But no, I'm not posting a scan of it on my blog. Personal info, you know.
However, if you want to know how easy it is for foreigners to get a Korean Driver's License these days in Korea, you should go check out the step-by-step breakdown I wrote at The Hub Of Sparkle.
one expat's life in Korea
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
This Headline Reminds Me Of A Story
"Man Booked For Trying To Talk To Foreigners"
Funny headline... the story goes a few Scottish fellas were trying to have dinner when a drunk old man came up to learn English from them. He refused to leave them alone, even when the restaurant staff member intervened, and it led to an altercation between the old man and the restaurant worker.
Anyway, I've been approached for free English lessons, too. All of us have. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's wonderful: I don't mind if somebody practices their English with me if they're helping me to get un-lost in a new neighbourhood, for example, and used to tell my students to go down to Insa-dong and help people who looked lost for English practice. I also usually don't mind if the person looking for free lessons is funny, charming, interesting, or cute and female.
But there are also times, after a long day, or for the tenth time that day, when one wants to be left alone... and there are some places one does NOT want to be approached for free English practice.
For me, the worst ever was this:
It was two months after my mother had passed away, and my relationship with exgirlfriendoseyo was starting to come apart at the seams. Saunas were one of the few respites I had in my day, after managing a stressful new supervisor job, and having exgirlfriendoseyo not answer my calls, because she was studying for a test.
I went to a sauna, feeling like crap; frankly, close to tears. I sat in the cold pool, in the nude, of course, on my haunches, so that the water was brushing the bottom of my chin, and let the shocking cold clear my mind, when suddenly...
a very fat, very naked ajosshi (older gentleman) waddled into the pool as well, and stood directly in front of me, so that his big, fat gut, and his man-pieces completely filled my line of vision, put his hands on his hips, and rumbled, "Where are you from?"
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore him.
Not one to take hints, this ajosshi tried again. "Where are you from?"
I shook my head, which must be ajosshi sign language for "try to guess and I'll give you a free English lesson."
"America? Russia?"
I still had my eyes shut (floating man-bits, remember?), and I put my forearms into the "X" formation that Koreans use to gesture, "NO," and kept them like that until he waddled away. He ruined my sauna -- ruined that entire (otherwise perfectly good) sauna for me, forever -- I've never been back there since -- and may have set back my entire grieving process for a half a month.
Later that evening, I asked a Korean friend to teach me how to say "I want to be alone" -- a phrase that has come in handy from time to time.
To any Koreans reading this: do NOT approach foreigners for English practice in...
1. a sauna, or any other place where the foreigner you want to approach is partly or mostly naked, or partly or mostly sweaty
2. if you have seen the person be approached once or twice already, at the coffee shop, gym, or restaurant where you see them
3. if they have an unhappy look on their face, or if they're reading, or doing anything else where they appear focused on their task -- if their face is up, looking around, interacting with the world, go ahead. If their nose is buried in a book, back off.
4. in a sex-toy shop. It's never happened to me, but I can just imagine...
5. on a Saturday morning, if they have bags under their eyes (hangover = bad conversation)
6. if the foreigner is the opposite sex, close to your age, and he/she is with someone who might be their significant other
7. if the foreigner has his/her eyes closed (in the sauna, on the subway), or headphones on (in the gym)
On the other hand, it IS OK, and cool, to approach foreigners who...
1. are standing in front of a neighbourhood map, or looking at a map, and appear to be lost
2. are looking around the room, making eye contact with the people around them, and appear to be in a good mood
3. look bored, or lonely
4. are smiling, and climbing a mountain
and it is always OK to invite a foreigner to sit with your group, if you buy them drinks, and if you leave them alone after asking twice.
In general: don't invite a foreigner to chat, sit, or walk with you more than twice. Foreigners will be much more open to chatting with you if you give them things: food and drinks are especially effective. Laughter will do, if you're funny.
Foreigners aren't stupid, and we can tell which people approaching us just want free lessons, and which people approaching us are really, generally friendly, outgoing people who like meeting new people. If you're interested in me as a person, and not just as a walking dictionary, I'll chat with you. I have a pretty good nose for smelling ulterior motives by now. So take a real interest in us, and be fun company, or you won't get far.
