Joe Mondello Shows us How Its Done: K-Blogger of The Month for September

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but this post finally pushed me over the edge.

Remember back in April, I tagged Brian from Jeollanam-Do my April Blogger Of The Month for his stuff about the Coreana Nazi ads, which eventually got the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and coverage on international news outlets.

Well, I've been thinking about featuring a kind of K-Blogger of the month every month, and doing a brief write-up about one of the Korea Bloggers on my blogroll (see sidebar). Today, Joe's latest post, has finally prompted me to do it.

Without further ado, to give credit where it is due, here is September's K-Blogger Of The Month.

Joe Mondello has been in Korea a way long time, and speaks Korean really well, as well as playing a respectable mandolin.


Joe is one of the expats who has lived in Korea for a long time, and still manages, on his blog, to try to walk a mile in Korean shoes, tries to offer up the benefit of the doubt wherever he can. You can see in his writing that he certainly does have things he likes and dislikes about Korea, but those things do not seem to cause him to lapse into bitterness or unabashed judgementalness. Meanwhile, he has a wry sense of humour that takes a while to spot, but that is consistently refreshing and occasionally hilarious, once you know when he is talking out the side of his mouth. (Writing out the side of his keyboard?)

He is very perceptive, and subtle, and prefers to tell stories (he calls them slices of life) over making proclamations. I think this is a very good approach to living in a different culture. I respect him a lot for it.

Anyway, Joe also has decided that, when he sees Koreans acting like "ugly Koreans" (you know what I mean) rather than confronting and pushing about, he will shame them into remorse for their inexcusable behaviour with his own class and politeness. Taking the high road like this, when one is being constantly watched anyway, the way we paleskin bignoses are, is probably the best way to go anyway. That we could all do the same.

Well, here is an anecdote Joe shared about being a good guy in the face of all the peer pressure to litter and spit in the street, and buddy, I admire the heck out of him for reacting to this situation with so much grace, given that he has probably spotted this exact situation five hundred times. Here. Read his story.

Here's to you, Joe. Well done, sir: I raise my glass to you and your "good foreigner" directive. May we all be as generous and gracious on our bad days as well as our good.

So, Roboseyo, what is a 제사?

Warning to my family: be ready for this one. It's about Mom/Jane.

Soundtrack: Bach, BWV 1068: "Air" 


OK. So here's the thing. Last Monday, September 8th, was the three year anniversary of my mother's death.


All week, I'd been in a bit of a funk; especially this weekend: between eating the heavy, tomatoey, beefy leftovers from the housewarming party (more on that later), sitting around instead of doing stuff for Chusok vacation, and it being the three year anniversary of my mother's passing. . . I felt a bit blue: this was sticking in my brain, and I didn't know what to do about it: we Canucks don't really have a ritual that handles this particular situation, and sorry, dear readers, but a whiny blog post just doesn't do my mom justice.  

Fortunately, I mentioned this to Girlfriendoseyo, and even MORE fortunately, her culture DOES have something precisely for those times when, no matter how long it is past the loss of a loved one, you still CAN do something about it.  It's called Jesa - 제사 and it's basically a tribute to the dead.  (It's not the same one people do for Chusok and New Years, but it's there, in the handbook of Korean rituals and rites for the ancestors.)

Now don't anybody think I've switched out and decided to become an ancestor-worshipper or anything -- I've spent the entire week leading up to Chusok explaining to my students that the Chusok rites for the ancestors aren't really so much worship as paying respect to the dead, and yes, I DO think there's a difference.

Even then, I would argue that this jesa was a different beast again than what Koreans do on the anniversaries of their loved ones, not least because Mom wouldn't feel comfortable with me going the whole nine yards and scouring the city to find her exact favourite foods, the way one ought to for a proper Jesa.  Sorry, but Dutch bakeries are few and far between in Korea, even in Seoul, and I think she'd let that slide; however, I also think that she'd be comfortable with me performing a mini-jesa, for the sake of giving release to these weird pangs that have been bugging me this week.

