Here, for your enlightenment, are the 25 songs that have received the most play on itunes, on my desk computer.
to view the whole playlist instead of just starting to listen, go here.
I claim no responsibility for the imagery you might encounter on these videos - for example on the mash-up post, when the only video I could find that used the mash-up song I liked, included a lot of anime panty shots. Minimize the window while it plays if you must... but the walkmen video's quite cool.
Feel free to judge the entirety of my character on whether you like or dislike one, several, or all of the artists or songs on this list. I think it gives a pretty fair sample of the variety of music I listen to, though it doesn't include any of the classical I like. The list biases towards the more mellow stuff that I like when I'm working (desk computer, you know?) When I'm out and about on my mp3 player or in the car, the stuff I choose tends to be louder, and when I'm really focusing on my work, I tend to play classical music on the mp3 player with speakers instead of having it on my desktop iTunes, so that I can't distract myself by playing around with the music selections. (White Stripes, and Sleigh Bells in particular this year, make me happy when I'm away from my desk.)
Songs (in order of listens)
Holy Holy Holy - Sufjan Stevens
4 Minute Warning - Radiohead
Lover's Day - TV on the Radio
Buriedfed - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
Keep Yourself Warm - Frightened Rabbit
Slow With Horns - Dan Deacon
Kids - MGMT
I Want to Live in a Wigwam - Cat Stevens
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Tytto Tanssil - Paavoharju
Donde Esta la Playa - Walkmen
In the Flowers - Animal Collective
Portland, Oregon - Loretta Lynn and Jack White
Make Everyone Happy/Mechanical Birds - Modest Mouse
1901 - Phoenix
Convinced of the Hex - Flaming Lips
Festival - Sigur Ros
Dragon's Lair - Sunset Rubdown
Scythian Empire - Andrew Bird (played on the video I made for my wife on our wedding day)
A with Living - Do Make Say Think
Once Again - Girl Talk
On the Radio - Regina Spektor
Everything is Free Now - The Tiny
Rococo Zephyr - Bill Callahan
A Case of You - Joni Mitchell (I cheated and added a 26th, because either Joni or Stan Rogers NEEDED to be on the list)
Not available on youtube: Music in her eyes - by Stan Rogers, a Canadian singer-songwriter who would have been named with Gordon Lightfoot in the Canadian folk pantheon if he hadn't died early in a crash.
So, readers, what does my list say about me, other than that I'm not much into top 40, and that I'm friggin' awesome?
one expat's life in Korea
Friday, December 31, 2010
Roboseyo's Year-end Bests:
Here are some notable posts from 2010 at Roboseyo
Happy Roboseyo:
Travel to: Busan. Inwang Mountain.
Useful Posts
Smart Roboseyo
Other Memorable Tributes, Rants, Miscellany, and Must-Reads
People Go Home: Tribute to Friends Gone Home
And for fun, one of my two favorite music discoveries this year. I'll probably write more about them later, but I totally have an artist-crush on Janelle Monae right now, and I am smitten as a kitten.
Here's the music; the video (which won't embed) is a another glorious thing entirely, and I highly recommend it.
Happy New Years, readers.
And for fun, one of my two favorite music discoveries this year. I'll probably write more about them later, but I totally have an artist-crush on Janelle Monae right now, and I am smitten as a kitten.
Here's the music; the video (which won't embed) is a another glorious thing entirely, and I highly recommend it.
Happy New Years, readers.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Year-end Parties and...Is K-pop the Greatest Genre for Mash-ups?
New Year's Eve parties: Ten Magazine continues its excellent work of scouting out and posting news of all the action going on in Korea.
Next: I love mashups. They fit with the way I envision culture working these days, where everything is mixing together and touching each other in unexpected ways, thanks to our confusing, communication society.
Every year DJ Earworm makes a year-end mash-up of the top pop songs from the year.
My personal favorite is this one, built around the etherial hook from that one Coldplay song. It just really, really works. And it features a lot of Alicia Keys, and a lot of Pink, two of my favorite voices in current top-40 pop music.
This year, there's another one: it's alright - I prefer Alicia Keys featuring prominently over Katy Perry and Key$ha, though I do like (cheesy as it is) this song: "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. I don't know if I'll join the Bruno Mars fan club and buy the t-shirt (I'd rather have this t-shirt), but this is an awesome song to have come on the radio while you're driving (which is how I first encountered it).
