Soundtrack time: "One More Time" by a band called Jewelry, a kind of K-pop hottie supergroup. Kind of like Eric Clapton's old band Cream, or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, except with less rock legend and more sexydance.
Observe here some traditional Korean dancing styles (I don't, unfortunately, know the Korean names for old dancing moves like the classic butt-jiggle or the shoulder-wiggle torso-twist). Also note the traditional fashions they use to present the best of Korea to the world.
Also, you can play a game of "who's using pitch correction," if you listen to their singing.
This song has been emanating from every cosmetics shop in the downtown for three weeks straight, now, and that accordian/guitar chords riff has been bouncing through my head like a pinball all that time. And now it can be stuck in your head, too. Catchy, that's for sure.
Family news:
As some of you know, my sister, and my brother's wife both got pregnant last summer. Well, on Marpril twentyteenth, my brother's wife had a little boy named Silas David Oprivacyhand, and shortly after, on Birthdayvember the tweenth, my sister made me an uncle twice in a week, with her little one, Aria Privacy. If you want to read the detailed stories, you can read them on their sites, but let's leave it at both babies are now home and healthy and doing baby things like crying, sleeping, eating, and pooping. But unlike other crying, sleeping, eating, pooping babies, I'm related to these ones! So I'm giggly and glad, and moreover thrilled for my brother, sister, and their spouses, who get to head out on the parenthood adventure. I'm limiting myself to two, small-sized pictures per niecephew, to protect myself from accusations of being a sappy, unclish goober.
My sister Deb was a really beautiful pregnant woman -- you can see the picture on her blog -- and I think she's a beautiful mom, too. You can see the feeding tube on Aria's face, because she was born a bit early, but she's doing just fine now, thanks. There are a few important reasons why this is a very, very special niece, and I can't wait to meet her.
Here's Silas David Oprivacyhand. My little brother announced they were having a baby during the last week I was in Canada before returning to Korea for this most recent stretch. I miss'em. Dan's a special friend to me, so I'm thrilled he has a kid now. I love the change that parenting brings to a person -- every friend of mine who's had a kid has turned softer and gentler in a really touching way -- it's just dead obvious that there's a new Most Important Thing in their life. I'm thrilled to have these lill'uns in the family, and they're sure lucky to have a cousin so close to their age -- that's how it was on my mom's side, with six or so cousins within five years of age, and the way we got along and connected together was really fantastic.
Now there's only one more of my nearest, dearest expecting, and she's also a beautiful pregnant woman, with two amazing little ones already. You can read more about how great she is here.
2. Found this really funny site: Youngme Nowme. You take a baby picture of yourself, and then a picture of yourself now doing the same thing, and the gallery is consistently cute and/or hilarious.
some highlights:
You can now vote for my "next big blog topic" on the sidebar. Tell me what you want me to write about, or suggest a topic in the comments.
Below is top star Kim Tae Hee, for an ice cream phone, gives an interesting look at cute culture here in Korea -- I brushed on this in my post about soju ads. In Japan it's called "Kawaii" culture -- the obssession with cuteness. To Canuck Schmoe, the average Canadian, it looks babyish, but believe me, to many of my Korean friends and students, this is considered cool and even sexy! It's a clever move, because women can connect to the cuteness and say "she's like my little sister," and not complain about the ad for being sexist, while men can have their sexist, dominant fantasy of the submissive girl who baby-talks and makes puppy-dog eyes. (note especially the cutesified sexual position at 1:20: you can't wiggle your bum cutely when your feet are that far apart!)
"Melong" is what Korean kids say instead of "na na na na na" when they tease each other.
when does this one (Kim Tae Hee again) stop being cute and start being suggestive?
don't know.
This one got banned for being too suggestive. Wait for the punch line.
And two funny Dutch ads: the difficult decisions we must make in life. . .
and this one is right off the hook. (Warning: this one has a very very bad word in it. It's funny, but rude. . . and it makes a very good case for what it's selling.)
I have some special family news to share. . . but that might have to wait until after the weekend, when the weather is this beautiful.
Until then, I posted these possible future post topics before, and wrote about the most-voted-for topics. I'm putting them up again so you can tell me, what do you want me to write about next? There's also a poll in the sidebar. Cast your vote on the sidebar. I took down the topics I've already covered, and one that I no longer feel motivated to discuss.
1. the goofiest urban legend ever (formerly titled: the silliest thing I've encountered so far in Korea)
2. the most entertaining internet phenomenon I've encountered in recent times
3. why reading Lord of the Rings comforts me
4. the top five list of "Things I'd Change About Korean Culture If I Had A Magic Wand (that worked)"
5. Great Korean movies you should track down and see. . .
suggest your own topic and I'll think about it.