So no, I'm not repudiating Jesus' blood, or blaspheming Allah, or pissing on the rituals the good Buddha and Confucius have left behind for us,  nor am I declaring loyalty and devotion to Mom, as if she were the one who could speed my way through purgatory and lead me on the path to enlightenment.  It's my mom, a human being, like the others; settle down there.

I'm just finding a way to say goodbye, even though it's long after we westerners (mistakenly) figure that one ought to have moved on, even though some goodbyes never actually end -- 'cause you know, Mom's not gonna be at my wedding, period.  And dammit, I should be allowed to feel bad about that from time to time, and if Korea has a ritual designed specifically for this kind of thing. . . sweetums!

So, I bought a tray and a candle and a bowl -- of the bowls in the shop, I intentionally chose the one Mom would probably have bought (no almond rings. . . but I'll at least do that much).

What I bought:

I boiled up some spaghetti noodles, and put on Bach's "Air on a G-String" -- funny name, but an important meaning in our family.  If you hit play up at the top, you're listening to it now.

I got together a few pictures of Mom that I like, and set up the incense, the candle, and the pictures by the window.  Why the window?  Just seemed like the right place:

If any of you know how a real Jesa goes, and what I did wrong, I'll kindly ask you to stay out of it.  This was something I had to do, and its meaning for me and how I feel about my departed mother has nothing to with whether the tray was oriented in the right compass direction, or whatever else I got wrong.

One thing I know: Koreans stand their chopsticks up in their rice when they honour their ancestors.  It's harder to get a fork and spoon (no knife: see that, dad?) to stand up in a bowl of spaghetti -- but I at least got one picture of it before I set them down.
I lit the candle, set the music on "repeat" and sat.
(camera flash: then I turned off the light)
I sat on the floor and missed my mom for a while, and it was exactly what I needed to do.

I'm not going to go into an extended breakdown of all the wonderful things my mother was (though she was); I also won't go into an extended explanation of the wonderful women who have been good-hearted enough to fill in the vacancy as surrogate-mothers (Raema and Kelly aka Mom Schneider and Mom Finlayson) and step-mother (Mary-Anna), even though they are all wonderful. 

Instead, I'll just leave it at this: I feel better now, and however I go about doing it, Mom deserves to be missed from time to time.  I'm sure she has much better things to do than check whether the spaghetti I set out for her was leftover or fresh -- I mean, if heaven's so boring its inhabitants could be bothered to check how their descendants are honouring them back on earth, why the heck are we being good, trying to get there?  And yeah, I've probably butchered the ritual about as badly as can be, but I don't give a rip, because I feel better now.

Love you Mom.  Hope you're having a great time over heavenwards, but you're still missed here on planet Roboseyo.

(Mom's Eulogy here)

Ten Things To Do

Over at the Seoul Podcast, Zenkimchi, Jennifer, and Stafford gave their "Top Ten Things To See in Korea" and "Top Ten Things To Do In Korea" lists. After ruling out crossover, it came to a list of fifty-seven things.

I thought I'd add a few of my own. They're not all "Must See" items, but they're things that have helped make my time here more enjoyable in one way or another, or some of my favourite memories of being here.


My list is biased toward Seoul, because I've always lived here, and not had my poop together enough to travel the rest of Korea as much as it deserves. . . but here she is, folks.

Roboseyo's ten things to see:
In no particular order:

10. coex at 1am when the late movie gets out and the entire rest of the mall is abandoned. . . but you can wander around wherever you like

9. Pukhakdong, the neighbourhood between inwang mountan and pukak mountain, and the trail up inwang mountain, as accessed through the neighbourhood on the north side of inwang mountain.

8. new year's eve at boshingak

7. lantern festival at Buddha's birthday; especially tapgol park after dark that night.

6. either a pro gamers (online gaming) league competition, or a b-boy competition

5. (for tourists) the seoul city bus tour (for people living here) the performances and demnostration in Namsangol folk village on Chusok, or at least the traditional performance in Jung-dong theater beside Deoksugung.

4. the look on a Korean's face when YOU ask THEM "where are you from?"

