Monday 3rd

In the traditional lunisolar calendar the year has 24 seasons, determined based on the position of the sun. Being heavily dependent on the weather, back in the days the seasons were an important part of agriculture, and the worship people showed to relevant gods of nature. With agriculture having changed so much, with the climate changing and with most people living in cities, today the 24 seasons are, obviously, a lot less relevant. That said, there is lot to find about the topic and since there are tales and beliefs about foods connected to important seasonal days, my interest is called for. Inyoung’s mom either makes us foods on certain days or she’ll make sure we know what day it is and what would be good to eat. The dishes are often healthy and green, lots of herbs and grains, perfect to decompress the internal systems. Today marks ipchun, the beginning of spring. The sun is at 315° but I don’t know what that means. Somebody explained it to me as follows. If the winter solstice, the shortest day, is considered midnight, and the summer solstice, the longest day, is noon, then ipchun is 3am. Seems fair. It may be the beginning of spring but temperatures can still drop low, it’s just that daylight gets longer, an important moment for farmers to start a new year of harvest. The weather was fairly comfortable over the weekend—five, six degrees and sunny. Today it’s freezing cold with a nasty wind blaring through the streets. It’ll drop further the next few days, with an expected perceived temperature of -25 on wednesday.

The birthday was as uneventful as I like it to be. It seems I’ve made almost everyone understand what’s good and what’s not. Behaviour I try to keep to myself as much as I can, but for the birthday I think it’s allowed. The one day in the year that I can justifiably mould around my wishes. There were sweet messages from family and friends. I remember ranting about some of the messages one receives these days last year. People sending the bare minimum ‘gefeliciteerd’ over whatsapp. Some adding one or two emojis, some not even doing that. Anyway, I don’t want to dig up that rant again. Some people send very thoughtful messages and that was touching—I guess the ageing plays a substantial role in how touching. Few weeks before my birthday Inyoung showed me that Kakao, Korea’s whatsapp-bol.com-maps platform, has the option of creating a wishlist for presents. And where I usually answer ‘books or socks’ when people ask, I now found that the bookstore of choice also offers their assortment through Kakao, I listed several books, hoping that would tackle the problem of non-book people not wanting to go to the bookstore for me. And it did. I was gifted the entire list, with most books arriving today. Gone is the disconnect between gifter and gifted.

Another present, at least that’s how I’d like to label it, the big Ajax-Feyenoord match last night. Remembering last year’s home and away, we took ten goals and had not felt so shamed before. How those tables have turned. We beat the Rotterdammers in their home end ’24, and we did so again at home yesterday. A 94th 2-1 goal. How sweet the taste of victory. With Eindhoven adding another draw to their recent slump, we’re now virtually leading the table. Amsterdams catenaccio is a thing. It’s a thing you, with your love for Italian football, would appreciate. PSV, 21 games, 68 goals, 50 points. Ajax, 20 games, 43 goals, 48 points. Someone wanted to talk effectiveness?

Tuesday 4th

Radio static noise

Wednesday 5th

For no identifiable reason I wake up with a sour mood. Not just a bad mood, a real bad one. I’ve tried to ditch much of it by writing nonsensical lines in a journal. This usually works. Today, at least so far, it doesn’t. I may have to step away from the desk, it seems probable things won’t be solved here. Yesterday the need to buy a simple notebook came to me. One I can use to scribble down Korean words and sentences I come across, the meaning of which I didn’t know. It’s ridiculous, I don’t need a new one. Scattered around the house lie notebooks of different sorts everywhere and it annoys me. There are the ones I use for the study program, that’s how I labeled them so that’s their sole purpose. Then there’s one I use when reading the sad book about the rhino growing up amongst elephants (it got even more sad). There’s a thicker one, more solid, for journaling. The little back pocket size in which I plot down interesting quotes. (‘Little comes from the works of those whose being is slight’, Meister Eckhart) Another even smaller one that has shopping lists and tasks I shouldn’t forget but still forget. A stack with year planners. The plan was to flip through the 2023 planner to see if there’s anything that needs not forgetting in 2024. Then 2025 came around. Now there’s a 2025 version that needs a 2024 review for which the 2023 review is still pending. It’s pathetic. And then I need a new one. For its purpose does not exactly match one of the already existing labels.

