Subliminal soundtrack time. . . hit play and start reading. Banditos, by The Refreshments
I have good news for all my Korean friends, and even concerned citizens in America.
See, after I got home from a lovely date with girlfriendoseyo, and a delightful walk through all the friendly protestors offering me red signs, and walking like docile cattle through the winding streets around Gwanghwamun, I checked my e-mail.
I got an e-mail from an actual, real scientist. . . I forget his name because I was so excited that I deleted the e-mail without thinking after I read it, but he went to Harbard or something, I swear, and here's, like, totally the best news I've ever heard, and it's absolutely totally true, because a real, actual scientist from Harbard told me.
He says that I don't have to worry about Mad Cow disease, because kimchi makes you immune to it! He said Kimchi's special combination of garlic, han, spicy chili, and jung kills the prions that cause Mad Cow, and he showed me some serious, like really actually real science that totally proves it's true. Here it is: see!
That totally proves it! If you don't want to catch Mad Cow Disease from American Beef, all you have to do is eat it with kimchi, and the kimchi will kill the prions!
Here. For those not well versed in the real, hard science above, I'll put it in simpler terms, too, so that all your worries can disappear like a bad memory:
Remember to forward this good news to everyone on your contact list it's your patriotic duty for public health!
And breathe a sigh of relief: it's safe to be a beefeater again.
In the afternoon, all of Sejongro was blocked off by "chicken cage" buses loaded with riot police. The atmosphere was kind of like one of those early evening aqua-skies where you just know it's gonna rain like a banshee later that night.
I walked around the protest today, and it was weird. It was the happiest protest I've ever seen. People were sitting in circles, holding candles, playing chanting games like "sam-yuk-gu" together, people brought their kids. . . and there were lines of buses and hundreds of riot police lined up, waiting for stuff to get out of hand. Absolutely surreal.
They set it up so that it looks like Admiral Lee Sunshin is on the side of the police. p.s.: New definition of Irony: Mad Cow beef protestor taking a break from shouting slogans, for a nice, relaxing cigarette.
p.p.s: It's not a protest if you can/want to bring your kids. Sorry, that's the rule. What with the marching and the candles, the event this reminded me of the most was actually the Buddha's Birthday Lantern Parade, not any of the protests I've seen. Korea is really completely off its rocker sparkling and interesting these days. So just make sure you eat your beef with Kimchi, and you'll be fine! I swear! It's science! Science is true!
Soundtrack: hit play and start reading. Sammy Davis Jr.
mr. bojangles. One of my favourite songs.
My mouth is frozen from a dentist's appointment, and I'm sitting in the doorway of a coffee shop by Piano Street in Jongno, because it suddenly started dumping rain; it looks like it might be one of those twenty-minute showers, so I'm going to try and wait it out before I decide I need to make an umbrella-free run for my school and get a case of saggy-wet-t-shirt-itis. Blast you, Danielle, you office harpy, for talking me out of bringing my umbrella with me to Gwanjang Market for Kalkuksu. Blast you with Thor's mighty hammer. (Don't worry. She thinks it's funny when I talk to her like that. In her mind, she might well be living in a Victorian Farce.)
A few things:
I love the way the word "piss" is used in the U.K.; it's so much better than the way we NoAms use it.
North Americans use it to tell someone to go away, as a term of derision, or to mean upset: "piss off" or "this beer tastes like piss" "that's a piss-poor excuse for skipping out on our meeting" "we were pissed off when the ticket prices were higher at the box-office than they were advertised in the poster". It can also mean extremely drunk: "he was piss-drunk" or "we got so pissed last night"
However, the U.Keeners use it in a much more interesting way (to me -- maybe they're amused by how NoAms use the word): Taking a piss means joking. "Are you taking a piss?" Piss-take means a prank or joke "I read the article and started to get upset, but then I realized it was April Fool's day, and the whole story was just a big piss-take. Take the piss out of X means teasing X, quite a lot.
I used to have a roommate who was a proper Brit, through and through, from a little town called Preston. Nice guy. Really classy.
