gonzobonsai

adventures in urban agriculture, daejeon style vol. 1

2009-06-03T15:49:00.005+09:00

As mentioned previously, the winding back streets of Daejeon provide a large magnitude of examples of people growing food crops right in the center of a dense urban metropolis. From small remnant farm plots not yet converted into officetel buildings, to squash snaking around in front of apartment buildings, to the ubiquitous potted pepper plants, people cultivate culinary products in nearly every available location, no matter how limited. Me being a fanatic of the garden, especially of the city variety, I decided to take the leap and get into the action this year.

From the outset of this project, there were known logistical hurdles to overcome, the first of these being the location of the necessary supplies and inhabitants for what would become my first Korean garden. This was fairly easily accomplished with a trip to the downtown street market in early April, where I secured seeds of several vegetables, seed trays, etc. and then luckily stumbled upon a bonanza of large discarded planter pots on the way home from the market. The next and more intractable problem was where the garden would reside, being as we live in a small 8th story apartment with limited to negligable access to the surrounding grounds due to language barriers. Our apartment is, luckily, equipped with a relatively large, enclosed, southern facing balcony where the laundry is washed and hung to dry. Now clean clothes and dirty pots are not an obvious combo, but I devised a way to the divide the space, and Taylor was amazingly happy to go along with the plan. There is also a kind of planter hanger protruding from our balcony railing that is slightly insecure, but overall suspectedly reliable.

So it was with this space in mind that I set about to planting my seeds and warming up for the summer crop. My mom even sent me some basil seeds (not readily found in Jungangno market), and with the one drawback of completely defective eggplant seeds, the garden was off to promising start. This is what it looked like:

Having overcome the anticipated difficulties, it was time for the unexpected to kick in. When relations between us and our boss quickly and severely deteriorated in the end of April, we made the painful decision to seek a new employer. As our employer provides our housing, this also meant moving to a new apartment. Not everyone is familiar with, or sympathetic to the concept that I would really enjoy a (preferably southern facing) balcony where my crops could prosper, but some of our new housing options seemed promising. The main problem was the element of uncertainty; with plants that needed to be put in ground (or, small pieces of ground enclosed by cylindrical plastic containers), I didn't want to make a move until I was sure those plants would have a place to go. Also, of course, small plants and empty pots are also much easier to move than large, bulky pots full of dirt.

After pondering long and hard over potential alternate outdoor locations for the garden, I finally realized that there is a large unused brick area at the skatepark I visit almost daily. There is full sunlight, plenty of space, a relatively nearby water source, and I had some semblance of a justification for using the space, given that I am a frequent inhabitant of the park. I asked a couple of the guys at the park about it, hoping that they could check with the guard man to make sure everything was cool. Their resounding response, was "just put the plants there, we don't need to ask the guy". Taking this as a green light for "Saemmori Garden", I went to Jeju for a week with grand ideas bouncing through my head of building large beds from scrap street wood, having fresh veggies for the skate barbeques, and maybe even getting some of the local skaterats interested in gardening. I even bought an orange tree.

When I returned home, my first errand was back to Jungangno market, where I picked up a bunch of surprisingly cheap starts (having much more room to work with, I vastly expanded my vision for the garden), and two gigantic bags of potting soil. I loaded up a very bulky load on the handcart, gathered bags of plants, and slowly rolled my way over to the park, about a kilometer and a half away. When I arrived, there were no skaters there, only a guard previously unknown to me, regarding me first with puzzlement, followed by skepticism, and finally culminating in disapproval. With one to five word sentences, hand gestures, plenty of smiling, and lots of thumbs up, I tried to convince this guy that "Saemmori Garden" was a go. He politely disagreed, but was kind enough to put in a call to his superior, confirming the negative response. Discouraged and tired, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was wrestle this awkward load of junk all the way back home, but after a short rest, that's exactly what I did.

The orange tree was basically a ball of roots in a black plastic bag, and most of the starts I purchased were dangerously rootbound. For these plants to live, they needed to be in pots. I didn't see any point in wasting perfectly good plants and soil I just bought, so they went into the pots on our balcony this morning. This is a little inconvenient, as I now have six large potted plants to move into an apartment we don't even have yet, or know if there is a place for them at, but it still makes me feel good to look out and know they're there. This is how the situation stands right now:

I will certainly follow up with updates on where the garden ends up.

censorship and thought control

2007-10-05T20:16:00.000+09:00

Author's note: this is a short rant limited by time, hunger, and amount of insightful things to acutally say about the topic.

Maybe what I was most excited about getting out of China for was the escape from blocked internet sites. Not that BBC News is really that much better than or different from the New York Times, or that I really have to use Wikipedia all that much, or that I actually need to read the blog I just wrote, but it's annoying. The first day I arrived in Vietnam, I read what BBC had to say about what was going on, and I definitely took a look at my blogger blogs. It felt good.

I don't know if it is the particular internet cafe I am now at, but I can no longer look at either of my blogger blogs (just like China, I am still free to post, just not to read). It seems outlandish that someone actually found out that I was writing about Vietnam and then blocked my blogs in this country, but that seems to be what has happened. I made friends with a teacher living in Ho Chi Minh City, and he is sure that your email gets read here (not that that doesn't happen in America though), and that you can be subjected to police action depending on what is in your email.

We also got into discussing Korea, which has a totally open policy towards information and education, and yet demonstrates an incredible consistency of ideas and opinions in its populace. There seems to be no sense in limiting or attempting to control what information people have access to. People can always circumvent laws and restrictions. It seems like you can allow people to read think, say and feel whatever they want to, while still guiding their ideas in a certain direction. I have long thought that this is the case in America, where freedom of speech in no way ensures that the majority of people still don't get erroneous information from what is essentially State TV (also known as Fox News).

All I'm really getting at here in this rant is that censorship is ineffective and just plain irritating, while subtle directing and controlling of public opinion can take place very easily in countries without rampant, official or obvious censorship.

tiger leaping purge

2007-10-02T13:46:00.001+09:00

Yunnan province, in severe southwestern China, is shaped roughly like a left-handed thumbs-up. The northwestern section of the province constitutes the thumb, and it wedges itself right into a crevice created between the wild western regions of Sichuan and Tibet. Along the western ridge and the tip of the thumb, the Earth leaps towards the sky as the foothills of the Himalayas begin their march up. Not really having the time or resources to properly delve into Tibet, and Sichuan being a bit out of the way, we opted to explore this section of China to at least get a feel for the mountains. We spent several days in Kunming, the provincial capital, getting our Vietnam visas arranged before making the bus ride out to popular and picturesque Lijiang.

Lijiang is traditionally home to the Naxi ethinic minority. There is a beautiful old town, where narrow, uneven streets wind through, around, up and down among architecture that may or may not be quite old. There are waterways of fast running, clear water that vary in width from a fist-width trickled to a rushing stream. This is my favorite part of the town. There are often people scrubbing their clothes on steps leading down to the gushing channels. There are special square pools where the water rises clear and fresh out of the ground. In the larger waterways, schools of fish face upstream swimming in time to the current and feasting on the debris swiftly moving downstream. There are goldfish, some kind of white fish, but the trout are my favorite to watch. Their slender, muscular bodies seem perfectly adapted to sit suspended in the current effortlessly. Bridges over the streams range from proper stone arches to almost haphazard wooden timbers. Sometimes the water disappears completely, and you can hear it flowing beneath the very stones that constitute the street. To know the geography of the erratic organization of this cluster of buildings is the know the location, movement, beginning and confluence of these unnumberable waterways. It is fairly common to see older Naxi women with brown crinkled skin, a royal blue Mao-style cap and basket backpack. Of course, all of the buildings in old town are occupied by tourist shops, cafes and hotel/hostels.

Because we have an affinity for domestic tourism in action, we chose China's busiest holiday (Golden Week) to go to one of the most popular destinations for domestic travel. This actually turned out to not be too big of a problem.

The real reason Lijiang is on the backpacker circuit map is because it is the jumping off point for Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of those attractions that everyone you meet on the road insists is "A MUST!". After waffling back and forth about going by myself and leaving Taylor in Lijiang vs. dragging Taylor along on the two-day trek, along with lacking required gear, I had kind of resigned myself to skipping the gorge. A last minute, night before conversation and photo viewing had convinced me that I needed to go ahead and just do it.

It had rained the entire week before we arrived. It continued to rain everyday after our arrival in Lijiang. 4000 meter gorges with sparse vegetation are not known to be among the most pleasant or safe places to enjoy daily thunderstorms. To add insult to injury, I became afflicted Saturday night with sudden, swift and severe intenstinal distress that made sleeping, moving, leaving the bed, eating, enjoying life in general, not to mention gorge trekking, out of the question.

A little salty about having to give up my precious Tiger Gorge, I was not made to feel any better by my sleepless night last night on my 10-inch wide slat directly above the engine of the old Yunnan Express "Sleeper" Bus.

Vietnam here we come!

lovebeard

2007-09-13T20:45:00.000+09:00

(Author's note: This posting is not about China at all. Sometimes travelling gives you a chance to think about where you came from, and it's just as important for that reason as any other.)

Opportunities come and go every day. Some we take, some we pass up, and these can be good or bad decisions in either situation. About two weeks before I left Korea, I half-drunkenly mentioned to my friend (who we will call "Upsayo") that it was too bad we had never started a band and didn't have any time left to. He called me the next day not suggesting so much as demanding that we put together a show before I left. This was one of the opportunities I didn't pass up.

Despite the fact that my final two weeks were already a little booked with entertaining Taylor's mom for a week while Taylor finished her classes, entertaining BOTH of our mom's for an additional week, moving out of my apartment, planning and arranging all the logistics for a four month trip to China and Southeast Asia, writing a manual of how to perform my job, and tying up loose odds and ends, I managed to squeeze in time for band practice. These were always after 10:00 at night on quiet nights at the bar where we would have our "final" show. It was difficult, exhausting, but extremely enjoyable. Miraculously, we managed to put together a full set in just four practices, and pulled off a show the Saturday before my departure.

The reason I mention it (aside from wanting to show off (videos can be found here) and give some proper credit to Upsayo (as well as Snake James)) is to encourage everyone to take a chance sometime on something that sounds crazy, difficult, or just plain too much. I've passed up a lot of things in my life because I was too busy, too tired, too grumpy, etc. Many of these I'm happy I passed up. But this experience was one that I could just feel was worth it, and I gained a whole new dimension of friendship, musical experience, and rockstardom by taking the crazy chance.

shangwho?

2007-09-12T23:12:00.001+09:00

(Author's note: although this posting technically covers only exploits in Shanghai, I have found it necessary to include a few extraneous details from my previous location. Please bear with me, and I promise we will get to Shanghai soon enough.)

In Qingdao, people drink beer. Lots of it. You would expect this, it being a brewery town and all, but even at lunch time all the tables at a restaurant are littered with pitchers of beer. It's also (in retrospect) an extremely pleasant place where people are incredibly kind, friendly and generally good natured. I just have to make sure we understand where the score stands on Qingdao before we start talking about Shanghai, namely, good.

We boarded our sleeper to Shanghai a little bummed out that the dudes in the upper bunks had made themselves at home sitting on our lower bunks with us. This was not the optimal situation, but luckily they later moved up top. Around supper time, the older and rounder of our bunkmates scampered down from his perch and produced a bag full of food and two bottles of Tsingtao. He promptly laid this all out on the table and offered me one of the bottles of beer (all done with hand gestures). He also invited us to sample some morsels of his dinner (a whole roasted chicken, and some delicious buns served with condensed milk). We moved up to one word (pretty much all in English) sentences catalyzed with copious smiling. When there was one piece of chicken left, he offered it to me. That piece being the head, I politely declined, and he promptly stuck the whole thing in his mouth, retrieving only the beak. After dinner, we had more halting conversation mostly revolving around looking at different pictures in our China guide book. Our second bunkmate made no attempts at contact with us.

It's good that the company on the train was somewhat interesting, because the scenery certainly was not. If you could imagine combining the two fantastic American landscapes of midwest cornfields and Utah desolate weird chemical industrial plants, you would have exactly what we saw for twenty hours. Oh shit, that's not quite right, I forgot the sprawling uniform government housing/dorm buildings that were interspersed.

For better or worse, we arrived in Shanghai around lunch time, and promptly took the subway in the wrong direction (are we detecting a theme here?) and so wandered around back and forth for about 4o minutes trying to find our hostel. We finally taxied to the "Captain's Hostel" right in the ritzy part of town. This is one of those classic large scale city-center hostel affairs. About five floors of dorm rooms are seemingly packed to the gills with a mix of 78% German, 8% Scandanavian, 13.5% Asian, and .5% (us) American backpackers. All in all, its a pretty nice place.

Shanghai is a city of stark contrast. The main tourist drags are lined immediately on either side by dark streets and alleys full of smelly water and hanging laundry. Half of the city is seemingly spurting right up out of the ground in great glittering geysers of development, while the other half seems to be being torn down in dusty dingy destruction. There are more foreigners here than any city I've been to in Asia, many of them businessmen, and a lot of them tourists (can't seem to find too many teachers). There are about three main tourist traps, and we've hit all three of them hard. They are mostly worth it. One is the area along the river, which highlights views of the impressive exploding skyline on one side, and classic European architecture on the other.

The other worthy candidate is a classical Chinese garden dating from the 1600's. It's pretty spectacular, but they've engineered the stupid thing so that you have to fight your way through a labrynth of shops, fast food, watch, bag, shoe and sunglass peddlers, and art students for what seems like hours before you can even find the entrance. (The exit is cleverly placed at a different location in the same mess, so you can't retrace your steps out.) But the garden is quite special, you can really feel the oldness of the place, and it's as if the stone, rocks, wood, carving and plants have all kind of grown and melded into each other to become one single unit. It's also interesting to catch the odd glimpse of a sky scraper or hanging laundry or have the silence (brief periods of which exist in between the barking of megaphone mass tour guides) pierced by the honk of a scooter careening around outside.

Possibly the best piece of Shanghai we've seen was an interesting complex of art galleries near the train station. It was cool to see, and there was some good work there, but I'll let Taylor fill you in on the details of that.

Though people generally wear clothing over their torsos, and children don't generally run around in assless pants (unlike Qingdao), I would say the level of manners is generally lower here. This is, of course, kind of a big city phenomenon, but it is very strong here, and most apparent on the subway. Even in the biggest, rudest cities I've been to, the people understand the rule that you have to let those on the train get off the train before you can shove your way on. That's not even manners, it's just the way that things need to happen in order for the system to work. Well, in Shanghai, that's not how it works. You fight your way on, and the people getting off be damned. This is not the only example of rudeness, of course, but it is the most visibly obvious. The rest is mainly just that indifferent face and lack of smiling or acknowledgement of your existence that is common in other locations as well.

