Hey there all. You missed your chance to loot my apartment: I'm back in Korea, after a pretty epic trip. The plane from Toronto to Tokyo hit a snag: the incoming flight was late, so they turned over the cabin a little too quickly, and forgot to drain the sewage tanks. By about halfway through the flight, half the toilets in the cabin weren't flushing, and by the end of the flight, only two or three were, and poop-smell started filling the cabin.
Meanwhile, I managed to stock up on all the items I really needed, including three nice pairs of pants that fit my butt properly, as pants made for Canadian butts do.
Plus, in keeping with my zombie theme all through June, I found a great new title at Wendel's bookstore in Fort Langley: Pride and Prejudice...And Zombies! It's hilarious, because the comedy of manners remains just as mannered as ever, but the art of being a refined and accomplished person of taste now suddenly encompasses the proper, ladylike manner of holding a killing sword, and the art of musketry carries as much weight as being well-versed in the modern languages.
I'll be cluttering up these pages with a few reflections of some of the interesting posts I've been unable, or uninclined to comment on during my vacation, and also a lot of pictures, so stay tuned. I'm back.
1. holy crap, tapwater tastes good. 2. my nieces and nephews are super cute 3. it's way different going around town with your siblings AND an infant, than going around town just with a sibling and their spouse. ("Can we do a drive-through instead of a sit-down meal? Silas is sleeping, and... you know") 4. Red Deer Alberta has the fastest, busiest drive-throughs I've ever seen in my life. 5. A month vacation in Canada is just enough time for Tim Horton's to lose its novelty. [overshare warning:] 6. In Korea, I'm an XL waist when I buy underwear. In Canada, I'm an M. Yay, overweight North Americans making me feel normal again! 6. Though Korea's population is double Canada's, its make-up consumption is probably ten times. 7. Western Canada's mountains are just effing gorgeous. So lovely. 8. But the bugs on your windshield after doing the Crow's Nest Pass are hella tough to clean off. 9. Vancouver has a Hindi radio station... and it's awesome. Indian music is great for driving, and I love how Hindi is the same language, yet it sounds so totally different depending on whether it's a male or a female speaking it. 10. I love cooking spaghetti for my family. 11. I'm going way over my mileage limit on my rental car. Tough cookies.
That's it for now. Having a good vacation. Hope you're all well, too.
This post goes back a while, but I wanted to share it with you, before it's gone completely.
Back last August, I was bopping around Yongsan Station, and I decided to venture right up to the tippy top floor of the Yongsan Shopping center. I saw greeters at a table and attendants standing at the door of an auditorium. There didn't seem to be an admission fee, so I poked my head inside, and saw this.
It was an online gaming tournament.
Now, this is something that Korea doesn't often push when it starts getting into Korea promotions: the old Hanjeongshik stuff, Hanbok and Pansoori, that stuff gets a lot of press, and old ladies in ornamental robes singing folk-songs: that always finds a spot in the video, or on the brochure. Sure.
Then I came in here, and took a look around.
See, online gaming is not just a time-killer in Korea. It's an outright phenomenon.
tournaments attract big crowds, and the top players (like this guy) are legitimate stars. The tournaments attract corporate sponsors, as do players, crowds turn out to watch the finals, and there are always a few channels on cable that are playing competitive Starcraft games.
those stands on the sides had huge posters of the different online games featured in the competition. some other luminaries/star players: I stuck around, and met a girl whose online handle was Peanut. She was Korean-American, from the East Coast, I believe, and totally excited about trying to popularize competitive Starcraft in America: she and some buds had this website called sc2gg where they took korean broadcasts of tournament games, and added English language commentary, and posted it on YouTube. Peanut was pretty nice, and we had an interesting chat about online gaming, and its potential for growth: seems she was bumping into a lot of naysayers in Korean promotion circles, but on the other hand, she was talking to some pretty high-up mucky-mucks about what could be done.
Here's peanut next to a display of game action figures.
The video cameras got some crowd shots... hey look! There were some foreigners there! This is the golden Mouse hand of the superstar pictured above. He was the first guy to game in cool outfits and try to act like a star (plus he had the chops to win stuff) rather than just playing in sweatpants with greasy hair under a baseball cap: he really helped make online gaming into more than just a nerd-hobby.
We watched these guys compete in Guitar Hero: but unfortunately I had to meet someone before the starcraft semifinal came on.
It was a neat experience, and one that people neglect in trying to get a handle on what Korea's young people do...but seriously, this online gaming stuff is a huge thing in Korea's modern culture, for whatever reason, and to really get a grasp of what Koreans do for fun, and how young people pass time, and how much gaming means to this subculture, I'd add "attend an online gaming tournament and/or a B-boy Competition" to the list of "things to see/do in Korea" before we all get tired of Hanbok.
Yeah, there are a lot of different issues Korea's working on these days.
Many of you expats may have noticed the Chosun Ilbo just hired a member of Anti-English spectrum as an intern...
but here's one issue that doesn't get much airtime, but if you start noticing it, it's an absofreakinglute outrage.
