바퀴벌리

I have a long and complex emotional history with cockroaches.
Actually, my history with the creepy-crawly parts of the animal kingdom has generally been pretty friendly. My father, an amateur naturalist, loved showing me the local "wildlife" that ran around our neighborhood. Thanks to him, I was never afraid of snakes, frogs, lizards, bats, toads, and most insects. The problem was more that my mother objected to my bringing the objects of scientific study inside the house for further examination. If I wanted to run around playing with beetles and spiders that was my business, but I'd damn well better not bring them into the living room.
When I was in high school I became a volunteer at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and was happily assigned to the biological sciences hall. One of my major duties was staffing the "bug cart": a mobile science unit that housed many of our arthropod exhibits including walking sticks (both Malaysian and Australian Giant Prickly), tarantulas, black widow spiders, wood beetles, and my personal favorites, Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. From almost the first, the cockroaches were some of my most beloved animals. They were quiet, clean, charming, friendly, and endearing creatures to whom humans were some kind of large and benevolent fruit-bearing gods. Raised entirely in the aquariums of OMSI, they were sheltered but goodhearted insects. Our biggest problem with them was that since they were giant, hissing cockroaches, all the kids wanted to hear them hiss. Unfortunately, the hissing sound is part of a defense mechanism, and they won't make the noise unless they feel threatened. And why should they feel threatened by the lovely fruit-bearing gods? The only time I ever heard one his was when a kid maliciously dropped one - the poor thing was scared out of it's nervous system! I never had any qualms about handling them, and a surprising number of visitors were also willing to touch or hold them.
But you see, they don't fly.
A week ago, in the bathroom of my one-room I saw the most gigantic oriental cockroach. I mean HUGE, maybe 8-10cm. And those suckers, my dears, FLY. They also eat refuse and rot and leave trails of their own droppings like Hansel and Gretel left crumbs. In other words, nasty, dirty things that I don't mind outside, but don't suffer inside. My apartment is gifted with instant, blisteringly hot water that gushes out as if from a fire hydrant, which is how this one particular specimen met his/her doom. One part of me wanted to assume that it was a lone case, driven indoors by the beginnings of the 장마. The other part of me was screaming that the place was infested and untold millions were lurking inside my decrepit 싱크대. The screaming side won, and a few days later I bought bait traps. Unfortunately, I think this might actually be bringing them in with the ever-so alluring fragrance of roach feed, because I saw another gigantic sucker last night. He went after the bait behind the fridge and was not seen again.
There's some kinds of house guests you mind, and some you don't. These I mind (along with centipedes and millipedes . . .why? I don't know.)
I'd rather find a more . . . natural way to dispose of them. I don't like using poisoned traps in and around the area where I live. I'd rather have something that a) won't lure them inside if they're not already here b) won't potentially harm me and c) will be kind of cute.
I want geckos!
It turns out there's a few species of lizards native to Korea, and I'd like mightily to have a few take up residence in my apartment. In particular, I'd like the native Gekko japonicus to start hanging out in my place. Somehow, having geckos run all over my kitchen doesn't bother me in the least. In Hawaii, they're sort of tolerated as indoor wildlife, because they eat other pests. If the Hawaiians are cool with it, so am I.
God bless Google. I done stole that roach pic from here

편두통: "All the fun of LSD, but legal"

Following the example of Expat Jane's excellent series on diabetes and treatment here in Korea, I'm going to spend a bit of time blogging about my most persistent health problem. Most Koreans I've talked to (like most Americans) have only a vague idea of how a 편두통 differs from a regular, ordinary 두통. Actually, I have yet to meet a Korean person who has been diagnosed as a migraineur. . .
In America, at least, approximate 15% of the population suffers from some kind of migraine headache, and at least 80% of those people have family members who also get them. In other words, this problem has a very strong genetic component. In my family, it's more unusual for someone to NOT have them - all of my immediate family get them, as well as my paternal grandparents, and my aunts on both the maternal and paternal side. They are also more common in women than in men (who are more likely to get cluster headaches, however)
There are several different kinds of migraines, but the two most common ones are classic migraines (i.e. migraines with auras), and common migraines (without). In a classic migraine, the headache may be proceeded by a brief period of visual disturbance. Common auras include seeing bright zigzag lines or moving points of light. My aunt describes them as "all the fun of lsd without the illegality." Usually the aura lasts for less than an hour, and is followed within the hour by the onset of the headache. Common migraines don't have any associated auras. Having the auras seems to me to be a good thing: it's an important and painless clue that a migraine is coming, and in many cases is means you can use medications that will prevent the painful headache phase. My grandfather carries medicine with him, and can take it at the first sign of the aura, and usually doesn't have to experience the actual headache anymore. My grandmother used to get only the aura, but not the headache phase (rather obviously named in medical terminology "headache-free migraines". DUH!) I, on the other hand, have experienced auras but mine are NOT reliably followed by the pain phase. Drat. I really don't mind the aura (usually small pinpoints of light that swim and dart around in my field of vision) but I wish it were more strongly connected with the pain phase.
Lots of people think the pain phase of a migraine is just a really, REALLY bad headache. It's not. They're a very distinct medical phenomena, and they feel totally different. A normal headache is a sense of tension and pain that spreads throughout most of the head. Sinus or cluster headaches can often show up in more confined parts of the head (usually around the eyes and sinus cavities) but the distinction of a migraine is a pounding, throbbing sensation on one side of the head only. When I get a migraine, usually the left side of my head feels completely normal. There's no pain at all. The right side of my head, on the other hand, will feel like there's a small elf in my brain trying to push my eyeball out by bracing his feet against the back of my head. My mother describes hers as someone running piano wire over one side of her skull and then playing "chopsticks." Badly.
Not all of mine are severe. For a long, long time mine were so mild that I barely noticed them. Heck, I taught classes of rowdy, noisy high school students during some of my headaches. But when they're bad, they're awful. The worst of them will basically leave me bedridden for a day or two. Luckily those are very, very rare for me.
The pain or headache phase is also usually accompanied by other problems: nausea, photophobia(sensitivity to light), and phonophobia (sensitivity to sound) are pretty common. I experience all three, and it's usually the nausea and photophobia rather than the headache that really cause my problems. One of the real tricks with medicating migraines is that because of nausea it can be hard to effectively use oral medication. By the time I know I'm getting the headache, my stomach has already shut down. That's one reason why when treating migraines caffeine is your friend.
Next time: Triggers and Treatments