We can also tell which kids are coming up to us because they're outgoing, and want to meet us, and which kids are approaching us because their parents told them to. Don't send your kid over to talk to the foreigner if he/she doesn't want to.
Just so's ya know.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
China Triposeyo: Dali
Before we get into Dali, two random things.
1. Jay-Z plus Radiohead, remixed, makes Jaydiohead. These are some really, really cool mash-ups. (Mash-ups are songs which take the music of one song and the vocal tracks of another, and edit them together. Like this: Nirvana vs. Beach Boys: Smells Like Sloop John B. or this one, which has bad words and stuff in it, but which is also an incredibly inventive and catchy mash: Beatles vs. Nine Inch Nails: Come "Closer" Together [warning: "Closer" was probably Nine Inch Nails' most controversial song])
So here is Jaydiohead. It's awesome.
2. This was a song I first found on Amanda Takes Off, a repatriated Korea blogger.
The Elephant Song by Eric Herman
Too cute.
And now, China Triposeyo, part Four: Dali
Dali was the prettiest, and most relaxing part of the trip. We started off with a pretty massive move, starting at noon one day, and finally finishing our journey in the early evening the day after. We had intended to go to Kunming and stay there for a few days, but after a very unfavorable first impression of the city, involving hawkers, hawkers, toats, more hawkers, and more toats, we decided to turn right around and head back to the bus station, which was next to the train station where we'd arrived. We had to choose between Lijiang and Dali for our destination, and chose Dali on blind chance, because it was closer, so we would arrive there at a more reasonable time to find a guest house.
Dali was a pretty town.
Things like this ran right through the middle of town.
And even along the sides of the streets, there were channels with water flowing through them.
It gave the city a really peaceful, clean atmosphere, having water running through it at every turn.
(here's the bad part, so we can get back to the great stuff:)
The one drawback of Dali was that none of the buildings were heated, and the weather was. . . April at best. Plus, because of the sides of the building where the sun shone, my guest house room was, I swear, the coldest place in the entire darn town, and there was nothing I could do about it. Dressing in the morning, and leaving the guest house, was the worst part of the day, and I kept overdressing for the cold, on the logic of, "If it's THIS cold in here, it'll be even colder outside" (the way things work in Canada or Korea) only to step outside and be WARMER in the great outdoors than I was in my flipping guest house room.
Good thing I shelled out for a top-notch sleeping bag, or I'd've gotten sick or something.
Gripe two: a few really gross bathrooms. This one took the cake, probably for the whole trip, which was saying something. I was saying, "I'm glad I'm a guy, and I don't have to touch anything."
And a pissing trough.
Other than those two gripes, Dali was amazing.
Dali was the capital of an ancient kingdom, the last kingdom to join the Chinese empire, and as such, it maintains more of its unique character than some of the provinces that have been part of China for, you know, three thousand years. Yunnan province in China is both the most biodiverse, and the most ethnically diverse province in China, and honestly, that was one of the things that blew my mind about this trip: see, from the outside, the way China presents itself to the world, and especially the way The World Outside China presents China to The World Outside China is way different than China looks from the inside. Saying "China is . . . " or "Chinese are . . . " is just as ignorant as saying "Westerners are . . . " or "The West is. . . " -- I mean, Danes are different from French are different from Californians are different from Saskatonians are different from Greeks, so to say "The west is . . ." or "Westerners never. . . " is dangerously ignorant. It's the same for China: the difference between China's leadership and PR/Propaganda department, and the average men and women on the street is huge, and China just kept amazing me with all the diversity in that one (granted, huge) country.
Here are some Bai people (the main ethnic group in the town of Dali), dressed in their traditional garb.
These ones were in town, dressed that way to try and get me to come in their shop and buy stuff...but an hour's walk outside town, we saw people wearing their traditional tribal clothing while working in the fields. Not to separate tourists from their money, but because that's what we wear in these parts, silly!
