Heaven, I’m in Heaven . . . when we’re off together dancing kimbap to kimbap!

Kudos to those who know the original song and the original singer. Seriously, if this wonderful Kimbap Cheonguk (Heaven) chain restaurant ever disappeared from South Korea, I’d cry. If it ever disappeared out of my neighbourhood, I’d go on a rampage to the headquarters! Not that it will happen, since there are two of these in my neighbourhood — a mere minute apart from one another — so as long as one remains . . . More »

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Happy New Year, Ningin!

I celebrated it with my parents, the first time in years. All of my friends were occupied, and it was too cold for me to just wander around the city by myself at midnight. (-8℃? Yes, it’s cold!) I came home, went out, and then bought some HOF chicken for my mum around 11:15pm. Came back home and asked Dad to pop open a stubborn bottle of vino. Luckily, after he took a wench to it, he did, so all three of us enjoyed the vino.

Then, we watched MBC’s famous Bosingak (pictured here) being banged upon amongst the crowds who came to watch this occasion. Every year, I want to go there with a friend, but that plan always falls through. Perhaps, next year . . .

Anyway, after we cheered for 2009, I was leaving the living room as Big Bang came on the broadcast to do a show. I made a noise of displeasure, and my mum said, “But these guys are popular!” I retorted with, “I like Dong Bang Shin Gi better!” Mum said, “Ahhh, yes, you’re right. They are better.” HAHAHA! I rule. JK!

Anyway, Happy New Year!

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Or so says this article. But then I read this article and go HUH . . .

I can understand the reluctance from South Korea’s side. I can sort of understand how some South Korean officials do not want everything to be “Japanised.” However, I can’t help but think, uh, sorry South Korea, but Japanese mangas, novels, and etcetera intrigue me more. Heck, even this entry just sort of proves from my side of the world that Japan rocks in certain areas. I admit that I am more biased towards Japanese products and media than I am towards South Korea’s, but I’ll blame that on my Japan-oriented hobbies. More »

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According to my dad, I’m living my third childhood because I went to Gyobo book store at Gwanghwamun today to look for Boxcar Children and The Baby-Sitters Club books. Well, I didn’t succeed in that department, but I did see this sexy looking thing.

It was sexy until I saw the price. 48,000+ won. Which translates into about $36. But then, compare that to $27 when you convert the price from 2500 yen. Um. Yeah. I know $36 is about the average price of an imported artbook, but my mind still thinks of June 2008’s conversion rate of 900 won to $1 USD and makes me think this is a $50+ book. Plus, I only had about 60,000 won on me, and I was not going to spend all my money at once like that.

But still! It looked sexy. At least, the cover did. Since it was in the plastic wrap, I couldn’t flip through the book to see if it’s worth that price. Then again, imported artbooks are so expensive. Once again, I ask myself, why must I have expensive hobbies!

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Everyone in China and Japan, come to South Korea! This article shows how weak the won is compared to Chinese Yuan and Japanese Yen. So weak, that right now would be a good time to visit this place. I mean seriously. My friend’s relatives are going to visit here next week from Japan. They are staying for three nights and four days. The plane ticket and the hotel fees all add up to $200 a person.

That’s a real, darned good bargain if you compare $730 to a three-night, four-day trip to Tokyo back in May. Oi. If only it would cost $200 to go to Tokyo . . . I’d be shipping my butt there for my birthday next month!

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After many months of depriving myself of this fun (mostly because my throat and sinuses were stricken by some disease), I finally went to a no rae bang (private karaoke room) with a friend. Actually, it was a really long and freezing day. I had to haul myself to Yeoksam-dong, to Gangnam-gu for an errand, and then I waited for my friend in a coffee shop in my neighbourhood. When she arrived, we went to another coffee house/bar to have dinner. Then we decided to go to a no rae bang since we couldn’t go last time due to my sinusitis.

We went to the one we always go to, paid about $9-10 bucks for over an hour and sang our hearts out. Whenever we go, we sing a bunch of weird combinations of songs. Here’s a list of what we sang and of what I can remember. More »

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Just mere hours ago, I had a Daewoo TV. Now that I have a new JVC TV, I just realised something: I own nothing that’s Korean-made, with the exception of my cellphone. Hahaha! Seriously! If I put all my electronics together, these are what I have:

* JVC TV (Nicknamed: Pita = Pain in the Arse) * Hitachi VHS * Panasonic DVD Player * Panasonic Stereo * Nintendo SNES * Nintendo GameCube * Sony PlayStation 1 * Sony PlayStation 2

No Korean-made products. I find it very ironic considering where I live. On the flip side, I love my new (well, second-hand) TV. HOMG. Playing video games on it will be a very smexy experience. I already tested it out with one game and am absolutely floored by the big, crisp graphical and audio output.