(Links to the previously suggested topics I already wrote about:)
So my Gmail account had a bunch of spam: all kinds of people seem to think I have various, um, manhood difficulties, and have decided that I deserve a personal e-mail with information on how to purchase viagra, other "love you long time" drugs, and even a few manhood, um, enhancing products.
They certainly didn't get that idea from those pictures I accidentally left in my shared folder in Dece. . . nevermind.
Anyway, the thing is, even though they want to sell me all kinds of nasty, look at the cool names they sport! I recommend that anyone who wants to be a fiction writer, scan the sender names in their e-mail spam folder before deleting. I know how hard it is to think up a good name for a character, but sometimes the spam folder is a veritable goldmine! Get a load of these (or if you don't care about junk like this, skip the next paragraph).
Madeline Crump; Dusty Bates; Helene Ladner (she's sent me a bunch now); Diego Yeager; Lakisha Henderson; Mai Conklin (love the last name Conlkin); Brandon Wood (great name for a viagra peddler); Flora Fink (great name for a spammer); Galen French; Damon Cole; Aimee Trotter; Madeline Daly; Clifton Koch; Enid Finley; Isaac M. Kiney; Celina Snyder; Anibal Hicks; Gabriel D. Kenney; Tristan Holt; Jay Cowan; Brian Grimm.
I had a game with one of my bright students where she'd make up a nonsense word and I'd make up a phony meaning for that word -- "greeble" - "Greeble sounds like a name for the bits of food that you can't quite get out of the pan when you serve your meal." It's fun to look at a name like "Mai Conlkin" and try to build a character around it. "Mai Conlkin sounds like the owner of a dance studio. In her free time she probably listens to classical music on the roof of her apartment building. . . (etc.)"
A recent development: Actual large size drinks have started appearing in Korea! When I arrived in Korea, there were no smalls -- basically, a "large" was the size of a N. American "medium" drink, and a "regular" was the size of a N. American small. Look at this cup, the size of my whole hand! I could barely finish the thing! It was like when I first got back to Canada in 2004, stopped into A&W, and (because it can't be found here), ordered a large root beer, and gawked when they basically gave me two litres of fizzy liquid! Burger Kings here have more atmosphere than a lot of the Korean food joints, where deco is very functional. It's kind of funny. Black and white pictures of celebrities and checkerboard tile floors aren't much, but they're more than soju posters.You'd expect to find this sign at a restaurant by a beach. . . but instead it was not far from downtown Seoul. "Sand" seems to be a new Konglish/English loan word, an abbreviation of "sandwich" (which is pronounced send-wee-chee in Konglish) Ddong-chim pencil holder.
Hmwahhahhah The Empror's new fashion line. There's a chunk of the Berlin wall near Chunggye stream in Seoul, right between Jongno and Myeong-dong. David Hasselhoff's picture is not on the wall. I wonder how he feels about that. A couple bears wandered into downtown Seoul the other night. Fortunately, nobody was mauled; they posed for a lot of pictures, though, and handed out flyer ads. I like this baby's goofy smile on the ad. Across the street from the only place in Seoul I know to find soy ice cream: the weirdest park bench I've ever seen. I posted once before about the supersaturation of Starbucks in Jongno, Jonggak, Insadong, Myeong-dong, and City Hall. . . but I missed this one. Hee hee. I wonder if they pay a royalty for this one. A little Konglish for ya. For the sake of journalistic thoroughness in my previous discussion of overly sexy ads for soju. . . two more examples of soju posters.
These days, waffle houses are popping up all over Seoul, except that they seem to make them with cake batter instead of waffle batter (darn adapting western foods for the Korean palate. . . which is an entire post of its own. Ask if you wanna hear). Anyway, Samchungdong, an old/new stylish neighbourhood, has been sprouting waffle houses like zits on a tenth grader, and in an attempt to stay ahead of the curve, this waffle house offered some good-looking waffle options: And also some, uhh, unconventional choices.Because, last time I was eating a waffle, sifting through fruit and sugary glazes and maple syrup, I thought, "Gee, what this waffle really needs is some sausage, or maybe some cheese," didn't you? This made me laugh. Rather than letting the word of mouth spread, or making his decorations parenthetical, displaying them modestly somewhere in his restaurant, this dude decided to just flash them out as brightly as possible. (this was on the outside of his restaurant. . . and actually has the opposite effect from what he intended, decreasing my desire to try out his joint, because maybe he's a good cook, but now he also comes off as a kind of self-aggrandizing smarm-farmer.) Are you that insecure, cook man, that you have to show around your, uh, attributes, in the crassest way possible?Okayyyyy. . . moving right along.
