Happy Times...

I'm tired every day when I get home from work... but there's a lot of awesome in my life right now.

Here's a song to commemorate my happy.  "The Heart of Life (is good)" by John Mayer, whose soft rock belies a seriously skilled guitarist.



and here are a few pictures from my wedding and honeymoon:



My Step-Mom is a class act.  We got her some hanbok made, and she looked fantastic with Wifeoseyo's ma.


This bouquet was part of wifeoseyo's birthday celebration.  It isn't easy to get flowers in the maldives, but it was worth every penny, dear readers.  They were gorgeous, and perfect for the situation.


Here is a happy Seyo.


Wifeoseyo can make a coral blue sea and a champagne glass into a nifty photo.


She's also a hot silhouette.


We chose the right night to go on the sunset cruise: the other sunsets that week were mostly grey and disappointing, but we got gorgeous skies all the way from blue to gold to pink to purple to moonlight.


see?


Oh yeah.  Also my niece.


And my other niece.  This is one of the pictures I like most, of all the pictures I've taken.

B- Blood Needed in Gwangju

I've received a few messages:

at Cheonnam University Hospital in Gwangju, there's a longtime expat, and upstanding community member named Michael Simning who sick: the full diagnosis isn't out yet, but he needs blood.

All RH negative blood is rare in Korea: most Koreans have a positive RH, so there is often a demand, or shortage in negative blood types.

A few months ago, there was a call to give blood for a kid in Yonsei Severance Hospital, across facebook and other places.  I wrote about my experience trying to give blood here, and I wrote about what one must do to qualify to give blood here.  It will help if you bring a friend who speaks Korean: even in Seoul, the blood clinic folks barely spoke a stitch of English.

there's a facebook group called "Blood Connections" that shares information about blood donation in Kroea.  They're a good group to contact for more information about what you have to do, to donate blood in Korea: the language gap can be a problem. There's more here.

The donation eligibility form is the same at any red cross clinic worldwide:

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

These two documents'll help you determine your eligibility.

In this article, and this one, I was told you need to meet these requirements to donate blood in Korea: 

1. You need to have an Alien Registration Card. Bring it, and be ready to present it.
2. You need to have been in Korea for a year.
3. You need to be able to answer some questions about your medical history... mostly the ones inthose two documents above... the guy at the Seoul Global Center, when I called in April, was pretty sure that you need to speak enough Korean to answer the medical history questions yourself, but when I went in person, the nurse did allow me to answer the questions through an interpreter.  Some of the questions made my translator feel awkward -- "have you shared needles"? But if you can help save a guy's life, it's worth it, right?

I'm not sure who the best person to call for more information is, either at the hospital, or for gwangju-specific information - maybe a Gwangju-er could let us know in the comments?  But that's a start.

ht: Brian in JND, Twitter, and the two or three people who have messaged me on facebook or by e-mail.

more about my blood donation experience here.

North Korea on Collegehumor

Collegehumor put up this fictional "google map" of North Korea on their main page.

Here's a teaser/screenshot:

It was kind of funny - riffing on the propaganda thing.

It's not the first time North Korea's been mocked, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

I'm so Ronery (Team America, World Police)

the "Jackass does North Korea" thing was mildly funny... not funny enough for an embedded video...

but my personal favorite is this Chinese insurance commercial.

I like to imagine Kim Jong-Il seeing this stuff when he surfs the internet, and I wonder how he responds.

Question of the day: Multi Language Car Navigation

So Wifeoseyo and I got a car. It's pretty sweet, though commuting is... commuting.

Anyway, it's not a Korean-made car, so the next question is this: see, the navigation system that's built into the car... well... has a few shortcomings. We're looking at getting a Korean navigation system, but as a not-Korean native speaker, Korean-only navigation systems aren't helpful for me, because exactly at the times when I need to focus on the road and not have too much distracting me - off-ramps, left-turns, merging traffic - having the Navi speaking to me in Korean increases my stress instead of decreasing it, and divides my focus instead of helping. I can turn the thing off, but having notations and such is useful.

