Seoul mates

Dear readers, it's been a while. I'm not sure whether the reason I haven't been posting is because there is too much happening, or not enough. For this post I've picked out a couple of themes - updating you on the lovely Lola's goings on and sharing with you the highlights of my recent trip to Korea.

Lola is our miniature Schnauzer puppy, now 8 months old. She has given us many hours of joy (especially once the house training bit was over) and out and out hysterical laughter as she races around the house in pursuit of one or other of her squeaky toys or just because she is so full of energy she has to let it out. Because Chris is away and our housekeeper has gone back to the Philippines for an extended holiday, we had to put Lola into kennels. She was a weekly boarder there with a sort of doggie exeat at weekends. When she got back last weekend, she was very sick. I won't go into the details for fear of offending the more squeamish amongst you, but it entailed an urgent visit to the vet, X rays, antibiotic injection and much squealing from an anguished puppy. Not for the first time, I wished that we could each understand what the other was saying.

She is better now, and back to her normal, slightly crazy self, although she does seem to have developed a taste for poached chicken breast, which was all I could tempt her with when she was feeling so low last weekend. As it happens, I had occasion to go to the doctor here this week, and my bill for consultation, X rays and medication (the same treatment as Lola, albeit for a different condition) was exactly half of what I paid for her! I am definitely coming back as a Singaporean vet in my next life.....

Once I was sure that Lola was on the mend, I was much happier about taking my planned business trip to Korea. It was my second ever visit to Seoul, and I managed to pack in a great deal, including experiencing several important aspects of Korean culture, by which I mean eating, drinking and karaoke.

Before any of you get excited, let me say right away that I did not try (nor was I invited to) bosintang - dog meat soup. Bosintang is not an everyday dish - perhaps a bit like guinea pig in Peru - but it is one of the traditional elements of Korean cuisine. It seems that bosintang came to Korea from China hundreds of years ago, at a time when the posh folks ate far more meat than the lower classes. Dog was apparently one of the few "meats" available to all classes of ancient Korean society. In modern South Korea, the sensitivities around eating dog have led a number of restaurants to use lamb or goat as a substitute, although you can still find the real thing also.

Those of you who know my eating preferences will understand why I would have been delighted with another aspect of Korean cuisine - something called banchan. Banchan is a sort of Korean antipasto, lots of small dishes that are served at the beginning of a traditional Korean meal, and when I say lots, I do mean lots and lots (see picture above for examples of banchan). There must have been at least 25 banchan dishes at the lunch I was treated to, mainly vegetable, fish and tofu based. My favourite was the "Korean pizza" - which was only like pizza in that it was round and flat. It was actually made of some sort of shredded green vegetable and was absolutely delicious. I also loved the tofu, fermented sesame leaves and all the different sorts of kimchi. With banchan, ingredients and dishes vary by province but a constant is kimchi - a fermented vegetable dish usually featuring cabbage, but it is also made with radish, cucumber or spring onions - and lots of chili.

Kimchi also featured at the dinner the Korean team took me to. This was a Korean barbecue, where the meat is cooked in front of you on a on a gas grill in the middle of the table. The dinner was accompanied by soju, a sort of Korean sake, which tastes a bit like vodka, but sweeter. Our evening was pretty restrained, by Korean standards, but it did still feature a round of "bomb shots" when we went off to the karaoke rooms. For those of you who don't know about bomb shots, they consist of a shot glass of some spirit or other dropped into a glass of beer. The spirit in Korea is often soju, but in our case it was whisky. I knew I hadn't a hope of downing this in one, the required bomb shot etiquette, and so I asked for a "white knight" to help me. A white knight is a member of the group who will do the drinking for you; they are happy to be asked, so honour is satisfied all round!

There was no chance of my asking anyone to take my turn at karaoke however - I love karaoke, and I get so few chances to have a go, since none of my friends or rellies seem to feel the same way about it that I do. I was first up, with a poignant (at least I thought so) rendition of Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton that seemed to go down well. That said, there were a couple of really great singers in the team and I was completely outclassed, which didn't stop me going up again, and again, and again........

The other Celt in the group - a Welshman, whose rendition of Delilah is something everyone should hear at least once in their lifetime - asked for an a capella version of Flower of Scotland. Of course I obliged, and then threw in the Corries version of "Will ye go, lassie go" for good measure. If only my friend Eddie had been there, we could have tackled the entire Corries oeuvre and a couple of Runrig songs for good measure. Perhaps the next time.......