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Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I sort of did. iPod Tunes + Touch-wise I didn’t, but food wise, I certainly did. For every single Christmas, my parents would cook a turkey for Christmas, along with other Korean food like galbi and whatever else my mum’s in the mood for! This year is no different from any of the previous years. The food was delicious. Mmmm. I even contributed something and made this cherry fruit dip that consisted of marshmallow creme, cream cheese, and maraschino cherries. The pink thing in the pictures is what I made! More »

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I just learned a new tradition a couple of days ago. Apparently, sometime around December (I’m guessing it’s dealing with the Lunar calendar), there’s a day dedicated to eating “pat gooksoo,” aka azuki bean noodles, in Korea. While I was aware of how my mother seems to have a thing for these noodles every year, I wasn’t aware of the reasoning behind it.

The subject line says it all. My mother told me last night to eat a few mouthful of those “pat-paste covered noodles” so a ghost will not haunt my living body and soul. Since I’m not superstitious like her, I just rolled my eyes at that ridiculous idea. However, I humoured her and ate some. While it does taste good, I am not a much of a fan of pat. I do like it in bungeobbang and in patbingsoo, though!

So, everyone, eat some pat once in awhile to ward off evil spirits, ghosts, or whatever the heck you want to call those supernatural beings.

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I’ll never forget the first time I played Pump It Up! Pump and DDR were the fad, but since Pump is a Korean-made machine, they were more abundant in arcades than DDR was. Because of that, I was exposed to Pump more than DDR, so I’m more biased towards the machine. I remember I was addicted to that game for about three years. I’d go spend 300 to 1000 won to play this at various arcades. I wanted to master some of the popular songs, but some were just too much for me. However, I enjoyed it!

Now, with my new job, I’m at a place where they have a Pump machine, where I can play for free. For the last two months, I have been playing the songs I played before with fondness. Slowly, I’m able to make my legs and body get used to playing the songs I like while many memories come flooding back to me. More »

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Considering all of the recent Korean celebrity suicides, especially those who came out as GLBT, I’m glad Hong Seok Cheon didn’t take that route. He’s still alive and kicking, and the most recent news about him is that he published a book. The book’s called Design Your Own Restaurant, and it “celebrates his successful transformation from suddenly-out-of-work actor to restaurateur.”

Hong, an actor back in the ’90s, came out in 2000, and not surprisingly, his sexual orientation wasn’t accepted among the general Korean population. That affected his acting career, so he began opening a series of restaurants — the first one being “Our Place” in Itaewon.

It’s a shame how he gave up acting to do this restaurant business, but from what I read, he’s happy with his current life, and that’s all that it matters. I just hope more GLBT Koreans can see that suicide isn’t the only option for being who they are. Actually, what I really hope is for Korea to become more accepting of GLBT, but considering recent events, the light in the tunnel’s really dim. However, like Hong, I’d like think a bit more optimistically about my home country – even if I am a natural pessimist!

Oh, and one of these days, I shall check out “Our Place.” I live in the area, so I may as well go!

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Last month, I had used H.O.T.’s “Candy” as my “classics” series. This time, I shall bring back their “rivals”, the six-members group called Sechs Kies. Even though they were “rivals”, I liked both for different reasons. Well, more for the same reasons since they were awesome, cute, great music, and etcetera.

To get to the point of this entry, this song’s pretty neat. It’s catchy, fun to dance to, and come on, six guys singing and dancing? That’s fun to watch! Anyway, this song’s the first Sechs Kies song I have listened to and thus became a fan of them. It’s a shame, though, that they disbanded so quickly. Three years? Man. Ah, well. At least I got to seem them at a free concert, at a park in Dongdaemun Stadium area, Jongno-gu, before they quit! More »

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Prior to watching Chan Wook Park’s “Old Boy” (2003), the idea of indulging in live octopus (san nak ji) as a delicacy was unheard of to me. Was this a new trend in sushi? Seafood so raw, it’s still living? Was it a product of laziness? In a harsh bout of hunger, did someone stop by their local seafood market in Korea only to decide that they were too hungry to set aside time to properly cook an octopus?

