Two weeks left- the panic sets in....

I have seen other people go through this and I am certainly not a stranger to it myself. However I was waiting to see how it would affect me in Korea. I am of course talking about the panic that you get just before leaving a country that you have spent a great deal of time in. The panic generally consists of the belief that you haven't seen enough of the country and that everyone else has seen the best bit- the bit that you didn't even know existed until you got home and people asked you how you liked it. A symptom of the panic is the feeling that you must go out and see EVERYTHING and the rush to try and see it all in one day.

When I was in Oz it was easy to spot the English and the Irish who were about to leave the country. They were the ones that had spent an entire year in the bar and were now trying to get a year's worth of suntan in one day. Qantas must think that everyone from Europe is just allergic to the plane home. I had laughed at these lobster people many times myself until I fell victim to it. My last day in Sydney (back in December 1999) and I had the choice of going to the movies and going to the beach, my last chance to get sand into all those places that I didn't know it was possible to get sand into. Inevitably the beach won the day and I set off to catch the ferry to Manly. But there was a further complication in that my stocks of suntan lotion had dried up a week previously and I had precious little money left to buy any. And, really, what was the point when I was heading back to the UK where factor 35 was still living in the realms of unicorns- some people had said that they had seen it but most of the population refused to believe them(!)

Despite slinking along the walls to get to the ferry terminal, only shopping on the shady side of the street and sitting under palm trees on the beach, I managed to attain the shade of red which would have guaranteed me pride of place in a salad had I been a tomato. you know, the kind of suntan that makes complete strangers wince in sympathy when they see you. Fortunately it had calmed down considerably after my 35 hour journey home but the stopover in Bali was a dicey time!

Well, the last thing that I am going to get in Korea in December is sunburn (I last did that in September so it is firmly ticked off my To Do list) but what should I do in my last week and a half? I have given into the temptation to start packing and have two boxes waiting to go to the post office (yes, Trish, only two!!) So far I have resisted the urge to put things in my bag though it is a struggle that daily nearly sends me into a backpack stuffing frenzy. I have seen a lot of the country but most of my travels seemed to lead me to a bar via the nearest World Cup stadium over the summer. And after intensive investigation I am lead to conclude that most Korean temples look the same and it is nearly impossible for an amateur to tell a new one from an old one.

But I still worry that I am missing out!

And it is this fear of missing out that is the main cause of the panic. The bit that has me scouring the pages of my Lonely Planet looking for cultural gems which I might have missed in the last 11 and a half months. When I went to South Africa last year I had an amazing time and wouldn't change a single moment of it... but.... I can still sense the sympathy when I tell people that no, I didn't make it to Cape Town. They then adopt a 'you may well have seen lions devouring antelope amid the sand dunes of the Kalahari Desert but what is that compared to a city with a hoofing great mountain in it' look which so inflames my curiosity that I nearly run to the airport to jump on the first plane heading to Africa just to see it for myself.

So I was determined not to spend this weekend the same way that I have spent countless others since I got here- that is to say anticipating being drunk, being drunk and recovering from being drunk- or Friday, Saturday and Sunday to the lay person! I had vaguely murmured something about going to the beach or the National Park nearby even if it meant heading into the wilderness on my own.

Then I realised, at the risk of appearing soppy that the one thing that I didn’t want to miss out on in my last few weeks was the company of my friends. So I am going out drinking this weekend proud that there is still soju that I have never seen. Now that is a real sense of adventure!
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Internet and other ramblings..

Guess that I should make the most of the PC bangs while I am still in Korea. It is ridiculously cheap here- around 50p an hour. There was an item on the Internet in South Korea on BBC world the other day. It said that over 50% of the South Korean population has access to the internet making it one of the most computer literate countries about. But it does have its downside. There are internet addiction support groups out there for those that can't tear themselves away from Starcraft or Crazy Arcade in their free time. There are also many professional game players.

Recently a man collapsed and died after playing computer games nearly non-stop for 86 hours in Gwangju (a city near Mokpo). Gaming addiction also has a knock-on effect on real life with more than one expert claiming that the digital violence is increasingly finding its way into every day life. All I know is that the PC bang that I am in is alive with the sound of people shooting the crap out of each other with laser guns and the only sound of typing is coming from my keyboard.
I guess that I am an internet addict in a different way. I check my hotmail account five days out of seven and sometimes several times a day. I am the kind of girl that likes the sound of her own typing almost as much as she enjoys the sound of her own voice. I am a communications addict really and this is much cheaper than the telephone with a much wider audience. After all the years of laughing at yuppies with mobile phones I have now owned four in the last three years (one got stolen, I gave one away because it was so ugly, one if sitting in my mother's kitchen drawer at home and the last one is the cute little white one in my pocket right now). And I still run home to check the answer machine and I don't even have one anymore! And I run to work in the mornings to see if I have any real mail. I am sure that I couldn't have done this travelling lark in the dark ages of five years ago when internet connection was still a rare thing in a city and the cafes where invariably still filled with anoraks.

The internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with passing acquaintances and friends and family alike. Which is great and I love the fact that I have friends in so many different countries.

But enough of this waffling, a little Starcraft won't hurt surely.............
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