quibbling jottings

Inventory

2012-01-22T02:11:00.000-08:00

I have a terrible, awful cold. I think it's the flu, actually. (I love the word "influenza," by the way.)

I'm still woolly-headed and nauseous, but it was a thousand times worse on Thursday and Friday. Thank goodness for Lunar New Year, which means that I don't have to go to work until Wednesday.

My refrigerator amuses me right now. Inventory:

- Oriental herbal medicine.
- One chunk of very sharp Cheddar.
- One chunk of aged Gouda.
- One quarter wheel of Stilton.
- Six apples.
- Twelve clementines (tangerines?- whatever 귤 translates to).
- Spam.
- Tofu.
- Eggs.
- Chocolate.
- Rice porridge.

What a weird list, I think. Anyone would come in and immediately assume I wasn't Korean- that's an indecent amount of cheese (which I brought with me from the States- don't judge me, there's no good cheese here!).

So, so ill. I'm attempting to clean a little, between bouts of wooziness.

Anyway, here's hoping that my health kicks up a notch once the new year starts (tomorrow)!

2012 (Or, The Year I Turn 30)

2012-01-12T00:21:00.000-08:00

(Actually, in Korea, I'm already 31. But in the States, I turn 30 in June.)

It's 2012, and it's already halfway through January in 2012. What have I been doing without blogging for over a month?!?

Well, in the beginning of December, I moved (from my residential hotel / officetel) into a regular officetel (which means that I have no maid service or furniture, but rent is cheaper and the actual place is nicer). Then, two days later, my mother and I flew back home.

I recuperated from the late nights and working weekends by being completely and horribly jet-lagged for the first week and a half, more jet-lagged than I've ever been in my entire life. I was sleeping odd hours, waking up at two or three in the morning, and then dozing off in the afternoon. Since I knew that I needed to let my body catch up with me and also recover from the many, many hours and I had worked, I gave myself a while before I started running around in California.

After Christmas, my family went to Las Vegas for three days, just to get some R & R and spend some family time away from the house, where there are constant visitors and phone calls (especially during the holiday season).

We got back to L.A. in time for a quiet New Year's Eve (I was in pajamas at 9:00), an early New Year's morning (6:00 a.m.), and then a sudden realization on my part that I had to leave for Korea in just a few days.

There was the inevitable panic, running around to buy things last-minute, realizing that I had bought way too many coats (the weather reports on the Korean news were freaking. me. out.), packing the day that I left, and then running off for a quick dinner with my mother and sister before going to the airport to catch my 11:50 p.m. flight.

Losing a day coming from LAX to ICN always bums me out (I left on Thursday at 23:50 and landed in Korea on Saturday at 06:15, which means Friday was but a distant spot somewhere in the Pacific Ocean), but I generally prefer coming to Korea because I don't get jet-lagged.

Since I had not one stick of furniture in my new place (nor blankets, curtains, or even a spoon), my cousin came over a few hours after I landed (for the record, it was -9 degrees Celsius when I got to Seoul) and we ran around town, buying all kinds of necessities. I still don't have a lot of stuff, but I'm not worried about it- I can survive, for the moment, so that's all I need. I'll find the rest of it in a more leisurely fashion.

After a few days of cleaning the new place and generally adjusting to life back in Korea, the same cousin and I came down to Jeonju, our hometown (both my parents are from this city, and it's the city where I was born). We arrived yesterday and are leaving tomorrow.

I'm at my maternal grandfather's house, a newly built townhouse in the "countryside" of Jeonju (it's only about a ten minute drive to "downtown"). I like the new place, I like that it's on a mountain and there are no apartment buildings in sight. I do not like, however, the new dog, which I met for the first time yesterday. She is a large white Jindo, and I am not a fan of large dogs in general, but particularly large dogs that bark like their tails are on fire when they see me.

I went to see my paternal grandmother today, and got back not long ago. I'm wearing a North Face jacket inside the house, because apparently, I am cold-blooded and not as easily able to control my internal body temperature as hardy Korean folk that have been weaned on ice water and barefoot walks in the snow.

I'm a little tired, as I usually am when I see a bunch of people (family is tiring, even if I love them to death). I also have a hard time living with other people, especially people that I am not used to living with. There are only five of us in a rather large house, but I still feel a little crowded. I'm using my (new MacBook Air) laptop as a shield this afternoon, until it's time for dinner.

It's funny, but leaving LA felt like leaving home. Upon landing in Korea, though, it felt like I was arriving home. Residing in Korea has given me a whole new perspective on my Korean-Americanness.

Being away for a month has actually had an impact on my Korean, which was quite good back in December. It hurts my head a little bit to be here, speaking in Korean 100%, which I suspect will dissipate soon enough. I start working on Monday, and once I get into the swing of things, I'll settle down.

Once I settle down, blogging will most likely go back to normal. Excuse me while I try to go find a way to heat my blood without singeing my skin off...

Bits and Bobs

2011-11-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

My brain is a little loose in my skull right now. I think I can hear it sloshing around in my cerebral fluids. A combination of lack of sleep, nonstop working, random drinks with co-workers, and quick trips to China tend to take a toll. Whew.

The movie is almost done. Not quite yet, but I'm hoping that late tonight or early tomorrow will see this thing through. I'm ready to stick a fork in it, that's for sure.

News!

I leave for LA next week, on Friday. Goodbye, Korea.

More news!

I come back to Korea in January. Goodbye, LA.

Because my mother is in Korea, I requested that I get to leave the country when she does. This means that I have a very whirlwind week ahead of me. I need to find a new place, move in, pack for LA, buy presents for people (or maybe just do that at duty-free), return my (stupid) Korean phone, see some people to say goodbye (or see you later, I guess), and try to catch up on sleep before getting on a very long plane ride. I'm tired just thinking about it ... though I was tired anyway, so that can't be helping.

Who knows how blog posting will go? Probably scarce until I get back to Korea in January, though I may have a bout of inspiration in LA (I'm betting not, as I will probably be dashing around seeing people and Christmas shopping in the short month that I have). I also need to buy winter clothes, because I don't know if you know this, but Korea? It has real winter. Sub-zero temperatures, freezing cold wind, and snow. I am not at all prepared for it. It's already too cold for me, and I'm told that it's only going to get colder. I was tempted to stay in LA until March, but that just seems excessive.

Also, I totally missed Thanksgiving because nobody in Korea cares. I want turkey and mashed potatoes! Happy belated Thanksgiving. And happy early Christmas!

Bits and Bobs

2011-11-19T06:46:00.000-08:00

I cannot even really begin to describe the hellishness of the last few weeks, in that I've gotten so little sleep that I've become delirious. Stark, raving mad. It's a constant struggle to remain upright, and an even bigger struggle to remember what day of the week it is. (Today's Saturday, I checked four times.)

Sleep, for me, is the single most important item while I am working. If I get enough sleep, I am generally okay. I may be cranky that I don't have a life, I may hate everyone, but I won't go ballistic. If I don't get enough sleep for a couple days and then make up for that lack of sleep, I'll be a little bleary-eyed, but not too bad. The past several weeks have been consistent. Consistently sleepless. I'm beat.

It's Christmas at Western Dom. Kind of. They just put up these decorations this week (I'm pretty sure it was this week ... but my brain isn't functioning all that well, so it may have been last week), which seems ridiculously early to me. Then again, Koreans think nothing of having Christmas decorations up all year round (Angel-in-us Coffee, I'm looking at you and your glittery gold ornaments).

My first taste of 족발 (usually spelled "jokbal" but pronounced more like johk-bahl), which are pigs' feet (or ham hocks, I suppose), cooked with spices and sliced thin. I was always wary of this dish, because DUDE. PIGS. FEET. Sounds gross.

Not surprisingly, I love jokbal. It's really good- it's just pork, eaten with varying accompaniments (seen in the photo). It can be dipped in one of the sauces, wrapped in lettuce with garlic or other vegetables, eaten plain, whatever floats your boat.

We had jokbal with 막걸리 (usually spelled "makgeolli" but pronounced mahk-gull-ee), which is pretty traditional. That white bottle is the makgeolli, which is sweet and only very slightly alcoholic. It's generally referred to as "rice wine," which I think is a little deceptive, because it's much weaker than wine. I think it's pretty much like soda (7Up or Sprite) with a little bit of booze mixed in.

No, I don't have much free time. We had jokbal and makgeolli for dinner one night, because the place we wanted to go to was full. There is a strange (to me) Korean tradition of eating green onion pancakes (파전, pajeon) with makgeolli on days when it rains. It was raining, so for dinner, three of us trekked over to a jeon (Korean savory pancake) restaurant. The place was totally full and not looking like it was going to clear out anytime soon, so we went to the jokbal place a few doors down.

I haven't eaten a meal at home in forever, so one of the few good things that have come about from my endless work hours is that I've become closer to my co-workers. A couple of them in particular. I've also realized that a few people that I work with are completely asinine and should be avoided. Good things to know, in any case.

I have written this blog post in about ten minutes, waiting for a review to start (that will probably last for at least two hours). I think they're about ready, so I'm off!

Also off to China tomorrow ... the upside is that I get to sleep in the plane...

Happy Pepero Day!

2011-11-11T00:48:00.000-08:00

It's November 11, or 11/11 today, which means it's Pepero Day.

There are giant displays all over the place with Pepero. It's really very much like Valentine's Day displays in the States, except there's only one type of snack being used.

I guess it's extra Pepero-y because this year is 2011? Two more 1's to add to the mix. Honestly, it's a silly day that just gives people an excuse to eat chocolate covered biscuits and give each other a little present.

I think it's kind of nice- an excuse to buy a gift for someone for a dollar, and an excuse to receive a cheap present. Sure, a buck isn't much money, but it's fun and seems to make people happy (at least for a few minutes).

Work is so incredibly busy that I haven't had time to sleep, much less blog. Back to China next week. This should be my last sleepless week before I get to pass out to my little heart's content. Just ... keep ... swimming...

Bits and Bobs

2011-11-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

I've been working very long hours lately, generally getting home around 3:00 in the morning. This means that I've been heavily abusing caffeine (Red Bull, thank you for FINALLY coming to Korea!) and sleeping lightly. I'm a little high from fatigue, which is not the fun kind of high. It's sort of like a weird, sluggish dream state.

Two more weeks and then this movie should (crossing my fingers) be over. Two more weekends of non-stop work, a few more meetings with the director, eleven or twelve more sleepless nights, and then I can pass out and sleep for 15 hours! Can't. Wait.

Random photos from my phones:

Beef sashimi (육사시미), which is literally sliced raw beef. Those little dishes off to the upper left side? Delicious, delicious dipping sauce that was a little spicy and quite garlicky. Yum. (Sorry, I didn't take any other pictures from this dinner, which was last night. Everything else was standard Korean beef grilling, nothing out of the ordinary.)

It's autumn, y'all. I took this photo in my building this morning, waiting for the elevator. That little hill is Jeongbal Mountain (정발산), which is what the subway station next to my place is called. The surrounding neighborhood is all called Jeongbalsan. I need to try to escape during some daylight hours to go up the mountain and snap some pictures before the leaves all fall off the trees ... hoping that winter doesn't come in the next two weeks.

Another photo from this morning, as I was waiting for the elevator. I absolutely love that shade of red that some trees transition to. It's so beautiful, and a color that I never saw on trees while I was growing up. Remember what this little garden looked like in the summer? It was nice and lush and green then, but I love the yellows and reds in this autumn photo.

Snapped on the way back to the office from lunch today. Those plastic chairs are common in front of almost all convenience stores in Korea. Generally, older men sit in them, reading newspapers during the day and drinking at night. I find it hilarious that these three chairs are grouped around this tree- what were they doing, communing with nature while smoking their cigarettes?

The trees have already started shedding their fall foliage, which makes me sad. I want autumn to last longer!

Geeky side note- the first and last photos were taken with my Samsung Galaxy SII. The middle two photos were taken with my iPhone 4. I have to say, the iPhone has a much better camera. Nothing really wrong with the Galaxy's camera, of course, I just think the iPhone's produces nicer photos. I've heard that the iPhone 4S's camera is even better ... but I'm not getting a new phone anytime soon. I'm already on my third (!) Galaxy S2, I don't need to blow all my money on getting new phones all the time. Sigh.

There is some drama (oh, drama, I have not missed you) at work, because politics are always present in any workplace, but coupled with Korean passive-aggressiveness, the politics are staggering. I've been quite blunt about it, and using my Americanness as an excuse to be aggressive and circumvent or just plain crush the drama that comes along and tries to bite me. No, thanks.

Still no change on my employment status. No idea where I will be working next month. Tick, tick, tick, tick...

R.I.P. Christopher Ryan Smith

2011-10-31T03:11:00.000-07:00

I was, for a while, so perplexed about this ... person ... that I didn't know if I wanted to blog about him. I didn't know if I wanted to add more words onto the internet about this man, who saddens me and angers me in turns.

I thought about it for a while. I talked to my mother about it. (She was at my place for the past two nights. I put her (and all seventy pounds of her luggage) into a cab this morning, packing her off to our hometown of Jeonju (전주)). I dwelt on it for longer than would be considered healthy. And I decided to write about it.

Writing and blogging is, in my opinion, one of the healthiest ways to express one's viewpoint. I like writing because nobody interrupts me; nobody can interject and make me lose my train of thought. I can go back and revise (though I rarely do). I can write something up, save it, and re-read it before posting. I can put as little or as much thought as I want into a blog post. Don't come back and yell at me if you have a fanatical point of view and put it up on the internet, though. People will always respond to fanaticism with a corresponding amount of vitriol.

So, here goes!

I remember seeing his picture, though I couldn't say where or when that was (I think it was while I was in Korea, and I think it was via Twitter). I remember thinking, what a ding-dong, and moving along with my day. There are a lot of news articles that enter my brain in snippets, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and the internet.

This particular case was about a murder. I only recalled the case very vaguely until my mother told me about it yesterday and I investigated it a bit further today, and now my head is reeling.

First off, here's the blog post he wrote on June 23, 2011, just a few short months ago:

For those of you who have known me a long time, you'll agree that my life has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. Though most of it was self imposed through a series of bad decisions guided by bad judgment, I can safely say that I am happy to be here. Regardless of the outcome, at the end of the day it's only about two things: 1. Your family and circle of friends and 2. Your faith.

1. My Family. I have three beautiful children, an amazing wife and another baby boy that's due in August. There's nothing more I could ever ask for as a human being other than the salvation of God's grace and His son. My kids are wonderful and despite the challenges of raising three kids that are seven and under, I couldn't imagine ever letting this get away from me as I have tried to let happen before.

2. My Faith. I will publicly admit all of my wrongdoing. I have made many mistakes in life, most of them in business and lot directly against my wife and family. I can't argue that God has blessed me with tremendous talents, but the issue hasn't been about execution or growth. It's been about taking shortcuts and looking for shortcuts when in trouble to get out of it. Additionally I think the whole "isolationist" perspective is not a good one to have. When you are on the top by yourself, it's very lonely and when you are immature and ill equipped to handle conflict because of character and under-developed integrity issues, you make mistakes, and in my case, more often than not. In the end, as I look upon my life and live it with a heavy heart knowing the people that I've hurt along the way, I can only hope to try and rectify everything in some small measure and know that in God's eyes that was good enough and that I'm good enough for him. My salvation through Jesus Christ is the ultimate gift, because no matter what, no matter if you are a hardened killer hanging on the cross just a few hours away from your death or born into a good Christian home whose family guides you to Jesus before you even commit serious sins, we are all people. People worthy of being saved by a higher power who was our Creator. Someone who "so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son..." So yes, I'm sorry. And yes, one day I will make good the best way that I can on the things I've done. I can't say when, but hopefully sooner than later.

The irony of all of this is that I could have chosen a different path or train of thought. However, in the end, I have to accept the fact that it isn't my power that has brought me here to where I can still have my family and love others, it's God's power. So because of that, I will take no credit and only offer my thanks and praise to God.

So. He's pushing the Christianity a bit hard, but nothing that stands out and screams that the author is a complete psychopath, right? I was a little surprised at how remorseful and sentimental the author seemed to be in this post, the only post on his blog, titled Mr. Shincredible. I fully expect that blog to be taken down shortly, which is why I've added the entire blog post above.

Mr. Shincredible is, in fact, Edward Younghoon Shin. He murdered his business partner, Christopher Ryan Smith, and covered it up for a year. A YEAR. There are two articles in the LA Times online, one on September 1, 2011, and the other on September 7, 2011. I am all for "innocent until proven guilty," but the man confessed. He killed his business partner, most likely because he didn't have the $1 million to buy out his partner's half of their marketing business.

I am perfectly aware that one million dollars is a very large amount of money. My life, the average life, is worth far more. To Christopher Ryan Smith's family, Chris is worth much more than one million dollars. They still don't have his body, because Edward Shin hasn't told the police where to find it.

The fact that Edward Shin had enough humanity in him to write that blog post? That's what makes me pity him. The fact that he killed a man because of financial gain? That's what makes me hope he gets a tough prison sentence. The fact that he has four children? That just makes me sad. For his wife, for his kids. Especially for the kids- their only wrongdoing was their inability to choose their own father, after all.

To recap the murder, here's what I've gleaned, sorted chronologically:

May, 2010: Edward Shin is convicted in Riverside of embezzling money. He is fined $700,000 and put on probation.

June 4, 2010 (or thereabouts): Edward Shin kills Christopher Smith and disposes of his body and some of his belongings, including his car.

June, 2010 (post-murder): Edward Shin hijacks Christopher Smith's e-mail account to e-mail Smith's family and friends about going on an African adventure. These e-mails continue for some time.

December, 2010: Edward Shin sends the last forged e-mail from Christopher Smith's e-mail account, telling Smith's family that he's on his way to Congo and Rwanda. This e-mail is vague and probably purposefully worrisome, seemingly because Shin wants Smith's family to believe that Smith died in Africa.
June 23, 2011: Edward Shin writes his only blog post. Possibly feeling the noose tightening as police are investigating him?

August, 2011: Christopher Smith's Range Rover is found in San Jose, about 400 miles from where he was killed.

August 28, 2011: Edward Shin is arrested on board a plane bound for Canada, taken into custody, and confesses to murder.

There's some inconsistencies in information about whether Edward Shin has three children or four (his blog post seems to indicate four, in my opinion, but most news articles seem to say he's a father of three), but regardless, he's definitely married and has kids. According to his blog, his youngest is a boy that was born in August. He's religious, obviously, and attends one of the mega-churches in Southern California that is predominantly Korean and Korean-American. (Reading that Wikipedia article, by the way, may shed some light for those who need examples of the lemming mentality that Koreans have.)

I understand, in my little brain, what might motivate a person to murder someone. Really, I get it. People can be stupid and infuriating, and I've said, "I'm gonna kill him/her" more than once in my life. Some people seem to defy Darwinism, in that I don't understand how they're still alive and breathing.

What I do not understand, will never understand, is actually being able to perform the deed. Can you imagine pointing a gun at someone, a real gun, and pulling the trigger? Holding a knife to someone and applying enough force to literally tear their flesh? I really doubt that, no matter how angry someone makes me, I would be able to do more than hit them (I've never punched anyone in my life, but I have hit people, mostly in jest). I don't think I could even put Visine in someone's drink, much less poison.

I am writing about this because of his blog post. There are murders on a daily basis- an hourly basis. I don't think I've ever read something that a murderer has written before he was incarcerated. I know murderers (and other criminals) tend to write letters and appeals once they're in prison and want support or public understanding or whatever, but I've never seen a criminal's blog, written of their own free will, before the public knew anything about them or their grisly crime(s).

They say (I don't know who "they" is, don't ask me) that people tend to become deeply religious on their deathbed, scared of dying without forgiveness, willing to try and ask for redemption before their bodies give out on them. This blog post seems like that sort of thing. Edward Shin is preemptively confessing his sins, hoping that putting his thoughts out there in the universe will somehow lessen his guilt. He compares himself to the two criminals that were crucified alongside Jesus- though to my knowledge, the two were thieves, not murderers. I'm sure he's hoping that he will be the "good thief," the one who was forgiven by Jesus, rather than the "bad thief," who mocked Jesus to the end.

I'm not going to further dissect this. I like analyzing things, but I have a feeling that dwelling on this for too long isn't going to do good things for my mental health, which is already teetering due to long, blood-sucking hours at work.

It's Halloween in Korea today, which means that it's just another autumn day in Korea today. Sadly, Halloween isn't much of an event here. I only remembered that it was Halloween because I went out with a few co-workers on Friday and I took them to a couple foreigner bars, where people were in (half-hearted) costumes. There was even an apple bobbing tub in one bar, which was a funny thing to introduce to Koreans (they think it's a weird game, which is perfectly understandable).

Nobody is dressed up at work today, and nobody's handing out candy. Sigh.

우마이도, Ilsan

2011-10-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

우마이도 (pronounced oo-mai-ee-do, Anglicized to Umaido) is a Japanese ramen place just on the outskirts of Western Dom (웨스턴돔) in Ilsan (일산). I've been a couple times now, and tried all two main dishes that they offer there.

I usually feel that restaurants are best when they concentrate on their signature dish and refine it. This place takes that notion to an extreme, literally only serving gyoza (potstickers) and ramen. Even their ramen only comes in two flavors- regular and spicy. They don't mess around. They don't even serve rice, so if you're hungry, order some extra noodles (for 1,000 won, or less than $1). They do sell their chashu (the pork that is usually served in slices on top of ramen) by the dish, if you need more meat. Chashu is part of Japanese ramen cookery, as are half-boiled eggs (hanjuku eggs), so I don't consider them to be separate dishes.

True to form for me, I prefer the spicy ramen. It's a little more interesting, and the spice cuts the heavy greasiness of the broth. Both are quite good, and if I was looking for something comforting, I might go with a bowl of the regular, but I think that most days, I prefer the spicy. They have the same base, and it's a good base. I believe that there's a reason that they charge you a whole extra 1,000 won for the spicy bowl, though.

Sadly, their gyoza is a little lackluster. ~~I don't think they make their own, which I completely understand, but I wish they would buy tastier dumplings. Not that they're bad, they're just sort of typical dumplings that one could make at home.~~ I think they make their own gyoza. Shame that their noodles are so good but their gyoza are just so-so.

I usually can't finish a bowl of ramen at other establishments, but I find that I actually eat the entire bowl plus a few gyoza at Umaido, so big eaters should really get the extra noodles added right off the bat. I almost never finish an entire rice bowl of rice at restaurants in Korea, so I wouldn't say that I eat a lot- I actually don't eat as much as most girls that I work with, especially when it comes to rice or noodles or ricecakes.

Just as Koreans differentiate between Japanese (and Korean) style curry (카레) and Indian curry (커리) with slightly different pronunciations and spellings, the difference between Korean ramen (라면) and Japense ramen (라멘) is very slight, probably not easily discernible to a Westerner.

One thing that is unique about this place that I've never seen before is the presence of raw garlic cloves and a garlic press at every table. You pop a clove or two (or three or four) into the press and squeeze freshly minced garlic into your ramen, stir it all around, then dig in. Koreans love garlic, of course, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is a Korean addition to a Japanese dish. I, personally, can't really taste garlic all that much, probably because I grew up on garlic-heavy Korean food. I think I had about a clove of garlic in my ramen today and I couldn't even tell it was there.

With the very simple menu of ramen, gyoza, and beer (no sake, as far as I know), this place is almost austere. Their decor is stark, and they seem to stake their reputation on their ramen. Frankly, I've had ramen in LA that I actually preferred to this (I love opaque white shio ramen), but I know that I'll be back for at least one more bowl of spicy ramen at Umaido before I leave Korea.

Their prices aren't bad at all, though pricier than having "normal" Korean food (and more of it):

7,000 won ($6.33) for a bowl of regular ramen
8,000 won ($7.24) for a bowl of spicy ramen
2,500 won ($2.26) for six gyoza

I have no idea how much the beer is because I didn't take note, since I don't care for beer. I'm sure it's not exorbitantly expensive, though.

That's it for today, I'm too tired from work to write anything with thought and opinion, too tired to attempt any type of wit. Hopefully, leaving work a bit early today (before 10:00 would be swell) to have dinner with some co-workers so we can whine and moan about how much our jobs suck. It's a necessary part of life in this industry.

My mother's back to my house tomorrow afternoon, yay! I have to work tomorrow, but I'm going to try to take off early and take her somewhere yummy for dinner. Have to work out where exactly that might be...

*EDIT*

I took my mom to Umaido for dinner! She had never had Japanese ramen before, so off we went. I took the opportunity to snap a picture of the spicy ramen:

The gyoza were better this time around. I actually paid attention this time and saw one of the guys making the gyoza, so I can confirm that they are actually made on-site. I think the skins of the gyoza are mass-produced and shipped, though, as they were in pre-packaged little containers, while the filling looking to have been put together by the people in the restaurant.

So there you have it.

Dongcheng District, Beijing

2011-10-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

All of the photos below were taken in various areas of the Dongcheng district of Beijing. To get all the links out of the way, let me list off the places that we drove or walked by:

Houhai, which means "back sea," as it's in the 'back' part of Beijing. This is a park with a lake.

Beihai, also a park with a lake, means "northern sea" and is very close to Houhai.

We walked by Gulou and Zhonglou, I think, which are the drum and bell towers of Beijing.

We drove by Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong's mausoleum (I still want to spell his name Mao Tse Tung, because that's what my textbooks said when I was a child), and some other places, but it was so foggy the night that we did the drive that taking pictures was pretty much useless. Of course, since I didn't take pictures, I don't remember exactly where we went. Sigh.

What I did take pictures of would be food. I don't know why, but this trip to Beijing was basically just an excuse for me to take ridiculous numbers of photos of food. We really ate quite a lot this time around.

So here was our adventure on our last night, after our meetings and review with the director. We actually left Wangjing and went out and about, taking in a nighttime market, eating, drinking, looking for cute knock-offs (some of the stuffed animals were hilarious), and just generally enjoying Beijing.

We started off at some tiny little restaurant, in a tiny little alley. I will never be able to find this place again, but one of the guys that we went with used to be a regular when he was a student at a nearby university. The owner greeted him cheerily and made us feel right at home.

The dish above was the first one out. I don't like mushrooms, but these mushrooms were delicious. Mostly because they didn't taste anything like mushrooms (or any mushroom I've ever had, anyway). I usually can taste the mushroominess even when they're deep-fried, but these were not mushroomy at all. Really very good.

Next came a tower of fried potatoes. Basically crispy-fried French fries with Chinese seasonings, piled high into a haphazard tangle. There were bits of cilantro in this, and one of my co-workers absolutely hates cilantro (as do a lot of Koreans).

I don't mind cilantro, though I used to really dislike it. I think pho pretty much wore me down and made me accept cilantro. Pho and Mexican salsa got me accustomed to the taste, and I didn't mind it in this dish. It was actually nice to have the sharp cilantro to cut through the deep-fried-ness of the potatoes. I never knew Chinese food involved so much frying until I went to Beijing.

Chicken with mushrooms and bamboo shoots and ... carrots? Something like that. These types of mushrooms, I hate. I avoided these like the plague. The bamboo shoots were actually nice; I didn't think I'd like them, but I did. This chicken was rather sweet and reminded me of Andong jjimdak (안동 찜닭), a popular Korean dish.

I personally like spicy food, and my problem with Andong jjimdak (jjim = steam or braise, dak = chicken) is that it's too sweet. I feel like it's just sweet, without any other flavors. This dish was not as sweet as Andong jjimdak, but still a little boring. I ended up picking out most of the bamboo shoots and leaving the mushrooms and chicken to everyone else.

This is supposedly a great dish that is done really well at this restaurant. I am still skeptical. It was essentially a giant bowl o' fish stew. Those little floaty things? That look like red peppercorns? They are Sichuan peppercorns, which kind of numb the mouth if you accidentally eat them.

I accidentally ate about five little peppercorns and had a couple minutes of pleasant tingling, then realized that the soup contained the greasiest broth that I'd ever tasted. I've had lobster bisque that wasn't as rich as this soup. How they managed to make a clear broth that is richer than bisque is completely beyond me.

There were bean sprouts, large slivers of fish, and some other vegetables in the dish. I took a couple bites, one sip, and I was pretty much done with this. I don't feel the need to ever try this again. Meh.

This looks kind of gross, I know. Like some large blob suspended in mysterious goo. It didn't look appetizing at all, but it was strangely addictive. Basically, it's an omelette wrapped around julienned cucumbers, sitting in a pool of a sauce that was similar to sweet chili sauce.

Okay, the description doesn't make it sound that appetizing, either, but it was actually good. I would've liked it even more if the sauce had been slightly spicy rather than just sweet, but that's just me and my personal taste.

Mysterious meat! I think it's pork, but I forgot to ask. I ate all the bell peppers in this, because I was acutely feeling the lack of vegetables in our dinner. This was really good, but very ... common. Does that make sense? It wasn't unique or anything, it was just sauteed stuff in a typically Chinese sauce. I'm not knocking it or anything, because I really liked it, but I don't know how else to describe it.

A very palate-cleansing, refreshing soup of cabbage and all kinds of mushrooms. This was divine. I don't eat these mushrooms, but I love cabbage (why do people think it's weird that I love cabbage?) and this soup was so blessedly clean, without the grease of the fish stew thing that we had earlier.

Dessert (I don't know if it's really meant to be dessert, but it was sweet, so I'm calling it dessert) was homemade bread. The paler buns are steamed and cooled, so they're slightly chilled. The darker buns are fried, I think, and were ridiculously hot. They came with a little dish of sweetened condensed milk, which I found hilarious. I preferred the fried buns, without the extra sweetening (I ate two!).

We actually starting drinking before we started eating, but that's neither here nor there. China means baiju, since I don't drink beer, and we all ended up drinking it, since nobody really felt like beer. This brand sold these glass cups of baiju, sealed with a thin metal cap and seal that were actually really difficult to remove (heaven help the person who's already had a couple, he'll end up cutting up his hands quite badly), which is probably why we switched to a different brand that came in bottles, with handy screw-top lids.

The nice thing about the little cups was that they were a little less strong than the bottled variety. I think the cups were something like 46% alcohol, whereas the bottle was 58%, which is basically like drinking rubbing alcohol. Blargh.

One of the many, many little alleyways that we traversed to get from the car to the restaurant, then get from the restaurant to the night market, then get from the night market to the bar. These alleys are scary, because people, scooters, cars, and even trucks all use them.

Characteristic Boiled Fish. Yum...? I appreciate that there are so many signs in English (all the larger street signs, especially on the highways, are in both Chinese and English) but some of the English names that shops and restaurants choose are just silly.

I think Special Dishes, Delicious & Cheap was where we had dinner, but I can't be sure. There were so many signs, I don't remember where I saw each one. Pretty sure this was where we had dinner, though. I can't speak for the "Cheap" part, because I didn't pay and had no bloody clue how much anything else, but it was "Delicious."

I can't believe I only took this one measly photo at the big market that we walked through. In my defense, I was busy eating these. I don't know what kind of fruit they are, though I was told definitively that they're fruits, but they were yummy. Candied to a crisp with a slightly sourish flesh. I ate three, I think, everyone else had one, and we ended up throwing two of them away (we'd already had four by the time I remembered to take this picture).

