Arbor Day, March 27th

Arbor Day is an awesome day: what a great idea it is to make a holiday just for planting trees! Sure, Korea's not the only place that observes Arbor day, but here in Korea it's on April 5th. Now, Korea's accomplishment in reforesting pretty much their entire country, after it had been razed by the Korean war, is an environmental side of Korea's post-war history that rarely gets told, next to the oft-trumpeted economic "miracle," but it's part of the story, folks.

Arbor Day is no longer a national red-letter day, but people still remember it, and this year, there's a sweet event happening near downtown Seoul. On March 27, near Gwanghwamun Station (line 3) there's a tree planting event on Inwang Mountain (one of my favorites). This is the kind of community event that I think expats should be finding out about, and joining.

So readers, I'm planning to go there on the 27th, and plant some trees. If you want to join me, let me know! I'll be writing about it on the 2S2 Blog as well, and you can let me know if you want to come from the 2S2 Facebook Group. Click on the picture for the full-size version.

2S2 This Saturday!

Great news, readers: first, Foreigner Joy and some friends have started a 2S2 chapter in Bundang, so if you live over there, you no longer need to trek up to Insa-dong to connect. Sweet!

Read more here, or at their facebook page.

However, the really exciting news is this: as per every month, 2S2 Seoul will be meeting as well.

Now, just as last Saturday, the awesome Chris in South Korea and the lovely Jo (short for Jehosaphattina) hosted a great swing dance + ice sculpture-o-rama, this weekend, the amazing Paul Ajosshi, from the great site, Paul Ajosshi, will be hosting the next one, Saturday at 2pm, at the same place as usual: the second floor of the Twosome Place near Exit 1 of Anguk station, at the North end of Insadong. The full run-down for the day is here, and it involves two neighborhoods, lots of good food, and a subtitled performance of the classic play, "The Cherry Orchard" complete with a way to reserve tickets in advance and save money, and you should go, dear readers!

If you want to reserve tickets for the play

Me on Exploring Seoul

KoreaBridge.net is a mostly Busan-based website that's trying to become a useful Korea info forum for the rest of the nation. I was asked to do an interview about getting around and seeing Seoul for them. It was fun talking about my favorite city, though every time I have to talk about it, I realize both how much, and in the end, how little I really know about this place.

Anyway, if you want to hear my take on some of the different famous districts of Seoul, or if you're looking for a basic scouting report on traveling around Seoul, it's a good place to start.

Go watch it, and look around the site while you're at it.

:)

Do Make Say Think in Seoul

Do Make Say Think is one of my favorite bands, and they played in Seoul a couple Sundays ago. They play what is often labeled "Post-rock instrumental" - longer compositions, usually without vocals (save a few la la choruses), almost like Jazz, but with more of the dynamic contrast you hear in some kinds of rock music -- lots of loud/soft, and atmospherics. It's the perfect band for me, because I'm all about the bliss-out, wherever it can be found... and dear readers, it can be found here.



So after a bit of searching to find the exact location of the venue, my buddy Evan and I headed down about twelve flights of stairs to the concert space, which was a big ol' cavernous room in the basement of a building not far from Hongik University's main gate. Evan and I grabbed seats on the risers at the back of the room, and watched On Sparrow Hills - an expat band, who reminded me of Frightened Rabbit, and did a good job of warming up the crowd, and then Vidulgi Ooyoo, a Korean bliss-out/shoegaze band with a female lead singer who didn't sing often enough, and who sounded, as Evan said, "Like the Cranberries got as high as f$*#" - especially when the singer was singing. I concur.

Here's a little of what the first two bands sounded like.

a picture of vidulgi ooyoo

Then, after very long break between sets, Do Make Say Think came on. They didn't talk to the crowd much, other than a few "I see a lot of English teachers here today" kinds of cracks. Here's a bit of their sound -- note the loud/soft shifts, and sudden changes in arrangement - from their patented everybodyplaysatonce to a soloist and back, etc..

But the problem, as always, is that live music is like nothing else. So watch this clip, but if you want to get a feel for what the show was really like, then play it as loud as possible, and project it life-size against a wall in your house, and then turn the projected life-size people into real people. That's what it was actually like to see.


I'm happy I went. I had a great time, and I'm thrilled that some of my favorite bands are finally coming to Korea: most of my favorite bands are not the arena-filling-type bands, so while Guns'n'Roses might will stop in here, Seoul is often skipped by smaller bands. It's not really my place to theorize why, but there you have it.

But great show! It was also my goodbye hang-out with my man Evan, who's gone back to Canada now. More on him later.

Problem: beyond a certain point, unless it's Lady Gaga or something, concert photos look the same for pretty much every band.

They have horns.