3. at least two UNESCO world heritage sites located outside of Seoul

2. the Korean food at a busy restaurant where you are the only person there under 60.

1. Jongmyo Park on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in summer, spring, or fall: go dancing with the old people, and watch them just hanging out.



ten things to do:


10. attend a protest, whether you agree or not (but if you disagree, shut up, and stay away from the anti-american ones, dummy.)

9. Speak gibberish to a person who wants a free English lesson. . . bonus points if you're approached whilst naked, in a sauna.

8. Get a letter to the editor or an op-ed column published in Korea Herald, Korea Times, Joongang Daily (inside the International Herald Tribune), or a magazine.

7. Dance with an ajumma. Dance LIKE an ajumma. Boat tours are somehow the best place to do this.

6. Skinny dip in a pond on a hiking mountain trail, when you're really effing hot.

5. Get away with something because you're not from around here.

4. In fresh snow, slide down the steep hills in Olympic Park's Mongchontosong Fortress on your butt. Be careful about where you do this, because some of the hillsides have jutting branches. Try the ones towards the south side, in the direction away from the Han River.

3. Play in the water fountains, either in City Hall Plaza, or Seoul Forest.

2. play gostop or yutnori with a korean family, and/or learn three Korean drinking games (sam yuk ku is a good start, as is kong kong chil bang!; at least one must involve variations on rock, scissor, paper)

1. learn to read hangul. preferably in your first month.




You can read their entire list, and listen to the podcast here.

Or you can read it here, with all the links that screwed up my post's formatting, and add to it Brian's list of cool stuff to do in Jeollanamdo.