(These are from a halloween party. They're on facebook, so he's already ok with the fact the whole internet can see these pics; however, I'm not publishing his name here. If you know it, kindly don't mention it in the comments. . .) Despite the pictures, I'm quite serious that Englebert was classy as anything, and one of the best roommates I've had. Top three, for sure, and one of the nicest guys to hang out with, fun as heck, until he got so drunk his legs stopped working.
Anyway, he had a cool way of using the English language that was different than we Canadians. Once, our friend was sick, and he said, "Oh, she's a bit gentle today," which I liked.
(this Canuckistani accent is a bit more Prairie than Vancouver, but it'll have to do).
Anyway, one day, a student invited me to his house for lunch, and during lunch, I talked about my cooking ability: I cook a few things very well, a lot of stuff alright, but the one thing I constantly bungle (bad one to bungle in Korea) is rice. I always put in too much water, or not enough, cook it too long or too short, or too hot or too cool, so it's scorched or crunchy or both. A while later, that same student teased me in class about my inability to get rice right.
Later, I was talking to my classy roomie, and my excellent Irish coworker Lorraine, and because both of them were from that region (warning: never mistake Ireland for being part of the U.K.; that's like calling Canada the fifty-first state, except with 600 years of oppression mixed in. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but the Republic of Ireland is a sovereign state), I figured I'd try to speak in their style, you know, to show my cosmopolitan flair. Except in my excitement over using the phrase (and despite having used it properly numerous times before and since), I just right bungled it that day.
I should have said, "My student Willy really took the piss out of me today for not being able to cook rice." Would have been totally acceptable.
Instead, I said, "My student Willy took a piss on me because I can't cook rice."
(Hopefully, that three seconds of idiocy will not now undermine all my heretofore unassailed (snicker) credibility as an essayist and Korea blogger, and will be taken instead as an example of my ability to laugh at myself, a feature I consider helpful in life [see point 3].)
Back to botching idioms: that's why I tell my Korean students, "Don't waste your time learning English slang and idioms well enough to use them -- increase your vocabulary instead." Using slang and idioms is high-risk, no-reward, because if you use it wrong, you look stupid, but if you use it perfectly, it fits into the conversation so seamlessly your conversation partner won't even notice you've used it. Nobody ever stops a conversation to comment, "Hey! Great saying! That was the perfect idiom for this situation!" Learn slang well enough to understand it when it's used by others, but don't waste your time trying to incorporate slang seamlessly into your lexicon. Stumbling to find the right word will bog a conversation down, more than using perfect idiom will improve it, so improve your vocabulary instead of your slang, and speak as simply as possible.
Also to my Korean readers: if you know some slang, don't twist the conversation around just so you can use the phrases you memorized. I once had a lunch with another student's mother, and she was a chatterbox, constantly apologizing for her (quite good) English (another pet peeve -- don't apologize; just talk), and twisting the conversation to lob her idioms into the chat like hand grenades.
For example: Mom: (changing the topic out of the blue) Do you think I'm speaking politely enough? Me: Sure. You don't have to worry about that with me. Mom: (pounds table with open hand) LET'S NOT STAND ON CEREMONY!!!!!! (does 'look what I did!' grin, like a kid who hit a bulls-eye on her first try) Me: Pfffft! (nearly empties mouthful of cola into lap)
High comedy.
From the Hire a Proofreader, Nimrod! files: at my own school. . .
Drinks come in really small cans here: it's nice, sometimes, when you aren't that thirsty, and once you pop the top, you just can't stop (that's why I prefer screw-cap drink bottles: you can close it up and finish it later if you want). But the small portions are nice, too. Especially compared to North American drink sizes. (from google images)
Climbed a mountain with these people last weekend. They were really fun, and we laughed a lot. The starbucks had stuffed "bear-istas" you could buy, which seemed like a cool celebration of Starbucks' new international ubiquity. . . The problem was, unless the barrista uniforms they wear are totally unique to Korea, there was nothing about these bears that was Korean except the word "Korea" on the flag they held. Something about across-the-board uniformity could, doubtless be said here, but I'll leave it at this: unless the bear smelled like garlic, (Korea's origin myth involves a tiger and a bear hiding in a cave and eating only garlic for 100 days) there's really nothing Korean about it except the word on the flag.Went to Ganghwa Island, where seagulls follow the ferries to eat the shrimp snacks people throw at them. Boy they were fun. And I enjoyed watching them fly, because Jonathan Livingston Seagull is one of the better "read-it-in-one-sitting" books I've come across.
