Snow Last Weekend

Here is a picture of Dongdaemun from Saturday night.

Here is a nice picture of the snow we had on Sunday evening.
The sound of snow hitting the frozen leaves of this tree was nice.

So was the snow, just in general: I've set it to music from the "Winter" section of "Korea: The Musical" (oops: I mean, "Vivaldi's Four Seasons"), in what is the most accurate rendering of falling snow into another medium that I have heard.

Got a nice link here...

The Korean Class 101 is a recent addition to my RSS feed, so imagine my surprise when my own image turned up there!

Because of my picture, It's a pretty good post, giving a brief look at the whole unhappy expat thing I covered in the "Why do Expats Complain" series, and also offering a brief survey of some notable Korea Blogs, which serve as a good starting point for knowing who's who.

Thanks, guys.

Expat Community: Time to Pitch in.

It's time to get up, get out, and help one of our own.

Brian has more details, including HOW you can help, in the case of a South African English teacher who was burned in an apartment fire.

Read here

Read here

Here is instructions on how you can help the family with donations. I think you should. I'm gonna.

Join the Facebook group for updates.

or this one, if you read Afrikaans.

Prop 8: The Musical

When Obama was elected, California also put gay marriage to a referendum, and it was banned by the voters.

In response, musical theater composer Marc Shaiman wrote "Prop 8, the Musical" and got a ridonkulous cast to join him to film it.

Keep your eyes open for a whole swack of famous people, including John C. Reilley, Jack Black, Margaret Cho (there's our Korea connection) and Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris.

Wherever you stand on the Gay marriage issue, it's pretty awesome: go watch it.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Personally, I think the Christian right is in the wrong here: as I wrote in my essay series, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins," part Four, when I was writing a prescription for how organized religion can return to true relevance on the world scene:

9: Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?

Enough pontification for today.

Watch the clip. It's awesome.

Roboseyo's K-Blogs of the Month: November and December

So bein' busy and all, I didn't quite get around to my K-Blogger of the month award for November. My bad.

To make up for it, today I will give you two K-Bloggers worthy of recognition.

The first one is well-known around the K-blogs, but I'd like to take a moment to say something nice about Korea Beat anyway. See, Korea Beat's blog is simple: the layout is simple, the premise is simple, but Korea Beat does something really valuable, by regularly, consistently translating articles from the Korean media into English. Even takes requests.

The article choices range from goofy to noteworthy, celebrity news, stuff relevant to the expat community, examples of horrible journalism, to weird court cases, the occasional (usually bizarre) picture, and serious stuff, and provide a look at Korea, from the horse's mouth. I'm especially fond of the weekly "Most-Read Naver Stories Of The Week" series, where Korea Beat recaps the articles on Naver, Korea's most popular web portal, which received the most hits this week. There isn't a huge amount of pontification (kind of the opposite of mine, where I'm about never current, but always have lots to say about whatever story I'm late to the game on), but I'd have to say Korea Beat is one of the most reliable Korea Blogs out there. Give it a look, if you haven't already.

So, that's November covered.

Next, I'd like to draw your attention to another newcomer.

One nice thing about doing a K-Blogger of the Month series is the same thing that sucks about living as an expat in Korea:

See, there are so many comings and goings that even if you DO know where it's at for a while, people are constantly going home, showing up, losing interest, and such, so that keeping your bearings on where your friends are at here, and staying on top of K-Blogs is a bit like doing a foxtrot on the deck of a sailboat on choppy seas. My second year in Korea was the hardest for this personally, because all my first-year friendships, which I approached the same way I approached friendships back home (on the assumption they'd be around for a while) moved on to wherever else, faded away, lost touch, you know. For building lasting friendships, this sucks. However, for finding new blogs doing interesting stuff that deserve a look, it's great. It's also a bit of hope for bloggers plugging away in obscurity: other than the very few of us who are here for the long haul, eventually, several, many, maybe most of the blogs that currently get more hits than yours, will repatriate or move on, so all you have to so is stick around, keep making worthwhile stuff, and eventually you'll make it on the list. Sure, you're not gonna pass some of the ones who started ages ago, who have been in Korea, and possibly writing about Korea, since the days when people had to know how to write HTML code to have a blog, but other than them, you'll get there.

That said, a blog I like these days is OK Korea. It's a very new blog, only posting since October, with a really nice look and layout. OK Korea posts a lot of photos, and slice of life video clips, with a very "Hey! Look what I saw!" kind of feel. OK Korea isn't (as far as I know) a professional photographer or anything, but does know where to point the camera to get a look at Korea's fun wrinkles and quirks, without feeling the need to add the kind of "Koreans are weird" commentary that some bloggers throw in there whenever they show something different from How Things Are Back Home.  So once again, go give OK Korea a look; won't take you long to read the posts, because they're not text-heavy, so have some fun and add it to your RSS feed.

Now it's late and I'm sleepy.

Have a good one, all.

-rob

By the way: if you want to be a Roboseyo K-Blog of the month, send me an e-mail with your link, and three reasons why I should feature you, in less than a hundred words.  What do you bring to the table?  That failing, I regularly graze at the Korean Blog List and add a few newcomers to my RSS feeds, so get your name on there, and if you catch my eye, you'll be a candidate.  From there: write a good blog.  It's that easy, really.