57. Watch someone else eat live octopus

56. Suwon’s Hwaseong Fortress

55. Yongsan Electronics Market

54. Convince an old man to give you a ride on his motorbike

53. Sunday at the Seoul Racecourse Park

52. Watch a pansori

51. Myeong-dong on Christmas Eve

50. Apgujeong’s Rodeo Street

49. Korean booking club

48. Go shopping at Dongdaemun Market

47. Dinosaur footprints in Goseong

46. The Island of Uido

45. Innertube down Cheonggyecheon River

44. Eat all the food samples at the Lotte Department Store in Myeong-dong

43. Get kicked out of Lotte Department Store (for eating all the samples)

42. Taekwondo (www.kukkiwon.or.kr)

41. Crash a wedding at a wedding hall

40. Seoraksan Mountain, especially in autumn

39. Anywhere in Jeollanam-do

38. Seoul from any high place (Namsan Tower, mountain)

37. Ruefully mock a Korean child by refusing to speak in English

36. All-nighter in Hongdae

35. Bulguksa

34. Bomunsa Temple and Seokguram Grottoon Buddha’s Birthday

33. Folk Village in Suji

32. Ride a yellow bus around Namsan Mountain

31. Go on the psycho Chucky doll ride atEverland

30. Temple stay (www.templestaykorea.com)

29. Namsan Mountain in Gyeongju

28. The DMZ

27. Eat a live octopus

26. Changdeokgung Palace

25. Get into a fight with a drunk ajosshi while eating odeng

24. Hike a mountain

23. Byeongsan Seowon Confucian Academy in Andong

22. Seven Luck Casino

21. Get an exfoliating skin scrub at a Jjimjilbang (Sauna)

20. Insa-dong’s hidden alleys

19. Climb over the tanks and planes at theKorean War Museum

18. Noraebang

17. DVD Bang (bring Purell)

16. PC Bang

15. National Museum in Gyeongju

14. Korea National Museum in Seoul

13. Anapji Pond at night

12. Watch a shaman ceremony

11. Submarines at Seoguipo

10. Cheonggyecheon River at night

9. Sleep in a nasty yeogwan

8. Steal a Korean flag from a lamppost onAugust 15th

7. Charcoal Sauna

6. Go fishing at the Cheonggyecheon River

5. Spend the night in a sauna

4. Woljeongsa Temple

3. The city of Gyeongju

2. Go to a country restaurant/see the countryside

1. A Korean (Jennifer said it. Don’t blame the guys.)

So, I'm on the Seoul Podcast

The Seoul Podcast is a podcast about Korea and the interesting/goofy stuff that goes on here, run by Joe McPherson, also known as Zenkimchi. Last week, I was the featured guest on the podcast, and we talked about the complaining expats topic, and went through some recent news items and goofy happenings here in Korea. The first hour especially, where we talk about complaining expats and people leaving nasty comments on webpages, is interesting, I think. However, I'd have to give this podcast a pg-13 rating for some of the joking that goes on -- if you don't like locker room talk, you might want to skip minutes 72 through 80 -- bit of dirty joking in there, prompted by a weird article about bumsecks from some Korean paper or another.

However, you can hear what I think about this and that, and I think the podcast is mostly entertaining: we laughed a lot while recording it. It was cool being on the show, and I met Joe a little while ago; he's a nice guy, so this is all good.

Have a listen if you like, and order one of the Dokdo T-Shirts if you like.

I'm Guessing Like Father Like Son

Dad. It's your birthday today (it's the 12th still back in Canada).

Tons of love.

Somehow, you just know these two are preachers kids too (like me)




P.S.: thanks for this, too:

September 11th, 2001

Was it really seven years ago?

I woke up early that morning, to feed the landlord's horses. I came upstairs to collect the dogfood the landlady set out for me every Tuesday morning, and she had the TV on. I'm pretty sure she was crying.

I listened to the radio most of the morning, and then biked limpidly to my university to be around other people. Most people were in the student lounge, watching the widescreen TV, and I remember being upset that they kept repeating the footage of those damn buildings going down. I was outraged that by the evening of the SAME DAY, I was already getting desensitized to a set of images that should NEVER cease to shock anyone, fucking ever. I watched President Bush's address in the evening, and felt apprehensive when he said he would also consider any country harbouring terrorists as an enemy: I remember saying to somebody that day, "I hope they go after Bin Laden with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer."

By sheer coincidence, the next day the Red Cross had been scheduled to have a blood donation clinic in one of the residence lounges, and students from my school packed the station out all day long: we had to reserve times.

It was a bit later before I saw this: satire website The Onion's greatest moment, their 9/11 issue, which somehow, magically, managed to capture the equal parts fury and fear that everyone felt those first two weeks, while making us laugh all the harder for feeling so sad together.

The 9/11 Onion: the headline at the time was "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" and that pretty much summed up what everybody thought when they found out.

What I Love about Korean Middle-Aged People:

They not only do stuff like this. . .
they put together a temporary stage, and do it in public!
(note especially the old lady haircuts, which are EXACTLY like old lady haircuts in Canada.)


Ajummas play a funny role in Korean society. . . they're a much maligned group known for elbowing people to get empty subway seats and bawling out vendors in harpy voices for refusing to cut another bit off the haggled-price, but then, they can be hilarious and charming sometimes, too.

(Ajumma at her worst:)


(at 2:35 in this video, Halmoni -- the older, meaner version of ajumma, shows up and basically terrorizes everybody for the rest of the song)


However, sometimes Ajumma can just be wonderfully fun. Here's another story about a delightful encounter with the Korean Ajumma.

For you Expats in Korea who like to get worked up about things. . .

Here.  Go have fun with this. The comment board is actually a howl to read (linked from The Marmot Hole's sponsors) -- especially when, uh, Gerry gets involved.

It's like putting two bees in a jar and shaking the jar.

What to do for Chusok?

As we all know, it's either impossible, or hella frustrating to travel during Chusok.

If you're stuck in Seoul, and all your Korean friends are out of town, I feel for ya.

Here is my list of things to do:

Wander around the abandoned (or nearly abandoned) downtown areas. It's absolutely eerie.

Don't go to Lotte World or Everland: families go there, in lieu of leaving town and getting stuck in traffic. You'll never see it so crowded.

photo from here. Yes, I KNOW this one's actually Tokyo, but you get the point about crowding, yah?

