Kim Jong-Il lives! Kim Jong-Il is alive and well! I have photo evidence! I have documentary proof! (My favourite new internet meme.)
OK. Here's the deal.
Kim Jong-Il sightings have been popping up ever since reports about his deteriorating health made headlines in August. This is funny to me, because I actually used to teach him back in my Kindergarten Teaching days. It's time for a repository.
Yesterday night I saw Jens Lekman sing at Freebird in Hongdae. It's rare enough that the kinds of artists I like play in Korea, because I generally go for the indie, undergroud, DIY songwriter stuff that doesn't show up on a noraebang playlist, so when Jens came, I had to try and catch him.
He was good. First off, if I can rock a receding hairline as well as he does, I'll be in good shape if I ever lose my hair. Second, that mopey crooney voice, along with fun arrangements, some bouncy twee pop and a light touch, made for a night of good music, if not the kind of thundrous arena rock which has people spinning out their car tires in the concert hall parking lot.
Finally, I swear, two thirds or more of the females there had epic crushes on this cat... which goes to show what you can do if you have a moon-spoon-croon kind of voice. If you don't know Jens Lekman, you should give him a try: his last two albums have both been listenable, clever, fun music that isn't too intrusive on your Sunday afternoon tea.
It was fun; I for one, particularly enjoyed the light show, and of course, I made a video.
He's playing again tonight at 7pm in FF Club, a few doors down from Jokerred, in Hongdae, if you're in the area. Catch him if you can: who knows when the next time a sensitive but fun hipster whispery white-bread crooner-songwriter my-girlfriend-has-a-huge-crush-on-this-pop-singer-with-widows-peaks-who-wears-plaid-collared-t-shirts-in-publicity-photos will come to town. (Sufjan Stevens, anyone?)
So Tuesday's Borrower and her fiancee sent me a video breaking down the "ordering takeout" conversation that is very informative, and funny, and I edited it to be a bit less chatty, and added a bit of roboseyo spice, because DB don't do that video editing stuff too good. (She's a very good writer, though). Watch it. It's cute.
then they did a final run-through of the conversation, so you can hear what to expect.
Blogger analytics tells me that two people found my page by googling "Roboseyo nude" today...
uhh...weird.
Now Brian has a feature on his page where he checks the google search keywords that brought people to his page, and sometimes writes about the things people typed in to learn about, and found their way to his site instead -- to fill in the information gaps, if you will.
I thought I'd be similarly obliging, for my (creepy) fans.
Here you go. A Roboseyo nude, for whoever that was that wanted it.
Have a good day, weirdo.
*special note: no, just because I obliged this one time, I still will not post photos, no matter how often you google "Roboseyo bestiality gay foot fetish tentacle porn" Sorry, Evil Jennifer.
-Rob
Dec 2: Update: Somebody googled "Roboseyo Bestiality" three times yesterday. Not gonna do it. Nope.
Under the "Awesome Things about Living in Korea" file, Otto Silver, at "I, Foreigner" has a helpful, informative video about ordering food to your home in Korea. Takeout Delivery is a wonderfully cheap, and convenient part of living in Korea, and it's not hard.
**Update/correction: I am told, by the Otto himself, that it is not him in the video, but simply a video he found online. My bad.**
Here is Otto's Video [correction: the video otto found], which goes step by step through the process of ordering food, and even tells you what to do with the dishes afterward.
Here's all you need to know:
1. Enough Korean to read the restaurant menus they stick on your door or hang on your apartment door handle. (And you have ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for not learning this much Korean, when the Korean lettering system is so easy to learn. Go here. Or go here to do it by video. It's a bit "Golly gee, this is SOOOO simple!" but it's well laid out. It doesn't take very long, especially compared to how long it took you to read English: King Sejong, the guy who helped design them, said, "These twenty-eight letters are so simple and precise that the wise can master them in one morning and even the fool can learn them in ten days." So quit your whining, quit procrastinating, and learn them, before we have to get Mr. T to pity you.)