I didn't take pictures of them without asking. I felt like it would have been disrespectful. These folks didn't mind, though.
One way Dali's changed since tourist dollars started rolling in... the layout of the shop was the same as the farmer's produce shops and such, but the product on the shelves. . .
Dali is a walled city, with beautiful gates at the north, south, east, and west, and pagodas and old-style gates here and there throughout the old city.
The town is sandwiched between a mountain and a lake (an embarrassment of beauty, really). I walked to the lake with Matt and Heyjin and took this panorama, including ladies washing vegetables in the lake.
It's also a very photogenic town, countryside, and wall. One morning, I woke up extra early, just to take pictures.
It was one of the best ideas I had all trip.
In this clip, you can hear kids doing some kind of drill -- I'm pretty sure it was a schoolbuilding -- and you can also see the way the Bai people all decorated all their buildings, with paintings, white walls, and grey roofs and trim.
I saw this old guy doing Tai-chi by the wall in the cool morning.
And these people doing sword, and then fan dance/exercises not far away.
That same day, I rented a bike and biked down to Erhai Lake, and met God. We talked for a while, in way that was more sincere and real than I can remember. I can't explain how or why, but in dreams, in moments of heightened awareness or awestruck beauty, I can tell you without a doubt that God, and my late mother were accompanying me on this trip. One night I even had a dream where I was showing mom the trip photo album, and explaining it all to her. Out by the lake in Dali, once things finally got quiet enough, I was startled to discover God sitting down beside me, going, "Look at those birds over the lake. Beautiful, ain't they? What? You didn't notice I was here until just now? Then pay more attention, silly."
Pay more attention.
I took these pictures and video panoramas, and I biked around with my hands off the handlebars, spread out as wide as I could, as if I could give the whole beautiful world a hug. I also biked a ton and wiped myself out...only to meet an awesome Chinese university graduate who was out with his friends; we had a really neat conversation about travel, about China, about life plans, and life in general.
And I met a Belgian lady who told me about living in China as a French teacher: she related an unfortunate experience that some teachers in small-town Korea might be able to understand, when she joined a fitness club, and gave out her phone number to the club, only to have every member of the club phone her and ask if they could meet her to practice their English, over the next week.
I was thinking about several uncomfortable conversations I've had in Korea, where some of my Korean friends bring up the hot topic of the day, not because they really want to hear a foreigner's view on an issue like Dokdo, but because they want to hear the Korean position coming out of a foreigner's mouth, as if that validates it. I said something like, "And your Chinese friends probably all want you to trash CNN or BBC, don't they?"
She answered, "No. Actually not. In my experience, Chinese almost never talk politics with foreigners. It's considered rude and inappropriate."
And for a few seconds, I was ready to walk away from my job in Korea, and try to convince Girlfriendoseyo to move with me to China.
(also because of pictures like this)
Anyway, we met an awesome guy named Lee, with the most comfortable bar/lounge/hangout I've seen in ages. He was an awesome, cool, hippy-ish guy with a pony tail, a really easy voice, and a manner that took you straight on, exactly as you were, and found something to like about it. He and his place were great, and we ended up there just about every evening of our time in Dali.
At night, and all day long, in some places around the town, were projectors playing movies for anybody to sit down and watch.
One outdoor theater was at the side of this gate, in a little culture pavillion.
Sunsets were nice, too.
We took a little horseback trek up the side of one of the mountains, and looked around there for a while.
The Bai food was also delicious, and in town there was a German bakery where the heavy cakes tasted like Christmas at home (good gracious I needed that).
We ate breakfast every day at a place called "Kaiyi's Kitchen" which I highly recommend if you go there,
and the Korean restaurant was pretty good, too, but the best food I had there (and it was a tough call) is between the Bai Feast I had on Sunday night at Marley's Cafe, where they offer the Bai feast only once a week, on Sunday nights, and stuff you silly with light, tasty, perfectly prepared dishes full of fresh vegetables and gentle flavours, well-balanced between spice, sauce, and main ingredients, or the pizza at a place called "Stella's Pizzeria" which you MUST find, if you go there. Because of my milk allergy, they just prepared the pizza with no cheese, and dear readers, any time you walk into a restaurant and you see one of these:
skip what you'd planned to order before you entered the restaurant, and get a pizza. Period.
Le box.
Le pizza.
And dear readers, I can't even tell you how great this pizza was. The crust was crisp and hot but not too crisp, and not too chewy, the toppings were perfectly balanced between the tart olives, the deep oregano in the sauce, the sharp onions, just enough hot pepper kick, and the substantial, but not overpowering crust laying a deep grounding for all the other colours.
Go to Dali. Eat a Stella's pizza. I had it on my last morning, and skipped out on breakfast with Matt and Heyjin just so I could try it, and it was another brilliant decision.
We'd planned to move from Dali on to Lijiang during that week, but we dropped Lijiang from the itinerary, because we just loved Dali so darn much. Great decision. Really great. It was the relaxation I needed.
Yay Dali.
More Dali pictures by OTHER people here. You can see the rich blues of the traditional clothes in these pictures.
Whew! Next stop: Beijing, and then, we'll finish off Triposeyo 2008-09 with Hanoi. We're more than halfway there now, folks.
1. Jay-Z plus Radiohead, remixed, makes Jaydiohead. These are some really, really cool mash-ups. (Mash-ups are songs which take the music of one song and the vocal tracks of another, and edit them together. Like this: Nirvana vs. Beach Boys: Smells Like Sloop John B. or this one, which has bad words and stuff in it, but which is also an incredibly inventive and catchy mash: Beatles vs. Nine Inch Nails: Come "Closer" Together [warning: "Closer" was probably Nine Inch Nails' most controversial song])
So here is Jaydiohead. It's awesome.
2. This was a song I first found on Amanda Takes Off, a repatriated Korea blogger.
The Elephant Song by Eric Herman
Too cute.
And now, China Triposeyo, part Four: Dali
Dali was the prettiest, and most relaxing part of the trip. We started off with a pretty massive move, starting at noon one day, and finally finishing our journey in the early evening the day after. We had intended to go to Kunming and stay there for a few days, but after a very unfavorable first impression of the city, involving hawkers, hawkers, toats, more hawkers, and more toats, we decided to turn right around and head back to the bus station, which was next to the train station where we'd arrived. We had to choose between Lijiang and Dali for our destination, and chose Dali on blind chance, because it was closer, so we would arrive there at a more reasonable time to find a guest house.
Dali was a pretty town.
Things like this ran right through the middle of town.
And even along the sides of the streets, there were channels with water flowing through them.
It gave the city a really peaceful, clean atmosphere, having water running through it at every turn.(here's the bad part, so we can get back to the great stuff:)
The one drawback of Dali was that none of the buildings were heated, and the weather was. . . April at best. Plus, because of the sides of the building where the sun shone, my guest house room was, I swear, the coldest place in the entire darn town, and there was nothing I could do about it. Dressing in the morning, and leaving the guest house, was the worst part of the day, and I kept overdressing for the cold, on the logic of, "If it's THIS cold in here, it'll be even colder outside" (the way things work in Canada or Korea) only to step outside and be WARMER in the great outdoors than I was in my flipping guest house room.
Good thing I shelled out for a top-notch sleeping bag, or I'd've gotten sick or something.
Gripe two: a few really gross bathrooms. This one took the cake, probably for the whole trip, which was saying something. I was saying, "I'm glad I'm a guy, and I don't have to touch anything."
And a pissing trough.
Other than those two gripes, Dali was amazing.
Dali was the capital of an ancient kingdom, the last kingdom to join the Chinese empire, and as such, it maintains more of its unique character than some of the provinces that have been part of China for, you know, three thousand years. Yunnan province in China is both the most biodiverse, and the most ethnically diverse province in China, and honestly, that was one of the things that blew my mind about this trip: see, from the outside, the way China presents itself to the world, and especially the way The World Outside China presents China to The World Outside China is way different than China looks from the inside. Saying "China is . . . " or "Chinese are . . . " is just as ignorant as saying "Westerners are . . . " or "The West is. . . " -- I mean, Danes are different from French are different from Californians are different from Saskatonians are different from Greeks, so to say "The west is . . ." or "Westerners never. . . " is dangerously ignorant. It's the same for China: the difference between China's leadership and PR/Propaganda department, and the average men and women on the street is huge, and China just kept amazing me with all the diversity in that one (granted, huge) country.