And, now that I've run it down a bit, here's the 2010 mash-up.
But readers if you're only watching one mash-up on this post, watch this one. This is the K-pop 2010 mashup, from mmixes' Youtube channel.
and here's the challenge:
I don't think anyone can find a genre of music that lends itself better to awesome mash-ups than K-pop. If you can think of one, with some example of mash-ups that are as awesome as this, let me know.
And here's why:
The fun of mash-ups is recognition. See how many songs you recognize from this one track by Girl Talk. Girl Talk is amazing. I don't know if Girl Talk can play a single instrument, but he can throw lines and hooks from all kinds of songs together, so that five minutes of listening touches on a billion memories of drives, dances, parties, and awesome people who played you music, and the music also rocks: it fits together, it works, and it's a musical journey that's awesome and nostalgic.
Well, the fun thing in mash-ups is putting hooks together, so that people can recognize those familiar hooks.
K-pop is all. about. hooks. Critics argue that's all it's about, and argue that if you will (some are), but when you're making a mash-up, that's beside the point, because the hooks alone matter. So go watch that K-pop mash-up I posted above: it's like listening to the best parts of the entire year of k-pop, and not having to wait through weak verses, lines of songs where "the one who dances" has to sing to get equal stage time, unneeded dance interludes, unneeded "the music stops and we're going to act out a scene that somehow involves ambulance lights" breaks, or the other three minutes of a song that only has one good hook, or any of the other excesses or filler that puts people off K-pop, and enjoy it in its purest, most concentrated state.
Only the best hooks, only the famous dance moves, only the cutest close-ups, and then it's done.
Mash-ups, baby. yeah!
What's your favorite mash-up? Put the youtube link in the comments.
Next: I love mashups. They fit with the way I envision culture working these days, where everything is mixing together and touching each other in unexpected ways, thanks to our confusing, communication society.
Every year DJ Earworm makes a year-end mash-up of the top pop songs from the year.
My personal favorite is this one, built around the etherial hook from that one Coldplay song. It just really, really works. And it features a lot of Alicia Keys, and a lot of Pink, two of my favorite voices in current top-40 pop music.
This year, there's another one: it's alright - I prefer Alicia Keys featuring prominently over Katy Perry and Key$ha, though I do like (cheesy as it is) this song: "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. I don't know if I'll join the Bruno Mars fan club and buy the t-shirt (I'd rather have this t-shirt), but this is an awesome song to have come on the radio while you're driving (which is how I first encountered it).
And, now that I've run it down a bit, here's the 2010 mash-up.
But readers if you're only watching one mash-up on this post, watch this one. This is the K-pop 2010 mashup, from mmixes' Youtube channel.
and here's the challenge:
I don't think anyone can find a genre of music that lends itself better to awesome mash-ups than K-pop. If you can think of one, with some example of mash-ups that are as awesome as this, let me know.
And here's why:
The fun of mash-ups is recognition. See how many songs you recognize from this one track by Girl Talk. Girl Talk is amazing. I don't know if Girl Talk can play a single instrument, but he can throw lines and hooks from all kinds of songs together, so that five minutes of listening touches on a billion memories of drives, dances, parties, and awesome people who played you music, and the music also rocks: it fits together, it works, and it's a musical journey that's awesome and nostalgic.
Well, the fun thing in mash-ups is putting hooks together, so that people can recognize those familiar hooks.
K-pop is all. about. hooks. Critics argue that's all it's about, and argue that if you will (some are), but when you're making a mash-up, that's beside the point, because the hooks alone matter. So go watch that K-pop mash-up I posted above: it's like listening to the best parts of the entire year of k-pop, and not having to wait through weak verses, lines of songs where "the one who dances" has to sing to get equal stage time, unneeded dance interludes, unneeded "the music stops and we're going to act out a scene that somehow involves ambulance lights" breaks, or the other three minutes of a song that only has one good hook, or any of the other excesses or filler that puts people off K-pop, and enjoy it in its purest, most concentrated state.
Only the best hooks, only the famous dance moves, only the cutest close-ups, and then it's done.
Mash-ups, baby. yeah!
What's your favorite mash-up? Put the youtube link in the comments.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
snow pictures from yesterday
It snowed yesterday, so I took these pictures.
It's actually harder taking good snow pictures than it seems, because all the white in the frame seems to wash out the three-dimensional feeling in a picture's composition, if it's not handled carefully.