2. The address of your apartment, in Korean. Get your Korean coworker or your boss to help you with this if you're not sure.
3. The numbers, so you can tell how many of each thing you want.
4. The Korean names of a few foods you like.
Here's all you need to have:
1. A phone.
2. A flyer from a restaurant.
3. A little cash.
4. An appetite.
Otto uses the phrase "Hangug-eo chogum arayo" "한국어 조금 알아요" which means "I speak a little Korean." To Otto's very helpful video, I want to add two phrases that would also be useful in this situation (and many others):
"Hangug-eo chal moatt-hae-yo" "한국어 잘못 해요"= literally, "Korean well can't speak" -- I don't speak Korean well.
and
"Cheon-cheon-hee mal-hae-juseyo" "천천히 말해 주세요"= literally, "Slowly speech-make-please" (juseyo actually is the polite form of "give," so it literally means "give me slow speech please" or paraphrased, "please speak slowly"... I'm not sure if that's grammatically perfect...but when you're telling someone you can't speak a language well, bad grammar might help you get the point across more emphatically, anyway.
Here's Mr. Ed, to help you with those two phrases. The pronunciation is Roboseyo-CanucKorean, rather than perfect Seoul Korean, but it'll get you through.
Have fun ordering your food!
Plus, Otto has a kind of funny address: there's a little squeaker noise in there. I wonder what neighbourhood he's in: maybe this guy lives nearby.
HT. to Brian in Jeollanamdo, who continues climbing the "Must-read K-blog" charts. Me, I got nothing. If I say more then twenty words about this I'm going to lay down a rant so vitriolic that unicorns and elves will be killed by all the evil will and poisonous bile pouring out of me.
So on Saturday night, The Hub Of Sparkle's first Sparkledown was held near Hansung University, and it was hella fun. Cheesy McCheesington was there, and her happy, shiny review of the night is more joyful and excited than anything I could write, so I'm just gonna quote from it, as a pretty good reminder of why it's important to expand one's circle of friends and connections while living in Korea, and how much being connected and putting oneself out there (for more than just drinking binges in Hongdae, if possible) enhances one's experience here:
Last night was probably one of my best nights in Seoul. For the past nine months, I've been lugging this sense of isolation and loneliness and un-bliss around inside The Belly. And last night, I feel like the ol' uterus of my soul gave it up and I birthed friends. A community, really. A community of like-minded and beautiful people who drink good beer and have deep, authentic conversation and at the same time have ridiculous non-conversations and laugh really hard at each other because we are happy and not alone. Well, at least, I was happy and not alone.
Home isn't about a building or a location, it's about the people in your life. I've got my family, and now I have friends. I'd like to think that the Night of Awesome is the start of something special, perhaps a new home for all of us to build together. I hope so.
So, between Danielle's birthing uterus of joy, and Wanderchomp's sense of home and connection, I'd say the night was a success just on that alone. FatManSeoul took pictures of the whole thing, and I'm looking forward to her finding some new wireless internet to steal in her building, so that she can upload the pics at the Hub Of Sparkle or something. Until then, here are the pictures I took, which probably won't be as good as hers. These are also available at the Hub of Sparkle's facebook page. There were some good conversations, some great laughs, some tasty drinks and side dishes, and then some more great laughs, and some smart people really worth talking to and listening to.
[Update: Kimchi For Breakfast also attended, and finally blogged about it. You can read here.]
Enough bloggers attended that there was occasional confusion about whether to introduce or address each other by our handles or our real names, exacerbated by the fact Roboseyo really IS my nickname.
So to everyone who came out, Thanks for coming out! It was really nice to see/meet/hang out with/talk to you (again, where applicable); to everyone who didn't come: whatsamattayou? Ya missed out, but we'll see you next time, when we choose a larger venue, right?
-rob
Update: FatManSeoul has photos and incriminating evidence up on Flickr and at the Hub of Sparkle. The flickr album has a handful of good ones, so go see it, and visit FatManSeoul, Korea's best new food blog which updates regularly and actually talks about food.
