2006-05-11 - THE POLLEN:

Springtime in Korea apparently means POLLEN RAPTURE, because I have never seen so much in my life. It started out innocently enough, with a "Hmm, I should dust," thought as I got ready to go to work. Then, when I got outside, I started noticing it was pretty hazy. Smog, I thought. Then, on the bus, I realized that every car is covered in a weird, yellow powder. "Surley there cannot be that much pollen," I thought.

But no. There IS that much pollen. By the time I got home from work, walking from the bus stop to my house, there were piles of it accumilating in the gutters on the side of the road. Piles of fine, yellow stuff were everwhere, and a fine haze of it clouded the windows of cars and buildings.

Of course, I left my windows open.

I got home, and realized that EVERYTHING in my house was yellowy. My glass-topped table? A yellow mess. When I cleared and windexed it, the paper towels were a soupy yellow. I had to do it two or three times to get the crap off. Then I had to dust the laptop, which was on the table, and open at the time. I wiped up as best I could, and rinsed off the dishes that had been drying on the rack (next to the window, of course).

i don't know where it all could be coming from. There are a lot of trees, but I don't see that many flowers. I mean, people HAVE flowers, but there aren't enough to constitute a yellowy mess nationwide. Do trees need flowers to produce pollen? I don't know. I'm just glad that I don't have any allergies.