Photatoes

The great thing about climbing mountains is:

exactly that.

mountains inside the city limits of Korea are crowded sometimes (especially in October), but mountain culture, as Matt will tell you, is one of the best sides of all Korea's culture. The same old lady who will hit a young lady with her purse as a way of saying "Hey. You stand up and give me your subway seat, because I'm older and louder than you." will, on the mountain, invite you to sit with her and share a glass of makkeoli (a mountaintop drink). It's lovely.

This picture's on Dobong Mountain.

Mountains are great. They're so beautiful -- if you're gonna do an hour of cardio exercise, may as well have a panoramic valley view at the end of it, I say.


this is mat perched on a rock on near Sapye mountain. We did a 2.5 hour hike on Sunday, a 3.5 hour hike on Tuesday, and a 4.5 hour hike on Wednesday, and at the end of the third one, I felt better than I had at the beginning of the first one (other than a single sore spot on my feet.) I got new hiking shoes (North Face: good brand) last week, and despite being new, they treated my feet so well that after over 9 hours of cumulative hiking, my feet are still happy.

Plus, hiking is good for my bum knee.

Hiking at night is dangerous if it's too dark, or if you're careless.

But this is the payoff.





Quite a payoff, I say.





Those are all apartment buildings. Matt and I calculated that each apartment building probably houses 1500-2500 people. Wrap your mind around how many people live in view of this camera shot.















This is an ad for one of those water-jet toilet seats. Also, it's just. . . odd.
















That's all I have to say about that.


There's huge pressure on Korean pop stars and models to have plastic surgery.

Look at this before video.




I saw this picture in an ad poster and had to ask my girlfriend "Who's that?" I was shocked and appalled that this picture below is the same person as the one in the video above.

Sad, isn't it?

Some of my students say that they can't even tell the difference between one star and the next by the time they all reach their late twenties, because surgery has homogenized them all into the same, cookie-cutter mold.
















This car made me smile. What happens when you cross a low-rider truck, a mini-car, and a lunchbox?
















During Chuseok Vacation (the most important holiday of the Korean year -- like Christmas in the west), between 70 and 85% of Korea's urban population hits the road and drives out to their hometowns to clean and tidy their ancestral tombs and party down with their extended family. This picture was taken Friday afternoon at the beginning of the vacation.


Then, at the end of the long weekend (or the three day holiday), it's as crowded as this, but because the population is all coming BACK into Seoul, rather than fanning out in every direction, the traffic is like this, bumper to bumper, starting about 70km. outside of Seoul, and all the way in. My friend travelled to her hometown this Chuseok vacation, and spent 14 HOURS in the car on the way back home.

(Think about how much pollution goes into the air while all those cars idle.)

Something's gotta be done about this.


This was the drumline I mentioned in a previous post.

















Climbing mountains was great, but then you have to come back into the city.




To this.

Every morning walking to work, my eyes are assaulted by business cards and flyers tossed around the previous night by various promoters for numerous restaurants.

It angers me every day.







But then, other times, Seoul can be just bloomin' beautiful.

















(If you like music recommendations, take these ones to the bank.)
(Iron and Wine: The Stranger's Dog)
(Jens Lekman: Night Falls Over Kortedala)


if you want something a little more avant guard, despite the fact it's already had lots of press in indie music circles,

(Broken Social Scene: You Forgot it in People)
and
(Broken Social Scene presents Kevin Drew: Spirit If)

These two are atmospheric, excellent, the musical equivalent (to me) of driving fast in the rockies, or climbing a rock face and turning around to see an entire valley.



One more thing:

A story and some thoughts.

Play this song. It's fun.


Jens Lekman

Now here's the thing. Gambling is the ultimate obssessive compulsive behaviour -- the ritual is exactly the same each time -- pull the lever, push the button; put down chips, ask for cards, see who wins, lay bets, spin the wheel, etc.. The repetition, along with slightly varying results and occasional big wins gives a suspense/resolution/gratification cycle that's downright addictive.

The other thing is, once your luck turns to the downside, there's that constant, just-beyond-the-fingertips hope that maybe the next hand, the next roll, the next spin, will be the one that turns your luck around. That's how people get in deep.

“Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant”
- P.T. Barnum

I went to a casino last Saturday night. It was a singularly unique experience.

I've never seen such weird energy in a room. Usually, with most leisure activities, and the places where they are done, either 1. it's really low key, all around: people are low energy, and low effort (sitting in a coffee shop or wine bar) or people are active and high energy (sports, etc.). At places like drinking holes or beaches, you can see some of each -- some lazing around or chilling, and others getting excited.

At the casino, everybody was extremely engaged -- their attention was rapt and really focussed -- yet glum and joyless. Usually, if a room is that high-energy, it's because there's some kind of great party going on, and there's a lot of shouting and laughter; at the casino, it was really high energy, yet a little desperate, almost hungry, like foragers in a scrapyard -- not happy, but intent. And people do this as a leisure activity! I think it's because they were all A. sucked into the obsessive-compulsiveness of the thing, and B. had money at stake -- as soon as money's at stake, everybody stops smiling.

It's an amazing racket they run at casinos -- they take your money, pat you on the head on the way out the door, do the Jedi mind trick, and say "You had a good time tonight" -- then they tease you with the good ol' "Maybe you'll get us next time" (but the house always wins).

If you don't have a good sense of when to quit, casinos are a REALLY bad place to be. With alcohol, you'll wreck your body, but it's pretty hard to spend more than $130 on a night of getting trashed, even if you're really ambitious, start early, and drink fancy drinks. Not to say $130 is chump change, but with gambling, there's literally, NO ceiling to how much you can lose in one night (other than your bank card's withdrawal limit + credit card limit).

Also: it reeked of cigarettes.

This was the first time I'd ever been to a casino. Never really felt the wish, and don't really want to return, but it was interesting to add that to my reservoir of life experiences. I'll add it to the list of behaviours that could easily addict me (along with playing EA Sports NHL Hockey videogames and visiting YouTube and social networking websites -- damn facebook!)

But this time, I went with Matt and James, his good friend (a top-shelf, quality guy). They played blackjack for a while, which didn't appeal to me whatsoever, but, after circling the room people-watching, James came to me and suggested we try roulette. Now roulette is a game of purest pure chance -- no skill whatsoever. I decided I was willing to put a small amount of money down for the sake of having the experience of placing a bet (I'm usually not in the habit of throwing my money away, unless I get something delicious in return). I put in 20 000 won (about twenty dollars) and Matt and James each put in ten. Then, I sat down at the table and bet very conservatively, betting a lot of odds or evens, red numbers or black numbers (each bets with about 50/50 odds and a double-your-money payoff -- not much by roulette standards, where guessing the number where the ball lands will give you a 30-1 return) but I wasn't there to blow everything on low-odds betting, so we played small and conservative, and suddenly, went on a tear!

Behind me, Matt and James were getting free drinks (of COURSE a casino gives you free drinks while you're sitting at a table and gambling) standing behind me and laughing and joking, cracking me up while I placed bets, and I rode my beginner's luck as far as it went, laughing all the while at James and Matt's silliness. We had a few really spectacular rolls where we got returns on almost every bet we placed, and Matt and James got into the action by laying chips on the table once we had a bit of a lead. Later, when our luck ran out, we figured out that it was turning JUST in time, before we started blowing the big stack of chips we'd accumulated. It was fun as anything, and, while we started with 40 000 won, we peaked at about 230 or 240 000, and then started losing regularly enough to decide it was time to walk away while we were ahead (the hardest thing to do in all of gambling). We cashed out at 190 000 won, nearly a quintuple increase!

So, I've decided I'll never go to a casino again, because there's just no flippin' way I'll ever manage to equal the fun, and the return I had, on my first night, so why bother, really, especially when you're risking hard-earned money.

After we walked away from that table, we went to another one, starting out with another forty, and lost it in about five minutes: we'd obviously rode my beginners' luck as far as it would go. Fair enough.

But it sure was fun as heck, for that one time.


We just had the five day Chuseok vacation: Chuseok is Korean thanksgiving, and it's awesome. Matt and I hiked three mountains during the break, and I got myself addicted to a MUCH better, healthier compulsion: the desire to be on the mountain whenever I have free time. I climbed another mountain today with Matt and his wife Heyjin, and we had a great time. The peak was in a cloud. Fun.