Another sign. I love owls, so I had to take a picture. We peered into the window of this place, though, and there were no owl decorations anywhere. I was disappointed- I had expected the place to be plastered with owls, kind of like how the Hello Kitty Cafe in Seoul looks like Sanrio threw up in there.

This dog was sitting on a stump outside the owl place. The stump actually had owls carved into it, which didn't turn out very clearly in this picture. There were a lot of little dogs in China with these types of haircuts, giving them disproportionately large heads on wee bodies. I have to say, though, all the dogs that we saw were very well behaved. Not a single one of them barked, even in the chaos of a night market.

Our last stop of the night was at Bed Tapas & Bar, where they have lounges and tables set low to the ground, with pillows all over the place. We, of course, elected to sit outside at a table with chairs, because we were not there to experience the "bed" portion of the place, nor even the "tapas" portion- we were strictly there for the "bar."

Everyone had a mojito. Everyone liked their mojito except for me, because I think the mojitos that I've had in LA were better than this weak little beverage. I need to find a place that will make real mojitos in Korea so I can take my co-workers.

At Bed, we were total nerds and played games on an iPad. This game was sort of weird. Type in your (Korean) name and it tells you what your brain thinks of. The majority of my brain, apparently, thinks of vacationing (not true).

We played air hockey on the iPad (well, I didn't, because I was busy downing my mojito) and then we all got addicted to this quiz game. I did quite well at English (of course) and world geography (surprisingly, the Koreans and Korean-Chinese do not know their world geography very well), but then failed miserably at Korean public transportation (which of these colors is not one of the bus lines in Seoul? Who knows that kind of thing?), but we had so much fun with all the different types of quizzes. I have to find that app.

Doesn't this look like jail? It was the view from my hotel room. The previous day, there were students in gym clothes swarming the field. I tell you, Wangjing is not a very pretty part of Beijing.

Unlike our Samuel from last month, October Sammy was alive and swimmy and cute! Hooray for energetic fish that cheer me up. Also, side note: isn't the iPhone 4 camera really amazingly good? It's inside a phone, for crying out loud, but takes very good pictures. I mean, look at Sammy.

It's almost midnight and after a day of assembling this post in bits and pieces while working like a crazy person, I am finally going home. Whew. Sorry for the long, picture-heavy, scatter-brained posts, but it's all I can manage for now!

Peking Duck

2011-10-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

I was going to title this post "Peking Duck in Beijing" but realized how stupid that would be. As my brain is not at its best currently, it'll be amazing if I make it through this post without spelling, grammar, and logical errors.

Last week was sleepless (a few hours a night) and mentally exhausting. We were running so late that we rescheduled our Thursday afternoon flight to early Friday morning, which meant that I got home around 3 a.m. and then had to be out the door at 6 a.m. to make my flight. Ridiculous.

Got to Incheon Airport around 7, had breakfast with my co-workers and fellow travelers, got on the plane, and conked out for an hour. Because our flights were last-minute, we ended up all sitting in center seats. Not that it mattered, because we didn't have the wherewithal to make conversation with each other anyway.

That would be Incheon Airport, a photo that I took very groggily. I rather like this airport. We landed at Gimpo Airport upon our return to Korea. I haven't been to that airport since I was a child, and it was a little bit weird to see how small the airport was. I had always thought it was massive, since I'd only seen it as a child.

Orange Hotel, our hotel- it's in the Wangjing area of Beijing. Wangjing really is the Koreatown of Beijing. There are tons of signs that are in Korean, lots of businesses that accommodate Korean speakers, and it's easy to find Korean food.

We landed in Beijing on Friday morning, went into the post-production facility for a bit to get some work done, went to the hotel to drop off our stuff, and then went out for lunch. There are a couple guys that work in Beijing that are Korean (one is Korean-Chinese and one is Korean, but has lived in China for several years now). They both know my co-workers that I went with, because the visual effects industry in Korea and China is tiny and everyone knows everyone, so the Korean-Chinese guy took us to lunch, insisting that we have Peking duck because I've never had it before and because it's obviously something that one does in Beijing.

You know how people use red and gold as symbolic colors for China? I thought it was always overwrought and people should stop being so stereotypical ... until I actually went to China. Red and gold really are used almost everywhere.

Before the duck came all kinds of yummy things. This was pretty much kung pao chicken, but better and with more complex flavors. Chinese food in China is a very different experience than Chinese food in the States or in Korea.

Then came a fancy salad. I think I was told that it was a peach pit salad (?!) but I didn't taste anything pit-y. I had no idea what I was eating, but it was good. Too much dressing, perhaps, though over-dressing salads is so common in Korea that I'm getting used to it (and don't ask for dressing on the side, they'll think you're weird).

Sizzling hot eggplant. This was quite good. I like eggplant, but I really like eggplant that is seasoned well and not cooked into mush. I find that I seek out vegetables more and more (I don't know why that is ... my old age?) and this was really a good vegetarian dish.

Our little ducky came with his own carver. She was really fast with that huge knife, efficiently cutting up little ducky into thin slices and then taking his carcass off to be turned into soup. She shimmied off some of the crispiest bits of skin first and handed them over to us. I personally like duck fat (I don't like pork fat), but that skin is just a mouthful of oil. Yes, deliciously duck-flavored oil, but I like duck fat and duck meat together.

Ducky also came with a certificate. He's a special duck. He was a quite delicious duck; I have no complaints.

The carver handed over two plates of neatly piled duck, which were almost too pretty to eat (almost), and then our Korean-Chinese friend explained how to eat the duck. It's pretty much a tiny duck burrito, or maybe a tiny duck spring roll.

Lay down one of the crepes (or pancakes or tortillas or whatever they're called), dip a slice or two of the duck into the sauce, add a couple matchsticks of cucumbers and spring onion, roll the whole thing up, and eat it. These little rolls were a perfect two bites for me, and very good. The wrappers were a little odd, because some of them were thick and some of them were very, very thin (the thin ones were better).

Here's our little ducky's head, cleanly halved, with some of the crispy skin. I tried the brain and it was okay. It had the consistency of beans and not much flavor. Now that I think about it, I probably should have had the brain and the skin together, that would have been much better.

Duck soup, which was very, very, VERY greasy and not refreshing in the slightest. I could see how this would be really good as a base for something, but it was a little odd and one-dimensional the way we had it. Besides, by the time the soup came out, we were all stuffed and ready to pass out from full bellies and lack of sleep.

Actually, passing out is exactly what we did. After lunch, we went back to the hotel, crawled into our respective beds, and look naps before our afternoon meetings started. The nap only made me want to sleep more, so it was not, perhaps, the best idea, but we were wiped out and needed whatever rest we could get.

This trip to Beijing was much better than the first one, mostly because we had a little bit of time and were actually able to go to some different places, rather than being trapped at the post-production facility during all our waking hours.

In non-China related news, my mother's here! Yay! She arrived (arrove) early yesterday morning. My aunt (my mother's only sister) went to pick her up. They had coffee and then came to my house just after 9:00, where I was sprawled in a stupor because of a hweshik (회식) the night before. During said 회식, I managed to drop my phone and crack the screen, meaning that I cannot use the phone at all. I am full of smart moves when I drink, let me tell you.

My poor mother saw me at my bleary-eyed worst as soon as she got here! We both struggled to stay awake yesterday. Mom managed to stay up until 9:00, after which I gave her permission to sleep (she passed out SO FAST), and I stayed up a while longer, waiting for an e-mail from work. I only came into work for a few hours yesterday, thankfully, but have been here since 9:30 this morning and am ready to go home (it's only 4:30).

More posts about Beijing coming soon- we went to a 24-hour restaurant-ish place that night, a nighttime market-ish place the next night, and managed to have fun. My Chinese visa is kaput now, so here's hoping that if I go back to China again, it'll be for fun and not for work.

Korean-Style English

2011-10-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

Because even English is just a little bit different in Korea:

contact lenses = lens, not contacts, not lenses, just "lens"
Coca-Cola = cola or Coca-Cola, nobody says "Coke"
Sprite or 7Up = cider (there's no apple cider here, by the way- there's Martinelli's and such, but nothing like real apple cider)
microwave = range (because the appliance is actually a 'microwave range' and Koreans apparently like to use the second word rather than the first)
app (as in, that app for my smartphone) = appil (which sounds just like 'apple' to me), a Korean-style shortening of 'application'
harddrive = hard (rather than 'drive', as in the States)
laptop = notebook

There are so many more, but I can't remember them when I'm trying hard to think of some examples. I should probably write them down as I encounter them. That's what the memo app is for, after all.

Blogging's been terrible lately, I know. I've been working until quite late every night, and then going home and having trouble sleeping. I don't usually sleep until 3 or 4; it's been an ongoing struggle for the past couple weeks.

Back to China this week. We're leaving on Thursday evening, which means that it's going to be a sleepless week as we prepare. We're staying until Sunday this time. I'm pre-upset because this means that I won't get any kind of weekend at all before I have to come back into work on Monday. Then on Tuesday, early in the morning, my mother arrives (hooray!) and I get to see her for a couple hours before I have to come into work.

It's going to be a long few weeks until this movie delivers, as we're already burning the midnight oil (I've had meetings that didn't begin until past midnight!) and burning that candle at both ends, all at the same time. Lots of burning going on.

My Chinese visa is done after this trip, so maybe I won't have to go back. I like going to new places and visiting foreign countries, but the part of Beijing that we stay in is not fun. Plus, the fact that I'm stuck in a building where everyone smokes indoors means that I really do not enjoy my working hours (of which there are many).

Alarmingly, it's gotten quite frigid here. I'm told (repeatedly) that Ilsan is colder than Seoul, which is disheartening. It's already cold, colder than LA winters, and I actually debated breaking out my puffy parka this morning (I didn't). My mother sent me some winter clothes a couple weeks ago when the temperature starting dropping and I realized that I wouldn't be able to avoid winter in Korea.

I am debating what to do with my professional future, and what would be the best course of action for me. No decisions yet.

There will probably be more random pictures of Beijing next week. I still have photos to post of the family get-together a couple weeks ago, plus the museum I visited, plus some other photos from Busan. So much to do, so little time! My mother arrives next week, so I'm sure I'll be occupied for a few days while she stays with me (I'm hoping I can work normal hours while she's here, otherwise that would suck).

I know that I'm in a strange place right now, in between a lot of things. The company for which I currently work has not really made me feel like I'm part of the family. I'm still a guest here, and I don't really like that feeling much. I am freakishly hermit-esque about my personal life at times and it takes me a long time to feel comfortable bringing people into my house, but I seek acceptance and approval at work. Feeling like I'm an outsider at a place where I spend nearly all my waking hours is crap.

More than ever, I also feel like I'm see-sawing between my Koreanness and my Americanness. I'm getting more Korean in some ways, in day-to-day ways, but I feel that I'm getting more resolutely American in other aspects, things that I see and don't like or don't agree with in Koreans. That hyphen between Korean-American is getting more and more jagged.

After I've gotten a consistent amount of sleep (sleep like a dead person for a week or two) and I'm not a zombie anymore, I'll give this all more thought.

Bits and Bobs

2011-10-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

It's been an exhausting week. And it's only Wednesday!

Randoms:

- Got my hair cut yesterday (for the first time since I've been in Korea) because I was looking like a bedraggled mop. The guy sitting next to me in the salon was getting a perm. He was in the salon for hours, I think, and left at one point while I was there so he could smoke a cigarette. He went outside in a burgundy gown with colorful pastel rollers all over his head. I love Koreans.

(My hair is quite short now. I wish I could have longer, more feminine hair, but I neither have the face nor enough hair to pull off anything but quite short cuts.)

- I got three moles removed today. It was shockingly fast and yet I wasn't frazzled much. I went with a co-worker, we just waltzed out of work in the afternoon, walked to the skincare clinic, then filled out forms with very basic information (name, birthdate, phone number), got our moles zapped, then went back to work after a quick stop at Coffee Bean.

We were sitting, having coffee and chatting in the lobby of the skincare clinic (which are very numerous in Korea), when a girl came by with a topical anesthesia. She dolloped some on our moles, covered the cream with bits of tape, then told us we had to wait about 20 minutes.

My co-worker went first and came back out in less than five minutes. He said it didn't hurt, it was like someome rubbed his skin. I went in for probably ten minutes, came out with three less moles and some sort of cream that's supposed to aid in the healing.

We have to go back in two months, which I managed to shorten to six weeks (I'll be in the States in two months).

It cost me 30,000 won per mole because mine are (were?) quite large and deep-rooted. Including the healing cream, I paid a total of 105,000 won (less than a hundred dollars), which includes the follow-up visit. Totally cheap but the clinic was spotless, the service was great, and the dermatologist was very kind.

Bad news, I have these bits of tape or bandages covering my ex-moles and I can't wet them for at least two days. How am I supposed to thoroughly wash my face??

One of the moles I had removed was just under my eye, which is very delicate skin. That one aches a bit, but I think the bandage is tugging the skin. There is no real pain, though I bet I'll have some nasty scabs.

Work has been quite busy, and I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I find that I'm distracted and listless without sleep, so I have a feeling that blogging will be quite awful until my sleep schedule's back on track.

I also still don't know where my next job is, and that is making me antsy and irritable. For the sake of NOT venting anger all over my blog, I'll refrain from talking about that whole ball of wax.

Good night. I really, really hope it's a good night of sleep!

BIFF and Bobs

2011-10-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, blog! I didn't mean to neglect you, I just got caught up in all kinds of different things that conspired against blogging. I think there's some tomfoolery afoot.

Last week was chaos, what with a family get-together, a director review (which means late nights prepping for the review), a new project to bid, international phone calls to make, preparations to go to the Busan International Film Festival, and just ... stuff. Not an excuse, sure, but it's the only one I got!

Monday was a holiday (개천절, or Gaecheonjeol, with is National Foundation Day) that falls on October 3 each year here in Korea. Since the anniversary of my maternal grandmother's death is October 5, the family had agreed to meet on the third for her memorial.

This meant that while others would be working on Monday, I wouldn't, since I was hoofing it down to Seoul to see my family. So I worked on the weekend, tried to get everything in order so nothing would go awry in my absence on Monday, and then went to see my family (I have photos which I will post at some point). A lot of us gathered (17? 18?), the first time I've been with so many family members at the same time. It was nice to take the time to remember my grandmother, and it was even nicer to see my grandfather saying loving things about his wife.

We ate a ton of food, had espresso, lots of dessert, including rice cake (떡), then the out-of-towners left. I went to a museum on the way home, just because I could, took a bunch of pictures (haven't even looked at them yet), then went home, exhausted.

Tuesday was an all-nighter to get things prepped for the director review on Wednesday, then an even later all-nighter to get the bid for the new movie squared away. Wednesday, director review day, started late because we didn't go to dinner (with the director and stereographer) until nearly 8:00. The review didn't start until 9:00, went past midnight, and then we had another meeting for the new project at 1:00 a.m. (Who does that, by the way?!)

Thursday was spent in a daze. I was in a fog all day, after getting to work around 2:00 in the afternoon, and didn't even try to do much. I knew that we had to leave for Busan on Friday, pretty early in the morning, so I was really glad when I heard that our departure time had been changed to 10:00 (the other car left at 6:00, so glad I wasn't in that one). We had dinner at a really cute place, took a couple half-hearted stabs at work, and left before 9:00, the earliest I've left work in a couple weeks.

Friday morning, five of us got in a company car and went to Busan. The drive should take about four to five hours but ended up taking six because we got stuck in traffic. We got to Busan in the afternoon, after stopping three times for snacks, lunch, coffee, and bathroom breaks (rest stops in Korea are SO AMAZING, I love them! America, why are your rest stops so scary?!). Milled around Busan, doing the typical Korean "hanging out in the parking lot next to our cars because we can't decide where to go."

Eventually, we made it out and about the city, mostly Haeundae (해운대), the famous beach. We basically didn't do anything in Busan except eat (and then eat some more), drink (and then drink way too much), and sleep (not enough sleep).

First stop was at a place called 매떡 (Mae-Tteok or Mae-Ddeok), an abbreviation (acronym?) for 매운떡볶기 (spicy tteokbokki, sometimes spelled ddeobokki). Those are fried dumplings (만두, mandoo or mandu) in the bowl closest to camera. We sat on little plastic chairs at little plastic tables next to this hole in the wall shop, practically receiving third degree burns in our mouths from the spiciness. It was good, I have to say, and I didn't suffer nearly as much as some of the other people (three of them got hiccups, it was so spicy).

We played a game on the street, throwing darts at a wall of balloons. All of our popped balloons combined got us a pink Angry Bird, which one of the girls hung off her purse. She had it on her for the rest of the trip- it was funny because her purse was tiny; the plush stuffy was bigger than her purse!

After the street fun, which I suppose is what one does in a beach town, the guys wanted to shoot pool, a very popular pastime in Korea. Actually, guys here prefer carom, which is played on a table without pockets (pool is called "pocketball" here). I think carom is what the Brits calls snooker? I have no idea, I'm terrible at all those kinds of games.

I learned the proper way to hold a cue and made a few good shots (and a lot of terrible ones). The girls played pocketball while the boys played carom (which is colloquially referred to as "three color" because there are three colors of balls), which has some sort of crazy scoring system. We were basically playing to pass the time, which we did quite well. It was surprisingly fun. I say it was surprising because I usually don't have fun with things that I'm bad at, but I did all kinds of things that I'm bad at (throwing darts, playing pool) and managed to have a good time.

We had a company function at Red Beard (붉은수염), a Japanese-style izakaya that's supposed to be famous for some reason or other (I wasn't paying attention). Once the boys were done carom'ing to their hearts' content, we walked the half-block to Red Beard to eat, drink, and be merry.

I don't drink beer, because I think it tastes awful. So we ordered beers for everyone except me- they ordered a bottle of soju for me. The waiter brought six glasses, thinking everyone was going to be drinking soju. One of my co-workers made me a pyramid of soju. We discovered that one bottle of soju is exactly seven glasses (useless facts, I'm full of them!).

These were tiny little prawns, with heads and tails and shells and everything, battered and deep fried. They were delicious! I thought they wouldn't be good because, you know, who eats shrimp shells?, but they were really good. A little salty (the food was overly salty across the board), but yummy.

Broth with fish cake (오뎅), vegetables, tofu, and some weird thing that I think was made of fish (it was fine, it was just weird because it looked like firm semi-opaque white Jell-O). Koreans really like some sort of hot soup when they're drinking, and this was a nice one.

Octopus "sashimi," which isn't raw. I think the octopus is boiled or steamed and then sliced thin. It's served cold, which is a little weird at first, but it was quite good (if my sister is reading this, she will be all, you ate octopus and liked it?!), especially with the spicy red dipping sauce (which isn't in the picture).

This was foul. It was some sort of raw fish with some sort of seafood paste on top, then decorated with thin strips of seaweed (laver) and watercress. The garnish is lovely, but the fish was gross. I tried a little at the insistence of my co-workers, and ewwwwww. Never again.

We switched to sake after two bottles of soju (no, I didn't drink all that soju by myself). The sake was good- I find that I usually really like the sake here, though I like soju better in the States. We were laughing about this picture because it doesn't look like I'm actually holding the carton, it just looks pasted in front of my face.

Skip forward a few hours. After several cartons of sake, several bottles of soju, and more food at the izakaya, we went down the block to a Korean street vendor (포장마차, pojangmacha) to have more soju and these little creatures. I don't know what they're called, but you basically take one, hold it to your lips, and suck out this tiny little sea creature. It tastes like mild salt water and is a little gritty, a little chewy. I didn't mind these suckers, but I had also had quite a bit to drink by this point.

Saturday morning (um ... noon-ish) we gathered, everyone looking a little haggard, went to have noodles (밀면), tease each other about the previous night (well, tease me about the previous night), and then figure out who was leaving, who was staying, and all that.

The group of us that were going to come straight back up figured out that one car had a zoom lens and the other car had a DSLR, so we detoured to the beach, near two lighthouses, took a bunch of photos (of each other- I looked at the pictures last night and there are none of the actual landscape!), then got in the cars and took off, agreeing to meet for dinner somewhere.

I couldn't stay awake in the car on the way up (thank goodness I didn't have to drive), so I nodded on and off the entire time. When I came to, it was dark and we were in Gwangju (광주), to have dinner (닭도리탕 and 백숙, two chicken dishes, and 감자전, a sort of potato pancake) and then drive back to Ilsan so we could all go our separate ways. (That's the restaurant, in the photo above- it was a really cool place, where each party is seated in a separate room. All the rooms are old-style Korean, with paper-covered doors and windows, tables on the heated floors. I bet it's amazing during the day, when all the doors and windows can be opened to look out at the surroundings, which are very country-esque.)

Not surprisingly, I couldn't stay awake in the car after dinner. I woke up when the guy that was driving started telling me to wake up because we were almost at my house. I opened my eyes just as he pulled up in front of my building, I hopped out, went up to my place, vegged out in front of the TV for a couple hours, then collapsed into bed, dead to the world.

It was a fun and exhausting weekend, and I'm almost completely recovered now. Still a little tired, but I think it's because I had coffee and tea quite late yesterday, so I didn't sleep much. I met my aunt (my mother's sister) and my uncle for dinner last night in my neighborhood. Then we went to Lake Park, where they were having some sort of show, watched a bewildering show (I think it was trying to be Cirque du Soleil, re-enacting the sinking of the Titanic?) during which we really wanted to leave, then were really glad we stayed when we got to see a ton of fireworks. I think there were about twenty minutes worth of fireworks, quite well choreographed to the music that they played. I thought American did public displays well, but Korea really spends a lot of money on these kinds of festivals (apparently, there was a festival all weekend) and public concerts (there's at least one public concert in the little park in front of my building every weekend).

The ten of us that went up together have become closer as a result of this weekend, and I feel like some of my co-workers are finally comfortable with me, rather than afraid of me. It was a good bonding experience. I think if we had another mandatory night out, it would be much less awkward and much more fun.

I have lots of pictures of post, but haven't gone through any of them. I have tons of work to do before I can even think about leaving work today, so I'm going to hop to it. A lot of things are making me cranky, and I need to stop typing before my blog becomes an angry, angry place of anger.

Work Cultures

2011-09-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

I had never worked outside of the United States until July of this year, when I moved to Korea. I've never really discussed how the whole thing came about, because Korea has notoriously prickly rules and laws about disclosure, and until I know the consequences, I probably won't ever post about which company is currently employing me. However, I have no problem talking about my situation and my observations, and how I came to be in Korea.

I have no qualms about telling someone that I am good at my job. I've been working in this industry since May of 2003 (working in post-production on various projects). Since April of 2005, I have worked exclusively in post-production- specifically, visual effects- on films. In the years that I've spent working on movie after movie, I've learned, I've adapted, and I've generally become better at my job. After two movies, I was competent. After four movies, I was good. Now, I'm efficient, I know what to do and how to do it well, and I'm an asset to the producer for whom I am working. This may all sound conceited, but I promise that I have self-esteem issues, like most of the world's population, and one of the few areas in which I am truly confident is my work.

Anyways. In 2005, I met an artist during my first movie ever ("The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe"). We weren't really friends, we were just co-workers, and we sort of became acquaintances because we were on the same team at work. I worked with him again a time or two before I left that company and moved on.

Fast-forward to early 2011, when I'm in Albuquerque, working on "The Green Lantern" and wondering what I should do next, knowing that I want to leave New Mexico and not having much of a plan (which is quite liberating, let me say). Suddenly, whaddya know, that artist calls me up and asks me if I'd ever consider working in Korea.

Well. It's as if the stars aligned or something, because haven't I been going on and on about how I wanted to try living in Korea? Yes, I have. So after a couple months of sporadic e-mailing and a few phone calls at weird hours with this company, I found myself with gainful employment in the motherland, not knowing a soul that works at the company I've agreed to enter. (Side note: I would have gone about the process much differently if I didn't know the person that had introduced me to the company. Don't get sucked into one of those schemes aimed at foreigners!)

What with the vacationing through New Mexico, the move back to LA, and the vacation to the Caribbean, all in June, I didn't really have time to let myself get worried or anxious about relocating to a whole different country. I didn't even pack to move to Korea until the day before my flight. I was so busy meeting friends, saying goodbyes, and having coffee with my parents that I forgot that moving to a country 6,000 miles away from my home was kind of a big deal.

As it turns out, I'm really glad that I didn't worry. Because as it really turns out, moving far from home is only as big a deal as you make of it. Late at night on July 4, my sister drove me to the airport as we watched fireworks on either side of the 105. I checked in, went through security, and sat at my gate, charging my phone and my iPad while I sent texts for the last time, before my phone service shut off (actually, it's suspended until I get back).

Moving to Korea and living here isn't as momentous a change as I had thought it would be. I don't wake up in the morning and think, "I'M IN KOREA," I just wake up and think, "I want another couple hours of sleep." Despite the language and the obvious appearance of the people here, it doesn't occur to me very often that oh, my gosh, I'm in Korea.

I can say all this now because it's been about two and a half months since I started working, and I have (finally) gotten used to the changes in my life. I don't think that 2.5 months is that long of a time, though- even when I moved to Albuquerque, I had quite a long adjustment period. (Koreans were easier for me to adapt to than Albuquerquians, actually- though that's a whole separate post.)

Since I've got some time under my belt and am feeling quite a bit more comfortable here, I thought I would put together my thoughts on how different the work cultures are between Korea and America. Mind you, I work in a weird industry, so this doesn't hold true (AT ALL) for people with other types of jobs (investment bankers, this is not for you).

- Automatic respect:

Koreans use two different types of speech (and writing): casual and formal. (There's actually an uber formal type, as well, but let's disregard that for the sake of this discussion, as it's used only very rarely.) If you've just met someone for the first time? Formal (unless that someone is a child). If someone is older than you and you're not super close? Formal. If someone is the same age as you and you're friends? Casual. If someone is younger than you and also lower on the food chain than you? Casual. If you are quite high on the totem pole, even if you're not the oldest? Casual (the CEO of the company, who isn't the oldest person at work, speaks casually to everyone, as far as I can tell- he speaks to me in English, so we're both casual). I drop my speech every now and again to the kiddies (people in their early twenties) at work, and they don't even blink an eye, because I'm older (and foreign).

Americans, especially people in LA, have one type of speech: casual. Super casual, on occasion, and very often laced with curse words that are just part of the conversation, not necessarily expressions of anger. This levels out the playing field, I think. Whether you are the PA or the director, everyone speaks to you in the same way. The PA does not call the director by his title. There are titles galore in Korea. And sometimes, one person has more than one title. I had a tough time with this, as some of the supervisors are also directors (or general managers) of the company (감독님 vs. 본부장님). I now know the difference, and use the titles appropriately, but it was a rough month or so when I was getting titles and names mixed up.

To call a supervisor in for a meeting, an American PA would say, "John, please go to the screening room." Something bizarre to me is that, in Korea, when I'm looking a supervisor in the face or talking to him on the phone, I would never, ever say his name. I call him "supervisor (감독님)" and nothing else, as in "Supervisor, please go to the screening room (감독님, 시사실로 가세요)." When I refer to that person in a conversation and he's not around, I call him "John Supervisor (존 감독님)"-- yes, his name plus title. Like Mr. Smith, but more complicated. Imagine if, instead of just "mister," there were a plethora of other titles. That's Korea.

The rules and regulations for all these titles is confusing enough. To add formal and casual speech into the mix is just maddening. I used to just sigh in frustration through July and August because I just wanted to give up and spout off in English. I actually used to do that, but my English-speaking co-worker (two of them, actually) left the company. Those traitors, abandoning me.

The differentiations in speech and titles means that there's a sort of built-in caste system here in Korea (okay, there's no serfs, but you know what I mean!). As I understand it, visual effects (and animation) companies are the most casual, while big conglomerates are just staggering in their structure and strictness. The lowest on the totem pole tend to be the youngest, and the young ones that are high on the totem pole tend to be totally obnoxious. It's such a strange cultural difference that I never even thought about before I started working here, after which I was in work culture shock for about a month.

I feel like it's easier to get to know someone in the States because you're actually seeing their personality on a daily basis if you work together. Sure, they may be sugar-coating themselves and putting on their work veneer, but it's a light coating, like the dusting of powdered sugar on a doughnut. Koreans that work together can't really get to know each other, because there are titles and formal speech working against them. There is a shiny coating of politeness and respectability that is thickly layered over almost all Koreans in the workforce, shellacked into place through years of cultural expectation.

To counteract the formality and the stiffness, Koreans have come up with nights out among co-workers (hweshik, 회식). As I said before, it's a mandatory event that is akin to forcing an impatient four-year-old to sit through an opera. Sure, it's fun at times, but not being given a choice can rankle. I was a little bit pissed just for the principle of it, then realized I was being an idiot and cheered up (and drank up).

There are exceptions to these rules, of course. One of them being ... me. That's right. Though I am Korean, I am also American, and my Korean co-workers regard me with something akin to fear. I am allowed to be (and even expected to be) more facetious, more rambunctious, and more disrespectful that my peers. I suppose that I am mostly happy about that, because it lets me be me. My shellack isn't as thick as that of my equals, so I'm more myself than my co-workers are themselves. Co-workers tell me that my Korean is really good, which they would never tell to one of their Korean co-workers. They ask me questions about America, that great big mystery over the ocean. They ask me how to pronounce words. They generally just treat me a little bit differently. Some of the things that I've been asked or told:

How come your English is so good? (I replied, because I'm American.) Oh. How come your Korean's so good?

You're giving me a complex, your pronunciation is too good.

It's like you're a real American person!

Do you miss American food? Hot dogs, hamburgers?

How come Americans wear their shoes in the house? (I really don't know, and I don't get it.)

Who are you?? (An alien, here to steal your brain.)

- Automatic disrespect:

That's right. There's a flip side to this coin, the dark underbelly of Korean workplaces. If you will harken back to your Asian history, the Korean War was technically between 1950 and 1953. That's not quite sixty years ago. I applaud the ROK for its significant growth from a war-torn third-world country to a very developed, very wired democracy. That growth comes with a price, of course, and part of the price is the legacy of disrespect.

Old Korean people can be horrible. They can be pushy, loud, and terrorizing. There is an acceptance that if you're old, you deserve everything. It's an entitlement issue that is the norm here, and it just baffles me.

In Korea, this disrespect holds true in age and also in gender. This article from the Economist says that South Korean women make only 63% of what their male peers earn. Perhaps that figure has gotten better, but I doubt that it's changed very much. I see this attitude (one could call it discrimination if one were American) on a daily basis, as the youngest women at work are ordered around and spoken casually to and generally just not given the same amount of respect that their male counterparts receive. Okay, sure, women are sort of coddled, more so than they are in the States, but I'd rather have the respect and carry my own laptop bag.

Again, I am an exception to these rules. Though women that are the same age as me are spoken to casually and ordered to do random things that have nothing to do with their actual jobs, those same men speak formally to me and wouldn't dream of asking me to fetch them a coffee (probably because they can tell that I would snap one of their appendages off if they dared). I try to be an advocate for the people that have no voice at work, because they don't even air their grievances. They didn't even tell me that they had such issues until a few weeks ago, when they finally felt close enough to me to unload. So since they can't (or won't), I speak up on their behalf when I feel that something is wrong. I have a voice, unlike those wide-eyed newbies.