Sure, I watched the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern experience live octopus for answers. It wasn’t enough for me to live vicariously through them. I wanted to embark on a gastronomic journey that only a few westerners have lived through. I wanted a live octopus eating experience to be my latest conversation ice breaker. (Because no one cares that I was once in the same room Paul Rudd was in.) I was also seduced by the fact that it is potentially dangerous. You can choke and die if you don’t chew properly!

That said, trying live octopus was one of many inspirations behind a recent trip to Korea. The experience wasn’t as dramatic as I’d expected it to be. For starters, I’m still alive. Live octopus is chewy and it does move in your mouth. Think moving gummy worms that don’t taste like anything until you dip it in sauce. Best of all, it was DELICIOUS. Since then I’ve had it a second time. I’ve also broken a lot of social ice. But, if you want to hear about the time I was within Paul Rudd’s vicinity, feel free to ask. More »

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This article is what led me to discover this new Amerasian (1/2 Korean and 1/2 Caucasian I assume) singer. Born Priscilla Natalie Hartranft, she decided to change her last name to her Korean mother’s native name to reflect her Asian heritage. Born in Georgia and after a stint in Korea, she grew up in Pennsylvania. After high school, she was encouraged to expand her musical skills, so she went to Los Angeles, California.

She independently made an album, Priscilla Ahn, and Blue Note Records discovered her talents and took her in to their company. Her next album, A Good Day was released earlier this year, along with her first single, “Dream”. That song’s received more attention when it was used for season four finale of Grey’s Anatomy.

Amazingly, enough, she will actually be on a tour in Seoul, at Hongik University (Hongdae) on December 4, 2008. I actually took the time to listen to a few of her songs and discovered that I like her style. She’s like Norah Jones on the guitar, but better. I like her voice. It’s really pretty. It’s a darn shame that I can’t go to the performance, though. Something called work is my first priority. More »

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Earlier this week, at the Sejong Centre for the Performing Arts in Sejongno, Jongno-gu, Kang Sue Jin gave her last performance as Juliet in the ballet Romeo and Juliet by John Cranko in her homeland. I didn’t see this performance, but I wished I did after I read up on Kang. She sounds pretty impressive by what I’ve read about her. Plus she’s in her 40s, making her one of the oldest female ballerinas around.

Seriously, Kang has one heck of a resume. She started ballet at the age of twelve, and what most ballet students would cover in eight to nine years, she crammed it all into three. Then she won first prize at the Prix de Lausanne as the first Asian. That gave her the leeway to join Stuttgart Ballet company, where at age nineteen, she was the youngest and the first Asian, again, to join. For the next twenty years, she started at the bottom but steadily worked her way up and received recognition for her beautiful dancing and her hard work. More »

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Pepero = Pocky = Icing covered pretzel sticks. Strangely, I find it ironic that Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day also means Pepero or Pocky Day, at least for the Koreans and the Japanese. Honestly, it’s really a strange combination of a day when one stops to think about it.

I also find it ironic that as much as Korean resents Japan for what happened during the Japanese Occupation Era, Korea likes to copy Japan in more than one ways. Copying the Japanese snack of Pocky into Pepero, it wasn’t until 1994 did Pepero Day start with Japan following suit with their Pocky Day in 1999. (Having read this on Wikipedia, I am not sure if it’s accurate. Don’t hold me accountable, please!) Talk about irony on top of irony. It cracks me up. More »

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Kimchi, the one ubiquitous food, other than rice, that exists in Korea, is everywhere. In my house, there was always at least one Tupperware full of the fermented, red-peppered vegetables, ripe or fresh. Therefore, being surrounded by them, I never really noticed there was a certain smell to the ripe ones. That’s why whenever the newcomers come to Korea, one of the first thing they tell me is that they can smell the overpowering stench of kimchi. For the longest time I didn’t have a single clue as to what they were talking about. That is until three years ago. More »

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I just saw one of the best, most dramatic and meaningful baseball games in a long time this morning, South Korea vs. Cuba in the gold medal match of the Beijing Olympics. Let me try to setup the stage for you. Cuba is to international baseball like Brazil is to World Cup soccer, perennial powerhouse. The three favorites to medal were Japan, Cuba, and the United States, so South Korea according to odds makers, wasn’t even suppose to medal. Somehow, South Korea improbably won 8 straight games including defeating Japan in the semi-finals one day prior. Cuba defeated the United States in the semis losing only once to South Korea in regular play and looking to avenge their loss. And Cuba easily has the best hitters in the game, some good enough for the Major Leagues, but South Korea has dominant pitching, especially today’s champ and Korean Ace, Ryu Hyun-jin. (more on Ryu later)

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