Cycle 14 – Item 1

6 (Fri) January 2023

Tong Dak

3.0

from Tobongee

at home

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

solo

With the start of the new cycle, I ponder the end of GMTD.

In my current state of mind, I am thinking that Cycle 16 will be the final one.

I’ve always hoped to end on a denomination of 4 (my favorite base number).

I had seriously considered wrapping after Cycle 12, which would’ve been a nice bookend following our return from the Philippines, but the total views for 2021 reached an all-time record of 21,212, nearly double the 10,947 views from 2020 (Cycle 11), so I felt encouraged to continue – though now I suspect that most of those views were from bots.

Oddly, the views dropped back to 10,938 in 2022 (Cycle 13), which was a bummer.  And no one leaves comments anymore, except the occasional one-off from my longest-standing reader GK.  So, I’m beginning to wonder if anybody even reads GMTD.

Anyway, by the end of Cycle 16, DJ will (hopefully) have graduated high school and entered college.  That’d be a nice way to wrap.

Then again, that would leave IZ hanging in Grade 8.  To see him through college, I’d have to keep the blog going through Cycle 21 – not a denomination of 4, but a nice number (black jack!).

In any case, the tradition of starting a new cycle with a meal of Korean grilled pork (see most recently 13.001 Mul Naeng Myeon) shall henceforth be replaced with Korean fried chicken.

(See also HANSIK)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)