Happy music: Mass Romantic, by The New Pornographers. Glee.
So 2S2 happened again on Saturday. First of all, I'm thrilled to report that Wonju had a 2S2 of their own, over there, and they had an awesome time. You can read about it at the 2S2 Blog, and you can go to my superstar buddy Danielle's blog and tell her how wonderful she is.
This picture is a teaser: for the full write-up of the 2S2 get-together on Saturday, you'll have to go to the 2S2 Community blog.
Tee hee. Snow on trash.
This sweet New Year's ice sculpture was on the way from one place to another.
the good thing about this picture is my nemesis Dan Gray giving me his "seduction" face. Look out, ladies.
The bad thing is I'd urged him to make a more embarrassing pose, and he refused. I'm very disappointed that he's figured out not to do that stuff when my camera's out. For my readers, even more so: we're going to have to find somebody else to tease and/or embarrass with silly pictures.
footprints on one of those bench blocks in Insadong.
#2 bummer of the weekend (#1's personal)
We headed to my favorite spiced wine shop. It was not far from the 2S2 meetup. I led a whole group of about 20 of my good friends and Dan Gray's food fans...
to a missing cafe.
See, one of my favorite things in the world is finding great restaurants and stuff, and then showing my friends where they are, and watching them enjoy the victuals. But because I'm so often bringing friends to a place, when one unexpectedly disappears on me, more often than not, I've got a friend or twelve in tow, to watch my dismay, and to think I'm a doofus for leading them to restaurants that don't exist. I have to say this was the largest group ever to mock my despair, as one of my seriously favorite restaurants had been replaced...
by a freaking handbag shop. A handbag shop. Because Samchungdong REALLY needed another handbag shop. it's the only thing the friggin' place was missing. Spiced wine schmiced schmine. Handbag shops are what really defines a great district.
Oh well. Could have been worse. It could have been replaced by a telephoto lens shop for all the froofy couples.
But bitterness aside: the rest of the day was great, and a very rewarding experience, and I'm super glad it happened, and I'm already excited about the next one.
Special thanks to Dan Gray for doing a double-down 2S2 with the Seoul Eats crew: it was a great shot in the arm, and a really positive experience for everyone... except the girl who left the tea house without paying. She's gonna get it.
It's the Second Saturday of January, so it's time for another 2S2. This month, we're doing a 2S2 special, teaming up with the Seoul Eats Meetup, and here's the score: meet at 12pm, at Anguk Station exit 1, for the Seoul Eats part of the meetup. You'll walk down Insa-dong street, and coming from that direction, just past the Ssamzie Square, you'll see a pharmacy on a corner on the left: turn left down that side-street. You'll walk right past a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Then, once you're past the coffee bean, go left again on the first really small side-street. Look, once again, to your left, and you'll see a dumpling restaurant called "Koong". They have the best large Korean dumplings I've eaten, and I highly recommend the ddeook mandukuk - rice-cake dumpling soup. The broth is simple and tasty, the ddeok is super fresh, and the dumplings are fat, juicy, and flavorful, with all the dumplingy goodness you could hope for.
Now here's the sad part: because of an unexpected twist, I have to do something for my boss that's going to keep me busy from 10-12 this morning, which means the earliest I can arrive at the Seoul Eats meetup is about 12:30. That'll be time enough for me to get a good meal, but I'm a little choked that I can't be there for the beginning of the event I helped plan with Dan.
Next, at 2pm (hence, 2S2) we're going to the Twosome Place, the usual 2S2 meetup. We'll muster there, but not stick around too long: I'd like to get out of there fairly quickly, in order to go to a quieter place. If the group's smaller, it'll be spiced wine (glauwine) at a sweet panini restaurant I know, and if the group's bigger, it'll be tea at one of Insadong's great tea houses.
2. On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Journalists Choi Hui-seon wrote her four part hit-piece on English teachers just as I was leaving for my summer vacation, so instead of reporting with the freshness, this five-part series tried to pull together a few themes going around on discussion boards, while taking a look at the Expat/English teacher community as it stands today, and the gap between what we expect and what we get from Korea, and the gap between what Korea expects and what it gets from us.
3. Tony Hellmann, ATEK forming, and The Wagner Report Blogging The Wagner Report was one of the most time-consuming single-posts of the year for me, but trying to shed some light on the content of Benjamin Wagner's complaint to the NHRCK, and trying to find a middle ground concerning the misunderstandings and bad blood stirred up between E and F series visas was hella stressful, but necessary. The formation of ATEK, and then AFEK, were both positive steps toward a more connected, and truly viable expat community in Korea. Unfortunately, Tony Hellmann - the subject of my first bold statement on the topic - found himself a target of some attacks, but hopefully everyone involved has learned a thing or two about what is and what isn't OK to do when you disagree with someone.
