"투혼"

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.

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Happy Birthday, 엄마!

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.

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Pizza Fish

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!

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