Overall, Shanghai is about what I was told it would be: not that exciting a place to visit. I'm certainly glad I came, and I think that living here could be pretty cool, but I don't live here, and I don't have time to search out everything that is cool. That being said, the coolness certainly doesn't jump right out at you. Tomorrow we'll be heading out for Suzhou, about an hour west of here, for some even more outstanding gardens than the one here. We may or may not return to check out Friday nightlife in Shanghai before moving on to the western mountains.

china: here we aren't

2007-09-05T14:53:00.000+09:00

A disclaimer: this posting is stolen from the joint Travis-Taylor travel blog that we have started. I will continue to post here on gonzobonsai, but both Taylor and I will give additional travel updates and photos over at fanny pack snackers . Check it out!

Having said all our goodbyes, cleaned out our cozy little home for the past year, wiped the sentimental tears from our eyes, and hoisted our luggage on our backs, we made our way for Seoul first thing Monday morning. We secured our Chinese Visas with no problem, were given our hepatitis shots, and had a pleasant final Korean dinner. Tuesday morning I climbed Namsan ((남산) mountain) for spectacular panoramic views of the city, and Taylor and I left with over two hours to make it to the Inchoen ferry terminal by 3:30 for our 5:00 departure. The sun was shining, our spirits were high, we were leaving Korea on a high note.

Due to some sort of engineering malfunction, however, the Number 1 Subway in the direction of Inchoen (인천) splits into two separate routes at Guro (구로). Had we known this, we would have tried to check which line the subway we got on was going to take. As it turned out, our train took a turn for Choenan (천안) at Guro (구로), not Inchoen (인천). We only realized this about 40 minutes past Guro (구로), when Taylor could finally slip out from behind our mound of luggage to see how many stops we had left before Inchoen. It was about 3:00 when we hurriedly leaped from our train to change directions. It soon became clear that continuing our current route would not get us to the ferry terminal anywhere near our 5:00 departure time. We called the ferry office, and the woman suggested that we immediately hop in a cab and we should be able to make it in time.

The nearest subway stop basically ended at the side of a major highway, where available cabs were few and far between, and those that did exist were zipping by at high speeds. We finally hailed a taxi with a blue-eyed driver (extrmeley unusual), and through a mix of Korean, English and hand gestures, we indicated where we needed to go. The poor guy was not really familiar with Inchoen (인천), as we were about five suburbs over, so he had to call someone else for directions. Soon, however, we were moving at 100km/h towards our port destination. The only problem now was that we had not foreseen the possibility of a cross-country cab ride, and had thus disposed of most of our Korean currency. It started to look like we would make it to the terminal around 4:30, which, we reasoned, should give us just enough time to run to an ATM to pay our driver, quickly swipe our credit cards to pay for the ferry tickets, and sprint across the waiting gangplank onto our China-bound fairy. Spirits were again lifting.

City traffic slowed us down, and then Taylor thought she saw a sign pointing towards the terminal in a different direction from that in which we were heading. We soon started seeing signs in our direction, and things again looked good. Upon arrival at the terminal, however, we were informed by a random passerby (terminal employee?) that we were at Terminal 1, when in fact we needed to be at Terminal 2, which was across town. Back through the traffic we headed, towards the sign Taylor had previously seen. As it was now past 4:30, my pessimistic side fully took over. Our driver felt the pressure too, and I hope he wasn't too stressed out, driving through rush hour traffic in a strange city, with two very anxious foreignors in the back seat.

When we arrived, Taylor arranged for a split won (원), dollar payment at a high exchange rate. We sprinted into the ferry terminal at quarter to five to be received by nothing but befuddled faces that we thought there was any possibility of us getting on the 5:00 boat (for which we had reservations).

Exhausted, irritable, and totally bummed out, we had to sit down and regroup, consider our options. The next boat didn't leave until Thursday, so we basically had two days on our hands. No option seemed bearable; Inchoen (인천) is not a real treat of a destination, getting back on the subway for another ninety minutes back to Seoul was kind of pointless and extremely unpleasant, and going back to Daejeon (대전) for two days with our tails between our legs wasn't particularly enticing either. In the end, after we had calmed down a bit, we reasoned that the only rational thing to do was to get a love motel room in Inchoen (인천) and wait it out for two days. The woman at the information desk gave me very detailed directions of how to get from where we were to a central district where we could stay.

That route took us to a busstop right in front of an E-Mart (giant grocery store), and we both agreed that before climbing onto another mode of transportation, we needed to sit out in front of the E-Mart and drink a beer. When I came out with the beers and a snack, Taylor had busted out the guitar, and we made a little party out of our unfortunate circumstances. I even wrote the better part of a song about our troubles that day. The sitting, beer, music, and attention from E-Mart shoppers brightened our moods quite a bit, and by the time we checked into the Royal Motel (로얄모텔), we were both ready to fully joke about the fact that we had missed the boat.

Letter to Nancy Pelosi

2007-08-22T15:57:00.000+09:00

August 22, 2007
Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Speaker Pelosi,

I would say it has been about a year now since I first felt the tinge of excitement and anticipation that just maybe the tide of absurd neglect of reason, morals, logic and decency was beginning to ebb. From this same seat halfway around the world, I watched with childlike excitement as you and others from around the United States vowed to veer off of the path towards destruction that our country has taken over the past seven years. The feeling was almost palpable; the strength was gathering, we were right, and finally, perhaps we would win.

I look back now, and I contrast that feeling with the sense of betrayal, exhaustion, and disillusionment that I feel now, and I find it hard to believe that my side actually won in 2006. The people who were brave, bold voices for change in their campaign speeches turned out to be nothing but meager lap dogs, obsequious to the ruling oligarchy of Cheney, Inc. And you, speaker, seem to have taken the role of Alpha Female in that pack of subservient drivellers, beating the others into submission in order to bask in the warm affections of Bush et al.

Now, I did not vote for you in 2006 (I voted for Bill Winter in Colorado’s Sixth District, who unsurprisingly was stomped by card-carrying National Socialist Tom Tancredo), but I did vote for a change in my country. My choice for congressional representative did not win, but a party opposite to my dire enemies did win. And so, though you do not represent me directly, you do represent my drive for ideological change, as you are at the forefront of the opposition power. As such, your representation on that front is disappointing to the highest degree.

Let’s begin with the recent enactment of Public Law: 110-55, so quaintly known as the “Protect America Act of 2007”. This piece of legislative garbage is utterly unacceptable. I would be berating some poor Republican House Speaker about this if they still had the reigns, but the fact that I have to berate you about it really irks me. The number one reason we as America voted for you and your Democratic cohorts was so that you could halt the blatant abuse of power by the Bush Administration that went unchecked by a friendly congress. The NSA wiretapping program is of course not the only (or necessarily the most harmful) abuse of power by the Bush Administration, but it is one of the most visible and attention grabbing instances of a much wider problem. For you and your brethren to win on a ticket of halting abuse of power, and then, less than one year later, give a resounding stamp of approval to one of the most publicly visible instances of said abuse is just too much for me to handle. This new law seems to actually be more vague and grant more actual power to these scumbags than the REPUBLICAN Congress even offered. This, Nancy, is not why we voted blue in 2006.

Now, let’s talk about the big “I” word. We all know that our adventure in Mesopotamia has left all of us between and very big rock and a very hard place. I grant you that. But again, we voted for you to change what is happening there. And once again, under Democratic Congressional watch, things in Iraq did change in the last year, except in the opposite direction from where we wanted you to take them. We vote for you to limit executive power, and instead you increase it. We vote for you to limit U.S. military operations in Iraq, and you allow Team Cowboy to increase it. Is there some kind of magnetic field over the District of Columbia that causes it to be perpetual “opposite day”? You Democrats have the control over all the money that is needed to finance the war. You have the final say, and we support you in saying “NO MORE!” that’s why we voted for you. Unfortunately, you guys are like the mother of the heroin junky who just can’t seem to resist giving twenty dollars to your son, even though you know it will be used for something you are wholeheartedly against. What efforts you have made to alter Iraq policy have been wholly ineffective because they know you don’t have the willpower to cut off the money.

Finally, it’s time for the other, and more important, big “I” word. It’s time to impeach these jokers, no passing go, no questions asked. Everybody says: “we shouldn’t have gone to Iraq, but now that we’re there, what can we do?” The first thing we need to do is hold the criminals who took us there accountable. Without doing this, we could end up in an (yes, it is possible) even worse situation than we are in now. If we don’t send Cheney, Bush, and all of their minions who helped conjure up the fictitious “Iraqi Menace” straight to jail, then they will continue to conjure up the “Iranian Menace”. We need to stop this situation from spreading into an all-out regional bloodbath, not cause it to do so. Furthermore, there have been so many abuses of power, beyond the Iraq nonsense, that these jerks really need to pay for their actions. If you do not enforce the laws of your country, they carry no weight. And the most important laws to enforce are those that go to the very heart of our democracy. If order is not quickly restored to the foundations of our democratic institutions, they will lose all credibility, and be democratic in name only.

With Deepest Concern,

travis h. eddy

buddha's birthday

2007-05-26T20:13:00.000+09:00

Despite the fact that Korea is hardly noticeably Buddhist in any respect, May 24th is a national holiday on account of the fact that it is Buddha's birthday. Prior to Wednesday (the day before the birthday), this fact was only known to me because Taylor and I had failed to attend the lantern festival for the holiday the previous weekend. Then, on Wednesday, my elementary class informed me that we would not be having class the next day. Never one to trust ten-year-olds who address me as "TEACHA!", I proceeded to ask our resident badass, Dr. Jo (the receptionist), if this was true. Turns out, it was in fact true that we had Thursday off. It also turns out that we had a mandatory picnic and work excursion planned for the day. At the time, I felt the excitement of the day off quickly negated by the existence of the work outing.

Work outings at Veritas usually consist of taking private cars to another city, and quickly boozing, no-rae-banging, eating tremendous amounts of food, and retiring to a love hotel. This outing proved to be about the same, except we were going to the mountains, where there aren't any no-rae-bangs or love hotels. But the booze and food promised to be the same. This was made clear during our stop at the grocery store on the way out of town, where we picked up, among other items, five chickens, twenty bottles of soju, one kilo of garlic and a tube of toothpaste. We were on the road.

After a two hour car ride, including the obligatory stop at a rest area for noodles*, we pulled into a seriously scenic mountain area, shrouded in misty fog. We checked in to basically a rustic hotel room, and immediately cracked into the Budweisers. After one can of beer, various grills and portable burners were placed on the floor in the middle of our seating circle, and piles of meat, mushrooms, onions, kimchi and garlic appeared instantly. It was on. Our boss's friend and family from a nearby town showed up, and his kids were the most shy of foreigners out of anyone I've met in Korea yet. We feasted on thick pieces of rarely cooked beef and beer for about forty minutes before everyone was stuffed. We had consumed about half of the meat. It was brought up that it was time for some exercise.

We romped down the hill to a scenic flat plot of land where we could play choku, which is basically volleyball played with your feet. This holiday really reminded me of either 4th of July or Labor Day, with the focus being on the combination of drinking and outdoor activities. Our Korean coworkers all proved to be surprisingly adept at the game, while I showed my utter hopelessness at kicking a soccer ball over a one meter high net. After one game, I relegated myself to drinking beer and exploring the river. Luckily, by the time I had soaked the better part of my pants by sliding into the river, it was raining pretty steadily. I opted out of the dunk into the river that most of the other men took. Everyone headed back to the room, but I had the brilliant idea that it was time to go for a hike. Of course, we needed not one, but two bottles of soju for the trail. We made it less than a kilometer up the steep, muddy ascent before sense got the better of us, and we each had two shots of soju before sliding down the mountain. I literally slid, and came home with fully saturated and muddy pants. As I had neglected to bring extra pants, my only option was to wear Taylor's pajama pants. (Despite the fact that she has had them since the fifth grade, they fit surprisingly well, aside from being about three inches short in the leg and a BIT tight in the crotch.)

The meat went back on the grill, and the beer was gone, so it was time to hit the soju hard. I don't know whose idea it was to go to the no-rae-bang, but suddenly it was a reality. I told you that there wasn't a no-rae-bang in this mountain park we were at. Three cabs showed up, and we took a twenty minute ride into the nearest large town. The table in the no-rae-bang was covered with ten cans of "Hunter" beverage, which our boss was very distressed to see us dip into. Turns out, "Hunter" is a 0.9% beverage due to local liquor laws. Luckily, Dr. Jo and Brian slipped out to a nearby convenience store to pick up three bottles of whiskey. The taxi ride home is a bit of a blur.

We got home, and the big news was that we were locked out of the room. Nobody could seem to figure out how to get in until TayTay scrambled up the balcony and saved the day. For some reason, it wasn't until we made it inside to the light that anyone, including Brian, realized that Brian was bleeding profusely from a wound above his eyebrow. There was blood, but once we got it cleaned up, Taylor, Brian and I all insisted that the lack pouring, seeping, non-stop blood, despite the fact that it was a drunken head wound, indicated that there was no need for stitches. Our boss (but not Dr. Jo) was sure that a trip to the emergency room was needed. Another taxi arrived and they went back to the town. Brian returned unsure of whether or not he had gotten stitches. I took this to mean that he hadn't.

The ride home was long and hungover. I was one of the lucky ones, considering I was able to go home, shower, and change out of Taylor's pajama pants before I had to teach on Friday night.

*Though you could drive the entire length of the country of South Korea in roughly 7 hours, every road trip, no matter how short, involves a stop at the Korean equivalent of a truck stop.

hokkaido memo vol. 2

2007-05-11T00:49:00.000+09:00

Biei is a very small town located on the southern flank of the Daisetsu Mountains, so to get there from Asahidake, I had to take a bus down from the highlands to Asahikawa, and then hug the mountain range about 40 minutes south on a commuter train. My hostel was technically located in the town of Bibaushi, which is one stop south of Biei, and could hardly even be called a town. When I asked where I could have dinner, the owner suggested that the only place for a meal would be to head back into Biei. I checked out Bibuashi, and it turns out he was right, the "town" is a gas station, two convenience stores, and a series of houses. Into to Biei it was.

The next day, I arose early to head back into Biei to check out the promised coffee shops, galleries, and bike rides in the charming little town. The town is beautiful, there is a main street that looks straight into the mountain range. There is a small business section of small shops, cafes, etc. It's charming, and friendly, but not too touristy. It reminds me of a Hood River twenty years before all the sleek shops and fancy cafes showed up.

I stumbled into town about 9 am, a little bummed to find out that the town famed for coffee shops had only one shop that I could find, and it wasn't even open yet. Absent any obvious breakfast places, I decided to just stumble around the town for the morning. The commercial district is a nice collection of tourist and local-oriented businesses. Clothing boutiques are situated next to farm supply stores, photography galleries next to local small town restaurants.

Where the town really shows it's charm, though, is in the residential neighborhoods. The houses have a rugged, frontier quality to them. There is a tired, rusty feel to the yards, many of which contain piles of old junk. What I really love about the houses, though, is the contrast between the rough, dirty appearance of the garages and workshops against the gardens. Given that there were still drifts of snow in the shadows, the gardens were not in their full glory. However, you feel a true beauty to them, the serene Japaneseness that I had come in search of. And on my day out, it seemed to be official sowing time, with dozens of old people out turning the soil for the vegetable gardens. But the best aspect of the houses was the bonsai trees. These were usually tucked back just around the corner or inside a fence, so I couldn't get many good pictures. Just seeing them and knowing that they were there, though, was exhilarating.