4. Travel Twofer: Morning Calm Garden and Kyoto My two favorite travel destinations this year were Morning Calm Garden and Kyoto... Morning Calm Garden because sweet mercy, that place is beautiful, and the photos practically took themselves, and Kyoto because, though I didn't announce it on blogoseyo, it's where I proposed to Girlfriendoseyo. Plus, she totally said yes! And later that night, we totally French-kissed, too. Sweet! Other trips this year included Andong, Hanoi, Gyeongju, Canada (more Canada) along with day trips to Paju, Yangpyeong, Jaraseom, Yongin,
6. Freedom of Speech and what NOT to Joke about in Korea I fired this post off after a really interesting discussion class. The way Korean freedom of speech laws work is way different than it is in North America. It demonstrates a very different view of public and private discourse: to oversimplify, let's say harmony ranks much higher on the cultural value list here than it does back in Canada, and possibly even higher than truth.
Radiohead: Four Minute Warning
7. Pro-Gamer's Tournament Almost a year after actually taking the photos, I finally ran this write-up about Korea's competitive computer gameing tournament: online gaming is a fascinating cutural phenomenon in Korea, and worth a closer look.
8. The Korea Times Crashes and Burns, and other Media Hijinks (Yonhap, Kang Shin-who, Choi Yong-hee) While Brian in Jeollanamdo and Popular Gusts had the most extensive (PG) and timely (Brian) coverage, Seeing Kang Shin-who cover English teachers was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and watching him run the Korea Times' credibility into the ground as he went was sad for one of Koreas's few English reporting sources. At this point, between the continuous embarrassment of the comment boards, the increasing number of simply asinine articles, refusals to print corrections, retractions or apologies, and expressions of straight defiance and contempt for its critics, rather than an attempt in good faith to improve, has me in a position now where I have to encourage readers to read the Korea Herald instead: at least they're actually trying to give expats a voice, rather than treating us with contempt. If you're going to get a subscription, I highly recommend the IHT/Joongang mashup: International Herald-Tribune (of the New York Times) and the Joongang Daily. Oh, yeah: let's not forget the Alien Graveyard (good lord I wish I'd bought a paper copy of that issue). It's pretty sad when a paper goes from being linked regularly at The Marmot's Hole, to being linked regularly by Dokdo Is Ours and Koreangov, in the space of a single year. (Yonhap News and Chosun Ilbo were other subjects of roboseyo media criticism)
Here's a look back at the year of K-Blogging: (and of course, let's punctuate it with music that made me happy this year)
Band of Horses: The Funeral
Matt at The Korea Herald asked me to do a top ten expat stories of 2009, which you can read here. It got me thinking, first of all because lists are fun, and second of all, because I like to take a look back at things in December, so I'm going to give you 2009 in countdown form. I wrote a personal reflection list that you can read here... though I work hard on these personal reflection posts, they're usually the ones that get the fewest reads. Oh well. If the seven people I love the most are the only seven who read it, that's OK with me, really. All the rest is just icing:
The top ten K-Blog Stories of 2009 - the most significant, or talked-about topics on the 2009 K-blogosphere
1. The Korea Times - beginning with strife, and ending in a train-wreck. We should have seen it coming with Jon Huer's series of off-base, un-founded, or just generally ridiculous series of columns. Few commentators on Korea have stirred up so many forehead-smacks, or baffled, upset, or angry comment threads. Bloggers wondered why this guy, who seemed to be writing about an imaginary Korea, got a regular column, while their letters to the editor were going unprinted. In the late Summer, Huer called off his column series, apparently tired of all the negative feedback. Meanwhile, Kang Shin-who seemed to be trying to redefine journalism as a means to grind one's axes, and cause strive in the communities about which one wrote: his misquotes and distortions, which came so frequently, and reflected the same prejudices so uniformly as to make them seem intentional, rather than simply a case of carelessness, along with as his seeming hair-trigger readiness to give quotes to the webmaster of a hate-site - the Anti-English Spectrum - gave the impression that he had a hate-on for English teachers, and in response, it has become common knowledge among English teacher bloggers and NET blog-readers not to give interviews to a guy named Kang Shin-who, and generally to avoid the Korea Times altogether, as its reporting has mostly demonstrated contempt for the English teachers in its audience, and its only response to the criticism directed at it was not an apology, or a retraction: it has been a resounding, childish, "Are not, either!"
2. ATEK and AFEK For a few months this spring, discussion about ATEK heated up into a total free-for-all, with heated opinions on both sides. While the legitimacy of ATEK as an organization was much-discussed, the personal lives and characters of a few of the key players also got involved, in a way that moved off the comment boards and not only into real life, but into people's employment and legal situations. Update: AFEK, which started out as a snarky repudiation to ATEK, is developing into a community of F-series visa holders to be watched, and which could be capable of great things, and ATEK now has somewhere around one thousand members (as of January 2010.