Now, I know that in America, you can get a navigation system that can switch voices - you can have Homer Simpson or Kyle from South Park tell you to turn left or right.  I haven't researched it, but I bet that means you can also switch your navigation to a different language...

At some point, maybe sooner than later, my Korean language will improve to the point it's not necessary, but until then...

So the question is, here in Korea, how does one get a navigation that can switch between English and Korean instructions without too much difficulty?  Which brand is best, or what does one have to do to their navigation system, so that it'll do it?

Answers in the comments, please.

The Funniest Sexual Harassment Training Video

My coworker just told me he stalks me on my blog. That's OK, Bryan. You're still awesome.

However, while we're on the subject...

There have been rumblings around my workplace that there might be a sexual harassment training seminar in our near future.  That's OK with me, all things considered.  But that got me remembering the funniest Sexual Harassment Training Video I've ever seen - from collegehumor.com.

warning: mature topic, some words your grandmother doesn't like to hear, and a few unexpected visuals.

warning: hilarity

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Disclaimer: while this video is over the top and funny, sexual harassment isn't, and anybody who employs these techniques in earnest is some kind of scuzz or another.

The best thing about living in Korea...?

So I got stuck in a traffic jam this morning - more about driving in Seoul sometime soon, now that Wifeoseyo and I got a car...

but I have been accused of too much bitching on my blog lately, so it's time for something positive.

First off, being married is great.  Wifeoseyo is a champ, in every respect, and it's been an awesome time so far.  Got to hang out with the in-laws last weekend, and my one-year-old niece is super-cute, too.  She likes me.  We're only at the waving and smiling point so far, but that's OK with me.

Anyway, this last week, I've been taking full advantage of one of the things I love the most about Korea, and here it is:

Monday: grilled Mackerel, in a long-standing, well-known restaurant in my neighborhood: crisped brown, perfectly salted, purple rice (healthier) on the side.  4000 won.

Tuesday: hot pot bibimbap: the pot is so hot that the rice scorches against the inside of the bowl in which the bibimbap is served; I mix it, and then press the mixed rice against the sides of the bowl, to maximize the scorched flavor and texture.  Best bibimbap I've had in the city (as always, the best bibimbap, hands down, is in those little restaurants at the bottoms of mountain trails, right after climbing a mountain, but short of climbing a mountain, this is great).  The old ladies at this place know me, and know that I don't eat the "Yakult" cup, so they don't set it out on my tray.

Wednesday: maybe on Wednesday I'll go to "Halmoni Kalguksu" near Jongno 3-ga, in a tiny back-alley near subway exit six.

The old ladies there have kept their prices the same since the 1980s, according to wifeoseyo, who read about them, and they plan to continue that way until they die.

Plus, they're really cute old ladies:

Their kitchen is pretty sweet, too.

And maybe on Thursday, I'll head down to the dark, slightly sketchy street near my workplace, where you can pay 6000 won for a seafood pancake (해물파전) that's crisp, delicious, fresh, and big enough that two people can't finish it together in one sitting.

See, you never know where you'll find a brilliant gem of a restaurant - the narrowest back alley might bend around and reveal a line up out the door and around the next corner, where you'll eat your fill and then some from a few people who actually take pride in serving great food for a low price.  I'll tell you what: where I'm from, if the soup became famously delicious, it wouldn't take long for the soup's price to reflect the degree of fame it had achieved.  

I've heard Japanese food is great - but you've gotta seriously pay for the best of it.  I've heard French cuisine is similarly great - if you don't mind paying through the nose.  But in Korea, the best - seriously, the best Korean food, the most authentic Korean food experience, the most delicious food, and the food that reminds your Korean friends of their childhoods, is usually cheap as anything, loaded with more side dishes than you can eat, and in unpretentious farmhouses, or in bare-bones simple hole-in-the-wall restaurants in a back alley where directions to find it go like this: "Turn left, and then right, and then left, and then right, and if you reach the old lady husking garlic cloves on her front porch, you've gone too far."