Anyway, I headed out to Bu-am dong, near Sangmyung University, and took some pictures on the way up a couple of mountainsides, and through a couple of grotty old neighborhoods, the likes of which are slowly, sadly disappearing.
Anyway, I love fresh snow.
And snow on branches.
maybe my second favorite picture from the day... I was actually a little disappointed with the results of my photography, though the snowy trudge was sure fun.
There's a little temple up there.
during the spring, this was a rushing river. Now kids were down there, having snowball fights in the riverbed.
This is a good example of why snow doesn't photograph well in daylight: the textures of the snow, and the branches on which it hung, got washed out by the diffuse daylight. If the snow had been sitting on larger shapes, the picture would have some composition, and if it were a moving video camera, you could see the 3D movement of the things behind the branches, to get a sense of the depth. As it is, there isn't much to see in this picture, though it looked super cool in person.
Maybe at night, if there were a single light source (say, an orange street light) it would have looked cooler.
Pine branches sagging under heavy snow. Now we're talking!
My favorite picture on the day. I'm pretty sure that's Bukhansan, though I might be wrong.
I also managed to get the pictures off the confounded wrong-file-formatted video camera and onto my computer, finally.
so those are my snow-tos. (see what I did there? I combined snow and photo, because they both have a long "o" sound!)
I also spotted this cool coffee shop name on the way up the hill to Sangmyung University:
The most puzzling thing I saw during my walkabout was definitely this nativity scene, out in front of a neighborhood church:
it's a run of the mill nativity scene, until you look at the proportional sizes of the figurines, and you wonder how a Mary that size had a baby Jesus that size... unless Jesus was capable of fish and loaves type miracles right from day one.
And, finally, because I have nowhere else to put them:
One of the little city beauty elements that one doesn't spot every day, but which I always love to see:
When the sun reaches a certain angle, it'll reflect off the side of one glass-windowed building, onto the side of another building, and cast all kinds of strangely shaped lights and shadow on it.
Stuff you don't see in the countryside, friends.
It's actually harder taking good snow pictures than it seems, because all the white in the frame seems to wash out the three-dimensional feeling in a picture's composition, if it's not handled carefully.
Anyway, I headed out to Bu-am dong, near Sangmyung University, and took some pictures on the way up a couple of mountainsides, and through a couple of grotty old neighborhoods, the likes of which are slowly, sadly disappearing.
Anyway, I love fresh snow.
And snow on branches.
maybe my second favorite picture from the day... I was actually a little disappointed with the results of my photography, though the snowy trudge was sure fun.
There's a little temple up there.
during the spring, this was a rushing river. Now kids were down there, having snowball fights in the riverbed.
This is a good example of why snow doesn't photograph well in daylight: the textures of the snow, and the branches on which it hung, got washed out by the diffuse daylight. If the snow had been sitting on larger shapes, the picture would have some composition, and if it were a moving video camera, you could see the 3D movement of the things behind the branches, to get a sense of the depth. As it is, there isn't much to see in this picture, though it looked super cool in person.
Maybe at night, if there were a single light source (say, an orange street light) it would have looked cooler.
Pine branches sagging under heavy snow. Now we're talking!
My favorite picture on the day. I'm pretty sure that's Bukhansan, though I might be wrong.
I also managed to get the pictures off the confounded wrong-file-formatted video camera and onto my computer, finally.
so those are my snow-tos. (see what I did there? I combined snow and photo, because they both have a long "o" sound!)
I also spotted this cool coffee shop name on the way up the hill to Sangmyung University:
The most puzzling thing I saw during my walkabout was definitely this nativity scene, out in front of a neighborhood church:
it's a run of the mill nativity scene, until you look at the proportional sizes of the figurines, and you wonder how a Mary that size had a baby Jesus that size... unless Jesus was capable of fish and loaves type miracles right from day one.
And, finally, because I have nowhere else to put them:
One of the little city beauty elements that one doesn't spot every day, but which I always love to see:
When the sun reaches a certain angle, it'll reflect off the side of one glass-windowed building, onto the side of another building, and cast all kinds of strangely shaped lights and shadow on it.
Stuff you don't see in the countryside, friends.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Who Owns a Culture: Summary before Finishing
OK. It was a long, long time ago that I started writing this series, and it's just embarrassing that I haven't finished it yet...
I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway. I got married, too. However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.
However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.
So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.
