2/22: After work, met up with Heather for a Wednesday evening sitting and dharma talk at CIMC, where I also ran into my new friend Joi.

2/22: Got to hang out with my friend Nicole during her third of six chemo treatments over at MGH.

2/18: Once more, with feeling: another fine issue of DargonZine comes out. DargonZine 19-2 features another excellent pair of Black Idol stories, bringing us ever closer to the arc's long-awaited climax!

2/17: After November's collossal travesty of ineptitude by Dell, in December I ordered a new laptop from IBM. After waiting for two whole months for it to ship, today it arrived: a brandy-new Lenovo StinkPad Z60m. Will it finally replace the six year old Vaio? Let's hope so!

2/11: Finished reading Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now", which I'd received as a gift from Inna. I found it an odd melange of Buddhism, Christianity, and New Agery.

2/6: Suffering from jet lag, sleep deprivation, dehydration, blood loss, and a viral infection, I went and passed out in public and had to be transported to the ER, having given myself a concussion and a facial laceration.

2/4: Time to go home! Goodnight Seoul, good morning, Boston! See the whole Seoul photo gallery.

2/1: The work week with the client in Seoul was going pretty painfully, but got suddenly much more painful when I developed a somewhat serious medical condition.

1/29: Sunday I took off for the hills, doing the "Inwangsan Hillside Walk" amongst Buddhist and shamanist shrines perched atop a high crag, then billygoated up some ludicrous ascents to the peak of 1132-foot Mt. Inwangsan. After coming back down, I checked out the huge palace at Gwangbokgung, where thousands of Koreans were playing games in observance of the Lunar New Year. Then down the Insadonggil marketplace and back home after dinner.

1/28: After one day at work, I had the weekend to myself! After accidentally sleeping past 2pm, I spent the afternoon exploring Itaewon, the tackily commercial expat district of Seoul, and checking out some rather mediocre Indian food.

1/25: Time to go! Packed my bags and spent 28 hours flying halfway around the world, finally landing in Seoul, South Korea. Whew!

1/24: Attended another pretty nice scotch whisky tasting at Federal Wine & Spirits, this time featuring selections from independent bottler Gordon & MacPhail.

1/23: Don't kick the Bucket! Caught the formerly mighty Toasters playing the Middle East upstairs with Hawaii's Go Jimmy Go.

1/21: In addition to continuing the long-running Black Idol story arc in DargonZine 19-1, my magazine started the new year with some big changes. We finally left our old ISP and went to a new one, which also allowed us to point the dargonzine.com domain at our real site, and a public ftp site at ftp.dargonzine.org.

1/20: Well, if I'm going to Korea, I guess I'd better bring along a camera! After a long wait and a lot of analysis, I finally picked up a new Nikon D50 digital SLR and lots of accessories. So look for more photos here, as well as in my online photo gallery.

1/19: Spent much of the evening as the center of attention at the Bus Innovation holiday party, as I was recognized with an Above & Beyond award on the same day that I volunteered to be sent Korea for work.

1/18: Joyfully met a cool, interesting person at a CIMC dharma talk.

1/11: Went to the Museum of Science to see the iMax movie "Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France", which was originally supposed to be about local hero Tyler Hamilton and his amazing ride through injury in the 2003 Tour, but was delayed and completely rewritten around Baden Cooke and Jimmy Caspar after Tyler was accused of doping.

1/4: Started the new year right where 2005 left off, by being right-hooked by an SUV during the commute home. Fortunately the injuries I incurred, though painful, weren't too major.