In fact, like "Full Metal Jacket," if the second half had been anywhere near as good as the first half, it would have been on my top five books of all time. Unfortunately, the second half of JLS (starting about when Jonathan meets The Great Seagull) kind of drifts off into some weird, mystic left-field. It starts as a beautiful metaphor for the pursuit of excellence, and finishes off in some kind of messianic non-sequiteur that doesn't quite ring true to me. That said, the first forty pages or so comprise one of the most beautiful parables I've ever read, full of poetry, simple wisdom, and great seagull photography.
People were holding up chips, and the seagulls were snatching them right out of their hands.
Even this little kid go in on the action. It was also cool seeing one snatch a tossed chip out of the air. All right. that's enough for now. Until I get a better camera (and maybe even after that), I've decided to set my filter a little higher, and only publish the better pictures I take, instead of just publish all the pictures I take.
Anybody out there who can recommend a reliable camera with decent battery life, that fits into a pocket? I don't mind dishing out some coin for something I can count on, and I'm not looking for anything too complex, but a few features (like that foreground focus one where you can hold the button half-way down to keep the focus, and then adjust the picture's composition before taking the picture), compact size, good battery life (girlfriendoseyo's camera is ALWAYS running out of battery life - that's why I'd prefer one that takes AA's over one that needs to be plugged in to recharge) and a big memory card would be nice. So, uh, let me know. Especially if you want me to start posting better pictures, eh?
Later, blogosphere! I need to get ready for my one year anniversary with Girlfriendoseyo now.
Ahh, kids. Sometimes I wish I could just throw the "grown-up switch" off for a while, or take a gee-whiz pill, and experience things as completely as this:
El Presidente (hope my music choice isn't too cheeky)
Sorry: I'm too busy to spice this one up with pictures.
Now, the Metropolitician recently had an interesting thing happen: Immigration Korea announced a shift in its policy that had a surprising similarity to an A-OK Visa proposal he'd made a while before. Whether the policymakers, or somebody with the policymakers' ear gleaned a few ideas from Mr. Hurt's page may never be known for sure, but Met started a meme, and who's to say where it ended. His "Ajussi's Ruin Everything" meme has alsopopped up (word for word, no less) on a few other blogs I respect.
The good Metropolitician's been around longer than I have, he knows more about Korea than I do, speaks the language, and also gets way more hits and comments on his site than I do: he even has anti-fans, people who skulk around his site just waiting for him to say something to which they can respond in white-hot, typo-inducing anger. I'm a tiny potato next to that big kahuna, but today, I have a meme of my own, which means more to me than coining the word "Kimcheerleader". It might take a while for it to gain traction, and that's OK; the idea might get separated from the source, and even that's OK, because I'm saying this for Korea (ain't I self-important), not for blog hits. If you like my idea, cool. Blog about it. Tell your friends about it. Translate it into Korean, or just blog about it in Korean. Share it with your friends around the samgyupsal grill. Post it on Naver comment boards. Tell your journalist friend who writes in a Korean daily. Pretend it's your idea if you want; I really don't care, as long as it spreads.
Without further ado, an open letter to Korea's President, Lee Myungbak.
Dear President Lee Myung-bak
So right about now, you're probably asking, "Why did I want this job in the first place?" People are protesting, signing the impeachment petition, your own party is divided, and your opponents are having a field day attacking you over US Beef, the Free Trade Agreement, your communication style, and your ability to manage a crisis. Meanwhile, your big project -- which you wanted to be your legacy -- is being roundly criticized either as a way to help your old buddies in Hyundai Construction out, as an ego trip the size of Korea, or as an ecological disaster on an epic scale, just waiting to happen.