The crowd was really into it. Most of them seemed to be very familiar with DMST, particularly the girl who was next to us on the bleachers, who nearly exploded in her seat once the headliners came on.

More on DMST, Vidulgi Ooyoo, et al, here.

Link Rundown

I've been leaving pages open on my internets for a while now, planning to write about them and not getting around to it. Sometimes cleaning my desktop takes as much time as cleaning my room.

1. Get a load of this article. It's my (Western? English? North American?) training in the five paragraph essay that makes me think this article looks like my first step of writing - the freewrite - after which I'd encourage my students to take that writing, throw away most of it, and find a main point. Brian in JND pointed this article out, and mentions that one rhetorical form in Korean writing seems to be to circle around a topic, and then deliver the main point as late in the article as possible; someone raised on thesis statements and topic sentences spends the entire time reading such an article going "give me a freaking statement of purpose already!" I'm sure it could be very effective if done well -- jokes are told that way, aren't they? -- but let's just say, either because of translation, or because of the original article, or cultural rhetorical forms, this one doesn't come of quite that well.

2. This article says that Koreans are the most materialistic country in the world. What does that mean? It means of all the countries surveyed, more Koreans said money was the main indicator of success than other factors.

Some Stuff that Made Me Smile...

The blog's been ranty and gripey lately, and one of my big upcoming posts will be similar... but in order to enjoy life, I encourage anybody who asks to pay attention to the things that made them smile, and talk about them, and draw attention to them - write them down in a notebook, or take pictures of them, or whatever it takes.

So here are some of the things that have made me smile lately:

Including:

the wacky statues near deoksu palace, which, no matter how low you squat, look like you're looking down at them from above. Korean conscripts shoveling snow. Dumb people who don't know how to drive in snow. A bucket of eels. Light shows by Seoul Square, and the cool film ads that play outside the car on the subway between Gwanghwamun Station and Jongno 3-ga station, and the tea blossom that opens. Oh yeah: and tickling Chris in South Korea.
Music from The Eels.

Got a Beef with Immigration?

According to this blurb in the Korea Herald, the Prime Minister's office has opened a suggestion box for the month of March.

Are there rules or regulations that are gumming up your groove, in areas like "immigration, personal identification, status change, economic activities or daily lives of non-Koreans, foreign spouses of Koreans or overseas Koreans"? Can you think of regulations or systems that are discriminatory?

Drop a line to sangsan@pmo.go.kr or send a fax to (02) 2100-2323 sometime this month, and if they like your ideas, you might even win some gift certificates.

Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.

Life as a Banana

Interesting article at London Korea Links about the lives of adult Korean adoptees.

Go read.

Enough with the Sports Victimhood Already

Had a conversation with Girlfriendoseyo about bad sportsmanship on the third last day of the Olympics: she mentioned how the Russian team officials were so disappointed at their poor showing these Olympics that team officials and government members left before the games were done, and even the president is calling for heads to roll. Figure saking silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko bitched about not winning gold rather than giving credit to Evan Lysacek. I came back with my memory of the 2002 winter games, when team Russia was so dissatisfied with their bronze medal finish in hockey that they didn't even show up for the medal ceremony. No class.

Then I mentioned the death threats against Jim Hewish, the referee who disqualified the Korean skater and gave Apolo Ohno the gold in 2002, and this year called back the Korean women's team speed skating gold medal for crowding a Chinese skater. (It's interesting that the hate this time is for the referee instead of for the Chinese skaters... but something I've noticed recently is that Korea will get all noisy and outraged in hate for America or Japan, but Korea doesn't mess with China. When the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay ended with the embarrassment of Seoul being unable to control the crowd of Chinese boosters, who violently quelled any protests around city hall, and darn near mauled a fella in the Soul Plaza Hotel lobby, the Chinese students arrested weren't even deported, and the whole thing disappeared from the media in two days, unlike the trumped up story against US Beef, which was a pure fiction, but sparked street protests for months, to say nothing of all of 2002 except the World Cup.)

So Jim Hewish had to be put under police protection in Vancouver. Brian cited a comment at Marmot, that these netizen outbursts can, and WILL undermine Korean attempts to host huge events like Olympics and World Cups - is the IOC really going to hold a Winter Games in a country where they might be unable to guarantee the safety of referees or players, if a call or a close game goes against Korea? Do they want to risk 200, or 1000 of THOSE kinds of people waiting outside the venue every time the hated ref of the day comes and goes?

In Korea's defense, Girlfriendoseyo said that she read that Jim Hewish had a history of other calls against Korea, and that he'd been suspended for two years for one such call (possibly the one in favor of Ohno?)... but I, with my extensive research skills (googling "Jim Hewish Suspended") haven't been able to find any confirmation of this from news sites. And yeah, the 3000 meter thing sucked. Sure.

