three posts in one week?! WHAT?!
Wherever there’s a reflective surface you’ll find at least one Korean – a guy or a girl – checking themselves out. It doesn’t matter how many people are around, they’ll all do it at least once. Did I just fail to notice this happening back home? Everyone here (the Koreans, at least) makes sure they look their absolute best. I’ve even seen girls on a full subway take a picture of themselves just to make sure they look okay upon review.
So I’m sure you all know about karaoke. It’s fun, ridiculous and generally all will have a good time. Here, it’s like their bread and butter. Noraebongs (literal translation: music room) are a dime a dozen here, and they really do karaoke right. They add some sort of echo/reverb on the mike so everyone sounds halfway decent, especially me, because I have a voice that’s like a combination between a cat getting raped by a baby. Work dinners are always followed by a trip to a Noraebong, where my bosses and Korean co-workers, who are extremely drunk, are hamming it up like no tomorrow on the mike (usually to Korean pop songs or classics). It’s a site to behold, really.
Did your elementary school ever forbid you to start a sentence with ‘because?’ I remember the teachers telling us (repeatedly) that starting a sentence with that conjunction is, like, the worst thing you could do, and they would always, always circle it with the reddest of red ink if it preceded a sentence. Well, we all know that that’s not necessarily true... BUT I NOW KNOW WHY THE TEACHERS WERE SO ADAMANT ABOUT IT. “Because I am full.” “Because Korea is the best.” “Because it is delicious.” Oh, man, it’s such a pain when correcting their journal entries. I now get so unbelievably frustrated when I see ‘because’ at the beginning of a sentence, and have since banned every single student from starting a sentence with ‘because.’ (As it turns out, the Korean teachers said that that was okay.)
So there are a few – actually, a lot – of foods I miss. One of my favourite snack foods back home were chips. The chips they have here are shit, and I wouldn’t feed them to my dogs. 85% of the chips here have a weird tinge of sweet about them, and the chips that aren’t sweet are bland as fuck. Who started replacing salt with sugar? I don’t understand. When I’m lamenting about my craving for ketchup chips to an American, they’ll stare at me blankly before saying, “…well, they have ketchup here.”
Another food I miss is pizza. It’s not like they don’t have pizza here - in fact, Koreans are bat-shit crazy about their pizza. It’s just that they’ve heavily Korean-ized their pizza. The most Western toppings you can get on your pizza are cheese, pepperoni and…corn. Aside from a really expensive pizza from Domino’s, you cannot get pizza with out corn. I love corn and all, but…I just don’t want it on my pizza. And the pizza chains here, including Pizza Hut, refuse to allow you to customize your pizza. It’s their way, or the going hungry highway. As it turns out, Koreans really have a thing for Koreanizing foreign food (because whatever Korea does is the best, and that’s that). At this sushi place I once ate at, they included kimchi and processed cheese in their maki rolls. WHAT THE FUCK.
The thing with Korean food is they love the red pepper paste, and they use it for just about anything (it’s what’s in kimchi). So after awhile a lot of the food starts tasting the same if you don't know what to order.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
CALLIGRAPHY AND GOING TO HELL
On a whim, Cindy, a few new friends and I went to a temple to learn calligraphy. (There’s this organization that plans culture-rich activities for foreign teachers, and this was one of them.) Most temples have a large sculpture of Buddha somewhere within its walls – but not this one. Instead, it housed the largest painting (ever) of Buddha. There’s a strikingly similar painting in Thailand, apparently, and no one is quite sure how the two paintings that were created so far apart look so similar.
The calligraphy lesson proved to be difficult. I was the sort of child who had a really tough time staying within the lines when colouring anything, and this was painfully obvious when I started the painting. We had a copy of what the painting was supposed to look like, and where the colours were supposed to go. Right from the start I painted an area with the wrong colour. This brought about a few laughs from the teachers and the fellow calligraphy-learners around me. After a few trial and errors, and a few pointers from the professionals, I was able to complete it. (Actually, this was taking longer than the organisers intended it to take, and so when everyone was on the tour of the temple, they secretly helped out and painted a fair chunk of our piece.)
The character that was in the centre of the painting is called “ohm,” which means the universe or cosmos. It’s an Indian word, and a lot of the Buddhist chants start with “ohm,” because they are praying to the universe. “Ohm…something something.”