This means, perversely, that I am the bad cop. I'm always the bad cop in almost every situation, because I lay out ground rules and I actually stick to my guns. Koreans have this laxness about how much work they're willing to deal with, in quantity and quality. If a director asks for ten more shots, Koreans will chirp, "anything you want! No problem!" while I am grousing about receiving overages and adjusting the budget and working out a new schedule.

I think the supervisors regard me as a strange creature because I am not as typically passive-aggressive and people-pleasing as most Koreans (though I am much more people-pleasing than a lot of Americans). But I get away with it all simply because I'm a foreigner.

- Overtime, or lack thereof:

In the States, hours are tracked and scrutinized because overtime adds up to a LOT of money. In Korea, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) receives a salary. They don't deal with any silly overtime.

So, to compare: During "The Green Lantern," I stayed at work past midnight less than ten days throughout the project, which lasted a total of 13 months for me. During the movie that I am currently mired in, I have stayed at work past midnight about ten days in the month of September alone. I work on weekends, I work from home, I get phone calls on my cell, and because I'm in Korea, where everyone picks up their phones no matter where they are, I'm expected to pick up my phone without fail. Well, guess what? I hate talking on the phone, and I will willfully ignore you if I feel like it. I turn off my phone when I get home and I don't turn it on again until I wake up in the morning.

I have nothing against working; in fact, I love working. I don't mind staying late, I don't mind putting in the long hours. What I mind is looking at a project and seeing very clearly that those long hours could have been avoided with better planning.

Because time is literally money in the States, long hours aren't as brutal. Because Koreans use time to fix their lack of a detailed, hardcore schedule, long hours are expected and are the norm. I'm a big fan of pre-planning and executing the plan. I believe that a bad plan can be adjusted as the project trundles along. There is no fixing a non-existent plan. Maybe that's just my logic and my overly dominant left brain, but that's always been my attitude.

- Wink, wink, nudge, nudge:

I mentioned it briefly previously, but the way post-production is dealt with in Korea is very loose. Bids are a page long (if that) and basically just say "the work that you want us to do will cost X amount of money." American bids (at least for the bigger companies) are complex documents that include everything and anything that is relevant, broken down into the smallest denomination possible. They may even be overly detailed, but they are more accurate because a lot of thought and effort needs to be put into them in order to complete the bid.

In my past experience, if something changes, we used to stop working on whatever that asset or shot was until the budget was resolved. Sometimes, if the cost was negligible enough, we just did the work (rarely). If the change was substantial and would take more than a couple man days, an overage is calculated by re-bidding the asset or shot and charging the studio.

I miss those days.

In Korea, it's all about freebies. The director wants to add a herd of goats instead of the one goat that we bid for? Sure! The director wants to add FX water splashes to an entire scene that used to just be wire removals? Why not! The list just keeps on going. Koreans don't think it's weird to just do all this extra work, they think it's normal. It floored me the first time I realized that this was happening- it still shocks me, when I hear about a movie that's taken on extra work. Why, people, why?? Don't work for free, even if it's for your hero or your role model. Or especially if it's for a family member. Just don't do it. It never ends well.

- Personal property:

There are some instances of personal property issues in the States, sure. People write their names on their lunches in the company refrigerators. A few people label all their office supplies (I never did that- I mean, who's going to steal my stapler??). People are protective of their stuff, which I always thought was normal.

Today, I caught myself going to my co-worker's desk and snagging a snack. Yesterday, I went to a co-worker's desk to use a highlighter. I no longer think about it- I just go and take or use someone else's stuff. I never did that in the States unless it was someone that I knew really well.

Koreans are very fast to share (apparently, Americans don't learn as much about sharing in kindergarten as I thought). People share food, drink, office supplies, cars, everything. They will bring things to share, be it coffees or snacks or hand-held fans. I admit that there is a certain closeness that comes about because of all the sharing. Maybe sharing really is caring... Koreans are also quick to touch one another in a platonic way, though slow to touch in an intimate way. Even men are very touchy-feely, and it's not weird to see a guy sitting on another guy's lap. They're just being Korean.

I think the difference can be described as a pack mentality versus a loner mentality. Koreans don't like being alone, and are constantly communicating with or meeting with other people. I've been asked many, many times whether I'm okay living on my own (of course I am). If I'm walking out during lunchtime to run an errand by myself, people will stop me and make sure I'm not going to eat by myself. Americans are quick to make friends, but don't have as much of a problem being alone. Alone time is a good thing, at least on occasion. I think, though, that "alone time" can turn into "me time," which shows a sort of self-centered side to Americans (or LA people, maybe). Americans look out for themselves and protect number one, a concept that isn't part of the average Korean's mindset.

I see the pros and cons for both attitudes, and definitely think that going to either extreme is not healthy. That balance is hard to figure out, though I think that my time in Korea is helping me to see that there really is a balance to strike.

Being in Korea and discovering the other half of my cultural identity is an eye-opening experience which has made me realize why I never felt American enough back home. Of course, I don't feel Korean enough here, but again- I have a balance to find, and am trying to find it. I also have to figure out my future (or at least the year 2012) and am not really motivated to do so. Today, I just want to give my brain a rest. Tomorrow, I'll start picking through my options to see where I land.

I've been writing this post on and off all day long, and it's now past 10:30 at night. I'm at work, alternating between busyness and idleness, and am ready to go home for some sleep. I refuse to proofread this, I'm tired and rebellious.

The weather has gotten cold this week, as cold as winter in LA. I'm told by my co-workers that this weather is cool and autumnal, though I'm wearing a wool cardigan and shivering. It actually does feel like a distinctly different season, more so than it did in Albuquerque, my only previous experience with real seasons. I just want the leaves to change colors already!

I still have some work to do, so I'm going to get to it and then, hopefully, leave work before midnight. I have a feeling that this post will have a sequel, because I have the nagging sensation that I left some stuff out, but my mind is too bleary to think of it now. Yawn.

Sickly

2011-09-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've had a persistent cold that's plagued me since China. I'm going to blame the air pollution (awful), the fact that people smoked indoors everywhere we went (I needed to go outside and breathe sometimes, because the smog was slightly less irritating than the indoor cigarette smoke), and the fact that I was on two planes in three days (planes are just self-contained germ factories, recycling all that stale air continuously).

I gave up the fight on Friday, because the two other people that I went to China with were also rather ill and we were all sniffly and coughy, and went to the pharmacy. Pharmacies in Korea are not like pharmacies in the States. I mentioned this from my trip to Korea last year (when I caught a really crazy cold), but one must always speak to the pharmacist when one enters a pharmacy. There aren't boxes of medicine (over-the-counter meds) just lying about.

I went into the pharmacy on Friday night after work, a little woozy from the cold. My wooziness meant that I was a little slow (slower than usual), and the pharmacist looked at me pityingly when I totally couldn't understand the Korean word for "symptoms" (which I still can't remember now). I explained that I was a foreigner, and I don't know hard words, and he switched to very proficient English.

Once he heard my symptoms (sore throat, coughing, feeling a bit feverish) he gave me two packages of pills and two pouches of herbal medicine (that blasted herbal medicine seems to be a permanent part of my life!), told me to take two pills from each package (four pills a dose is a LOT) and one pouch per four pills every four hours on Friday (hence only two pouches of herbal medicine, as I could only take two doses on Friday before the day was over), then take four pills three times a day on Saturday, which would deplete all the pills that I bought.

Whew, that was a lot of pills. They did make me feel better, but they wiped me out. I dozed all day on Saturday and was useless on Sunday. I'm mostly recovered now, with a minor case of sniffles and a bit of a headache (though that could be attributed to work).

I came into work on Monday morning to see the above. This isn't my desk, but I would've laughed if someone had stuck little sticky tabs all over my monitors. I just think it's funny that no matter where you work, office pranks remain largely the same.

My favorite office prank, by the way, is licking the back of gummy bears and sticking them on monitors. They really stick! And it's super gross to get all the gummies off, because they leave a sugary residue.

Sorry about the lame posting this week, but between work (and some in-fighting at work) and the cold, I've been treading water just to stay afloat.

Daegu (대구)

2011-09-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

Lots of photos ahead!

I traipsed off to Daegu (대구), a few hours south of Seoul, to visit William a couple weekends ago. He had a whole itinerary, and I feel like I saw a lot of Daegu- we went to lots of places, ate A LOT, saw a giant Buddha, and even found time for a noraebang (karaoke). So here are a bunch of photos:

William and Dean, though I was distracted by the large platter of fish that had arrived at our table just a few seconds before I look this picture. I think this is the only picture I took of William, and now that I look at it, I have no pictures of the two of us together!

I mean seriously, though, who can blame me for forgetting to take pictures of people? There were fishies to eat- there was always something to eat! This was at 어물전, a fish restaurant across the street from a funny motel. The motel had shower curtains (okay, they weren't shower curtains) blocking their driveway, so that people who were cheating on their spouses wouldn't get caught by parking their cars in plain view.

Daegu Stadium, where we went after lunch to have coffee and walk around. The mascot for the world championships is this colorful sheepdog-looking cartoon character, who was quite cute. That huge cutout of the athlete was the first one we saw, but not the last- they were all over the place, and very clever. One of the cutouts was a woman pole-vaulting, the pole being a lamppost. Another cutout was of a hurdler, a fence being the hurdle. All the cutouts were larger than life and double-sided, and added a lot of interest around the city.

From the stadium, we walked to the Daegu Art Museum to see some art. We made the mistake of deciding to walk because the day was overcast and breezy and we were high from all the fish we ate at lunch. It was a long walk, y'all. The museum was a really nice space, but the "Made in Daegu" exhibit on the second floor was not good. The contemporary art exhibit on the first floor was nice. No cameras or taking of pictures allowed, which is a shame (harrumph).

A quick stop at a pet shop for William's puppies, where I met Rufus. Yes, I've named this adorable little sleepyhead. His name is Rufus and he really wants to live with me. I miss my crazy cat!

This is Rufus's friend and neighbor, who was a little spastic. He's not striped, that's the reflection of my top. I really wanted to play with the kittens, but then I would never have left the pet shop, and we wouldn't have made it to the noraebang to sing lots of cheesy songs.

I have never seen this before, but found it hilarious. Really? Targeting cat food to their owners? Don't all cat owners have cat lovers' souls? This is just a bizarre marketing tactic.

I didn't take photos, but we went to a noraebang (it was called Good Noraebang!), then we went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse (we have a joke about Outback), then parted ways in downtown Daegu. I can't speak for William, but I was exhausted, as I hadn't really slept the night before and we did do a lot, all over town.

The next day was a trip to Donghwasa (Donghwa Temple), after a very arduous bus ride to Palgongsan (Palgong Mountain). It was less arduous for me- I had a seat, and only had to contend with people that were trying to sit on my lap (literally). William was standing the whole time, because he's chivalrous like that, and people were packed into the bus like sardines. The bus driver should have stopped letting people on the bus, but kept on letting them come in. It was seriously incredible, and probably dangerous. We survived and made it to the mountain, mostly intact- our kimbap (gimbap, 김밥) may have gotten a little squished.

Lanterns were strung up all over the place for Buddha's birthday. It says a lot that the lanterns are all still up in September when Buddha's birthday was on May 10 this year. Actually, it mostly says that the lanterns are made of vinyl and plastic and strung with electrical lights, rather than the old-school paper lanterns and candles. I was a little saddened to see the plastic, but I was glad to see the cheerful lanterns, so I guess that's that.

I didn't take a picture of the gourds- there were little gourd halves hung with twine to use for obtaining water from this fountain. We assumed that people were supposed to drink the water, but I have a fear of germs. We washed our hands using the gourds. That may have been disrespectful, but we had walked uphill to get to the temple and our hands needed the washing.

Those three round things at the base of the stairs are phoenix eggs. That's all I know, the sign next to them was in Korean and Chinese. I read some of the Korean, William read some of the Chinese, then we shrugged and walked up the stairs to go into the main square.

We went on a Sunday, and there were tons of worshipers around. I didn't want to take too many pictures, because my camera makes a really audible clicking noise, so I restricted myself to just a few shots. This temple was a little scary, because there are no railings around the platform. No ledge, no nothing.

Probably my favorite picture. This little gate led to a group of small buildings, including a temple. I made friends with a temple cat and gave him water in the little courtyard. Those temple cats, they're friendly and whiny, with their meowing and pacing. I couldn't get a good photo of the kitty in this area, unfortunately.

This was the temple inside the little courtyard, where I took a couple snaps because there were only two people inside. I still felt like I was intruding, so I beat a hasty retreat. I'm not Buddhist, but Korean culture has a lot of roots in Buddhism, and I respect that. I don't understand people who vehemently oppose any religion other than their own.

This little temple cat wouldn't stop meowing. He was very vocal, but refused to come closer. I've noticed that cats in Korea are smaller than cats in the States- and I'm not just talking about overfed house-pets. We saw three cats, all of them rather small and not fearful of people. One cat was running up the very edge of a set of stone steps, and I imagined that the cats loved the monks because the monks feed them. I hope the monks feed them.

Detail on one of the walls of one of the temples. I'm sure the images mean something, but I don't really know what they mean. I liked these temples because they weren't pristine and re-painted, like some of the places in Korea. I mean, the cleanly restored palaces and temples have a charm of their own, but the worn, faded places feel warmer, homier.

These huge, scary statues were in various buildings. I only took this one picture, because they were alarming and I didn't really feel the need to keep images of them. I took a photo of this one because he's got a baby dragon (and looks to be killing it). I like dragons!

There were two of these tunnels (maybe there were more, but we only saw two). One of the tunnels was the tunnel of hope. I don't think this was the hope tunnel- we couldn't figure out what the word was, and William said it was probably despair, in keeping with the yin-yang of Buddhism. I really doubt it's a tunnel of despair- probably something like contentment or inner peace or something.

There was a stream that ran down the mountain, visible from most areas around the temple. It reminded me a little of Hawaii, with the abundant green vegetation, but rather than tropical leaves, Korea is full of trees. I think my favorite part of Korea is the abundance of trees. We saw this part of the stream as we walked from the temples to the giant Buddha statue.

And here's the giant Buddha. He looks tiny in this picture, but it's just a weird trompe l'oeil- he's actually quite far behind the stone pagoda (are those pagodas? I don't know my Buddhist architecture). There were quite a few people praying, bowing before the Buddha, and milling about.

This fountain or faucet is off to the right side of the picture above. I'm not sure what's up with the water at this temple, but I think that it's supposed to be mountain water, which Koreans believe is good for the body (and soul, perhaps).

In front of the fountain. I don't know what the money is for. It was raining intermittently while we were up on the mountain, which wasn't too bad (just a sprinkle here and there, really), but was not good for taking pictures.

There were small figurines and little stacks of stones on the stone walls on either side of the fountain. Koreans stack stones all over stone-based mountains. This may not be a solely Korean thing, but my only experience with these stacks of stones is with Koreans. These are tiny examples; there are huge and elaborate ones at Maisan, somewhere I haven't been since I was in elementary school. I really need to go back while I'm in Korea.

Another look at the little stone stacks. Maybe they're supposed to lend some kind of Zen peace to the builder? I should try it out sometime, see if it brings me some inner peace.

This is the (rather large) temple in the same plaza as the Buddha. That large stone structure on the right side is one of the stone pagodas (visible in the first photo of the pagoda and the Buddha, where the Buddha looks small), which looks enormous in this picture- they actually were quite large.

The Buddha. There was a shiny marble floor just in front of the Buddha, where people prayed and bowed. They took their shoes off behind stepping onto the marble, so I assume it's a sacred place. That man in the white shirt was busy chasing off a sacrilegious pigeon that had dared to step on the marble.

A good look at the temple facing the Buddha. There were monks in that enclosure upstairs, holding a service (prayer? ceremony? I really am ignorant about Buddhism). The overcast day really flattened out all my pictures, which is too bad, because the surroundings and the temples were really beautiful.

The second floor of the temple. More lanterns! I wish the lighting had been better, because there were incredible details on the temple that I would have liked to photograph. Oh, well- there are lots of temples and lots of sights in Korea that are left to visit.

A look back at the pagoda. That stone wall on the lower right side is where all the small figurines and stacks of stones are. I will admit that the drizzly weather did photograph nicely as misty, foggy skies.

This is looking into the temple and out the window to the other stone pagoda (the twin to the one in the previous photo). I was trying to get a good shot of the interior of the temple, to no avail. There were rows of neatly lined-up golden Buddhas inside, mirrored by the lanterns hanging in regimented rows on the ceiling.

Walking down to the stream so we could eat our kimbap (and I could get attacked by a giant green bug). I just love trees! I love the way they look, the way they smell, and I cannot wait for my first real autumn. This is the first time I've lived in an area with tons of trees that will change color in the fall (well, not counting my first three years of life).

I don't remember where, exactly, I took this picture, because it looks unfamiliar to me. My camera tells me that I took it at the time that I was on Palgongsan, so I believe it. This is most likely somewhere near our picnic area- we went down to the stream and sat on a big rock to eat kimbap, have some water, and breathe in that crisp mountain air.

I love these types of areas, with leaves everywhere. I took a billion photos at Jeongbalsan (the mountain next door to my house), and most of them are of leaves, trees, or plants. It really was super green, that sort of brightening, cheering green. I'm not a nature girl- I love the convenience and bustle of cities too much- but I love nature occasionally, and this type of nature is probably my favorite.

Daegu isn't a particular novel city. It's like the other big cities in Korea, with a downtown, mountains all around, some museums, some sports arenas, and the like. Daegu was fun for me because William planned my visit, took me to see all the places that I may not have found on my own, and served as an excellent tour guide.

If I had gone to Daegu by myself, I probably would have ended up in downtown the whole time, since that's where my hotel was. There's a reason people go to foreign countries to visit their friends- it's better and more fun with a local.

Thanks for the awesome weekend, William! The weather wasn't on our side, but we still managed to have a good time.

(And no matter what he tells you, the man is a great singer.)

Happy Birthday, Little Sister!

2011-09-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Today (it's finally the same day in Korea and America, for the next few hours!) is my little sister's birthday. Welcome to the late twenties, the water's fine!

The flower was photographed on my iPhone in Beijing. My sister's favorite color as a child was purple, and while this flower is more fuchsia than a real purple, it's still in the purple family. Also, the brighter green leaves look like perilla leaves, sometimes called shiso (깻잎, pronounced something like ggaetnip, or ggaet-neep). My sister loves ggaetnip (I do not).

I love you, sister of mine.

Free-ish Speech

2011-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this post, which will probably bloat into an uncontrollably long essay, by saying this, right off the bat:

I am not an English teacher in Korea.

This means a few different things, starting with the most obvious: I do not have the same experience or the same types of experiences as most of the expat blogs about living in Korea. I am certainly not saying that my experience is better or worse, it's just different.

My situation gets a little weirder when one takes into consideration my Korean heritage. This is an important point because it means that when other Koreans look at me, they see a Korean. They automatically assume that I am Korean, that I have the same cultural and social references. This is, of course, not true- I may be racially Korean, but I am culturally more American than Korean, which I think is fairly obvious from my blog. Yes, I have a rather strong Korean identity, but most of my culture is from my childhood and young adulthood, which were spent in California.

There are times when I get very frustrated here in Korea, and wish that I were just Korean. Why did my parents have to immigrate? Why couldn't they have taught me Korean, so that I'm completely proficient? Why am I caught between two cultures that are so different? I do not feel that way very often; I am usually very happy with my life, including how, where, and when I grew up.

Koreans tend to be rather xenophobic and prejudiced, in my experience. While expats that aren't ethnically Korean may think that I'm lucky, because I'm automatically accepted by Koreans, I feel that the opposite is true. Non-Korean expats have the benefit of their appearance, an immediately apparent trait, to explain away any awkwardness with the language or culture. I do not have that benefit at all, and so feel like I am disappointing Koreans whenever I don't understand something that they say to me or I don't get some joke that has its roots in a cultural reference that I don't get. Koreans expect me to speak Korean like a Korean, with all the colloquial terms and slang perfected. They anticipate it, actually, and get flummoxed when I ask them to explain something to me, something that someone my age would obviously know if they had grown up in Korea.

Well, I have news, Koreans- I didn't grow up in Korea. I'm sorry that I look so Korean that I am tricking you into thinking that I'm like every other Korean you meet, but I'm Korean-American. I know that I have practically no American accent when I speak in Korean, and I'm sorry about that, too- my parents raised me in Korean, so my casual, everyday Korean is very good. I know it would be easier for you to accept that I'm American if I had an obvious American accent, but I can't very well go about faking an American accent. I know it would also be easier for you if I had a Korean accent when I speak in English, but I can't fake that, either. So Koreans, I'm sorry for being both Korean and American and just confusing you.

I'm confused, too, though, so maybe we can all get through this together.

It's been over three months since I've started working at a Korean company. It's taken probably two and a half months for people to adjust to me and vice versa. While it didn't seem all that bad when I first got here, I think back to July and wonder, how did I work like that? It was awkward. It was so awkward that it was totes awks.

One of my co-workers told me (while we were in China, actually) that my Korean's gotten better. I was all, really? I don't notice a difference at all. He was very emphatic- my Korean's gotten better, and he can tell that I've gotten more comfortable. That much is true, for sure- I don't have to think as hard during a Korean conversation, because using Korean has gotten much more natural. My gut reactions are still in English; if something bad happens, I will still say "crap" rather than "헐", I will always say "what?" before I say "뭐?" (Though I love the word 헐, pronounced something like "hull," and used very similarly to "crap" or "argh". I just find the word itself to be funny, but I don't know why- it just hits my funny bone.)

Still, though, my Korean is better. How could it not get better, when I have to use Korean every single blessed day? I mean, I would have to actively be avoiding Korean in order to not improve. Non-Korean expats learn Korean, too, albeit probably at a slower pace. English teachers in Korea are hired to teach English, not to speak in Korean. I speak predominantly in Korean at work, so my Korean's improving, a tiny bit each day. I do appreciate that, because I always wanted to be able to speak Korean completely fluently.

If you were to talk to the Korean people that I know in the States, they would most likely tell you that I am fluent in Korean. This is true to a point, as I have no problems in casual settings or in restaurants or bars. The Korean used at work, at Immigrations, at the airport, at banks? That is hard Korean, more formal and proper than any Korean that I encountered in the States (other than at the consulate, where I almost died due to frustration). That is the Korean that I do not know, the reason that I am incapable of and have no desire to watch the news in Korea. That is the Korean that I want to learn, and the Korean at which I am getting slightly better.

I just realized that I've been rambling on and on with the introduction to this post (yes, that was my introduction- don't judge me, I've been feeling this way all summer long and am just now venting!), which is really supposed to be about Korean cyber bullies and the concept of free speech in Korea. Which I will get into now, because it's my blog and I can:

The issue of Korean cyber bullies came to my attention via the Korea Herald, an article titled "Praise is meaningless if not allowed to criticize" by Rob Ouwehand, who is better known online as Roboseyo. I feel, perhaps immodestly, that I have a slightly different position on this issue (and most issues regarding expats in Korea) than other expat bloggers who have posted about this issue, mostly due to my ethnicity.

Most of the better known expat bloggers in Korea are not Korean. I feel that the majority of the blogs that I've seen are by white writers, and the majority of those white writers are male. I have nothing against white men- I've dated several- and I generally agree with their opinions. I think my race and gender just slightly skew my viewpoint so that it's a bit different from those dudes, who are having a very different Korean experience from mine.

Rob wrote about expat bloggers who write negative things about Korea while they're living in Korea. From the Korea Herald article:

This January, an English teacher in Korea had a conversation with a few other expats. All the complaining she heard made her decide to vent her negativity on a blog, so that she didn’t have to be negative around her friends.

Also a regular blog reader, she took the repeated and repetitive theme of complaining about Korea, and exaggerated it to ridiculous degrees, partly to vent, and partly in hopes that the exaggeration would prompt some of the whiners to shake their heads and say,“Wait a minute ... Korea’s not as bad as all that.” She named the blog Lousy Korea, and while she expected some defensiveness from people who missed her point, she did not expect what happened.

The teacher, whom we'll call L.K. to protect her privacy, last week took her blog down completely. Threats were being made not only to L.K., but to other bloggers who were linked on her blog, and even the families of those bloggers. Lousy Korea is not the only blog that has been targeted by death threats, nor the only expat: Korean Rum Diary is another blogger who received a death threat with detailed descriptions of how he would be murdered, and included his real name and address.

Popular blogger Brian in Jeollanam-do was recently reported to immigration, most likely because of his critical opinions, and the president of the Association for Teachers of English in Korea also had his life threatened. Some of these people were attempting to discuss Korean social issues honestly. Others took negative approaches. However, it is shocking that there are people who believe that when somebody writes something they dislike, an appropriate response is to threaten that person’s job, life, friends or family.

Honestly, when I first read this article, my hackles rose.Well, who are these people, anyway, to be all writin' bad things about my motherland? I am being completely frank, that was my initial reaction. Initial reactions cannot be faked or controlled, after all. (Yes, I get all Southern when my hackles rise.)

Then, my second thought: What is wrong with people? Why are they making death threats?! Because ultimately, I believe people are entitled to their opinions. They can think negative things about Korea, because it's hard to be in a new culture and feel completely happy about it. I'm Korean, and I'm not having a totally bump-free time in Korea. How could someone who isn't Korea, who doesn't know Korea, have an easy go of it?

So what’s with these negative blogs, anyway? They’re misunderstood: A lot of the people who complain online save all their negativity for the Internet, so that they can be pleasant and polite during the day to their friends and coworkers. These people are not publishing their articles in famous magazines or newspapers -- they often aren’t writing for an audience at all: They’re participating in a group therapy session, dealing with culture shock by talking to others who also feel culture shock. Posting their thoughts where anybody can find them might not be the wisest choice, but such people deserve pity more than hostility.

Meanwhile, in the same way that hyper-negative bloggers leave a bad impression of expats in Korea, the extreme reactions from netizens, who really believe they are protecting Korea with their hateful behavior, creates the impression that Korean society can’t stand criticism. This tiny, angry minority of hostile people can be very noisy, and they’ve chosen different targets at different times: ask Park Jae-beom, Vera Hohleiter (the “Loser” girl from Misuda), Dog Poop Girl or Jim Hewish. These people do not realize that rather than protect Korea’s reputation, their behavior actually damages it by creating a false image of a country full of thin-skinned, reactionary and hostile netizens.

I was torn about this, and still am: if one writes negative things on the internet, someplace where anyone can see, then one should be prepared for the repercussions. I don't particularly pity people that do such things, because if they didn't want to rile people up, then they should lock their blogs or block certain users. For example, I still have no pity for Alexandra Wallace, because she did a stupid thing. Do I feel that the consequences were severe? Yes, I do. But the consequences of our actions can never be accurately predicted, particularly when our actions are public. I always write my blog with the assumption that reactions, if there are any, will be stronger than I would assume that they will be. Isn't that the reasonable thing to do? Are people just lacking common sense, that this doesn't occur to them?

I also think that Rob is unintentionally pointing out something that is actually mostly true- Koreans can't stand criticism. Saving face is an art form in Korea, particularly in the workplace.

William and I were chatting in a cab while I was in Daegu when the conversation meandered into Korean suicides, and how commonplace suicide seems to be. We both agreed that suicide is regarded to be a viable option to Koreans, at least more so than to Americans. Facing shame and ruin? Suicide. Teenaged and pregnant? Suicide. Cheated on your spouse and got caught? Suicide. Americans would rather be publicly humiliated than kill themselves, which is so much more reasonable, in my opinion. What's a little public shame when compared to your entire life?

In order to save face, Koreans will go to insane extremes (suicide, in my opinion, is insane in this day and age). Because of that cultural trait, Koreans are terrible with criticism, constructive or deconstructive (and everything in between). I have first-hand experience with this, as I've been quite critical in the workplace while in Korea. I get away with the amount of criticism that I spew simply because I'm American.

You see why I'm confused? First, I'm treated as though I should be totally Korean. Then, when I do something un-Korean (criticize, for instance), I'm treated as though I'm American. Oh, it's okay for her to do that because she's AMERICAN. There is an implied sneering of the lip when I'm called American in certain situations.

During Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorships, people were afraid to say anything different, difficult, or provocative, because people were regularly jailed for criticizing the regime. Even today, the situation is similar in North Korea. It is really sad that a few angry and aggressive commenters can create a culture of fear online, so that, once again, people are afraid to express their opinions. It is shameful that even though many Koreans alive today can still remember those dictatorships, some people are celebrating Korea’s new democratic freedoms by using the same fear and intimidation tactics Korea’s old dictators did, to stifle opinions they dislike.

Free speech is the lifeblood of a truly free society, and while free speech does not mean speech without consequences, there are acceptable responses to speech, like written responses, angry comments, criticisms and negative feedback, and there are unacceptable responses, like threats to someone’s privacy, job, safety, friends or even family. It doesn’t matter if someone’s opinion or method of expression is unpopular or even offensive: If their free speech is not also protected, nobody is really free to express themselves.

These days, Korea seems to be especially concerned with how it is perceived by countries around the world. Branding is the buzzword in food, business and tourism promotion. Positive mentions of Korea are repeated, but criticisms are met with outcry.

On the blogs, it’s the same: Everybody congratulates the happy bloggers for truly understanding Korea; however, if bloggers do not feel free to say what they really think, if they are writing positive things because they fear violence when they criticize, then their positive comments are as empty as the songs of North Korean school children praising their leader, for fear of the prison camp.

To comment, e-mail mattlamers@heraldm.com; Rob Ouwehand’s other writings can be found at the blog Roboseyo.blogspot.com; the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of The Korea Herald – Ed.

By Rob Ouwehand

It's an interesting, thought-provoking article that I really appreciated, because it points out, very clearly, the observations of an expat that's been in Korea, living among Koreans, for several years (since 2003). He's also married to a Korean woman, I believe (and they're expecting in October, congratulations!), which adds another element to his perspective.

I honestly do not feel that the situation is quite as dire as the article makes it out to be, but perhaps it's because I've never gotten a death threat because of my blog (that's not an invitation to start threatening me). I also believe that unless something changes drastically, I won't necessarily be on the bad side of those few angry Korean netizens, because I don't hate Korea.

Perhaps non-Koreans think that my blog only says positive things about Korea, that I'm biased because I'm Korean. This may be true, to a certain extent. It's my blog, and I have no reason to be impartial. However, I am not such a nationalist that I can just blindly adore everything about the land of my birth. I just choose to focus on the things that I like, rather than nitpick about the things that I dislike.

Another thing that I've realized is that yes, the free speech rights of bloggers should be protected. But doesn't that also mean that the free speech of commenters should be protected, as well? Free speech doesn't mean smart speech. It just mean free, and whether that speech is ignorant, savvy, sarcastic, stupid, or reasonable is up to the person that is speaking (typing).

I wish everyone could just get along already, but that's never going to happen. I'm not passionate enough to go around and lecture people, but I am just opinionated enough to take the time and write on my blog.