Go to the palaces: almost every palace has something going on at Chusok, events, demonstrations, cultural whatchamacallits.
And, Roboseyo Recommends: Namsangol Folk Village, by Chungmuro Station always puts on a show at Chusok, with tons of traditional performances to see on the main stage.
More to do here.
Or, Roboseyo REALLY recommends:
Because everybody's out of town, and it's September, Chusok is the best time to get out and hit the mountains around Seoul. Here are directions to a few (I like Inwang Mountain myself), but personally, I recommend heading to the north end of the light blue subway line, getting out at Sanggye Station, looking around, and heading for high ground. (Bukhansan is popular, too.)More on mountains in Seoul from Galbijim.

and who knows: maybe I'll see you up on the hills.

Yeh.  The mountains.

Move Over, Paul McCartney, there's a new King (Jong-Il) in Town

As you know, back in the '60s, there was a rumor that Paul McCartney had died, and been replaced by a lookalike name William Campbell, who could be distinguished from the original Paul by a scar on his upper lip. The link above catalogues the clues supposedly left in album art and lyrics on the Beatles' albums recorded after that. (The Wikipedia entry.)

Now, a Japanese Professor is claiming that Kim Jong-Il, too, died, way back in 2003, and was replaced by a lookalike. They claim voice and height discrepancies to support the theory. . . hard to confirm when the guy's the most well-protected recluse in the world. More here.

While I'm pretty sure Paul's death was a hoax, it's also pretty likely North Korea would crumble within the week if word leaked that the Dear Leader was actually the Dearly Departed Leader. . . there's also news that old Kimmy collapsed last month, though as always, this kind of stuff is impossible to confirm, when the national North Korean press agency releases announcements that their dear leader completed a round of golf at 38 under par, while wrestling off man-eating tigers, learning Arabic in a week, and impregnating North Korea's fair virgins with his sheer charisma and a special Baby Gaze he perfected during a week of meditation three feet above the peak of Geumgang Mountain.

Still. . . watch carefully, ladies and gentlemen. Things might get really interesting around here.

You don't know these guys, but you know them. R.I.P. Don Lafontaine

R.I.P. Don Lafontaine (the first one)


The man who invented the phrase "In a world. . . " for movie previews.
Don, featured in an insurance ad:

A Demonstration of the Way Navigating the K-Pop Scene Sometimes Feels Like Wading Through a Swamp Of Cute

except instead of algae floating on top of the water, it's English sentence fragments.
Lee Hyun Ji 이현지 is the perpetrator today.

The entire video. . . if you dare. (Pay special attention to the E.T. appearance two-thirds in.)

Roboseyo's First Caption Contest

HT to Korea Beat

funniest caption wins.

The Good News and the Bad News: Seeing Cultural Events in Seoul

The good news: especially with this mayor, Oh Se Hoon, Seoul has been loaded with cultural events and festivalish thingys going on, like, all the time.

This was from Seoul Night Out, a few weekends ago, when they did cultural presentations after dark. . . which is cool to me, because I think cities are all prettier at night.


this performance was gobsmacking amazing. Really, truly fantastic.

The bad news:
As far as I know, there is no single place where one can find English information about all the happenings going on in Seoul. Maybe if you can read Korean, there's lotsa stuff, or if you check the arts page of the Korea Times on the right day (I'm pretty sure it's friday); however, as far as I know, there is no website that gives comprehensive events listings for Seoul in English, that is both navigable, and regularly updated, which means you have to check five or six different places, piecemeal, to find out about concerts, festivals, cultural events, demonstrations (as in pottery, or tea ceremonies, not as in "down with LMB").

Dear Seoul City Hall: Is it that hard to hire a bilingual person to run an up-to-date website, maybe linked to the HiSeoul tourism webpage, that includes ALL cultural events, concerts, performances, demonstrations, and festivals happening in Seoul? Wouldn't that make things easier for tourists than having each different organization's website only advertising the events they sponsor, and having lots of dead links saying things like "Please wait. English version coming soon." or blank pages, or updates from a season ago, and blocked transactions saying "Sorry, Firefox/Linux/Mac-using sucka: you need an ActiveX controller to see this page or navigate this flash-guide, even though huge swaths of the internet hate activex and refuse to use internet explorer" or "We're going to tell you about this festival, and all the films you could see, but you can't order tickets because you don't have a Korean ID number. Mwahahahahaaaa!"



