I see a dance craze coming on!

This song is called Twiggy Twiggy by the Pizzicato Five (think I spelled that right).

I think bossa nova (that's what this is, right?) is my favourite rhythm for a song -- a fast bossa nova is the one that makes me want to dance EVERY time.



Other songs that make me want to dance every time I hear them:

Hey Ya

Home For A Rest

Soul Bossa Nova (surprise!)

anyway, Mel won the game of "Spot the Intentional Error" on my last post, so she got to choose the topic of my next post. She wants me to write about "why you love to write/why you write, and what you like about literature? Your own philosophy of your art."

that'll take a little time to stew before I'm ready to post it, so until then. . .

pictures!



It's a bit hard to spot, but this, about an hour climb up the mountainside, was a little stand where somebody was selling instrumental cassette tapes. HALFWAY UP THE MOUNTAIN!

Blew my mind, made me laugh. A lot of older gentlemen like to hike with a tape player around their necks, so maybe this is where you can recharge, in case youve already been through your first tape once or twice, and need new accompaniment on your way down the mountain.

This is on Surak Mountain, a mountain near my old home in Nowon (second year in Korea).

It's a pretty impressive mountain, but Matt and I slammed it on Saturday morning, going all the way up and down in just under three hours. Two years ago, this mountain would have taken me four hours, maybe four and a half. Improving one's time by a third doesn't sound that impressive, until you consider that the bulk of that's steep up and downhill, and that causes heartrates to climb and out-of-breathness to occur. Fact is, it was a flippin cold day; we HAD to move fast or we'd freeze in the rock-face winds.
We climbed this. It IS as steep as it looks.
And this was the payoff.
Leaves are changing; that's why EVERYONE's heading for the mountains these days.

As I said before, persimmons are ripe. Girlfriendoseyo and I wandered into the tea garden, and saw trees just sagging with ripe persimmons. It was a beautiful contrast of colour, dark sky against vivid orange fruit. The pictures are small. . . I think the cameraphone automatically decreased the photo size to compensate for the low light. . . if that makes any sense.



It's finally gone over the edge: this picture is a bit blurry, but it's an ad for soju. The soju girls are probably the most photoshopped models in Korea (other than the LaNeige models). . .

this one looks so touched up, I wonder if they even had to pay the original model anymore? Looking at this one, I thought they might have just generated her digitally, rather than even bothering with a model.

Did I post these pictures already?

Anyway . . .

This is all that remains of the old bubble street shop, which gave me so much joy. . . before it got demolished.

I also saw a little prince cafe once.


Sigh.



She looks lonely. This is in the high fashion district.



next: the aesthetic of Roboseyo

Books that become old friends, some shameless begging, and a game of "spot the intentional error"

Sometimes you come across a book that will become an old friend -- one that you buy in hardcover, because you know you will read it often enough to justify having a well-bound copy.

Because I change apartments frequently, it is important to try and keep my book collection small: books take up a lot of space and weight, especially if you ever move between Canada and Korea.

Here is my list, in no particular order (other than the order in which they came to mind, which says something in itself).

The Little Prince - Antoine de St.Exupery
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
Ahead of All Parting - The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke - trans. by Stephen Mitchell
New American Standard Bible - breast pocket edition
The Annie Dillard Reader
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzerald
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger
Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Speaker For The Dead - Orson Scott Card
Mirrored Minds: A Thousand Years of Korean Verse - trans. by Kevin O'Rourke
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tsu (my translation is by Sam Hamill, and highly recommended.
The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama and another guy.
Several of John Keats' best poems.
(with pride:)
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Batman: the Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
Batman: the Dark Knight Strikes Again - Frank Miller


Others that nearly made the list, or are somewhere in an anthology on my shelf, etc:
The Collected Short Fiction of Flannery O'Connor
Hamlet - Victor Hugo
E.E. Cummings - Selected Poems
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles (I once tried to write an essay on this one, and after reading it, was so impressed I didn't want to write about it: I just wanted to read it to people instead.)
amazingly enough
The Iliad - Homer (translated by Robert Fagles - thought it would be dusty and dry, but this translation is vivid, visceral, and quite stirring!)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein

painfully absent:
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak

if my apartment building burnt down, I'd grieve the loss of some irreplaceable things, particularly some photos, old drafts of old poems, and the painting my best friend Melissa made for me, but those are the books I'd buy again.

For a guy who loves reading and storytelling as much as me, that list is pretty darn short!


But the reason I'm writing about this is because I just reread Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
(Ender's Game, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Catcher in the Rye, Rilke, The Little Prince, Mirrored Minds, and the Tao Te Ching are the books end up off the shelf and in my hands most often)

My friend Tamie wrote on her blog that Seymour, from JD Salinger's works, is the fictional character she'd most like to meet.

I'm gonna add to that list, the Little Prince, and Ender Wiggin, the protagonist of Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead.

Here's why:

Ender's story touches me deeply, because I really feel like he is the most human, most representative everyman I've ever read. He contains the genius, the potential, and the sorrow, the compassion and the viciousness, the insight and the need for redemption, that made the human condition so baffling, and all these features are displayed believably and compassionately in a character that is so human, I feel like I know him. I don't want to give away any plot points if you haven't read the books, but Ender's flawed, confused greatness is the most touchingly human portrayal I've ever seen of a protagonist in a book.

I highly, highly, highly recommend you read Ender's Game, and Speaker For The Dead: they will teach you something about compassion and healing, in a more profound way than you'd ever think, given that it's a pair of science fiction books. I think maybe there are some things that we can only learn from stories. The Talmudic Tradition, and Jesus, were onto something there.

(My other favourite everymen (everyhumans) are Holden Caulfield (Catcher In The Rye), and, though he's a little too perfect, is Jean Valjean. I love him, but I don't feel like I know him, the way I do with Ender.)

If you want to know why I love Catcher in the Rye, and especially Holden Caulfield, so much, ask.



