Retail Therapy

Heat, hardware stores, IKEA again, and barbecue.

I finally get why they call it a dongle.

Real feel 113 F today. Tomorrow the forecast says 118. We’re through the monsoon season. No long stretches of rain to cool us down. A good time to stay in and enjoy the aircon.

We spent the weekend working on the apartment and avoiding the heat by shopping. Jia takes a clay-making class at the Starfield Mall near Kintex every Saturday afternoon, and while she did that, we went to Daiso, Casamia, and No Brand to buy stuff for the house. We dropped Nammin off at One Mount to see her friends, and Jia cried in the car the whole way home. She missed her mom so much that the first thing she did when we got back to the apartment was draw a picture of her that said MAMAMAMA. We ordered Korean-Chinese, and Jia ate almost a whole bowl of jajangmyeon. Then we played Nintendo Switch Sports until we got too tired and switched to Mario Kart. She was asleep almost as soon as I finished the last page of a Dr. Seuss book.

On Sunday, we went to ACE Hardware, just down the street from us by Ilsan Station, for some lightbulbs and WD-40. The store is a curiosity. It has all these industrial-scale tools and products that people here would seldom buy for DIY home repairs or maintenance. They play Top 40 country music over the speakers, and you can even buy a full-size American flag. You see Koreans wandering around just looking at everything. I almost talked myself into buying a Weber gas grill but wisely did not.

Then it was off to E-Mart, which was busier than I’ve ever seen it. They remodeled the one near us with a whole new Wow! section intended to compete with Daiso. It has a ton of household supplies, with nothing over KRW 5,000. Jia got a little stuffed Shiba Inu that she named Bark Bark Love. She’s best friends with the kitten version, Meow Meow Love.

Somehow we completed the trifecta of shopping misery by returning to my absolute favorite place on earth, the blue-and-yellow hellstore, IKEA. We dropped Jia off at the kids’ play area, Småland, and went through the whole torturous maze again. I’ve been in this densely populated country long enough that I’m usually OK with crowds, but this was my second time there in a week, and it was absolutely jammed with people. Another cart loaded with flat-pack boxes of shoe benches and storage shelves. We didn’t even get meatballs.

But we did find one of the more exciting barbecue restaurants I’ve been to in a long time, tucked away in another pocket of our neighborhood that we would have found only because we moved here. The kind of place that has an earthenware charcoal grill on the end of the table. They cook the meat with mushrooms and shishito peppers. Great quality. Kind owners. They even let you bring your own wine. We’ll definitely be back.

I ended the day by building three pieces of furniture and only had to endure one thingamajig that didn’t fit and one missing piece. Good thing I had a few extra wooden dowel thingies left over from some past agony that I could retrofit.

What else? I filed my pieces on Scott McClanahan’s Fights! and Min Jin Lee’s American Hagwon. Very different books, but both good in their own way. Next up is Claire Hopple’s new one, and then I want to write about The Sun Also Rises turning 100 this year. I just reread it, making it my third time through—essentially once every decade. I love how books become completely different experiences as you change over time. After those two, I’m hoping to write a bigger piece on Malcolm Lowry and Under the Volcano, sort of like what I did with Thomas McGuane. Those projects take more time.

Oh, and if you’re a fan, the Popcast interview the New York Times did with Conor Oberst is worth a watch—or a listen. I’ve been listening to Oberst’s music and admiring his lyrics for more than 20 years. He’s had moments over the last few years when it looked like life was catching up with him. When you get to be his age—which is also my age—you know people who didn’t make it. It is a long life. You start to see how it could go either way. He seems pretty good in this interview.