And I love it.

Halmoni Kalguksu (pictured above) is closed on Sundays, and don't go during lunch hour, because the line goes out the door.  Here's the google map:

View Halmoni Kalguksu in a larger map

Overpackaging In Seoul: Has Anything Changed?

A bit over a year ago I made this video to point out the extreme level of overpackaging many products have in Seoul: even Wifeoseyo's mom is shocked by the overpackaging when she comes in from Daegu.


The question is: has it gotten any better since then?

I'm gonna spoil Inception for you.

OK, readers, I'm about to spoil a movie for you.  Not spoil like, "give away the ending" but spoil like "once you realize this, you can't look at the movie the same way again" spoil -- not in the "HE's Keyser Soze" way, but in the "How did Fezzik find out Count Rugen was the six-fingered man?  He didn't talk to Wesley after Wesley was captured" way.

In the same way that the best criticism I heard of Harry Potter came out of left field and surprised me with the perceptiveness of the comment, Wifeoseyo just pulled a tiny thread and made the movie Inception unravel for me.

See, I met this lady who didn't let her kids read Harry Potter... but not because Harry Potter was the devil recruiting her kids to witchcraft, but because Harry was a bad role model: one of the overarching themes of the books (especially the early ones) was "Kids usually know better than adults, and adults are not to be trusted, and rules made by adults are to be circumvented or ignored whenever it seems best to kids to do so."  Think about how often Harry doesn't tell Dumbledore about something that he should have, given that Dumbledore was above reproach and always did right by Harry, given that Harry always trusted him when he thought explicitly about him, and how Dumbledore always proved trustworthy.  Yet Harry lied or concealed all kinds of stuff from Dumbledore, McGonagall, and all the other teachers.  This mom didn't like the spirit of disrespect, mistrust, and disobedience for adults embedded in the books. And she was right.  And that message was subtler, and therefore harder to de-program, if kids picked it up.

I was totally unprepared for her critique, but she was bang on, and as the series continued, Harry started concealing or lying to his friends as well, to the point that by the seventh book, he was one of the most unlikeable heroes I've read in a book.  Say what you want, but the heroes of the Narnia books, and especially Lyra and Will in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman, are miles more likable than our man HP.

So what about Inception?

Well, yeah, the story was subtle and cool.  The effects were great.  The levels and the themes were nifty and I'm sure I could watch it three more times and get more from it each time.  DiCaprio remains my favorite actor of his generation (that's the post-Johnny Depp generation, as Depp is in a class of his own), and I still think that in thirty years, Depp/DiCaprio will be the Pacino/DeNiro of our generation, unless Robert Downey Jr. has a run of brilliance like Tom Hanks had in the '90s.  Then somebody will come along and say, "Streep" and everybody will go, "Oh yeah.  She owns them all.  Plus, we're sexist."

But here's the thing that undid Inception for me, and that won't get out of my head now that I realized it.  And now I'm going to wreck it for you, too:

Wifeoseyo commented, offhand, that she really got annoyed by all the gunplay in the movie.  This is surprisingly similar to something my mother would say: she'd tune out and usually fall asleep, at the first gunfight, no matter how good the movie was.  (And then snore during the most crucial scene, to the exasperation/delight of everyone in the family.)

But then I thought more about it, and realized...

Holy crap, Inception presented one of the biggest lost opportunities in a movie, like, ever.

See, we're in a dream world.  a dream world and the most imaginative protection one's subconscious can come up with is people with guns?  In a freaking dream world?  Come-freaking-ON!

Christopher Nolan sets his movie -- makes the whole point of his movie that it happens in the subconscious -- and then the best he can come up with is people with guns?

Where's my Matrix-anti-gravity moon-boot action?  It's a dream after all, isn't it?  Why would I bring a gun into someone's dream world, when instead I could turn my arms into giant steel octopus arms, or grow myself fifty feet tall and get my stomp on, or spray psychic mind-beams all over the landscape?  Why wasn't a single one of the five dream layers defended by giant robot ninja hedgehogs with rocket-claws and laser eyes and invisibility power?  At the very least, why weren't the dark corners of these dream cities and hotels hiding ghouls and bogeymen and spiders and kidnappers and whatever else lurked in the dreamers' nightmares?