After the coffee shop had opened and I got some lunch, I rented a bike and decided the make the 10km trip through the countryside to Takushinkan, a museum/gallery featuring the work of Shinzo Maeda, a famous landscape photographer who took many pictures of the region. I fought a nasty headwind the whole way out, and struggled with a bike that was just not built for people of my size. I even considered turning around at one point, but luckily shamed myself out of that poor decision. The gallery was impressive, but it was more the view of the countryside that made the trip worth the perilous wind battle. The area is known for glorious fields of lavender. Needless to say, the fields were far from purple, and were in fact only a freshly tilled brown in most areas, but it was still gorgeous, especially the patchwork with the areas that were freshly sprouted green. Of course, the ride back was no problem.

I returned my bike and headed back out to Bibaushi. I made great friends with the crew at the hostel over coffee that night. Me being the only foreigner, they of course found it very exciting to talk to me once they all got over their shyness and fear of using their impressive English skills. They all found it absolutely hilarious that I live in Korea, and insisted on having a twenty minute conversation about kimchi. This is not the first time I've heard of kimchi being funny in Japan. I don't know what could possibly be so funny about spicy, smelly fermented cabbage.

With a heightened love for the Japanese people, I left Biei early the next morning to ensure that I could secure a room for the night in Sapporo. I easily acquired a room, and soon set off to explore the town some more. I found limited success in the botanic gardens (though there were some nice Rhododendrons and Magnolias in bloom). The Ainu museum there had an interesting artifact, however.

After the garden, I cruised down into the heart of the city, to return to a bizarre store I had encountered on my first day in Sapporo. This place is the quintessential crazy Japanese store that lived up to to every stereotype I had of what a crazy Japanese store could be. The thing is five stories high, and inside it, you can purchase everything from clothing to your groceries to several varieties of breast shaped pillow to camping stoves to French Maid costumes to school supplies to ashtrays that say "no weed, no life". Needless to say, it was pretty awesome, and obviously the place where I would find a nice souvenir for Taylor. (Which it finally delivered on the fourth floor, in the form of a blue translucent plastic human head piggy bank. It was awkward to pack, but totally worth it.)

I layed low in the afternoon, rereading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in preparation for my return to teaching. Evening came, and I ventured out for one final miso ramen and maybe a light beer at "Gaijin (Foreigner) Bar". I was wrong about the second activity. Upon entering Gaijin Bar, I couldn't help but notice the presence of Dead Guy Ale in the cooler. I had to have one. The bartender informed me that if I liked that, I should try one of the special Japanese market beers that Rogue Brewery makes. Japanese labels and all. I was ecstatic when I asked the bartender what the one with the label entirely in Japanese tasted like, and she answered, strong, bitter, hoppy. Keep in mind that it had been almost three quarters of a year since I'd had an IPA. I don't know if it even would have been better had she handed me fresh bong rip of Trainwreck. Needless to say, I ended up closing the bar and spending all my money on sweet, bitter Oregon beer, not to mention chatting with the local Sapporo foreigners. I was more than a little sad to say goodbye to Hokkaido the next morning.

hokkaido memo vol. 1

2007-05-04T19:42:00.000+09:00

For the uninitiated, Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan, often referred to as the "Alaska of Japan". The largest city is Sapporo, home of the beer that bears the same name. Hokkaido was only settled in the mid-19th century, so it lacks the centuries of established history found in other parts of Japan. Sapporo is laid out on an American grid system, and has the feeling of a western frontier town. The terrain of the island is rugged and mountainous, the countryside open and rolling.

I landed in Sapporo Friday afternoon and spent the hours into the evening wandering the city's central districts. There is a lovely park that runs along the north/south dividing line; I stopped briefly to enjoy the late afternoon sun slanting onto a nice fountain. The center of the Friday night action is in Susukino, a neon, flashing, pulsing district full of bars, strip clubs, and late night eateries. I wandered around for about 2 hours until my feet were beginning to ache because I was too shy to try out any restaurants. After becoming accustomed to Korean food and being able to read Korean menus, being alone in a new country where I was unable to read menus made me nervous again. After finally deciding to just go for it, I stopped in to a little curry shop with picture menus and enjoyed a nice fried pork cutlet curry dish.

After dinner, I decided to check out "Snack Team", a bar I had stumbled past several times on my wanderings. The sign outside boasted of blues/rock, and the bar did in fact deliver this. Unfortunately, I was the only patron in the bar, and things were a little awkward between the owner and myself, as neither of us was particularly fluent in the other's language. He did have an excellent blues collection, and a really nice assortment of dusty stereo equipment from the 1970's. My guy put on a very nice Buddy Guy live in Tokyo DVD, and that gave us a bit of a distraction. I sucked down three Kirin draft beers, and was a little disappointed to get the bill, which clocked in just shy of US$30. I justified it to myself by remembering that I was the poor guy's only customer all night. Cool bar though.

I woke up late Saturday morning to make a new friend in my roommate, a guy from California who is into traveling, indie rock, and philosophy. Needless to say, we had plenty to talk about. We attempted to go to the Sapporo brewery, but ended up at the old Sapporo brewery, which is now a mall. Luckily, there was a bit of an impromptu petting zoo going on the central plaza, featuring many strange animals, including a nice beaver. We finally determined that we needed to be at the new Sapporo factory, and quickly made the trek north to the actual factory. Upon arrival, we were a little disappointed to find out that we couldn't really tour the actual beer production facilities, only the "beer museum". Despite the lack of English signage, the beer museum was interesting and fairly informative. There was a very bizarre depiction of the beer brewing process using strange cartoon-like characters, and a wide array of historical Sapporo packaging and product samples.

After the tour, we stepped into the sampling room, and each went for the variety tray. We made friends with a very endearing group of folks sitting next to us, and then they bought us each a beer and snack on their way out. Having not eaten all day, we stepped out in the day squinting from the bright light and neatly buzzing. We wandered downtown and feasted on Sapporo's nearly famous miso ramen. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city, checking out the parks, and just exploring. We toured a great Japanese grocery store, where we picked up a six pack of Yebisu "The Hop" tall boys, and some dinner box sets. We headed back home via the Hokkaido University campus, and found a lovely creekside bench on which to enjoy our dinners and beers. Upon arrival back at our hostel, we grabbed Kai's guitar (which he has carried for eight months from India up to Japan) and sat out on the street trading songs late into the night.

I got up early the next day and began my trek out to Daisetsuzan National Park, and Asahidake, the tallest peak in Hokkaido. I had originally been interested in camping, hiking, and perhaps even some backpacking around the peak of Asahidake, but as I neared the resort area, it became clear that the weather was more fitted to skiing than hiking and backpacking. Several meters of snow still piled up on the ground at the mountain's base. It also became clear that I had picked one of the most popular holiday weeks for domestic travel in Japan. I arrived at the resort area greeted by basically laughing faces at the two reasonably priced places to stay when I told them I didn't have a reservation but wanted a bed for the night. I grumpily decided to suck it up and try the giant, super fancy hotel across the street. I started to panic when even that place was booked up. Luckily, there was an incredibly friendly, English speaking woman at the desk who offered to call around and find me a room. The staff of this super classy lodge were more than willing to invite my sweaty, dirty, backpacked self into their reception seating area and offer me tea. The women got me a single room down the road, and I stumbled down to check in. The room ran me about US$100, but it did involve a nice dinner and a warm, private shower.

Despite the setbacks, Asahidake was a wonderful and stunning area. The mountain rose majestically in the background, and rustic log lodges dotted the snowy, forested hills. A nice little river ran through the "town", steaming from the hot mineral spring water that washed out from the many onsen (public baths). The air was clean and cold and wonderful. It was just what I needed, an open space, a tall mountain, and peopleless landscape. Having gotten my mountain fix, I left on the bus next morning and headed down to a town on the edge of the mountains.

going merry

2007-03-30T02:13:00.000+09:00

Korea is the most homogeneous place I have ever been. Aside from being one of the most genetically homogeneous places on Earth, it is also extremely culturally homogeneous. This means every one dresses the same, acts the same, generally just fits into the flow of things. If you're a dude over 20, you constantly have a cigarette hanging out of your mouth. If you're a lady, you are constantly decked out in the latest fashion trends. There is a saying that goes "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". Apparently so, because I've seen very few nails sticking up, especially in Daejeon.

Imagine our excitement, then, when we stumbled upon a freshly minted punk club called "Going Merry" last November. We immediately went in to see what was going on, but it turned out they weren't open yet. The dudes we talked to invited us to their opening show the following Saturday. Of course we would be there, if for no other reason to see what exactly Korean punk looks like.

As it turned out, we were at "Santa Claus", a popular western bar about a block from Going Merry the next Saturday, and we tromped down around 11:00 pm to check out the show. What we found was a long table of Koreans eating dinner and listening to Meatloaf. It was slightly awkward. This was not a show. Luckily, one of the guys was Korean-American, and explained to us that shows in Korea start around 7:30, and that we had missed the action. We stayed for a beer anyway.

My third journey into Going Merry came about three weeks ago when Taylor and I had dinner at a restaurant down the street. After a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, the NOFX blaring out of the speakers on the street convinced us that we should step in for a beer or two. We were disappointed that Punk in Drublic was not playing inside, and the bar was almost completely empty. The only other party there was a middle aged businessman and his date sitting at table littered in Heineken bottles. We got a couple of beers, and the guy working asked us if there was anything we wanted to hear. Naturally, soon he had some nice NOFX blaring for us. Soon we couldn't help noticing that the businessman's date was passed out on the table while he was having a heated discussion with someone on his cell phone. This lasted for at least 20 minutes before they took off. On our way out, we ascertained two pieces of information: 1) NOFX is playing in Seoul in April; 2) there was a show at Going Merry the next Saturday at 7:30 sharp. We would be there on time.

We got to Going Merry about 8:24, and there was an all girl band raging on stage. Their main aspect going for them was sex appeal, not quality sound or song-writing. They were brash and strong in performance, as you would suspect, but off stage, they were as shy as the stereotypical young Korean woman. The next band was a standard punk band. The final band was definitely the best of the night. They were from Seoul (as I think all the bands we saw were), and interestingly enough, had one dude who was American. About half the songs and banter were in Korean, and the other half were in English. This was actually a pretty fair ratio, considering the audience was about 60-40 foreigners (which I didn't like at first, but learned to deal with).

At the end of the show, the American guy shouted "I don't drink anymore, who's got the chronic?" He was bummed that they were heading back to Seoul immediately so we couldn't bring him back to the apartment later for a little snack. But seriously, if you are lucky enough to sniff out any dope in this country, who's going to bring it out with them?

new zealand memo - vol. 3 - street booze and music

2007-03-16T12:32:00.000+09:00

When you travel in a group of at least 10, plus extras, the only way to roll is in a giant blue van. That goes double when a number of your crew are also carrying musical instruments. Before coming to New Zealand, Jenine had joined a bike circus for the summer and fall, in which she had traveled through Mongolia, down China, and into Southeast Asia. In China, she picked up a bazoonie (some sort of large brass instrument), and she came to Auckland with this dented, metal monstrosity and a fiendish drive for street performance. She instilled this love of busking in several folks there, which was why we had bazoonies, guitars, harmonicas, tambourines and bucket drums booming, buzzing humming, clapping and strumming as we cruised downtown in Keiran's van. I decided driving around with a live band in your car is the only way to roll.

Our destination was the opening night of the Auckland Festival, in a downtown park, where we had heard there would be a pyrotechnics show. I had spent the previous days in the depths of an infatuation with readily available and comparably (to Korea at least) cheap New Zealand wines, so I came armed with a nice Pinot Noir and Merlot/Cab blend, which seem to be two staples of NZ wines. The event was a huge gathering in an amphitheater shaped grassy bowl, mostly a family event. The word from the stage was that there were 60,000 people there. As darkness was falling, there was terribly cheesy music coming from the main stage, our buskers went out to ease those 60,000 people of their burdensome pocket change, and we were doing our best to keep our doping unnoticed by the families surrounding us. I was pleasantly ripped when the fire show started. We had all expected the show to be a fireworks show, but it was basically just an extravaganza of leaping flames and fireballs. Unlike I anything I had ever seen. The whole demonstration was set to the same terrible live band, and my favorite part was when they chilled it down, and small flames were shooting up to a solo smooth jazz sax improv solo.

After the show, 60,000 people were let loose on the streets of Auckland, with the predictable consequence that the sidewalks were packed, and your only hope was to swim with the flow of bodies, as if you were caught in a human avalanche. Luckily, Jenine was tooting away on her bazoonie the whole time, so we could all hear and rally around her when we got separated or had to dip into the bushes to water them. At one point, the crowd bottlenecked onto a bridge, and the people took over the road, blocking both lanes of traffic. The crowds persisted for what seemed like unnecessary distances.

Somehow, we reached K Road, a popular bar/porn store area just on the edge of downtown. Our plan was to get a drink at the Wine Cellar, but pretty soon an impromptu busk had self-organized itself at the intersection of the sidewalk and a covered pedestrian shopping mall. Jenine put out her sign from the circus that reads "We come from different countries. We travel the world by bicycle. Any money or food you can give us would be greatly appreciated...". Most of this was only marginally true; luckily no one pushed us on how we had gotten to NZ on our bikes. Our "busk" was more like a get together of drunken Appalachian hillbilly children than any sort of organized performance, but people stopped to watch and seemed to enjoy it anyway. Looking back, I'm slightly surprised we didn't encounter any sort of legal problems, considering we were openly drinking, and somehow my 3/4 full bottle of pinot ended up smashed on the concrete, leaving what looked like a pool of blood. Jenine's bazoonie boomed low, Jake's guitar was missing both the A and B strings, and several of us had only our clapping hands and stomping feet as instruments. Nonetheless, we had a small crowd of fans, and our hat soon filled with roughly $35, a bottle of wine, several bags of salty snack foods, and a full cooked chicken. The act may have been saved by Jenine's magic tricks.

After a good run of it, after the guitar was totally banged out of tune, and the chicken had been picked to the bones (mostly by me), we slipped into the bar right next to where we had caused the scene in order to count our loot. After splitting up the pot, we moved slowly along K Road in the direction of home, stopping at the place with the "strongest coffee in Auckland" (their espresso machine looked like something out of a steel mill), a Cuban dance club, and a gay karaoke bar. On the walk home, our guitar was out of commission, so we had to settle for singing an a capella rendition of the entire Graceland album.

new zealand memo - vol. 2 - weddingness

2007-03-15T12:12:00.000+09:00

Possibly one of my favorite things about New Zealand is that you don't have to wear shoes to many places that you would have to in most other countries. Grocery stores, chill restaurants, it's even normal to see people tramping about on glass shard infested city streets without any sort of foot covering. So of course, when Keiran and Mayana went to get registered to marry, we all clambered into Keiran's big blue van, and he jumped in the driver's seat sans shoes. Why all 9 of us were needed to go fill out paperwork for 4 of us to marry (Hana and Jake also registered at this time) was unknown, but those of not filling out the forms to wed were eventually told to remove ourselves from our loitering spot in the lobby. Keiran's shoelessness, on the other hand, was not a problem at all.

