Amanda Takes Off...

I think the Mexican restaurant may be cursed.

I have bronchitis, and my doctor (a very cool woman who speaks good English) forbade me from doing taekwondo until I am better. So this week I've been home every night. Good Man works one subway station away from me. Last night he called around 10 and said, "I'm coming over, I have to do work on my laptop late tonight."

I gave him keys for a reason. (So he can do my dishes when I'm gone, of course.) I didn't mind if he came over.

Except he had to be up past midnight and up again at 6 am to do tech support with Costa Rica. When I was leaving the house this morning I told him to call in late. "Your employer doesn't know you're at my house. You can't possibly do tech support with Costa Rica and be on the subway at the same time. Call him, tell him you're doing tech support, and take a break! Rest! You work too hard."

Good Man took my advice to the extreme and called in sick. (And did my dishes.) Good for him, he is getting sick and he deserves a rest after working 12+ hour days and the last few Saturdays.

So after work we decided we'd go have Mexican food. The food was delicious and afterwards we went to the place we had breakfast for coffee and ice cream.

Good Man was a bit quiet over dinner and coffee. He's stressed from work. And he's sick of Korea. He wants to get out of his home country. I understand the feeling. Both being sick of Korea and wanting to leave one's home country.

Finally we were getting ready to part at the subway station. And I realized I didn't have my handphone.

Good Man callled my phone and a guy answered, but he was all the way in Indeogwon. Turns out he'd found the phone in the taxi and didn't realize it wasn't his until he'd gotten out. It must have fallen out of my pocket. There was no way I could get my phone back without Good Man's help, so even though it was ten and we were both tired, we headed back to Indeogwon and waited to meet the guy. When we got out of the taxi at Indeogwon I jokingly asked Good Man to check that I hadn't left anything behind. He looked in the taxi and held up my pineapple lip balm. I can only wonder how many things I've left behind in taxis.

We finally met the guy. I saw him on the phone talking to Good Man and said, "Is that my phone?" but he shook his head. Good Man turned around and saw the man. The man looked at me. He looked at Good Man. He slid the phone open, looked at Good Man's picture, looked at me, "Oh, that is you!" he said to Good Man with a laugh. We thanked him several times and I tried to give him 10,000 won as a reward, but he refused to take it.

Last time it was shoes, this time my handphone...what will go wrong next time?

Good Man decided to take a taxi home and I made him take 20,000 won to help pay for it. I climbed into my own taxi, because even though I was two stations from my house I was tired. "Why did you leave that man?" the taxi driver said.

"What?"

"The man, not friend?"

"He's my boyfriend."

"Where's he going?"

"He lives in Seoul," I said, praying this one wouldn't ask if I sleep with him.

"Oh. Why not go with?"

I really didn't want to talk to this man, even though I knew he was just doing that taxi driver thing. I said, "His mother was calling him."

"Oh. Yes," the driver said with a nod, "Korean mothers are like that."

Subway Good Man

Coffee Good Man

Photos taken with my new 50mm f/1.8D lens. I wanted the 1.4 but just couldn't afford twice the price for 2/3rds a stop. I'm having problems with the autofocus aspect of it. Honestly, shooting at 1.8, autofocus is going to be a pain anyway because the depth of field is so darn narrow.

I don't know when I last shot with such a fast lens. Heck, I don't know that I've ever shot with such a fast lens. I love throwing the f/stop as far open as possible, so this is a dream come true. Except I need to ready my eyes to manually focus with such a narrow depth of field. And still, getting used to the fact that 50mm is really more like 75mm when mounted on my DSLR is difficult.