PS: It's my birthday on Monday. I feel kind of bad doing this, but here's a low-grade, and low-class call out:

(shameless begging for my friends in Canada to send me something that can't be found in Korea. . . more shameless begging for my friends in Canada to send me something that can't be found in Korea. . .more shameless begging for my friends in Canada to send me something that can't be found in Korea. . .)

. . . please? If you really want, I'll send you some compensation.




(just in case this wasn't shameless enough already. . . )

This begging can be used as wallpaper, too.


so, uh, enough of that.

what books are YOUR best friends?

Grasping and veering: the moment

The moment

so here's the thing.

In the effort of giving one's all, of being actually In The Moment, appreciating The Here And Now, there are pitfalls.

I've recently had trouble with the old cliche that you ought to live each day as if it were your last, because that's a non-viable lifestyle. If I woke up this morning and Gabrielle the messenger angel visited me in the shower and told me that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'd be dead by midnight that day, I'd make a certain set of choices:

What would you do?

I'd find a way to be with as many of the ones I love as possible; I'd eat the best food I knew; I'd write a letter or phone the people I could not have around me; if I were in Korea, I might try to cheat time by flying to Vancouver, crossing the international date line, and stealing an extra sixteen or seventeen hours. I'd do my damndest to die happy, whatever that means.

The thing is, I can't live each day as if it were my last. That's a pretty manic kind of day, jettisoning all responsibilities, etc.. I'd get fired after two days of living each day as if it were my last. You see the problem.

That silly old adage, I suppose, is actually intended to encourage people to live without fear, and maybe also, to live with an integrity such that, if one DID die suddenly, one could stand before God and say one has no regrets, if nothing else.

One part of that, I think, is living in the moment: being mindful of the world around, of the wonders visible all around creation, to be fully Present for the experience of being alive. That requires its own kind of courage -- to know, and then live according to, one's priorities, rather than other's perceptions, measurements, or expectations, is important to actually finding joy.

I think there are many ways we get trapped out of really Being Present, but recently I've been thinking about two in particular: veering and grasping.

I said to Girlfriendoseyo once, "There are some things that can't be fully experienced if you hesitate." This is especially true of relationships, I think. If my default approach is caution, if I'm hedging my bets before I know anything, I might shut myself off from something real, because I wanted to stay safe. My old roommate Anthony taught me the word velleity -- it means "the lowest level of motivation" -- that vague hankering one never gets around to acting upon. "I should work out more." "It was a long time ago, but I ought to apologize, really." Often the old objection, "sounds too much like work" prevents us from really investing and getting passionate about something. Sometimes, we're just afraid of what it might demand of us if we really pour ourselves into something.

A sports writer I like (Bill Simmons) discussed this in a column once as it applies to sports: some athletes DON'T prepare the best they can for their sport, so that they have an excuse ready if they fail -- if Quarterback A loses the big game, he thinks "I'll work out this off-season, instead of just drinking beer and driving my motorcycle" -- his excuse is ready-made because of his own lack of effort. He let himself down, but he can boast that "I could have won the game if I wanted". If Quarterback B loses the big game, he has nothing to fall back on -- "I trained and prepared, brought myself to the absolute peak of my ability physically and mentally. . . and I STILL failed." That's a much lonelier failure, because there's nowhere to hide. Some people do the same with relationships -- "I've been hurt before, so I'll hold back on this new one, so that I'm limiting how much she could hurt me, if it doesn't work out" -- but holding onto that old baggage might keep me from reaching the peak of the mountain! Maybe the loss hurts more if one's fully invested, but I'd much rather have a "gave it my best and it didn't work out" in my past than a "woulda coulda shoulda" -- I think the regret of woulda coulda shoulda's linger longer.

On the other hand, I realized another way people shut themselves out of truly experiencing a moment last Saturday: Girlfriendoseyo and I walked out to the middle of Mapo bridge on the Han River in Seoul, because over by 63 Building (the tallest building in Korea), there was a fireworks festival. I opened my eyes wide and watched, taking in as much as I could, from the delay between flash and boom, because of the distance, to the jostling of crowds, to the whistling of traffic conductors keeping people off the lanes still open to traffic. A large (huge) number of others, instead of watching the fireworks, held their cameras up in the air, pointed them at the fireworks, clicked, and checked in the display screen for what they had. Instead of enjoying the moment, they removed themselves a step from the actual experience, by filtering it through a camera. Taking a picture of something as ephemeral as fireworks strikes me as completely defeating the purpose of going to a fireworks show, unless you're a pyrotechnician yourself, collecting data on your rivals.

They may as well have stayed home and watched them on TV, or downloaded clips of fireworks displays from the internet! Why go in person if you're not going to BE there? (Yes, that's Be with a capital B.) Some moments are like water -- they're meant to run through your fingers and be gone, and if you catch water in a bowl, it loses a lot of the beauty it had when it was in motion, jumping over rocks and scattering light in every direction.

Camera culture is strange to me -- cameras only catch one of the five senses, and give no sense of story, and to me, if it's not a story, it's not a memory. My best memories from Malaysia are tastes, running jokes, textures of food or sand, sounds and voices. Ditto for my trips to Japan. You can't take a picture of washing all that sand down the shower drain after spending a day at the beach; you could, but it wouldn't show that little bit of sand that ALWAYS goes in the wrong direction. Even the dancers I saw in Osaka, if I took a picture of them, would have lost the excitement and motion that imprinted them on my memory. Cameras can't catch any of that, so I always feel that pictures are terribly inadequate keepsakes of a place, unless they bring about the memory of a story.

The main thing is just this: a camera removes me from the Here And Now by one step -- I'm now seeing the world through a viewfinder instead of through my eyes -- and looking at the picture is poorer again than the viewfinder display. Even more, the taking of a picture is an attempt to make permanent moments that are often best appreciated for their very fleeting nature, and stepping back from those times of spontaneous fun often kills the spirit of fun anyway.