At this temple I finally learned why Koreans use metal chopsticks (this was a burning question of mine). Back in the day the metal chopsticks acted like a poison warning; they would change colour at the potential adulterant in the King’s or other high ranking official’s food. This is similar to the cheers custom; when one was clinking the glass of a friend, a bit of the liquid was supposed to move from one drink to the next, so if you were poisoning someone, you would get the poison as well. As an aside, metal chopsticks can be annoying to use, because they are more flat then the ones I am used to using.
On the way home from the temple on the subway, these two really cute Koreans sitting across from me started obviously talking about me. The one would take the other’s finger and point it at me while saying something in secret. Eventually one of them mustered up the courage to talk to me, and all he wanted to do is call me handsome. This is a very common occurrence – and not because of my wicked good looks. Koreans view white people as the pinnacle of beauty. Thus a lot of the white men in Korean will be called handsome at the drop of a hat by anyone – old ladies, young guys and girls, etc. Though this takes away a lot of the meaning from being called handsome, it’s still nice, because, hey, it’s better than being called a fag by some random douchebag back home.
I started having impure thoughts about the one cute Korean boy on the subway. He was wearing really tight clothing, and that kind of clothing helps for, y’know, fantasies. He looked a little young, but from my experience here, the boys who look young are usually 23 or so. When I asked him his age, he told me he was 17. Hell’s a fine place – or so I’m told.
Flash forward a month:
I made two Korean friends named Kay and Nicole on the beach. There was a bit of confusion with age, because he told me he was 25 (he looked no more than 20), but he was born in ’84. It turns out that as soon as you’re born in Korea, you’re one year old. So whatever age a Korean tells you, subtract one and you get the actual age. Whenever a Korean asks me how old I am, I usually bump my age up by a year, which kind of sucks because it seems like I got older with out doing anything. After Kay and Nicole explained this Korean age to me, my mind immediately thought of the ‘17’ year old on the bus. He’s actually 16. Oh, my god. I’m definitely going to hell, and those impure thoughts are really damming now.
Kay and Nicole also told me about their versions of anniversaries. Instead of, like, one-month and six-month and one-year and etc anniversaries, they celebrate 100-day and 300-day anniversaries. That must really get annoying, because there’s some calculation that goes into finding that special day. On the 100- and 300-day anniversary, couples usually dress in the same clothes, be it shirts, sweaters, whatever. It seems like this ridiculous tradition is localized in Busan, as the amount of couple outfits are almost zilch in Seoul. The ‘couples’ look is kind of silly, and I really want to meet the guy or girl who came up with this idea. I mean, the couples are wearing the same shirts and same pants. I would die if someone saw me with my significant other in public wearing the exact same clothes. Anyways, it’s become kind of a thing to punch one another if you notice a couple outfit, just like the punch-buggy back home.
On my birthday, Nicole and Kay surprised me with a birthday cake and a present. I was totally taken off guard, because I had just met them maybe a week before my birthday, and wasn’t expecting anything from them. They sang me the Korean version of Happy Birthday, and gave me a book to learn Korean, which is slowly collecting dust. :(
The calligraphy lesson proved to be difficult. I was the sort of child who had a really tough time staying within the lines when colouring anything, and this was painfully obvious when I started the painting. We had a copy of what the painting was supposed to look like, and where the colours were supposed to go. Right from the start I painted an area with the wrong colour. This brought about a few laughs from the teachers and the fellow calligraphy-learners around me. After a few trial and errors, and a few pointers from the professionals, I was able to complete it. (Actually, this was taking longer than the organisers intended it to take, and so when everyone was on the tour of the temple, they secretly helped out and painted a fair chunk of our piece.)
The character that was in the centre of the painting is called “ohm,” which means the universe or cosmos. It’s an Indian word, and a lot of the Buddhist chants start with “ohm,” because they are praying to the universe. “Ohm…something something.”
At this temple I finally learned why Koreans use metal chopsticks (this was a burning question of mine). Back in the day the metal chopsticks acted like a poison warning; they would change colour at the potential adulterant in the King’s or other high ranking official’s food. This is similar to the cheers custom; when one was clinking the glass of a friend, a bit of the liquid was supposed to move from one drink to the next, so if you were poisoning someone, you would get the poison as well. As an aside, metal chopsticks can be annoying to use, because they are more flat then the ones I am used to using.
