"On the good ship of Sperwer..."

Sperwer's Lodge
Under construction...
(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday afternoon, my family and I enjoyed a meal and conviviality on Sperwer's stately pirate ship, which -- like Noah's Ark -- has run aground high up on a mountain.

We nearly didn't find the place because in setting out from our apartment, my wife and I were in a bit of 'confusion' over who was being more generous in carrying things and so forgot to carry the two most essential things:

1. Sperwer's treasure map for locating his mountain retreat high above Seoul

2. Sperwer's secret code for actually using the map to locate his place

I think that the latter is also called a phone number. Anyway, 'we' left it and the map on my wife's desk in our apartment. Technically, my wife left them on her desk, but I'll let that pass.

Anyway, there we were, standing outside of Gireum Station, wondering what to do next. I suggested that we find a PC-bang (i.e., a Korean-style Internet café), go online, access my email, and obtain the map and code.

That would be a reasonable recourse.

My wife, however, preferred to risk relying on her memory of the instructions. Now, I would never do that myself, but she felt pretty sure that she recalled the directions because she had translated them into Korean and written them down. I didn't insist on my way because I didn't want to re-visit our earlier 'confusion'.

We hailed a taxi, cabbed it up the mountainside, and -- to my surprise -- found the place. Here's the 'original' English version of what my wife had in her head:

Make the second left at the third stoplight out of the Kagub Lennut. Go up the hill to the Y-intersection at the top and bear right. Follow the street as it meansers about until you come to a small park on the left. Turn right there and go down the street about 100 meters. Our house is on the left, surrounded by a vine encrusted brick wall, across from a massive brick wall and just above a new hanok with a traditional wall.

The Kagub Lennut does not exist, of course, and I've altered some of the instructions to prevent Interpol from using this information to track down the famously infamous pirate Sperwer, but he really did write "meansers" in his instructions. Initially, I took that as a typo for "meanders," but the street is rather crooked, so possibly "meansers" was truly meant as a pun on "mean streets."

Anyway, my wife guided the taxi driver as we meandered along that 'meansering' street, and -- as already noted -- she actually got us there. On time. I bowed to her superior intelligence.

We went in and greeted the other guests: the Liminal Man, accompanied by his lovely wife Hyunjin, and the Big Ho, accompanied by ... uh, well, by nobody, but the Big Ho is massive enough to constitute two people, so he's never really alone.

I then opened the large bag that I had generously carried the whole way from our apartment, took out the three bottles of wine and the container of chicken legs still marinating in quantities of special sauce, and handed all of this booty over to Sperwer.

As with the Big Ho, Sperwer was unaccompanied -- his wife having been unexpectedly called out of town on a business trip -- but his seven-year-old daughter was at home, and the kids were soon playing the way kids do.

They seemed to be having a great time running in and out of the house and around in the yard, a particularly special treat for En-Uk , who had never seen a yard before. Sa-Rah can recall having played in the yard around our house back when we lived in Australia, but for En-Uk, this was a totally new experience -- yards and yards of yard.

Their games left us adults free to eat, drink, and converse, which we did for several hours. My wife says that I drank too much, but I don't recall things that way ... though my body did respond in a rather zombie-like manner as it dragged me out of bed at the usual hour of 3:00 a.m. and forced me to blog on this.

Oddly enough, my zombie body now wants to take me back to bed! I wish that it would make up its zombie mind. Oh, right, zombies don't have minds...

[Incidentally, Blogger is refusing to allow entry headings this morning, so I'll have to add the title later: "On the good ship of Sperwer..."]