In Park Chung-hee's days (Korea's old military dictator, plus the architect for Korea's current economic growth), he restored the Korean palaces, but built them out of concrete instead of the traditional wood.
He oriented them in relation to an administrative building the Japanese had built during the Japanese colonial period. . . I thought before that the Japanese had rearranged the temple buildings to mess up the topography and energy flow of Korea's power center, but those offending buildings in question were actually built by Koreans! (There goes that scapegoat!)
Note that beneath the traditional Korean paint, on these pieces of the old, gate, is solid concrete! (Gyungbokgung gate is currently being rebuilt in the correct place, according to archaeological evidence, out of original materials with original techniques -- authenticity over durability; take that, Park Chunghee!) From the old, campy 1960s Batman: right over the top. does this ever happen to you?
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"
sweetness.
Goofy computer screens selling stuff today at lunchtime. I have no idea how they could see. Yes, there are people inside. Spotted them taking a break by Insa-dong. Their job must suck when it's hot. There's a little alley like this near my house -- I've mentioned the good restaurants to be found in there before. Now that it's spring, every night it's poppin' in there, full of people eating pieces of barbequed meat. (yaaaaayy redmeat!) The people always look really happy, and I love the ramshackle homeyness of the alley restaurants. Well on Sunday night I finally ate there.
Here's about what it looked like.And it was one of those perfect evenings -- as good as wine on the rooftop terrace the night before. I love where I live. Really I do.
A guy came by selling little snacky things. It's a bit of ddeok (rice cake) wrapped in a fresh leaf, and they're great.
Eating them made coworker Dani make this face.
Here's another old tea room in Samchung dong (been stomping around there a lot lately. It's really fun at night, but pricey.) This is one of the old, one of the original samchungdong establishments -- before it was hip to go there. They served Nok'gak daebotang, deer antler tea (didn't know that's what it was when I ordered it; I basically shut my eyes and pointed at the menu because none of the items were known to me), that is the bitterest broth I have ever tasted, dear brothers and sisters. I still feel like I have tiger balm on my tongue, a day later. It was wildly different from anything I've had before. anyway, there's a bit more of what's been keeping a grin on my grill lately. it's late now. Pray for girfriendoseyo if you pray: things at work continue getting curiouser and curiouser.
here's an awesome online game where you can help the Olympic torch on its way through Hong Kong. I wish they had higher levels that included obstacles like protesters, paratroopers, changes of course and buckets of water -- level 2: San Francisco. Level 3: London. Level 4: Paris!
Does playing the game count as complicity? Or should you click on the link but not play the game, to cause maximum embarrassment, like Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai, or do something else embarrassing, like conceal a Tibetan flag in your sleeve, a la Majora Carter? I think they should have buttons you can push to do such things in this game. They should also have cheap plastic toys and cheaply made clothes you can collect as you run down the street, I suppose.
As some of you know, my sister, and my brother's wife both got pregnant last summer. Well, on Marpril twentyteenth, my brother's wife had a little boy named Silas David Oprivacyhand, and shortly after, on Birthdayvember the tweenth, my sister made me an uncle twice in a week, with her little one, Aria Privacy. If you want to read the detailed stories, you can read them on their sites, but let's leave it at both babies are now home and healthy and doing baby things like crying, sleeping, eating, and pooping. But unlike other crying, sleeping, eating, pooping babies, I'm related to these ones! So I'm giggly and glad, and moreover thrilled for my brother, sister, and their spouses, who get to head out on the parenthood adventure. I'm limiting myself to two, small-sized pictures per niecephew, to protect myself from accusations of being a sappy, unclish goober.
My sister Deb was a really beautiful pregnant woman -- you can see the picture on her blog -- and I think she's a beautiful mom, too. You can see the feeding tube on Aria's face, because she was born a bit early, but she's doing just fine now, thanks. There are a few important reasons why this is a very, very special niece, and I can't wait to meet her.
Here's Silas David Oprivacyhand. My little brother announced they were having a baby during the last week I was in Canada before returning to Korea for this most recent stretch. I miss'em. Dan's a special friend to me, so I'm thrilled he has a kid now. I love the change that parenting brings to a person -- every friend of mine who's had a kid has turned softer and gentler in a really touching way -- it's just dead obvious that there's a new Most Important Thing in their life. I'm thrilled to have these lill'uns in the family, and they're sure lucky to have a cousin so close to their age -- that's how it was on my mom's side, with six or so cousins within five years of age, and the way we got along and connected together was really fantastic.
So then, two more links:
