Ah, yes, Dana and I waiting for the godlike Mrs. Shim to sit down and eat so we may. That's another custom I love. The most senior person is the one that everyone waits for when doing anything at dinner. So sometimes when you're looking at a spread like the one in front of us in this picture, you get a little ancy in your pantsy for the most respected person to start eating.

Speaking of spreads, I got really excited at dinner tonight when I saw something that resembled sweet and sour pork. It turned out it was chicken and that also suited my fancy, but then I heard the worst possible sound of all, the sound of bones crunching in my teeth. Those fuckers basically deep-fried chicken bones. Apparently it's a well-known dish in Korea, and the bones are supposed to make it taste better. But that doesn't fool me. Oh no, no no, I see right through that bullhonkey. This reasoning is coming from a country whose cuisine used to primarily consist of rice and cabbage which is one reason why food is eaten quickly here and why the population as a whole has been pretty short for generations leading up to modernization.
Yes, you may fool your countrymen Korea, but you do not fool me! I'm keen to the ways of your food propaganda and I say, "do not soil my taste buds with your boney-fried distopian cuisines. I demand satisfaction!" Now some of you might bring up the point that buffalo wings are the same concept, but you're wrong. I know where the bone is in a buffalo wing. In each piece of fried meat I had tonight, it consisted of a different set of bones, and often there were just splinters of chicken bones in the batter itself.

Anyhoo, it's still pretty amazing how advice can be universal, but adapted to the culture at hand. I'm told by Koreans that the way to dislodge any bones from your throat(which is common because bones are in almost any soup and often headless fish are served for breakfast) is to eat some kimchi and have a shot of soju. The same advice was told to me in Italy... just have some bread and drink some more wine.

This advice has yet to fail anyone that I've met... but I guess if it failed, I wouldn't meet these people. Hmmm.