After a couple days of simmering my excitement over the possibility of real coffee, I clean up the machine I found, and plug it in. It seems to work. I run a test batch of water through it, and everything comes out fine. I go out to find some coffee.

The super-market in Hyundai department store has an aisle of instant coffee, but there is no real coffee to be found- ground or otherwise. I wonder how mister Hyundai manages to make all those cars on instant coffee. It offends me. A man walks past and I ask him, "Have you seen this?"

"What can I do?" he replies, "We like it fast."

I go outside in a red fury. I see an ice-cream shop, but it doesn't help. I see a book store, but book stores in Korea are for books, not books and coffee. I wonder how a country can make it with such a narrow outlook. But somehow Korea is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. On instant coffee?

I see a coffee shop. I go in. I'm surprised, I was expecting the little European toy-sized coffees. But no, here they have real coffee. North American half litre coffees. And they sell beans.

I take an 18 dollar, half pound bag up to the counter, and try to ask the girl to grind the beans for me. But what is 'grind' in Korean? I ask, "Can you make the beans small for me?"

She responds in English. "You would like the beans ground? Sure, what kind of coffee maker do you have?"

"Drip. I think it comes from Og."

The coffee is good, but I'm going to have to find something cheaper. I'm not going to pay 36 bucks a pound again unless the beans have been shit out by a civet.