I tell you, Christian looks like a white boy in comparison!
korea
Archived Posts from this Category
July 27, 2009
July 17, 2008
Today the woman I met through Freecycle and I carpooled to a market she knew about in Irvine: a KOREAN MARKET!
And although I was tired and grumpy (I woke up last night at 2am to discover that Bella and her three friends were MIA – after much stressing and pacing, they showed up at 3 am – in bikinis and towels; they had taken upon themselves to go swimming in the middle of the night. Needless to say there is much house cleaning and sobbing about how unfair life is going on around here…and will be too, for the next week or so.)
Zion Market is not only a Korean market (versus a general Asian market, thus having one entire aisle dedicated to kimchi, another to hot pastes, another to seaweed, etc) but it is clean and huge. I see lots and lots of Korean food in my future. Now I just need to get there at the beginning of budgeted grocery money not at the end like I did today (I did get the essential: kimchi).
December 11, 2007
But transliteration is still painful; the North Korean town that is now open to tourists is named Gay Song.
Watch a 2:35 minute BBC news clip about it here (but be prepared to watch a 20 sec commercial first).
June 8, 2007
I’m sitting in Water Canyon eating a spinach and walnut salad, sipping a jasmine tea, and sitting to some pretty good music being belted out by a songwriter passing through town (Corby Lanker?). Bella and Dawkins are hanging out with their friends at Denny’s for a post-promotion dance debrief over dessert and so, I get a brief moment of respite at a local cafe.
I love this: chilling in a cafe by myself – although in a town as small as this, there is no such thing as “by myself.” I’ve already run into two long-time friends: finagled a trade for my weight machine with one, and said my good-bye’s to the other. It’s only now hitting home that I am going to be leaving the hi-desert in a few short weeks. I started to panic about having make to new friends – and then I realized that I already know some great people down by the beach: Chad’s sisters! Talk about ready-made friends.
Last weekend I went a Korean bathhouse with my three future sisters-in-law: Lisa, Corrina, and Asia.
It is important to make a distinction between a Korean bathhouse and an American-style spa; a Korean bathhouse is not about being pampered and indulged, but the utilitarian concept of getting clean, very clean – perhaps cleaner than you ever imagined you could be. Now, I have only been to a Korean bathhouse a half dozen times, but no matter the city, Sydney, Seoul, or LA, the experience is virtually the same – and deeply infused with Korean culture.
The Olympic Spa in Koreatown is no different. Despite the (free) valet parking and all the beauty products lining the reception, it is a no-nonsense place. To use the spa facilities (all day if you like) only costs $15. The classic Korean scrub is an additional $30 and lasts for 20 minutes. A reservation is recommended, especially on the weekends. We had reservations for noon, so we arrived early to soak.
Once we paid, we were given a key chain with two keys and a number. To enter the spa, you must pass through a series of spaces, gradually shedding clothes and the grime of the outside world. Just past the reception desk we pushed passed thick, wooden double doors and entered a small vestibule with woven matting on the floor. There are small wooden numbered lockers lining two walls from floor to ceiling. These little locked cubby holes were for our shoes.
In bare feet, we padded into the main “dry” area. In front of us, robed women were lounging on a big leather sofa drinking barley tea or resting on a large heated marble-lined stage. We headed to the lockers to our far right. There was a clean towel and robe inside each locker. We stripped down to our birthday suits and donned our light cotton robes.
to be continued…
March 16, 2007
If you are interested in the answer to this question, take this short quiz here. (Thanks for sharing this one, Al.) Apparently, I have virtually no accent.
This was what I got at the end of my quiz:
“Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.”
Interestingly, when I was still taking classes at Art Center, a Korean guy told me that I have the slightest twinges of a Korean-American accent. My fiance thinks it’s hokey-balokey; I think it’s probably true. In third grade I was even pulled out of class for speech testing because I had such a strange sense of pronunciation.
As an adult, it finally dawned on me that English was not my first language – in fact, my mom says that I didn’t start speaking English regularly until I went to preschool at four! It also explains why I say strange things like, “Don’t pass the bug” instead of “Don’t pass the buck.”
February 25, 2007
My sister has pointed out to me that there is no such Korean custom as not having a baby touch the ground for the first 100 days of its life.
Bella’s dad and I had a big party when Bella turned 100 days old, which is Korean custom (ie., in the old days with high infant mortality, surviving your first 100 days was cause for celebration). At that ceremony, Bella’s feet touched the ground for the first time, which in retrospect is not Korean custom, but something Bobby and I made up… I think simply because she hadn’t touched the ground yet, and we thought we could mark the occasion.
We did that a lot in those days – make things up I mean. We made up her surname too (Monique). Up until the point when I was handed the birth certificate document and asked to write Bella’s name for the first time, I didn’t realize that a child could be named anything – that there are no rules for name-making, only tradition – and for us back then, tradition was made for breaking.
Bella’s feet touched the earth by the smoke tree we planted for the occasion.
More on Korean baby traditions on a kimchi mama post here.
February 6, 2007
Donna, the woman my brother is dating, is featured in KoreAm magazine! (Hey – they’re looking for a full-time staff writer in Gardena…note to self: apply for this position after finishing thesis.)
And on the topic of Korean women; I’ve found a new entertaining blog called Kimchi Mamas. Check it out here.
January 31, 2007
We watched an excellent Korean movie last weekend. In Korean the title is Gwoemul and in English it is called The Host (imdb 7.3/10.0). Despite its unimpressive Imdb rating, this movie is now considered the all-time number one box office hit in Korea (do I sound like I should be writing blurbs or what?) I liked it a lot. Making me laugh out loud wins you points.
The movie takes place in contemporary Korea and revolves around government misinformation, a beastly reptile creature created by improperly disposed formaldyhyde, and the desperately heroic attempts by a family to find a little girl. It is a funny horror movie the same way Dr Strangelove and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Atomic Bomb is a funny horror movie. Read the NYTimes review here.
We have been on a Korean movie streak the last couple years (along with everybody else). If you are interested in checking out contemporary Korean flicks, check out this alphabetic Korean movie list at wikipedia.
If you can occasionally stomach extreme violence or extreme melodrama, I would recommend:
Old Boy (violent)
Il Mare (melo)
Joint Security Area (violent)
The Lake House (violent and melo)
Memories of a Murder (quiet with outbursts)
My Sassy Girl (melo)
Samaritan Girl (melo and violent)
Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall,… and Spring Again (quiet with outbursts)
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (violent and melo)
Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War (melo and violent)
The next ones we are going to watch: Silmido, The King and Clown, Save the Green Planet!, Crying Fist, and A Moment to Remember.