Last night I had the house to myself, I played live recordings of Daniel Norgren for hours on end. Had I known about my current morning mood, it could have been consolation of sorts. Anticipated solace. Wearing a helmet in traffic. Norgren is the food I can eat any time of day. There are foods and music for specific moments, things I can’t digest before sleeping or find hard to process upon waking up, Norgren is chocolate. I read Ferrante too. Il momento è arrivato. Book, music, sleep. All of good quality and in the right order. And still this sourness. I wish I could say your listening ear helped. How it lifted some of the burden and now I walk out into the world lightly. No such thing. The app states sensory temperature -16. If nothing else works, maybe true cold does. Let’s see if lemons freeze.

Thursday 6th

On my way to the bookstore today, I took the route a little north of the main and quickest road. It’s the route I prefer, not too many other people, only two traffic lights to wait for, the long pedestrian tunnel that connects my side of town with the area where the big palaces are. On regular days it’s a pleasant route all the way to the palaces. With the constitutional court exactly between the two palaces, I know there are a few traffic inconveniences. It’s the court that found itself on the global news stage a few weeks ago when the conspiracy idiots decided to climb the fences and break the parameters. It’s not where the president’s impeachment case is dealt with and I thought crossing the area wouldn’t be much of a hassle. It’s so cold, nobody with a sane mind would be there, I thought. A thought that may have been right, but I hadn’t anticipated the ones with the un-sane mind. And wow, there are many. I ended up having to cross through the middle of a stand-down between a mass of youtube-fed, ultra conservative and right-wing, American flag waving nutheads and the biggest flock of police force I’ve seen here to date. It’s not frightening in any way. Especially not for someone who has the skin-color of an American and therefore can always claim a position on the right side of history and geography if need be. It was just the sheer amounts blocking the streets. At least a hundred police touring cars lined up on all sides of the streets, leaving but two meter gaps to squeeze through, trying to get to the other side. And all I wanted was to buy a few books for my friend’s birthday. A slight underestimation on my end.

Having forced myself through the throngs of idiocy, it was smooth sailing after. A stint in the book store, pleasantly surprised to see the English book section constantly being further enlarged. Sorry Jhumpa, sorry. I’m still not at level full Korean book immersion. From the book store onwards to Upside Coffee, the Siberian airco blowing nastily in my face. It started snowing again too. In the stream I followed a school of big fish huddled together. Thirty at least. Less noisy than the crowds of earlier. Less star spangled banners too. I stand for a few minutes while every sane person quickly continues their walk, barely spending a second looking at the spectacle. Then I continue. Coffee to warm up. To read some. The protagonist rhino, his name is Nodeun, still thinks he’s just an elephant that looks like a rhino. He wonders at the character of the older elephants around him. They’re big and strong, he thinks. Their best character feat being that they don’t get angry easily. He knows elephants getting into fights can often end up killing someone and that’s not good. We’re all lucky for elephants not getting into fights recklessly. If only the protesters had an elephant in their life too. Or an elephant who looks like a rhino.