The summary then:
I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway. I got married, too. However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.
However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.
So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.
The summary then:
Butterfinger Pancakes and Crappy Service in Restaurants Serving Western Food
In the comments of this post:
Let's go for a little name and shame.
Which restaurants have YOU been to, that should have known better (we're not talking "Halmoni Kimbap" here: we're talking about places that look, and charge, as if they ought to know their asses from a hole in the ground, in regards to service). Let me know who the worst offenders are in the comments.
Fact: there are a bazillion restaurants in Seoul. This means, I operate on a "one strike and you're out" policy. If a restaurant can't impress me the first time, I won't waste my time going back to give them a second chance: other restaurants deserve a first chance more than that place deserves a second, after underwhelming me before. The only time I bend on this is when it is enthusiastically advocated by someone whose food taste I trust (right now, that's a list of about four people, and I'm not telling you who they are... but two of them have names that start with J.)
So then...
A few months ago, in a fit of righteous outrage, I tore a strip through the horrible, horrible, insultingly neglectful service I encountered at Passion Five, one of those so-stylish-I-want-to-punch-myself-in-the-face restaurants near Hangangjin station.
Let's go for a little name and shame.
Which restaurants have YOU been to, that should have known better (we're not talking "Halmoni Kimbap" here: we're talking about places that look, and charge, as if they ought to know their asses from a hole in the ground, in regards to service). Let me know who the worst offenders are in the comments.
Fact: there are a bazillion restaurants in Seoul. This means, I operate on a "one strike and you're out" policy. If a restaurant can't impress me the first time, I won't waste my time going back to give them a second chance: other restaurants deserve a first chance more than that place deserves a second, after underwhelming me before. The only time I bend on this is when it is enthusiastically advocated by someone whose food taste I trust (right now, that's a list of about four people, and I'm not telling you who they are... but two of them have names that start with J.)
So then...
A few months ago, in a fit of righteous outrage, I tore a strip through the horrible, horrible, insultingly neglectful service I encountered at Passion Five, one of those so-stylish-I-want-to-punch-myself-in-the-face restaurants near Hangangjin station.
Lesson learned: beautiful design is a yellow flag in Korean restaurants. Of the ten worst service experiences I've had in Korean restaurants, about eight of them were in really nice-looking places. Not ALL beautifully designed places are crap, but let's just say nice looks is NOT assurance of good food, or good service.
Three seasons later, if you google "passion five Korea" look what comes up:
Passion Five, you've been google-bombed, and deservedly so! I've made clear what I want in return for taking down the post (see the end of the post)
Until then, you frankly deserve to be slammed by google, for the atrocious, insulting service you gave me and my group.
And today, Butterfinger Pancakes gets theirs.
I'd heard a LOT about Butterfinger: how the food was just like home... but not crappy "just like home" (a la Denny's Korea) but GOOD "just like home" with waffles and pancakes worth the trip to Kangnam.
My friend Chris, who lives in South Korea, was having a birthday party for the lovely Lady in Red (who is an awesome human being, by the way). He invited a crew over to Kangnam, and staked a place in line for a big group: about ten. They said "Oh. ten? That'll be about an hour."
No sweat: we went to a Krispy Kreme to pass the time.
An hour later, we came back to Butterfinger. "Oh. You guys again..." (inner monologue: we were hoping you'd get discouraged by the one hour wait and piss off) "we don't have a place to seat you. Twenty more minutes."
Twenty minutes go by: now we're standing in the cold. "Five more minutes. And you have to sit at different tables." (no problem, guy. Can you just friggin' seat us now?)
Buddy goes upstairs to use bathroom: sees other groups getting seated before us, and no tables cleared for a group. After an hour and a half. Ten more minutes, several more inquiries (each time being told, "five more/ten more minutes"), still no movement (that's for those of us waiting for tables; I can't speak for the person who went to the bathroom).
Finally, we gave up and headed for a Burger King. Wifeoseyo and I had a long to-do list that had included eating with the fine people at The Lady In Red's birthday party, but we couldn't because Butterfinger Kangnam couldn't get their poop in a scoop.
So, dear Butterfinger Pancakes Kangnam:
Maybe your food is good. I don't give a damn. I'm avoiding you, and telling all my friends and readers to avoid you as well. Hell, I can probably make better pancakes at home, anyway, and now that Costco exists, I no longer have to grovel to the shitty service gods to get my bacon fix. We agreed to be seated at different tables, and we agreed to wait for an hour, and then waited in the cold for twenty minutes more, and twenty more: we were obliging as hell and got nothing except a chill, frustration, and a hunger headache from you.