Everyone's entitled to their own thoughts. These are mine.

Skewers in China

2011-09-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

The whirlwind dash to China is over, and I am safely back in Korea. (Is it weird that I almost said "I am safely back home"? Hmm...)

Though I haven't had a post about Daegu yet, I'm going to start with China, because the photos and videos were taken on my iPhone, which means I don't need to go through tons of photos and edit.

We got to China on Tuesday evening after a pleasant enough flight. I love Korean Air, I feel like the airline really is trying to make air travel an easier experience. Checking in, security, all that was a breeze, without much of a wait- although that's less about the airline and more about the airport. Incheon Airport is WORLDS better than LAX in terms of convenience and efficiency. Plus, Incheon has tons of shopping, restaurants, coffee shops, and is so much cleaner.

My first impression of Beijing was that it was a sort of hybrid of Seoul and LA. Lots of tall buildings, like Seoul, and lots of smog, cars, and concrete, like LA. (Yes, Seoul has concrete, but there are also tons of trees that sort of make it seem less concrete-y than LA.)

We worked pretty much constantly, so there wasn't any time for sightseeing or exploring (not that I wanted to). We ate either at the restaurant next to our hotel or at the studio, where they had a kitchen and a cook who prepared lunch and dinner. The one time we left the studio for fun was on Wednesday night, our second (and last) night in China.

The four of us from my workplace and two of the Koreans that work in the studio in China (one is Korean-Chinese, the other is a Korean transplant) went to have lamb skewers. That's how it was explained to me- 양꼬치 (양 = lamb, 꼬치 = skewers). We walked from our hotel to the restaurant, about a fifteen minute trek through the concrete jungle.

The restaurant had a unique way of ordering- there is a video touchscreen at every table, where you place your order. You order by the skewer (I think we started with 20 lamb skewers) and keep ordering as you wish. We had lamb first, with beer (I drank a teensy amount of beer to appease my fellow Koreans), then went into pork skewers, then back to lamb.

I am not normally a big fan of lamb, but it was really delicious in this skewered form. There was a little dish of spices for each person, things that ranged from red pepper flakes to caraway seeds (I think). We ordered very Korean side dishes (like doragi, 도라지, which is apparently balloonflower) to go with our skewers.

This was the kind of beer we drank, which wasn't too bad. I mean, it wasn't too bad for me, because it didn't really taste too much like beer. So real beer drinkers would probably not like this very much. I think we went through ten bottles or so.

A few of us graduated to real booze. I still have no idea what this is called, because they just told me it's 백주 (백 = white, 주 = alcohol). It was strong, 42%, and very sweet, with an almost floral aftertaste. That dish on the right is the one with the spices, by the way. I drank a LOT, because when people offer you a drink, you're not supposed to say no. Especially when you're the youngest one at the table.

Chinese Coke. Love it. Apparently, it translates into something like "happiness in your mouth"? I don't know, I was tipsy by this time and could barely see straight, much less remember what Chinese characters meant.

Water with a singer/actor and my share of the skewers. One of the guys told me that he could eat 60 skewers. I managed eleven, and I was stuffed. That dish in the back with the pale blobs on it? Those are tangsooyuk! They are made with glutinous rice flour in the batter, which gives them a rice-cake-like coating that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Really good, though the sauce was overwhelmingly sweet.

I was fascinated by the skewer-rotating thing, so I took a couple videos. The waiter brings over a platter of skewers, which you can get par-cooked. We preferred to get the par-cooked skewers, as they just needed a minute or two over the coals before they were ready to eat. We got one set of raw skewers and they took ages to cook through, especially since they were pork and really needed to be properly cooked.

A closer look at the twirly device. Once we got the skewers, we would put them into the slots. The handle of the skewer is magnetized, as is the machine, and that's what pulls the skewers along so that they turn over the coals. The more you drink, the more entrancing this machine gets.

It was the only fun we had on the trip, and since we had all been tired before we even went to China, we let loose, drank too much, and didn't get back to the hotel until 3:00 a.m. (a few of the guys stayed out even later and got back at 5:00).

We had a meeting with the director of the movie the next morning, and were quite bleary-eyed and probably exuding the scent of booze from every pore. Sometimes, even if it means less sleep, it's necessary to go all-out and have a good time.

I got home around 9:00 last night and tried to go to sleep, but couldn't. I've still got quite a big sleep deficit to overcome, so I have a feeling that this weekend will be all about catching up on sleep and doing laundry.

The weather in Korea is getting very cool, to the point that I've broken out scarves and the one cardigan that I brought with me. This weekend may also involve sending summer clothes back home and buying some autumn / winter clothing.

My future is very unclear at the moment, as I have an offer from the States that I am debating about, as well as continued discussions with the company in Korea. I'm not sure what the best plan for me would be- stay in Korea? go back home?- and which would be most advantageous to my career. I'm mulling. I have a feeling I need to mull faster.

Happy Birthday, 아빠!

2011-09-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (in Korea, today in the States) was my father's birthday. I was in Daegu, getting my wits scared out of me by a large green bug (praying mantis?) and my parents are currently on vacation in Canada. We are an international family, including my jetsetting sister.

I miss my family. I can't wait to see them again.

Preparing to go to China, so it's a zoo around here. Better blogging (and pictures from Daegu) once I'm back and rested up. I just wanted to wish Dad a joyous birthday before the 18th is over in North America!

(That photo above is from the subway last night, a wee dog with dyed fur. We saw bottles of pet fur dye in Daegu and were appalled. Figures that I would see an example of it the next day! I thought my dad would laugh at it.)

Hectic Weekend

2011-09-15T13:25:00.001-07:00

It's about 5:20 a.m. and I just got home. Whew.

Tomorrow (er, today) is a mad dash at work and then a sprint via KTX to Daegu, followed by a late night at work on Sunday (I get back from Daegu on Sunday evening), then a flight to China for a few meetings, one night spent in Beijing, then a flight back to Korea on Wednesday night, probably landing just after midnight on Thursday.

All this to say, blogging will be crappy. Or maybe it won't, but I doubt that.

I've already been told that I probably won't have full access to my GMail account while I'm in China, which is ridiculous and depressing all at the same time.

Now if only I could fall asleep...

Korean Vanity

2011-09-15T05:09:00.000-07:00

Or, the post wherein I outline how much time I waste for vanity's sake.

Koreans are, generally, very concerned with appearance, especially the ladies. Most women that I see have on make-up, have styled their hair, and are wearing outfits, rather than just clothes.

I am probably one of the least put-together women in my office, as I don't wear much jewelry (I really only wear earrings, and only when I remember to put them on), I don't switch out my purse very frequently (there's a girl in my office that has a different purse every single day, depending on what her outfit is), I don't blow out my hair, and I don't wear colored makeup. By "colored makeup," I mean eyeshadow or lipstick. On a daily basis, I have on base makeup (so my skin looks nice), eyeliner, and eyebrow pencil. I sometimes remember to put on blusher. I never wear lipstick, and I only put on eyeshadow twice or three times a year (you know, for all those times I go clubbing).

In LA, I was considered rather preppy and conservative, as far as my appearance goes. I wear heels and sandals, and my outfits are general some sort of sweater and either jeans or trousers. I don't wear t-shirts to work. I sometimes wear blouses, and every once in a blue moon, I'll wear sweats (yoga pants) with a hoodie (generally if I have to work on weekends). While my daily wardrobe was a little formal for the LA workplace, it's pretty much casual here in the Korean workplace.

There are women in my office that wear prom dresses to work. One girl had on a bridesmaid's dress one day, I swear. It was peach organza with fluffy sleeves and a full cocktail-length skirt. Who looks at that kind of dress in a store and thinks that she'll wear it to work?? Not me, that's for sure.

Most of the women at work wear makeup, have their nails done, and have some sort of processed hair (perms and dyes). They wear jewelry, carry girly bags, and will sacrifice comfort in order to wear tottering heels. Most women also have great skin, something I envy.

As I've watched TV, talked to co-workers, and just soaked in the vibe here, I've realized that good skin is earned. I always thought it was genetics, and while my mother has nice skin, I just figured that I was never going to have clear, even skin. I have sensitive combination skin, which is annoying to deal with, and I get a blemish here and there every couple weeks. Not only do I get those blemishes, but I have rather long-lasting scars, even when I don't pick at my spots. I always just resigned myself to cleansing very thoroughly, exfoliating every few days, and applying concealer when necessary. What else can one do, when one is fast approaching 30 with no sign of improvement in one's skin?

Turns out, one spends money. Korean women use time and money to get their skin to be better than it really is, and I was rather taken aback by the sheer amount of products and propaganda that bombards me from all angles.

Advertising is pervasive, especially in such a wired country, to the point that I have a hard time remembering that when I was back home, I wasn't too perturbed about my skin's condition. Here in Korea, there are commercials, billboards, and constant reminders that YOUR SKIN IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. A couple examples:

Lim Su-Jeong (임수정), an actress and spokeswoman for SK-II (that's SK2 with Roman numerals), one of the pricier skincare lines. It's made in Japan, and Cate Blanchett is the international spokeswoman. (Cate Blanchett has ridiculously beautiful skin.) It's available for purchase in the U.S. at Bloomingdale's, here.

Song Hye-Gyo (송혜교) is also an actress and the spokeswoman for Laneige, a Korean skincare brand (under the Amore-Pacific umbrella, which contains a ton of cosmetic brands).

Korean ads focus on pale, luminous skin, and try to make it appear that their spokespeople aren't wearing any make-up at all. This somehow really gets to me (I must be part of the target audience) and makes me crave that kind of clear, glowing complexion.

I don't know if it's subliminal or just really clever marketing, but I've been all about skincare lately. I started off quite well, with good (cheap) intentions, at road shops (lower end cosmetic brands that have stand-alone shops all over the place) like the Face Shop, Skinfood, Innisfree, Missha, and TonyMoly. I still go to road shops to stock up on face masks and foam cleansers, and one of Innisfree's scrubs has completely won me over (the Jeju Volcanic Pore Scrub Foam, which is awesome and has replaced my St. Ives Apricot Scrub, which has been my exfoliating scrub for years and years).

However, I realized that I needed a new moisturizer, because my Shiseido Brightening Moisturizing Gel was almost out. Besides which, my sensitive skin forces me to switch moisturizers when the weather changes- the gel works really well in the summer, but isn't moisturizing enough when it gets cooler. So I moseyed over to Lotte Department Store, intending to buy the Protective Cream, which is part of the same line as the Moisturizing Gel ... and I got sucked into the wonder of cosmetic counters in Korea.

There are a LOT of brands. They promise to do a lot of things. I browsed, I wandered, I tried different things (the backs of my hands have never been so moisturized before) and then I fell into the steep trap of SK-II.

I've seen commercials and advertisements for this brand, which I had heard about years ago. It was always way, way too expensive for me to even consider purchasing, but my newfound obsession with skincare and a little bit more disposable income meant that I was shelling out quite a lot of money for some moisturizer. (Don't ask how much, I still treat the thing like it's made of pure gold.)

Since I still had toner (also called "skin" in Korea), I just bought the moisturizer and fled before I could spend any more money. Before I ran off, though, the salesgirl gave me samples of SK-II's toner and essence. The essence is quite famous, reputed to be "miracle water," with something called pitera, which apparently decreases wrinkles and increases elasticity.

The essence, while famous, smells odd. Not really bad, but it's weird. The toner's fine, whatever- it's a little more moisturizing than other toners, but it doesn't seem to be anything spectacular. The essence, though, while it might smell weird, really does seem to have an effect. It's runny, just a little bit more viscous than water, and then feels sort of sticky in a couple seconds, once it's on the skin. It absorbs really well and then helps with the moisturizer, which seems to kind of bind to the essence.

I've been using the samples of the toner, essence, and moisturizer (the girl gave me two samples of the same moisturizer that I bought, telling me to use the samples to test the product) for about a week, and my skin is much happier. The samples I got are larger than most samples, they're really more like travel-sized bottles, rather than those tiny sample bottles that are normally distributed. I'll probably be able to use the samples for at least another two weeks, if not longer.

Back in the States, I used to use Qiora (a sister brand to Shiseido) off-and-on, mostly because I saw a difference in my skin, but it wasn't radical enough for me to justify the price on a regular basis. So I would buy the stuff when my skin got out of control (dry and flaking on my cheeks, oily and angry in my T-zone), use it until I ran out, and then let my skin go off on its own. I would use Qiora, Clinique, Elizabeth Arden (which always made me feel like an old lady), Lancome (eye cream), Shiseido, Clean & Clear (I don't discriminate by price), and all kinds of other brands, swapping out products dependent on my mood and my skin's condition.

For the past month, I've been using masks quite regularly and cleansing my face as thoroughly as possible. Adding SK-II to the mix seems to have really made my skin relax and brighten up.

I don't have perfect skin, not at all, but I'm hoping that it continues to get better. I'm also questioning why I care so much (curses to your emphasis on complexion, Korea!); when in Rome....

My new favorite mask, which I just discovered yesterday, is from Innisfree. (I think it's my favorite road shop, their products seem to be the nicest.) It's some sort of brightening wrinkle-reducing formula, but the awesome thing is that the mask covers the entire face and wraps around the neck! It feels a little suffocating at first, and it's rather annoying to unfold and apply, but it's fine once it's on and I like that it includes the neck. It also fit really well- I don't like those masks with really small eye-holes or really big mouth-holes, because I'm picky that way. If I'm going to put on a mask for 15 - 20 minutes, it better cover all the skin on my face.

It's already Thursday, and thank goodness. I'm ready for my weekend escape to Daegu, where I will wreak havoc on my skin by eating unhealthy food and probably drinking. I doubt that I'll be leaving work anytime soon (it's just past 9:00 now), but I'm definitely leaving on time tomorrow, so I can catch my train.

Hooray for short weeks (even if they have long days)!

Bits and Bobs

2011-09-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Random photos from the long weekend (though I really only got Sunday and Monday off, as I came into work on Saturday and Tuesday):

Army dudes on the subway. Yup, the one on the right is sleeping. I see guys in uniform pretty much daily, as all Korean men have a two-year mandatory army stint, and they seem to get a couple days off here and there. Usually, I always see them carrying things that look like gifts- for the girlfriend or parents, I assume.

The sign stuck to the window made me laugh a little bit. It says 약한방차: 약한 냉방을 원하는 고객일 위한 차량입나다, which means that this particular car is a less-air-conditioned car than the typical (freezing) subway car. It was warmer, I admit, probably at least 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

My first Korean manicure. All these pictures were taken with my iPhone, which is overly saturating all the colors. The color at the tips of my nails is less neon, more of a peachy coral. Very pretty color. I quite like the manicure, except the woman filed my nails crooked, which just tortures me. I will end up taking a nail file to all my nails, but I'm resisting the temptation for now (filing the ends of manicured nails tends to encourage chipping, I've found).

It's almost midnight and I'm at work. Hopefully, it's only crazy busy until tomorrow, and then quiet from Friday. Besides which, I've already purchased a train ticket for Friday night, so I'm leaving no matter what!

Happy 추석!

2011-09-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today (Monday, September 12) is 추석 (Chuseok), or Korean Thanksgiving. As I've mentioned before, I've never spent a major Korean holiday in Korea. I'm not used to having lots of family around, people to make plans with. Getting my American family together for holidays is really easy, because there's just four of us. With my Korean family, it's a little more complicated.

Because my grandfather is currently in Seoul at his second son's (third child's) house, the kids in the family that live in Seoul (or, in my case, Seoul-adjacent) were expected to trek over for the holiday. This uncle is my mother's younger brother and has four daughters, all younger than me. The cousins who live in Seoul are my mother's older brother's kids, two sons, one older and one younger than me. The three of us were to all meet at my uncle's house, but my older cousin said he would meet me at the subway station, since I don't know how to get to my uncle's house.

Convoluted and totally confusing, yes? Turns out, having lots of family means there is more chaos. And it also turns out that traveling via public transit during a national holiday is awful. It doesn't help that I may have taken the longest way possible to get to Seoul (thanks a lot, Jihachul app, thanks) and what should have taken less than an hour took almost two and a half hours.

The first transfer on the subway was pretty easy. The photo above was taken at 대곡 (Daegok) Station, where the app told me to transfer. So I did, because this app has guided me to and from Seoul for the past two months.

I waited at this particular station (in a very rural area) for probably about half an hour, because I didn't realize that my transfer was onto a county line. I mean, really, it's very hard to tell the difference.

So the app told me that I would just make the one transfer and proceed right along to Seoul Station, which is where I was to meet my cousin. Easy. Sure, I had to wait half an hour at Daegok, but if that's the only transfer I'm taking, I can deal. Yeah, not so much.

The train stopped at Digital Media City Station and then we all got kicked out. I looked around and noticed that transferring to the next platform would lead to Seoul Station. Seemed rather straightforward and normal, so I waited for the subway.

I waited ... and waited ... and took pictures ... and texted people ... and waited some more. I think three trains, honest-to-goodness passenger trains, not subway trains, whizzed past in the first twenty minutes. All I did was impatiently pace around that platform, carrying a purse and an awfully heavy camera, listening to Adele and cursing the subway system.

It wasn't until I'd been at the station for well over half an hour that the subway train finally showed up. I dashed in, took a seat, and began realizing that transportation on Chuseok is no joke- people weren't kidding when they said traveling during holidays in Korea is crappy at best.

I'll admit that I did like this station because I like trains, and regular underground stations aren't nearly as interesting to photograph as this type of outdoor station. Proof of Korea's industrialization in the background, with the new tall and shiny building on the left and the new building on the right, still being built.

Finally got to Seoul Station, where there were thousands of people milling around, making me feel suffocated as they crammed together and got all up in each other's personal space. Ugh. I didn't take any pictures at Seoul Station because my cousin and I were calling and texting each other, trying to figure out where the other was and not succeeding.

We finally found each other and walked to the bus stop, where we got on the bus and exited one stop late. Because we were so late and we're both impatient, we trekked to the previous stop, rather than waiting for the bus going in the opposite direction.

The photo above was taken at the first bus stop. The taller tower is Namsan Tower (남산 타워), which I had tons of photos of from last year (can't believe that I haven't posted those pictures yet). I do distinctly remember that Namsan (literally "South Mountain") is very close to my uncle's house, so I knew we were somewhere in the vicinity.

My cousin and I were in a neighborhood mart (a small little store in a small little street that's lined with stores selling different things- groceries, fruit, vegetables, fish, etc.) buying a box of giant Asian pears (a traditional gift during Chuseok) when we saw our aunt and uncle walk down the street. What amazing timing- and thank goodness we didn't have to hike up the rather steep hill and try to find their house without assistance.

My grandfather, aunt, uncle, their four daughters, my two cousins, two congregants of my uncle's church (he's a pastor), and I had Chuseok lunch (so much food), tons of fruit (peaches, apples, and pears), espresso, traditional Korean pastries, walnuts and pine nuts, and then a little more espresso. We all lolled about in a food-induced stupor for a couple hours afterward, talking about insignificant things, teasing each other, and acting very much like a family.

My uncle took a nap in the tent he has outside, which is his little outdoor retreat (he had a movie playing out there while he dozed). Our grandfather nagged his grandkids a little- mostly the two boys. The youngest, a sixth grader, skipped around the room while we watched her. It was so much like a normal family, like my family, but with different people.

That's the cousin that met me at Seoul Station. He worries about me, probably because he's the only cousin I have that's older than me, and because he's older, he feels a little responsible. He is probably the cousin that I am closest to, because I've seen him more than any other cousin. We're not that close, but we're not strangers- most of my cousins are strangers to me, even though we share DNA. Hopefully, being in Korea will help me to feel like my family is really my family. (And that's my uncle's tent in the back- he was in there when I took this picture.)

My grandfather with three of his grandchildren. The two girls are the youngest and second oldest of my uncle's daughters. The baby was probably bored all day because she's the youngest by almost ten years, so we're not very much fun for her to hang out with. The dude is my older cousin's little brother, he's the same age as my sister.

I didn't take the county line on my way home, so it only took about an hour to get back. Never taking that county line again. I shake my fist at you, Gyeongui Line (경의선)!

The transit hiccups had me all tired out before I even got to my uncle's house; it's only just past midnight now and I am wiped out. Tomorrow's technically part of the holiday, but I think I have to go into work for a couple hours and get some stuff done. Poop.

I'm hoping to find Jeongbal Mountain tomorrow, but I may settle for Lake Park, since it's close and easy. I may not have the energy for an uphill hike by the time I'm done with work.

Hooray for short work weeks, at least! And hooray for spending holidays with family!

Remembering

2011-09-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

Ten years ago, I was nineteen. My sister was about to turn eighteen. We were both in college in Los Angeles, both of us very close to Los Angeles International Airport.

Ten years ago, I spent hours at my sister's apartment while we tried to call our parents to check in, to reassure them, to share our horror and shock.

Ten years ago, I discovered that I had a patriotism that I had not previously acknowledged, and I cried for people that I had never met.

I would hope that since ten years have passed, the world is a more peaceful place. But I know that it isn't.

9/11 was an almost unbelievable day. But one that should not be forgotten, and one that should teach all of us something. I remember that day. I will always remember it.

Sparkling Juice

2011-09-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

What the heck, Korea? Why is there this delicious sparkling juice here that I've never seen before in the States? Isn't Tropicana an American company?

Harrumph, I say. I quite like this sparkly beverage, and I'm going to miss it when I'm back home. I haven't been drinking a lot of soda while I've been here, something I'm sure my mother will approve of.

Every once in a while, I'll drink something other than water or coffee. At work, I generally have Martinelli's sparkling apple cider or this Tropicana sparkling apple juice. I love Martinelli's because it reminds me of my family (we always substituted Martinelli's sparkling cider for champagne before my sister and I were able to drink real champagne) and because it's delicious, but this Tropicana stuff is a little less sweet, a little less cloying, which makes it easier to drink.

I was at work until about 2:30 last night (erm, this morning) and am pretty useless today. I remember those good ol' days when I could survive on little or no sleep. Now, I need at least seven hours of sleep (six hours minimum) in order to function normally, without zombie-esque symptoms. I must be getting old.

I may have to work tomorrow, which is a bummer, but I'm not going to work the rest of the long weekend. I have a lot to do! Some sort of gift to buy before I visit my grandfather, figuring out how to get to Seoul without dying in an over-crammed subway car ... and sleeping. I miss sleeping.

Since I live right next to Jeongbalsan Station, and "san" means "mountain," I'm hoping to venture over to Jeongbal Mountain this weekend, maybe see if the trees have started changing colors. It definitely feels like fall, with a chill in the air during the mornings and evenings. My wardrobe, sadly, does not really work for fall. I'm going to have to start layering, and it's going to look peculiar. Oh, well.

Drizzling today, with weather that exactly replicates LA's winter. All I want to do is curl up in bed and watch a crappy American movie.

Old Friend, Random Bits

2011-09-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Not that he's OLD, per se ... but I unexpectedly got the chance to see an old friend today. He used to live in the States a few years ago, stayed for a year or two and went to college. He's the same age as my sister, and knows my parents and my cousins. He came back to Korea three years ago and has been here since, working hard and being a good kid. I took his picture for posterity and as proof, so I could post it (so my parents could see).

엄마, 아빠, 수창이가 생일 축하한대! 안부전해 달래. 잘 만났어, 잘 있는것 같아. 나는 오늘 거소증도 받고, 출장갈 비자 신청도 하고, 바뻐! 추석에는 푹 쉬려고.

I'm a little loopy because I'm still at work, and it's been a confusing kind of day. The good news is, I went to the immigration office this morning and I got my foreigner registration card! I am now officially registered and legally able to reside in this country and whatnot.

(My registration card, by the way, is a little different from the Alien Registration Card (ARC) that the English teachers receive. I wonder if the cards are different depending on what kind of visa one has? Mine's not as colorful and fun as the ARCs are, which is kind of a bummer.)

The bad news is, I got a late start to my day because of my trek to immigrations. It's been a busy day at work, with meetings all over the place, random issues that keep popping up, and irate people to deal with. It's been a little annoying, but I think I'm finally in the groove. I still don't completely mesh with my co-workers, but it's much better now.

The random news is, I think I'm going to China in a couple weeks. One of the movies that the company's working on is a Chinese film, and I think we're going to visit the director. I'm useful for Chinese movies because all the communication is done in English, since there are crews in China, Hong Kong, and Korea, and English is the common denominator. No definite plans yet, but visiting new places is always good.

The fun news is, before China (the weekend before going to China, actually), I'm going to Daegu (대구) to see the sights and visit William, with plans to judge passersby passed on their appearance and eat lots of good food. It's going to be a fun weekend-- I'm finally going to leave Gyeonggi (경기) and explore more of Korea. (For such a small country, I'm having a hard time traversing around.)

It's past 10:30 and I'm still at work (in a conference room, actually). I'm just trying to hang on until the blessedly long weekend (thank you, 추석!), when I'll get to sleep to my heart's content.

Horrible blog posts lately, I know. I'll try to do better!

"투혼"

2011-09-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, I tagged along to a screening of a movie that my co-workers worked on, called "투혼" (which is pronounced "too-hone" and means 'fighting spirit'). When I had asked what the movie was about, I was told, "it's a baseball movie." So I was thinking that it would be some sort of sports movie, with men in baseball uniforms running around and getting discouraged and then bucking up, despite their injuries, to win the big game.

I mean, that's generally what sports movies are like, right? No? Okay, I'm not a big fan of baseball, so I didn't really know what kind of drama that anybody could eke out of a baseball game (seriously, nine innings? That is just excessive). I just went to the screening because I had never been to a movie theater in Korea before and I wanted a break from work.

Turns out, it wasn't much of a break. I had to get up earlier than usual because we had to leave at 8:30. I don't usually wake up until 8:30 or 9:00 (I know, I know, poor me), so I dragged myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 and had myself ready, full of breakfast, and waiting outside by 8:30.

One of my co-workers had one of the company cars, picked up another co-worker, and then picked me up (we all live within a couple blocks of each other). The ride to Seoul was uneventful, but annoying. I really don't get into cars very often here, as I usually take the subway into Seoul (into the city? I feel so 1950s when I say that), and I don't think I've ever been in a car during rush hour.

It took just about an hour and half to go about 30 kilometers (about 18 miles), which is as bad as LA's rush hour traffic. I never thought I'd have to contend with that kind of traffic again (I am really bad in traffic, due to the fact that I get carsick if I'm not driving). By the time we got to the theater in Gwangjin (광진), I was already tired and a little nauseous. Not the best state to watch a movie, but we were there for a screening, so what could we do?

The movie was, in a word, unexpected. It wasn't the typical sports movie at all. I don't know if that's good or bad, to most people, but I was taken aback. There were sports elements to the film, sure, but not as many scenes as one might expect. There were comedic elements, dramatic moments, and some hilariously fluctuating dialects.

The sports elements to this movie were straight-forward. The main character is a baseball player, and he plays for the Lotte Giants (the screening was at Lotte Cinema, see how it all ties together? Oh, Korean conglomerates). His wife suddenly turned up and hey, she's quite an important character, too. Who knew?

I give Kim Sun-Ah (김선아) a lot of credit. I first saw her in "My Name is Kim Sam-Soon" (or "My Lovely Kim Sam-Soon"), that juggernaut of a drama that made a star of its actors. She's been in a lot of movies and TV shows since, and I always find her believable. She was the only one of the main five or six characters in "Toohon" whose accent was believable.

The Lotte Giants are in Busan (부산), a port city at the very south end of Korea. Busanites (and most people in GyeongSang Province) are known for their dialect, which I compare to the American Southern drawl. It's distinct and different from the Seoul ("accent-less") dialect, which is the standard. I find the Busan dialect cute, though I sometimes have a hard time understanding it.

Even with my somewhat ineffectual grasp of Korean, I could tell immediately that the male lead didn't have a good command of the dialect. It bothered me intermittently through the movie, because when his accent slipped, I would momentarily forget the flow of the story and wonder, "why didn't he practice more?"

The dialects and the varying skill of the actors was a con for me. I didn't like that I would keep thinking about it.

The story, too, didn't flow quite smoothly. I kept thinking that I was seeing an edit that would be changed and addressed, I didn't think that I was watching a final film.

Still, the movie was enjoyable fun. I cried when the kids cried (seriously, they were just squeezing their little eyes out to get maximum tears, and I'm a sympathetic crier), I laughed a couple times, and it was nice that I understood the movie without English subtitles- it really was an easy story to follow and nobody had a good vocabulary.

Despite my obnoxiousness about his accent, I do like the male lead. I had watched a few episodes of "Terroir" (a Korean drama) a couple years ago, and he had made a favorable impression. I think his character was a rather cold, calculating restauranteur with discerning taste in wine and women.

So my first Korean movie experience? Very good. The audience was well-behaved (no excessive noise, no crunching or slurping- though this was a cast and crew screening, so they were probably better behaved than usual), the theater was very clean, there were purse hooks on every seat, and nobody kicked the back of my (plush) chair.

I'm sure I will watch another movie while I'm here, and probably at a newer theater. The Lotte Cinema that we were at is one of the older ones, and it was still very nice. The newer CGV that's over here near my workplace is likely to be even better.

One last thing:

It's Chuseok (추석) this weekend, the Korean Thanksgiving, which means that we get a four-day weekend. The CEO came around today and gave everyone an envelope with their name on it. I opened mine and it contained a crisp 50,000 won note (about $50). Turns out, the company gives their employees the money as transportation allowance for the holiday, since most people go to their hometowns to visit family. As most people take the bus (long-distance buses, called limousine buses here) or trains (the KTX is really fast, but there are "regular" trains, too), transportation would rarely cost over 50,000 won.

What a nice gesture. I wish American companies gave $500 for transportation costs for Christmas break, since most people fly home for the holidays.

I'm finally going to see my grandfather (maternal; my paternal grandfather's passed) during Chuseok, since he's at my uncle's house. Hooray for family ... we'll see, I've never spent a major Korean holiday with my Korean family before.

Happy Birthday, 엄마!

2011-09-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is the second year in a row that I will not be with my immediate family during their birthdays (all in the month of September). I am a little sad about this, as I love my family more than anything, but I do realize that this separation does not make me love them any less. If anything, I appreciate them more as I am away from them.

There are a lot of things that I like about home (I still consider California to be my home), but there are a lot of things that I like about Korea, too (which I definitely consider to be my motherland). I feel a little closer to my heritage here, and I like the fact that I am getting in touch with my nationality.

I know that my Korea is very different from my parents' Korea. Still, the fact that I am living and working while speaking in Korean makes me feel a little more Korean, and therefore a little closer to my parents.

More than anything, I have come to the understanding that I cannot control my life. I don't know what's coming next, and I'm okay with that. I know that worrying about it won't help, and though I can't control the slight trepidation that I feel, I am not overwhelmed with nervousness. I know that I'll be fine.

This peacefulness is a nice gift from my motherland, the land of my mother and father.

I do wish, though, that I could give my mommy a hug right now.

I got my love of coffee from my mother, and I was appropriately getting coffee today when I snapped a phone picture of the Nescafe interior. I love coffee shops here, they are so clean and comfortable (and when I say clean, I mean CLEAN) and full of simple syrup.