Friday 7th

There is a strange thing to music played in coffee houses that I cannot seem to pinpoint. Jazz, blues, a bit of rock and roll, it works so well in an atmosphere that floats on the smell of freshly ground, on the wooden furniture, on that sense of relaxation. I often find myself shazaming a track, only to find out that the same cannot be achieved at home. Etta James. God’s Song. The barista today empties the sleeve and carefully places 12 inches of vinyl on a record player. Pretentious. Absolutely. But magical too. The crackling before the music. A pair of high quality speakers in one corner, in light-brown wooden casing. Polaroid pictures on the wall, portraits of local regulars I assume. A stack of other records lined up against said wall, the corner resembles a shrine. An homage to the deep south. Only the candles are missing. I ordered a drip coffee with Kenya AA roast. I have no idea what this means. We have Kenya AA beans in our house too. But that’s based on a science of trying six, seven different options from the store and settling on the one we both like most. Here today, in Elak Coffee, one senses a holy importance to the practise of making coffee. Pretentious. Absolutely. It’s a spot I’ll return to though. A cafe in a corner house, a stone throw away from the main roads, just enough to be somewhat hidden and thereby remain pretentious. Two small tables, two benches and a wooden counter. It’s a living room. A few guys stuffed away under what must be the stairs of a neighbour’s house. I count five kitchen scales for two staff members, and an amount of glass jars that would put my old science teacher to shame. I walked all the way back from Seongsu-dong, a walk I love but that I regretted today for its distance today. It truly was too cold, instigated by an eye piercing wind. I cried all the way and felt relief upon closing the sliding doors behind me. A subtle nudge to me rubbing my hands intensely, the staff gave me a class of warm water to start with. The optimal occasion for a few pages with Elena and Lila but damn me, the book forgotten. My brain too cold for Nodeun and the requirement to work the pages, I opted to sit and bore myself instead. Four hands skilfully preparing coffees. The couple occupying the table next to me softly chattering about a recent trip to Jeju. A guy in full army suit entering, shuffling a few times to find the best way to seat himself on the one open counter seat. Between two girls, one of whom is studying with books, the other drawing on a tablet. Right from me, in the corner against the window a guy with a laptop. Windows frozen solid on the outside, blurring the street view. Two small portraits on the bottom of one of the sliding doors, Ringo Starr and John Lennon. Hand in hand with Etta I find myself slowly thawing back to my regular human being self.

Man means nothing, he means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower or the humblest yucca tree

Monday 10th

Yesterday, we met our Korean-American friends. Apart from pleasantries and regular, friendly and anecdotal talk, we spoke about anxiety over the current political situation in their two home countries. Both of them seem to suffer from severe anxiety. Inyoung is worried too but does not feel the same constant pressure. And as for me. I wonder what is wrong with me. I’m concerned, yes, but at the same time I find myself turning around, walking away, or like an ostrich, burying my head in the sand, choosing to ignore the power plays.

Without succumbing to pessimism, we tried to find some optimism and consider what opportunities there are to improve the current situation. While I tend to stay clear from expressing what I truly think (we’re all doomed), instead, I shared with them about my recent deep dive into old age eastern wisdom. Listening to the audiobook on Indian and Chinese intellectual traditions, one of the things I was surprised by is how the two diverge in their nature. Indian beliefs generally lean towards the metaphysical, while the Chinese cornerstones are more in the here and now. This distinction resonates and it reaffirms me my attraction to some of the wisdom born in the far eastern countries. Laozi’s Dao , Tibetan buddhist practises (especially their day-to-day, often stoic approach to life) and even certain aspects of confucianism.

There is a lot of criticism towards confucianism today in Korea, especially for it being the root cause of a distorted, patriarchy-centred society. Women are rightfully frightened of confucianism making a return. I don’t believe a revival of confucian values is likely. But if it should, be it in another shape or form, the tradition of rigorous study sounds appealing. Ever since its namesake roamed the lands that one day became China, sharing his wisdom with his disciples, the deep studying of historical text was always one of the key confucian components. Studying the sages, interpreting their thoughts and ideas.

Governmental officials in China, but also in Korea, dedicated their lives to studying ancient texts, interpreting the ideas of sages, to pass difficult examinations, allowing them to serve their king and their people. They lived their lives reading books, living in the university premises, committed to the higher goal–a righteous government and productive society. I’m not suggesting things need reversed centuries back, but this intellectual rigour definitely holds a lesson or two for modern-day leadership. An intelligence doorstep of sorts, a selection process, a bar to cross before being admitted in important roles. The requirement of something that takes years and requires one to read and read and read some more. I’m in favour. The world would be better for it.

That said, there’s one adjustment I’d make to the traditional confucian approach. Historically, students focused on past successes, assuming that replicating what worked before would yield more good results. I’d like to think that we should shift our focus. Opposed to constantly trying to copy the good, we should study and learn from the bad instead. The mistakes, the missteps, and failures. Those should be studied. It’s there that we might truly move forward.

Tuesday 11th

Radio static. Again on tuesday. What’s with tuesdays in february?