But one commenter I read pointed out: Korea's own bad sportsmanship may well have caused Jim Hewish to make more calls against Korea. You see, Kushibo explains:

South Korea's hardcore netizenry may be entirely to blame for this one. The call was one that, according to the link The Marmot provided, could have gone either way, but the orgy of hate unleashed by the hardcore super comment tribe and their hacker buddies in 2002 forced his hand in Vancouver: Were Mr Hewish to have sided with the ROK team this time, he would have left himself open to accusations of caving in against his judgement.

The Joongang Daily has an editorial (HT Brian's twitter) about how bad calls are poor sportsmanship... which conveniently fails to mention that planting flags on pitching mounds and death threats are poor sportsmanship, too...
(source)

I don't really care to get into a back and forth about who's right and who's wrong, so all I want to say to Korean sports fans is this:

Folks, here's the thing. Sports Karma exists. The sporting gods, who determine who gets good luck and who gets bad luck, watch the behavior of athletes and fans, to decide who gets the lucky bounces, and who gets the bad calls.

Here's how sports Karma works - and I've seen this best by following Canadian hockey for quite a long time:

Basically: what goes around comes around. Send out bad sports Karma and it'll haunt you later. Send out good sports karma, and you'll benefit. Seriously.

Being a sore loser = bad sports karma - if you bitch and moan when bad things happen, more bad things will happen. Seriously. Russia's sore losership in the past is, in the Sports karma way of things, the direct cause of their poor showing in these Olympics.

Being an ungracious winner = bad sports karma - if players gloat when good things happen, bad things happen in the future. (cf: Flag planting, Korean audiences getting up and leaving after Kim Yuna skates instead of watching the whole show, gold medalists talking shit about runners-up)

And here's the big thing about sports Karma: if you remain competitive, keep trying, and respect the game and the other players, what goes around comes around. Seriously. In Canadian Hockey, a few bad referee calls have robbed Canada when they should have done better... but for every disallowed goal or bogus call that went against Canada, there's one that went our way, that benefited us, at some other time. If Canada lost this gold medal game because of a bad bounce, or an unlucky play, or a bit of bad refereeing at the wrong time, or if they just ran into a hot goalie, like they did in 2006, I'd be a bit upset, sure, but I'd also know that buddy, that doesn't change too much: Canada played hard, and next Olympics, they'd be in the mix again. Dear South Korean sports fans: it's the same for you! If you try your best, and lose with grace, that's good sports Karma, which improves your chances next time around. Losing a heartbreaker? That's good sports Karma, too, and it just makes it more satisfying when things finally DO go right (cf: 2004 Red Sox World Series). Getting the women's 3000 relay gold next Olympics will be way more satisfying if you win it back after being robbed this year, than it would have been if you'd just kept winning.

Korea's last two Olympics were, as far as I can tell, its best showings ever... so enjoy that, and be happy about it, support your athletes, learn to enjoy the awesomeness that is sporting excellence, no matter who's playing and winning, and seriously, back off with the victim thing - two Korea stories were in the nominations for the most controversial moments of the Olympics, and that's bad Karma - and go enjoy another Kim Yuna replay. The bad sports fan thing is tired, and it's building up bad sports karma which will hurt your teams and players in the future.

Thank you for listen my essay.

Rob

Olympic Wrap-up

The Olympics are finished, and even though I couldn't see any of them in person, living in Korea and all, it's been a pretty satisfying run.

Here are the three things I was rooting for during these olympics:

1. Canadian Men's Hockey gold.
2. Kim Yuna gold
3. (I'm a petty old codger, but...) Canada finishes ahead of Korea in the medal standings.

And squee with glee, dear readers: I got all three!

So Canada won 14 Gold medals (an Olympic record), including the one we would have traded the other 13 for: Men's Hockey Gold. Way to go, Canada. I watched the game on tape delay (it aired live here at 5am), and got to enjoy it. And holy crap, what a great game that was.

Sidney Crosby is officially Canada's new national hero, and Joannie Rochette is not far behind. Plus, he was assisted by Jerome Iginla, one of those prototypical Canadian hockey players who can throw his weight around, or dupe you with a swift move. Now if only Sidney were playing for a Canadian team, too, and Toronto didn't suck, everything would be right in the hockey world.

Kim Yuna has achieved goddess status in Korea -- seriously, she could run for president right now and win, she could read the phone book and people would watch the telecast, she could become a pitch lady for Toyota and they'd hit #1 here. You could make money selling empty jars of air labled "Yuna Farts" (I stole that joke... but girlfriendoseyo's friend's mother said almost the same thing - "I bet even her poo is pretty", which is about the equivalent of "she pisses perfume" I suppose.)

That's all for now.