It wouldn't be hard. Heck, pay for my Korean classes so that I can check the listings myself, and I'll do it for you. (If you can lure me away from my current job . . . good luck with that, though.)

My lovely readers: is there a website like this I can bookmark, that I just don't know about yet? If so, please tell me in the comments section, and I'll add it to my sidebar and send you gratuitous thanks.

If not: Hey Korea! You know how you say you want to become more attractive to tourists? Is that true, or is it just lip service? If you mean it, here's a good start! Give us some direction, so that our main "seeing cool shit" strategy isn't just "walk down toward City Hall, follow loud noises, cross your fingers praying its not a protest, and hope something cool happens."

This is what I saw tonight, but I mostly only found out about it by dumb luck.

Ah, Singin' In The Rain. My second favourite musical.

Oh, and by the way. . . Gene Kelly makes it look so effortless, if this doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't know what to say to you,


except that even when Usher, one of the very best dancers in the pop world today, decided to recreate this scene, buddy, you can see how much work he put into it. . . when Gene Kelly does it, it really seems like a fella might do exactly these steps off the top of his head, because he's so happy in love.

To compare: Usher. He does a good job, but it's a bit strained, because Gene Kelly's Just. That. Good.

How the LPGA is like my classroom: No Speaking Korean!

An ESPN columnist writes about the LPGA's recent decision to require all woman golfers to speak servicable English, after discovering that Korean women were suddenly taking over the sport.

Choice quote: "And American college graduates get huge salaries to spend a year in Seoul, teaching the language. "

Why did I spend all this money if I can't park my penis, I mean car, anywhere I want?

The Hyundai Genesis is the new most expensive domestic car/status symbol in Korea, meaning that, short of buying a Mercedes or BMW, effectually saying, "I'm so successful, I don't even CARE that I'm not supporting my country's economy anymore!", the Genesis is the biggest freudian compensation kit status symbol you can drive around Korea.

The sign says, according to Girlfriendoseyo, "Don't park here.  If you park here again, we'll let the air out of your tires." 

Not only is he parking where he shouldn't, but he's done it often enough to be threatened.

I'm told by students who work in the service industry that the most obnoxious customers aren't the really rich, but the upper-middle class people -- the ones who go into debt to buy the mercedes, because their neighbours have one.  The ones knocking on the door, but not quite in the club yet.  There's an old Korean saying that translates, "An empty can makes the most noise," which might apply.

Meh.

Preach it, Kyung-Hee!

HT to Gord Sellar.

in case you haven't already had the conversation about the bad effects cram schools and private institutions have on Korean kids a hundred times, or want to hear about it, or just like reading a succinct summary of a conversation many English teachers in Korea have stretched out over hours on end. . . here.

I talked about this in my "Five Things I'd Change About Korea" post, but Kyung-Hee used fewer words.

P.S.: Camper Van Beethoven is making me very happy these days.

By the Way: A Poem in need of Parsing.

If you're a lover of literature, you might want to check out an accidental poem that blogger Schwim, of Sink of Schwim received from a student. I took a crack at unpacking its vivid imagery and fascinating progression of symbols, and some of you might want to take a shot at it, too. If not, just read that thing: it truly is a work of art.

Science is cool again. Nerds are, too.

In case you were wondering about what Dark Matter is, and what the Large Hadron Collider built under France and Switzerland actually does, but can't read the science-ese in science quarterlies. . .



It's cool to be nerdy again.

Improve Your Life With Roboseyo

Roboseyo's Three Principles For Having A  Disciplined Mind:

1.  Remember that which is important.  Study it if you must.

2.  Forget that which is unimportant.  Take steps to avoid exposure to it if you must.

3.  I forget the third one.  

(p.s.: Bjork)