Wednesday 12th

Nothing quite like it has ever been published. That’s what it says on the cover of the my Ferrante paperback. Is that so? Has nothing like it ever been put out? Of this I’m not quite sure. It’s wonderful yes. But this may be a slight exaggeration. Its neapolitan setting, rough as it is, helps a sense of charm and it makes me wonder what the judgment would have been, had the story be in, say, Liverpool. Or Halifax. Hongkong. Rotterdam. The general opinion but yours too. Would you praise this story as highly if it was the Tangerean Novels instead of the Neapolitan? But, all in all, it’s really good, I don’t want to criticise the story, maybe just challenge its reception. Unfortunately the other three parts are not for direct sale in Korean bookstores. I guess the success of part one, had an English translation shipped to the east, but for the other three I’d be dependent on import shipping and, for now, that’s not what I want to promote.

The anonymity of Ferrante remains a point of debate. I read several important voices have rightfully stated it’s a boring and irrelevant search. I agree wholeheartedly. The link to Anita Raja and her husband, D. Starnone, makes me wonder whether we missed anything while spending our time on the Via Gemito last year. Some claim Starnone’s writing style matches Ferrante’s closest. Did you feel that too? His book about a (the) girl from Milan receives much praise, and is lined up for a few awards here and there. Some say it may reach the international booker prize longlist. Published more recent, substantially slimmer than the Via Gemito, and, this may speak to your data analytical approach most, more and better reviews from the Bezosean book platform. Is it time for a new chance? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s Italy after all.

It’s the first full moon after the lunar new year. This means today’s the festival called daeboreum, celebrated by a few traditions. There will be bonfires tonight in certain areas. We will eat ogok-bab, sticky rice mixed with five types of beans and grains. Supported by a wealth of edible, fresh green leaves and herbs. A meal I always look forward to and one that tourists never get to try. A miss if you ask me.

I’ve busied myself with the tours. Doing them and developing some new things. It’s exciting. Airbnb wants to offer one as an exclusive Seoul experience. I’m somewhat flattered but as it comes with zoom calls and filling online documents, it’s an underwhelming experience at the same time. Scratching the corporate nag. Overly friendly contact persons telling me how excited they are to add my tour to their portfolio. Had they been Dutch, or Canadian, I wouldn’t trust their sincerity. It’s painful to say, but it’s because they’re Korean, that we deal in good faith.

Thursday 13th

I consider myself a pacifist too and in no way am I encouraging the orange pretender in chief to have the troops march northward. What I would sign up for though, should that happen – the faint glimmer in the abyss – would be for your daily ten minutes writing after being conscripted into the Canuck army. Given the sense of dread your writing on corporate politics is permeated with, I’d love to see what you’d write about life in the pinnacle of bureaucracy. Corporate blowjobs exchanged for soap grabbing shower sessions. Out with the 9-to-5 jargon in emails, instead here’s a guy shouting commands in your face. A world in which there is no excel sheet to withdraw to for peace. Peace, a thing being endowed by higher rank. A daily regime more rigid than the one Milo is forcing on you. Promise me that you’ll write something every day. Pen on paper, it’s ok. Notes from the trenches by private Miskiewicz. Later followed by an intensely bleak memoir. My time on the 49th Parallel.

With that in mind, today in the human grinder, it will be a piece of cake for you.

The idea of an author, or even a character from a book, taking centre stage at the Superbowl halftime show, is worth a few minutes fantasising. I can see why you’d grant it to Ferrante with her (his)(their) popularity among Silicon’s tech workers and literate unicorns. We both know it would never be Ferrante in the land of wrong decision. It would be the author of the subtle art of not giving a fuck whose name I’m happy the name escaped me. At best it would be a fictional character, introduced by Oprah. A hologram of Olive Kitteridge. “To all the phonies in the house, straight from rebellious Brooklyn, here’s Hoooooooooolden Caulfield”.

It’s hard to remove the image of you on the frontline, dressed in camouflage, dirt purposely smeared on your face, going full band of brothers. Now it’s me who needs to put the laptop down and go for a long walk.

