Absconding With The Tontine Funds

It all started four years ago, when we went to Ivar's Salmon House in Seattle on a beautiful summer's day, me and sarea_okelani and slitherhither. We sat outside by the water, watching the boats whiz by, pouring oyster shooters down our gullets, a perfect way to while away a summer afternoon. We vowed then to come back every summer, maybe even multiple times a summer.

Cut to the last week of August 2018 and we still had yet to make good on that vow. The lesson here is to never trust any of us when we promise things. In our defense, we did plan to go to Ivar's on the 25th, but the weather was crappy that day and we were still in the throes of that horrible haze that had enveloped Seattle due to fires in both California and British Columbia, with the winds somehow blowing smoke towards us from both ends.

So instead we ended up at Tacos Chukis in the SLU neighborhood of Seattle, on recommendation from our friend S. Sarea got pork tacos, a cheese quesadilla, and horchata; I had pork and beef tacos; Slither got pork on cactus! She let us try a bit of cactus; it was sort of squashy like okra, which Sarea did not care for. I like okra a lot, so it was fine.

Sarea and I have become somewhat lax on bringing oppas with us, largely because, as explained before, a) we are creatures of habit and it got boring taking pictures of all the same places we always go to, and b) there was a lot of travel happening in summer, especially for Sarea, and we just kinda forgot about our regular weekend stuff. It was no different on this day, but thankfully, I had Emergency Eeyore with me, who is technically a little pouch in which I carry my headphones, but can also fill in for Minhyuk oppa since he had an Eeyore costume on in their Winter's Tale video. (I also had Emergency Donald on hand, but Eunkwang has since enlisted in the military, so he is in no condition to take us anywhere.)

( Emergency Eeyore's double duty ahoy )

This past Saturday, sarea_okelani and I began our weekend festivities at Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese BBQ restaurant we have been to several times (including with Sungjae oppa). When I say "we" and "several times" I mean Sarea and I, and approximately four times so far. Sarea with other people? Like, twenty-six times, at a minimum. So many times, in fact, that the manager greeted her by name when we walked in.

When we first started going to Gyu-Kaku, it was awesome because it was one of the few places we like that would take reservations online so we never had to worry about waiting for a table. It's really popular so if you didn't have a reservation you might have to wait upwards of an hour. However, their front-of-house management is very much lacking, and eventually they removed the option to make lunch reservations altogether.

Sarea had the foresight to make a ton of reservations in advance before this policy was implemented (we're booked every weekend through the end of the month, I think), but it's troublesome for when she wants to go with her colleagues during the work day and they can't afford to spend their entire lunch break waiting for a table.

Anyway, that is all backstory to say that once we were seated, the manager N came over and gave Sarea unofficial VIP status and her personal cell phone number to make up for the inability to take online reservations. So now whenever Sarea wants, she can just call N to reserve a table and bypass the crowds of commoners gathered in huddled masses at the front. This made Sarea's colleague C, upon being texted the news, very happy: "Lunch there every day?"

We attributed this stroke of luck to our oppa for the day, Song Joongki, represented by a wolf because a) he played a werewolf in the film Wolf Boy, and b) in Descendants of the Sun, he had a plush wolf (possibly fox?) dressed in army uniform - which would have been perfect for us to get, except the small sizes of the plush came without the uniform, in which case, why even bother??

Here's SJK oppa with his namesake. We took this picture at our dinner place, where there was a poster of real SJK shilling for some sort of beer, and now, as Sarea pointed out, I don't even have to search for a picture of SJK to juxtapose with SJK oppa. Hooray!



( What a fun, successful day )

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PREVIOUS OPPA OUTINGS: 1-2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Well, this was originally supposed to be a Sungjae oppa outing, but he was "too busy" to come with us on this day, so Hyunsik oppa stepped in.

Hyunsik oppa is an elephant because Hyunsik is freakishly strong and they share a lovely eye smile. The elephant plush, which I got on eBay, was listed with a little felt flower on its head, but didn't actually come with it (I got a refund) – this is important because one time Hyunsik put a flower clip in his hair and pretended to grow it by dripping water on his head, freaking out his stylist. (I am working on getting Hyunsik oppa his own flower.)



I'd taken the day off work on Tuesday and sarea_okelani had some time to do lunch, so we met at Kiku Sushi. We both got the bento box special of salmon teriyaki, sashimi, and tempura. Sarea overheard a nearby table of… let's say… Asian cuisine-challenged patrons ask for Sweet N Low for their green tea; I didn't hear this at the time and when she told me later my mind was blown. I had no idea this is a thing people do in real life, like asking for ketchup in France. Lol.



After that we took a quick Starbucks break, and Hyunsik oppa also came with us to Korean class, where he was variously described by classmates who noticed him hanging off my handbag as cute, small, and red. (We never learned our colors in class. We're all terrible at Korean.)