Just cause it’s been awhile

I’ve been trying to blog for a few days now, and finding it excruciatingly difficult. There are things that I keep meaning to do, and those things are blogworthy, so I think that I keep putting it of for them. No good, that.

Anyway, I took Atticus in to get fixed. I’ve never actually been to a vet in Canada, (I’m not the type to have pets of my own) but I have a feeling that this would have been an experience for all of you.

Lets start with all the things I suspect would have been different at home.

1. The operating room would have been a different room, instead of around the corner of the office.

2. I suspect the reading material provided while I waited would have been something other that a picture book of Pets With Horrible Diseases. Thanks vet, I will treasure these images always.

3. As proof that the operation is finished, I’m trusting enough to take someone’s word for it. I suppose, however, that having a small pan containing my cats testicles thrust at me for inspection is good to.

4. At home, if any of the above were true, I would be uncomfortable, and take it as a bad thing. This, however, is Korea!

Was I weirded out? A little, but i think it was mostly apprehension. I doubt it would have been that much different if I were at home. The vet is question is really friendly, and recommended to me by a friend who had had his cat fixed there as well.

Oh, one more thing

5. It is unlikely, I suspect, that a Canadian vet would have taken me out to lunch while we waited for the cat to wake up.

Ha!, that was almost awkward, but not really – she seemed to like talking about Korea, and I hardly ever get to talk to Koreans about Korea. I read the menu and she approved of my attempts to learn her language. We went to a Sambap place, and if there’s a difference between Sambap and Bulgogi, I have no Idea what it is (I’m thinking that Bulgogi is the meat dish that is served with the meal that is Sambap?)

There were about ten Ban chan (the little side dishes of pickled things), and every one I tried was really, really good. There was a soup that they serve with this sort of meal most of the time – a very mild seaweed in a sort of miso broth, but with a little more Oomph to it. I forget the name, but April knows it.

There was about a pound and a half of Bulgogi on a sizzler (You know when they bring stuff to the table and it’s still boiling really hard – like that on a cast iron pan set into a wooden dish). Bulgogi is thin cuts of pork cooked in a mildly spicy sauce, and is delicious and probably very bad for you. As we looked over the pile of it, mouths watering, the Vet calmly looks in my direction, smiles, and says “I am on Diet. I eat vegetables and soup.”

I regarded my tasty adversary, knowing the battle was lost before it began. Let me tell you a little about the Korean appetite.  I really don’t know where it goes, and I’m sure it has it’s roots in the country being so poor so recently, but I eat less than a nine-year old girl here. Any Korean worth his salt would have eaten all of the Bulgogi, and would have wolfed it down along with three or four of the little bowls of rice that you can get, as well and the leaves you wrap it in and the sides you wrap it in the leaves with.

How do I know this? Because, I was watching the guys at the table next to us. They came in after, ordered more, and let sooner, after having ordered five extra bowls of rice (rice bowls are small here, sort of Palm sized).

Having received some ribbing (once again) for not eating enough and being too small, we made the quick walk back to the office, I picked up the cat who was now awake, and completely unable to move his body except for his head (which let me tell you, is hilarious) and went home.

Tomorrow is Atticus’s last (third) trip back to the vet for checkups and such, and he’s doing very well. He doesn’t yowl in the night, but he is still a jerk when he is conscious

Well, most of the time.

Cheers

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