Not that Mayana and Keiran were getting married that day; the day was Monday, and they had to wait at least three days before they could marry (some sort of "cooling off period"?). So the wedding was set for Friday morning, to be done at the legal minimum, right there in the Office of Internal Affairs.

Keiran, Sondre and I returned from our manly house building excursion on Thursday night, dusty, muddy, smelly, bloody in some places, and exhausted. Keiran and Mayana went home, but Sondre and I were dragged to a kiwi indie rock show. In retrospect, the show was totally worth going to, despite near delirium levels of exhaustion. We boozed hard and late on strong kiwi beers, watching "The Mint Chicks" play their super loud and fast brand of art rock. By the time we stumbled home, we had about four hours before we had to be up and ready for the wedding festivities. Who gets married at 9:30 in the morning, anyway?

There was a celebratory breakfast downtown before we formed a small procession to the Internal Affairs Office. The bridesmaids were all in impromptu costumes of short skirts and/or shorts, with knee high striped colorful socks. Keiran was barefoot in his best black shorts and a nice black button up shirt. Mayana had a long black dress accentuated by a bright orange netting veil. Sondre and I were the boring ones, dressed in nearly normal attire. We paraded in a line two-by-two through the morning downtown Auckland buzz, singing "Going to chapel, and we're gonna get married" at high volumes.

Luckily, the Internal Affairs Office was nearly empty at this hour, so the scene we caused there didn't upset too many innocent bystanders. We were all invited to "the chapel", which was basically a conference room in the corner of the office. A very nice woman came in to officiate the service. The vows went something like this: "I, Keiran Donnely, see no legal impediment to this marriage taking place...". I was getting a bit cynical about the dryness of the whole proceedings, until I saw the look in Keiran and Mayana's eyes, and realized that as silly and goofy as this spectacle was, it really was a representation of their love. And that's cool. If you are a goofy person, you absolutely should have a goofy (or at least unorthodox) wedding. What would have been truly ridiculous would have been for these two to get married in some kind of super planned, formal, traditional wedding in a large church, with a long white dress, mountains of flowers, long church service, etc. No, no, no, for this kind of love, only a 9:30 am, barefoot, striped stocking, conference room wedding would do.

After the verbal service was completed, there was the all-important and romantic signing of the documents, which we all watched with the same fascination as the service. There was even some audience participation on this one, as two witnesses were needed to sign the documents. After this was completed, our marriage officiate congratulated the couple, and left the room. Seeing as we were apparently free to use the room for some period of time longer, we did the only reasonable activity we could, and had an extensive photo shoot with all the fun props in the room.
After leaving the Internal Affairs office, we climbed back into the blue van, which had been haphazardly covered in "just married" regalia, and drove off into the sunset.

new zealand memo - vol. 1 - moving to the bush

2007-03-12T10:49:00.000+09:00

If you would have asked me four years ago about my life goals, I probably would have talked your ear off about building a simple home somewhere in New Zealand, and sustaining my own life, isolated from the destructive systems of contemporary society. Lofty goal, indeed, and one that I have since tweaked, reconsidered, bordered on abandoning, etc. Not that I don't still in principle agree with the idea that I should play no supporting role in current agricultural, social, and political practices, I'm just not as sure that moving to the bush and ignoring it all is the proper way to solve our problems as I used to be. I still believe the most important practice to pursue in life is relying more on yourself and less on destructive practices, but I now think that you need to do this in a city, not isolated in the wilderness.

But this memo is not about my beliefs on the topic, rather it is about my experiences with someone who holds my former beliefs, and is actually pursuing them. Keiran is the real deal. He is currently building his simple home in the bush, where he will live with minimal impact on the earth, and for the most part not contributing to the trouble the rest of us are causing.
Keiran picked up a 47 acre parcel of land about two hours north of Auckland for the astonishing price of NZ$65,000. The property is surrounded by cleared pasture land, but has itself been left for about 30 years, and has subsequently returned to bush (causing the government to put a ban on clearing it for sheep pasture, and the reason it was so affordable.)

I had the pleasure of accompanying Keiran out to work on his home for a couple of days. He, Sondre (sp?) and I clambered into his big blue van on a wet early morning and made the trek north through horrendous morning rush hour Auckland traffic. The land we traveled through was once covered by massive Kauri forests, only small pockets of which still remain. (For the record, Kauri trees are probably the most amazing trees I have ever seen.) Keiran's land was once covered in Kauri's but now sustains more modest recently regrown forest. Even so, it's amazing how much the forest can return in roughly 30 years.

We passed through the nearby town of Paparoa, and then traveled about 12 km down gravel road to a small driveway off to the side. From here, Keiran's property spills down the hillside, fills in a boggy marsh at the bottom, and then climbs up the opposite ridge. The surrounding terrain consists of nice rolling hills. The house site sits about about a three minute scramble down from the road. The building is completely un-permitted, but by far the lowest impact building site I have ever been to. All the materials and tools are carried in by hand, all digging is done by hand, and the house lies tucked right into the surrounding trees. If you get more than 10 m away from the house, it totally disappears into the forest.

It's amazing to see a house actually being built the way I have imagined doing it so many times. I am usually skeptical of people with high-minded talk of just going out and building a house in the wo0ds (including myself), but Keiran is extremely serious and definitely knows what he's doing. In two months of working by himself one or two days a week, he has framed the entire house, and almost completed the second story flooring. The house is modest size, one big room downstairs, with a kitchen coming off the side, and then a large room upstairs. It looks fantastic; Keiran is using whatever building materials (recycled or otherwise) he can easily come across, but the house doesn't have the hodge-podge look that projects like that tend to take on. All the water will be collected from the roof of the house and nearby shed, and the gray water will be used for the garden. Cooking will be done on a wood burning stove, and solar panels will provide small amounts of electricity. This is going to be bush living in its pure form.

We started working as soon as we got there. Keiran was working on framing the kitchen off to the side of the main room, and Sondre started putting weather boarding (walls) on the frame. Due to limited tools, we couldn't all work on carpentry projects, so I was given tasks working on the land, which was quite suiting to me. My first job was to survey and cut out a new, less steep trail to the building site. The existing trail is quite steep in spots, and not suitable for carrying down some of the larger items that will come later. It took basically the entire first day for me to scope out a suitably graded path and the cut it out from the bush using the machete. The end result then required a serious amount of hand digging to level it out. I had leveled about a 2 m patch when darkness fell and we had to quit for the day. Dinner consisted of a delicious salad , complete with venison sausage, washed down with about half a bottle of cheap red wine. We were in bed before 10 pm. Due to tent problems, "bed" consisted of the three of us curling up in the back of the van. I had been extremely skeptical of the feasibility of this project, but was happily surprised by how miraculously it ended up working out.

Day two consisted of the guys continuing their respective projects, while I worked on a new drainage ditch for the freshly cut driveway. My entire body was burning when Keiran announced that we'd be quitting early (5 pm), taking a walk, and then heading home. Even so, I was severely disappointed that I had not been able to fully complete the ditch. Keiran took us for a tour of the property, including the original house site, which was across the valley on the far hill, and would have been a disaster to get materials to. Keiran has eventual plans of building a community in those trees, with other families moving in, a community building, and even an internet cafe at the top of the hill where you can get cellular reception. I hope to return to NZ to see how his dreams shape up.

korean health care

2007-03-02T18:08:00.000+09:00

First of all, I have now completed my sentence of doom in the Veritas Winter Intensive Program. By the time it was all said and done, I was actually sad to say goodbye to my kids on Wednesday. Most of them I will see in a week and a half, so that's no big deal, but many of them are moving on to high school and will no longer be attending my classes. Those were the hard goodbyes, especially one of my favorite, hard working students, Gaigurina. (Only her nickname, it roughly means "frog princess".) She was crying for about twenty minutes at the front desk, and when I tried to cheer her up, I only started crying too. Working like a machine for two months really sucks, but it also really makes you form strong bonds with those you share the experience with.

Anyway, the point of my story involves the fact that my last day of intensives coincided with the resurgence of a strange and powerful disease that I have been battling for the past 40 days. The symptoms come and go, and I am never full-blown ill, but I often wake up in the night not being able to breath. But just as this entry is not about my crying students, it's also not about me trying to get sympathy, so I will leave the description of my illness where it stands.

The point of this entry, if you are wondering at this point, is the excellency of the Korean health care system. In Korea, you don't need health insurance, because the government subsidized health care is astoundingly affordable. They are even happy to extend the gift to foreigners who are legally living and working in the country. I trucked down to the medical clinic about two blocks from my house today, and was greeted by smiling nurses. I handed over my Alien Registration Card, and there weren't even any forms to fill out. Before I had read half a page in my book, I was whisked in to see a doctor who spoke close to perfect English. He was not particularly impressed with my symptoms, and mostly was concerned about whether I had anything "coming up from the throat". After explaining that I was also experiencing nausea, he wanted to know if I had anything "coming up from the stomach". I didn't have to strip down and put on a gown, he just listened to my heart and breathing by lifting up my shirt (actually, the nurse lurking around unnecessarily assisted me in holding my shirt up). We just had a chat, as makes sense, without any of the bullshit you get in an American doctor's office.

He ended up writing me a hefty regiment of drugs (no antibiotics), and I was sent on my way less than 20 minutes after I arrived. My bill for the visit came out to less than $7, and I was able to pick up my prescription in the basement of the same building for about $11 (for three days worth of six different pills). Even with health insurance in the U.S., my bill would have been at triple what I paid here. The woman in the pharmacy spoke a little English, and said she felt bad that my prescription was "very expensive". I told her it was no big deal.

At this point, you're probably wondering how much of my teaching salary is being deducted to pay for this incredible system. The answer is: I pay 5% income tax, and that is the rate for everyone in my income bracket, not just foreigners. There's no sales tax in Korea. I suspect that property taxes must be high, but I have no evidence to back this up. I have absolutely no idea how the government affords to ensure everyone gets reasonable health care at reasonable prices, but I think it's wonderful. I think this is worth looking into, especially because today's New York Times reports a majority of Americans are demanding a solution to the dismal state of medical services in "the most prosperous nation".

My next entry will probably be from the summer climate of New Zealand. I can't fucking wait.

reflections on the korean landscape

2007-02-08T23:39:00.000+09:00

Korea is not, strictly speaking, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's mountainous and pleasant, but not in a jaw-dropping, stunning way that parts of the world can be. The scenery is scaled, not fantastic. The mountains are small. The rivers are, for the most part, calm, and you can almost always see some evidence of human existence.

But it's nice to look at. Especially through the window of a moving train. The land kind of folds out around you in a calm, comfortable way. Although you can take a bullet train that will often exceed 200km/h, I've come to prefer the slow train. This is not only for the added reading time, but also for the more accessible view. The major mountains cut north-south along the eastern side of the peninsula, so the trip to Busan (on the southeast corner) is more scenic than the trip to Seoul (in the northwest corner, tucked right in near the DMZ).

Today, however, was a good day for a train ride home from Seoul. This was maybe the third time I have seen fog in Korea, but the hazy air created an interesting feel to the landscape. At first I thought that it reminded me of the Pacific Northwest, but I soon realized it was completely different (and that I was just home(kind of)sick.) For instance, fog in the mighty Columbia Gorge hides or partially masks a dramatic landscape of immense basalt outcroppings, equally immense douglas fir, and magical spraying waterfalls. In Korea, there is nothing so spectacular lurking in the clouds. The fog rather gives a quiet, almost sad feel to the landscape. This is not to say that you can't get a little sad rolling northeast on highway 199 in late November, passing quiet small towns and smoke clouds billowing out the chimneys of school buses-turned-homes. But that is a rugged, cool sadness; a visual expression of the struggle to forge an existence in that towering, wet wonderland. As if a landscape could single handedly demonstrate the character of the Stamper family. In Korea, there is no formidable nature to stand up against, and what there is has been conquered and incorporated into human existence.

Cutting across the northeast corner of the Republic of Korea in a thick fog is like combining the scenery outside of Newark, NJ with the soft, weathered mountains of northern New South Wales. There are rivers. And there are mountains. And there are forests. But there are also many, many factories. Many sites housing enormous pieces of industrial trash; just the kind of iron and steel graveyard that fascinated me as a child. The fog clinging to a sweeping river valley partially obscures the view of a huge, windowless building, itself pushing out clouds of some kind of vapor, which immediately melts into the mist. The factory is not new (has anyone every seen a new, shiny factory? One that doesn't look rusty and heavy with the weight of the world?). And there is a town surrounding the factory. It is not new either. The houses are of the tile-roof, classic east-Asian style, but the roof is more often made of faux-tile corrugated metal. The buildings don't match, and the town looks like it just kind of happened there. Around every bend, or after every tunnel, it's a different factory and town, and the space in between that isn't too steep is all devoted to cascading rice fields. In early February, all the trees are without their leaves, and all the rice fields are a dead brown. Especially in the fog, it all comes together to make you feel quiet, sad, lonely, tired.

When you live in the ritzy part of a young and rapidly developing city, it is easy to think that everything in Korea is tall, new buildings that seem to go up in a matter of weeks, pretty girls in short skirts, and shiny cars. It's not, as a foggy train ride clearly demonstrates. Prosperity is a recent phenomenon, and definitely not one that applies to everyone. The landscape mentioned above shows the recent manufacturing basis of the Korean economy. The forests are not tall or mature, a mix of pine and deciduous trees. A testament to the fact that most of the entire peninsula was flattened and burned in the 1950's.

The foggy air blanketing the huge rusty buildings, small mountains, and low trees doesn't strike you with awe, but it definitely inspires emotion and thought. And that's really what a good landscape does, anyway.

makoli and escorts

2007-01-22T22:49:00.000+09:00

One interesting difference between teaching in the US and Korea is the attitude towards discussion of teacher recreation with your students. It is perfectly permissible to discuss boozing in front of and/or with your middle school students (within reason, of course (i.e. it's okay to say "I drink soju", but I tend to shy away from mentioning things like "So I suddenly I found myself in a taxi with some Irish dude at 7:30 in the morning.")). So it wasn't a problem that Brian (the crazy guy depicted in the last blog) was telling the entire school we were going out for makoli on Friday night. (Makoli is fermented rice milk, about 6% alcohol, and costs about $1 a liter.) We thought it was a little different when Brian was boozing a tall boy in the hallway on our way out when a bunch of kids from the hagwon next door came rushing out. Our fellow teachers and boss assured us that it was totally chill.

Soon enough, we were neck deep in makoli and questionable side dishes. Makoli is always served from a purposefully dented copper kettle, and you drink it by the bowl-full. The taste is not nearly as objectionable as you might guess. The side dishes were a truly new experience (even after almost 5 months in Korea), and included raw cow liver and stomach, and what was described as chicken "pieces" (very cartilageneous). We were all soon ripped to the gills, and moved on to the next spot.