It seems like you're having a lot of trouble convincing people that you can see any point of view other than your own -- people are accusing you of being a bulldozer in the BAD ways instead of the GOOD ways, and suddenly being President of a Country seems like a much bigger job than being Mayor of a City.
You're probably looking for a way to fix all these problems, and to set up a legacy that will be treasured and respected by Koreans, all through time.
Well, have I got an idea for you!
As you know, Korea is obsessed with education: Koreans see education as the key to survival in a competitive world. As you also know, Korea recently ranked 53rd out of 55 countries in a comparative study on how well education prepares students for social and economic participation. The very system in which Koreans put their faith for improvement is failing in its most important goal!
As you also noticed when you prematurely rolled out your previous education reform plan, there are a lot of politics to be considered when we take on education. It's a plain fact, as you must know, that a true, systemic education reform plan, one that changes things right to the heart, instead of just moving around the furniture, is nearly impossible to implement in a single, five-year presidency, especially because it seems that the first thing each new president does is to reverse the previous president's education policy.
It might seem surprising to you, Mr. President, if I gave a suggestion that would solve all these problems: the problem of your wish for an unforgettable legacy, the problem of having too short a time as president to truly effect change, AND the problem of people's perception that you surround yourself with yes-men and never listen to the other side of a debate, as WELL as Korea's education crisis, but that is exactly what I have for you today.
President Lee, if you want to be remembered as an open-minded politician, an effective president, and as a great visionary who, like Park Chung-hee, took the difficult steps necessary to prepare Korea for future success, here, sir, is what you must do.
Swallow your pride, and ask Korea's people to bear with you as changes come into place: change is never easy.
Reach out both within your own party, AND TO THE OPPOSITION, and
Negotiate a twenty-year, bi-partisan education reform program to which both your party AND the opposition can agree.
Here is my reasoning:
It must be a twenty-year plan, because you will need to do it in several steps: a. gather information b. get recommendations, c. set out a plan for implementing these recommendations, and d. phase in those changes gradually.
It must be bi-partisan, because if it is not, then the next government will make it their first act to cancel it, and Korea, the country you serve, will have gained nothing, except another lost generation of high school students who don't know whether to improve their grades or focus on test scores to get into a good university. If you can negotiate a reform plan that both sides agree upon, then no matter which party takes office after your term, they will follow through with the plan. Heading to the negotiating table instead of starting up your bulldozer will also change your reputation for being stubborn and arrogant, and prove that your concern for Korea's future is your top priority, and not just your OWN legacy. Engaging the other side will show that you are open-minded and truly pragmatic, despite what your critics say.
You must ask Korea's people to bear with you, because during the implementation of the plan, there will be some years of shift, some years of confusion, and things will probably get worse before they get better, as everybody grows accustomed to the new system. As we have seen before (think of the 1997 Economic Crisis), if Korea's people can see the goal for which they wait and work, they can come together and support a major project. . . IF YOU ASK THEM TO.
The four steps must be as such:
First, gather information. Offer up big money, in order to recruit the world's top education experts. Put together an international team of educators and analysts to inspect Korea's education system from top to bottom, from the first year of pre-school to the final year of graduate school. Talk to educators, parents, experts, students of all ages, and people on the street. Talk to laypeople from other countries with highly-regarded education systems. Hire retired Ivy League University presidents and faculty chairs and top educators and education experts worldwide to design and conduct the surveys, and to analyse the results. Do not only bring in North American experts: search Europe, India, and the entire developed world, as well as emerging countries that have successfully implemented English learning programs in their school systems, to find experts in both developed and developING education systems. Pay well enough that it is clearly worth it for them to bring their expertise to Korea. Do not just hire foreigners as "token" place-fillers, but take their advice and analysis VERY seriously: for Korea to become internationally competitive, she must begin taking advice from international experts as well as home-grown talent. As well, Korea's education system is cluttered with too many activists masquerading as teachers, whose ideologies prevent them from true teaching and leadership. If the international experts complain that some Korean team member is bringing politics into discussions about education, cut him or her from the team. Do not limit this team to Koreans, because Koreans have been IN the system for too long to think outside of it. It has become obvious that an outside view is necessary to get to the root of Korea's educational system's flaws.