I feel like I cheat myself out of truly experiencing life if I hesitate and guard myself, and I also limit myself by trying to keep moments that are meant to pass by. (Veering away, or grasping too tight.) Some rare pictures catch something more than just the images -- an expression, a sense of love between two people, or a sense of fun, and some people are really good at catching that (I'm thinking of my brother-in-law's pictures from my father's wedding), but for me, I'd rather open my eyes as wide as possible, turn on my senses, and experience things, as fully as I can.

And later, I can write about it.

One nice thing about cameras, and their attempt to catch things (though it removes me a little from my Here And Now) is that, though it doesn't bring back the smells and sounds for me, it DOES allow me to share my life with people who couldn't be there with me.

(Irony alert)

Here are some pictures I took from a Eulalia festival in Seoul, in Sky Park near World Cup Stadium in Seoul, where I went with Girlfriendoseyo, complained about people who hide from reality behind cameras, and then took about a dozen pictures, hypocrite that I am.

But I did it for YOU, my wonderful readers. I hope you like them.


They look like wheat, but they're about six feet tall.



The reason there's a whole park full of them is because when the sun is low in the sky, they blaze with pure white, catching the sunlight like a spider-web.



In full blossom, from close up.

I have no idea of the purpose of these plants, but they're sure pretty.


In the low sun:


They looked much nicer in person (back to that old "why bother to capture it" thing)

The one drawback: you can never quite pretend you're in the countryside when there are so many people,

when there are mounted lights (for the open-air concert to start later, and to light up the plants in the evening)


And when speakers ALL through the park are playing the Korean pop-song equivalent to Roy Orbison.

I'm about halfway through this, but. . .

Holy cow you gotta read this book! I don't care what your upbringing or background is, everybody on the planet can learn from the Dalai Lama.


I finished it now . . .

his teaching is rooted in ancient traditions, yet profoundly practical, and immediately applicable to real life. Reading this guy was like having a light switched on -- he teaches such deep wisdom, so simply, in ways that translate directly into my own situations. He explains a twenty-five century old principle, and than shows me how I can apply it to the guy who drives through the crosswalk right in front of me. (And yes, I HAVE been using his techniques at crosswalks. . . and they've helped. He probably added a month to my life just like that, by nipping that tension in the bud.) Give this dude a try. Right now, he's on the shortlist with Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger, and Jesus as the greatest teachers I've ever read.

Rare air up there!

Roboseyo's global warming idea, and seventh generation sustainability

These will never happen, but. . .

1. L.A. should be shamed into getting a better public transit system, by all the countries and cities in the world.

2. Bill Gates should offer a 1 000 000 000 dollar reward to the scientist/engineer who invents a solar panel that is cheap and efficient enough to make oil obselete.

3. The downtown core of EVERY CITY larger than one million people in the world should have cars permanently banned, and improve public transit enough that the downtown cores can be traversed efficiently by bus and subway. Those buses and subways should be hydrogen cell or electric or hybrid-run.

4. The big-ass car tax. No excuse. Just no excuse for those big-ass cars, unless it's full of carpoolers. (The big-ass car tax has a subclause called the carpooler tax break, along with the hybrid driver tax break, which makes it economically more viable to buy a hybrid, considering the gas AND tax savings.)

5. The big-ass gas tax (Vancouver does this: 9cents a liter of gas goes toward improving public transit). Along with this one goes the public transit tax break. Your primary ID card has a microchip in it and doubles as your magnetic subway/bus access charge card; a record is kept of how frequently you use public transit, and you can claim tax breaks for reaching certain levels.

6. Within a certain distance of the city center (because public transit has improved so much), private car ownership is illegal, or practically illegal because of ownership taxes. Instead, cars are owned only by companies that require travel by car for their business, and company cars are distributed as needed. For weekend trips, etc., hybrid and fuel efficient cars are readily and reasonably available for rental.

7. (This will never happen, more than any of the others, but while I'm playing around in my fantasy world . . . ) -- Any company that deals in oil must put 15% of its gross oil income into alternative energy and conservation technology. Oil companies, accustomed to being energy suppliers, ought to be looking for the next solution: THEIR product is largely responsible for this mess.


Read the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It's preachy, but important.

Also, from the last chapter of "Consilience" by Edward O Wilson -- a book I tried to read after having it recommended to me by Maggie, back in third year university (anybody remember her?). I got bored of it (and I no longer finish books that fail to grip my attention: I've even ceased to feel guilty about this), and skipped to the last chapter, which was much more interesting than the chapters trying to explain the biological/genetic bases that necessitated the development of language and art.

He writes:
To summarize the future of resources and climate, the wall toward which humanity is evidently rushing is a shortage not of minerals and energy, but of food and water. The time of arrival at the wall is being shortened by a a physical climate growing less congenial [through global warming]. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. Exemptionalists are risking a lot when they advise us, in effect, that "Life is good and getting better, because look around you, we are still expanding and spending faster. Don't worry about next year. We're such a smart bunch something will turn up It always has."
They, and most of the rest of us, have yet to learn the arithmetical riddle of the lily pond. A lily pad is placed in a pond. Each day thereafter the pad and then all of its descendants double. On the thirtieth day the pond is covered completely by lily pads, which can grow no more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.