Here are some Bai people (the main ethnic group in the town of Dali), dressed in their traditional garb.
These ones were in town, dressed that way to try and get me to come in their shop and buy stuff...but an hour's walk outside town, we saw people wearing their traditional tribal clothing while working in the fields. Not to separate tourists from their money, but because that's what we wear in these parts, silly!I didn't take pictures of them without asking. I felt like it would have been disrespectful. These folks didn't mind, though.
One way Dali's changed since tourist dollars started rolling in... the layout of the shop was the same as the farmer's produce shops and such, but the product on the shelves. . .
Dali is a walled city, with beautiful gates at the north, south, east, and west, and pagodas and old-style gates here and there throughout the old city.
The town is sandwiched between a mountain and a lake (an embarrassment of beauty, really). I walked to the lake with Matt and Heyjin and took this panorama, including ladies washing vegetables in the lake.
It's also a very photogenic town, countryside, and wall. One morning, I woke up extra early, just to take pictures.
It was one of the best ideas I had all trip.
In this clip, you can hear kids doing some kind of drill -- I'm pretty sure it was a schoolbuilding -- and you can also see the way the Bai people all decorated all their buildings, with paintings, white walls, and grey roofs and trim.
I saw this old guy doing Tai-chi by the wall in the cool morning.
And these people doing sword, and then fan dance/exercises not far away.
That same day, I rented a bike and biked down to Erhai Lake, and met God. We talked for a while, in way that was more sincere and real than I can remember. I can't explain how or why, but in dreams, in moments of heightened awareness or awestruck beauty, I can tell you without a doubt that God, and my late mother were accompanying me on this trip. One night I even had a dream where I was showing mom the trip photo album, and explaining it all to her. Out by the lake in Dali, once things finally got quiet enough, I was startled to discover God sitting down beside me, going, "Look at those birds over the lake. Beautiful, ain't they? What? You didn't notice I was here until just now? Then pay more attention, silly."
Pay more attention.
I took these pictures and video panoramas, and I biked around with my hands off the handlebars, spread out as wide as I could, as if I could give the whole beautiful world a hug. I also biked a ton and wiped myself out...only to meet an awesome Chinese university graduate who was out with his friends; we had a really neat conversation about travel, about China, about life plans, and life in general.
And I met a Belgian lady who told me about living in China as a French teacher: she related an unfortunate experience that some teachers in small-town Korea might be able to understand, when she joined a fitness club, and gave out her phone number to the club, only to have every member of the club phone her and ask if they could meet her to practice their English, over the next week.
I was thinking about several uncomfortable conversations I've had in Korea, where some of my Korean friends bring up the hot topic of the day, not because they really want to hear a foreigner's view on an issue like Dokdo, but because they want to hear the Korean position coming out of a foreigner's mouth, as if that validates it. I said something like, "And your Chinese friends probably all want you to trash CNN or BBC, don't they?"
She answered, "No. Actually not. In my experience, Chinese almost never talk politics with foreigners. It's considered rude and inappropriate."
And for a few seconds, I was ready to walk away from my job in Korea, and try to convince Girlfriendoseyo to move with me to China.
(also because of pictures like this)
Anyway, we met an awesome guy named Lee, with the most comfortable bar/lounge/hangout I've seen in ages. He was an awesome, cool, hippy-ish guy with a pony tail, a really easy voice, and a manner that took you straight on, exactly as you were, and found something to like about it. He and his place were great, and we ended up there just about every evening of our time in Dali.
At night, and all day long, in some places around the town, were projectors playing movies for anybody to sit down and watch.
One outdoor theater was at the side of this gate, in a little culture pavillion.
Sunsets were nice, too.
We took a little horseback trek up the side of one of the mountains, and looked around there for a while.