"The next spot" was a No-Rae-Bang (for new readers, karaoke room) next door. Now, I'd always heard about hiring "girls" when you go to the no-rae-bang, but had only had a moderate encounter with this. We walked straight into a room full of eight women in short skirts. This encounter didn't last long, however, as my boss barked several phrases in Korean, and soon we were back on the street. Once outside, he declared that those girls were too "homely". I couldn't really argue with him.

We dipped into a billards hall to play a game. Korean people love to booze, but the one place you would think would be a booze house (the pool hall) is actually alcohol free. It was about 10:30, we were all shredded, and everyone else in the hall was a serious and sober pool fiend. I don't think our presence was appreciated. I was on a team against our boss, and soon he was talking shit about $100 being taken out of our pay check if we lost; a bit of a wager. After I sunk the 8 ball, the obvious question was "when will I get my hundred bucks?" The answer was that it would come out of my fellow employees' (his teammates) paychecks. As we were walking out, a strange song began playing in my head:

The Story of Donn-i the Daegu Dude

forty bucks
forty bucks
too much to pay
for a love hotel
in this town

gyeongju
two thousand years old
a city but sooo cold
and the round hills rolled
over the old dead kings

fourteen kilos of raw oyster
and seasnail
good for health
washed down in soju

no-rae-bang
whiskey splash beer
the girl so awkward
next to taylor
at the end of the table like
snoop dogg

forty bucks
forty bucks
too much to pay
for a love hotel
in this town

The song faded away as we snuck into another no-rae-bang. We went into a room that was girl-less, and started singing. A pack full of girls was sent in after not too long, but of course Donn-i sent them away, demanding a less "homely" bunch. I was halfway through "Dancing in the Dark" when the second group showed up. I had imagined that the girls just kind of came in and hung out with the group of dudes. Not quite how it works. Everybody gets their own girl, who sits with you, talks to you (awkward when this just involves her talking at you in Korean), hands you your drink, and dances with you when you sing. Extremely odd and interesting.

There was much Korean singing, wasting, and I even tried my hand at a Skid Row tune I hadn't heard in ten years. All of a sudden, our time was up, all the girls darted out of the room, and it was time for us to go. We were all about ready to go by this point, and one of our party had even slipped out to nap on a bench in the hallway.

Brian and I headed downtown in a cab with the deskman. We were ecstatic about the fact that he might join us at the western bars. No such luck, he cut us loose and headed home. I ended up at SugarWatermelon, packed in against the Koreans. At least I made it home before 7:30 in the morning.

one down

2007-01-18T22:49:00.000+09:00

One of my best students has been in the hospital all week with pneumonia. She blames the illness almost exclusively on our hagwon, but apparently she wants to do her homework while she's there. In a show of unfortunate timing, the above photo was posted on our school page the day before we found out Yoon Hee was in the hospital. The funny thing is, nobody (including hospital girl) seems even the slightest bit offended or upset.

You can't make this shit up.

caffeine and kyul

2007-01-10T22:18:00.000+09:00

I know that bloggers who fail to post at least once a week lose their audience. I know this specifically because I have bailed on many a blogger who couldn't keep their shit together. So it is with great dismay that I now realize it has been multiple weeks since my last post. Happy New Year, Holidays, christmas, Kwanza etc. to all. I at least have an intense excuse for neglecting my blog duties in this holiday season. One word sums it up: intensive.

Intensive sessions are what Korean kids do on their winter vacation. Instead of going to their regular school all day, they come to hagwons all day. I think that the hagwon schedule is actually quite a bit more rigorous than the public school schedule, so vacation for Korean kids is actually during the school year.

This is not to say that the intensive schedule is easy for teachers. It is very, very far from easy. Since our regular term ended on December 29, I have been working upwards of 13 hour days everyday, including Saturdays and Sundays. Not that I'm actually teaching that whole time, I only teach from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm Monday through Friday. But Veritas (my employer) has a reputation as the most prestigious hagwon in Daejon, so we've got serious standards to keep up. This includes writing and producing the necessary materials to push my students near the edge of insanity on a daily basis. Daily quizzes, memorization, hours of homework, and handouts, handouts, handouts. If the kids aren't moaning in agony every second of class, the parents call and complain, because that's what they're paying for.

More about how hard we push our students. Last Friday (end of Week 1), our boss came into the office and announced the disgrace that our middle school kids were going to bed before midnight. His exact wording for this was that it was "unprecedented". We all got a scolding for not assigning enough homework. The same day, we also later received a scolding because no parents had yet called to complain that we were assigning too much homework. The students attend 4 hours at our hagwon everyday, and at least that much at other hagwons. On the average, they receive at least one hour of homework per hour of class. In reality, probably much more than that. But, if we don't drive them crazy, we lose our standing as top dog in Daejon. Here's the kicker: my co-worker told me that last winter intensive ten or our students went to the hospital (I'm assuming for stress and exhaustion-related conditions). That's bad enough, but the point he was trying to make was that that was how we got our excellent reputation.

Now, how the teachers work. First of all, we beefed up our teacher force by about double. Our office was already ass-to-ankles, but now it's ass-to-ass-to-ankles. Two of the imported teachers are living with our boss, one of them sleeping on his floor. Not that they ever really go there; as far as I can tell, they are at the hagwon from about 6:30 to 4:00 am every day. If you can imagine not only prepping and teaching all these classes, but grading the intense amounts of homework we are giving our roughly 400 students every day, it makes sense that 20 hour days are necessary. So far, I've escaped the worst of it, and am managing a luxurious 6-7 hours of sleep per night. Some of the ones that aren't sleeping are slowly slipping into deep delirious dementia. We are officially living on high doses of kyul (mandarin oranges) and caffeine.

When it gets late and we are still working, and starting to get really crazy, sometimes the joke comes out that we will be the first hagwon to kill a student with homework. Doesn't seem actually possible, but this is the country where multiple people have died from video games. I'm serious. Imagine what that kind of publicity could do for our reputation.

signing off from official insane-o world.

the role of intellectuals in the dumbening of america

2006-12-17T22:43:00.000+09:00

I am willing to admit that I took a certain amount of snobbish joy in writing the essay on the dumbening of America. What is truly a depressing topic somehow brought joy to me as I wrote about it. Of course, that's why you choose to write about whatever you write about. A journalist who writes about the horrors of war in Africa can feel good about their writing because they have related important information to the world. And while I know a good deal of my joy in the "dumbness" piece comes from this, I worry that some of it comes from something deeper and more sinister. There is that lurking overwhelming sense of pride in the fact that I am not a dumb American.

Intellectuals have always celebrated their lives apart from most of humanity. Traditionally, European intellectuals were always from the privileged classes, scorning the silly masses. And though today's American intellectuals (in theory) represent all races and classes, I wonder if this better-than-you mentality is not only present, but also dangerous to American society.

Being an intellectual is always tragic; there is inevitably the sense of having battled against some adversarial force. This adversary is most commonly the society of idiots who just won't let the intellectual be themselves. But despite their complaining about this, I think there is a certain thread in the intellectual tradition that needs this opposition. There is a sense that one's greatness only exists in measure to the relative stupidity of those around you. If America (or the world) stopped being dumb, where would the intellectuals be? They'd be the same as everyone else. This is what they (we) all espouse to support, but could they (we) really stand the scenario of not being the smartest kid in the classroom anymore?

What I'm getting at is that I say I wish everyone read the New York Times every morning, but I secretly take pleasure in the fact that I am one a small number of people who actually do read the New York Times every morning. I wish that Fox News didn't exist, but I feel self-important knowing (and saying) that it is bullshit. The Daily Show is what I consider the pinnacle of television, yet it's entire premise is laughing at (and thus enjoying?) America's descent into dumbness. Is this smart, cynical attitude somehow responsible for the stupidity?

It would be very difficult to draw a direct causal connection. However, intellectuals make no secret of their attempts to cordon themselves off from the world. I am currently in a state of near personal crisis regarding my decision whether or not to attempt to enter the tower of academia. It's a wonderful, enlightened place, but the hoops are so high, and the people are so snobby, I don't know if it's worth it. This is where the partitioning of society begins. Those with PhD's scorn those without them, when in truth, being granted one is based on about 43% skill and 57% popularity contest. Being the brightest is definitely an exclusive club, and I wonder if that attitude among our best educated somehow contributes to America's dumbness.

Certainly the intellectual snobbishness doesn't aid in achieving a truce in the culture war, but does it really contribute to the stupidity of those in the other trenches? Is there something about the way that we say "everyone should listen to NPR" that makes the masses prefer Fox News? Could we be subconsciously doing this on purpose?

I certainly fucking hope not, because I feel that I honestly, sincerely believe it when I say that everyone should listen to NPR and read the New York Times. Sure I take pride in the fact that I do these things, but I don't think I would take any less pride if everyone else did them too. I take pride in doing them simply because it is the right thing to do. Doing the right thing doesn't feel any less good if everyone else is doing it. It's fun to be the smartest kid in the class, but it's also much more fun to be in a class full of smart kids than a class full of idiots.

the dumbening of america

2006-12-17T18:05:00.000+09:00

My boss asked us all to write an essay for him. Thought I might as well post it.

When recent polls show that a clear majority of Americans now believe we should not have invaded Iraq, the obvious question is “where were these people four years ago?” How is it possible that most Americans could see the Iraq war as the scam it was/is only after four years of blood, bombs, and billions of dollars in defense spending? I believe we are dealing with an American public that has been and continues to be severely “dumbened” by its government and media. The deterioration of the public school system, focusing on standardized test scores, and not on critical thinking skills is the first cause of this problem. The second is a media that increasingly insists on breaking the world and its complexities into simple, fast thirty-second segments.

The intellectual decline of America is a significant issue not only for myself and my country of origin, but for the entire world. Due to the global dominance of the United States, the stupidity of the American public can have consequences for all nations and peoples. The Iraq war is the most prominent reminder of this fact. Many Americans do not consider issues and events in any detail, or with any analysis, often failing to perceive the connections between actions and circumstances. They have very little knowledge of or interest in the complex factors that create the world we live in. In a democratic system, a country of shallow thinkers is poorly equipped to pick qualified leaders. When that country is a world super-power, the situation has global effects.

A public education system that increasingly ignores the teaching of critical thinking plays a lead role in America’s declining intelligence. Education in the United States has fallen behind worldwide standards, largely due to lack of funding. The solution to this problem has been to implement a system of monitoring schools based on standardized test scores. This leads to a situation where teachers must focus on preparing their students for the barrage of multiple-choice tests taken on a yearly basis. The problem with this approach is that standardized tests by nature cannot gauge critical thinking skills. Thus, teachers do not teach critical thinking skills, because they are not part of the standardized testing regiment. A whole generation of Americans now has memorized facts where their ability to think, question, make inferences, and see connections should be.

While the education system affects only the youth, the U.S. media makes idiots out of Americans of all ages. Most Americans no longer get their news from print (or written) media, opting instead for the speed and sheen of television. While television is not inherently bad as a media, in practice, television news is over simplified, sensationalized, and sped up to a dizzying pace. Television news usually gives multifaceted issues and events a simple treatment in a thirty-second clip, before moving on to the next story. In addition to simplification, television news fails its viewers in terms of content. Important stories that actually affect peoples’ lives are ignored, while inconsequential but sensational stories are headlines. The result is an American public that thinks in simple terms about current events, while often being completely ignorant of an important event’s occurrence or significance.

Thus, Americans are being “dumbened” by their public school system and media. This is troubling not only because of American power in the world at large, but also because of America’s influence on global culture. Will the entire world follow the U.S. down the road to idiocy?

seoul

2006-12-15T23:00:00.000+09:00

It's no secret that teachers expose themselves to an unusually high amount of infection causing bacteria and viruses. Every time one of my students coughs or sneezes, I cringe and try to hide behind my podium. Unfortunately, these high-tech attempts at disease control appeared to have failed miserably, as I was made miserable two weeks ago by some sort of Asian super-cold. Rather than stay home and nurse myself the first weekend I came down with the illness, I was whisked away on a weekend trip to Gyeongju and Daegu by my boss. (A journey so bizarre it could only be related through some sort of Pynchonesque story-within-a-song-within-a-story in some future post.) By last Friday, I was producing green phlegm in silver-dollar-sized dollops. However, once again, it was time to travel, so instead of resting, I hopped a bullet train for Seoul.

Now, everyone is grumpy when they are sick, but I have a very special talent of insisting on doing something (like traveling to Seoul), and then having a bad attitude about it the entire time because I'm sick. As you may have guessed, negative attitudes tainted much of our trip.

There's nothing in principle, or in practice, to dislike about Seoul right off the bat; it's big, exciting, happening, and easy to navigate. That said, stepping off the train from Daejon in Seoul Station is much like arriving in Grand Central Station fresh from Portland. The speed of the city astounds you so much that you feel everyone around you can literally see your eyes bugging out of your face. I felt like a country bumpkin peeling and eating my mandarin oranges (kyul) in the packed and crammed subway line. Of course, the shock and awe wears off as soon as you've completed your first successful multi-line subway trip without incident.

Our first destination was Dongdaemoon, the east gate market district. I love markets, and was hoping for some crazy-exciting wares that cannot be found at the Joongangno market in Daejon. It was a real shame that poor planning brought us to Dongdaemoon right as the final rays of light were disappearing from the sky, the bitter dry chill was setting in, and the marketeers were shutting down for the evening. As an unfortunate side note, what we did see of the market seemed to indicate that it contains exactly the same cheap goods peddled in Joonangno, just more of them. By the time we were getting back on the subway, I was already making snide comments like "I don't even know why we came here."

The next stop was Itaewon, the "Little America" of Seoul. Already, we had been seeing far more westerners than we are used to, and feeling a little off put by it. But Itaewon, whoa, that place is foreigner central. Some things are annoying, like the hordes of silly white people (in no small part due to its proximity to a major US army base), but many others things were very cool and refreshing. Examples include an all black hair saloon, and a rocking English bookstore. We had a delicious (if extremely expensive) Greek dinner before it was about time to leave Itaewon.

Hongdae is the really cool district of Seoul; it is the happening University area, where bars, shops, and art schools all combine for a hip neighborhood. Taylor was ecstatic to finally see stenciling in Korea. (I am slightly suspicious that most of the stencils were Westerner-made, though Taylor disagrees with me on this point. Unsurprisingly, not our only disagreement of the trip.) Luckily, Ben X happened to be in the neighborhood, where he was working on shooting a short movie with a gay Venezuelan filmmaker he had met in a Spanish chat group. He was able to walk us down the main strip of Hongdae, but it was Taylor who spotted "Bar Da", an inauspicious second floor bar with a seemingly secret entrance. It was extremely small but cool inside. I felt like I was back in Portland. One of the bartenders was even wearing what seemed to be a self-modified sweater. My favorite thing about Bar Da was the shoe-box size diorama of the bar built into the bar wall. (Man I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.)