[My words in brackets: Are these environmental warnings alarmist? It is better, down the line, to assume the worst, and prepare for it, than to hope for the best, and continue living beyond our ecological means, assuming 'we'll find our way out of the woods'] In ecology, as in medicine, a false positive diagnosis is an inconvenience, but a false negative diagnosis can be catastrophic. This is why ecologists and doctors don't like to gamble at all, and if they must, it is always on the side of caution. It is a mistake to dismiss a worried ecologist or a worried doctor as an alarmist."
(Page 313-314)

Later

The single greatest intellectual obstacle to environmental realism, as opposed to practical difficulty, is the myopia of most professional economists. . .
. . . the weakness of economics is most worrisome, however, in its general failure to incorporate the environment. After the Earth Summit, and after veritable encyclopedias of data compiled . . . have shown clearly the dangerous trends of population size and planetary health, the most influential economists still make recommendations as though there is no environment.
(Page 318)


And that's the problem -- people follow their pocketbooks to the voting booth, so until there's a financial incentive (taxwise) to conserve, people won't think about their kids and grandkids; they'll only think about next quarter's raise and the cost of living, right until humanity careens into that huge wall called "Earth's Carrying Capacity"

(Carrying Capacity means the maximum number of life forms any ecosystem can sustain.)

My friend Tamie and a group of her friends formed an integration pact, where they try to live in relationship with the earth, rather than just living ON the earth : environmental responsibility is part of their pact to live with more awareness and responsibility.

It's human nature to think about money first -- I remember one day, when I was in high school, saying to a member of the baby-boomer generation how recycling was important, and he answered, "Well, you know, the recycling program costs the government a lot of money -- I don't know if it's worth it." If you're thinking about the next quarter, maybe; there's an old Iroquois law that every decision must be considered for its impact on the seventh generation to follow, and a movement is beginning in environmental circles to pressure corporations and leaders to implement seventh generation sustainability principles in their decision making, rather than just thinking of next quarter's profits, or next year's re-election push.

It's frustrating how, in the face of the overwhelming evidence Al Gore presented in "An Inconvenient Truth", corporations and their media lackeys have gone ad hominem on him, and attacked first Al Gore for using a private jet, and then the nine scientific errors/conjectures in his documentary, enabling them to ignore the hundred other facts that are true and verifiable, and try to discredit him. It's frustrating how I can see this stuff happen, yet I still like my hot shower in the morning.

But something's gotta be done. Sooner rather than later. Population growth, overfishing, conservation, alternative energies. Humans are a pretty complex creature, and it's hard to say how much our biology could bend before poisoned air and water are the end of us, before food shortages cause regional tensions to blow up into full-scale war. Remember what happened to the Jews after they were blamed for the great depression? A lot of countries were happy to hand their Jews over to the Nazis because they thought they were responsible for the depression. Who will be the scapegoat next time?

It's good to see people are finally talking about the environment as a legitimate concern -- in the early '90s environment was still some scary thing far in the future, while now people are taking it seriously. I just hope we're ready to make the changes necessary, in time, or it will be too little, too late.

And global warming is just the beginning -- overpopulation will occur long before coastal cities get flooded with water from the molten ice caps. This article argues that the tragedy in Darfur was caused first by an overtaxed environment, that the displaced people started fighting because they had no food or water, and needed to co-opt arable land. This kind of catastrophe will become more commonplace as water supplies dry up, species go extinct, land loses its arability, and entire populations must move to areas where there is no space for them. Just wait till the water table in the American midwest is finally tapped out, and see what happens then.

Blogger action day

*** This is important.***
Tomorrow (the 15th) is blog action day. A group is trying to get every blogger around the world to write, on the 15th, about the environment, one of the most pressing issues for my generation. If you have a blog, click the link and join in! I'm kind of jumping the gun talking about it here, but this is important, and as time goes by, I feel more and more strongly about this.

http://www.blogactionday.com/


Radiohead has a new album out online.

So far, after listening to it about five times, I'm quite disappointed -- it's the first Radiohead album where I really feel like they're not covering any territory they haven't covered better before. The reduces the list to Pixar as the only creative team that I know a lot about, and still haven't repeated themselves/released anything below top-notch. (I haven't seen enough Miyazaki to say for sure about his work.)

The list:
Let-downs:
what movie/album did you expect to love the most, only to be disappointed?
Personal nominees: Radiohead: In Rainbows; Shaft (with Samuel L. Jackson); X-Men 3 (should have seen that coming), The Constant Gardener, Braveheart, Harry Potter 6 and 7,


next:
Pleasant Surprises:
What movie/album did you have full intention to hate, only to discover it was actually much more enjoyable than it needed to be?
Personal Nominees: Legally Blonde, High School Musical, Nelly Furtado (Whoa Nelly), Green Day (American Idiot), Sahara (action movie with Matthew McConaughey), Transformers, the Movie


Next:

Anyone here read The Alchemist?
One of you -- one of the people in my circle -- recommended it to me, but I can't remember which of you did.

Well, I read it. I've discovered the formula to sell a million copies of a book.

1. Short -- should be readable in a single afternoon, maximum two sittings.
2. Male hero -- young, idealistic, big dreams
3. Maximum 6th grade reading level (if it has a lower level than that, it will appeal to second language learners, which is also a plus: you'd be amazed how many times I've seen a Korean reading "Tuesdays With Morrie" on the subway)
4. A thinly veiled moral/didactic lesson/inspiration about how to live your life and realize your dreams.
5. A tone like a fable -- story moves quickly, and does not dig too deeply into the concrete details of setting and place and character description -- characters and settings are portrayed in broad strokes, so as not to distract from The Message.

I've read at least a half dozen of these books now, ranging from sublime (The Little Prince) to abysmal (Tuesdays With Morrie -- sorry if any of you liked it, but I didn't.) I've heard I REALLY, MUST read The Secret next. I'm kind of dreading it.