3. Ben Wagner and Andrea Vandom Ben Wagner has never been a member of ATEK, though one of ATEK's first public moves was putting its support behind Ben Wagner's complaint to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Prof. Wagner's argument that in-country HIV tests violated English teachers' human rights, and actually worked against the proper protection of Korean children, led to Andrea Vandomrefusing to submit her health test results, and a constitutional challenge to the HIV test for English teachers. In June, Ban Ki-moon and other human rights heavyweights called Korea out for its stigma-inducing AIDS testing regulations, and on World Aids Day, 5 other migrant workers' groups also filed complaints to the NHRCK about HIV tests.
4. Benojit Hussain - general wisdom on the K-blogs was to walk away if somebody tried to get into it with you, but Bonojit bucked that advice, and went to the law, leading a Korean judge to award him Korea's first ever civil settlement for a racist attack -- something there isn't even a law for yet. It also caused Korea to take a look in the mirror, as regards racism here, and attracted international media attention, as well as prompting a big discussion on numerous blogs, and a wide variety of opinions on the topic.
6. Jon Huer - some were annoyed at his articles, some were annoyed that The Korea Times would print them, many simply didn't recognize the Korea he described in the regular column Jon Huer wrote for the first half of the year. For whatever reason, and though someone who knew him once assured me he comes across a lot better in person, Jon Huer's articles often just seemed like he was making Korea up as he went along, and rubbed a lot of expats here the wrong way, especially when Mr. Huer applied his "blanket statement" style to expats. His columns ranged from positively ingratiating to harshly critical, even condescending and orientalist, but the one thing most of them shared was a tendency to generalize wildly, often in ways that made his readers wonder what country he was describing, and why he thought it was Korea, and where he got his views, and how long it had been since he'd updated them. (English teachers with backpacks? Seriously? Happy new year: hope you have a good 1995, Mr. Huer.)
7. Swine Flu, Kimchi, and Festival Cancellations - there was the quarantine, there were rumblings of painting swine flu as a foreigners' disease, there were a number of highly entertaining "in Quarantine" blogs, and then, suddenly, finally, there was soap in the dispensers, and people covered their mouths when they coughed and stayed home from work if they felt sick. Well, not that last part, but still: sanitation awareness hit an all-time high this year, and that without a single mention of hazardous materials, downer cows, or spinal fluid. American beef quietly found its way onto Korean market shelves
8. Korean Stars go Global - Boa, Jeon Jihyun, WonderGirls, Rain's abs, and Lee Byung-hyun all tried to make their marks in America, with varying degrees of success. The Wondergirls were the first Korean band to chart on the Billboard top 100, Ninja Assassin got critically panned, but that was because of the Wachowski Brothers' failure to consider story an important part of filmmaking, Blood: The Last Vampire vanished like a dirty secret, without even a courtesy nod from the Kimcheerleaders who rallied behind D-Wars, and not that it's really saying a lot, but Lee Byung Hyun was possibly the best part of the summer craptacle G.I. Joe.. This was fodder for the Kimcheerleaders, of course, and the "Do you know Chee Eye Cho?" questions came fast and furious, while expats weighed the relative merits of the new phase of the "Korean Wave".
9. Rise of the K-Comedy Blogs - This was Dokdo Is Ours' first full year of operation, after starting in the middle of last year, and while comedy blogs (especially ones that frequently update) are hit or miss, some of the high points were memorable. Later in the year, Koreangov hit Twitter in a big way, and finally opened a K-comedy blog of its own, while a few other K-comedy blogs had a few kicks at the can, and faded, and other bloggers managed to crack the K-comedy quicklist simply because the topics were so funny: it may well be that next December, we'll be looking back at 2010 as the year of the rise of the K-boy dating blogs, as a handful of hilarious blogs about hooking up with Korean boys suddenly burst onto the scene this fall. Read more about Korean comedy blogs here.
10. The Marmot Hole Comment Board Implosion - Dongchim once called The Marmot Hole "Dave's For Ajosshis" and as the year wore on, the comment threads there got to be more personal, and less informative. The back-and-forth came to a head in December, when Robert closed comments entirely for a while; we should have seen this coming, with commenters like King Baeksu and Linkd leaving, with the return of Pawikirogi, and, worst of all, with the fact, as the year went on, fewer and fewer fresh voices and new commenters bothered to read, or add, to the comment discussions at what was once far and away the most lively and interesting comment board in the K-blogosphere. Nobody's going to eclipse The Marmot Hole's popularity any time soon, though for relevance, Brian in Jeollanamdo got to most stories sooner than the Marmites did in 2009. Now that moderated commenting is back on at The Marmot's Hole, who knows what the new year holds, but the challenge of maintaining a lively comment forum that doesn't get bogged down in personal attacks or axe grinding remains an elusive happy medium in Kblogland.
Stay tuned for The Top Ten Blogoseyo Moments of 2009... coming soon.
and here's a song called "Dragon's Lair" by Sunset Rubdown, a band starring Spencer Krug, a favorite indie artist of mine, from their album "Dragonslayer" (get it?)
anyway, here's the song. It's long, but I love how it builds.