When it was time to sleep, we slipped into a Ben X recommended jim jil bang (previously called a "jil jil bang"). You may know these as the public baths, but there are also sleeping accommodations, which involve one large room with hard floors that you sleep in with a bunch of clothed (or unclothed) dudes (or ladies). Did I mention I was suffering from a cold? This was not my ideal sleeping arrangement. But, in order to fulfill my ongoing desire to make the world (or at least Taylor) as miserable as me, I decided to assent to staying there so I could complain about it later. Not that I was lacking in things to complain about. The dark communal sleeping room had hard floors, and tough leather pillows. There were only three dudes in there when I crawled into bed around two, and I thought "this could work". That soon changed. Soon the room was full of (mostly) drunk, snoring Koreans, about thirty of them. I finally drifted off around four, only to wake up about five to find that the room's population had nearly doubled, and that I was centimeters away from being spooned by a half-naked Korean man. And I had to piss. I knew that as soon as I got up, my space and pillow would be devoured by the wall-to-wall sleeping mass, so I didn't even bother going back upstairs to the sleeping room. Instead, I opted to try passing out on the floor of the well-lit locker room, as roughly 15 other dudes had already done. I don't think I was drunk enough to achieve that task. By the time Taylor and I met at our appointed time of ten a.m., I was really, really salty, and looking to take it out on someone. (As a pleasant side note - my sleepless hours gave me plenty of time to boil away in the tubs, which actually helped clear out my sinuses and bronchial tubes.)

Our morning was expectedly filled with snappy comments and fights on the quarter hour. This was inflamed by the fact that the Western breakfast place we tried to go to (which, incidentally, is run by the US army) was closed. We didn't have the energy (or resolve) to battle our way through Itaewon again so early in the morning, so we had to bail on our coveted Western breakfast. We instead headed to Korea's version of a fake colonial town where you buy "authentic" souvenirs, Insadong. In retrospect, it was actually a pretty cool place, but Christmas shopping was about the only activity I felt could make me more miserable than I already was. Finally, Taylor dumped me in a Starbucks with a copy of the International Herald Tribune, and set out on her own.

It was actually a kind of blessing that our train tickets home were only available in separate seats. This allowed Taylor to make a new Korean friend, who is in the army, and thus needs a place to stay over the weekends, who will be joining us in our home for Christmas Eve. By the time this was relayed to me as we got off the train in Daejon, I was so burned out on being in a bad mood that I couldn't even come up with any nasty comments to make.

moon base

2006-12-05T21:35:00.000+09:00

So, we're going to build a base on the moon. Awesome. Now, I'm about as stoked on science and understanding the universe as they come. And I have to admit that it just sounds really fucking cool to say "Yeah, we've got a base on the moon." And of course, the moon is the best place to try out our hand at space colonization. So yeah, there's a part of me that says "Go moon base!"

However, if I think about the moon base for more than 87 seconds, the glitter and coolness starts to wear off, and reality starts to sink in. The moon? I'm pretty sure there's not much going on there. At least not much that humans need to be around for. Like I said, I'm all about research, but I think robots can tell us most of what we need to know about the moon, or Mars for that matter, for about half the cost. But I don't think this action is about research. I think some people think that we can/should set up viable colonies on the moon, and then Mars. Again, of course this appeals to the 8-year-old boy in all us, who would love to run around in moon boots and chase Martians. But well, we're not 8 anymore, and despite how cool it sounds, there is absolutely no reason for people to live on the moon. There isn't even an atmosphere on the moon, much less water*, plants, ecosystems, etc., all of which we need to survive. Also, I don't understand what people think the moon has that we want. Not only is the moon useless to use as real estate, it's a real hassle to live there. It's like Arizona without water, air, or regulated temperature. In other words, hell, but worse.

One argument I've heard for colonizing space is that we're going to have to, because we are destroying our own planet so quickly. I agree that we are making Earth an uninhabitable place for humans, but I really don't think the moon and/or Mars is the answer. As it stands, we will really have to do some serious damage in order to make Earth harder to live on than Mars. My opinion is, since it will cost astronomical amounts of money to move to space, can we instead just not ruin our planet? I really don't think it will be that hard. Certainly easier than building a new civilization on the red planet.

The biggest argument I have with myself on this issue is trying to imagine myself as a 15th century European flat-earther. Am I just lacking in imagination? Is space really a great place for us to live, I just can't seem to conceive of it properly? I've decided no, I am not being closed minded in my assessment of space colonization. In the time of European trans-Atlantic exploration, people didn't know exactly what they were going to find, but they were pretty sure it was something they would be interested in. They knew it would be be land with viable resources and food production potential, and/or convenient transportation passages. In contrast, we aren't sure what the moon has for us, but we know enough to know it's not really anything that we need. You can't grow anything there. Any resources that happen to be there would be way too expensive to ship home. And I'm pretty sure there aren't any moon people for us to enslave.

I think what this is really about is that pesky little inconvenience we know as the military-industrial complex. Lockheed-Martin is already scheduled to make a bundle of money building the new human cargo space-craft. You can bet they will also stand to run away with a sack of money on this whole moon base scheme. What the government thinks we really need, more than a base on the moon, is for their buddies in the defense industry to get big business in government contracts. This isn't about going to the moon, it's about somebody making huge profits building the equipment that will take us to the moon. I recently accidentally ran across this graph of NASA funding, which shows a very substantial jump in 2001. Does it just happen that space exploration is the one area of science Bush is not opposed to? No, NASA is inextricably linked to the military-industrial complex.

Finally, my major concern with the moon base is not that it is bad in and of itself. No, even if useless for colonization, a moon base would still be cool. My concern is the opportunity cost. There are LOTS of people in the United States who do not have health care. There are many people who are much worse off than this. Our social security system is about to crash. Our public schools are rapidly deteriorating due to piss-poor funding. And that's the reason we can't afford another couple hundred billion dollars on pet projects for the defense industry. A moon base would be cool, I guess, but universal health care, a functioning public school system, an end to homelessness, and I don't know, maybe legitimate combat of AIDS in Africa would be pretty cool too.

*Turns out, there might be water there, which we would use for oxygen (for breathing) and hydrogen (for fuel). The feasibility of this is questionable.

political turmoil

2006-12-01T15:37:00.000+09:00

While the world is still bitching and moaning about North Korea, by far the most consistent and continuing news story in South Korea is the ongoing FTA negotiations with the United States. I found it particularly of note when I read a news article back in the middle of October about the fact that the National Police force was sending 10,000 "troops" to the fourth round of FTA talks. I mean, I know that Free Trade Agreements are not popular around the world, but seriously, 10,000 policemen? This in a country where laws seem to just be abided by, despite the visible lack of any kind of police presence. I see a police car on the street maybe once every three days. If you would have asked me, I would have been surprised that there even were 10,000 police officers in the country. Yet, all the plant stores leave their merchandise outside all night long, and no one steals it. I couldn't imagine what they thought the FTA protesters would do.

As it turned out, on the second day of talks, the protesters stormed the fortified compound where the talks were taking place, managing to tear down a shipping container and hospitalizing several police officers. I talked about this incident with my students, telling them I was surprised, considering how mild mannered, polite, and law abiding I had found Koreans to be. My students were not surprised. I now realize why they were not surprised. Since then, violent FTA protests have occurred at least twice a week, all across the country. In Seoul, there are major labor protests almost every day. Some of these target the FTA, others are for completely unrelated reasons. It seems universally known that protesters bring sharpened bamboo spears to every protest, and pictures of black masked people lighting buildings on fire seem commonplace in the newspaper. How is it that a society I find to be so respectful of the law can have this continuous violence?

The answer I have gotten is that it is related to Korea's semi-recent political situation. If you have only been alive since the early 1980's (as I have), you weren't alive for the huge political turmoil that characterized this country from the 1960's to the early 1980's. I still know very little about this period of Korean history, save that there were military coups, assassinations, extremely repressive military regimes, etc. So, even though South Korea has had a period of political stability and economic growth for the past twenty-odd years, this legacy of social and political upheaval seems to have survived. And despite a general feeling that everything is business as usual around here, I recently found out that President Roh (pronounced No (I don't have time to explain, or really a good understanding of, the reason the President's name is different in Korean and English)) Mu-Hyun's approval rating is significantly below that of even our beloved Bush (whose name, incidentally, in Korean, is pronounced "Goji Bushi"). This actually has nothing to do with North Korea, and everything to do with what Koreans see as a lack of job opportunities.

I had always assumed that South Korea was a stable, developed country; that political turmoil was limited to Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. My experiences here initially did nothing but reinforce this notion. The atmosphere is calm, people are generally prosperous (at least moderately), and society doesn't seem to be extremely polarized. However, the FTA protests and other events have changed my mind. While I am not worried about serious political instability, or a coup of any sort, I can definitely see the effects of decades of turmoil still rippling around society. My favorite example of this came today, regarding the issue of a conservative group writing new history textbooks that glorify the military regimes of the 1960's. At an academic conference discussing the new book, violence broke out, including desks flying through the air. Not generally the type of behavior you expect from academics at a nation's top university.

korean cuisine

2006-11-28T20:33:00.000+09:00

Now, I'm far from knowing all there is to know about the fascinating world of Korean food, but I've learned enough to have my bearings. I at least know a standard group of popular dishes, and can read these from a menu. I also am becoming familiar with the different types of restaurants and the different food they serve. Korea offers something for everyone in the way of food, especially if you are particularly fond of spice or adventurous in your eating habits. Most food is extremely spicy, and involves at least one sea creature. If want to eat something you didn't even know existed as an animal, a seafood restaurant here will delight you. Before we get started on individual dishes, a few notes about the presentation and process of eating. In Korea, a meal consists of anywhere from 4 to 87 dishes. Every restaurant will serve a series of complimentary "side dishes" which come along with your main dish (which probably itself will be at least two dishes). Also, it is very common for everyone at a table to share dishes. This is of course true with the side dishes, but often the main dish will be one huge serving of food that everyone shares. This dish is often cooked by you, right at your table, in a pot of boiling broth, or on a hot kind of grill-dome. Okay, let's get into some examples of the deliciousness.

We'll start with side dishes. You ALWAYS get kimchi with your meal. If you haven't heard about this delightful product, it is fermented cabbage that is literally doused in red chili paste. Tangy and spicy, to say the least. Secondly, you almost always get slices of yellow pickled radish. I'm talking the giant radish, that if you're familiar with it in Japanese food, you will know as daikon. This is salty, sweet and vinegary. Rounding out the list of ever-present side dishes is a weak soybean soup (you get this only if your meal isn't soup). However, there are probably hundreds of other side dishes that you may or may not receive, depending on the restaurant. Quite possibly my favorite is jon. This is a fried egg and/or flour pancake type object that has some sort of vegetable or octopus inside of it. It is always greasy, and usually delicious. Small servings of seaweed or mushroom salad are also quite popular and tasty. Radish kimchi is a regular on the table, taking many different forms and styles. One dish I'm quite fond of is what I think is sauteed spinach with garlic. Speaking of garlic, raw garlic is served on occasion as well. Some places (usually bars, I've found) serve an inexplicably burn-your-fucking-tongue-off spicy clear bean sprout soup. Be careful with this one; it may be the spiciest food product in Korea, and because it's not red, it'll sneak up on you and leave you crying, like the best friend who steals your girlfriend. There are definitely more side dishes to mention, but I think you get the point.

The most accessible food is at lunch/snack/all night restaurants that are kind of the Korean equivalent of fast food. Here, you can get quick, cheap food, but unlike American fast food, it is not greasy, meaty, fried, or cheesy. The main staple of this type of food is kimbap. This is rice rolled up in seaweed with goodies inside. It looks like sushi rolls, but doesn't have raw fish, crab or avocado inside. Inside kimbap, you'll find egg, ham, yellow radish, fish cake, inexplicable brown vegetable (I think I've determined that it is fern sprouts), and occasionally an extra item of your choice. My favorite is tuna (chamchi) kimbap. Another staple at these places is mandu, or dumplings. They are steamed, and filled with salty, meaty, vegi goodness. Bibimbap is quite possibly the food product that has most nourished me here. This is an excellent dish that is a big bowl of rice, topped off with fresh greens, seaweed, a healthy dollop of red pepper paste, and a fried egg. You can also get a number of noodle soups, like udong (Japanese style wide noodles) and spicy lamyeon (ramen). Tappap is a food of your choice (beef, kimchi, tuna, etc.) over a heaping helping of rice. Naengmeon is like cold slimy ramen that is impossible to bite through. It literally comes with scissors to cut the slimy mess hanging out of your mouth after a bite. Finally, you can even get a fried pork cutlet that comes with a fork and knife to eat it with. This is called dongasu.

(At this point, it is worth pointing out the eating utensils you are provided. Of course, you get chopsticks, but these are slippery, stainless steel chopsticks, not the forgiving wood or plastic type you are used to. Luckily, you also get a spoon, which you are encouraged to use for rice and dishes like bibimbap and tappap.)

Outside of these quick bite spots, restaurants usually focus on one or a few dishes. Soups are incredibly popular. Kimchi chigae is just like it sounds; spicy kimchi soup. The best place for kimchi chigae in Daejon (reputedly) is just down the street from my house/work, and their soup is made with kimchi that is aged for 3 years. It is almost indescribably sour, salty, spicy, and mouth wateringly delicious. Tang is another type of soup, usually one which comes with beef or ribs. A soup-type food dish is one that involves a boiling pot of broth at your table, in which you cook thin strips of meat, mushrooms, vegetables, etc. Ja jong myeon is udon-style noodles with a delectable black bean sauce. Bulgogi is very thin strips of marinated beef and vegetables. Kalbi is fatty, greasy barbeque pork. I wish I could remember the name of the bacon-like pork product you fry up at your table. I can't. But, imagine a thicker, fattier, greasier bacon, which fries right in front of you, while dousing the rest of your meal on the grill with delicious hog grease. It's even better than it sounds. Often with the meats, you take the cooked product and wrap it up in a leaf with raw garlic and a droplet of chili paste. One of the leaves you use is sesame leaf. I don't know why we don't have sesame leaves in the west. They are large, almost minty tasty and unbelievably fresh tasting.

The seafood in this country is absolutely out of control. With any luck, you've already seen the photos from the Pohang fish market. Octopus is everywhere, as are small dried fish. However, when our boss took us out for a seafood feast last week, I ate things I had never dreamed of. It's always good when you ask what something is, and the reply is that there is no English word for it. Quite possibly the best dish in terms of shock value was the raw octopus tentacles that had literally just been chopped off of the puss. They were wriggling around on the plate, and the suckers would definitely grip weakly to the inside of your mouth on the way down. Raw eel was served with with a spicy red sauce. There were several raw invertebrates that all taste kind of vaguely salty and chewy. You had some more standard raw sea products, such as oysters and tuna, but they were much fresher than any I've ever had. (These restaurants keep their product alive in tanks until you order it. (Well, not the tuna.)) I'm pretty sure it was conch that was a small shelled creature that you literally had to rip still living out of its shell. These tasted good, but I wasn't fond of ripping a living creature out of its home. I don't really know how to describe the several dishes that don't have English names. All I've mentioned so far are the side dishes, the main dish was a couple of platters of raw sashimi-style fish. At least 7 varieties of fish, mostly meaty white fish. The English names of the fish were unknown. These you would wrap up in the sesame or lettuce leaves, along with raw garlic, chili paste, and shoot it down. The meal was wrapped up with a literally fish-head soup that was not my favorite dish on the table.