In order of awesomeness, here is the Roboseyo (sometimes)overbearingly-inspirational reading list.
1. The Little Prince: I think I'd trade 20 years of my life to write a book as simple and wise as this one. Die young + write The Little Prince: I could deal with that. The least didactic of the books on this list. It almost doesn't qualify for the genre, because it's too good.
2. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse -- engaging story. Not too didactic, though it IS about a young idealist's spiritual journey.
3. The first half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- chase down excellence and perfection with passion, even if it isolates you. Nice.
4. The Alchemist -- I liked it. It's true. It dropped in some biblical references that were a bit cloying, but not too bad. I wasn't quite bowled over, but I liked it.
5. The Greatest Salesman In The World -- (the least known of the ones I've read) by Og Mandino-- the most didactic, but enjoyable reading, for a bald self-motivation tract with a tacked-on story and an overbearing religious subtext that didn't quite fit the story, and even detracted from it. The meditations were good, though.
6. The last half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- it got a little weird, and too mystical/symbolic to me, and didn't live up to the simple excellence of the first half. Starts going downhill when JLS meets The Great Seagull.
7. Tuesdays With Morrie -- instead of evoking our feelings through excellent writing, Mr. Albom tells us how we ought to feel, and made ME feel manipulated. A meditation on death and moving on that left me totally unmoved.

Didn't qualify, despite being very talky/preachy:
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (not inspirational)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (too long, actually had a story for the first 2/3)


Which other inspiration-disguised-as-story bestsellers did I miss?

In a later post:
the books I should read once a year until I die --everybody should have a handful of books that basically function like lifelong friends.

Having a blog finally justifies my using a cellphone-camera.

One of the little kids is pinching the buddha's nipple, and I had to get in on the action. I'm not sure of the story behind this statue, whether Buddha had a "Suffer the little children" moment, but I sure hope the nipple-pinch is part of the original story.



There were about a hundred steps (after about an hour mountain climb) to reach this temple where Korea's kings of old would go and visit for spiritual consultation and meditation. I ran up the steps, just for fun, and then at the top, there were eight people meditating, and I felt like a right dummy sitting there, with my legs folded, panting like a rabid duck.



I have to say, though, for a place so remote you have to climb a mountain for about an hour to access it, it just blows my mind how ornate and spectacular these temples (and especially the monuments) are.

The street below is shiny.


Today I bought a white wristband from a group who were raising funds to help extreme poverty. The wristband was wrapped in an unnecessary plastic bag. I called them out, and dolt them, "You help the poor, but this hurts the earth."

I really tire of overpackaging -- it's rife here in Korea, along with overconsumption. One common practice in Korea is to throw away perfectly good furniture (for example, when one moves) in order to get new furniture. Rather than bring things to new places, some Koreans just throw them away. The outward display of wealth is a really dismal human habit, and I wish people (worldwide) started finding more wholistic criteria for measuring those around them. At least something better than the measurement of one's TV screen + number of visible luxury brand lables one is wearing at any given time + price of one's car + prestige level of one's neighbourhood. This whole consumption thing is odd -- I was reading a book that pointed out how economists speak of growth and consumption as if infinite increase were possible, as if earth's resources were unlimited, and through growth, eventually all problems could be solved, when in reality, earth is already at or above its sustainable carrying capacity for humans. Yet politicians still almost exclusively talk about money, growth, and economy, because people follow their pocketbooks into the voting booth, and will vote for the guy who helps them keep their job over the one who tries to spend taxpayer money on making sure there's still something left on our dear old planet for the grandkids.

I'm turning into a crotchety old liberal.

I decided to chill out on the crosswalks (see previous post).

Remember this place:
Now it looks like this.

(sigh. my rainy days just got a little sadder)


Fun thing about living in the city: it may be hard to tell, but there was a camera crew in the midst of all these gawkers, filming a scene for a TV series or a movie.

I don't know from Korean celebrities, but it was fun watching all the people with their cameras out.


Also seen on that same street, later in the day.


These figures are usually carved out of dead trees. They're totems to protect a village from unhappy spirits. These ones were outside Jogyesa, one of the most important temples in Korea.

Persimmons are in season now. Mmm they're good.



More later.

something i learned today, and some pictures from Namsan

I learned something this morning.

I have a pet peeve: those cars that drive through the crosswalk even after the light has changed, and people are on the crosswalk (though maybe not where THEY are yet) really bug me. I know a kid who was killed in a vehicle/pedestrian accident, so every time I see a car disregarding pedestrian-related traffic laws, somewhere inside me I think "Killer!"

Sometimes, when the light changes green, I head out into the crossing zone as fast as I can, just to block those jerks from running the crosswalk -- it's my own personal, petty vendetta. . . but I'm RIGHT, dammit! They DESERVE me jumping in front of their car and glaring accusingly if they're going to disregard traffic laws and endanger pedestrians! I always wanted to give one of those cars a smack, just to make some noise and say "Don't be a jerk!" to the drivers (it never really occurred to me that the only thing I'd REALLY communicate to the driver might be "I'M a jerk". . . but that's beside the point.)

Well, today, I had my chance. I bolted out into the crosswalk, and some jackass in a black car took a run at the crossing zone. I was close enough that I planted a big, noisy handprint on the back of the car, and I felt a tingle of satisfaction (and a bit of disbelieving "I can't believe I actually did that) slide up my spine and massage my scalp.

But here's the thing: now that I've gotten my ya-ya's out, and expressed myself noisily and rudely on this guy's trunk (do bear in mind that this is the big city, where contact is common. You get bumped on the subway, toes get stepped on, people don't say excuse me -- me slapping a car here is not as egregious a break in protocol as it would be in a small town in Southern Ontario, for example, where Joe Crosswalk might climb out of his car and jersey me if I slapped his jackass SUV, but it's STILL more, um, communication with strangers than is common here), I realized, walking away from the intersection, that carrying this self-righteous vendetta around in me, and the spike of annoyance I allow myself to have when I see some jerk (even bus drivers will do it) disrespect a pedestrian zone. . . it doesn't hurt the twit driving the car at all. The only person it hurts is me, and my peace of mind. The fact I was in the right (at least partly) doesn't justify my answering his jerkousity with a bit of my own; in fact, by allowing HIS crassness to change MY behaviour (or even my attitude), I'm giving that driver power over me! Why on EARTH would I want to do that? Last time I heard my dad preach, he said, "Harboring bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." (does anyone have a source for that quote?), and I realized that I was basically doing the same thing by letting these yahoos get to me.