The Bai food was also delicious, and in town there was a German bakery where the heavy cakes tasted like Christmas at home (good gracious I needed that).We ate breakfast every day at a place called "Kaiyi's Kitchen" which I highly recommend if you go there,
and the Korean restaurant was pretty good, too, but the best food I had there (and it was a tough call) is between the Bai Feast I had on Sunday night at Marley's Cafe, where they offer the Bai feast only once a week, on Sunday nights, and stuff you silly with light, tasty, perfectly prepared dishes full of fresh vegetables and gentle flavours, well-balanced between spice, sauce, and main ingredients, or the pizza at a place called "Stella's Pizzeria" which you MUST find, if you go there. Because of my milk allergy, they just prepared the pizza with no cheese, and dear readers, any time you walk into a restaurant and you see one of these:
skip what you'd planned to order before you entered the restaurant, and get a pizza. Period.Le box.
Le pizza.
And dear readers, I can't even tell you how great this pizza was. The crust was crisp and hot but not too crisp, and not too chewy, the toppings were perfectly balanced between the tart olives, the deep oregano in the sauce, the sharp onions, just enough hot pepper kick, and the substantial, but not overpowering crust laying a deep grounding for all the other colours.Go to Dali. Eat a Stella's pizza. I had it on my last morning, and skipped out on breakfast with Matt and Heyjin just so I could try it, and it was another brilliant decision.
We'd planned to move from Dali on to Lijiang during that week, but we dropped Lijiang from the itinerary, because we just loved Dali so darn much. Great decision. Really great. It was the relaxation I needed.
Yay Dali.More Dali pictures by OTHER people here. You can see the rich blues of the traditional clothes in these pictures.
Whew! Next stop: Beijing, and then, we'll finish off Triposeyo 2008-09 with Hanoi. We're more than halfway there now, folks.
Kim Yu-na, Yu-na Kim: Plato's Perfect Skate: 김연아 Rocks!
Proud uncle side-note: my sister-in-law caught my nephew's first steps on video. Yeh.
Now in other "Videos of awesome things" news: Kim Yu-na.
As you know, somewhere in every philosopher's mind is a little cave carved out by a cat named Plato, where the most perfect, flawless form of everything in the universe exists in its unsullied state.
Somewhere in there, there's a little, perfect TV playing this Figure Skating women's short program:
Watch it once: just watch it. Even the TV announcers realize they're watching something flippin' awesome, and shut up, about halfway through the program.
Kim Yu-na (the Korean way, with the family name first) or Yu-na Kim (the western way, with the family name last), is a teen-aged figure skating phenomenon out of Seoul. She's only eighteen years old now, and she's been kicking the crap out of the ladies' singles category for a few years already. She's telegenic and cute: she appears in TV commercials here in Korea and sells, better than most of Korea's other "Best in the world/Korea at X" stars, for example Park Ji-sung (family name Park), the Soccer (that's Football to the rest of the world) star who is holding his own impressively on Manchester United, but who's so ugly, and un-charismatic in front of the camera, that they can only make commercials like this: keep the camera at a distance, and show him kicking stuff, because that's the only time he looks impressive. (Notice at the end of the ad, when the close-up is as short as they can make it and still have him be recongnizable, as if the camera's afraid to get close to his face)
(Mind you, as a soccer player who DOESN'T have a face for advertising, he's certainly not alone.)
But Yu-na Kim is cute, holds the camera, and is carrying herself quite well for a young star under the microscope that is Korean celebrity-worship. She even sings pretty well.
Drink your milk.
For Nike Women
However, the thing she does best is skate. She traveled to Toronto a few years ago, and she and her mother camped out on Brian Orser's front door until he agreed to train her, they got themselves a really good choreographer, and little Yu-na's natural athleticism blossomed. The other best skater in the world is a Japanese lady named Mao Asada, who is the same age as Yu-na, and they've been vying with each other for world number one ranking, and despite the bitter, WWE-type rivalry some nationalist Korean netizens would probably love them to have, all reports say they're friends.