I have two more items to tell you about before you're done with this bizarre rant. They are both extremely prevalent and strange. The first is dok. This is a gluttonous rice cake that can take many forms. It has roughly zero flavor, and is mostly characterized by its extremely chewy texture. It comes in a variety of types and styles, from a sweet-like snack, to a grilled hot dog like tube. The most common form is a street food called dok-bokki. This is heated dok in spicy sauce that you can get on just about every street corner. Dok is not bad, though some westerners (especially upon first taste) find it objectionable. The second item is odaeng. Odaeng is fishcake; basically ground fish (I'm under the impression that it's any generic fish) mixed with flour. This stuff is also on every street corner, in the form of long, wide strips on skewers. It also turns up in soups, side dishes, and your kimbap. It tastes just about as you would imagine it to, fishy.

I keep coming up with more to say, but I think I've given you enough examples for you to be impressed with the variety and flavor Korean cuisine.

korean education system

2006-11-19T21:59:00.000+09:00

Whoa, Koreans are crazy about education. Remember in elementary school, when your teacher told you that students in Asia go to school all the time, even on Saturdays? Well, that wasn't just a clever lie to get you to stop complaining, it really is true. My students go to go school essentially from 9 am to 11 pm Monday through Friday. They have public school every other Saturday. When they were studying for high school entrance exams, they stayed at our academy until 2:30 several nights in a row. There is extreme competition and pressure to be academically successful. I still haven't figured out when students do their homework. There are several important differences between Korean and American education systems, beyond just the amount of time spent studying.

First of all, there is the phenomenon of hagwons. These are the private academies that students go to when they are through with regular school for the day. Just about every foreigner teaching English in Korea works for a hagwon. An interesting realization I had was that my students learn much more advanced English at our hagwon than they do in public school. This is also true of the math hagwons they attend, the science hagwons, etc. There is so much pressure to advance academically that many students are literally years ahead of their public school curriculum do to attending private academies after hours. They go to public school because they have to, but they don't learn anything there. A lot of times, I think they read the books we assign them during their public school classes (oh, that's when they do their homework). When kids get accepted to their fancy private high schools, I'm pretty sure they just stop going to their public middle school classes.

The more I began to realize this, the more qualms I began to have with the hagwon system. This sounds to me like a recipe for the destruction of public schools. I don't like this at all. Because, when I say that all kids attend hagwons, what I really mean is that all kids whose parents can afford it attend hagwons. But I also have mixed feelings about this. As much as I believe education should not be something you buy, I can certainly think of worse things to buy. On the one hand, it is really cool that people choose to spend money on extra education for their kids. I mean, these are definitely some of the smartest kids I've ever encountered. I read Civil Disobedience with my seventh graders (granted, it was a little too difficult for them, but still). On the other hand, it just doesn't really seem fair that rich people get the opportunity to give their kids a much better education, and thus much more opportunity in life. But Korea is definitely not the only society designed to keep the rich rich. Oddly enough, I'm not the only person with these concerns; it was actually illegal to pay for education in Korea, prior to 1991. It's still illegal to buy or sell private tutoring lessons.

Second in the list of interesting topics concerning Korean education is the use of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is definitely allowed and used in public schools, though to a lessening degree. Most hagwons, I believe do not generally hit their students, but ours does. Just to get this out in the open, only Korean teachers hit the kids, we are not asked, expected or allowed to. That, at least, makes my life a little easier. What makes it very difficult to teach these kids is the fact that they don't respond to non-physical punishments. I've had to institute a policy of punishing my kids by making them go out in the hall and hold the push up position for five minutes. I feel really bad even doing this. At the beginning of the term, I had all my kids write me about why they were taking my class, and several actually asked me beat them in order to make them learn English better. This is situation is one of many factors that cause teaching in Korea to be K times more difficult than teaching at home. But, just so you know, Korean teachers are not heartless. I have one class that is terribly behaved, and I asked the Korean teacher who also teaches them if they were bad for him too. His response was "Yes, but they are too cute to beat."

All of this focus on education is obviously with the intent of giving your children a better life. Access to the good jobs, wealth and prosperity, all that good stuff. Interestingly enough, Koreans are actually becoming "too educated", with problems similar to the US, where there aren't enough jobs for the pool of highly educated people. Nobody wants to work the manufacturing or labor jobs, so immigrants come in to work in that sector, but there is strikingly high unemployment among the well educated. Many people actually leave the country to find jobs in their field of interest.

Okay, time for just some fun facts about Korean education. Once you get into middle school, girls must have above shoulder-length hair, and dudes have to have short hair (unclear just how short). If you break the rule, the teacher pulls out the scissors and barbers you up right in class. In addition to learning English in public school, you are also required to take either Chinese or Japanese. You have to wear a uniform to public school, but you get to pick your own shoes. Obvious from the girls in skirts, vests and tights rocking bright green and orange Nikes. Every student carries an extremely well-equipped pencil case with them at all times. We're talking at least 4 colors of pen, several pencils, extra pencil lead, at least two giant erasers, a red wax pencil, and an exacto knife. Text messaging is a rampant problem, with many students performing a blind, one hand under the table looking straight at you while texting technique. I don't know how they do it.

the korean haircut

2006-11-12T22:35:00.000+09:00

I have never been a big fan of haircuts, especially professional jobs. For some odd reason, I am never able to clearly articulate how I want my hair cut (the SAME length all around). I always end up with short sides and back and a poofy top. For about the last seven years, I have dealt with this situation first by boycotting haircuts altogether, and then using friends as hairstylists. For some reason, my friends seem to be capable of understanding that my look requires equal length of all the hair. I don't know what they're teaching these people in hair-cutting school that makes them feel they need to always give me the poof top. Despite this beef with the hair cutting industry, I have recently returned from my boycott to allow strangers to cut my hair in exchange for money. I received a couple of cuts in the states that went of alright. But, even if the cut looks okay, there is the other issue you have to deal with. I'm talking here about the awkward conversation with the cutter while they are cutting your hair. What is the reason for this practice? At a restaurant, the cook doesn't expect you to sit around and chat with them while they prepare your meal. Your mechanic doesn't want to hear about your life story while he fixes your car. I will admit that the haircut conversation makes more sense than the dental hygienist conversation (which is by far the worst practice ever), but it still just bothers me. What, is there some bond of friendship that gets passed on when someone cuts your hair? I don't believe so.

Anyway, having ranted for long enough now on my feelings regarding haircuts, my hair was in desperate need of a trim this week. Between my beard and the round curly halo surrounding my face, I look very strange to Koreans always, but the afro was getting out of control. If you take my existing opinion of haircuts, and add to that the "Korean factor"(A universal constant which causes everything done in Korea to be 2.77 times as difficult as it is at home. Let's call it "K".), it is needless to say that I was a little nervous about my haircut. I got a recommendation for a good spot though, and today I sucked it up and took the plunge.

My initial entry into the salon (I guess that is what you call it) did not help my anxiety at all. It was a large, loud room, packed full of cutting stations, people running around, an inexplicable amount of shouting and something being said over a loudspeaker. I think the only thing that kept me there was that one of the ladies at the front desk actually spoke English, and got me set up. I was told no fewer than 5 times that it would be about a twenty minute wait, but that i was welcome to use the internet while I waited. It was only about seven minutes until my stylist, who also spoke English, informed me we were ready to go. The cut started out pretty standard, with the hair wash. I can't remember if there is a separate hair washer in the US, but my hair was definitely washed by a lady who not my stylist. It was a good wash. I was reunited with my stylist at one of about 23 cutting stations. Instead of each stylist having a personal cutting station, they keep all their tools in a super efficient tool belt, and each cutting station consists only of a chair in front of a mirror.

I thought it would be a safe bet to bring a picture of myself with short hair, and just show that to my guy. He was pleased that we could communicate the style this way, but I realized upon showing him my passport sized photo that it was not exactly clear what kind of style my hair was in. I didn't even bother trying to explain the same length thing. My cutter was very precise and dedicated to making each snip properly. After cutting a section, he would use a weird second pair of scissor-like tools that he would us to basically shear the tips of my hair. I didn't really understand what was going on here. I originally thought I would be off the hook as far as the awkward conversation situation goes, not being to speak Korean and all. But, as I mentioned, my guy spoke English. Not enough, mind you to communicate tricky subjects like "ALL THE SAME LENGTH!", but enough to chat. The chatting was good though, not too aggressive or bothersome. He was very nice, and kept checking to make sure I was happy with how things were going.

Now, after the cutting is done is when the Korean haircut really starts to shine. First, I was whisked away from my chair by a third person, and taken back to the sinks for a second washing. This included a very pleasant scalp massage. When they wash your hair, they scrub your ears a bit too. Very nice. After wash two, it was off to a strange looking device on the windowsill. This thing was an open plastic box that kind of resembled a toaster with only one big slot. There was some liquid in the bottom that I was instructed to dunk my hand into. Actually, the wash girl ended up dunking the hand for me a few times due to my general confusion and hesitancy. Turns out the box was full of melted wax. A little shocking at first (not the least hot thing I've ever dunked my hands in), but pleasant once the wax cooled. The girl then took me back to my cutting chair, where she gave me a neck and shoulder rub while the wax dried. After a few minutes, my stylist came back to dry and style my hair. During this process, the wash/wax/rub girl removed the wax coating from my hands. Those hands felt extremely smooth and clean after the wax came off. After I was dried and styled, I was given a slice of cheesecake and a glass of water to enjoy.

Now, you're probably wondering how a lowly English teacher like myself could afford such a glitzy haircut. I was actually nervously wondering that myself as I finished off the cheesecake. My stylist reappeared as I approached the counter to pay, and informed that it would be $11. I can handle that. I had been told previously that it is not appropriate to tip your stylist (you don't tip anyone here). But I really felt like a should, because the guy even walked me to the elevator and hit the button for me.

How did the cut come out? Like I said, I always end up with short sides and a poofy top. This time was no exception.

vote, dude

2006-11-07T00:18:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I've never been one to be too preachy, and I know everyone of you (US citizens) already know that you need to vote. This is more just a friendly reminder that all of you had better get your asses to the polls tomorrow. Or, if you're out of the country, you had better have already put your absentee ballots in the mail. Especially those of you in Colorado. Even if you don't smoke pot anymore, you have to realize the opportunity and potential implications of being the first state to legalize dope. Also, Tancredo needs to know that he doesn't have his talons around all of us, Beauprez cannot be allowed to follow in the shameful footsteps of Bill Owens, the 7th district is hot, and for god's sake, bush was campaigning in Greeley! Fucking bush in fucking Greeley! This is the chance to take a red state and make it blue. True blue. It's time to show the country that Coloradans cannot be trampled on by right wing religious representatives of National Socialism. If you're not in Colorado, you're not off the hook. Even if you're in a blood red district, take the opportunity to fight back! Do it. Okay, I'm done, because this is getting close to preachy.

letter to tom tancredo

2006-10-25T00:59:00.000+09:00

Representative Tom Tancredo
6099 S. Quebec Street
Suite 200
Centennial, CO 80111
USA

October 20, 2006
Daejon, South Korea

Congressman Tancredo,

I haven’t been registered in Colorado’s sixth district since the summer of 2000, and it is for this reason that you haven’t yet heard from me in regards to your participation in the public revival of fascism. First of all, I guess I must congratulate you on your successful campaign to bring illegal immigration to the forefront of national political “debate”. Well, congrats Tommy, you’ve managed to stoke the fires of racism in a way that hasn’t been seen in this country in a long time. I see two possible explanations for your irrational assault on illegal immigrants: 1) you actually believe all of the hateful nonsense you spew about the damage illegal immigrants are doing to our country; or 2) you recognize this nonsense as such, but find it politically advantageous to shout this type of Third Reich rhetoric at the top of your lungs. I don’t know whether you’re (1) an idiot, (2) an asshole, or both, so I will address each of these two possibilities separately.

Who do you think built Highlands Ranch, anyway?

I’m going to tell you a little story. I grew up in Castle Rock, and in high school, I bussed tables at a little Italian restaurant about two blocks from your office on Wilcox Street. Some of my best friends at that job were the Latino guys. They worked hard, they were pretty much always in a good mood, and they were happy to help me practice my Spanish. These guys got up and worked landscaping jobs from 6:00 until 3:00, then worked at the restaurant from 4:00 until 10:00 every day of the week, except Sundays. And if you’ve ever seen a landscaping crew working, or been in the kitchen of a restaurant, you know that these guys were not the only Latinos doing this. Contrast these people to any of the restaurant’s patrons, who were 90% fat, lazy, and for some inexplicable reason thought they needed to watch television while in their cars, and it’s not difficult to guess who built the district you are now king of.

This is why your position on illegal immigration is utterly nonsensical. The lifestyle that you and your constituents enjoy is entirely reliant upon the labor source of illegal immigrants. These are the people who build the houses, strip-malls, and sprawling parkways that you tout as Colorado’s “economic development”. I can guarantee that your constituents, on average, consume at least one fast food meal a day. Have you been to a fast food restaurant in Douglas County lately? Not even high school kids will work there anymore. You and your idiotic white upper-middle class constituents can rattle off all the hateful babble you like about Latino immigrants, but without those people, you wouldn’t have a house, you wouldn’t have a three lane parkway to cruise your Tahoe down, and you would probably starve to death, because you wouldn’t have any restaurants to eat at.

Furthermore, aside from the fact that immigrant labor built your district, the immigrants you target have no intention of being permanent residents of the United States, where they may or may not be a drain on our societal resources. They don’t want to be Americans any more than you want them to. For the most part, these people love the country they’re from, they only want to come to the U.S. to make a bundle of money that they can take home and retire on. I spent the past spring in Central America, and just about everyone I met (north of Nicaragua) had lived and worked for some time in the United States. But you know what, they all went back to their homes and families.

Do you put “Professional Hatemonger” on your resume?

Okay, at this point, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you (as any reasonable person would) already understand the points made above. Of course, a good deal of the blame belongs to the mindless multitudes of Centennial and surroundings, but you should not be swindling your constituents like this. This is the oldest trick in the book, playing on people’s fears and inciting racial hatred in order to gain a political advantage. While you may be winning so far, you’re not clever, and I hope that your inner shame will drive you to dementia and ruin. I apparently have no understanding of how low moral standards can sink, but I hope that one day you will realize how evil it is to: 1) make people believe false things for your own gain, and 2) insult and injure an entire group of people who have done nothing to you, save build and landscape your house, harvest and cook your food, and give you an excuse to get drunk in early May.