Hire top Korean and international analysts and planners to form recommendations from the information gathered, on how to get Korea from its current system, to a new system that will raise Korean children up to be internationally competitive. Do not accept "but we've done it this way for hundreds of years" as a valid objection to a change: the world changes. Every culture changes, but, like an intelligent old lady who refuses to learn how to e-mail out of stubbornness, a culture can also limit itself, blocking itself from changes it is CAPABLE of doing, but unwilling to do, locked into a self-made cage. Sure, introduce and implement the changes in ways that make sense within Korean culture, to Korean people, but don't let "This is how we've always done things" and the same old boilerplate objections carry the day. (for example: "But essays are so subjective! Multiple choice is much more cut and dry!")
Create a plan for implementing these changes in stages: too much change, too quickly, will confuse everyone, and lead to total failure, before the reforms have a chance to truly change Korea's education culture. Set a schedule to introduce reforms year by year, maybe starting in Kindergarten and moving up, each year, so that everyone knows what is happening, and can prepare for the new system. Train the teachers well, not just with flyers and handouts. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, so if necessary, urge early retirement on some of the older "dogs" who won't "learn new tricks" (educators and administrators). Bring in some of the fresh young talents that are currently wasting their lives away studying for the teacher's exam, who would be thrilled at a chance to learn some new tricks, to replace them.
Put the plan into action, and expect a bumpy transition. (This is why you MUST ask Korea's people to bear with you.)
In 1965, physical infrastructure was Korea's great need: roads, railways, highways, and factories brought Korea from abject poverty into prosperity. However, diligence alone is no longer enough, when South-Asia and China can underbid on labour prices, and the international market is full of flexible, innovative thinkers, team-workers and problem-solvers: eight months of twelve-hour days studying for a four-hour exam that's 80% multiple choice will no longer produce the workforce Korea needs. In the same way Park Chunghee created a physical infrastructure that brought Korea into the developed world, Mr. President, you could be the leader that forges the intellectual infrastructure needed to make Korea a global leader. Then, though your legacy will not be a physical feature on the landscape, you will always be remembered, like Sejong, as a visionary leader who knew that intellectual capital is far more valuable than a physical monument or an engineering feat, and leads to a more enduring legacy.
Do not bet your entire legacy on a canal project that is already damaging your credibility; if you want to be remembered with respect and gratitude, this is how to do it, sir.
P.S.: This is a good idea. It could even be a powerful idea, so you should handle it carefully. Do not unveil it in response to a crisis, as if it's an attempt to save your reputation; think it through, build it up, present it in as positive a light as possible, line up supporters from all ends of the political spectrum, right from the get-go, and plan carefully how to introduce and sell this idea both to Korea and to your opposition: if you present it as a plan for Korea's future, rather than as "MY Legacy," it will be easier to convince the opposition to sign onto a bi-partisan project; making it bi-partisan, rather than simply pushing it through on bald authority is crucial to getting Korea, and the opposition, to "sign on" to the idea. I am sure you have advisors who can help you present this idea as humbly as possible, in order to give it a chance at success, for the good of Korea.
I'll even let you pretend it was your idea.
P.P.S.: Green energy.
There you go, K-bloggers and netizens. Go forth and spread that around, see where it goes.
In my last post, I wrote, "Hundreds, maybe thousands of North Koreans die weekly in death camps or of starvation, and South Koreans save their outrage for American beef imports???" but it's a little more complex than that.
So as far as I can tell, the SeoulPodcast is pretty sure that the mad cow/US Beef/FTA thing is just a bunch of public panic over lies; they frame it in terms of nationalism and leftist manipulators bending facts for a bunch of credulous schlubs.