Also, my wonderful lady, Girlfriendoseyo (info about her will be sparse and hint-laden, just because it's fun to be a tease) got back from her conference in New York, and it was sure nice to see her again. She's great. Even when she's exhausted and jetlagging.



PS: just saw this. Ruud Van Nistelrooy, the Dutch soccer star, proves that American basketball players don't have a corner on trash-talking and getting in each other's faces. This made me laugh out loud.

question of the day

been a while since i did one of those.

what would be the most disgusting toothpaste flavour?

(let's narrow this down to items that people would at least conceivably allow in their mouth: that's right. Poo tooth paste is out. All the dung beetles reading my blog sigh and go back to their halitosis-cursed lives of dirty mandibles.)

I'm torn between Ketchup and Big Mac.

What do YOU think would be the grossest flavour?

This blogger is interesting to me.

Here's another link about beauty culture in Korea.

Back on my high horse again. Here's a cool online comic, and more about materialism

Remember a few posts ago where I said, in reference to the vicious materialist "gotta have a bigger flat screen TV than my next-door neighbour" cycle:

I just wonder how many never bothered to stop and ask "do I actually LIKE spending so much of my life-energy on the opinions of people who don't love me anyway"?

Here's an online comic that almost perfectly expresses what I was trying to say.

Also, go check out the movie Supersize Me. Seriously. Before you eat another whopper meal or big mac, go watch it.


It seems like I'm experiencing materialism culture shock right now. Here are a few things:

Chindogu is an interesting, slightly subversive kind of invention. It's a useless or cumbersome tool designed to solve a simple everyday problem -- one that solves a problem, but usually creates other problems along the way. I talked about these in class, and found out more about it online. It's a charming channel of creative thinking. The concept was developed by a journalist who got tired of materialist society -- why must we ask "is it useful?" "is it profitable" of every invention? He set out to develop useless inventions, to improve his creativity rather than just to line his pockets. (Ironically, he then made a bundle by writing a book about chindogu.)


Here's the other thing. I want to know what you think.

The thing I hate about materialism is that it's an entire way of thinking, an ideal, that's designed to foster self-hatred. Advertisers know that if I hate something in my life, I'll spend money to fix it, so they present me with TV ads and characters that show people who are richer, more beautiful, more WHATEVER than I am. That's the insidious thing about beauty magazines and TV commercials -- they introduce a measuring stick to my life that I can't possibly measure up to, and thus make me vulnerable to being sold the "solution" to my fabricated "problem".

Here in Korea, one area where this has really been getting at me is in beauty culture. It's so disgusting to me that advertisers have created a beauty ideal (Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz) that is genetically out of most Korean women's reach, and then (implicitly) made lots of perfectly nice, perfectly attractive women feel ashamed for having a single instead of a double eyelid, for having black instead of blue eyes, straight black instead of curly, red, or blonde hair, for having a smaller, less curvy frame than those voluptuous northern-european-blooded women can manage.





There's a harsh stigma against ugly and overweight women in Korea: "Lazy girl isn't willing to do the work needed to take care of herself!" This link is to a synopsis/review/trailer/clip of a recent Korean movie about a fat, ugly girl who gets $60 000 of plastic surgery to become a beauty, and then gets everything she wants -- it's a cute, charming, funny movie (the review's right about that) but the message -- "If you're a woman, you can only have a happy ending if you're beautiful" is the most disgusting subtext I've ever heard, and teen-aged girls are eating it up. Korea is known around Asia as a plastic surgery hotspot -- cheaper than Japan, better quality than China, and it's common for women to get their eyelids done as a high school graduation gift.

The other thing is: by setting up the western beauty as an ideal in Korea, the best Korean women can ever do is attain to a near-facsimile, a "best possible imitation" of the western ideal, because of the aforementioned DNA issues. Instead of saying "This is what we are, and THIS is beautiful," too many people idealize the impossible, and come off making poor imitations of what ISN'T, instead of celebrating what IS.

You can't tell me that this:



Is more beautiful than this:



Anyway, I wish people would celebrate who they are, instead of longing for what they're NOT -- in terms of beauty, talent, success and wealth, and all that stuff.