No. 1: Macdonald-Cartier to Pearson to Narita to Incheon

Funny, isn't it, how the world's shrunk? There's no place on the planet farther away than a meal, a movie, and a nap. My flight from Ottawa to Seoul took just about twenty-four hours, but I can't say it felt that long. Hard to explain just how it felt. Surreal, certainly. Dreamlike, in the way that I wandered thru airports, blithely accepting it all as though I was about to wake up.

The Toronto-Tokyo leg was especially strange. I was in the air nearly twelve hours, nowhere near a window, with an analog watch. Though my sense of time was decalibrated, the most disorienting thing about the flight was being unplugged - this was the longest I'd gone without checking my email or sending a text message in something like eight years. It was a strange, unwelcome feeling, to've been wrenched from that superconnected network.
















A brief stopover at Narita International Airport (where the above photo was taken), and I was in Seoul, crusing along the Han River, listening to what I was told is the city's only English radio station ("One Sweet Day" - classic Mariah/Boyz II Men jam). Though I'm living just outside Seoul, in Ilsan, it was nice to see the city proper. It's teeming with life, choked with people and bathed in neon light. I'm drawn to that dense, flickering cityscape - it reminds me of Blade Runner, William Gibson's novels, even Lost in Translation. It's frightening and beautiful - kind of sublime.