On the way home from the temple on the subway, these two really cute Koreans sitting across from me started obviously talking about me. The one would take the other’s finger and point it at me while saying something in secret. Eventually one of them mustered up the courage to talk to me, and all he wanted to do is call me handsome. This is a very common occurrence – and not because of my wicked good looks. Koreans view white people as the pinnacle of beauty. Thus a lot of the white men in Korean will be called handsome at the drop of a hat by anyone – old ladies, young guys and girls, etc. Though this takes away a lot of the meaning from being called handsome, it’s still nice, because, hey, it’s better than being called a fag by some random douchebag back home.
I started having impure thoughts about the one cute Korean boy on the subway. He was wearing really tight clothing, and that kind of clothing helps for, y’know, fantasies. He looked a little young, but from my experience here, the boys who look young are usually 23 or so. When I asked him his age, he told me he was 17. Hell’s a fine place – or so I’m told.
Flash forward a month:
I made two Korean friends named Kay and Nicole on the beach. There was a bit of confusion with age, because he told me he was 25 (he looked no more than 20), but he was born in ’84. It turns out that as soon as you’re born in Korea, you’re one year old. So whatever age a Korean tells you, subtract one and you get the actual age. Whenever a Korean asks me how old I am, I usually bump my age up by a year, which kind of sucks because it seems like I got older with out doing anything. After Kay and Nicole explained this Korean age to me, my mind immediately thought of the ‘17’ year old on the bus. He’s actually 16. Oh, my god. I’m definitely going to hell, and those impure thoughts are really damming now.
Kay and Nicole also told me about their versions of anniversaries. Instead of, like, one-month and six-month and one-year and etc anniversaries, they celebrate 100-day and 300-day anniversaries. That must really get annoying, because there’s some calculation that goes into finding that special day. On the 100- and 300-day anniversary, couples usually dress in the same clothes, be it shirts, sweaters, whatever. It seems like this ridiculous tradition is localized in Busan, as the amount of couple outfits are almost zilch in Seoul. The ‘couples’ look is kind of silly, and I really want to meet the guy or girl who came up with this idea. I mean, the couples are wearing the same shirts and same pants. I would die if someone saw me with my significant other in public wearing the exact same clothes. Anyways, it’s become kind of a thing to punch one another if you notice a couple outfit, just like the punch-buggy back home.
On my birthday, Nicole and Kay surprised me with a birthday cake and a present. I was totally taken off guard, because I had just met them maybe a week before my birthday, and wasn’t expecting anything from them. They sang me the Korean version of Happy Birthday, and gave me a book to learn Korean, which is slowly collecting dust. :(
CAVE BAR
I'm so behind in backlogged entries. My FOUR MONTHS LEFT resolution is to actually update this bitch and to get to the half-finished posts that I started like months ago. Here is one about the cave bar:
Back in the day, during the Korean War, there was a giant cave in Busan – Busan being one of the few cities not to be overtaken by North Korea - used to store weapons, ammo, artillery, etc. Where once it stood as war symbol, it now stands as a place to get your drink on. Yes: a bar in a fucking cave. It’s damp, it’s dreary, it’s wet – but man is it awesome. There are low-wattage lights strung along the sides of the narrow cave (which coats the cave in a soft, yellow glow), a couple of wooden statues (one of which is a dragon, who, legend has it, appeared in the current cave owner's dream, telling him to turn the bar into a cave), and a somewhat winding pathway (riddled with puddles) running alongside the tables. If you really wanted to, you could even cross the barrier where the lights stop and the darkness begins to really see how deep this cave goes – but that would be silly, as something like the Descent might happen to you.
Their alcohol of choice in this cave is dongdongju, a sort of rice wine. It comes in a brown ceramic bowl, with ice chips and bark floating on top. This wine was sort of an acquired taste, but when it’s … acquired … it’s really easy to get drunk, because the drunk slowly creeps up on you, and by the time you stand up you’re pretty much done for (many people have blacked out at this bar). The cave bar also has the best kimchi I’ve ever tasted (you can become quite the connoisseur of kimchi when you have it all the friggin’ time).
