Of course, it’s only the fact that none of these rules are followed that makes driving like an aggressive maniac an efficient way to beat traffic: most places in the world, it just slows down everyone else without speeding you up appreciably. Still, I suspect that driving would be much less frustrating if a tad less fun if there were a situation other than anarchy on the roads here.

Naturally, the day arrives and there is rain. This isn’t just any rain, though: it’s a downpour. Torrential in volume, ferocious in intensity, seemingly endless in duration. This has led to some amusing scenes.

The BN HQ parking lot, for example, is filled to capacity. At its only entrance, a large sign warns “Parking Lot Subject to Flooding. NO OVERNIGHT PARKING.” An inch of water is streaming down the tarmac at the entrance.

In front of the community center, in the normal parking lot, there’s a raised stage and some enormous speakers connected to what looks like a pile of very expensive audio equipment. In front of this are about a hundred folding metal chairs. It’s all deserted, with the electronics entarped in plastic wrap.

Surrounding that are a dozen or so small awnings for the various services, groups, and businesses that want to make a good impression on the soldiers here. Most are simply deserted. Others are manned by one or two lonely-looking but dedicated people. The only one with any customers at all is selling $1 beers, $1 hotdogs, and free popcorn. There’s an air of mirth around that one, as though everyone suspects that they are being ridiculous. Periodically someone pokes the awning, pushing a solid sheet of water off the edge.

I like the rain, and I don’t like crowds. I probably should feel bad that this is how the summerfest is turning out, but honestly it is just amusing.

Right now I’ll sleep a few hours, then get online with my friends from college. After a few hours of that, I’ll drive to Osan Airbase, where I’ll fly a Cessna down to Kunsan (weather permitting) and back. Then I’ll link up with my buddy who lives down there and hang out all evening, possibly drinking. Sometime in there I expect a Skype call from my sister.

Sunday morning, I start on my way to Jeju-do: Korea’s Hawaii. It is the farthest place I can go from here without needing a passport. Astonishingly, a round-trip plane ticket costs only about $75. Hopefully I’ll be able to walk into the airport and buy one, because the Korean websites are giving me trouble.

The plan is to spend 48 hours in Jeju-do, then return to base by Tuesday evening in time to get back to work on Wednesday morning. Once there, I’ll figure out lodging and entertainment somewhere; I am certain that I can find both on this island of tourism. Everything I’m bringing fits into a backpack.

They don’t believe at work that I am a spontaneous person.

• Deny aid.
• Cease trade.
• Enforce a blockade.

Is it harsh? Perhaps. Still, it can’t be called unjustified, and it makes perfect sense to let them steep in their own juche.

Every attempt at negotiating with the North has failed. Their internal propaganda brags about reneging on the various nuclear treaties, and claims all aid as tribute. It’s not as though there is any pretense at being anything other than evil. Simply cutting them off from all contact is simultaneously the most effective way to destabilize them and to return to them the contempt in which they hold the rest of the world. So what if they retaliate by banning atomic inspectors? We already know they’ve got the bomb; past that point, the quantity doesn’t matter.

They’d have only three possible developments: thrive, or stagnate, or collapse. I don’t think the first is likely at all. They’d maintain their big option: go to war, or not. I do not think they would go to war. Most likely they’d try to wait it out, wait for the inevitable change in world opinion to get back to a policy of appeasement. By the time they were desperate enough to choose war, their straits should be dire enough that starting one would be obviously suicidal.

If they did start a war, it’d be terrible. They’ll inflict tremendous civilian casualties even if they choose not to use atomic weaponry. Then they would lose.

I’m ok with that, though. It’d be a chance for someone else to be the bad guys for once.

It was a nice enough tour, though we were only allowed to take pictures from three designated locations. For the most part, the landscapes were beautiful and the architecture stately. There were two exceptions: two carefully manicured lawns which had obviously been artificially flattened for use as helicopter landing pads. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much information from the tour guides; they spoke only in Korean, and deputized an astonished KATUSA on the fly to translate for them. The one they chose tended to summarize, for example, a ten minute speech into “See that tree? It’s famous for being 160 years old.”

I cannot overemphasize how ornate and elaborate the changing of the guard ceremony was. It involved a marching band, two parades of guards, a prerecorded speech (with translations following each line into Japanese, English, and Chinese), and much pomp and circumstance. This picture shows just one of the parades of guards, minutes before they marched up to relieve the parade comprised of the previous shift. It was a nice show, but I can’t help but assume that the majority of the guards change shift in a much more relaxed manner, and that this was just an additional duty that some of them picked up somehow.

This particular war memorial was much more inspirational than most I’ve seen in Korea. Then again, its symbolism with a phoenix rising over a smiling family seems less like it’s commemorating less the war of the 1950s than the upcoming one which will unite the peninsula. An interesting message for the memorial in front of the house of the President, but a powerful one.

