The Danger of Boredom

The danger of being bored - especially when it is 800 degrees out with eleventy million percent humidity - is that first off, you end up fulfilling what's-his-name's law of whatever it was - momentum or something. Like, a body in motion remains in motion but a body that isn't doing much in the morning except playing on Facebook and whining to her friends on msn about how bored she is, uh, doesn't remain in motion.

Or something.

And the second problem with being bored is that, besides getting nothing done, you also come up with devious ways to make the things that you do actually manage to get done last longer. This holds true even if you are shopping in a market and have to force yourself to walk slowly past all the raw fish stalls in order to reach the fruit.

Apparently, boredom also makes me do stupid things. It was boredom that led me to lock myself out on a fire escape in Montreal ten years ago (I was washing my windows, okay???), and it's led up to today, which was truly a red-letter day in the world of me being an idiot.

Having left Red Devil in Hadang (other side of Mokpo) yesterday, after having seen 1408 with JP and Kristen and having once again used JP's cooking skills to feed me (along with Kristen and Hyun-joong), I had to go and get it today.

So, I decided to walk.

Outside.

At the hottest point of the day (roughly the temperature of the surface of the sun, but humid too!).

From Old Mokpo to New Mokpo.

I'm blaming Kristen for this, in part, because she walks everywhere and I was starting to think "Hey, I used to walk everywhere too, so why don't I try to walk to Hadang?"

Except for the fact that it was a long stupid walk, there's nothing really to report. Except that it was longer than I thought. And stupid. And hot. And now I also have a stupid dark farmer's tan, and it's on my legs too.

While I was walking, I noticed that I was also limping a bit. My ankle had been a bit stiff in the mornings, so I headed down to the Bloodletting pit of hell and see if they could cure it (yeah, I may complain about that clinic, but they do cure what ails me).

It was a totally different experience because a) I knew what to expect and b) I could see what they were doing to me. Yeah, that bloodletting thing? You really don't need to see that happen to yourself. No. Really.

It was a really busy day at the clinic today, and almost all the beds were full - the dude next to me was on his cell phone (!) leading me to imagine what it would have been like to talk to me on a cell phone during say, the electrocution massage part of the treatment that made my foot spasm. It would have been like, "Oh hey, yeah. What's up? Oh, I'm just ... OOOO - THAT'S WEIRD ... you know, getting some ... OW... acupuncture ... WHAT THE? done. Hey, do you happen to know if your toes should, uh, fold backwards?.... FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, MAKE THEM STOP!..."

I was a bit disappointed that no part of me was set on fire this time, but the important thing is that my ankle feels better.

Even more importantly, friends have started returning to Mokpo, and I've got a weekend in Wando lined up, so there should be no more foolishness to report caused by my own boredom-induced stupidity.