There are easy ways to get around pissing off a widely read blogger or five (and a number of the people in that group were bloggers, and I hope every one of them tears Butterfinger a new asshole for treating our crew customers so badly).
1. Have a maximum group size policy for weekends. Train your staff to be clear about it.
2. Have a maximum table size policy for weekends (ie: if your group's larger than six, we reserve the right to seat you at different tables) Train your staff to be clear about it.
3. Train your door staff to seat people in the order they come in, and in how to set out tables for large groups.
4. Don't say "five minutes" when it's actually going to be twenty minutes.
There are probably other solutions, too.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've come across such crappy service in restaurants serving non-Korean food: the Passion Five incident has left such a bad impression that I've almost entirely avoided stylish looking places since then, as well as Fusion Food restaurants, and any place of which somebody tells me "they're famous these days".
Expat Jane's beef with slow, obnoxious service at Smokey's Saloon in Itaewon is well documented: it's surprising how many people I know have complained of the crap service there.
Personally, I had another atrocious experience at Jacoby's:
Other bloggers have blissed fondly over the lovely burgers there, but my friend (another prominent food blogger), and I decided to finally try Jacoby's out one day. We were told we'd have to wait an hour, so we gave them our phone number [they had our phone number] and instructions to call us when a table opened up. We headed out and had a breadstick at a nearby bakery to tide us over. An hour later, absent a call, we came back, expecting to be seated promptly. People who had not been in line when we came, and people who had been behind us in line were already seated. My friend asked where our table was, and they said, "Oh. You have to wait."
"Why didn't you call us? But those people got seated ahead of us; they weren't in line when we came by."
"Yes they were."
That's right. Instead of trying to make peace with an unhappy customer who's hangry and annoyed, they lied to our faces. We didn't drop the "You know we're famous bloggers" card, because it shouldn't have to come with that...
however, I've lost all interest in Jacoby's burgers. If their wait staff is lying to customers' faces in order to save face, I'm not interested. And every time a friend is looking for a burger, I qualify my mention of Jacoby's with "I got really shitty service there."
Maybe it's good I didn't go in and order at Butterfinger, and give them a chance to get my order wrong, because that would have led to a whole other outrage...
But to be fair, here's one good thing about Butterfinger Pancakes:
It's near a building that looks cool.
But the larger question is,
why do all of these restaurants offer such horrible service to paying customers?
But what it boils down to is this:
If you're serving western food to western people or in the western style, at the usual prices for good western food here (and almost everybody in that Butterfingers' was western, or going there to fulfill their sex and the city brunchy handbag western fantasies, as were most of the Jacoby-ites). give a damn about western service, too!
If you're serving kalguksu at a hole in the wall, be as gruff as you want: I'm there to fill up, you know it, and I know it - I'm not an idiot, and I know different kinds of dining come with different kinds of service expectations... but if your place is high end, or reputed to be high-end (I'm looking at you, Outback), then I come in with some modest expectations about a modicum of decent service.
If you're not going to train your wait staff to be attentive, put a bell on the damn table. Maybe burger joints in Canada don't have table bells... but if it means I'll get extra ketchup without spending twenty minutes trying to ESP the waiter over to my table, I'll deal with it.
And if your place is designed real pretty, pay the wait staff an extra 500 or 1000 an hour to retain them longer, and make it worth it to train them in how to not piss off widely read bloggers, and general customers. That shit doesn't matter to everyone, but it does matter. Not all of us like shouting "YOGIYO" over the violin quartet playing in the corner. You're charging 18000 won for a plate of spaghetti. Don't tell me you can't put a little of that into competent wait staff.
If your place serves food that Westerners crave after eating jiggaes for a month out in the countryside, you know, maybe you've got all those folks over a barrel, and they'll take whatever long wait and crappy service you can pinch out, because they need their pancake-maple fix... but don't expect us to be happy about being treated like cattle, and don't expect to get through it without people who DO give a damn about service, and aren't just ravenous for "real" bacon getting pissed off to high heaven at your arrogance.