Sunday 16th

It’s been a few busy days. Busy days in my world that is. Not the busy that is working a full-time job and taking care of a toddler son (until when is one a toddler?) and a pregnant girlfriend. That’s a level of busy I have no understanding of. There’s pro-league busy and then there’s several leagues lower, amateur league busy, where I hang. Friday therefore was easy by all means. But at the same time, I hosted two tours around the market and along the city wall. Morning and afternoon, basically the same route twice. First a Swiss individual, then a group of three Dutchies. Eight hours total, 37,000 steps end of day. I was knackered and couldn’t get myself to opening the laptop after, let alone read a book.

Instead Inyoung and I finished the final two episodes of a tv-series we’ve been watching—Godless. A western story. About a gang of cowboy villains, one of whom, expelled after an altercation, turned good guy. There is a town where only widows live, all husbands died in a mining accident. A bit further down the sandy road a community of people-made-slaves. A lot of blood, a bit of christianity and slavery, some romance too, heaps of poverty, alcohol abuse and a fair amount of horses. Your typical western. I enjoyed Godless for several reasons. Jeff Daniels who acts the villain, is great. It’s only seven episodes. A little more meat on the bones than an average movie, but short enough to not drown in an endless thread of images and information. Also, I find it important to (fore)see the state to which the US is returning in the next few years. A godless shit hole of sand, inequality and violence. And lastly, it reminded me of the Winnetou and Old Shatterhand stories by Karl May. Stories that are up there among my forever favourite children’s books. I guess all these have now been cancelled for being completely inappropriate, but that’s a balloon I don’t want to burst. I read those books over and over, for years on end. Especially the first three, four of the series. It’s why I’ve parked the project of reading non-English novels in translation for a few days, and am now back with the adventures of two of the heroes of my childhood. Winnetou and Old Shatterhand have just met for the first time, but have parted on bad terms. Fingers crossed the plains, the native spirits, and a shared sublimity will ultimately bring the two together as friends.

Later today I will watch Ajax playing their league game. Watching Ajax these days, and it surprises me to say this, is a true joy. I can only recommend it. Lay the little man on one shoulder, find yourself an illegal stream somewhere. They’ve been winning the last, I don’t know, 8-9 games and are even at the top of the league currently. With a short spell in last position, all but a year ago, enter an Italian data freak in his early thirties, and the machinery starts grinding and pushing. First rusty, weird sounds hissing from unknown pipes, but now the bolts are greasy and the thing is fired up, spewing out one success after another. A midweek stint on a slippery mudflat in Brussels resulted in a 0-2 win and moreover a great team performance. Best one on the pitch, lauded even outside the Amsterdam bubble, a sixteen year old Belgian, making his debut in Europe, scoring a brilliant goal with his not-so-preferred right foot. Van Basten liking him to Rijkaard and predicting a Premier League move in the not-so-far future.

Something’s cooking in Amsterdam and you want to be part of it Jack. As said, the cook is Italian and he knows what he’s doing.

Monday 17th

A late game. A short night. Worth the watch, my Ajax heart beats regular speed again.

A photo full of wonder you sent me. Milo a little too young to realise he sits face-to-face with times past. Maybe one day he’ll see the photo and become curious as to what the strange clunky thing in front of him is. It can’t be long before keyboards are history. Voice recognition, brain guidance. Not sure where we are, but the hitting of keys seems almost obsolete. After keyboards, books and libraries will follow. We should embrace the still existing book scene, a vibrant one in Korea that is. It’s not yet the niche that is film photography, or vinyl records, or arcade machines and fountain pens. It can’t be long though.

While reading how Winnetou slowly warmed up to Old Shatterhand after their initial feud, my electronic book had a brief spell of firmware tantrum. The irony. It froze, then automatically restarted, then froze again. I couldn’t get it to work again and, after several attempts, had to reboot the device to its original settings. Not as dramatic as it sounds, but it wiped the thing entirely. While watching the game later, this provided for a small project on the side—to upload again the 100-something titles that were on the reader before. Things run smooth again now but I can’t un-see the correlation between Milo and the typewriter and my electronics letting me down.