So I may still barrel into crosswalks, but I'm not going to let these dumb drivers under my skin anymore.

Today I climbed Namsan (Nam Mountain) in the dead center of Seoul, with Girlfriendoseyo, the wonderful woman I've been dating. We had a really nice time, and a great talk. At the top of the mountain, at a lookout point, we saw this:


The whole chain-link fence was laced through with padlocks, with writing on them. I don't know the exact meaning, or where this tradition/superstition/fad came from, but it was sure neat -- from what I can tell by looking at them, couples have been writing their names on the padlocks and then looping them through the fence, probably as some kind of a "staying together" sort of charm. It was neat seeing them all. Maybe next time we climb Namsan together, we'll bring up a padlock, too.
Can any of my readers tell me what that says? Any Korean-speakers out there?


Also up on the mountain, we came across a VERY brave chipmunk:

Girlfriendoseyo got right in close, and the little stinker didn't flinch a bit.


My camera was about a foot and a half away from the little nut-muncher in this picture.


I've been climbing all the mountains I can get my feet on lately, and taking stairs instead of elevators. It really makes me feel good. I'm happy. . . and having fun. And Girlfriendoseyo's great.

Hope you're all well too.

Happy Canadian thanksgiving.

love
Rob

Konglish and wild coincidences.

so today in my business english class we started talking about brand names, and how they're such an easy yet crass way of measuring the people around us, and I suddenly had to halt the conversation and change the topic, because if we talked about brands and mob mentality and artificality and lookism and consumption for the sake of consumption or the appearance of wealth any longer, I'd have gotten upset.

it was a strange sensation. i didn't realize just how visceral my reaction really was to that topic.

This story made me happy. Korea has an embarrassingly poor track record on conservation issues -- a marsh that hosts a nearly extinct butterfly is scheduled to be bulldozed for an apartment block in a suburb of Seoul. Asking ships to reroute for the sake of a whale makes me proud to be a Canadian.

What makes me sad to be a Canadian is the fact I missed turkey dinner this year. There was gonna be a turkey dinner in Seoul for Canadian expatriates, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest, leaving me jonesing for turkey and such, but unable to get my fix.

I got some new shirts, and so had to retire my two least-frequently-worn shirts.

This one's a Konglish shirt -- the words on there aren't Korean, but they aren't English either. I don't know what to make of them, except that it must be either really easy, or really hard, to get SO close to making sense that everybody frowns and shakes their heads, yet still not making any sense at all.

I want to open a T-shirt shop in Canada where I import shirts like this

In Korean they are an earnest attempt to cash in on "english characters look cool"; in Canada, captions like this:
would be ironic and hilarious, don't you think?

Any theories as to what this means are welcome!

Short story:

1984, my family moved to Woodstock Ontario, where we became family friends of the NameChangedForPrivacy's. They moved away about in 1989 or 1990, and we saw them once or twice again after that -- not much.

Then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from their youngest daughter, Kelly (whom I remembered as a five-year-old with way too much energy). She'd graduated university and wanted advice on getting a job in Korea. I gave her tips and we've written the odd message back and forth.

Well on Saturday, I ventured out to a drum festival in Han River Park (cool) and near the end, I stumbled into a group of Canadians (plus one brit). We chatted, and I noticed something odd about one of the girls, that I wasn't sure enough to comment upon. Something in the shape of her eyes, her body language, and especially her pronounciation and intonation of certain words and phrases seemed. . . familiar.

I heard one of her friends address her as Kelly, and I thought I'd try it out.

"You're Kelly NameChangedForPrivacy, aren't you?"

"You're Rob."

It was pretty wild. A weird mix of familiarity (her brother was my best friend for a year or two, and, after all, we'd hung out back when we were four and nine), and whatever word's the opposite of familiarity -- after all, we hadn't seen each other since probably about 1992. Maybe like your first time meeting the cousin whose picture's been on your fridge all your life. Really interesting. But totally cool. She seemed happy to meet me -- she even mentioned one of the rants on this blog, so I know she'll read this. Hi Kelly! Tell the other NameChangedForPrivacy's I send my greetings.



Cool to see her.

A paragraph from Garrison Keillor

he just made his way into my good books, for 1. calling George W. Bush "the current occupant" and refusing him the respect of using his name (speaking of people who are never named, I've been thinking of starting to refer to George W. Bush as Voldemort).

2. Writing this.

"I gave up watching television 25 years ago because I liked it so much even though I couldn't remember what I had watched the day before and could see that if I went on as a viewer my life would become a blank. And now I refuse the iPod because it is an audio bubble that shuts you off from the world, which is where good ideas come from."

in revising a play I wrote, I came up with this line -- i don't know if it will fit into the script, but it made me happy when I turned this phrase in summarizing a scene to my (wonderful) girlfriend.

"If what you have isn't making you happy, having more of it probably won't, either."

If you're a youtube junkie like me, search "Flight of the Conchords" -- Tamie started me on these guys.



Sometimes, you round a corner in a market in Seoul, and stumble across something like this.



I love this city.


One more.

I've tried and tried. . .

These guys are an independedent Canadian rock band. I've tried, but I seriously haven't managed to find a hint of irony yet in this video. In the song, as well, I've listened a bunch of times, and I haven't found any irony in there, either -- just a song about being joyful (the song's titled "Be Joyful")

If it's true, well, I can't think of a time I've seen a video match a song more perfectly.



And it makes me happy. It's like they were actually listening to the song when they planned the video, and made a list of all the cool stuff that makes people happy and put it in a video together. With puppets!

I wish my camera could take pictures of smells.

because gosh these smelled great in the rain.

New Principle for Cultural Exchange:

Principle:
Visitors (particularly monolingual North-American visitors) to a culture are only qualified to complain about their host culture as much as they are able to do so in the host language.