If you want to give the Korean people a little more credit than that, Gord Sellar gives a really thoughtful look at the way the public approaches a political issue, framing it as the sign of a still-developing democracy -- that's really worth a read. People are taking part in democracy here, which is interesting, even though they're doing it based on wrong premises. The one thing missing in this issue is informed discussion of issues . . . but the fact there's discussion this time, is actually a step forward, sez Gord.
President Lee Myungbak has gummed this situation about as badly as he could (which could also be applied to pretty much his entire first half-year in office): he recoursed to "Because I'm President, that's why"-type rhetoric, leaning on presidential authority in a kind of arrogant way, rather than by leaning heavily on facts, science, and dry information. This gives his opposition a chance to turn this into a suppression of dissent issue, rather than a mere safety/science issue. It's no longer a question even of mad cow beef or the FTA, but of how Korea's leader is going to lead the country, because the president pitted his authority against the protesters, arresting them and threatening legal action against the people spreading disinformation, instead of using dispassionate science, and overwhelming the hearsay with plain facts, while keeping his leadership style out of the discussion. Instead of facts vs. myths, it's now public emotion vs. presidential authority -- it's disappointing than neither side has turned to information, but that's not what it's about anymore, I think, to most of the people still holding candles.
Frankly, the whole thing's been beaten into the ground on the English language K-blogosphere (probably even more on the Korean one, but I can't read Korean well enough to get my finger on that pulse), but this whole thing has gotten bigger than American beef, the Free Trade Agreement, or even nationalism, I think.
I was on my way back home from a Salsa Dancing lesson in Hongdae (dang, that was fun. . . next time I really need to drag Girlfriendoseyo along), when the taxi just couldn't go any farther, right next to Gyungbok Palace.
This is why:
For whatever else it's worth, I had to walk fifteen minutes out of my way to circle around the scads of protesters holding candles and (interestingly) singing songs and shouting chants I last heard at a Korean soccer game (singing the Arirang and doing the Dae-Han-Min-Guk chant), along with other slogans.
Walking through a crowd of people protesting something at least tangentially (via the FTA) anti-American is a bit nerve-racking, because I look like an American, and you know, it only takes one angry drunk to shout, "There's one! Let's GET HIM!" and I wouldn't have a chance to defend myself. If it were a protest about China or Japan, I'd've gotten a bit closer, to take pictures with my crappy cameraphone, but for now, what a mess. I got home alright by doing my low-profile walk (stare at the pavement, make no eye-contact with people, but when no-one's approaching, glance around and check for people giving me hairy eyeballs). Things are off the handle here, ladies and gentlemen. It's a bit wild and woolly in the downtown these days.
I don't know where it's heading, but this thing is snowballing, this issue has way more legs than it ought to, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
Yellow dust: dust from China's Gobi Desert, spiked on Friday. It was pretty awful, and the facemask actually worked. Y'all Canadians from CleanWaterFreshAirtopia can't even imagine this.
From the linked article, about a Dunkin' Donuts spokesperson wearing a scarf that unintentionally resembled the keffiyeh, a scarf symbolic of Palestinian jihad:
“Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial," the company said in a statement.
They pulled the ad entirely because of a possible misunderstanding of its meaning.
To Coreana (who merely rephrased a slogan and narration and attempted to smooth over a Nazi reference, and to my knowledge, is still running the offensive ad): are you listening?
(meanwhile, I can hear sirens in the distance from the beef protests. Hundreds, maybe thousands of North Koreans die weekly in death camps or of starvation, and South Koreans save their outrage for American beef imports???)
On Sunday, before seeing Indiana Jones together (enjoyed it. Love the kitchen-sink action sequences of the Indy series...) I spontaneously suggested to Girlfriendoseyo that we meet a bit early and stroll around, because the weather was nice.
I had no idea we'd be mugged by roses once we got to Samchungdong.
Girlfriendoseyo was like a kid in a candy store. She described this wall as "a waterfall of roses." Words. Superfluous. Look. But. . .