Several hours later as dusk was falling we happened to cross the same corner again. This time the stage gear was all deployed in the middle of the road and there was a crowd of maybe a dozen gathered in front of a small storefront. In the center of the commotion, at the focus of the cameras and the boom mikes, were two extremely stylish and good-looking young people.

There was an open space four or five meters from the actors, out of the way of the lights and cameras, from which we thought to watch the proceedings for a while. One of the crew came over to us and made exaggerated “be quiet” gestures, and we nodded our understanding silently. Unfortunately, even once the director quieted everyone there and started the camera, the female actress said nothing, but instead gave us a dirty look. We left, chatting about how a pair of innocent waygugin could so distract her that she refused to perform.

It’s one reason I love living abroad: the random events are drawn from a completely different pool than when living back home.

Yesterday I was stuck in traffic on a two-lane highway on the north edge of the Han river, going eastbound. Above me were two more lanes of traffic moving in the other direction. To my right, separated by maybe ten meters, was another highway: three lanes per direction, moving swiftly. It would have done me no good to have teleported my car onto that highway, though; it had no access at all to the bridge I wanted to use.

Traffic really isn’t helped by all these roads. Having a ton of mid-capacity highways linked by low-capacity onramps turns out not to be nearly so good as having a few high-capacity highways with high-capacity ramps.

In consequence of all this, I’ve become a much more aggressive driver than I’d normally be. Partly, it’s just adaptation to the local driving culture: it feels like every time I drive harder and closer to the edge than ever before, ten minutes later I see a Korean attempting some feat of driving insanity that leaves me breathless. Another part is that I’m driving a gas-guzzling sports car in a country of underpowered microvans: I thrill to perform maneuvers that nobody on the road around me can duplicate. Finally, there’s the fact that between the traffic and the stoplights, it’s a lucky day when it’s possible to approach the minimum speed limit. It’s hard to get truly worried about losing control when I’ve spun out on a go-kart track at nearly the same speed with no ill consequences at all.

My car is starting to pick up some evidence of all this. The right mirror has a teal spot on it where someone tried a little too hard to crowd ahead of me merging into my lane; that guy ended up with a four foot long scratch along the side of his van and didn’t get the lane. The brakes shudder when I engage them at speed, and it’s pretty common for it to cough out a huge cloud of black smoke when I first start it in the morning.

I’d worry about pollution except for the fact that I burn less fuel in a week in this car than I do in an hour in the helicopter.

Driving here is stressful, dangerous, and the best incubator for rage that I’ve ever encountered. It’s my pure good luck, then, that this week after my breakup I’ve been attending a class that requires an hour’s commute in each direction.

What’s a little less obvious until you’ve actually seen for yourself is that whoever’s in charge is clearly a huge fan of SimCity. It’s a big, successful city, so there’s no question that they’re good at it. Still, it also shows some of the limitations of the engine: vast stretches of perfectly identical apartment buildings, with perfectly identical parking lots, tiled out for miles. There are stoplights at every intersection, regardless of their utility in helping traffic flow effectively. Even the terrain seems pulled straight from the game: vast swaths of perfectly flat ground interrupted by hills too steep for anything except trees and the occasional monument at the crest.

Will Wright’s games are notable, among other things, for including very user-friendly tools which can be used to rough out basic ideas for complex things like architecture, ecosystems, creatures, and urban planning. Until now, however, I’d never expected to see anything pulled directly from the game and implemented in reality exactly as it appeared in the simulation.

Now that I’ve seen it, it’s still hard to believe, but the evidence is hard to dispute.

Monsoon season in Korea isn’t a huge deal for most people. Sure, it’s a bit rainier in the middle of the summer than other times of year, but it’s nothing that really affects daily life. Once you’re past a flood or two in July, you’re alright as long as you can stand the humidity.

As a pilot, that’s not at all the case. We have weather minima required to fly: cloud floors of at least 1200 feet above ground level and two miles of visibility. If you’ve got those, and no thunderstorms predicted en route, you’re good to go.

Despite the seeming leniency in those requirements, so far Green Platoon is running a less than a 50% uptime because of weather. Today we at least had good weather predicted, to much rejoicing. Three hours after that forecast, once we’d preflighted and completed every requirement prior to startup, I went to get the weather update: it’s necessary to have one updated within 90 minutes of takeoff. That requirement is a good thing, because when I went in, they were predicting half a mile of visibility. They were right: I went outside a few minutes ago and could only see the buildings down the street because they’re lit.

There was nothing to do except tie up the aircraft and head back to the briefing room. In theory we were dismissed more or less immediately thereafter, but what actually ended up happening was a Pilot’s Social Hour: four young warrants just out of flight school listening to the war stories of the retired CW4 and CW5. It wasn’t as good as a proper flying day would have been, but it was entertaining, and almost as educational.