Sleepwalking to Nando's

My internal clock is still off: today I woke at six a.m., stumbled around in the dark for an hour or two, and by nine I'd had breakfast and wanted to go back to bed to sleep for the rest of the day.

However, since I had exactly the same experience every day in Seattle and in Hong Kong, I don't think this is jet lag. It's just inconvenient.

Fowl Weather, Boxing Day

Despite my best efforts, today was very eventful. We dined late last night on tepid spaghetti and cold mince pies, and perhaps that influenced the dream I woke from at 3 this morning, convinced the resort had been overrun by zombies.

A chicken-powered nuclear bomb

There were some strange things contemplated in the Cold War, and among them was Blue Peacock, a somewhat ill-thought-through plan to protect Europe from invading Communists by ... exploding ginormous nuclear weapons across Germany.

I was reading about rockets today, which got me onto reading about Black Knight, a British rocket, which got me on to reading about Rainbow Codes, which got me glancing through a list of weird and wonderful code names ('Green Cheese' for a submarine weapon system is marvellous), eventually depositing me at Blue Peacock.

Now, if you're thinking it's a good idea to defend Europe by covering swathes of it in nuclear fallout, you might also be the kind of inventive person who thinks nothing of sacrificing the lives of innocent chickens to keep the electrical innards of your devices at the correct operating temperature.  So, not exactly powering the weapon with chickens, so much as ensuring it worked, but that's almost good enough, right?

And here I was, thinking that Charles Stross' Laundry novels described an outre and surreal version of the British Establishment's organs.  Maybe it's just a series of careful leaks of the more believable parts.

But without chicken-powered nuclear bombs.  Oh well.

Chang Tsai, Fine Art Museum of Taiwan

We started the day with a visit to Taipei's Museum of Fine Art. Unlike when we visited at Christmas, Cai Guo and his exploding car extravaganza was not in situ; not was the hot tub full of strangers. Given the weather was chilly and damp, perhaps the second absence was a good thing.

Chicken, Chicken MUSEUM

More pictures of chickens here

We got up very early this morning and went to Anjuk, for a walk from the guidebook that promised to take us to the Owl Museum of Seoul. It had been a most unsatisfactory guidebook throughout our stay in Seoul, and it did not fail to disappoint once again.