"Thank god for velcro..."

...that's something I invariably find myself saying every day but today I really wanted to give Arthur Velcro a double high five. I was told not to put things on my wall with glue nails or tacks. So I took a look at my local dollar store (cause that's about my spending limit for interior decorating) and found some velcro tape. Now the picture on the package showed this stuff holding a remote control to the wall. Now I figured, well if its strong enough to hold a remote control on the wall it must be strong enough to hold a big mirror and a bunch of pictures onto poorly mounted wallpaper.

I was not told to avoid taping things to the wall. It was implied. Oh boy was it implied. But never said.

So I've managed to put my stuff back on the walls with a clean conscience. And does my stuff fall down? Sure yeah a bit, but it doesn't get too broken. And don't we all need a little crash now and again to remind us what a cruel and powerful mistress Gravity is? That could just be me.

Tomorrow I am planning to go to a Buddhist temple and make kimchi. As per the title of this blog I think my relationship with kimchi is allegorical of all my struggles in life. Cabbage is an evil food that represents the evil cabbage that is within all of us. I eat it almost daily now, all pickled and spiced. I realize now that kimchi isn't cabbage its dead cabbage that has been stripped of all its evil flavor and nutrients (well actually it can be other stuff like radishes and stuff, kimchi is more of a process than a food, and actually is very nutritous). So in reality tomorrow I will kill some cabbage, which represents me subjugating the malicious mushroom inside of me. Its a complicated allegory.

Its about time I started taking in the culture, and this seems like a good way to start. I read about the event on a korea forum and signed up (b.y.o.apron was the only requirement), as the kimchi making festival is a popular cultural thing here. Sure there's a part of me that feels like it might just be a bunch of Buddhist monks Tom Sawyering me into making their lunches for the winter. But then there's the other part that says that these monks probably know all sorts of kungfu and I'd better do what they want. Luckily for me that same dollar store sells nunchucks.