Nobody's really talking about this one. And Girlfriendoseyo's mom comes from a different city in Korea, and reports that overpackaging is not NEARLY as egregious there as it is here... but overpackaging here can be pretty extreme sometimes.
Judging from how carefully I read OTHER K-bloggers' accounts of their travels off-topic (that is, outside of Korea), I'll spare you the pages of journalling about the old friend I haven't met since high school and all that stuff, and I'll leave you with a few combinations that have struck me lately:
1. pecan pie + coffee (americano was the kind I used) = one of the best flavor combinations I've stumbled across so far. It helped that it was at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, so it was real crackin' good pie, and real crackin' good americano...but why didn't anybody tell me that pecan pie and coffee is as awesome a combination as soy chai latte and coffee cake, black tea and clover honey, chocolate and mint, or coke and dalk galbi? WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME? So anyway, now I'm telling you.
2. Night driving: nice driving in rain: fun driving on mountain roads in, say, the Rocky Mountains: awesome driving in areas with road signs saying "watch for wildlife" = cool: maybe I'll see an elk! driving in rain at night = NOT fun driving from Banff to Red Deer Alberta at night in the rain when there's a risk of a deer crossing your car's path (deer will mess up your car... and I saw two on the roadside near Cochran) = NOT FUN AT ALL
3. toast + peanut butter + sliced bananas = a whole bucket of awesome. Seriously, I never got on board that whole PB&J thing -- peanut butter's good, jam's good, but I never quite dug the two together. However, peanut butter and sliced bananas is SO FLIPPIN' GOOD! (also try: toasted white bread, sliced tomatoes, lots of mayonnaise, and a bit of salt and pepper. You'll keep making more until you run out of either tomatoes or bread)
4. My brother and brother-in-law + fatherhood and my sister and sister-in-law + motherhood = sweet.
5. Girlfriendoseyo + my family = AWESOME! They really liked her. That's good. Girlfriendoseyo + bestfriendMelfromCanada = ALSO AWESOME. You have no idea how happy it makes me when people who are important to me get along. Girlfriendoseyo + My Surrogate Family S. in Agassiz = Girlfriendoseyo gets mauled with hugs! Also super special, and super important.
Yep. I don't talk about my deep, personally-personal stuff on the blog TOOO much anymore (with a few exceptions), but I WILL tell you that I was lucky enough to have Girlfriendoseyo join me in Canada for part of my vacation, and we had hella fun, and she loved it, and "gets" some things about me that can only come of meeting my family and seeing my country. It was great.
I was eating dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Banff yesterday when suddenly a lady at the next table just right passed out and fell off her chair. I saw her face as she went down and she was right out of it. That was strange. It's funny how a human being in rough shape suddenly pulls all the people around into his/her matrix of need, and nobody can look away. We are intensely social creatures who instinctively look out for each other. I do think we are, despite the evidence to the contrary that comes up here and there. It's good when we recognize this.
The Korean NIS (National Intelligence Service) has published an online game to help you spot North Korean spies.
It includes things like people covering their mouths with their hands when they talk (holy crap! every Korean woman with a cellphone is a North Korean spy!)
And don't forget, if you see a person wearing a Kim Il Sung t-shirt, talking with his hand over his mouth as he grabs his stick and furtively leaves the PC Room after posting messages to corrupt Korea's youth, and heads for a protest to hand out tracts and incite violence while photographing sensitive government compounds, the number to call is 111: Korea's spy hotline.
I still have lots to say... but I'll be saying it to my friends and family while I'm on vacation in Canada. Expect light posting on non-controversial topics, because I don't like moderating comment threads while I'm on freaking vacation. Unlike Christmas break, I've been just plain too durn busy putting out fires, slogging things out, negotiating crazy crap, and handling a few personal-life earthquakes, to set up a bunch of "future posts" that will come up in my absence. There's a restrospective on what's been a totally insane semester somewhere inside me, but right now, I'm quite nearly a wreck from weathering storms on numerous fronts... so you'll have to wait until I'm good and ready to talk about it.
Until then... an entire year of riding the subways, sitting beside weirdos or soju-and-squid-reeking drunks, and dealing with other people's bulgogi farts, is made up for by a suit like this.
ajosshi's a pimp!
Took this picture on a recent rainy day. Like. enjoy the hot weather.
When I was a little kid, I lived in Southern Ontario, where summer evening thundershowers are a common occurrence. After bedtime, which was when they happened, the thunder used to wake me up, and I'd stand on the bed headboard, poke my head under the curtains, and look out at the skyline and empty land behind our house (before it all got developed into suburbs) and watch the lightning flash on the farmland on the other side of the lake.
To this day I love thunder and lightning storms, almost as much as they frighten one clan of my cousins, who inherited a pretty sharp fear of thunder from their mom.
we been having thunder and lightning storms in the early morning around Seoul this week, and I've been tempted to get out of bed and point my camera out the window, in hopes of getting something like this. Yeh. Supercool.