A while ago, I went to the diabetic clinic to have some tests since it's been a while.  The doctor I saw only works every other Saturday and work isn't exactly tolerant of me leaving on a work day, so I had to wait a month to see this doctor again... or so I thought.  This morning I dragged myself out of bed and across town, feeling generally like a person who was awake when they were really, really meant to be asleep, only to find out that I had no appointment - the person at the international clinic who should have scheduled it hadn't done so.  Unkind words were spoken, and finally they agreed that if I paid for the consultation fee then and there, they could have the doctor call me later on when he was free.  I'm not sure why that couldn't have happened in the first place so I didn't have to agonize over potential problems for so long.

My next plan was to meet Chris at Seoul Station to go out to a sculpture park on an island off Incheon.  We packed our bathing suits since this thing was on a beach.  In order to get there, we took the subway from Seoul Station to the airport, a bus to the ferry dock (where a piece of paper indicating "occasional service" had been slapped up over the real schedule), a ferry to one island, another bus to another island, and then walked the last kilometre.

Naturally, the doctor's call came an hour late, while we were on the ferry.  Ferries, as you may know, are not usually all that quiet.  I got "The results are not that good..." and then we repeated ourselves and misunderstood each other for a few minutes.  Once I'd kind of got the point (high cholesterol), I asked about my kidneys, and got, "About the kidneys..." and then nothing I could hear for quite a while afterward.  It was really not that much fun.  Eventually I found out that they too are fucked up.

Being pretty upset by this and all, I busied myself photographing seagulls for a long time.  It was the most obvious distraction.

So lovely.

Vast clouds of seagulls followed the ferries around, probably because people happily threw food overboard for them.  This gave me a lot of chances to play around with the camera.

Looking at things more rationally, none of what the doctor told me was really unexpected.  Of course I'd hoped for different results, but as a 25-year diabetic, I'd almost be some kind of medical miracle if I didn't have problems.  It's true that I don't control my blood sugars as carefully as doctors recommend, but that would pretty much require me to arrange my whole life around eating meals at the right times.  It would limit almost everything I do.  I don't even know if I could keep on living here since it's pretty much unheard of to find nutritional information for food at a Korean restaurant.

So, I decided quite a while ago that I'm going to live in a way that I enjoy.  If it cuts my life a bit shorter, so be it - at least I'll enjoy what time I have.  

I may feel differently when I'm on dialysis or something.

However, that's still a ways away.  Both the cholesterol and kidney troubles are easily treated with pills.  I'm not keen on adding MORE pills to my daily routine.  I hate taking medication at all.  But it seems the medication usually works pretty well, and maybe I'll feel better... so this isn't really the end of the world.  

It's still an unpleasant reminder that someday the fun is going to end.  

Not that there's any point in sitting around now worrying about that; again, I want to enjoy the time I have.  I'm just not that good at living in the moment.  Gotta work on that.  I should note as well that my blood sugars skyrocket when I'm worried, so it's actually hurting me more in the long run to sit around and worry about what's (not even really) hurting me now.  

As for this island, it's called Sindo, and the do part means "island", so it's actually Sin Island.  I was really hoping to see that written out in English somewhere, but it never happened.  The park we actually went to was on Modo, linked to Sindo by another island and a couple of bridges.  The islands include a few churches, a couple of schools (both marked "closed") and a lot of farmland.  

On the bus I noticed on the tourist map that the park was an "erotic" sculpture park, which Chris hadn't known but which just made us all the eager to see it.  The artists's mind must be a tremendously interesting place.  We had sculptures of boobs, butts, dicks and, in one special case, a dick on four legs, all of which had boobs, with an ass at the back.  This would be easier depicted than described, but I'd like to keep this thing pretty SFW.  Here's an overview of some of the tamer stuff:

There was also this one sculpture which hit a little too close to home just at that moment:

Yeah, that's a skull biting a living face.  The ever-present nagging reminder that death is waiting just over your shoulder to really sink its teeth into you.

I really liked the idea of having the sculptures out in the open in a park by the sea.  It made for a really nice walk around, and even though some of the pieces were showing signs of wear, I thought it was better than having them in some sterile museum.  Something about enjoying the time you have even if it's shorter than it has to be, or something like that.  Really, the whole place was full of symbolism.  Or maybe I was just in a receptive mood to see it.  

The place has rooms you can rent overnight, but at 120,000 won each for a room in a building with all the ambiance of a warehouse, we passed on that.  We didn't get to go swimming, either; the beach wasn't really suitable for it.  I kind of just wanted to sit there for a while - oceans always make me feel happy, and I needed a little reflection time - but there were enough people around that it wouldn't have been that nice.

(Also, the sun was doing its best to roast us.  I have a definite reddish tinge at the moment and Chris is full-on lobsterfied in places.  I felt like sitting out on a rock for a long time would have been giving that bastard sun WAY too much of an edge).

We finished off the afternoon with drinks at a little cafe attached to the park.  It had very comfy chairs and, bizarrely, a few Christmas decorations still up.  

All in all, a very nice, if sedate, collection of islands.  Not that much to see, but a nice place just to bike around (which we didn't do, but lots of other people did).