[update] I've been asked by a few people to put this list, which I posted in the comments, in the actual post, to increase the chance it'll be read: so here it is. Here's what I expect when I'm paying more than 15000 won for an entree. I don't think these are unreasonable, given that I probably also ordered a soup, or a salad, and some drinks.
water refills/another pitcher/whatever either without shouting at someone, or without waiting more than three minutes
knowledgeable about the menu, and/or willing to ask the chef (eg: about allergy-specific ingredients) rather than making something up (this goes back to knowledgeable about the menu)
able to relay special requests to the chef - salad dressing on the side? no problem
brings main dishes out all at the same time (if it's western food); brings out appetizers and soups in timely ways (if it's a course meal)
checks by from time to time to see if everything's ok
if refills are free, comes by to offer refills, or check for empty glasses - even once a meal will satisfy me on this count.
refills my glass with water when it's empty
gets the orders right, and writes things down if necessary
if something I ordered isn't available, they come out and tell me, instead of giving me something else and hoping I don't notice.
is nearby enough, and attentive enough, to spot, and come promptly, if they see someone trying to get their attention
and I know enough Korean that all these issues can be dealt with in Korean: I'm not even asking the wait staff to be conversant in English (that WOULD be arrogant of me)
and, of course: my expectation of service like that depends also on the price scale of the place. 4500 for a heaping plate of bokkeumbap? I'll happily get my own water and kimchi for that.
12000 for a bibimbap? I'd like someone to come by and pour my water for me, thanks. If I wanted 3500 won bibimbap service, I'd have gone to a 3500 won bibimbap place.
Butterfinger, I offered an olive branch to Passion Five, on what they could do for me to take my rant offline. I'm not offering that to you, because I didn't even see inside the door of your place, and I'm insulted by the lack of regard for the customers who had been waiting the longest to eat your food.
You'll never see me at your restaurant again.
Rant.
Over.
So where did YOU get crappy service at a restaurant? Let me know in the comments. Best story wins.
Couple in Cheonggyecheon
I took these cute pictures of a couple kissing on one of the Cheonggyecheon bridges, while I was out with my buddy taking video of the Christmas lights last week. It took some color altering to actually see the couple, but I still think they're nice photos.
Finding Christmas in Korea: Part 1: Lights and Candles
The Sunday before Christmas, Wifeoseyo and I went down to the Express Bus Terminal Station, where lines 3, 7, and 9 meet.
View Christmas Decorations in Seoul in a larger map
Most of the year, in this underground area, there are tons and tons of live plants you can buy, which is great. However, during Christmas, the underground shopping center that's below the street at the south end of Gosok (Express Bus Terminal) station, near the entrance to Shinsegye Department Store.
Wifeoseyo and I went down there, and we found everything from lovely to tacky (mostly the latter) and a huge variety of things. We found scented candles that smelled like pine and apple/cinammon. We found a christmas tree and strings of lights and wreaths and garlands. We got some christmas tree ornaments and pipe cleaner snowflakes to hang on the walls. In general, what you find at the bus terminal shopping center is a little less... um... K-mart... than what you find in Namdaemun.
(image)
And readers, it wasn't a whole heck of a lot, but it made the house look a little like Christmas. And that was important to us this year. And the scented candles even made it smell like Christmas this year, and that was nice, too.
And for your benefit, here are the two places I've found Christmas Decorations in Seoul. If you know of another one, let me know, and send me a location on google maps, and I'll totally add it.
View Christmas Decorations in Seoul in a larger map
Monday, December 27, 2010
It's not Christmas Without...
Hope all y'all had an awesome Christmas weekend (without any extra days off)...
On Christmas Day, Paul Ajosshi posted this video of a lovely postmodern, post-religious Christmas song:
"I'll be seeing my dad,
my brother and sisters, my gran and my mum
they'll be drinking white wine in the sun"
full (lovely) lyrics: well-written and full of humor, assonance, internal rhyme, and poetry. Critical of organized religion... but gets right to the heart of why you don't have to be religious to love Christmas.
White Wine in the Sun, by Tim Minchin
And I'll say, writing songs that pretty is the only way I can forgive his teased, mad-scientist/electroshock mullet.I think this song is an eloquent defense of an atheist's Christmas: not everybody subscribes to the various religions that have their eight crazy nights, etc., at the time of the Midwinter Festival (worst name I've heard so far), but this song is a lovely affirmation of the one thing shared by almost all the different holiday season celebrations: getting together with the family.