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." --Yogi Berra
Samchungdong is in danger, dear readers. Dire danger. The dastardly Dunkin Donuts dilemma: people like what's familiar, but the appearance of a chain like dunkins seems to me a blight on a cool, hip little neighbourhood of Seoul. What's next? A stinking starbucks? We have enough of those already. We don't have enough Samchungdongs. It's the old dilemma -- people find a hip neighbourhood that's free of the trappings of chain stores and corporate crap; word spreads, it becomes a hot-spot, so the chains move in, in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the neighbourhood, and because they have the resources to squeeze out the hip little independent coffee shop owners who play unique, funky music and let you write your name on the walls, and make a panini you can't find anywhere else. In the corporate attempt to cash in, the mucky-mucks and their cookie-cutter franchises dillute the unique colour that made the neighbourhood into a hot spot in the first place, it gets co-opted, and starts to suck.
The same thing happens to pristine "best-kept-secret" beaches in south asia -- a few intrepid backpackers blab, word spreads, and suddenly all the reasons people had for going there in the first place get squeezed out by the usual tour groups and noisy camera-toting bus-touring foreign currency-monkeys, to the point that you say "Phuket! Forget these hidden-away hovels! I may as well just go to Phuket after all."
Dunkin Donuts in Samchungdong. . . everything that is wrong with the (corporate) world. Is there no remaining refuge? One more gripe about Samchungdong: Too. Many. Waffle. Houses.
Don't get me wrong: I love samchungdong! Even the waffle houses can stay, if they're nice, and each different from the other. But dunkin's has got to go.
This is an ad for Stylish Beer -- if you drink it every day, you'll look like her . . . I swear! A Jewelry shop in Jongno 3 ga. Jewsrock.org (a site dedicated to jews in rock music, including their patron saints, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen) ought to know one of their indie stars opened a jewelry store. Maybe Ben Kweller? Korean store openings: across from the entrance to my work last week were these, gyrating inflatable phalluses. They skimped on the sexy dancing girls, though (a mainstay on the Korean grand opening circuit). One was there, but she didn't dance much, and mostly just talked.
The air compressor makes the phallus twist like this:This is how you open a business in Korea, almost without exception.
More US Beef protests this weekend. They're starting to get rowdy -- people were arrested over the weekend, and the left-wing, anti-American string-pullers are more open about the real motivation behind their misinformation campaign to smear American Beef's reputation. Han-woo (that's what the first two syllables on every menu item reads) means "Korean Beef" -- stores are starting to advertise their Koreanness in the beef department. Almost every beef-serving store had "hanwoo" stickers up by their entrances, advertising that they only served Korean beef. Whether the signs can be trusted or not is another matter. Whether Korean beef is even safer than American beef at all is also completely unknown, because the Korean Beef industry has refused to allow mad-cow risk-assessment organizations to inspect their farms and slaughterhouses.In Korean, saying "Majah majah majah" (the equivalent to "OK OK OK OK") is a way of saying "I'm listening intently," while to English speakers, repeating "OKOKOK" is a sign of impatience, tantamount to saying, "I get it already -- move on". . . this can be a source of misunderstandings between Koreans trying to show they're listening carefully, and Westerners who think the Korean is acting impatient. You know you're in Jongno 3ga when. . . If you've ever told someone, "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot-pole!" Here's the guy to call: Lush is a soap, etc., store. I love the goofy names of their fragrances. "Sonic Death Monkey" -- a must-have body-wash for those early mornings when a little giggle will help you wake up. 'nuff said.
After an exhaustingly long post/response cycle on the "Korea Herald" post...
I read this: some very interesting food for thought.
soundtrack: Cat Stevens
Where do the Children Play, with clips from "The Lorax"
Rosa Brooks, a columnist from the LA Times:
Remember 'go outside and play?'
Overbearing parents have taken the fun out of childhood and turned it into a grind. May 15, 2008
Can you forgive her?
In March, Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother, gave her 9-year-old son, Izzy, a MetroCard, a subway map, a $20 bill and some quarters for pay phones. Then she let him make his own way home from Bloomingdale's department store -- by subway and bus.
Izzy survived unscathed. He wasn't abducted by a perverted stranger or pushed under an oncoming train by a homicidal maniac. He didn't even get lost. According to Skenazy, who wrote about it in a New York Sun column, he arrived home "ecstatic with independence."
