From Mt. Sobaek

I’m currently at the observatory on Mt. Sobaek with a bunch of Korean SF writers/publishers/translators and astronomers, for the three-day 2009 SOAO workshop. (2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, by the way.) This is the Korean equivalent of the Launch Pad workshop held in the US yearly, and similarly brings together scientists and SF creators.

I’ll have more about this later, including tons of pictures and some video, but for now all I’ll say is that I’m catching just enough of the discussions to kick myself (hard) for not only not having studied Korean much in the last few years, but also for having let what I had learned from 2002-2005 ossify as badly as I have. Now, I’m paying the price. How shall I forgive myself when they start discussing SETI (and an issue I’ve been thinking about lately, the Fermi Paradox) tomorrow? 아이고!

On the bright side, I managed to hike for approximately thirty minutes up-mountain (though not always uphill) in my new boots and come out of it feeling just fine…

(UPDATE: … except that bleeding toe, but that’s because the nail was broken and then badly clipped. And it’s not serious.)