The Best Blogs of 2008

Over at the Hub of Sparkle, I've started a huge survey of what you think are the best Korea blogs of 2008.

Take a look, and add your nominations on the comment board either there, or at the Hub of Sparkle Facebook page. If you're a K-blogger, tell your readers about it, so that they can get over there, stuffing the ballot box on your behalf: after all, it's the internet!

I'm closing comments on this post, so that you put all your comments at the Hub of Sparkle's site, or Facebook discussion group.

Heh heh heh. When Insurance Advertisers cause Diplomatic Incidents...

Resemble anyone you know?



(from Mad TV...I think)

Dealing with Racism

From Foreigner Joy, here's a good look at how to deal with racism in everyday life, and how people respond wrongly when they encounter it.

Heh heh heh.

From Cracked.com, from last summer:

"Ways to make the Olympics Kick More Ass" -- a cracked.com photoshop contest, where people photoshop funny pictures based on a theme.

Welcome, Korea Herald Readers

The news is this: I have been asked, and accepted the offer, to write an ongoing column for the Expat Living section of The Korea Herald. My theme will be building community in the Expat world: I hope to talk about the importance of community to enhancing the expat experience, and helping people who live here, to enjoy the heck out of Korea, and I also hope to feature some of the communities that add meaning to expats' lives while they live here.

The article itself:
If the link works, you can read it here on the Korea Herald's webpage.

If the link doesn't work, you can read it here, cut and pasted to Roboseyo, and magically buried deep in the past.

Finally, if you are part of an expat community, or a community involving Koreans and expats together, and you think your community should be featured in my column, drop me a line at roboseyo@gmail.com explaining what you do, and why you'd love to be featured, and we'll be in touch.

If you're new to this blog, welcome to Roboseyo! You can look at the sidebar to the right, and see some of my favorite posts, to get to know who Roboseyo is, and what I'm about.

Thanks for stopping by!
(and thanks also, Matt, for giving me the opportunity to write this column)

sincerely
-Roboseyo

Remember the Foreigners who got Deported for Producing a Comedy that Made Fun of Korea?

A moment in memoriam.

Metropolitician on the same: he describes the Korean police/media's "scandal creation attempts" in a number of similar incidents where foreigners got scapegoated or demonized, sometimes through exaggeration, sometimes through outright fabrication.

Have things gotten better? Talk amongst yourselves.

The Korean Does it Again: K-Blogger of the Month for January

Ask A Korean! a blog you might remember from my old complaining expat teamup, published this list of visual cues on "How to Tell a Korean by Looks" back in September.

And he gets to be my K-blogger of the month for January, because he deserves a look.

Since I'm on vacation, but want to keep the blog posting until I come back, I've saved this up until now to highlight. "The Ultimate Korean Looks List - How to Pick Koreans from Other Asians Just by Looking At Them" discusses. . . read that title again. It's a funny and bang-on list that made me laugh several times.

The most helpful, and also funniest part discusses how to identify a young Korean woman by her fashion.
Best line: The overall look is that of a literally overdressed woman who outgrew exactly half of her wardrobe.

I salute you, The Korean, for referring to yourself in the third person so consistently, and for producing good content non-Koreans find worth reading.

Two other Ask A Korean! gems: The handbook of How To Deal With Koreans, and how to interact with Asian cultures in general without making a fool of yourself. It's great.

Two highlights:

Do not ask "Where are you from?" to an Asian person unless you are reasonably certain that s/he is outside of his/her American hometown. If the Asian answers, say, "Los Angeles", do not follow up with "where are you originally from?" or "where are your parents from?" Our precise ethnicity is none of your fucking business. Do we ever ask you whether you are from Dominican Republic, Ireland, or Ivory Coast?

and

On the other hand, if you are at a Thai restaurant and don't have chopsticks, do not act all high and mighty and ask for chopsticks. Thai people don't use chopsticks.

And finally, after the great "Why do Expats Complain about Korea" teamup, The Korean joined forces with GI Korea from ROK Drop in late September, which also deserves a second look; I'd meant to blog it then, but got distracted by Youtube videos of cats falling off chairs and fan-made animations of Batman fighting other superheroes from the Marvel universe, so I want to bring your attention to them now. They are a lot more specific than the "Expat" series, because the Military in Korea is a much more singular and specific group, with unique needs and interactions with Korea, and who represent something much more specific to Koreans, which means they got to go into much more specific detail in discussing this (sometimes) mutually antagonistic relationship, than I could in my complaining expat broad-brush-generalization-fest.

So if you haven't already, I also highly recommend you read:

from ROK Drop, Why do GIs Complain about Korea,

and from Ask A Korean!, Why do Koreans Complain about the US Military in Korea. The list is much more specific and focused than the one I wrote about expats in general, which is a much more diverse group with many more varied interests and experiences of Korea, and so much harder to write about with any specificity.

Go forth and read!

(his latest post about Fan Death is a real winner, too)

This is a naughty one for all you English Teachers out there...

If you think your job sucks. . .

(warning: sex jokes and bad language)

Korea's version of haggis

instead of stuffing a sheep stomach, how about stuffing a squid?





from So I Married An Axe Murderer


till then. . . seen in the window of a hiking goods shop. . . uh. . . yeah. Special hiking underwear. You know, for all those jolts as you clamber over rocks.

I like that their logo is an elephant, too.

Effing cool video of the day

Air Traffic Simulation tracks every civilian air flight in the world with yellow dots. Hypnotic, friends. Hyp-no-tic.