His mother wasn't so lucky. Her column generated as much outrage as if she'd suggested that mothers make extra cash by hiring their kids out as child prostitutes.
But it also reinvigorated an important debate about children, safety and independence.
Reader, if you're much over 30, you probably remember what it used to be like for the typical American kid. Remember how there used to be this thing called "going out to play"?
For younger readers, I'll explain this archaic concept. It worked like this: The child or children in the house -- as long as they were over age 4 or so -- went to the door, opened it, and ... went outside. They braved the neighborhood pedophile just waiting to pounce, the rusty nails just waiting to be stepped on, the trees just waiting to be fallen out of, and they "played."
"Play," incidentally, is a mysterious activity children engage in when not compelled to spend every hour under adult supervision, taking soccer or piano lessons or practicing vocabulary words with computerized flashcards.
All in all, "going out to play" worked out well for kids. As the American Academy of Pediatrics' Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg testified to Congress in 2006, "Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles. ... Play helps children develop new competencies ... and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges." But here's the catch: Those benefits aren't realized when some helpful adult is hovering over kids the whole time.
Thirty years ago, the "going out to play" culture coexisted with other culturally sanctioned forms of independence for even very young children: Kids as young as 6 used to walk to school on their own, for instance, or take public buses or -- gulp -- subways. And if they lived on a school bus route, their mommies did not consider it necessary to escort them to the bus stop every morning and wait there with them.
But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).
Increasingly, American children are in a lose-lose situation. They're forced, prematurely, to do all the un-fun kinds of things adults do (Be over-scheduled! Have no downtime! Study! Work!). But they don't get any of the privileges of adult life: autonomy, the ability to make their own choices, use their own judgment, maybe even get interestingly lost now and then.
Somehow, we've managed to turn childhood into a long, hard slog. Is it any wonder our kids take their pleasures where they can find them, by escaping to "Grand Theft Auto IV" or the alluring, parent-free world of MySpace?
But, but, but, you say, all the same, Skenazy should never have let her 9-year-old son take the subway! In New York, for God's sake! A cesspit of crack addicts, muggers and pedophiles!
Well, no. We parents have sold ourselves a bill of goods when it comes to child safety. Forget the television fear-mongering: Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a "stereotypical kidnapping." And unless you live in Baghdad, your child stands a much, much greater chance of being killed in a car accident than of being seriously harmed while wandering unsupervised around your neighborhood.
Skenazy responded to the firestorm generated by her column by starting a new website -- freerangekids.wordpress.com -- dedicated to giving "our kids the freedom we had." She explains: "We believe in safe kids. ... We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security detail."
Next time I take my kids to New York, I'm asking Skenazy to baby-sit.
You've never seen Alice in Wonderland like this before. . .
The song is "Alice" by electronica artist Pogo, who used samples from the movie to make it. More about Pogo here.
One of my five favourite albums ever was also about Alice in Wonderland: "Alice" by Tom Waits. Tom Waits is one of those otherworldly artists who took a full three years to grow on me, but now that he has, I literally can't get enough. In my opinion, the greatest lyricists of the rock era were:
1. Leonard Cohen 2. Tom Waits 3. Bob Dylan
Here are two of the prettiest songs from Tom Waits' "Alice" album. The album is odd, funny, strange, wildly fascinating, lyrical and haunting, but these two are sure gorgeous.
Fawn: Melissa says the violin's bow needs more rosin.
(mad cow)
(plus)
(kimchi)
(equals)
(healthy cow)
(and)
(happy, safe, beefeating children) (from pixadus.com)
I walked around the protest today, and it was weird. It was the happiest protest I've ever seen. People were sitting in circles, holding candles, playing chanting games like "sam-yuk-gu" together, people brought their kids. . . and there were lines of buses and hundreds of riot police lined up, waiting for stuff to get out of hand. Absolutely surreal.
So just make sure you eat your beef with Kimchi, and you'll be fine! I swear! It's science! Science is true!