Now, coming from a religious family, the sacred part of Christmas is important to me: while I think "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" bumper stickers are tacky, and A Charlie Brown Christmas is preachy, it was still important for me to catch the Christmas Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral with Wifeoseyo, to hear their choir sing a bit of Handel's Messiah, and to stand outside, and check out the nativity scene in the bitter cold. No pictures, because it was literally too cold for my camera to work, but the Nativity outside Myeongdong Cathedral doesn't put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning.
Folks, Korea's my home... but the time it feels least like home is during Christmas, when I'm far away from my family, and when Christmas is celebrated very differently.
Now, I recognize, as Bobster stated in the comments last time I bellyached about this, that I don't really have much right to complain, when I'm choosing to be here, and I don't really have a say in how Korea does Christmas... I've written before about the fact nobody owns a culture, and will expand on that soon, in response to a few comments I've had recently: Koreans are in the wrong to complain about Japanese Kimuchi or a Turkish family owning a Korean restaurant in Edmonton that makes more money than the Korean-owned one, but when the shoe's on the other foot, and Korean Christmas is about couples and ice cream cake instead of families and turkey, we are also wrong to get in a snit.
That's because there's the emotional issue of not feeling at home in this kind of christmas, and the logical issue of recognizing that it's not really my place to tell Korea how to celebrate Christmas. But as homesickness goes, it's OK when the emotional issue doesn't jibe with the logical conclusion, because this is my Christmas, darnit! So yeah, that's how I feel... and I'm glad people close to me understand and care how I feel, but I wouldn't write a letter to City Hall or the Chosun Ilbo telling all of Korea "You're doin' it wrong!" and if I did, I'd ripely deserve the middle finger and the "Yankee go home" I'd get in reply.
I raised this point because: for Christmas to feel like Christmas to me, I have to be more intentional than I had to back in Canada, because the elements that make me feel Christmassy are not the same elements that are emphasized in Korea's Christmas celebration. In Canada, people get eggnog foisted upon them so often we're happy it'll be a year before we have to smell it again... but here in Korea, you have to head down to Itaewon to that place selling illegal goods smuggled off the army base just to taste it. Same for turkey stuffing. Meanwhile, silly hats and ice cream cakes and "Last Christmas" by Wham! and all its remakes are practically clogging the air and making it hard to walk in a straight line.
So here are the things that make ME feel like Christmas:
1. The sacred Christmas carols (The First Noel, Silent Night, Hark The Herald, O Come Immanuel, Joy to the World, for starters)
2. Handel's Messiah
3. Something religious - church, a carol sing, something.
4. Turkey Dinner. With STUFFING.
5. (new addition:) Spiced Wine
6. Being around my favorite people, preferably in groups.
7. Phoning the family that's not immediately nearby
8. A Christmas Tree
9. Flashing Christmas lights
10. Presents
11. It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon)
12. Candles
And I've been working hard to try and check as many of those boxes as I could during this holiday seasons. I'm happy to say I did. No, I didn't have a huge Christmas dinner party like I did last year with my nemesis Dan Gray, but Wifeoseyo was wonderfully supportive this year in seeing to it that we touched on as many of those elements as we could, which was nice, seeing as we have to forge out a Christmas tradition of our own, now that we're married. It was a fine first Christmas together.
I'll write a few posts this week about the varying degrees of success I had tracking down each of these things.
Rob
On Christmas Day, Paul Ajosshi posted this video of a lovely postmodern, post-religious Christmas song:
"I'll be seeing my dad,
my brother and sisters, my gran and my mum
they'll be drinking white wine in the sun"
full (lovely) lyrics: well-written and full of humor, assonance, internal rhyme, and poetry. Critical of organized religion... but gets right to the heart of why you don't have to be religious to love Christmas.
White Wine in the Sun, by Tim Minchin
And I'll say, writing songs that pretty is the only way I can forgive his teased, mad-scientist/electroshock mullet.I think this song is an eloquent defense of an atheist's Christmas: not everybody subscribes to the various religions that have their eight crazy nights, etc., at the time of the Midwinter Festival (worst name I've heard so far), but this song is a lovely affirmation of the one thing shared by almost all the different holiday season celebrations: getting together with the family.
Now, coming from a religious family, the sacred part of Christmas is important to me: while I think "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" bumper stickers are tacky, and A Charlie Brown Christmas is preachy, it was still important for me to catch the Christmas Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral with Wifeoseyo, to hear their choir sing a bit of Handel's Messiah, and to stand outside, and check out the nativity scene in the bitter cold. No pictures, because it was literally too cold for my camera to work, but the Nativity outside Myeongdong Cathedral doesn't put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning.