Result:
If you haven't even bothered to learn any Korean, I don't want to hear you bitching about Korea, buddy!


No more of that judgment from a distance junk. . . unless you're extremely well-informed and, say, a student of or expert in international relations, international environmental/gender/multicultural/etc. issues.

I'll also make allowances for people who have lived extensively in other cultures than their native one, and I'll even say the ratio of right to complain:command of the native language increases proportionally for each additional language said complainer speaks -- that is, if you are fluent in three languages, you're allowed to complain three times more than if you only speak one, because to master three languages, one must have a lot of experiences with how different cultures work, even if one doesn't speak the specific language of the host country.

[update: April 2008: we need to add "time spent in country about which one complains," because living in other countries is good; so is spending time seeing the actual country one is criticizing.]

So our formula is:

R=C*L*(0.2Y+1)*(T)

where R = one's right to complain about one's host country,
C = one's command of the host country's language,
multiplied by
L = the number of languages one speaks fluently,
multiplied by
0.2Y = the number of years spent living in cultures other than one's native culture, divided by 5 (I'd say five years living in a place is about equivalent to learning the language, as far as absorbing a culture goes, wouldn't you?),
multiplied by
T = Time in host country.

We need to add the +1 to the 0.2Y or else the whole equation divides by zero if one has never lived outside one's native culture.

Try THAT on for size, you culture-shocking, knee-jerk judging, otherness non-coping whiner!

(how's my formula, Tamie? My math's rusty, but I think that looks sensible. Feel free to poke holes in it as practice for your GRE)

Impressions are allowed, but if you aren't even willing to properly engage the host culture, don't judge it, and if you can't cope, well, nobody's keeping you here!

Why North Americans especially?

Because an entire ocean separates North Americans from truly distinct, other cultures with whom they could interact on an equal footing. I'd consider adding other island countries to the list (that means you, England). Mexico is roundly regarded as an inferior/less rich/less powerful little brother, and mostly ignored by Americans, while it's too far away for Canadians to consider, and Canada and USA speak the same language (other than French Canada). Belgians have entire COUNTRIES of otherness bordering them, while the closest Canadians and Americans come to that kind of otherness are little pockets of immigrants that (usually/often) are trying to assimilate, or at least feel a little like they should, and have kids who probably do. This means that a lot of North Americans are never REALLY required to think too far outside the box of their own cultural assumptions, and going too long in that groove leads people into the trap of assuming anything different from what one's accustomed to is automatically inferior.

Agree? Disagree?

Photatoes

The great thing about climbing mountains is:

exactly that.

mountains inside the city limits of Korea are crowded sometimes (especially in October), but mountain culture, as Matt will tell you, is one of the best sides of all Korea's culture. The same old lady who will hit a young lady with her purse as a way of saying "Hey. You stand up and give me your subway seat, because I'm older and louder than you." will, on the mountain, invite you to sit with her and share a glass of makkeoli (a mountaintop drink). It's lovely.

This picture's on Dobong Mountain.

Mountains are great. They're so beautiful -- if you're gonna do an hour of cardio exercise, may as well have a panoramic valley view at the end of it, I say.


this is mat perched on a rock on near Sapye mountain. We did a 2.5 hour hike on Sunday, a 3.5 hour hike on Tuesday, and a 4.5 hour hike on Wednesday, and at the end of the third one, I felt better than I had at the beginning of the first one (other than a single sore spot on my feet.) I got new hiking shoes (North Face: good brand) last week, and despite being new, they treated my feet so well that after over 9 hours of cumulative hiking, my feet are still happy.

Plus, hiking is good for my bum knee.

Hiking at night is dangerous if it's too dark, or if you're careless.

But this is the payoff.





Quite a payoff, I say.





Those are all apartment buildings. Matt and I calculated that each apartment building probably houses 1500-2500 people. Wrap your mind around how many people live in view of this camera shot.















This is an ad for one of those water-jet toilet seats. Also, it's just. . . odd.
















That's all I have to say about that.


There's huge pressure on Korean pop stars and models to have plastic surgery.

Look at this before video.




I saw this picture in an ad poster and had to ask my girlfriend "Who's that?" I was shocked and appalled that this picture below is the same person as the one in the video above.

Sad, isn't it?

Some of my students say that they can't even tell the difference between one star and the next by the time they all reach their late twenties, because surgery has homogenized them all into the same, cookie-cutter mold.
















This car made me smile. What happens when you cross a low-rider truck, a mini-car, and a lunchbox?
















During Chuseok Vacation (the most important holiday of the Korean year -- like Christmas in the west), between 70 and 85% of Korea's urban population hits the road and drives out to their hometowns to clean and tidy their ancestral tombs and party down with their extended family. This picture was taken Friday afternoon at the beginning of the vacation.


Then, at the end of the long weekend (or the three day holiday), it's as crowded as this, but because the population is all coming BACK into Seoul, rather than fanning out in every direction, the traffic is like this, bumper to bumper, starting about 70km. outside of Seoul, and all the way in. My friend travelled to her hometown this Chuseok vacation, and spent 14 HOURS in the car on the way back home.

(Think about how much pollution goes into the air while all those cars idle.)

Something's gotta be done about this.


This was the drumline I mentioned in a previous post.

















Climbing mountains was great, but then you have to come back into the city.




To this.

Every morning walking to work, my eyes are assaulted by business cards and flyers tossed around the previous night by various promoters for numerous restaurants.

It angers me every day.







But then, other times, Seoul can be just bloomin' beautiful.

















(If you like music recommendations, take these ones to the bank.)
(Iron and Wine: The Stranger's Dog)
(Jens Lekman: Night Falls Over Kortedala)


if you want something a little more avant guard, despite the fact it's already had lots of press in indie music circles,

(Broken Social Scene: You Forgot it in People)
and
(Broken Social Scene presents Kevin Drew: Spirit If)

These two are atmospheric, excellent, the musical equivalent (to me) of driving fast in the rockies, or climbing a rock face and turning around to see an entire valley.