Whatever my mother is doing today, I do hope that she's having a wonderful birthday, with something that makes her smile.

엄마, 생일 축하해! 한국와서 맛있는 커피 마시자.

Pizza Fish

2011-09-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

Work has most definitely picked up. I've been wary about being too open about the details of my working life in Korea- it's a different country, after all, and I don't know how they feel about blogging and whatnot.

I will divulge that there has been a bit of general upheaval in the post-production industry in Korea, and that's causing ripples through my workplace. (I still can't quite call it "my company" yet.)

Because of this, that, and the other thing, I've been busy. I actually had to go to Seoul yesterday for a meeting. At a hotel. I don't think I've ever had a real meeting in a hotel before, so that was weird. Weirder still was that this meeting was in the lobby (of the Shilla Hotel), where we were discussing all kinds of things about one of the movies currently in production at my workplace. Things that normally wouldn't be talked about in the lobby of a hotel (even if it is a really, really nice hotel).

The meeting was pretty dang long, too. I had to get caffeine to stay awake, so I ordered an iced latte (it was hot yesterday, y'all). It was enormous and it had round ice. I have been curious about round ice ever since I read an article somewhere about how scotch is best with one big round ice ball in it (I keep typing "ice cube"). And here I am, years later, with unexpected round ice in my (hideously expensive) coffee.

You bet I snuck a picture of the coffee. I was so intrigued by the round ice, I couldn't resist. I thought the thing in the long white container was a stick to stir my coffee, but it was a straw. A straw in a heavy paper container, with a pre-perforated tab so that I could easy get the straw out. Ridiculous. Less ridiculous is the little silver container, which contained simple syrup. I didn't use any, but I really appreciate that all coffee shops in Korea have simple syrup- I do not enjoy stirring sugar granules into my iced coffee, should I want some sweetness.

After the long meeting at the Shilla, I trekked back to Ilsan and went straight home, because it was almost 9:00 at night and I didn't feel like making an appearance at work. I was cranky and tired, a bad combination.

Today hasn't been much better- it's been hectic, I'm still oddly tired out, and there's a mountain of work to be done. But I came back to my desk after a meeting today to a little surprise.

Fish! No ... bread! This is not 붕어빵, the wintry treat that I love- that is a thinner pastry, filled with something sweet (red bean paste, honey, or whatever the trend might be now)- this is sort of like a calzone. This particular one was pizza flavored. The bad news is, I would not have guessed that it was pizza flavored from tasting it. One of my co-workers told me "it's pizza flavored! It's good, eat it!" so I dutifully bit in.

I mean, honestly, Korea. Corn? In pizza? (Okay, Koreans seem to put corn in everything, so maybe that's not quite fair.) A cute little company called 해삐 소뿡이 (Happy SoBboongYi) specializes in these funny little things, selling them with all kinds of fillings. Like I said, it didn't taste like pizza- but it was still good.

The bread was really good, much better than any calzone I've ever had. I'm sure you can tell that it's good from the grease stains on the paper. The crust was so buttery that I'm afraid that the grease was all butter, but I have no confirmation and I'm certainly not going to check the website to see if butter is their first ingredient.

The filling was ... not pizza, but it was okay. I like vegetables, and it was mostly vegetables. No real tomato sauce, which is fine by me, and random chunks of ham, with little round slices of pepperoni (the pepperoni here is really, really mild). Since I didn't have lunch today, this was a nice afternoon snack.

My eating habits in Korea are getting weirder and weirder. I have no idea why, but I have been all about soups and stews. It's still fairly hot and summery, so I'm obviously just losing my mind a bit.

I've been eating things in Korea that I wouldn't eat back home, which is also weird. I had crab two nights ago. I went to dinner with a bunch of co-workers, and we went to have 백숙 (baek-sook), which is apparently a healthy dish. The restaurant we went to was supposed to be very good, and there were all kinds of things stewing with the (giant) chicken- ginseng, roots, garlic, abalone (ew), and so on and so forth. The chicken was okay (a little gamey, actually, because I guess you're supposed to use really large chickens for baeksuk and smaller chickens for samgyetang), but the 매운탕 (maeuntang), a spicy, steaming hot soup, was really good.

I have always loved maeuntang, but this was especially good, with 수제비 (sujebi, a dough made of flour and water that is torn and dropped into the soup- the Korean version of American dumplings) and some sort of yummy fish. Unfortunately, there were also these little crabs, a little smaller than tennis balls.

These crabs, after being simmered and boiled in the red broth for a while, fell apart, so that their main body was in two bits- the body and the head. The lid contains the brain and some innards, not much meat, and the body contains ... everything else, with the legs still attached.

One of my co-workers scooped out a crab lid and put it on my plate and told me that the brain is the best part, and I should try it. Well. I didn't want to be rude (I had already rejected the abalone, which I cannot even try because the look of it just repulsed me) so I tried the ol' crab brain. It was surprisingly good, kind of like a very firm fish. I said so, too, and we all laughed at the crab was probably insulted that I was comparing him to a fish, when crab is more expensive. (In my defense, saying it was fishy was a compliment.)

I never used to eat squid or octopus, and while I won't eat them raw (no raw fish yet, either), I will eat them cooked. Without complaining. It's kind of amazing.

I've been drinking a little beer lately (okay, I'm still not a fan, but I can down a (Korean) glass of beer now), which is highly unlike me. Granted, I'm not enjoying the beer, but I don't have to be the odd one out that won't drink beer anymore- I can tolerate it. Korean beer is, I think, lighter than the average American beer. Since the glasses are so small here (about a quarter of the size of my Shilla Hotel coffee), I'm okay with accepting one glass of beer when I'm out with people.

My mother thinks this is progress, and she's now glad that I decided to come to Korea, since I was apparently way too picky before, but I still have a long way to go. I've tried mushrooms a few times while I've been here, but I still don't like them. I tried 골뱅이 (golbangee), a type of sea snail- I didn't really mind it, but it isn't something I'll be seeking out. I think it would be good if it were battered and deep-fried (how American of me) rather than in the cold noodle dish that I tasted.

Many things, of course, have not changed. I still eat a lot of eggs (I oddly don't like having raw meat at home, it weirds me out), I don't eat much white rice (lately, it's this glutinous rice with beans that my aunt sent me, but more frequently, it's barley), I drink a lot of water, and I still love cheese dearly.

I'm glad I'm becoming a less picky eater, though. Hopefully I get even better in the time that I have left here!

Aspirations

2011-08-31T00:21:00.000-07:00

I've been working in visual effects for eight years. That can either be seen as a long amount of time or a rather short amount of time. For me, since I'm 29, it's a long time. It's more than a quarter of my life that I've spent doing this work.

In the eight years that I've been working, I've met a lot of female producers. Not many female supervisors. I suppose that this means women tend to be left-brained, whereas men are more right-brained (with exceptions, of course). Which is why I was so happy when "Kung Fu Panda 2" did so very well when it premiered- it was directed by a woman, Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson is not only a woman, she's a Korean-American woman. She came from Korea when she was four, I came when I was three. She grew up in the town right next to the town where I grew up. She grew up in Lakewood, she went to college in Long Beach, and I imagine that if it weren't for our age difference (10 years), she and I might have crossed paths at some point.

It amazed me to read that "Kung Fu Panda 2" is now the highest grossing film that's been directed by a woman. I am so proud (I really think Korean-Americans are my people, even if I also think that Koreans are my people and Americans are my people- they are not my people the way Korean-Americans are), just because this achievement shows me (and all the younger kids that are the way that I was) that it's possible, that we can do great things, and that dreams are not meant just for sleep.

I don't know what my real goals are. I don't have a five-year plan. I do know that the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that I have after finishing a film is something that I love. I also know, though, that I'm getting tired of the politics and backstabbing and favoritism that is prevalent in this business.

For now, I am content in Korea, though my job is ever-changing and my co-workers are still confused by me (it's been almost two months, people, adapt already). I feel a little more comfortable here now, though I can see that my behavior is a little different (more about that in another post).

I'm looking forward to the weekend and some rest and buying some groceries- I have no vegetables other than half a cucumber and an onion- and perhaps taking some real pictures with my real camera. Please let the weather be clear!

This is my 500th blog post! Some posts have been completely useless, but still. It's a milestone. I'm celebrating by working a few extra weeks in Korea, yippee.

Seoul Explorations

2011-08-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

I can honestly say now that I am adapting to Korea. Maybe not all of Korea, but definitely the subway system, which I have grown to love dearly. (Seriously, why can't LA have a subway like Korea??) I might actually be happy to not have a car (!), and that's saying a lot for someone from LA.

It used to seem ludicrous to me that I needed to take the subway for about an hour (give or take) to go to Seoul (depending on where in Seoul I was trying to go), but now that I've made the trip a few times, it's not bad at all.

The subways here are air-conditioned to the point of frigidity and they are generally quiet, unless they're stuffed like tins of sardines (I've only experienced that once). Even inside the sardine tin, it's not nearly as loud as it could be. (God save me if I ever go to New York and have to get on one of their notoriously rank and noisy subways.)

I can usually find a seat, put in my ear buds, listen to music, read a book on my iPhone, play games, or even watch TV on my Korean phone (more about that later). The time passes by really quickly, to the point that I've never impatiently checked the clock while sitting on a subway.

This past weekend, I went to Seoul to wander around and to look at camera lenses (I got the one I wanted- I've been eyeballing that lens for years!). I saw some interesting things, trekked over a pretty large area, and never even worried about getting lost. Suddenly, Seoul does not seem as big as I had previously though. I'm counting that as a sign of adaptation to my surroundings.

There was an underground mall between the Hoehyeon (회현) and Myeong-Dong (명동) subway stations (Line 4). It was mostly closed by the time I was walking through it, but I had fun anyway. There are so many weird little shops- the ever-present nail salons and cosmetic road shops, but also a surprisingly large number of currency stores (you can buy currency from other countries) and hiking shops (literally to buy hiking supplies- Koreans are crazy about hiking).

There were also records all over the place. The interesting thing was, they didn't bother to lock up their records or anything. They were on shelves that lined entire outer walls (not even inside shops), just sitting out in the open. I love the idea of records, even if I've never owned a record player, so I took a few snaps on my phone.

째즈 is the phonetic Korean spelling for "jazz." There were random labels all over the place- some by genre, some by the Korean alphabet, some by the American alphabet. I love the way vinyl looks in its big cardboard sleeve, all lined up on shelves.

An Edith Piaf record that certainly looked original- the thing was banged up and the sleeve was yellowing, but I really liked the artwork. The woman manages to look like Edith Piaf without being a caricature; she looks rather depressed, which I think is true of Piaf and her melancholy eyebrows.

The picture above is, perhaps, a fantastic representation of my childhood. My mother, the pianist, introduced me to Tchaikovsky quite early. My father, the guitarist and drummer, had me singing Beatles songs before I ever knew what the phrase "twist and shout" might possibly mean. I love that these records were just sprawled out like this (I didn't touch any of them, lest the shopkeepers think I was going to buy something), two mismatching records that together, mean something to me.

This is the staircase up and out of the subway station. I like that natural stripes of stone were used, instead of smoothing over any trace of perfectly imperfect nature. Subway stations in Korea vary wildly, from the somewhat posh, like this one, and then the very 70s style, with orange and subway tile and kitsch. I like them all.

Shinsegae (신세계) is a famous department store in Korea. I went and picked up a few things from Shu Uemura (they don't have any Shu Uemera counters in LA, I always had to order online), admired the polish and shine of the place, and then left before I could spend any more money.

This is an interesting display at Chungmuro (충무로) Station, where I switch from Line 4 to Line 3 (my house is off Line 3). I guess it has something to do with movies? There was nothing to explain why this was inside a subway station. Perhaps they're just trying to make the stations more interesting.

I've never seen this before- see the back of the car? There are no seats. I don't know what that area is for, and nobody stood there or anything while I was on this subway car. Maybe it's for people with lots of luggage? People in wheelchairs? I have no idea.

TV on my phone- it's not just because I have a fancy phone (it's a Samsung Galaxy SII), everyone seems to get streaming TV on their phones. I see people with flip phones watching TV. The white thing coming out of the phone is the jack for my ear buds. The metal thing protruding from the phone above the headphone jack is the antennae, which pulls out quite a lot from the body of the phone. I marvel at how light my phone is when it packs such a long antennae in it (seriously, iPhone, your screen is smaller and you weigh at least twice a much, and you don't even stream TV- if it wasn't for your superior camera, I would chuck you).

The above is the browsing screen, where I can scroll though the channels (right) and a preview pops up (upper left) so I can check what's on which channels. There is no stutter, no lag, no playback issue, no sync issues between picture and sound. Back home, I couldn't even get YouTube to play a 20-second video on my phone without problems. How is streaming TV possible and even successful in Korea?

Full screen mode (I was watching "I Am A Singer (나는 가수다)" and the lighting was intentionally crazy green, it's not a weird problem with my phone. It really is like watching a portable TV. I was underground, for crying out loud, on a moving subway, and the TV never even hiccuped. American wireless technology, please get with it.

I actually spent the majority of my time in Seoul at Namdaemun Market (남대문), which is essentially like a giant, organized flea market. The shoe stores and stalls are all together, the (knock-off) purses and luggage shops are all together, the herbal medicine vendors are all together, etc. I wandered around and around and around, but I still don't think I saw the whole thing. I did manage to find a few camera places, which is where I found my lens (I really need to start taking some real pictures). I didn't take any snaps because, frankly, Namdaemun is ugly. Think flea market or swap meet, and you're pretty much there.

While I've been in Korea (almost two months!), I have realized that I am capable of things that I would never have thought to do before. I haggled down the price of my camera lens, I ask random strangers questions, I go into shops to ask for directions, I take subways alone- all things that I have never really done before. Though I may come across as assertive, I'm not really a pushy Asian woman. I've always had my sister to be pushy for both our sakes, so I was spared having to deal with strangers. My sister never had a problem going up to people and saying whatever she had to say, whereas I was always terrified of strangers.

I'm not going to lie, I'm still a little scared of strangers. Especially the pushier Korean strangers that seem to have been raised by parents with incredibly sharply pointed elbows. But I'm getting better, and I credit Korea for that- I am forced to do things that I don't like to do.

Hopefully, I don't turn into an outright Korean ajumma. Shudder.

Almost 9 p.m. and I'm still at work (!). We have a big meeting tomorrow. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Korea's Next Top Model

2011-08-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in passing previously that I have been watching "Korea's Next Top Model" lately, and after my last (very long) post, I decided that I would lighten up and write about this TV show. (Warning: this is going to be a rather harsh review of "Korea's Next Top Model" ... I tend to be hard on these types of 'reality' shows.)

This show is much like "America's Next Top Model," a reality show competition that pits a group of thin, generally high-strung girls against one another in order to win a contract, a spot with a modeling agency, and other random prizes.

The main differences between ANTM and KNTM are the hostess and the culture. To compare the hostesses:

ANTM is, of course, the brainchild of one Miss Tyra Banks. I've always thought that Tyra was striking, with those big eyes and all those teeth. She was a great Victoria's Secret model because she had the body and the sass.

As a reality show MC, I don't know. The first few seasons of ANTM, she was a little bit awkward, obviously not that comfortable. She found her footing as the seasons wore on (and on and on and ON), but she also became sort of the bridezilla version of an MC. She did strange things (remember that season during which she only wore jumpsuits?), she came up with weird concepts, and she stomped around the show like she was the star. I thought a reality show was about the contestants, the hostess is supposed to facilitate (for the record, I really liked Heidi as the hostess of "Project Runway," which I am currently NOT watching because I still have a thorn in my side about the awfulness of Gretchen's win).

In the end, between Tyra's growing oddness and my growing disinterest, I stopped watching ANTM. It's been a few years since I've watched (or maybe just a couple years, who can tell with this show, there's a new cycle seemingly every couple months), so maybe things have gotten better lately (doubtful).

Then I came to Korea and watched "Korea's Top Model," with Jang Yoon-Ju (장윤주) as its MC.

Bizarrely, I recognized her from a Korean TV show broadcast that I had watched in LA not too long before my departure for Korea. She was on a talk show (I think it was 놀러와) with a bunch of Korean indie groups. She sang a song with one of the musicians, and she was quite good- a great voice for soft indie music. I remember being impressed with how genial she was, and how great she was with people. She was actually really funny, and put all the awe-struck men at ease.

Then I came to Korea and realized that dude, she's a model. She hosts the show with much more of a quiet command than Tyra. When Yoon-Ju interacts with the models, she is helpful but never aggressive. She seems like a girl that I would want to be friends with, like a girl that would be super fun if you met in a bar one night.

I obviously prefer Yoon-Ju. I just don't like Tyra's hosting style. Honestly, I'd rather see pictures of Tyra than watch her on my TV.

The cultural differences are huge, of course, and lend for completely different types of model-filled houses.

I think these are the models that are left (the ones that blended into the background have all been eliminated- thank goodness, because I was confused for a few weeks, who's that girl? has she always been there?):

Park Seul-Ki (박슬기). She seems to be one of the more mature girls. I like her, and actually want her to do well.

Song Hae-Na (송해나). She seriously irritated me during the makeover show, because they chopped her hair off and dyed it blond and she was leaking tears like a faulty faucet. She's a little petty sometimes, but I like her- she tends to be bubbly and seems sweet (and sometimes a little dumb).

Lee Jenny (이제니). She's foreign, though I never pay enough attention to the show to hear where she's from. Maybe the States? She speaks English, I'm pretty sure. Her Korean's not great, but it's passable. I question whether or not she's from the States because her Korean accent is not very American. I think I like her, but she's hard to read, since she doesn't talk much, owing to her language barrier.

Lee Sun-Young (이선영). What's the Korean word for "ditz"? Because it's this girl right here. I think she's adorable, but then she opens her mouth and it all goes down the drain. Her photos are either fantastic or awful.

Lee Song-Yi (이송이). She's got that awkward, shy, model-y thing going on, but sometimes, her photos are actually just awkward, instead of awkward-chic. She doesn't talk much and is very quiet, so I have no strong opinions about her. I have a very strong aversion to the horrifying haircut that they gave her, though.

Um Yoo-Jung (엄유정). WHINER. She complains about everything, gets depressed at the drop of a hat, and is generally just a dark cloud over the entire show. She makes me sad, and while she's striking, I don't think she's very photogenic.

Jin Jung-Sun (진정선). Ugh. I can't even begin to describe how annoying this kid is. I believe she's the youngest (17); she certainly acts like it. She's always overly confident, obnoxious, and says the most grating things. DISLIKE. I do concede that she takes some amazing photos- her pictures look much better than her snippets of "reality," that's for sure.

So I think those are the girls. As much as I dislike Jung-Sun, I have a feeling that she'll be going far, as she generally has good photographs and can actually walk on the runway (unlike some of the other poor girls who clomp up and down like they're in cement shoes).

A few differences between ANTM and KNTM:

- Cat-fights:
On ANTM, the girls are thrown into a house together ... and then they fight. There's always some sort of screaming fit, someone throws something, someone pours someone else's Red Bull down the drain, and someone always cries. On KNTM, not so much. Koreans have much more of a pack mentality than Americans, I think, and when someone tries to "lead" the other girls (generally the oldest, as Korea ranks people by age much more than America), the other usually follow along. Complaints aren't as frequent on KNTM- at least, not until some of the girls become good friends and whine to each other.

- Confessionals:
I admit, I kind of love the confessionals, where the girls are filmed talking to the camera about the other girls. I still remember Elyse talking smack about every single girl on the show, and how hilarious I found her (she's one of my favorite ANTM contestants). Korean girls? They talk about how good the other girls are, and how they're worried. After a few weeks, when cliques formed and discontent started coming to the surface, they would say things like "I don't know, is she going to be my rival?" or "I really want to beat all the other girls"- nothing nearly as mean-spirited (and therefore entertaining) as the ANTM girls. The one exception is, of course, hateful Jung-Sun, who says things like "I doubt she has that many friends," and "I can't believe she would come on this show when she can't even walk." Mean-spirited, sharp-tongued, and vindictive, that one.

(Side note- Korea's got a singing competition show called "I Am A Singer (나는 가수다)" which pits all kinds of singers (old, young, professional, amateur, men, women) against each other. These singers, when watching the others perform, only have nice things to say about each other. They never say mean things or belittle each other. It was so bizarre the first time I watched the show, because wow. That is not American at all.)

- Housekeeping:
The ANTM house, at the beginning of the cycle, is usually an unbelievable mess. Totally gross, with trash all over the place, disgusting bathrooms and kitchens, and unmade beds. The KNTM house is pretty dang clean. The "buckle down and clean" mentality is very strong here in Korea, and it shows. There's a little drama about who's going to do what, but not nearly as much as on ANTM. The house is in pretty good order, from what the cameras show, and it's a smaller house than the one that the American girls usually get.

- Relationships with the creative director and photographers:
The ANTM girls listen to Mr. and Miss J, though sometimes grudgingly. And in America, talking back to them or to the photographers isn't as rude and disrespectful as it is in Korea. Because of the casual and formal speech differences in Korea, I think the distinctions are clearer. Talking back to the (totally gay and fabulous) creative director or the photographers is considered to be absolutely disrespectful and something that just is. not. done. There are good and bad elements to this, of course- the good being, the photoshoots tend to have less drama. The bad being, there's less drama.

On the whole, I really prefer KNTM. ANTM just seemed so angsty and overly theatrical, like they were purposefully going out and trying to find insane girls to pump up the (already overmuch) drama. KNTM seems more real, and the girls seem more normal. I mean, do you actually know anyone that's like the craziest ANTM girls?

I miss American TV, of course (they have the weirdest selection of American TV shows here, which is so confusing- I mean, the new "Night Rider"? Really?) but Korean TV is doing nicely to fill the void and give me a source of white noise.

It's Saturday and I'm at work! Shouldn't be here long- I really do want to try to make it to Namdaemun today.

Asian Women and Marriage

2011-08-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

(엄마, 아빠, 오늘 드디어 우체국 갔어! 편지가 곧 도착하겠지?)

Twitter can be quite useful on occasion. I follow a few news organizations (BBC and CNN, for instance), which gives me the day's news in small bites, with the option to view the full article should I choose to. I like that I can skim Twitter and pretty much know what's going on (earthquake on the east coast of America, Steve Jobs quitting (!) as Apple's CEO, Amy Winehouse's toxicology report coming back clean, etc.).

The other day, I saw a tweet that caught my eye. It was from The Economist, about Asian marriage- and more specifically, about Asian women. Here's the full article. The tweet said, "Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. This has profound implications for women."

Now, Twitter always makes message come across as terse- 140 characters is not much space, and leaves no room for eloquence. But the words "profound implications" really gave me the willies and made me feel like it was going to be a damning article about how Asian women are ruining Asia, or something to that effect. (What? Lots of Asian men actually think that.)

The article isn't very long, but I did find it to be though-provoking. I agreed with it, mostly, and I understand where the concern (and hence the "profound implications") comes from. There is another article linked to the first one, about the flight from marriage, here.

Now, I'm of a certain age (29 in the States, 30 in Korea), the age where people give me sideways looks and wonder aloud when I'm going to get married, not bothering to whisper. I'm not morally opposed to marriage, and I think that a life partner would be fantastic. However, I'm morally opposed to a co-inhabitant that I happen to be married to. I think finding an actual partner, with whom one could actually share a life, a bank account, and children, is one of the hardest things in the world. I'm not husband hunting, I'm not renouncing marriage, I'm just letting things unfold as they will.

TWENTY years ago a debate erupted about whether there were specific “Asian values”. Most attention focused on dubious claims by autocrats that democracy was not among them. But a more intriguing, if less noticed, argument was that traditional family values were stronger in Asia than in America and Europe, and that this partly accounted for Asia’s economic success. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged “scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.

On the face of it his claim appears persuasive still. In most of Asia, marriage is widespread and illegitimacy almost unknown. In contrast, half of marriages in some Western countries end in divorce, and half of all children are born outside wedlock. The recent riots across Britain, whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect, seem to underline a profound difference between East and West.

Yet marriage is changing fast in East, South-East and South Asia, even though each region has different traditions. The changes are different from those that took place in the West in the second half of the 20th century. Divorce, though rising in some countries, remains comparatively rare. What’s happening in Asia is a flight from marriage.

I agree with the above. The values between East and West are distinct and different- what is merging between East and West are aesthetics, and those aesthetics are giving the impression that the world is getting smaller. It isn't really, because underneath the make-up, clothes, and dance moves are roots and values that differ hugely.

Marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched. Marriage ages have risen all over the world, but the increase is particularly marked in Asia. People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India. But it is likely to, as the economic factors that have driven it elsewhere in Asia sweep through those two countries as well; and its consequences will be exacerbated by the sex-selective abortion practised for a generation there. By 2050, there will be 60m more men of marriageable age than women in China and India.

...

Can marriage be revived in Asia? Maybe, if expectations of those roles of both sexes change; but shifting traditional attitudes is hard. Governments cannot legislate away popular prejudices. They can, though, encourage change. Relaxing divorce laws might, paradoxically, boost marriage. Women who now steer clear of wedlock might be more willing to tie the knot if they know it can be untied—not just because they can get out of the marriage if it doesn’t work, but also because their freedom to leave might keep their husbands on their toes. Family law should give divorced women a more generous share of the couple’s assets. Governments should also legislate to get employers to offer both maternal and paternal leave, and provide or subsidise child care. If taking on such expenses helped promote family life, it might reduce the burden on the state of looking after the old.

Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.

Case in point. Because of the stigma that is still attached to divorce (it's a SCANDAL when any of the Koreans that my family knows decides to get a divorce), I feel like Asians would prefer not getting married at all rather than marrying for the sake of marriage and then regretting it ... so they just stay in the dysfunctional marriage because they don't want the humiliation of divorce. (Those statistics above are staggering, by the way. 60 million more men than women in 2050 in China and India?!)

Women are retreating from marriage as they go into the workplace. That’s partly because, for a woman, being both employed and married is tough in Asia. Women there are the primary caregivers for husbands, children and, often, for ageing parents; and even when in full-time employment, they are expected to continue to play this role. This is true elsewhere in the world, but the burden that Asian women carry is particularly heavy. Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours. And Asian women who give up work to look after children find it hard to return when the offspring are grown. Not surprisingly, Asian women have an unusually pessimistic view of marriage. According to a survey carried out this year, many fewer Japanese women felt positive about their marriage than did Japanese men, or American women or men.

At the same time as employment makes marriage tougher for women, it offers them an alternative. More women are financially independent, so more of them can pursue a single life that may appeal more than the drudgery of a traditional marriage. More education has also contributed to the decline of marriage, because Asian women with the most education have always been the most reluctant to wed—and there are now many more highly educated women.

TRUTH. Though I do not agree with the usage of "retreat." Women aren't retreating from marriage; retreat is for the losers of wars and back-alley fights. Women are embracing their careers, they are running towards something rather than running away from something. I was told by one of my co-workers (in the U.S., not in Korea) that I should marry a sweet guy who wanted to be a house-husband. I was, truthfully, a little insulted. I've always had the expectation that I would work until I was married and pregnant, then stay home and raise my kids. Nobody ever forced this thought on me- it's just an assumption that I always had.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I was short-sighted. What if I really do end up with a guy that's a great cook and housekeeper? Better than me? I love working; I love my career. Would it be easy for me to give up my career? I always joke that I'm dating my career, but it's not really a joke. I've been dating my career for eight years, and I'm in love. If (or when) the time comes, could I forgo my first love for a screaming baby and a husband?

That kind of thinking always gets me into trouble, because then I get preemptively tired, thinking about staying up all night with a newborn and cleaning the house daily, only to have to clean it again the next day ... for all eternity. Then I just think that it would be easiest to live by myself, with no one to take care of or worry about but me. I would imagine that these are similar thoughts to those of all these single Asian women.

The flight from marriage in Asia is thus the result of the greater freedom that women enjoy these days, which is to be celebrated. But it is also creating social problems. Compared with the West, Asian countries have invested less in pensions and other forms of social protection, on the assumption that the family will look after ageing or ill relatives. That can no longer be taken for granted. The decline of marriage is also contributing to the collapse in the birth rate. Fertility in East Asia has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in the late 1960s to 1.6 now. In countries with the lowest marriage rates, the fertility rate is nearer 1.0. That is beginning to cause huge demographic problems, as populations age with startling speed. And there are other, less obvious issues. Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime.

I'm conflicted about the paragraph above. On one hand, women are sources of life. On the other hand, because we're sources of life, we're to be blamed for decreasing fertility and, obliquely, increasing crime. What the eff. What a burden to put on my entire gender. And how unfair. Men are no longer expected to be the sole breadwinner or sole protector of the household, but women are still expected to do everything they always did and then some. I know, logically, that OF COURSE women's roles cannot change THAT much- men cannot have babies, after all. Still, that doesn't mean that I don't find it a little unjust.

Conservatives in the West are fond of saying that the traditional family is the bedrock of society. That view is held even more widely in Asia. The family is the focus of Confucian ethics, which holds that a basic moral principle, xiushen (self-improvement), can be pursued only within the confines of the family.

...

In a book written in 1995 with a Japanese politician, Shintaro Ishihara, Dr Mahathir [Mohamad] contrasted Asians’ respect for marriage with “the breakdown of established institutions and diminished respect for marriage, family values, elders, and important customs” in the West. “Western societies”, Dr Mahathir claimed, “are riddled with single-parent families… with homosexuality, with cohabitation.” He might well have concluded that the absence of traditional family virtues from the streets of London recently showed the continued superiority of Asia.

What a pompous ass. Superiority is all relative, isn't it? Being a "superior" culture depends upon what you value. I didn't quote this bit to call out these men for being short-sighted (though they are), I wanted to talk about the homosexuality portion.

It's true that being gay in Asia is a stigma, almost akin to the racism in the U.S. just a generation ago. I know there are gay people in Korea, but nobody that I meet is going to tell me that they're gay during our first conversation. In LA, a gay person wouldn't think twice to tell me that they're gay (unless they're still in the closet, of course). Gay culture in the States (hello, WeHo) is prominent, proud, and distinct. Not so much here in Korea, and that makes me a little woeful.

I know that if I (or my sister) were gay, my parents would have a hard time with that. I firmly believe, though, that my parents would come to terms with it and still love their children. They know that I have gay friends, and they have no issues with my gays. I absolutely know for a fact, though, that there would be no coming out to grandparents or, possibly, even aunts, uncles, and cousins. The stigma is deep-rooted and difficult to overcome, so much so that I would think that a lot of Asian gays would have self-loathing issues.

Just the differences between the American and Korean gay culture show how vastly different the two countries still are, in terms of society and mindset.

In South Asia and China marriage remains near-universal, with 98% of men and women tying the knot. In contrast, in some Western countries, a quarter of people in their 30s are cohabiting or have never been married, while half of new marriages end in divorce. Marriage continues to be the almost universal setting for child-bearing in Asia: only about 2% of births took place outside wedlock in Japan in 2007. Contrast that with Europe: in Sweden in 2008 55% of births were to unmarried women, while in Iceland the share was 66%.