Folks, Korea's my home... but the time it feels least like home is during Christmas, when I'm far away from my family, and when Christmas is celebrated very differently.
Now, I recognize, as Bobster stated in the comments last time I bellyached about this, that I don't really have much right to complain, when I'm choosing to be here, and I don't really have a say in how Korea does Christmas... I've written before about the fact nobody owns a culture, and will expand on that soon, in response to a few comments I've had recently: Koreans are in the wrong to complain about Japanese Kimuchi or a Turkish family owning a Korean restaurant in Edmonton that makes more money than the Korean-owned one, but when the shoe's on the other foot, and Korean Christmas is about couples and ice cream cake instead of families and turkey, we are also wrong to get in a snit.
That's because there's the emotional issue of not feeling at home in this kind of christmas, and the logical issue of recognizing that it's not really my place to tell Korea how to celebrate Christmas. But as homesickness goes, it's OK when the emotional issue doesn't jibe with the logical conclusion, because this is my Christmas, darnit! So yeah, that's how I feel... and I'm glad people close to me understand and care how I feel, but I wouldn't write a letter to City Hall or the Chosun Ilbo telling all of Korea "You're doin' it wrong!" and if I did, I'd ripely deserve the middle finger and the "Yankee go home" I'd get in reply.
I raised this point because: for Christmas to feel like Christmas to me, I have to be more intentional than I had to back in Canada, because the elements that make me feel Christmassy are not the same elements that are emphasized in Korea's Christmas celebration. In Canada, people get eggnog foisted upon them so often we're happy it'll be a year before we have to smell it again... but here in Korea, you have to head down to Itaewon to that place selling illegal goods smuggled off the army base just to taste it. Same for turkey stuffing. Meanwhile, silly hats and ice cream cakes and "Last Christmas" by Wham! and all its remakes are practically clogging the air and making it hard to walk in a straight line.
So here are the things that make ME feel like Christmas:
1. The sacred Christmas carols (The First Noel, Silent Night, Hark The Herald, O Come Immanuel, Joy to the World, for starters)
2. Handel's Messiah
3. Something religious - church, a carol sing, something.
4. Turkey Dinner. With STUFFING.
5. (new addition:) Spiced Wine
6. Being around my favorite people, preferably in groups.
7. Phoning the family that's not immediately nearby
8. A Christmas Tree
9. Flashing Christmas lights
10. Presents
11. It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon)
12. Candles
And I've been working hard to try and check as many of those boxes as I could during this holiday seasons. I'm happy to say I did. No, I didn't have a huge Christmas dinner party like I did last year with my nemesis Dan Gray, but Wifeoseyo was wonderfully supportive this year in seeing to it that we touched on as many of those elements as we could, which was nice, seeing as we have to forge out a Christmas tradition of our own, now that we're married. It was a fine first Christmas together.
I'll write a few posts this week about the varying degrees of success I had tracking down each of these things.
Rob
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry Christmas
It's Christmas, so here's are three bits:
1. Durkee in Busan has a Youtube clip that amused me and my Korean teacher:
The Twelve Days of Christmas in Korea
2. ATEK got mentioned in Time Magazine, folks, in an article about HIV testing for E2 Teachers.
3. If you really want to make Christmas mean something for somebody, you need to learn about Kiva.org... maybe you've heard about microfinance before -- mini-loans for people who need just a little kick to get themselves going. Kiva is a place where you can choose who you sponsor, you can loan small increments toward the goals people need, and you can take the money that gets paid back once the loans are paid back, and put it back into the microfinance system, and sponsor someone else.
Check it out.
1. Durkee in Busan has a Youtube clip that amused me and my Korean teacher:
The Twelve Days of Christmas in Korea
2. ATEK got mentioned in Time Magazine, folks, in an article about HIV testing for E2 Teachers.
3. If you really want to make Christmas mean something for somebody, you need to learn about Kiva.org... maybe you've heard about microfinance before -- mini-loans for people who need just a little kick to get themselves going. Kiva is a place where you can choose who you sponsor, you can loan small increments toward the goals people need, and you can take the money that gets paid back once the loans are paid back, and put it back into the microfinance system, and sponsor someone else.
Check it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)