Tuesday 18th

One of the few occasions we get to hear the revered Karl-Ove—thoughtful, a deep voice, humorous too. It also reaffirms a thought that crosses my mind occasionally. On the art of a good interview. There are some great podcasts out there and I do spent (or: waste) quite the hours listening. But the ease with which one can make themself heard today, has also resulted in a proliferation of shows hosted by appalling interviewers. And yes, to interview well is either a talent one has or a skill one learns. It seems commonly accepted that it’s just the interviewed who is important. We learn their life hacks, we jot down some quotes, we receive a recommendation or two for our next listen, and on we go.

Interviewer: Do you consider yourself to be a romantic?
Karl-Ove: {sighs deep} Romantic in what way?
Interviewer: Uhm. I suppose in your…kind of perspective…uhm…it’s a bit of a…I suppose in your kind of heart. I mean, for want of a better way to frame it. That you, your writing is so kind of un-murky in any way. It’s so deliberate and clear. But then, maybe to do with, like, you know, love of music and interesting clothes. Like when you described being interested in beauty as a little child.
Karl-Ove: Yeah. {another sigh} Yeah, I think I am very much so. Also, I find truth in emotions. And emotions are, you know, it’s hard to define {chuckle} it’s hard to know what it is but I do trust them.

I mean. I suppose. Maybe I’m too cynical.

I like when the interviewer listens well. When the guest is inspired, challenged, and is given space and time to contemplate and wonder around an answer. I don’t want the interviewer to hear a guest and simply wait for their next turn to ask something banal. I want them to listen to a guest. To allow the conversation to develop by putting up a few, but only little boundaries to ensure we don’t get lost and then, within set space, to just gently push the guest to adjust course every now and again. I don’t want my guest floating on a raft out on open sea without support. Just an air mattress in a pool, a pool of substantial size, and my interviewer to subtly push the mattress when a pool’s edge nears.

Or, if situation demands, to challenge the guest. Not to challenge for bravado or a quick win. But to sincerely challenge one’s choices and ideas, or to call someone’s bullshit. Listen Karl-Ove. On this crap about your father and his mom, which parts did you fabricate to make yourself look better?

It’s kind of, like, you know. Too cynical? It probably is. Especially considering the amount of podcasts I listen to routinely. Only to continue the streak of listening to a show I’ve been consuming for years. Still though, we should hold the interviewers we allow the courtesy of our hearing attention, to a higher standard.

A final point of attention: Why is he talking about fashion and not football?

February 20th

It’s a little hole-in-the-wall near the photography studio of my friend Chris. The space is at least four/fifth kitchen. What’s left can hold six customers, each a wooden stool at a counter made of the same wood. Six coat hangers, one per seat, on the white plastered wall that makes the right long end of the restaurant, stretching deeper to the far end than the front stretches left to right. The menu is simple. It’s either yakisoba, buckwheat noodles, stir-fried with an impressive variety of seemingly random veggies and pork. Here they add pieces of squid as well. Egg-fry on top, a squish of mayo and a few slices of pickled ginger on the side and bob’s your uncle. Half-covering the dish with an egg, makes it somewhat presentable. Without the egg it could, at least aesthetically, pass for a quickly thrown together house meal. This chef’s version though, it’s magical. Apart from noodles, the menu offers Japanese style fried cutlet and rice. Both dishes prepared by a friendly chef who himself, based on his appearance, loves eating. It makes one wonder what came first. Did he enjoy eating that much and decided to become a chef, or did the profession proceed consumption. Chris frequents the restaurant often, the two of them are friendly among themselves and address each other in a lesser formality than is common in restaurants. It takes some for a Korean working a service job to let slide of some of the ceremonial attitude—younger generations are better at this but it also speaks to Chris’ charm.

We both eat noodles today. Followed by a small bowl of sweet yoghurt, a service on the house here. Chris jokes it’s the reason he visits, which evokes laughter behind the pots and triggers the chef to add more gratuities. We both receive two pouches with a nutritional, supplemental powder. Proteins, omega-3, probiotics, vitamins. Reading the cover one could start to believe that two of these a day could replace a substantial part of a healthy diet. Later at home gifting her the supplements, Inyoung mentions the brand is well-known for its pyramid sales scheme. Your Korean Herbalife. It puts the creator of the tasty wheat noodle-dish in a different light. Is he a trickster? Or the tricked? Or oblivious to the fact, as he received the pouches as a present himself.