Most East and South-East Asian countries report little or no cohabitation. The exception is Japan where, among women born in the 1970s, about 20% say they have cohabited with a sexual partner. For Japan, that is a big change. In surveys between 1987 and 2002, just 1-7% of single women said they had lived with a partner. But it is not much compared with America where, according to a 2002 Gallup poll, over half of married Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 lived together before their wedding day. In many Western societies, more cohabitation has offset a trend towards later marriage or higher rates of divorce. That has not happened in Asia.

Traditional attitudes live on in other ways. Compared with Westerners, Asians are more likely to agree that “women’s happiness lies in marriage”. They are more likely to say women should give up work when they get married or have children, and more likely to disapprove of pre-marital sex. Surveys by Pew Global Research, a social-research outfit in Washington, DC, show that Muslims in South and South-East Asia are more likely than Muslims elsewhere to say that families should choose a woman’s husband for her.

Dude. Being Muslim in South and South-East Asia must be rough. Being Korean-American's hard enough, I can't imagine having the social pressures and also having the religious rules to follow. Yikes.

This is the part where I show my Korean side: I would never live with a boyfriend. I don't know why, but I've always felt like living with someone should be saved for marriage. I know that there will probably be habits that are discovered after the honeymoon, but I still would rather have those surprises after marrying the guy. I even surprise myself with my random un-Americanness.

Asia is changing. Although attitudes to sex and marriage are different from those in the West, the pressures of wealth and modernisation upon family life have been just as relentless. They have simply manifested themselves in different ways. In the West the upshot has been divorce and illegitimacy. In Asia the results include later marriage, less marriage and (to some extent) more divorce. The changes in the West may be more dramatic. But both East and West are seeing big changes in the role of women and traditional family life.

[One] change is that people are getting married later, often much later. In the richest parts—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—the mean age of wedlock is now 29-30 for women, 31-33 for men. That is past the point at which women were traditionally required to marry in many Asian societies. It is also older than in the West. In America, women marry at about 26, men at 28. If you take account of the cohabitation that routinely precedes Western marriage (but not Asian), the gap between East and West is even larger. The mean age of marriage has risen by five years in some East Asian countries in three decades, which is a lot.

The Asian avoidance of marriage is new, and striking. Only 30 years ago, just 2% of women were single in most Asian countries. The share of unmarried women in their 30s in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong has risen 20 points or more (see chart below), “a very sharp change in a relatively short period”, says Gavin Jones of the National University of Singapore. In Thailand, the number of women entering their 40s without being married increased from 7% in 1980 to 12% in 2000. In some cities, rates of non-marriage are higher: 20% among women aged 40-44 in Bangkok; 27% among 30-34-year-olds in Hong Kong. In South Korea, young men complain that women are on “marriage strike”.

Maybe, South Korean men, you should make it worthwhile for your female counterparts to give up their careers and marry you. I'll save my rant about Korean men for another post, this one's already way too long, but men aren't exactly making women eagerly anticipate marriage (not all men, obviously). It disturbs me when I meet Korean men in their early 20s- they seem like they should be at least 15 years younger than me, they tend to be so immature and ... thoughtless.

What is remarkable about the Asian experience is not that women are unmarried in their 30s—that happens in the West, too—but that they have never been married and have rarely cohabited. In Sweden, the proportion of women in their late 30s who are single is higher than in Asia, at 41%. But that is because marriage is disappearing as a norm. Swedish women are still setting up homes and having children, just outside wedlock. Not in Asia. Avoiding both illegitimacy and cohabitation, Asian women appear to be living a more celibate life than their Western sisters (admittedly, they could also be under-reporting rates of cohabitation and pre-marital sex). The conclusion is that East Asia’s growing cohorts of unmarried women reflect less the breakdown of marriage than the fact that they are avoiding it.

But marriages are breaking down, too. In Hong Kong and Japan, the general divorce rate—the number of divorces per 1,000 people aged 15 or more—was about 2.5 in the mid-2000s, according to Mr Jones’s calculations. In Asia as a whole, the rate is about 2 per 1,000. That compares with 3.7 in America, 3.4 in Britain, 3.1 in France and 2.8 in Germany. Only in one or two Asian countries is divorce as widespread as in the West. The South Korean rate, for example, is 3.5. Because divorce has been common in the West for decades, more couples there have split up. The rise in Asia has been recent: China’s divorce rate took off in the early 2000s. In the 1980s the Asian rate was 1 per 1,000 people; now it is 2. If that rise continues, Asian divorce could one day be as common as in Europe.

This seems to be true. Of all the Korean people I know (here and back home), it's the younger generation (in their 20s and 30s) that seems to divorce more readily. People that are a generation (or even half a generation) older than me are still old school and believe in staying in bad marriages over getting divorced. I know plenty of people in their 40s and 50s that are in unhappy marriages, but wouldn't dream of splitting up.

The main function of marriage in most traditional societies is to bring up children (romantic love rarely has much to do with it). Not surprisingly, changes in child-bearing have gone along with changes in marriage. The number of children the average East Asian woman can expect to have during her lifetime—the fertility rate—has fallen from 5.3 in the late 1960s to below 1.6 now, an enormous drop. But old-fashioned attitudes persist, and these require couples to start having children soon after marriage. In these circumstances, women choose to reduce child-bearing by delaying it—and that means delaying marriage, too.

Changing marriage patterns are also the result of improvements in women’s education and income, and the failure of women’s status to keep pace. The salient characteristic of many traditional marriage systems is that women—especially young women—have little independence. In South Asia, brides are taken into the groom’s family almost as soon as they move into puberty. They are tied to their husband’s family. Sometimes women may not inherit property or perform funeral rites (this is especially important in China). In parts of South Asia, wives may not even take their children to hospital without getting their husband’s permission.

In English, the phrase is "to get married". In Korean, there are two phrases (one per gender):

For women: 시집 간다: 시집 is "husband's home" and 간다 is the verb "to go"
For men: 장가 간다: 장가 is "marry" and 간다 is the same verb, "to go"

Koreans think of marriage as a departure from their families. From the parents' perspective:

For daughters: 시집 보낸다: 보내 is the verb "to send"
For sons: 장가 보낸다

Parents send their children. Away from their childhood home, into a new married life. I think that's a distinctive difference. Americans think of marriage as a merging of families, whereas Koreans, especially the families with daughters, think of marriage as a loss of one of their family members.

Parents "lose" their daughters because, generally, on holidays and important days, their married daughters go to their in-laws. 시집 is such an interesting word to me. While 장가, the male version, has no roots in Chinese, 시집 does. Literally, 시 means 'husband' and 집 means 'home'. Women, from the point of marriage, are considered part of their husband's family, no longer part of their blood family.

Now, the one thing in Korea that completely boggles my mind is the fact that married women do not change their family names. They keep their own family names for all eternity. Doesn't that seem so progressive? And yet the old traditions still (co-)exist? Such a strange dichotomy.

Two forces are giving women more autonomy: education and jobs. Women’s education in East Asia has improved dramatically over the past 30 years, and has almost erased the literacy gap with men. Girls stay at school for as many years as boys, and illiteracy rates for 15-24-year-olds are the same for the two sexes (this is not true of South Asia). In South Korea now, women earn half of all master’s degrees.

Education changes women’s expectations. Among Thai women who left school at 18, one-eighth were still single in their 40s; but among university graduates, the share was a fifth. A survey in Beijing in 2003 found that half of women with a monthly income of 5,000-15,000 yuan (roughly $600-1,800, an indicator of university education) were not married. Half said they did not need to be, because they were financially independent. South Koreans call such people “golden misses”. “Why should I have to settle down to a life of preparing tofu soup, like my mother?” asks one.

I think that marriage, like any other occupation, should be regarded as a choice. (Yes, I see marriage as an occupation- it occupies your time and life.) Some people are suited for marriage. I see girls and women here that are obviously just working for the sake of working- they don't have real careers and they don't care to try and achieve anything in their workplace. They're just working until their "real lives" begin, once they're married and have kids. Granted, most of these women don't regard marriage as a choice, but the really obstinate women are working hard, getting their careers in motion, damning their critics.

It's not to say that the career-less women are necessarily going to be great wives or mothers. They may not be. But because of their circumstances (maybe their parents raised them that way, maybe they don't have a high level of education, whatever the case), they don't try to get ahead in the workplace. With that sort of stagnancy, it must not be much of a sacrifice to quit their jobs and raise their kids. For the driven, career-oriented women, giving up their careers really is a sacrifice and one that cannot be made easily. The golden misses should do as they do, only stopping to prepare tofu soup if and when they have a hankering.

Rates of non-marriage rise at every stage of education. Women with less than secondary education are the most likely to marry, followed by those with secondary education, with university graduates least likely. This pattern is the opposite of the one in America and Europe, where marriage is more common among college graduates than among those with just a secondary education.

There are two reasons why education’s spread reduces women’s propensity to marry. First, non-marriage has always been more prevalent among women with more education. Now that there are more women in these higher-education groups, there are fewer marriages. Marriage rates are also lower in cities. Since education is likely to go on improving, and urbanisation to go on rising, more women will join the ranks of graduates or city folk who are least likely to marry.

Second, more education leaves the best-educated women with fewer potential partners. In most Asian countries, women have always been permitted—even encouraged—to “marry up”, ie, marry a man of higher income or education. Marrying up was necessary in the past when women could not get an education and female literacy was low. But now that many women are doing as well or better than men at school, those at the top—like the “golden misses”—find the marriage market unwelcoming. Either there are fewer men of higher education for them to marry, or lower-income men feel intimidated by their earning power (as well as their brain power). As Singapore’s Mr Lee once said: “The Asian man…preferred to have a wife with less education than himself.” In Singapore, non-marriage rates among female university graduates are stratospheric: a third of 30-34-year-old university graduates are single.

Better education also makes possible the other main trend changing marriage: female employment. Asia’s economic miracle has caused—and been caused by—a surge of women into the formal workforce. In East Asia two-thirds of women have jobs, an unusually high rate. In South-East Asia the figure is 59%. In South Korea the employment rate of women in their 20s (59.2%) recently overtook that of twenty-something men (58.5%). This surge has been accompanied by the collapse of the lifetime-employment systems in Japanese and South Korean firms, which used to ensure that a single (male) worker’s income could support a middle-class family. Now the wife’s earnings are needed, too.

This makes me rather sad. Not the part about lifetime-employment, I think that's stupid (and it does still exist in Korea, just to a lesser extent than in the past). The part about both partners needing to work in order to support a middle-class family.

One of my co-workers here has a really adorable three-year-old son. I asked him if they were going to have a second child before their son gets too much older, and he said that they couldn't afford it. Both he and his wife work. He barely sees his son, as he works long hours, and yet they are just getting by with the two salaries in their household. Living seems to be hard, even residing in one of the Four Asian Tigers.

All things being equal, having a job increases a woman’s autonomy. She has more options, and these options include not having a husband. But it is clear from Western societies that women will not necessarily choose a job over marriage. Rather, they will struggle to balance the conflicting demands of work and family.

What is unusual about Asia is that women seem to bear an unusually large share of the burden of marriage, reducing the attractiveness of family life compared with work. Certainly, this is what Asian women themselves think. Surveys about attitudes to marriage are patchy and subject to a lot of reservations. But for what it is worth, in a survey from 2011 of Japan’s three largest cities, only two-thirds of wives said they felt positive about their marriage, much less than their husbands; in America, both husbands and wives usually report higher and similar levels of satisfaction. In a survey from 2000, satisfaction levels in Japan were only half those in America. This may be because the readier availability of divorce in America has left fewer people trapped in loveless marriages. Or there may be something in the Japanese caricature of the salaryman husband working long hours and socialising all night and at weekends, while his neglected, fretful wife struggles to bring up the children at home.

The burden that Asian women feel towards marriage is, yes, perpetuated by their societies. However, they also have very high expectations of themselves, possibly higher than could be reasonably achieved. Koreans are xenophobic, to a degree, and can be very conformist, but within that conformity is a lot of competition, more so than in American society. Competing to get the biggest house, the best car, to get their kids into the best schools, the most coveted universities- it's cutthroat and stressful.

Whatever the problem, it is not confined to Japan. Illyqueen, a popular Taiwanese blogger, recently ranted about “Mama’s boys” in their 30s who have had “no hardships, no housework, [and who] …have lost the ability to keep promises (like marriage).” If some Asian women do indeed have an unusually negative view of marriage, it might make them more likely to choose a job over a husband, or to put off marriage while they pursue a career.

Moreover, public attitudes and expectations are lagging far behind changes in women’s lives in Asia, making it even harder to strike a balance between life and work. Despite higher incomes and education, “women have lower socioeconomic status than men,” argues Heeran Chun, a South Korean sociologist. “Their lives are markedly restricted by the cultural values associated with Confucianism.” They are expected to give up work—sometimes on marriage, often after childbirth—and many do not return to the job market until their children are grown. This forces upon women an unwelcome choice between career and family. It may also help to explain the unusually low marriage rates among the best-educated and best-paid women, for whom the opportunity cost of giving up a career to have children is greatest.

This is a huge problem. Even in my workplace, I can see it. There is a lot of change in Korea, constant change, but perhaps it's so speedy that people can't keep up. Korea really is remarkable in its transformation from a war torn, occupied countryside to a thriving nation with bustling metropolises. It happened so quickly, though, within a generation. My grandparents were born before World War II and lived in Korea while it was occupied by the Japanese. My mother was born just a couple months after the armistice was signed to end the Korean War. My father was born a year before her, during the war. They now live with high speed internet, a landline, a cell phone, an internet phone, a fax machine, and cable TV.

Perhaps part of the problem, at least in Korea, is that change is not meant to be quite this fast. Evolution should take longer than a single generation.

On top of this, many Asian couples face enormous pressure to ensure their children succeed in schools with cut-throat competition for places—pressure that falls mostly on the mother. Private child care is exorbitantly expensive. There are few state-subsidised crèches (324,000 children are on waiting lists in Seoul alone). And setting up a home is expensive because of high house prices. All this means it is harder to strike a satisfying balance between job and family in Asia than in the West.

Not every Asian country is affected by these trends equally. South Korea, for example, has lower rates of non-marriage, and a lower age of marriage, than its neighbours. But the big exceptions are Asia’s giants. At the moment, marriage is still the norm in China and arranged marriage the norm in India. As long as that continues to be true, a majority of Asians will live in traditional families. But how long will it continue? Signs of change are everywhere.

Crèches are day-care centers (sometimes colloquially called "after school" by Korean-Americans). Korea may have lower rates of non-marriage, but there is a lot of competition for the schooling and education of their offspring. I cannot believe how much it costs to have a child here, and to educate that child so he or she can compete with their peers.

Korean children have intense education from infanthood right up through college, with their parents (usually their mothers) driving them to be the best. Yes, the children suffer and are stressed out, but I would think that being a mother to these Korean children is no cakewalk, either.

The big question remains: how much is this a problem? And if it is, why? Arguably, the most important thing is that women who do not want to marry are no longer being forced to. And that must be a benefit: to them, to men spared an unhappy marriage; perhaps to society as a whole.

Against that, there are several reasons for worry, some of them extremely disturbing. Social attitudes in Asia change slowly, and many people think it wrong to remain unmarried. “Parasite singles” is the unflattering term in Japan. The reluctance to marry seems to have unleashed spiteful hostility, an attitude that makes the decision not to wed a tough one.

Contraception is a particular problem. Several Asian countries restrict state-provided family planning to married couples. A few even demand to see the wedding certificate before dispensing condoms (that has happened in Europe, too). This is not a sensible policy when so many men and women will remain unmarried throughout their 20s and 30s.

Then there are the educational and social aspects of changing marriage patterns. Because women tend to marry up—that is, marry men in an income or educational group above them—any problems of non-marriage are not dispersed throughout society but concentrated in two groups with dim wedding prospects: men with no education and women with a lot.

Marrying up is a dying concept in Korea, I think. There are still matchmakers here, true, but less than there were twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. Women are moving on up in the world, and that means some men are now marrying up. The trend of younger men marrying older women has gotten more widespread lately, and that used to be taboo (though I can't imagine why).

Almost every East Asian country is worried about the decline of marriage among its best-educated daughters. In Singapore the government even set up an online-dating service, lovebyte.org.sg, to boost marriage rates among graduates. The problem is no less acute among poor or ill-educated men. South Korean women seem to be no longer interested in marrying peasant farmers, for instance.

China has coined new terms to describe the two groups: sheng-nu (left-over women) and guang gun (bare branches, or men who will not add to the family tree). “Bare branches” is most commonly used in China to refer to men who will be unable to marry because of sex-selective abortion. And that encapsulates the biggest worry about Asia’s flight from marriage. If (when?) it spreads to China and India, it will combine with the surplus of bachelors to cause unheard-of strains. Prostitution could rise; brides could be traded like commodities, or women forced to “marry” several men; wives could be kept in purdah by jealous, fearful husbands.

This may sound alarmist. But the reluctance of women to marry, together with men’s continuing desire for a wife, is already producing a surge of cross-border brides. According to “Asian Cross Border Marriage Migration”, a book edited by Melody Lu and Wen-Shan Yang (Amsterdam University Press), 27% of Taiwanese marriages in 2002 involved foreign women; one in eight births that year was to a “mixed” family. Many girls are illiterate teenagers sold (in practice) by their families to older, richer foreigners. Back in their home villages, therefore, young men’s marriage chances are lower. Arranged marriages with foreigners fell in Taiwan after the government cracked down on them, but they continue to rise elsewhere. In South Korea, one-seventh of marriages in 2005 were to “Kosians” (Korean-Asians). In rural areas, the share is higher: 44% of farmers in South Jeolla province who married in 2009 took a foreign bride. If China or India were ever to import brides on this scale, it would spread sexual catastrophe throughout Asia. As it is, that catastrophe may be hard to avoid.
There is an historical precedent for falling and low marriage rates. It happened in Ireland in the late 19th century and in America and much of Europe in the 1930s. American and European marriage rates bounced back between 1945 and 1970. But Europe and America were different: marriage rates fell during an economic crisis and recovered as the economy did. The Asian peculiarity is that marriage rates have been eroding during a long boom. And as Asia gets richer, traditional marriage patterns are only likely to unravel further.

There are tons of mixed marriages in Korea now. Not as common as in the U.S., of course, but for Koreans, it's a big step. Because Korean women are less likely now to marry those farmers out there in the country, the farmers are marrying women from lower-income Asian countries (Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, etc.) in order to extend their families.

I see a couple problems with this:

First, the women that are agreeing to even talk to marriage brokers are probably not that desirable in their home countries. They're probably not very well educated. While Koreans think farmers are "country", I think there's a big difference between the Korean "country" and the South-East Asian "country". Literacy in Korea is almost 100%, and not going to college is considered "uneducated". Because of those types of differences, along with the obvious cultural differences, I would think that a marriage between a Korean farmer and a South-East Asian bride would be difficult at best, impossible at worst.

Second, Koreans are racist. Everyone's racist, let's please admit it right off the bat, but Koreans have their own brand of racism. Americans, Canadians, and anyone from the UK? Friends! South-East Asians, other dark-complected people who don't speak English? Not so much. Koreans tend to look down on South-East Asians, believing them to be inferior because of their lack of education and their perceived unsophistication. A nervous (or frightened) bride from South-East Asia won't be greeted by a smiling welcome party when she meets the villagers. She'll likely be harassed, her children teased.

Marriage is such a complicated, personal decision. I have nothing against mixed race marriages (Diana and Amanda, for example, seem to be in great marriages), but it does complicate life to some extent. Language barriers, cultural differences, and Korean in-laws do not an easy life make. Again, it's a personal choice that cannot (and should not) be made by anyone other than the bride and groom.

I didn't expect this post to become this bloated. I didn't think I would end up quoting almost all of the two articles I read; I don't know what happened. I guess when I have opinions, I just really feel the urge to write and rant and vent.

Exactly why I would be a terrible wife for a Korean man.

I KID. I would be a fantastic Korean wife, I'm great with Korean parents (no, really, I am).

I can't help but wonder how I'll feel about this post in a few years. Maybe I'll turn into one of those husband hunting women once I'm in my thirties. Maybe I'll become a golden miss and turn up my nose at the idea of matrimony. Who can tell? I'll report back in a few years. I read this post, which I wrote two and a half years ago, and I feel like I'm largely the same person. Maybe I've grown into my brain now and won't change much. Maybe I'll have a sudden growth spurt. I don't know yet, and the not knowing is what makes life fun.

Frivolity and giggles to follow. This post has exhausted my grey matter!

Random Things

2011-08-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Life is tripping along, as it does. I've been working more hours than usual, but it's a good thing- I feel like I'm getting things done, and I feel useful. Because of the hours I work, though, I haven't been doing a thing once I get home. Hence my lazy post today. At least there are pictures?

This is the view from work. We're on the eighth floor in an area of office buildings, all very tall (as you can see). There are wee parks all over the place and tons of coffee shops. From this view, Western Dom would be just to the right, beyond the buildings. The weather's been fickle lately, sunny and clear in the mornings and then cloudy and sprinkling in the afternoons, but I managed to get this picture when the sun was still out.

The ingenuous way that Koreans transport large items to tall buildings. People move this way, too, their luggage going out the big veranda windows that most apartments have. I rather love this- it's so much more practical than people with dollies running in and out of elevators, as they do in the States.

I went on a skincare spree because I've finally run out of some of the things that I brought with me. From the photo above, I only bought nine items. There are at least seventeen bits and bobs! Korean beauty shops, especially road shops, are all about samples and "service" items (free gifts). I should probably review some of this stuff (I really like the Innisfree toner and scrub, supposedly made with something or other from a volcano in Jeju Island).

My hair grows pretty fast, which means it's already grown out into a shaggy bob (rather than a short pixie cut), which means that my cowlicks are back. I have rather severe cowlicks (inherited from my father) and somewhat wavy hair (inherited from my mother). I keep both of those traits in check by keeping my hair short or tying it back, but it's at that in-between stage where I can't do anything with it. So I whipped out my straight iron, intending to tame the worst of it ... but then I plugged it in and smelled smoke a couple minutes later.

Yup. Destroyed my straight iron. I threw it out and gave up. I suppose I should go get a straight iron here and give it to someone when I leave. I probably will, when my hair grows out even more and I can't take it anymore. For now, I don't care enough to do anything about my hair.

What would a random blog post be without a secret subway photo? This guy was just epic- mushroom hair cut, drop-crotch pants, and shower slippers? How could I not take his picture? I think this was on the subway when I went to do my whole alien registration thing. I don't even remember anymore, all my subway jaunts are a blur.

Hopefully, the weather holds up this weekend so I can go check out some camera lenses in Seoul (my cameras have been feeling very neglected lately because I haven't used them at all since I've been in Korea). I do want to take some pictures of Ilsan while I'm here- I'll be the weird Korean with the giant DSLR camera, snapping random photos.

Quite a few things are happening at work lately, but I'm hoping that I still find the time to blog. I want to retain a record of what I did and what I said while I was in Korea.

That's all the randomness I can think of- for now, at least!

(By the way, this is my 497th post on this blog. It's insane to think that I'll be at 500 soon!)

Korean-Japanese Food, Western Dom

2011-08-22T01:13:00.000-07:00

I've been working here in Korea since July 11 (over a month ago!) and had lunch out pretty much every single workday. There is only one (one!) time that I've been to lunch at a restaurant that I had already been to. Yes. Over a month of going to a new restaurant every day. There are a LOT of restaurants right around my work because I work (and live) in the busiest part of Ilsan (일산). There's not much just outside this area- which is to say, there's not much outside of Western Dom (웨스턴돔) and LaFesta (라페스타), two large, outdoor shopping areas (sorry, neither of their websites have English versions).

Western Dom (no 'e', I promise), in particular, is literally right next to work. I've been out to lunch in Western Dom more than anywhere else. There are tons of restaurants and tons of coffee places (including a newly opened one, called Beans & Berries, which is pretty cute).

One of the types of food we eat quite a bit is Korean-Japanese. Much like Korean-Chinese food, there is (usually) a Korean twist to the Japanese food here. I couldn't say for sure, as I've never explored Japan or China, but it seems to me that Korean-Japanese is a lot more authentic than Korean-Chinese. From what I've experienced in the U.S. and here in Korea, Korean-Chinese food is quite a departure from "real" Chinese food, whereas Korean-Japanese is passably Japanese (other than the fact that Koreans like spicy more than Japanese do).

I've been trying to remember to take pictures of things (very difficult sometimes, as I'm distracted by all kinds of things in this rather hectic city), and what better to take pictures of than food? Who doesn't love food? (I don't want to know if you don't love food, that's just wrong.)

So, a couple photos of recent Korean-Japanese lunches.

Curry (Koreans distinguish between Japanese-style curry (카레) and Indian-style curry (커리) with slightly different pronunciations) at Abiko (아비꼬, あびこ), on the second floor of Western Dom.

Donburi (Koreans call this 덥밥, which translates to "covered rice") at Millefueille (밀피유), also on the second floor of Western Dom.

Yes, I've been eating a lot of donkatsu (돈까스) lately (Japanese-style fried pork cutlet). The donburi was actually really very good, with runny eggs covering the whole thing. I don't like donkatsu in donburi, and I've always known it, but I always get it anyway. I like my donkatsu to be crisp and crunchy, and when it's covered with cooked soft eggs, the crisp and crunch disappear.

I bought Western fast food for the very first time today (Burger King) because I had to run home for lunch (I left my access card at home) and I had left really late (around 1:30). Burger King is on the first floor of my building, so I dashed in, dashed out, went upstairs to my house, inhaled my food, then dashed back to work. Burger King is, not surprisingly, better in Korea than in its home country. Sigh.

This past weekend was my first really social experience in Korea. I belong to a Facebook group for people in Ilsan (apparently, we're called Ilsanites?)- specifically, foreigners and expatriates. Since I'm mostly foreign and somewhat of an expat, I joined the group. Saturday night was a pub crawl fundraiser in Ilsan, right near my house, so I decided (with only a little bit of trepidation) to meet some English speakers and check out the bar scene here.

The fundraiser, by the way, was for a little girl named Hannah Warren, who has a rare condition that requires that she get a tracheal transplant. See her story and donate here- the fundraiser ends on October 22. She's really adorable, it's impossible to see her little face and not donate.

Drinking, meeting new people, and doing it all for a good cause? It seemed like a great idea, and it was (for the most part). One thing I've realized is that having a pub crawl in Korea, while a fantastic idea, is really difficult, especially when the crawl only includes Western bars.

Pub crawls are easiest if all the locations are right next to each other (i.e. downtown Culver City, or Abbott Kinney for First Fridays). This Korean pub crawl had four locations (all bars- Intos, Whiskey Weasel, LePub, and Old Rock) that were in something like a four-block radius (city blocks). But because addresses are non-existent in Korea and none of the bars were on the ground floor, they were a bit hard to find.

A group of four of us got lost on the way to LePub and wandered around Ilsan late at night (we eventually found the place). I wasn't going to judge the bars during this pub crawl because it was a biggish event, and I knew the bars wouldn't be their typical selves, with their regular vibe. They were okay, as far as bars go, and I didn't dislike any of them. My favorites were LePub (lots and lots of cocktails, if that's any incentive) and Old Rock (good atmosphere- the wall behind the bar is stacked with records (vinyl!) rather than bottles of booze).

The hundred or so people that convened for this fundraiser were all English teachers and their significant others. I was literally the only person (of all the people I met, anyway) that didn't teach English. Also, they were all really young. I mean, that's logical- when you're thinking about what you want to do with your life and decide to go teach English in a foreign country for a year, you're generally young, trying to find yourself, and/or trying to travel when you have no money. New college graduates, kids that haven't started a "real" career yet, etc.

I don't know if I was just in that sort of group, but I only met two Americans! The vast majority of the people I talked to were Canadian (with a couple Brits and an Irishman sprinkled in), mostly from around Toronto (I think). I've never been so happy to meet Americans before, by the way- it was a strange sensation and I pounced on my two countrymen (a Texan and a San Diegan).

Despite the fact that I felt old and suddenly very Korean in the group of young Westerners, it was a good experience. I got home past 4 a.m. and only slept a few hours before suddenly jolting awake (I don't sleep much if I drink, I find). I was exhausted yesterday (Sunday) and didn't really get to enjoy the lovely weather. The weather today was very nice and clear, sunny without any clouds, but then the thunder just started about half an hour ago and there are little bursts of rain. I didn't bring an umbrella today, so here's hoping that I don't get drenched on the way home.

Oh- the best part of this pub crawl? I walked home and it only took about ten minutes. I really do enjoy being in a walking city.

Mindless Dribble

2011-08-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

Back home in the States, I think I tended to watch lots of procedural television shows, like "House" and "Law and Order." For story-related programming, I liked shows with action or drama, like "True Blood," "Boardwalk Empire," "Nikita," and the like. (I'm racking my brain to think of shows right now, and those were all the ones that popped up. I'm tired.)

Here in Korea, possibly because of the language barrier (dramatic shows tend to be harder to understand, since they have ridiculous plots that involve suing conglomerates, children switched at birth, and all sorts of legal entanglements), I like comedies, reality shows, talk shows, and romantic comedies. They are easier to understand, for me, and they have the added bonus of pop-ups. Koreans love them some pop-ups.

One of the shows that I watched even in LA (my parents watch Korean TV) was "Infinite Challenge (무한도전)." It's amusing because it's a reality show about six hapless guys that are put to various challenges (they aren't really naturally good at anything- they're mostly comedians, and mostly comic relief). I've seen them try to learn to ride a bobsled, walk on a rope hung over muddy water, race F1 cars, and so on. For the past several months, they've been learning to row, to compete in a regatta that takes place in Korea between different international universities. It was the longest challenge that they're ever tried (five months of training, I think?), and the guys really worked hard (though whining all the while). Fun and totally different from the typical American reality show.

This show is somewhat easier to understand because it prominently and constantly uses pop-ups. To make points, to push the story along, to exaggerate emotions, all kinds of reasons.

Some pop-ups are informational, like above. Basically, a synopsis of what's going on. I like seeing these, as they help with my spelling (seriously, Korean spelling is sometimes super difficult for me).

The above is a mock news piece, used to exaggerate emotion. There's a lot going on with very little screen space, I realize, but it adds to the frenetic, funny feeling of the show. Why don't America shows use more pop-ups??

Comic book style pop-ups are used, too- to make a point, to give the eye somewhere to go, to be funny- it all works. Because it's a reality show, several cameramen just follow the guys around, shooting willy-nilly. Framing, cinematography, it all goes down the drain, as the guys usually behave like five-year-olds that are in desperate need of naps. The pop-ups help with all those typical reality-show issues.

(The rowing challenge ended, by the way, last weekend. They lost the regatta (really badly), but they did well and really seemed to have learned a lot. It was heartening to watch.)

There are a couple romantic comedies that I've been watching while I've been here, and they've both ended recently. I'm totally bummed, because I see no viable replacements yet. I don't warm up to dramas very quickly, so I usually need a few episodes before I'm fully on board. I also find that in Korean dramas, the first few episodes are BORING. Character establishment, plot development- writers, PLEASE. You use trite cliches all the time, we know all of them already!

