[Acting Like Godot]

I just came back from a 10-day holiday in Korea and I wanted to share something with you, Criseyde.

While I was there, there were at least 10 occasions when strangers would tell my wife, my children or myself that we looked beautiful, handsome, attractive or pretty.

It was very strange. Some examples:

1. We were at a theme park. Three teenagers started following us around. Finally they said that they would like to take a photo with my daughter (age 7) because she was so pretty.

2. A taxi driver went into a long monologue in his broken English about how handsome I was, and how lucky my son is, to look like me.

3. At a market, there were several stalls selling hair clips. Two shop owners fawned over my daughter, wanted to doll her up, pinned her hair with all kinds of hair clips, and eventually gave her five clips for free (we bought nothing at all from them).

4. At a restaurant, the female waitress kept staring at my wife and finally came close and peered at her face and asked her if she was wearing lipstick. My wife said no, and the waitress said, "Wow," and basically said that my wife had such naturally beautiful lips.

5. At another restaurant, a customer who could barely speak English came over and tried hard (with single words, hand gestures and thumbs-up) to say that my two children looked lovely.

6. At a park, a stranger told my wife that I looked like a certain TV star.

Basically, this hasn't happened to us before. I think that we look alright, maybe a little above average, but this is the first time so many strangers have repeatedly told us we look great.

I suspect that this was either:

(1) a rash of LOA synchronicities triggering each other off; or

(2) beauty is in the conditioned eye of the beholder, and we just possess certain looks which are considered attractive by Koreans.