Satisfied by soba we walk a few blocks with coffee in mind. A craving satisfied at Uig, a cafe named after one of the most remote towns on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. I’ve been there years ago. This coffee place honouring the town always makes me chuckle. It’s by no means a five story Starbucks building, but it’s of proper size. Two open floors and a large terrace. At least fifteen, if not twenty, tables on each floor. A huge counter downstairs, covered with different flavoured pound cakes named after other towns on the Scottish islands. Some tables hold two, but some six, or eight. So that makes sixty downstairs, sixty upstairs. With lots of space among the tables. This means that if we were to start cramming here, the restaurant can hold more coffee drinkers than the town of Uig itself has inhabitants—350 in the latest population count of 2019. One only has to imagine the ravage of a covid virus crashing through the streets, occupied by mostly elderly island Scots, and one can see the irony of naming a coffee place this size, in a city of millions. The coffee is black and hot. And after all, that’s what we’re here for. Not for being sarcastic and trying to find funny loopholes in what is probably an honest way to uphold an important moment in one’s life. That visit to the town of Uig. I have that memory too, it made an impression.

To Uig, to pyramid schemes and to yakisoba!

Friday 21st

There is not much more that can be done by the red and white from Amsterdam to draw your attention to their contemporary catenaccio art. According to wiki it was Rinus Michels’ Ajax in the seventies that exposed the weaknesses of catenaccio. This makes it all the more surprising to see its revival now in Amsterdam of all places. The average Ajax fan, typically a very critical creature, always demanding offensive wingers, midfielders thinking forward, a keeper judged by his feet rather than his hands. And now there are 50,000 of them cheering for a physical game, a strong defense, for withdrawing around the own box even.

Thursday 13:
Union St. Gilloise – Ajax 0-2

Thursday 20:
5’ – Ajax misses the unmissable header to seal the deal and close the books early
15’ – Union score 0-1 from a similarly unmissable header
25’ – Klaassen prevents a 100% goal, solid dive, two hands block. Unfortunately he’s not the goalie. Red card Ajax
26’ – Union score 0-2 from following penalty
27’ to 95’ – Ajax not only a player down but team loses its metaphorical head
27’ to 95’ – Union miraculously fails to take any of the uncountable opportunities and game goes into overtime
93’ – It’s just a cross, not even a chance, handball Union. Ajax scores penalty
94’ to 128’ – Union are offered another plethora of chances but fail to score

Ball possession – Ajax 33% Union 67%
Shots – Ajax 7 Union 34
Passes – Ajax 370 Union 716
Twelve yellow cards, one red one.

Images of an Union player breaking his nose, an Ajax defender continuing on one shoe, four guys down with cramps. It’s almost eight o’clock and time for breakfast when the game ends. I’m ten years older in all but two hours. Speechless too. Amsterdam warriors and an Italian chef. Onwards in Europe. Few days left for ice bath and massage now. This team truly is worthy of receiving the Seria A label.

Monday 24th

We are in Myeongdong, the center of vulgar consumerism. Take your Kalverstraat and multiply this by ten. Then by five more, adding at least five floors per building. Saturday afternoon. The worst time to be here, unless one came to walk on people’s heads. Hell on earth. We are on the eleventh floor, towering over this pool of misery, almost level with Namsan’s radio tower. Here in the gates of hell is the arthouse location of CGV cinema franchise and, appropriate to the location, we are here to see Lynch’ Mulholland Drive. I’ve seen the film years ago. A year after its release, when the VHS hit the stores. 2002. One of few that left such an impression, I can still revoke large parts more than twenty years later. A weird impression, for sure. I remember not understanding it at the time. A feeling of ‘what did I just watch?’. Now, two days after a second try, a similar feeling still lingers but a general idea of understanding resides as well. More importantly, Naomi Watts’ stellar performance. For reasons unclear she didn’t leave the same impression on nineteen-year-old-me as she does on forty-plus-me. There’s much to like for an adolescent, a slippery lesbian sex scene, the angriest masturbation ever to be screened. It also struck me this time how often I had to laugh. The espresso scene is one of the funniest scenes in a movie that seems not intended funny. The slowness of the spit, the drooling of the supposed best espresso in town. On a white napkin. It’s hilarious. Did Lynch have personal beef with LA’s coffee scene?

