It's just on the cusp of being spring. Last Sunday, despite the wintry twilight and the ice on the ground there were birds singing in the winter-shorn ginkos. Tuesday was even slightly warm; above freezing at any rate, but that was after it snowed all morning.

I woke up about ten after nine because my phone was vibrating. "goodmorning all ˜ it's snowing!wish u a romantic day ^.˜" What the hell. It's a peculiar message regardless of the weather, but whatever. I crawled back under the covers after looking out the window.

I'm back in my big coat, like everyone else. We're all commuting and taking up far more space than we really ought to. It's harder to pack in a heap of people already lumbering around with extra pounds of clothing wrapped around them. Getting into the subway and having your nose pressed deep into someone's down coat for thirty minutes isn't very nice.

Parts of the Han River froze over the winter. Walking along it in late January with my sister and a friend, dinner plate-sized chunks of ice floated along at a stately pace. Further east, the river was frozen nearly to the center; out way past the Hangang bridge... into the nethers of urban sprawl where I never frequent and never really see.

Which I suppose I could. I know the subway exits, I know how to wander through the tiny side streets and around busy interchanges, over the Olympic or Gangbyeon Expressways to get out to the edge of the river. But I've never headed out that way; there's never been a need. Everything that I need is either in other directions or much closer to home than a forty minute subway ride and an hour walk. But maybe when it gets reliably warm, when the ginkos and the Chinese elms are radiating a nuclear green again I'll take a stab at it.