- "I Need Romance (로맨스가 필요해)"- TVN- (terrible title) a cute romantic comedy that was Korea's answer to Carrie Bradshaw. Not nearly as risque as "Sex and the City," but pretty scandalous for Korean TV standards. Its main character reminded me of Carrie in that, like Carrie, I was annoyed by her. They both tend to be whiny and self-centered, though they mean well. They love their friends but somehow make all their friends' problems about them. Not as irritating as Carrie, but almost. The subplots, the girlfriends, and the boys that came in and out of their lives- very cute and easy to watch.

I liked that the show was fast-paced, without the lengthy drawing-out of idiotic plot points. I did not at all like that the main character (girl with the Minnie Mouse bow on her head, above) worked in a hotel. Korean dramas, PLEASE stop writing your heroines as hoteliers. We're all over it. There are a lot of other, more interesting careers to depict. (Really, since there's been a drama actually titled "Hotelier," isn't time to move on?)

These three girls are best friends, and very different. In the picture above, the girl on the left is Samantha, with Miranda mixed in. The girl on the right is Carrie. And the girl in the middle is Charlotte, with a dash of Piglet (from Winnie the Pooh) thrown in for good measure (she's scared of everything, dumb about men, and the comic relief for the group).

One of the things that made InYoung (Carrie- "inyoung," by the way, is "doll" in Korean) less annoying than Carrie was that her narration actually made her a better character. Carrie's narrations always made me wonder how self-centered a person could get.

Unlike "Sex and the City," with (crazy) Pat Field and their (insane) wardrobe budget, this show didn't mind putting their characters in some zany get-ups. Their pajama parties, for instance, usually had the girls in ridiculous pajamas with either masks on their faces or wax strips on their legs.

It was a sweet little show (I think I arrived in Korea around the middle of the show, episode 8 or so, so I caught up on the first episodes online) and somewhat less fantastical than most other Korean dramas (wherein a rich and handsome prince whisks off a penniless but beautiful maid, or some other similar dribble). Not that this show didn't have its moments- the guy that's standing in the picture above was one of those rich and handsome prince types (heir of the owner of the hotel, I think).

(By the way, the show that replaced this one is about a woman golfer. Lame. I refuse to watch.)

- "Heartstrings (넌 내게 반했어)"- MBC- a cute little romantic comedy just ended this week. This one's about college students, so the scale of the drama is quite small- the biggest problems that they have are little issues, like a mean classmate, or their musical getting canceled. In the scheme of life, not a big deal. Because their problems are small (though they milk the melodrama to death), it makes for easy viewing. I'm not a fan of the overly dramatic Korean shows that are all about melodrama, with no comedy for relief.

The characters and plot are all predictable, but the actors are adorable enough to forgive their inability to act and to just watch. It's amusing, but because of the bad acting and the inane plot, I found that I wasn't able to solely focus on the show- I had to be doing something else while watching, like reading or washing dishes or brushing my teeth.

This show used the rather stupid and over-used devices of disapproving parents / grandparent and scheming mother. I did not enjoy those scenes at all, as they were forced, silly, and just filler. But I do enjoy the picture above, I think it's adorable. I love Volkswagen vans, and I love orange. And I admire men that aren't adverse to putting on white jeans.

The hero (the dude above, obviously) is in some sort of boy band (C.N. Blue? what a stupid name), so he constantly plays the guitar and sings in the show. The problem is, he has a thin, wispy little voice and isn't actually a great singer or guitar player.

The heroine (the dudette above, obviously) sang in a previous drama ("You're Beautiful," which I did not see, as the girl played twins (brother and sister), and the sister character cross dresses to replace her ailing brother in his band. Yeah. No way was I even giving that a chance.) and her voice is passable, but still not chills-down-the-arms good.

Still, despite the fact that I seem to be full of complaints, I didn't hate the show. It didn't perturb me if I missed an episode here or there, and I didn't catch up on the episodes that I didn't watch, but it was just amusing enough ... though I admit that I did channel-surf while I watched.

One of the most annoying things about Korean dramas is their tendency to use the same song (sometimes, if I'm lucky, it's two or three songs rather than just one) over and over and over and OVER again. I have these songs stuck in my head the next day because they just. won't. stop. playing. them. It's maddening! It's called a soundtrack, people, and there should be a variety of songs on it. Please, please, please stop with the incessant repetition of the theme song.

The most promising show that I've seen lately is "Scent of a Woman (여인의 향기)," not at all based on the Al Pacino movie from 1992. This drama's about a woman in her 30s (an old maid, by Korean standards) who is told that she only has six months to live. She's trying to really live life in the short time that she has.

Kim Sun-Ah (김선아), of "My Name Is Kim Sam-Soon (내 이름은 김삼순)" fame, plays the doomed heroine, and does so well. She's not the problem. I'm having trouble with the (rich, well-connected, well-born) boss, played by Lee Dong-Wook (이동욱). His character (or the actor) is so wooden and so heavy-lidded that I feel like the guy is always asleep, even when he's "angry." I watch the show occasionally, but don't remember what days it airs and don't really care. Maybe it'll pick up, since it's nearing the middle of its run (I find that I don't care about the shorter dramas (16 - 20 episodes) until about episode 8 or 9, which is usually when the plots (finally) picks up).

I tried out "Spy Myung-Wol (스파이 명월)," but the main character (Myung-Wol, a female North Korean spy) is played by Han Yeh-Seul (한예슬), who is so annoying that I can't take it. Plus, she looks like an alien and seems to be constantly wall-eyed. Google her, she has giant bugged-out eyes like an alien! (Apparently, there is some sort of furor right now because she quit the show (incidentally, who quits a show that only airs for a couple months?!) and the production company's going to sue her or something.) It's just not that interesting of a story, either- a North Korean spy trying to seduce a South Korean pop star? Meh. If they had written it from a more comedic bent, maybe, but they're going with more of a serious vibe, which just seems overly theatrical and silly.

I know that I'm not the target audience for Korean shows. I also don't know when shows air, and I don't care enough to look up times. I don't investigate what's airing, I just watch whatever catches my fancy (currently, lots of "Cold Case," which I had never watched before I came to Korea). There's also a few channels that constantly play movies, mostly American movies, which I tend to gravitate towards. After a day of working with Korean people, exercising the Korean part of my brain (it's a tiny, itty-bitty sliver of brain matter), it's nice to leave on some white noise that I understand without having to make an effort. TV is really just white noise, to me, because I don't really sit there and watch intently. There are other things that take more concentration, after all.

There are plenty of other shows that are airing, and that I watch, but those will have to wait for another post. (I need to mention "Korea's Top Model" at some point, because that is one crazy group of girls- and the hostess is WORLDS better than Tyra.)

For now, I'm trying to survive work, meet people, and soak in the motherland. (Yesterday, there was an episode of a beauty show that focused on pores. For the entire hour.) Oh, Korea, how you charm and repel me.

Formspring

2011-08-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Formspring is basically a website that is a bit like Twitter, but Q&A style. You can ask questions, answer questions- it's fast, it's easy, it's instant gratification in the same way that Twitter is.

I've added a Formspring widget (see it there, on the left? at the bottom?) to add to my ever-growing column of stuff over there.

You can stay anonymous, if you like. So. If you're curious about something, go ahead and ask me a question!

Bear Soup

2011-08-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

Contrary to the title of the post, I did not have soup made of bear. However, I did have gomtang (곰탕), which I'm calling "bear soup" because literally, 곰 means bear and 탕 means soup. There are lots of funny Korean words in this manner, which I'll explain as I blog more about Korea.

On Saturday, after lunch and tea with my cousin, we took the subway to Uljiro Station (을지로) so I could meet my family friend and we could dash off to Myeongdong (명동), a.k.a. get-me-out-of-this-unholy-crush-of-people.

When I went to Myeongdong last year, I had a LOT of trouble. I went with the same cousin that I met for lunch and tea, and he did not adequately prepare me for the sheer number of people that would be crunched into a rather small space. I am not a fan of strangers invading my personal space. AT ALL. I don't like it when strangers, no matter how good looking they may be, touch me even casually. I hug and kiss my family and friends, but if I don't know you, I don't want your germs.

Myeongdong last year was a big mistake. I was not only unprepared for the sea of people, it was also Lunar New Year when I went. Unbelievably crowded. (I eventually went back to Myeongdong with my sister and cousin last year, and I was fine, mostly because I was emotionally prepared for strangers to be all feelin' me up.)

This year, I knew to grit my teeth and bear it. So we went to Myeongdong ... and it wasn't that bad! Maybe I've gotten used to living in a busy, crowded city (heaven help me, am I actually adjusting to Korea??) or maybe my expectations were just worst-case scenario, but I wasn't horrified.

We had (a really, really early) dinner (bear soup!) and then wandered around Myeongdong and did some shopping. I (shamefully) bought a top at Forever 21, some face masks at TonyMoly (I am addicted to face masks now, what with the Face Shop, Skin Food, and Missha being ever so populous), and browsed through some phone cases (there are adorable iPhone 4 cases in Korea).

Bear soup is pretty similar to seollongtang (설렁탕), one of my top five foods of all time. Seollongtang is a little more opaque, whereas gomtang is a little bit more transparent. I am used to eating seollongtang with thinly sliced brisket; the gomtang that we had contained all kinds of different animal parts.

I didn't eat any of the animal innards that I didn't recognize. The slices of mystery meat edged with black? I had no bloody clue what part of which animal those might be. I didn't touch them.The kimchi was really good (especially the radish (daikon) kimchi, kkakddoogi), the soup was delicious in the way that can only be had by stewing cows for endless hours, and because we went between lunch and dinner, there weren't too many people.

I probably mentioned this in some previous post raving about seollongtang, but I'm not a big fan of green onions, except in this sort of soup. Then, the green onions are perfect- they wilt just very slightly in the hot soup, taking the edge of that onion-y sharpness that they can have, and they provide a nice contrast in texture to the silky soup and the soft, fall-apart meat.

The more I go to Seoul, the more I discover reasons that I like Korea. This is problematic, as my time in Korea is almost half (!) over. I can't believe I've been here for a month and a half- where in the world does all that time go??

Work's been picking up lately (finally), and I am feeling more like I've adjusted to my working life here. I've realized in my weeks here that the shy little girl that I once was is not as far beneath the surface as I had previously thought. Being in a foreign country, even if it is my homeland, has shown me that there is a huge difference between knowing a language and being a native speaker. I am not comfortable working in Korean, though I am adapting. I am struggling to get that shyness back under the surface and let my assertive (English-speaking) self rise to the top.

My mother says that my Korean's gotten better in the time that I've been here, that I speak more confidently and more quickly. I don't yet sense a difference, but at this point, I think it's a vocabulary problem. My Korean vocabulary is pretty crap, even colloquially, and it's never more apparent than at work, where technical jargon and slightly formal words (surroundings, atmosphere, internal, external, etc.) are lost on me. I know that the best way to improve my vocabulary is to read, but reading Korean is still too uncomfortable for me to do it easily.

Here's hoping that the longer I'm here, the easier things will get!

Cafe Mahsil, Seoul

2011-08-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

Cafe Mahsil
2nd Floor, 62-2 Taipyongro-1 Ga, Jung-Gu, Seoul
2층, 62-2 태평로 1가, 정구, 서울
02-725-6930
011-9068-8087

Hooray for long weekends! Yesterday (August 15) was Korean Independence Day (광복절, Gwangbokjeol), so I didn't have to work. I spent my time pottering about, watching TV and movies ("G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra" was terrible, but unintentionally hilarious) with half my attention on other things, and reading (last book of the "Benedict Society" series, I quite like them and am sad that I'm almost done!).

Saturday was spent in Seoul, running about. The first stop was in Gwanghwamun (광화문), a neighborhood in Seoul. I still don't quite understand the way Koreans separate their neighborhoods, districts, counties, cities, states, and all that. It's confusing. So I met my cousin (the cousin who was in the States for Christmas a couple years ago) at a place ambiguously called Gwanghwamun, which was very convenient for me because I could take one subway there, rather than having to switch lines, which still unnerves me a bit.

We went to lunch at some Chinese restaurant (we always eat Chinese food when we're together, it's funny), which was yummy, then went to have coffee. It's very much in the style of our family (he's a maternal cousin- his father is my mother's older brother) to linger over coffee or tea. We wandered around the neighborhood in a very light drizzle and stumbled upon a sign that looked promising.

Traipsing up a flight of stairs, I was encouraged by the look and feel of the place. It didn't really seem like a cafe, more like a little bistro.

For a Saturday, it was really quiet. My cousin ordered coffee, I ordered iced omija (오미자) tea, a Korean herbal tea that's mostly made from berries (hence its pretty color) and tends to be on the sweet side. It was delicious, with crushed ice rather than cubed, and the color made me happy. (Yes, I can sometimes be girly and get happy based on a cheery color.)

We talked about this, that, and everything in between. One of the best things about Korea has been the fact that, for the first time in my life, I live in the same country as many members of my extended family. I've never texted or just randomly called my cousins or aunts before, and though it's a small thing, it's something that has made me feel closer to my family.

This cousin, in particular, is the only cousin I have that is older than me (on either side of my family). Granted, he's only a year older than me, but there's still something about being younger than someone. I don't know quite how to describe it, but being older lends a certain ... responsibility, maybe, in Korean culture. Even in modern Korean culture. I like the change in being younger, it relaxes me. Don't get me wrong, I like being the older, responsible one, but every so often, it's nice to be the baby.

I have yet to go to my hometown (Jeonju, 전주), but I'm sure I will one of these weekends. There's a lot going on in Jeonju (my aunt and uncle that live with my maternal grandfather are building a house to move into, and construction is running behind schedule), so I'm not sure when I'll make it down there. I'm thinking that maybe I'll go to Daegu (대구) next weekend (hi, William!) and check out the sights there, hang out with William, ride the KTX for the first time, and probably eat a lot (every time those 조인성 Outback Steakhouse commercials come on, I think of you, William). Who knows, though, things change constantly.

For posterity, I took a picture of my cousin at the cafe. He used to have long hair (see the linked Christmas post above) and recently chopped it all off. I didn't recognize him the first time I saw him a couple weeks ago- he had been wearing a shirt that I had given him last year, which was the only reason I had known it was him.

That's his 멋있는 pose- he's acting distinguished in his Konglish shirt. 엄아, 잘 보고있어?? None of the rest of our family has seen his haircut, so I'm making it public!

After our hours over lunch and tea, my cousin took me on the subway to Myeongdong (명동), where I met up with a family friend. She just graduated from college and came to Korea in June for vacation (her father's here, her mother and brother are still in California). It'll be my next post, probably, because I'm exhausted from my relaxing weekend.

I just discovered a couple days ago that another family friend (our mothers are friends and my mother taught the kids piano) is in Korea. She's quite a bit younger than me (I feel so old in this country) and in the U.S. Army, stationed in Korea. Maybe I'll have an "American in Korea" experience sometime.

Short week! Thank goodness it's already Tuesday, because I'm ready for another weekend. I'm antsy to go somewhere (I'm eying Japan, even though my parents do not approve. It may end up being Singapore or Thailand) but I can't leave the country for a little while yet. I'll have to content myself with weekend excursions in Korea- there's so much to see here, and I haven't done any of it!

Cute Overload: Contact Lenses

2011-08-11T04:58:00.001-07:00

I bought contacts tonight. Getting contact lenses in Korea is quite easy- if you know your prescription, they'll just sell the lenses to you. If you don't know your prescription, a very quick exam and then you're ready to buy.
More so than the lenses, the free case they gave me is adorable. There are even cuter cases for sale, but why would I buy a case?
The salesgirl took the lenses out of their glass cases and put them in the (cleaned) cute case for me. Picking a pair of contacts (I got lightly colored ones), getting the lenses, and paying took all of ten minutes, at most. So easy. America, take note.

Cute Overload: Cake

2011-08-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of insufferably adorable things here in the ROK. Just one of the many (millions) would be the cakes.

While Baskin-Robbins started in the US (presumably with 31 flavors), it's branched out into some sort of dessert juggernaut in Korea. There are flavors and options that I've never seen in the US, and when we went to the Baskin-Robbins in Western Dom today (yes, it's spelled "Dom," without the 'e'), I noticed that they have fondue there. FONDUE. In an ice cream store! (The fondue hardware was impressive- specially designed crockery and dishes with the BR logo on them and everything.)

More so than in the US, Baskin-Robbins is an ice cream parlor here in Korea. People sit around, lounge, talk, spend hours over their ice cream (or fondue, I suppose) and coffee (there's always coffee where Koreans are lounging). They are cleaner, cuter, and more welcoming than any Baskin-Robbins I've ever been to in the States.

It's my aunt's birthday today (my mother's older brother's wife) and it's also, I discovered, a co-worker's birthday today. (Happy birthday, 숙모!)

Several of us (seven, to be precise) went to lunch, including birthday boy (we call him Diana, because he's the one that sang the Paul Anka song when we went out last week). For the first time since I've been here, we had to get into a car to get to lunch. Since it was seven of us, four of us took a cab (a measly 2,500 won! $2.37).

On our way back from lunch, we had trouble catching a cab, so we ended up walking. We weren't going to walk, we were just walking until we got a cab ... but we never ended up catching an empty cab. The cicadas were out in full, angry force today- they were LOUD. I thought there was a broken generator somewhere, they were so loud. So with the screeching cicadas serenading us from lush, green trees, we hoofed it, probably a little over a mile.

Since birthday boy (Diana) drove back (he's the only one out of the seven of us that has a car today), the four of us who walked stopped by Baskin-Robbins to buy a birthday cake. There were three girls and one guy, so of course we picked a cute little cake that looks like it's for children. (Also, we just walked a mile or so and needed air conditioning.)

Is this cake not adorable? Just tooth-achingly darling? The lion and the monkey are decorated cookies, and those pink and white blocks are marshmallows (they make marshmallows at Baskin-Robbins here! No stiff, rubbery Jet-Puffed Marshmallows!). We stuck a bunch of candles in the cake (well, technically, I think it's supposed to be three big candles and four little candles) and sang happy birthday (in Korean) to "Diana."

I do not recall how much ice cream cakes were back home, but I know they weren't cheap. And they weren't this ornate, they were just plain little affairs with whipped cream dollops for decorations. For this cake, I would think you would pay about $40 or $50 in LA. Right? (I don't think anyone in LA reads my blog, so it's a rhetorical question- on my blog, I'm right. Always.)

This thing was only 22,000 won ($20.89). Totally cute in a very Korean way, without the bloated American price tag (ahem, Starbucks, Coffee Bean, plethora of "American" restaurants).

The walk back to work has completely wiped me out. I don't mind walking (even in heels) and I don't mind working (usually), but walking out in the blazing sunlight has tired me out, almost to the point of uselessness. I find that I get listless and boneless when I stay out in the sun, drooping over like a wilted plant. I'm very wilty right now, even with the latte that I'm chugging to try and stay awake.

I'm thinking that I'll keep posting about cute things in Korea, because there are so many. Can't believe I haven't thought of this until now!

Seoul Day

2011-08-07T18:59:00.000-07:00

I finally left Ilsan (일산) on Saturday! It was a rather long and tiring day, but I didn't mind at all. I saw family that I hadn't seen (I still have a lot of family members I've yet to visit!), though I didn't take pictures of them (uh, I was busy taking pictures of food). I took the subway for the first time (this year) and managed to get home faster than expected. I had non-Asian food. I had four (!) cups of coffee, because my family is all about coffee.

So it started quite early in the morning (for me). Work starts at 10:00, which means that I tend to groggily wake up around 8:30 or 9:00. I am not a morning person, so this suits me just fine. Since my aunt wanted to trek out earlier than I start my workday, I resigned myself to a sleepless night and a jam-packed day.

My aunt came around 9:30, picked me up, and we were off to Gunpo (군포), where my great-aunt (이모 할머니- my maternal grandmother's younger sister) lives, in a rather spacious and quite lovely 19th floor apartment. (My mother gets along very well with my great-aunt, and they are very similar, more so than my mother and grandmother.) With three generations of women, it was a comfortably talkative afternoon.

Though Korea's a small country, it seems like it always takes at least an hour to get anywhere. I have no idea why that is, because we didn't really hit any traffic. Perhaps the roads are all curvy and longer than necessary? Whatever the case, we didn't get to my great-aunt's until about 11:30. (We had stopped at E-Mart first, to buy grapes and cherries- Koreans don't go anywhere empty-handed, especially to their families.)

My great-aunt is a former opera singer and the widow of a politician. As such, she has slightly different tastes from a typical Korean woman her age. A few of the things that come to mind when I think about her are pasta, cheese, and coffee. She's probably the only person in my family that makes and drinks espresso at home. She loves cheese, real cheese, because she's spent a lot of time in Europe and actually knows it. She knew and loved pasta long before it became a fad in Korea.

As soon as we got to her house, we had coffee. Really cute espresso cups, no? Not cups that I would personally have in my house (I like plain, plain, plain), but these were fun. My great-aunt also gave us macarons (not macaroons!), which she had discovered in France ages ago. She told me about the two French brands of macarons sold in Korea and imperiously stated that one was better than the other. (For some reason, I only remember the one that she said isn't as good, which is Fauchon.) I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the macarons, but they were lovely. (Those cherries in the photo above were the ones we got at E-Mart, and they were pretty dang good.)

Lunch was ordered in, because we were all hungry and with the sky threatening to pour, we didn't feel like leaving the house. Chinese-Korean, of course, consisting of jjajangmyeon (짜장면) and sweet-and-sour pork (탕수육). After lunch, another espresso with ddeok (or tteok (떡), Korean rice cakes) for dessert. Those rice cakes were really good- very dark green, indicating that a lot of mugwort (쑥) was in them, and filled with a variety of nuts and fruit. They weren't too sweet, but sweet enough to feel like dessert and somehow still feel healthy. A handful of cherries and the espresso ended our visit with my great-aunt.

My great-aunt, knowing how I love cheese (it's a trait shared by my great-aunt, my mother, my sister, and myself), commanded that was all go to Costco together, since she has a Costco card and she claims that there is good cheese to be had there. So off we went, driving right through a squall (소나기 in Korean- I love that word- sonagi) and arriving at Costco to realize that the place is PACKED.

It was insane. It was like a concert. Or a Saturday at Disneyland. Once we checked out, we realized that there was an enormous line to get on the elevator. Since we didn't have a shopping cart, we lucked out and skipped the line. It was a grim scene- add in the pushing and shoving that is typical of Koreans, and I was really, really happy to get out of there.

In my defense, this cheese isn't all mine. The mascarpone and the Swiss are my great-aunt's (she fondues at home!). But yes, I bought three types of cheese. Life without good cheese is tragic, let me tell you. The emmentaler and the raucher are actually from France and Switzerland, not a word of English on the packaging. I had to get the pepperjack, it's Tillamook and it made me think of home. I resisted a giant wheel of camembert and a round of brie. It took a lot of willpower.

That plastic-wrapped package on the very left is a cheesecake, which was purchased in anticipation of the next stop of the day. My uncle (삼촌- my mother's younger brother) lives in Seoul, not too far from my great-aunt, and we were off to his church (he's a pastor).

My uncle has four daughters, two of whom (the oldest two) lived with my parents for a while. They attended college in Cerritos and eventually got their own apartment, the first time they'd ever lived away from family (well, other than each other- so I guess the first time they lived away from adults in their family). Because they were in the States for a while (a couple years) and I saw them every weekend, I know them fairly well. They're only a little younger than me (three years and five years), so it's quite easy when we see each other, none of the usual awkwardness of "we're family but don't really know each other."

My aunt's navigation system took us through Itaewon (이태원), the "foreigner" neighborhood of Seoul. Sure enough, there were more signs in English than in Korean, and there were quite a few different types of restaurants crammed into a small space. (I saw a Greek place and had a sudden desire for feta cheese.) The picture above was just an interesting building that I snapped while in the car, waiting for a light. Turns out that it's a boutique hotel, cute.

We got to my uncle's church, where the fourth floor is his office. It's more like a summer camp- a big balcony, full of plants (my mother and my uncle both get their green thumbs from their father) and vegetables, a little kitchen, places to sit for at least twenty people, books everywhere, and even a piano. Little guppy-like fish inside the office, in large, clear tubs, and outside, in even bigger rubber tubs, feeding off flourishing water lilies. Vegetables that grow like weeds, my favorite being a group of delicate lettuce, frilly and speckled green and purple.

I don't know why I only took a picture of the sunflowers- there was a single morning glory that had refused to go back to sleep and was stubbornly unfurled, a few water lilies that hadn't wilted in the heat of the day, various flowers and plants. It had started to rain almost the second I stepped out onto the balcony, big, slow drops that seemed to fall reluctantly from the sky, and I beat a pretty hasty retreat back indoors.

We visited a while, eating peaches and grapes (there's always food involved, always) and then we kids said goodbye, as we were off to dinner. We were to meet another cousin (my mother's older brother's son) for dinner, so the three girls took two umbrellas (I took my cheese, too) and dashed for the bus.

We met at Shinsegae (신세계) Department Store. It's a very nice place, nicer (at least at first glance) than the Lotte Department Store next door to my house. The tenth floor consists of restaurants. I loved the aesthetics- all wood and white, nothing overly ornate, but clean without being spartan. We decided to go Italian and ended up at Il Cipriani Bistro. The vibe was decidedly un-Italian (or, I should say, un-American-Italian), but seemed like it would be okay.

We all ordered "course sets," but I only took pictures of my meal. Note the china- it's very Korean and not at all what I would have paired with Italian food, with the exception of the bread bowl and pasta bowl.

Different types of bread, which is normal. They even brought balsamic vinegar and olive oil (Koreans love butter with their bread), so I gave them points for that. Any points they had were immediately taken away when I noticed that there was steamed corn and potatoes in the (very cute) bread bowl. That's definitely Korean.

We got a bottle of Los Vascos, a Chilean wine. I generally like wine from Chile and Argentina, and since I was buying dinner, I picked the wine. Everyone ended up liking it, so it was a good call. The wine wasn't as expensive as I had thought it would be, which was a pleasant surprise.

Soup. It was weird. Grainy, not hot enough, and without any distinct flavor. I think it was ... potato? It wasn't creamy (Koreans don't usually like heavy cream, they think it's greasy), so it wasn't quite cream of potato soup, but I think that's what it wanted to be. I was disappointed, because the first course is usually very telling. (Side note- there are no Russet potatoes here. They only have waxy potatoes, and I find that Russets make better soup.)

The salad. It was supposedly a Caesar salad, but not really. First of all, there was tomato and grilled onion sitting on the plate. For garnish? I don't know, but that was weird. The dressing wasn't very strong. It didn't taste much of anchovy or black pepper, but was mostly creamy and cheesy. It was just an okay salad, and my expectations began to dwindle.

The pasta. Spaghetti in tomato sauce with eggplant. Surprisingly good sauce (though the eggplant was a little under-seasoned and overcooked), but the noodles were too soft and squishy. Way, way past al dente, which I was expecting, because Koreans like their noodles all bloated and overcooked. I like my pasta firm, probably undercooked. There were large cloves of barely-cooked garlic in the sauce, which was puzzling. I always though that Italians either cook their garlic down or, if it's going to be raw, mince the cloves. Despite my quibbles, a good dish.

The meat. They had some sort of stuffed chicken, but that sounded like it could go terribly wrong, so I went with the beef. They did a very nice medium rare (Koreans tend to eat steak and most beef cooked well done, which is a shame). The potato was really good, with a thin crisp on the outside and completely cooked through but not dry on the inside. The sauce was okay, a little bland. The waiter put a dollop of whole-grain mustard on my plate after he set it down. I have no idea what that was about. Is it supposed to be like the horseradish and prime rib combination? I didn't touch the mustard, the garlic, or the onion.

I forgot to take a picture of dessert and coffee. Dessert was called mango cake, but it was really like a mango mousse with a very, very thin (and dry) layer of cake at the bottom. Not bad, but not a cake. It came with a piece of pineapple and watermelon. The coffee was okay, but not great for an Italian place.

Not bad, overall, but nothing spectacular. For the same money, there is much better Italian food to be had in the States. However, for the same ambiance and service (never mind the food), it would have been at least twice the price in the States. It's discombobulating!

We parted ways around 10:00, I think, in the subway. The girls went off in the opposite direction, their subway having arrived almost as soon as we got to the platform. The boy cousin and I took the subway in the same direction. He was supposed to stay on the subway and keep going, but got off to make sure I found my transfer correctly and then he got back on the proper subway and left.

One transfer, two subways, 1300 won ($1.23), and about 50 minutes later, I was home. The subway station here is less than a block from my house. When Lotte Department Store is open, I can just go through the store to get home. (Their hours are appalling- they open at 10;30 but close at 8:00. What is what?!)

Though it was Saturday night and the subway was crowded, it was quiet and people were polite. A couple people were falling asleep, a girl was doing her make-up, some little kids were dancing impatiently, but most folks were on their phones, fiddling with them, listening to music, watching TV, and so on. (Yes, phones really work everywhere here, including underground in the subway- and they work so well that people can actually stream live TV. When is that going to happen in the US?)

I read an e-book on my iPhone until I felt a little motion sick (the subway's fine when it's moving, but pulling into and pulling away from the stations feels like some sort of demented horizontal elevator), then I watched my fellow passengers and guarded my bag of cheese (which felt like a load of bricks by this point), trying not to stab people with my umbrella.

That was my Saturday. Home before 11:00, which seemed early. Sunday, in comparison, was lazy and unproductive. The only things in my refrigerator right now are water, kimchi (I'm almost out!), and lots and lots of cheese, because I refused to go grocery shopping yesterday. (The pepperjack, for the record, is not as good as I had hoped / remembered. The emmentaler and raucher are amazing.)

Mandatory Fun

2011-08-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

Last night (on a Wednesday, of all days), I went to my very first 회식 (pronounced "hwe shik" and technically meaning a dinner or a meal).

Like much in Korea, it's more than what its name implies. First of all, it's mandatory. It was a group from production management and supervision, and I was basically informed that we're having a 회식. No silly questions like "are you free?" or "what's a good day?" or any of that, just an announcement and expectation that we would all be there. We didn't even know where we were going until Monday, and even that changed a few hours before we actually left the office (we were supposed to eat eel (I've never tried it) and then switched to a beef place at the last minute).

In bigger, more corporate companies, it's apparently customary for the higher-ups to torture their underlings by making the poor kids sing and dance and drink excessively and generally entertain their bosses. Thankfully, we don't quite have that vibe here, though it does still exist to some extent (if one of the two supervisors that attended told you to drink, you drink).

We started out quite well. Dinner at a barbecue place- not typical Korean barbecue, though, it was more like thick steaks grilled at the table and then cut up on the grill. Really good, though also really greasy. We all ate like pigs, probably helped along by the fact that the drinking started almost immediately. Beer and soju, of course.

Soju bombs, in LA, are a very different creature than what they are here. A soju bomb is a shot glass filled with soju that is dropped into a half-filled glass of beer, then chugged. (Like an Irish car bomb, which is a shot glass of whiskey and a splash of Baileys dropped into a half-pint of Guinness.)