I had not visited this theatre, disguised as an arthouse cinema, but am positively surprised. It takes a trip to hell and back, but it’s worth it. Inyoung and I decide to cool down, braving the Siberian wind (I learn today Koreans simply call it knife-wind)—It’s her first time with Lynch. One can understand the need for thoughts to settle down a bit before other things. We walk an hour, all the way to the theatre district, Seoul’s Broadway if you want, and grab a table at our favourite pizza place. One ‘nduja and one prosciutto e rucola pizza. A perfect desert to Lynch if ever there was one.

Tuesday 25th became Friday 28th

It’s years ago I read the book, but Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is the best war novel I ever read. And I’m confident it will stay in or very near that top position for the remainder of my life. It be foolish to say that his descriptions made me feel as I was there with the guys. There being the dread that is the daily life of a marine platoon dispatched to Viet Nam. I have no idea what it means to guard a piece of jungle that is not ours—unwashed since weeks, the humidity unbearable, leeches, blisters, wet cigarettes. I have no notion whatsoever. And like to keep it that way. What it did do though, is provide me with an insight in that war’s misery, an idea of claustrophobia while not being in charge of the situation. Are we surrounded? Where are they and what are they thinking? They being both the Viet Cong enemy but also the US army chiefs, making decisions hundreds of miles away from the front line. It’s a brilliant book. Even for a pacifist like me. Especially for a pacifist? Maybe the gun-owning, violence-glorifying reader wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I did. And would it be presumptuous of me to think that individual wouldn’t be a book reader?

In light of his latest release, a novel set in the context of post-WWII Finnish-Russian border calamities, I just read an interview with the author. It’s a brief interview, not one to remember, definitely not one that will one day be brought back to the spotlights for its historical validity or its striking forward-looking relevance. It annoyed me though and it shouldn’t have. It’s 8’o clock in the morning and here’s a piece of work that should have been left in the dark dungeon of already forgotten internet data. After the first formalities are over, the interviewer, a Jane Ciabattari (a name sufficiently infuriating already) asks the following:

JC: What inspired you to write about the immediate aftermath of World War II, years 1946-1949 in Finland, a country that was invaded by the Soviet Union, losing huge amounts of its eastern territory. After the war, Finland fell under Soviet dominance and teetered on the edge of becoming totally absorbed into the Soviet Union, an outcome that would have been calamitous for the U.S. and a Western Europe struggling to stay free.

I guess what you mean to say was “an outcome that would have been calamitous to Finland struggling to stay free’. You self-centred, unaware, privileged piece of shit. It’s the same over and over. ‘Western’ reporting on the war over Ukraine hardly ever stems from sympathy with the Ukrainians, their safety, their lives. It’s always the line that creeps up on the west.

Skins full of bullshit is what they are.

Marlantes is gracious enough to let the offensiveness of the question pass, but pokes back at the interviewer and many of her US based readers a little later in the interview. I’m sure she’s too stupid to realise this. That’s unfortunate. Although, that slight chance, upon reading it out loud, post-editing the text? Maybe? Seated in a silent room of the Ciabattari mansion, I’m guessing upstate New York somewhere. Maybe she noticed.

JC: How were you able to infuse Louise with such energy and naivete?

KM: I’d guess by showing, not telling. I was aware that making her so naïve might stretch credulity, but I stand firm. People who think she is too naïve, are naïve. We have members of Congress who are no smarter than oysters and as ignorant as medieval peasants—and American voters put them there.

I set out to write on books but failed miserably. If there’s one thing you should take from this: Read Matterhorn. Oh, and the US is full of shit. More on books tomorrow.