One more thing:

A story and some thoughts.

Play this song. It's fun.


Jens Lekman

Now here's the thing. Gambling is the ultimate obssessive compulsive behaviour -- the ritual is exactly the same each time -- pull the lever, push the button; put down chips, ask for cards, see who wins, lay bets, spin the wheel, etc.. The repetition, along with slightly varying results and occasional big wins gives a suspense/resolution/gratification cycle that's downright addictive.

The other thing is, once your luck turns to the downside, there's that constant, just-beyond-the-fingertips hope that maybe the next hand, the next roll, the next spin, will be the one that turns your luck around. That's how people get in deep.

“Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant”
- P.T. Barnum

I went to a casino last Saturday night. It was a singularly unique experience.

I've never seen such weird energy in a room. Usually, with most leisure activities, and the places where they are done, either 1. it's really low key, all around: people are low energy, and low effort (sitting in a coffee shop or wine bar) or people are active and high energy (sports, etc.). At places like drinking holes or beaches, you can see some of each -- some lazing around or chilling, and others getting excited.

At the casino, everybody was extremely engaged -- their attention was rapt and really focussed -- yet glum and joyless. Usually, if a room is that high-energy, it's because there's some kind of great party going on, and there's a lot of shouting and laughter; at the casino, it was really high energy, yet a little desperate, almost hungry, like foragers in a scrapyard -- not happy, but intent. And people do this as a leisure activity! I think it's because they were all A. sucked into the obsessive-compulsiveness of the thing, and B. had money at stake -- as soon as money's at stake, everybody stops smiling.

It's an amazing racket they run at casinos -- they take your money, pat you on the head on the way out the door, do the Jedi mind trick, and say "You had a good time tonight" -- then they tease you with the good ol' "Maybe you'll get us next time" (but the house always wins).

If you don't have a good sense of when to quit, casinos are a REALLY bad place to be. With alcohol, you'll wreck your body, but it's pretty hard to spend more than $130 on a night of getting trashed, even if you're really ambitious, start early, and drink fancy drinks. Not to say $130 is chump change, but with gambling, there's literally, NO ceiling to how much you can lose in one night (other than your bank card's withdrawal limit + credit card limit).

Also: it reeked of cigarettes.

This was the first time I'd ever been to a casino. Never really felt the wish, and don't really want to return, but it was interesting to add that to my reservoir of life experiences. I'll add it to the list of behaviours that could easily addict me (along with playing EA Sports NHL Hockey videogames and visiting YouTube and social networking websites -- damn facebook!)

But this time, I went with Matt and James, his good friend (a top-shelf, quality guy). They played blackjack for a while, which didn't appeal to me whatsoever, but, after circling the room people-watching, James came to me and suggested we try roulette. Now roulette is a game of purest pure chance -- no skill whatsoever. I decided I was willing to put a small amount of money down for the sake of having the experience of placing a bet (I'm usually not in the habit of throwing my money away, unless I get something delicious in return). I put in 20 000 won (about twenty dollars) and Matt and James each put in ten. Then, I sat down at the table and bet very conservatively, betting a lot of odds or evens, red numbers or black numbers (each bets with about 50/50 odds and a double-your-money payoff -- not much by roulette standards, where guessing the number where the ball lands will give you a 30-1 return) but I wasn't there to blow everything on low-odds betting, so we played small and conservative, and suddenly, went on a tear!

Behind me, Matt and James were getting free drinks (of COURSE a casino gives you free drinks while you're sitting at a table and gambling) standing behind me and laughing and joking, cracking me up while I placed bets, and I rode my beginner's luck as far as it went, laughing all the while at James and Matt's silliness. We had a few really spectacular rolls where we got returns on almost every bet we placed, and Matt and James got into the action by laying chips on the table once we had a bit of a lead. Later, when our luck ran out, we figured out that it was turning JUST in time, before we started blowing the big stack of chips we'd accumulated. It was fun as anything, and, while we started with 40 000 won, we peaked at about 230 or 240 000, and then started losing regularly enough to decide it was time to walk away while we were ahead (the hardest thing to do in all of gambling). We cashed out at 190 000 won, nearly a quintuple increase!

So, I've decided I'll never go to a casino again, because there's just no flippin' way I'll ever manage to equal the fun, and the return I had, on my first night, so why bother, really, especially when you're risking hard-earned money.

After we walked away from that table, we went to another one, starting out with another forty, and lost it in about five minutes: we'd obviously rode my beginners' luck as far as it would go. Fair enough.

But it sure was fun as heck, for that one time.


We just had the five day Chuseok vacation: Chuseok is Korean thanksgiving, and it's awesome. Matt and I hiked three mountains during the break, and I got myself addicted to a MUCH better, healthier compulsion: the desire to be on the mountain whenever I have free time. I climbed another mountain today with Matt and his wife Heyjin, and we had a great time. The peak was in a cloud. Fun.

Also, my wonderful lady, Girlfriendoseyo (info about her will be sparse and hint-laden, just because it's fun to be a tease) got back from her conference in New York, and it was sure nice to see her again. She's great. Even when she's exhausted and jetlagging.



PS: just saw this. Ruud Van Nistelrooy, the Dutch soccer star, proves that American basketball players don't have a corner on trash-talking and getting in each other's faces. This made me laugh out loud.

question of the day

been a while since i did one of those.

what would be the most disgusting toothpaste flavour?

(let's narrow this down to items that people would at least conceivably allow in their mouth: that's right. Poo tooth paste is out. All the dung beetles reading my blog sigh and go back to their halitosis-cursed lives of dirty mandibles.)

I'm torn between Ketchup and Big Mac.

What do YOU think would be the grossest flavour?

This blogger is interesting to me.

Here's another link about beauty culture in Korea.