Dave, Cindy and I visited this bar one Sunday night, after a heavy party weekend. We were all staring into our drinks, lost in our own thoughts, and almost ready to call it a night. Eventually the best game of “would you rather” broke out, and some of the questions would turn into 30-minute discussions, all thanks to several helpings of dongdongju. One of my favourite questions was, ‘would you rather fuck animals and everyone knows, or fuck children and no one knows.’ A close second was, ‘for the rest of your life, every time you take a step you make the noise “wacka-wacka” (the pacman noise), or, for the rest of your life, every five to 10 minutes you fart or burp noticeably, and you’re not sure if it’s going to be one or the other.’ Another gross would you rather: would you rather snort two lines of dick cheese or eat two cups of poo. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
It took Dave, Cindy and me awhile to find this cave bar (it’s pretty hidden in the depths of Busan’s alleys), and the entire time Dave was complaining about his need to take a “major dump.” We got sort of lost, and he started walking in a way where he had his ass clenched for dear life. Once we found the place, Dave runs to the bathroom and Cindy and I order a round of dongdongju. A little while later, Dave comes back with the most disappointed look on his face, crossed with a look of worry…remember how squatters are popular here? That’s what they had at this fine establishment. His bowels must have worked in reverse when he saw the squatter, and that somehow made him able to hold it for a few hours before leaving the bar. I’m sure the dingy-atmosphere of the cave didn’t traverse well into the bathroom.
Back in the day, during the Korean War, there was a giant cave in Busan – Busan being one of the few cities not to be overtaken by North Korea - used to store weapons, ammo, artillery, etc. Where once it stood as war symbol, it now stands as a place to get your drink on. Yes: a bar in a fucking cave. It’s damp, it’s dreary, it’s wet – but man is it awesome. There are low-wattage lights strung along the sides of the narrow cave (which coats the cave in a soft, yellow glow), a couple of wooden statues (one of which is a dragon, who, legend has it, appeared in the current cave owner's dream, telling him to turn the bar into a cave), and a somewhat winding pathway (riddled with puddles) running alongside the tables. If you really wanted to, you could even cross the barrier where the lights stop and the darkness begins to really see how deep this cave goes – but that would be silly, as something like the Descent might happen to you.
Their alcohol of choice in this cave is dongdongju, a sort of rice wine. It comes in a brown ceramic bowl, with ice chips and bark floating on top. This wine was sort of an acquired taste, but when it’s … acquired … it’s really easy to get drunk, because the drunk slowly creeps up on you, and by the time you stand up you’re pretty much done for (many people have blacked out at this bar). The cave bar also has the best kimchi I’ve ever tasted (you can become quite the connoisseur of kimchi when you have it all the friggin’ time).
Dave, Cindy and I visited this bar one Sunday night, after a heavy party weekend. We were all staring into our drinks, lost in our own thoughts, and almost ready to call it a night. Eventually the best game of “would you rather” broke out, and some of the questions would turn into 30-minute discussions, all thanks to several helpings of dongdongju. One of my favourite questions was, ‘would you rather fuck animals and everyone knows, or fuck children and no one knows.’ A close second was, ‘for the rest of your life, every time you take a step you make the noise “wacka-wacka” (the pacman noise), or, for the rest of your life, every five to 10 minutes you fart or burp noticeably, and you’re not sure if it’s going to be one or the other.’ Another gross would you rather: would you rather snort two lines of dick cheese or eat two cups of poo. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
It took Dave, Cindy and me awhile to find this cave bar (it’s pretty hidden in the depths of Busan’s alleys), and the entire time Dave was complaining about his need to take a “major dump.” We got sort of lost, and he started walking in a way where he had his ass clenched for dear life. Once we found the place, Dave runs to the bathroom and Cindy and I order a round of dongdongju. A little while later, Dave comes back with the most disappointed look on his face, crossed with a look of worry…remember how squatters are popular here? That’s what they had at this fine establishment. His bowels must have worked in reverse when he saw the squatter, and that somehow made him able to hold it for a few hours before leaving the bar. I’m sure the dingy-atmosphere of the cave didn’t traverse well into the bathroom.
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