Here in Korea, they drink somacs. (So = soju, mac = maekju (맥주), the Korean word for beer.) A varying amount of soju is poured into a glass, then beer is poured over it. I'm told that the beer should be poured in a rather slow stream so that the drink fizzes and foams. I drank one at the insistence of one of the vfx supervisors, but since I don't like beer, it was wasted on me. He made the somacs with just a little bit of soju, quite a bit of beer, and a ton of foam. (I liked the foam, I have to admit- and side note, Koreans don't drink beer out of pint glasses. They're more like dainty 6-ounce (8 ounces, max) glasses.)

Dinner was fine, even fun- we were sitting in a private room and the group I was sitting with (it's impossible to talk to people at the other end of the room, after all) was a cheery, talkative bunch. There were a few awkward silences, but after the first three bottles were emptied, everyone got a little louder and a little less awkward.

The second place we went to was a bar, technically, but since we were such a big group (about twenty, I think), they seated us in a karaoke room (노래방: 노래 (norae) means song, 방 (bahng) means room).

I have never witnessed such silence in such a large crowd before, other than at a funeral. At the restaurant, the loudness of the restaurant itself helped get us through the awkward moments. The sizzling of the grills, the waitresses running to and fro and telling us things, various dinner companions ordering more food or drink- all that noise masked the underlying quiet. In a noraebang (the common English spelling, though it's misleading for pronunciation), if no one's singing, it's very, very quiet. And very cold.

There was a strange, long lull where people didn't do anything at all. We sat there, around an enormous table, nobody talking. I think if the drinks had arrived sooner, we might have been okay, but the food came first (Koreans eat constantly while they drink, it dumbfounds me completely) and the drinks took their sweet, sweet time. It felt like an eternity of sitting in silence, some of the guys smoking (oh, smoking indoors, when will it stop??), some people silently nibbling on bar food.

That mood stayed with us for a good ... hour? One of the vfx supervisors finally took it upon himself to lift us out of the doldrums and forced everyone to drink by continually making us clink glasses, cheers, and down our booze. One of the guys was convinced to sing, and then things finally picked up. I think four people ended up singing (the first guy sang "Diana," by Paul Anka, and he was pretty awesome), then we were off to the next bar.

The next (and, thankfully, last) bar was literally right across the hall from the karaoke place (both on the third floor of a building filled with bars and restaurants). It was a fusion Japanese bar, which means they had lots of sake and a better selection of bar food. I don't know why, but it was much less awkward at this bar. (Though I was immediately put off by the Corona beer flag they had hanging on the wall. I got over it eventually.)

We stumbled out of the bar around 2:30 in the morning. All three locations were between work and home, so I walked home in about three minutes, trusting that everyone would make it back to their respective beds safe and sound.

This morning was pretty telling. I walked into our office (production management and the assistant supervisors all sit in a big bullpen together) and there were ... two people. Some folks are out on set, but two is still a very small number compared to how many people there normally are. It's been quiet all day, with nary a peep from the eight or so folks that eventually tiptoed in. (There are usually about 15 - 20 people in here, depending on the day.)

I'm tired. I think I'm too old to be partying on school nights- I used to be able to do it without any problems at all when I was in my early twenties, but those days are far behind me now. I can't seem to shake the fatigue today, so I'm probably going to conk out early tonight and try to catch up on sleep. I'm just thankful that I don't feel wretched. Combining soju, beer, (cheap) whiskey, and sake was probably the worst idea I've had in a long time. (Hi, 엄마 and 아빠! Poor parents, reading about their daughter's terrible drinking habits.)

I took some photos on my phone last night, but in the cold (and rainy) light of day, they are truly crap photos. Besides, I don't really know these people well enough to be posting pictures of them in a bar. So no photos. At least, not this time. I'm sure there will be another chance to document Korean drinking culture at some other point.

Last night was the first time that I've really actually talked to people at work about anything other than work (or niceties). It made me feel strange- I feel so American here, but I also see that I belong, in a weird sense. All the things that made me feel out of place in the States are perfectly acceptable here, but the things that I take for granted in the States are bizarre here. I felt off-balance all night, but people were quite nice (and drunk) and more willing to talk and put me at ease.

I could also perceptibly FEEL the cultural differences between my equals and myself in dealing with the supervisors. My peers are obedient and a bit terrorized by the supervisors, whereas I am most definitely not. I have no problem talking back to them and making fun of them, something that I feel wouldn't be as well-tolerated from one of the Koreans. Being American does give me some (small) amount of liberty. Of course, I'm generally pretty good with people (I can say that about myself because I worked really hard to get this way and I know what it was like when I was not good with people at all) and people do not usually take offense to what I say or do, as I'm pretty good at gauging limits.

I had a great (alcohol-fueled) conversation with one of the supervisors, whom I genuinely like as a person, though we have our differences at work. I got some of the guys to try out their English. They got me to try dried squid (which I love) dipped in mayonnaise and soy sauce (not so much).

I can see why these outings are a necessary evil. With the passive-aggressiveness that is so pervasive in the Korean work culture, this is the only outlet that people have in expressing any negative emotions. What happens during a 회식 doesn't count in real life (unless you punch your boss or something), and it's an opportunity to live big for a few hours on the company's dime. With the rumored salaries of some of the newer kids here, I wouldn't think that they really get to go out and party up very often.

Vitamin Water (the restore flavor), a small bowlful of rice for breakfast, and some pretty good pork ramen for lunch have mostly restored my brain cells. If only it would stop raining so I wouldn't have to worry about my shoes anymore...

Random Things

2011-08-02T03:15:00.000-07:00

More random things, because I (still!) have not ventured out beyond a half-mile radius. I honestly have no bloody idea what's wrong with me.

To trick myself, I have made plans for next weekend. With my aunt. So I can't back out from sheer laziness.

Anyways. More random things:

Cicadas. They are so loud. I've never seen one, because they're in trees and hiding, but I can hear them every time I walk by a place with trees (every single day, at least twice a day).

Dragonflies. I have never seen a dragonfly before in the States. I think they need lots of water and tend to be near rivers, creeks, and the like? I lived in the desert-y parts of the States, I have no idea what to make of these enormous flying bugs with giant cellophane wings. They're pretty, but quick and startling.

Restaurants. I realized this week that in every restaurant that I've been to (quite a few, at least 15, probably more), the patrons are expected to do some sort of work. Water is usually handed over in a lidded pitcher with teeny cups, not poured and re-filled for you. Most places have utensils and napkins on the table (in containers or drawers) and you set your own place. A lot of places make you cook- there's a burner in the middle of the table and some sort of cooking device goes onto the burner, where you grill / stew / boil whatever you're going to be eating. On the other hand, no tipping. So it balances out. (And the cost of eating out here is ridiculously cheap- my co-workers tell me that it's become pricier lately, but I've never paid more than 7,000 won ($6.65) for lunch.)

I can't think of anything else right now because my brain is frazzled. I think it's a combination of having to speak in Korean all day, being frustrated by problems that I'm trying to solve, and being stressed out about Koreans just coming at me a mile a minute. I need some mental adjustment time and I need to stop expecting to hear English everywhere I go.

I've been reading e-books for a while now (I have multiple e-book readers on my iPhone and iPad), but there is something about books printed on paper that call to me. I love (LOVE) books. I love the smell of paper and ink, I love opening that first page of a new book with an un-cracked spine, I love it all.

The bookstore in the Lotte Department Store calls to me every time I go (it's on the ninth or tenth floor), and I go fairly frequently, for the grocery store in the basement. I went on Sunday and finally found the elusive (single column) of English books. I was ecstatic, and proceeded to look at every single book they had that was printed in English (not many).

A set of three books caught my eye- their titles all started with the words "The Mysterious Benedict Society"- because, contrary to ye olde saying, I do judge books by their covers. The covers of these books are adorable and old timey and just great. Written by Trenton Lee Stewart, with charmingly askew illustrations by Carson Ellis (I love Carson as a girl's name, by the way), I was pretty much sold right away. I looked up the series on my phone, just to confirm that my judgment was sound, and noting how many stars (a lot) the first book received on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the like, I scooped up all three books. I really like them a lot- a cross between Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, and Madeleine L'Engle, I know I'll enjoy all three of them.

(And yes, I have thought this through- I may have spent my money on books that are too heavy to take back to the States with me, but I have plenty of family here that reads English and would enjoy these. I'm debating which cousin will be the lucky recipient.)

Sunday afternoon turned into a mini-shopping spree, but everything I bought was on sale (I bought some tops, I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't bring enough clothing to Korea) and comparable (at least in price) to items I would and have purchased back home. I love that there's a Muji and a Uniqlo right next door to me, but I should probably be careful not to visit too frequently. Sigh.

I thought about watching "Harry Potter" last night, but ... yeah. The constant lack of energy makes it difficult to do anything at all. Plus, it's a long movie (over 2 hours is long, to me) and I may fall asleep if I go to the movies after work.

On the (literal) bright side, it hasn't rained in a couple days. It was even sunny today, a sure sign that the clouds have lifted, if only for a little while. Yay, vitamin D!

TGIF

2011-07-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

Time seems to pass by really quickly here, for whatever reason. I'm still more tired than what I would consider to be "normal," but I'm going to blame work and leave it at that.

Life is uneventful- the rain seems to have stopped (the sun! it's shining!), the temperature rose into the 80s, and I wore heels to work today without feeling any regret. As I'm leaving work in about half an hour, I would hope that I make it home with my shoes intact.

So I took a random picture while waiting for the very slow elevator in my building (there are two banks of elevators and four elevators in each bank, and they are ALL SO SLOW). This is from the 11th floor, looking down at the garden on the 3rd floor. That pink building is one of the Lotte Department Store buildings (the shorter one- there are two right next to each other, the taller building isn't visible from this angle). The garden's been drenched lately, so no serene cups of coffee in the garden for me.

This is very typical of Korea, by the way- there are little pockets of green spaces all over the place, even in the midst of all the very tall buildings that crowd the city. Ilsan doesn't have much space, as evidenced by how high they built up the city, but there are parks and little gardens all over the place.

That picture above was taken with my Korean phone (the Samsung Galaxy SII) and the following photos were all taken with my American phone (iPhone 4). The whole 'loud shutter click' thing on the Samsung means that I have been using my iPhone for silent picture-taking. (I carry around my iPhone as an iPod, since I'm not going to be buying music and putting it on my Korean phone, which I have to return before I leave the country.)

This so-called ecological park is on the roof of the Lotte Department Store. It's a garden more than a park, but very cute, very well maintained, and very quiet. The department store is so loud (and full of pushy Koreans) but the rooftop garden is serene. I love it.

I like this type of wooden walkway. The trees in Korea are SO green. The trees in the US (well, California and New Mexico) aren't this vibrantly green. I think part of it is the weather (it's humid and rainy here, whereas California and New Mexico are deserts) and part of it is that there are lots of types of trees in Korea that I'm not used to seeing in the States.

Lotte Department Store has (generally) very nice aesthetic value. These lamps were hanging next to an escalator that I was taking (hence the blurry photo). I would want this kind of lighting for my house- diffused, no glaring spotlights, peaceful.

This is the view looking down from the escalator. I like the wavy aqua walls. Koreans place a lot of importance (or at least they seem to spend a lot of time) on appearance, which lends for prettier spaces and generally very well put-together people. (Some other time, I will get into what some of my female co-workers wear to work. I need to take sneaky pictures as evidence, though- some of their outfits are madness!)

What else .... I got paid! Hooray ... I think. The way I get paid is a little bit odd: I have a set rate (by week). However, the way the company pays me is in won, not dollars. My weekly rate is in dollars. They calculate my pay by whatever the current value of the dollar is as compared to the won. So on the 25th of each month, I get paid varying amounts of money. Right now:

(my rate) x (current exchange value) = (not as much as it would have been three weeks ago)

Hopefully, the dollar picks itself up a little. If $1 falls below 1,000 won, I'm going to be upset. (I remember when the Korean economy was crashing because of the whole IMF thing and $1 was worth almost 2,000 won. Sigh.)

Anyways, I calculated the amount that I got paid and it's all kosher. The whole direct deposit thing is quite convenient, actually- if you have someone's name and their account number, you can just put money right into their account. (I owe my cousin money because he ordered my cell phone online and used his credit card.) It's a lot faster than giving someone a check or taking out an inordinately large sum of cash.

I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of days, so I'm a little loopy. Still, I'm seriously going to try to do something this weekend, after the past three (um, all the weekends I've been here) weekends of doing ... nothing. At least go into Seoul and see some family, maybe wander around the places that I have interest in seeing. (All of this is pending weather issues, of course- I'm told it will rain more this weekend.)

Current currency exchange: $1 = 1,054 won. Up one measly won from the last time I checked ... still, I suppose that's progress.

Lightning

2011-07-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

I took a (crappy) video of the lightning a couple nights ago. It's been raining an insane amount over the past three days, unrelenting and crazy. I've heard that people are stuck in Gangnam (강남), an affluent area of Seoul south of the Han River (Gang (강) means "river," Nam (남) means "south") and that a couple people have even died.

The jangma rains when I first got here were not bad- generally pretty light, no real wind to speak of- but the recent rain includes gusty winds, which means that even with an umbrella, people get soaked.

Walking home from work yesterday, my umbrella flipped inside out (the first time that it's ever happened to me!) and my jeans were pretty much sopping wet from the knees down. I was wearing leather wedges, which were not a good idea. (I'm wearing flip-flops today.)

The rain has prevented me from doing anything but going to work and going back home. I have no urge to even go grocery shopping.

It's just past 2:00 p.m. here, and the rain has stopped. Hopefully, it holds for a while so I can go to the bank (to check to see if I've been paid) and wander around the neighborhood before heading home tonight.

Blurb

2011-07-26T08:29:00.001-07:00

Most amazingly loud and bright lightning and thunderstorm outside right now. It was pouring when I left work this evening- I now know what a "torrential downpour" is- but the grumbling thunder and eyeball-searing lightning just started.

I realized today why I forget my umbrella so often. It's because I cannot hear the rain hitting the ground. The highest building I ever worked or lived in while I was in the US was only three stories. Here, I live and work so far off the ground that I cannot hear the pelting rain, no matter how much it pours.

Good thing I'm not afraid of lightning and thunder, or it would be quite a sleepless night!

Random Things

2011-07-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm tired for no apparent reason, but I feel like I'm neglecting my blog, so I'm writing a list o' randomness. I really don't know why I'm tired- I've been sleeping a lot (and having crazy dreams, to boot), I've been eating normally, I haven't really been stressing (or at least I don't think I have). Something fishy is going on ... probably the fact that I moved to a foreign country.

Here's the random list:

- Gyms here are referred to as "health" in conversation. Keep in mind that there is no "th" sound in Korean, replaced by an "s" sound. It's odd, to say the least.

- It rains here, more often than I'm accustomed to. And I forget my umbrella almost always. I live on the 11th floor, and I don't realize it's raining until I'm on the first floor, then back up to my place I go to get my umbrella. (Ahem, this happened today.)

- Walking = hell on shoes and feet. I didn't realize how little I walked around in the US unless I was specifically somewhere to walk (hiking, the beach, whatever). I walk everywhere here, and my shoes are not happy. My feet are even less happy.

- Almost everyone (unless it's a part-time job) gets paid monthly. It seems that everyone in Korea gets paid on the 25th of each month. I have never been paid monthly before, and it seems terribly, terribly wrong. That's a lot of money, what if I spend it all at once?? (I won't, but it's the thought that's terrifying me.)

- Eyelash extensions are really cheap here, and look really good (a co-worker got hers done). The one time I contemplated getting them in the States, it was $200 for initial application. They are 30,000 won ($28.50) here, and look better. What the heck?

- The dollar is still falling. I am not pleased. At 1,053 won and counting...

- I haven't been taking many pictures lately (and I was totally called out on it by my sister yesterday) because I've been senselessly tired and also being cell phone cameras in Korea all have this issue. You cannot mute the sound! Apparently (well, according to my friend Google), it's a law in Korea that all cell phone cameras must click when taking a photo, to prevent people from taking photos of unaware people. And to prevent perverts from taking photos up a girl's skirt, I suppose, but Korean women wear SUCH SHORT SKIRTS that really, they're asking for it. This whole camera click thing is vastly irritating to me, and makes me not want to take pictures with my phone unless I'm at home.

- I caved and bought cheese and wine. Well, I bought "cheese" and wine. Don't judge a desperate American! My great-aunt (maternal grandmother's younger sister) says Costco has good cheese. She's lived in Europe, so she should know. I need to find someone with a Costco card and a car.

I bought this wine at Homeplus, where two girls helpfully wrapped up the bottles with these foamy sleeves so that they wouldn't break en route to my house. Since people generally walk here, portability is figured out really well. Handles on packages, protective packaging for breakable things, all very nicely thought out.

Yes. It is squeezable "Camembert" cheese. It tastes like those Handi-Snacks from ye olden days when I was a wee tot. It's not bad, it's just not Camembert. Sliced cheese here is awful. They have sliced Velveeta, which I don't need, since I won't be melting cheese into anything (and Velveeta is only good for melting). They also have sliced Gouda, which is ... awful. Pre-sliced cheese should just be American and yellow, like Kraft.

- Customer service is so different here. I don't know if I'll ever get over it. People are so ... helpful. And there's no tipping, so it's just ... normal. Bizarre. For instance, at the Lotte Department Store's grocery market, if I pick up a bunch of grapes and look like I'm getting them, a dude materializes and packages up said bunch of grapes in a plastic bag, asks me if I need anything else, and then disappears when I say no. Crazy. If I look around like I'm lost, someone will come ask if I'm looking for something in particular. Shops are generally alarmingly well-staffed.

- I've been going to Bethel Church. The sheer size of the place still overwhelms me. It has stadium seating in plush red chairs (like an opera house) and all the chairs are numbered. There's a complicated lighting rig, a large choir, an organ, all kinds of things. It's more like a theater than a church. There's seating outside the main sanctuary, too- groups of chairs for people that are late, separate rooms for people with babies, and just ... so many people.

That's it for now. I'm sure there's more, I'm just groggy and can't think up anything at the moment. Yawn. There's some sort of work thing on Thursday ... I have no idea what's going to happen or where we're going. I'm dreading it, I have to be nice and such. Ugh.

Currently Awful Currency

2011-07-21T02:49:00.001-07:00

Holy cheese and crackers, the American dollar is awful right now.

1,000 won (원) is $0.95. Ugh.

Some other time, I'll explain how I'm getting paid and why this state of the dollar is annoying me. The dollar has been steadily falling since I started watching the exchange rate (two weeks ago, when I got to Korea).

Sunrise

2011-07-20T23:16:00.001-07:00

Bizarrely, I woke up with a start at 5:30 this morning. In my bleary state, I took some photos through the (dirty) window with my phone (the Samsung, not the iPhone).

There are fun settings on the camera on this phone, including different modes for sunrise and sunset and a panorama option. Here's a wee panorama (the window prevented me from taking a proper panorama).

Nekoba's, Ilsan (Korea)

2011-07-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

One of the most convenient things about Korea, so far, has been eating. One of the most inconvenient things has been grocery shopping, so those differences balance out pretty well.

I have never in my life considered how annoying grocery shopping could be, because I've had a car since I was in high school. Having to carry groceries and walk home really makes a person think hard about what the essentials are. I don't drink Coke or eat snacks here (Coke is too heavy and snacks take up too much room in my eco-bag).

I was feeling quite lazy this weekend (I literally didn't leave the house on Saturday) so I called and ordered food from downstairs. Like many buildings here, there are tons of shops and places to eat on the first few floors of the building that I live in- things ranging from shoe stores to a kimbap (김밥) place, with a Burger King (labeled 버거킹 for the very few non-English-reading Koreans?), two convenience stores (편의점), a nail salon, a hair salon, a place that will mend clothes, a place to buy signs (neon and printed!), and a coffee shop in between. This is all in a small little area- some of the stores are wee.

One of the restaurants is called Nekobas (Nekoba's?), right next door to a place with a cartoon corn cob that claims to sell "corn noodles," the very concept of which scares me a little. I called Nekoba one night and ordered tonkatsu (sometimes spelled donkatsu (돈까스)), which is basically fried pork in a sweet, salty sauce.

Because I live in the building, they delivered to me. I called and a girl showed up in about ten or fifteen minutes, food in hand and ready to give me change (she brought exact change). There's no tipping here (I LOVE that, so easy to calculate things!), so she knew that if I didn't have exact change, she would need to give me a specific amount of money. Smart.

Most places in Korea (mostly Chinese-Korean places) will deliver in real dishes, with a little plastic bag for you to use after you're done. Finish eating, put the dishes in the bag, place the bag outside your door, and someone will come pick it up. Nekoba's is adorable (I went in earlier in the week to check it out) and a bit fancier than most delivery places (very cute and decorated with Totoro stuffed animals), so they brought me dinner in disposable containers.

Cute containers. Dinner came with salad (barely visible in the back), which is basically the Korean take on coleslaw (served at most Japanese-Korean places here), miso soup, kimchi (pretty good, actually), takuan (단무지, sweet pickled radish), and the actual donkatsu (pork's on the right, shrimp tempura on the left, and rice underneath it all). That white stuff on top of the sauce on top of the pork is mayonnaise. Asians (Koreans and Japanese, at least) love mayonnaise. I am not as crazy about mayonnaise as they seem to be here, judging from how many dishes mayonnaise sneaks into.

Dinner was 7,000 원 ($6.61). No extra charge for delivery, no tip. Crazy.

Also, I called them and they didn't answer. I didn't leave a voicemail, I just hung up. They called me back a minute later, identified themselves as Nekobas, and apologized. Being in a phone-centric country has its advantages.

Nekobas
Woorim Rodeo Suites Building
Janghang-dong, Ilsan-gu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do

Telephone: 031-904-7909

(No idea what their hours are, but business (restaurants, at least) in Korea seem to open late and stay open late.)

Random updates:

Work's been fine. A little slow and a little dodgy, as we get used to one another and as I get used to having to speak in Korean all the live-long day, but fine. There are more and more (very proficient) English speakers coming out of the woodwork, which I'm grateful for. My brain can only handle so much Korean in a day.

I have to move offices this week, and I'm not happy about it. I like this office. Harrumph. I like my officemates, I'm used to them. Now I'm going to be in a big bullpen with a ton of people. Ew. I'm trying to delay my move as much as possible.

I can't figure out my cable and TV. The first week, I had one cable service and an old-school TV. Sometime while I was at work, they changed my TV to an HD flatscreen. That's all well and fine. Then a few days later, they changed my receiver. And all the channels changed! It's annoying me and I don't understand this new system. I can't find channels that I used to get, which is probably the part that's annoying me. Why they didn't do this before I moved in is beyond me.

Korean TV broadcasts an amazing number of American TV shows and movies. Yesterday, there was a Harry Potter marathon (I think it was on OCN). They regular broadcast marathons of American TV shows (Hawaii Five-O, Without a Trace, CSI, Hellcats (?!), Project Runway (I'm still bitter about the Mondo-Gretchen thing), America's Got Talent, the list goes on and on). I find it odd, but I also like hearing people speak in English. When I'm home alone, I generally leave the TV on. I'm not watching it- I just like the noise.

I also can't figure out my air conditioner. There's a remote, with words that make sense, I'm sure, but don't seem to have anything to do with cooling the air. I turn the thing on and off, set the temperature, and hope for the best. It's not a good system, and I should really learn to use it correctly. I'm terrified for the first time I have to do laundry in my crazy Korean washing machine (it's a washer and dryer in one, which is odd to me).

The rain's let up. I think jangma (장마) season (monsoon season) is pretty much over. Time for typhoon season (though I hear the first typhoon passed through Japan and missed Korea entirely) and then unbearably hot sunshine and humidity, plus temperatures in the upper 80's and 90's. I'm really trying to get used to the whole Celsius thing, but I can't. 30 degrees is cold, people. It's below freezing. America and its refusal to switch to the metric system is ridiculous. Nobody else in the world cares about Fahrenheit, inches, feet, or miles. So dumb.

Korean-isms

2011-07-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

Some observations from my time so far in the ROK:

- Lots of push-button doors. Push the little bar on the wall next to the door and the door slides open (there are a few at work, but it seems to be common in most bakeries (Tous les Jours, Paris Baguette, etc.) and banks). Not automatic doors- you need to push the button to make them move. Weird.

- Tiny cups. TINY. I used to drink so much water back in the States, but I drink hardly any water here because the cups are SO LITTLE. Maybe four ounces. Even the glasses in my residence (provided) are wee. Very cute, yes, but stupid.

- Everyone assumes I know every English word ever created. Yes, I generally do, but still. I'm a walking, talking pronounciation guide.

- Talking elevators. Everwhere. "You are on the eleventh floor." "Going down."

- Slippers. People at work wear regular shoes to and from work, but wear slippers (mostly those Adidas-style slides that were super popular in the States a while back) while at work. To be comfortable, I guess? I work eight hours a day, but they work a lot more.

- Have you eaten? Everyone asks this of everyone. I think it's the first thing I get asked every day. Koreans really care about appearance, but also really want to make sure that you're eating. Another thing is that a lot of people that work here seem to eat all their meals here. I have no issue eating dinner at home by myself- I like it, in fact- but my co-workers seem worried that I do so. It's not like they eat here, either, they all eat out. So basically, some people eat out every single meal during the workweek. Granted, eating out in Korea is not like eating out in the States- almost every restaurant in the States is unhealthy, whereas a lot of Korean restaurants have really homemade food. I still don't think I would like to eat out that much, though. I don't like to eat around that many strangers, either.

- Titles. Americans that work in film (I can't really speak for other industries) don't use formalities at all. Even the director is just called by his name. In Korea, everyone has some sort of title, even if the title basically means "worker." I can't get over this, because it means that what I have to call someone is much longer than their whole (first and last) name. How is that reasonable at all?

- Accents. For such a small country, Korea has a lot of regional dialects. I've gotten used to dramas and movies, where mostly everyone has the Seoul accent (no accent), with the quirky/funny/weird character having a heavy country bumpkin accent. A lot of people at work have accents, to varying degrees. I find that I understand some of them a lot better than I understand others. Think of a thick Lousiana accent, or maybe a heavy Boston accent- similar thing.

- TV shows. What the heck, Korea?? Why do TV shows start at 11:00 p.m. or even midnight?? The Korean version of "primetime" is apparently quite a bit later than the American version. The good news is, I get about 500 channels and they re-run everything so often that I end up pretty much catching up on the shows that I watch every now and again. The bad news is, there's a lot of shows. I have to prioritize. And figure out when they actually air. It's all very confusing so far.

- Bread. Why is the bread in Korea better than the bread in America? This is dumbfounding to me. For a country that only consumes bread at breakfast (if that) and for snacking, Korea has some amazing bread. American bread makes me sad, and I don't like it, but Korean bread is addicting. Awful. I already love rice way too much, I can't also love another starch.

- Checks (of lack thereof). There are no checks in Korea. Literally no checks. People use automatic deposits (using each others' bank account numbers) for everything. Owe someone some money? Put it in their account. Getting money from your employer? They'll put it in your account. It's convenient, I suppose, but also weird to me. My bank book is pretty adorable- they gave me a choice when I opened my account, and I went for the girliest one. My bank card (debit card, I suppose, but I've never been asked for a PIN number unless I'm at an ATM) is just a standard card with magnetic strip. Nothing fancy there.

I've been in Korea for a week now (I got here last Wednesday) and it already feels like I know the place. I know where to walk if it's raining (there's cobblestones (maybe not cobblestones- they're like bricks, but in zigzag shapes) instead of sidewalks in a lot of places here, so the walkways can be slightly uneven, holding water in big puddles if it's raining enough), I know where to go if I need Q-tips, I know where to go get money, I know where to get groceries, I feel like I've gotten to know the area a little.

Granted, I still get a little turned around sometimes, but it's not that bad. And I've always found my way back home, even if I do get lost for a few minutes. I'm sure it will all be a different story once I get on the subway (or bus, horror of horrors), but that's why I have a phone, after all. I've already checked out the map on my phone and it's quite the good deal, with lots and lots of detail.

I had jjajangmyun (짜장면) for lunch today. It was delicious. I will never be able to find that restaurant again without someone's help.

A House Is Not A Home

2011-07-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

A terrible video of my residence. I took this on my iPhone 4 when I was first shown in (hence all my suitcases)- I've unpacked and such since, so there are things strewn about.

This is what Koreans call an "officetel," a portmanteau of "office" and "hotel," mostly meant for people that are working and need someplace to stay during their work week (or however long they're working). It's also called a "residence," which is a little confusing- I don't think Koreans know that 'residence' just means someplace you live.

It's very conveniently located, thankfully, so much so that I haven't had to take any public transportation (well, excluding the airport bus). Since the day after I got to Korea, I've walked everywhere. No buses, no subways, no taxis.

Anyway, here's home. Storage galore, more than I will ever use.

Phone!

2011-07-11T00:49:00.000-07:00

I have a cell phone!

Many thanks to my cousin and to quick service, one of my favorite things about Korea.

I officially feel like I live here now.

(The screen grab shows what it looks like to blog from the new phone. This Android business hurts my brain.)

Lake Park (호수공원)

2011-07-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

I have always found it annoying to read Korean. Part of the problem is that there are always other languages mixed in, mostly English or Chinese. Part of the problem is also that the English is generally phonetically spelled out in Korean, rather than just written in English. Sounding out a word in Korean that I already know in English is just a big ol' waste of time.

Since I am currently living in Korea, I've had to adjust to the abundance of Korean all over the place. That hasn't been fun.

Yesterday (Saturday), my aunt (my mother's only sister) came with household supplies for me (pots, pans, dishes, chopsticks, etc.) and we ran around, catching up and talking. The weather was nice, thankfully, and though it was cloudy, it never started raining.

Before she got here, I went to Lake Park (호수공원), a huge man-made lake with very nicely landscaped and planned areas around it. Koreans know how to do nature, even when it's man-made. Since it was a Saturday, there were quite a few people- some jogging, some on bikes, some sitting on the abundant benches and eating or talking. Lots of old people with visors and wide-brimmed hats, chortling with one another. A father teaching a son how to ride a bike. Very bucolic stuff.

I took a couple pictures with my phone (there's free WiFi at a lot of places, so I carry it around even though I can't make or take calls), but the weather didn't really make for good photography.

That building, second from the left, blue-ish with red lettering on top, is where I live. This area was sort of the parade of flags. I've been here less than a week but I was already happy to see the American flag.

The silver sculpture at the center of the picture is the beginning of another park, a smaller one. I need to cross the little park (it's long and narrow) to go to work, which is nice. I'm glad that I can walk to work here.

Better look at the flags. And the perfectly manicured grass. I saw quite a few people with dogs, but didn't see any dog poop anywhere, which is good.

There aren't that many trash cans in public places in Korea (the land of really picky recycling), but there's not much litter. Isn't that odd? There are tons of trash cans in America, but there's still trash all over the streets.

I'm going to try going to Bethel Church (enormous, gigantic mega-church close to me) today, but I'm not very hopeful that I'll like it.

I start working tomorrow. Looking forward to it, on one hand, since people there will be bound to give me advice about the area, but also not looking forward to having to work. That month and a half of not working went by in a flash!