The more I think about it, the more disappointing the gunplay becomes, and the more cheated I feel.  Christopher Nolan set an entire movie in dreamland, and there wasn't a single shapeshifting bearshark with robot intelligence that spit acid saliva.  He gave himself a total blank slate: a dream world with a virtually unlimited hollywood budget... and then filled it with the most conventional element in the world.  That's like your friend buying a Ferrari and then only using it to drive to church, or owning the world's greatest home entertainment system, but only having "The Notebook" in your DVD collection.

For the record, Inception is not the only movie I believe was made into a huge letdown by an over-reliance on gunplay: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, was another movie where the gunplay copout left me cold.  The whole point of the movie was two super-smart, super-spies who are married... and instead of extricating themselves from their spy agencies through some super-smart, stealthy piece of intrigue that gives them a watertight out... they shoot a bunch of people in a warehouse?  I was totally disappointed.

That's all for now.  Leave requests for other movies I can spoil in the comments.

Wanna be a KPop Star?

Now that I'm officially out of the KPop closet, I was looking up articles to put together a topic for my discussion class, and came across this:

what it takes to become a KPop star.

Interesting.  Extra Korea regularly comments on the conditions KPop stars work under (hint: pretty outrageous).

And in other news, I've got to report on KPop songs I like quick, for one of two reasons: either the song doesn't hit, and it vanishes from the public consciousness so quickly that my video clip seems irrelevant, or it DOES hit, and it becomes so ubiquitous that I get sick of it.

So here's the latest song that's been buzzing through my head.
And maybe if it gets stuck in your head, dear reader, it won't be stuck in mine for another week.



ever notice how so many of JYP's bands have English words at the most catchy points of the melody? Exactly those points that are supposed to catch in your head?

It makes me particularly susceptible to infection.

North Korea on Youtube

The Korea Herald had a blurb on its front page that North Korea had opened a Youtube channel.  Now, this is very, very interesting news to me, because a North Korean propaganda channel on Youtube is/could be...

1. unintentionally hilarious
2. unintentionally frightening
3. a fascinating convergence of backward-looking thought with new media
4. in danger of being blocked by the Korean government
5. loaded with hilariously bad English

-here we expat bloggers have been moaning that South Korean promotions people have been failing to reach their audience because they've been publishing/producing stuff THEY like instead of stuff that'll actually reach their audience... how much do you want to bet a North Korean Youtube channel will raise that hilari-out-of-touchness to a degree we may never have seen before.

If the intended audience of the Youtube channel is the international world, and not just South Korean sympathizers/potential sympathizers, that is.

Here's North Korea's Youtube Channel: take it with a grain of salt, and keep an eye on it: who knows when the hilarity will begin.  I'm praying for subtitles and English language narrators to keep me joy-ing.

Also interesting are the comment threads on most Youtube channels related to North Korea: even my own video about North Korea gets a random "Hail the great North Korea" comment posted on it about every third month or so.

For more North Korea on Youtube:
JucheKorea
rodrigorojo1 (Hat-tip to Reasonable Man)
the famous north/south b-boy showdown video that went around Youtube.

The video you SHOULD watch is this one, by LINK (Liberty In North Korea) - this was a video sponsored by Google to spread word about the situation in North Korea.  This video features a talk by a North Korean defector who grew up in a North Korean concentration camp.  Did you know there are still concentration camps operating in the world?  Why isn't every person in the world outraged about this?

public executions, mass starvation, concentration camps; the list goes on.

The tragedy: this video only has 100 000 or so views as of today.

story on google news
I'd link the Korea Herald article, but I've been getting "this site will harm your computer warnings" lately.

Vice Guide to North Korea: a tour of North Korea from the view of a western TV Crew who pretended to be tourists, and took hidden camera footage.