Yu-na Kim has won other world championships and major international competitions before - read more on her wikipedia page; I'm too lazy to copy it out here -- and this is a short program she's used before in competition, but this time, she comes in at full health, in Canada (she really likes Canada, girlfriendoseyo told me), in Vancouver -- on the rink where the Olympic skates will be next winter == and her first triple is absolutely perfect; from there, she gets more confidence, and lands her other two jumps perfectly as well, and ultimately sets a world record for the highest score ever in a women's short program (72.24). Her technical score is off the charts, because she got bonus points for each perfect jump, Girlfriendoseyo explained to me. Watch the video again, and let that sink in, and pay special attention to the look on her face at 3.29 in the video, just as she completes her skate: it's the pure bliss of someone who knows she just did something really, really special.
There it is.
And in a nice change, even the Korean announcers' heads do not explode when her world record is announced (unlike certain races during last year's Summer games, when you might have thought the Korean announcers were on speed. Follow this link, skip to 5.00 in, and watch the excitement build until the end of the race, or skip to 7.00 to just hear the announcers orgasm over their guy winning... yah At least some people realize it sounds a bit silly).
Way to go, Yuna! I haven't watched figure skating regularly since my sisters used to make me sit through it when I was a kid, back in the days when Elvis Stojko was turning the men's skating world on its ear by doing routines with songs that had beats, instead of all snoozers and string quartets, but even a rube like myself knows when something amazing just happened. The other reason I'm happy about Yuna's success is because she's an awesome role-model for all the young Korean girls who don't want to be popstars.
(Speaking of popstars, listen for the WonderGirls' "Nobody" playing in the background as the arena waits for her scores.)
Congrats, lady.
Now in other "Videos of awesome things" news: Kim Yu-na.
As you know, somewhere in every philosopher's mind is a little cave carved out by a cat named Plato, where the most perfect, flawless form of everything in the universe exists in its unsullied state.
Somewhere in there, there's a little, perfect TV playing this Figure Skating women's short program:
Watch it once: just watch it. Even the TV announcers realize they're watching something flippin' awesome, and shut up, about halfway through the program.
Kim Yu-na (the Korean way, with the family name first) or Yu-na Kim (the western way, with the family name last), is a teen-aged figure skating phenomenon out of Seoul. She's only eighteen years old now, and she's been kicking the crap out of the ladies' singles category for a few years already. She's telegenic and cute: she appears in TV commercials here in Korea and sells, better than most of Korea's other "Best in the world/Korea at X" stars, for example Park Ji-sung (family name Park), the Soccer (that's Football to the rest of the world) star who is holding his own impressively on Manchester United, but who's so ugly, and un-charismatic in front of the camera, that they can only make commercials like this: keep the camera at a distance, and show him kicking stuff, because that's the only time he looks impressive. (Notice at the end of the ad, when the close-up is as short as they can make it and still have him be recongnizable, as if the camera's afraid to get close to his face)
(Mind you, as a soccer player who DOESN'T have a face for advertising, he's certainly not alone.)
But Yu-na Kim is cute, holds the camera, and is carrying herself quite well for a young star under the microscope that is Korean celebrity-worship. She even sings pretty well.
Drink your milk.
For Nike Women
However, the thing she does best is skate. She traveled to Toronto a few years ago, and she and her mother camped out on Brian Orser's front door until he agreed to train her, they got themselves a really good choreographer, and little Yu-na's natural athleticism blossomed. The other best skater in the world is a Japanese lady named Mao Asada, who is the same age as Yu-na, and they've been vying with each other for world number one ranking, and despite the bitter, WWE-type rivalry some nationalist Korean netizens would probably love them to have, all reports say they're friends.
Yu-na Kim has won other world championships and major international competitions before - read more on her wikipedia page; I'm too lazy to copy it out here -- and this is a short program she's used before in competition, but this time, she comes in at full health, in Canada (she really likes Canada, girlfriendoseyo told me), in Vancouver -- on the rink where the Olympic skates will be next winter == and her first triple is absolutely perfect; from there, she gets more confidence, and lands her other two jumps perfectly as well, and ultimately sets a world record for the highest score ever in a women's short program (72.24). Her technical score is off the charts, because she got bonus points for each perfect jump, Girlfriendoseyo explained to me. Watch the video again, and let that sink in, and pay special attention to the look on her face at 3.29 in the video, just as she completes her skate: it's the pure bliss of someone who knows she just did something really, really special.
There it is.And in a nice change, even the Korean announcers' heads do not explode when her world record is announced (unlike certain races during last year's Summer games, when you might have thought the Korean announcers were on speed. Follow this link, skip to 5.00 in, and watch the excitement build until the end of the race, or skip to 7.00 to just hear the announcers orgasm over their guy winning... yah At least some people realize it sounds a bit silly).
Way to go, Yuna! I haven't watched figure skating regularly since my sisters used to make me sit through it when I was a kid, back in the days when Elvis Stojko was turning the men's skating world on its ear by doing routines with songs that had beats, instead of all snoozers and string quartets, but even a rube like myself knows when something amazing just happened. The other reason I'm happy about Yuna's success is because she's an awesome role-model for all the young Korean girls who don't want to be popstars.
(Speaking of popstars, listen for the WonderGirls' "Nobody" playing in the background as the arena waits for her scores.)
Congrats, lady.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Quick Shots: Andong and a funny text message
The Dali Post is in the works, but it's gonna be long and full of photos.
If you'd like to hang out with me and some blog pals, I'm planning a trip to Andong to eat the best food in Korea: Andong JjimDalk. See here for more gushing about Andong jjimdalk's perfect-ness.
Get in touch with me if you'd like to come; if you live in Seoul, and are willing to meet me on Saturday morning, I'll even reserve train tickets for you (you'll be paying me back though. Got it?).
If enough people want to come, we'll see what we can do about lodging, too.
Next:
I was feeling down a few days ago: end-of-vacation blues, plus grey skies, plus not accomplishing much this week, plus cracking my coffee pot, rendering my coffee-maker with its specially fitted and difficult to replace pot useless, does that for a fella.
So I sent a text message to a few pals, saying, "Hey. I feel blue. Tell me something to cheer me up." I got a pretty good response, but the best one was from my pal Evan, who is proving himself over and over again:
"An anagram for your name is Nude Hobo War."
And he's right. How he thought running my name through an anagram generator would cheer me up, I don't know, but that mental picture still makes me laugh.
So here: now you can find anagrams for your name, too. I don't know if they have a "sort results from funniest to least funny" option, but you can give it a shot.
Hope you get a few as funny as mine.
(ps: the only anagram that came up for Roboseyo was "Rosy oboe," but "Doucheburns" turned up "Crude hub, son" and "Sun bred. Ouch.")
If you'd like to hang out with me and some blog pals, I'm planning a trip to Andong to eat the best food in Korea: Andong JjimDalk. See here for more gushing about Andong jjimdalk's perfect-ness.
Get in touch with me if you'd like to come; if you live in Seoul, and are willing to meet me on Saturday morning, I'll even reserve train tickets for you (you'll be paying me back though. Got it?).
If enough people want to come, we'll see what we can do about lodging, too.
Next:
I was feeling down a few days ago: end-of-vacation blues, plus grey skies, plus not accomplishing much this week, plus cracking my coffee pot, rendering my coffee-maker with its specially fitted and difficult to replace pot useless, does that for a fella.
So I sent a text message to a few pals, saying, "Hey. I feel blue. Tell me something to cheer me up." I got a pretty good response, but the best one was from my pal Evan, who is proving himself over and over again:
"An anagram for your name is Nude Hobo War."
And he's right. How he thought running my name through an anagram generator would cheer me up, I don't know, but that mental picture still makes me laugh.
So here: now you can find anagrams for your name, too. I don't know if they have a "sort results from funniest to least funny" option, but you can give it a shot.
Hope you get a few as funny as mine.
(ps: the only anagram that came up for Roboseyo was "Rosy oboe," but "Doucheburns" turned up "Crude hub, son" and "Sun bred. Ouch.")
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)