Toward a sensible policy

Despite my (at times) belligerent tone towards you, I do agree with you on one point: in a perfect world, we would not require cheap immigrant labor to build our homes and provide our food, nor would people in other countries need to leave their families and work demeaning jobs in order to make a decent living. The only question left is: how do we achieve that? Well, you and I both know that we can’t achieve this goal by building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. That’s not going to work any better than the “War on Drugs” has worked. We all know that.

If we really want to solve this problem, we need to do two things: 1) improve economic conditions in Central America, so that people do not need to migrate to the U.S. to earn a living wage, and 2) force Americans to pay a little more for their houses, roads, food, etc. To accomplish 1), we need to find a way to encourage economic growth in Central America. Not the kind of growth that free trade agreements bring, but true growth. We need Central American companies to create economic growth there, not U.S. companies exploiting cheap labor. My girlfriend and I developed a plan that will do just this: institute a guest worker program (5-7 years in the U.S., then you go home), add an extra tax on guest worker wages (about 3-5%), put this money in a special business grant fund, and then distribute this money as business grants to people who have returned to their home countries from the guest worker program. This plan allows us to force immigrants to invest in economic development in their home countries. This investment will eventually solve the immigration problem better than a wall ever could, because if people can make a decent living in their own country, they won’t leave. Solving issue 2) is a little more difficult, but I imagine once the source of cheap labor has dried up (through the abovementioned plan), market forces will force Americans to readjust their lifestyles. See, this problem can be solved without invoking racism, or spending billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on nonsense like fences and a “War on Immigrants”.

Why I’ll be voting all the way from South Korea this November

Obviously, thinking there’s a chance that the 6th district would vote you out of office is slightly less realistic than expecting Isaac Newton to come prancing up on a unicorn to my 26th birthday party. I’ve lived in that suburban wasteland for long enough to know full well that you’ve got that district by the balls. So why did I even bother registering and requesting my absentee ballot? Well, aside from a very important governor’s race, the opportunity to make Colorado the state with the most progressive drug laws in the country, a horde of measures targeting gay people, and the all important local offices, this is my chance to offer my own personal fuck you to Tom Tancredo. I can write as many letters to you as I want; and your interns may or may not read more than two sentences of them. But the electoral system is my one constitutionally guaranteed right with which I can tell you to fuck off, and (whether or not my view wins) it gets officially counted somewhere. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up that right, as futile as it may seem. Not when people like you are running my country. You may represent the evangelical, dimwitted bunch that has invaded my state, but you’ll never represent me.

Regards,

travis h. eddy

drunk in the jil jul bang

2006-10-22T01:20:00.000+09:00

When we go out with the foreigner crew, we almost always go downtown to Unangdong, where most of the westerner bars are. It’s a cool area, right near the train station, and the buildings were actually built more than fifteen years ago. There are wide blocks of pedestrian walkways, with tons of stores, restaurants and bars. Last night, however, we decided to drink locally. The new teacher at our hagwan, Brian, and I met our crew at Sole, a bar less than half a block from our school with a picture of Keanu Reeves on the door. Meanwhile, Taylor went off to rummage around in the garbage and try to find good stuff to stencil on (she finally found spray paint at a supermarket, and was very anxious to get spraying). Brian and I enjoyed a pitcher of Cass while we waited for the other guys to show up. Drinking in Korean bars is kind of awkward sometimes, because Korean people always, always, always order food when they drink. Having already had dinner, neither Brian nor I were interested in any side dishes, making us the only people with no food on our table (save the edamame/cracker/vegetable platter and sprout soup that come complimentary). For some reason, it was free cigs night at Sole, and some ladies brought around plastic beer mugs with colored lights in the bottom, a pack of cigs and some rosemary sprigs in them. Every table got one, and when they set it on your table, they would then pour hot water in it, which would cause a dry-ice steam to pour out around your new cigs. It also created quite a pleasant smell.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that most of the friends we have made so far work at the hagwan directly below ours, and there is definitely some serious competition and rivalry going on between the two schools. Our friends brought their bosses, and I was sitting next to one of the directors, who insisted that our bosses had “stolen all their ideas” from his hagwan, and was constantly trying to impress me with how well they treat there teachers. Also, these guys were Korean, so of course they ordered a huge platter of spicy chicken, boiled egg and vegetables. Everything was going good, the pitchers of beer kept flowing around the table, a couple rounds of pineapple soju came around, and I even became hungry enough to sample some side dishes. Luckily, at this point (while moderately sober) I informed the group of my odd habit of only speaking in shouted Spanish after I’ve had too much to drink. I shouldn’t have said anything about this, because they would discover this fact soon enough for themselves. Our ringleader, Ben (known to Taylor and I as Ben X), was pushing to go downtown, but we decided instead to travel to the convenience store down the street. Interesting Korean cultural fact: every convenience store has outside seating, and drinking at the seven eleven is actually a very popular past time. So, we sat down outside the mini mart with several “pitchers” (1.6L bottles) of beer, and I proceeded to have a very heartfelt discussion Ben X about disciplining my students. The Spanish was already starting to come out.

By the time we left the convenience store, I was definitely taking a few tumbles here and there on the perfectly flat and smooth walking surfaces. Taylor got everybody fired up to go to her rubbish rummaging spot behind “Shark Zone” (a mall). We went ahead a picked up three mannequins between us, some odds and ends, and I’m pretty sure that this was where I picked a large tree branch that I decided I needed to carry around with me. After an interactive photo shoot in the street with the mannequins, somebody brought up the do re bang. Bang in Korean means “room”, and do re means “sing”. So the do re bang is where you go to do karaoke, and true to the name, you get your own private room and karaoke system. This one even had a private bathroom. A fact I promptly forgot when I started to get salty mouth syndrome, and left the room to try to find a toilet. The guys outside were like “dude, you have your own bathroom in that little room where all your friends are.” Oh yeah. By the time I got back to our room, my mouth was no longer salty. There was even a shower, in case you got a little sweaty while singing. I was intently trying to peruse the song book while everyone else sang, and never did find a good song.

After we left the do re bang, we ran into Ben #3, who we had been with earlier in the evening, alone outside a seven eleven with a bottle of soju. I’m still a little hazy on the details of where he had gone, and why he was drinking solo at 6:00 in the morning. Well, of course we had to sit down with him and finish off the soju. Again, somebody came up with a wonderful bang idea, and soon we were all off the jil jul bang. I’m pretty sure jil jul bang translates as “hot room”, but it is the public bath house. This one is 24 hours, and also located in a mall. I wasn’t sure anyone would be bathing at 6:30 on Saturday morning, but there were definitely some folks there. The tubs weren’t quite as hot as I like them, but it was still relaxing. It did not sober me up. We (the dudes) were supposed to meet Taylor after twenty minutes, and all of a sudden I looked up and everybody was gone. It took me a while to drunkenly slither back into my clothes, and by the time I got out into the lobby, none of my crew was there. I don’t know why I thought this meant that Taylor had gone home without me, but I did, so I left immediately and went home. Taylor was not at home; she was at the jil jul bang waiting for me for one hour. Sorry Tay Tay. Today I have been absolutely useless.

nuclear crisis II: update

2006-10-13T14:13:00.000+09:00

Okay, so further research indicates that there are, in fact, some hardliners here in the Republic of Korea. Recent editorials have taken a more aggressive stance against the northern brothers, and you even hear denouncement of former president Kim Dae-jung and the sunshine policy. In the legislature, there was heavy bickering between the ruling Uri party and the opposition conservative Grand National Party over how to word the resolution condemning North Korea. Even the polls are showing broad popular support for a move away from the engagement policy, and even moderate support for a South Korean nuclear weapons program. So it looks like I may have to retract my statement about South Koreans being more sensible than Americans on this developing situation. It seems like hard-line crazies really do just encourage that behavior to come out in others. At least the heavy legislative debate shows that there are multiple opinions, and not everyone in the government wants to go off the deep end on this one. (unfortunately, safari does not support the link adding feature of blogger (or if it does, I can't figure out how to do it), so the links I wanted to add here are not working. People interested in what the South Korea news media has to say should go to http://joongangdaily.joins.com/, the definitive South Korean english language news site.)

Opinions among my students are reading in a similar fashion. A lot of my kids place at least partial blame for this situation on the United States, but there are some super-nationalist opinions out there too. One kid told me yesterday that the US should instigate a nuclear attack on Pyongyang. When I pushed him on this, he softened his position to say that the US should just assassinate Kim Jong-il. Again, though, almost all my kids assume that it is only a matter of time before there will be reunification on the peninsula. Even among the kids who think there should be punishments against the north, there is almost unanimous agreement that further isolation of the country would be a bad thing.

One particularly interesting aspect of my students’ opinions is the surprising clarity with which they understand the issue of nuclear proliferation. Thinking back to when I was in middle school, I don’t think I really paid attention to nuclear proliferation, much less understood the ins and outs of it. The most consistent (by far) answer I get when I ask what should be done to stop proliferation is that the US and other nuclear armed countries need to start depleting their nuclear arsenals before they can legitimately tell other countries not to develop nuclear weapons. Almost every single one of my students understands this. I don’t think that idea would even cross the minds of thirteen-year-old American kids. Of course, serious politicians cannot publicly subscribe to this idea, fearing the ever-powerful scorn of the mighty Washington, but it’s comforting to know that the new generation has some sense when it comes to this issue. Still, I will never understand why popular debate never mentions the 12,000 (or whatever the number of nuclear weapons the US has squirreled is) reasons other countries have for desiring a nuclear arsenal.

nuclear crisis

2006-10-10T01:34:00.000+09:00

All weekend long, I was trying to make sure my senses were acutely tuned, hoping that if I tried hard enough, I could feel the tremor of North Korea stomping its nuclear foot. It was with great disappointment then, that I failed to notice even the slightest shake in the ground at 10:36 am local time. Now, one might imagine at least a social tremor radiating throughout the country that shares a heavily fortified border with the world’s newest nuclear power. I had thought when the word came down there might be panic, or a tangible sense of dread in the air. But there was no such feeling. I don’t think any of my Korean co-workers even mentioned it to me today. The whole reaction all weekend has been, well, subdued. CNN Asia is pumping us full of hype and fear though, so don’t worry, we’re getting our fair share of crazed blabbering.

This is not to say that no one here is talking or thinking about North Korea, but the discussion is surprisingly calm and rational. Of course South Koreans don’t like the idea of North Korea demonstrating its nuclear might, but they’re not frantic about it. People here are much more likely to point to broad and ultimate causes of the current situation, rather than spouting off some kind of rant about a crazy dictator and calling for punishment.

Now, I’m certainly no expert in international affairs, let alone specifically the Northeast Asian region, but I’ve learned a thing or two about people’s attitudes since I’ve been here. Let’s start at the beginning. South Koreans I’ve talked to have absolutely no beef with North Koreans; they don’t even call themselves “South” Korea. People here seem to just assume that they will reunify with the North at some time. They very much consider themselves and North Koreans as one group of people: Koreans. There is certainly not hatred of North Korea, and more then anything, I think there is a sense of sympathy for the North. The commentaries in the English language newspaper lately have portrayed a North Korea that has been kind of pushed into a corner by the international community. This is the same sentiment I’ve gotten from many of my students when we talk about these issues. You hear a lot of talk about how what North Korea really wanted was a direct dialogue with the United States. (As an unfortunate side note here, you may remember (I believe it was) the second 2004 US Presidential Campaign debate, when Kerry pledged to open bilateral talks with North Korea to diffuse the crisis, while Bush insisted that the only way to make any progress was to continue exclusively with the six party talks.) The overwhelming opinion I’ve heard is that the worst road to take is further isolation of North Korea. But now, South Korea feels they’ve been pushed into a corner of their own by this nuclear test. They feel they will now be pressured into joining the hardliners in the US and Japan. While South Koreans are uncomfortable with the current situation, even my 13-year-old students have the sense to know that nobody’s going to be aiming nuclear missiles at Seoul any time soon. The talk in the papers is the more reasonable fear of a nuclear arms race in the region.

For what it’s worth, I find much more legitimacy in the South Korean position than I do in the US position. I wholeheartedly agree that further isolation of North Korea is going to do no work towards achieving the ultimate goal of stability in the region. I heard this same argument about China about ten years ago: if you want to change a country, the way to do it is to trade with them, expose them to democratic and Western values. It made sense to me then, and it’s essentially what happened. Granted, they’ll still go out and beat 55,000 dogs to death in China, but they haven’t run anybody over with tanks lately. China has become much more open and liberalized in the past ten years, due mostly to increased trade with the rest of the world. North Korea wants a dialogue and a relationship with the west, that’s what this whole issue is about. And if we can achieve our goals by having a dialogue and opening up to them, I see no reason not to do it. Of course, I understand the reasons not to reward their bad behavior, but come on here. How many drunken fistfights occur needlessly because nobody is willing to step down and talk things over? It’s time for Washington (and Tokyo) to step down and say: “hey, let’s talk about this, we’re acting like children here.”

korean efficiency

2006-10-09T00:17:00.000+09:00

I get really frustrated sometimes when I consider all of the ways in which our world could be more efficiently organized. There are so many seemingly simple ways that our lives, homes, cities, world could be slightly altered in order to save energy and just make more sense. As the growing energy crisis looms above my generation, there are literally thousands of things that could be done to stop the unnecessary waste of energy. This is not the sole solution to our energy problems, but serious conservation must necessarily play a role in our future of energy use. More than anything, though, it really just bothers me to see things done poorly. It doesn’t make any sense to waste energy because lifestyles and cities are not properly designed or organized. Nor does it make sense to waste energy because people feel they have some sort of right to be lazy or unnecessarily demanding about their lifestyle.

The common reaction to this kind of thinking in the US is that it’s well and fine to dream of a society where everything makes sense, but that people will never change their habits to achieve this. I guess I have always responded to this attitude with a kind of disgruntled acceptance and cynical attitude about the general useless of humans. I mean, it is difficult to imagine your average American riding their bike to work, or drying their clothes on a line. It’s hard enough just getting people to separate their recycling from their garbage. I am ashamed to admit that I often fall into the trap of thinking it is for some reason impossible to get people to do what makes sense.

Now I’m going to tell you about how things are done in Korea. I’ve never thought of Korea as being a particularly environmental place. And I still don’t know if it necessarily is. But the way things are done here just makes sense. It’s like they already do all of the little things that I trounce around America saying: “we should do this”, and “we should do that”. To start off with, they do not fuck around with recycling in this country. We separate our household waste into: food waste, clear glass, dark glass, cans, plastic bottles, plastic wrappers, plastic bags, black plastic bags, paper and garbage. We live in a building with 150 apartments, and we have one (smaller than American) dumpster that holds all the trash. Next, there is no centralized air heating in our apartment building, all of the heating is done through the floor (as it is not winter yet, we do not know how warm this keeps your apartment). Every light I’ve seen in Korea so far is fluorescent. There is apparently no such thing a clothes dryer here; every apartment is equipped with a small washer, and a separate glass-enclosed balcony for air-drying clothes. All of the balconies on the apartment buildings face south. The apartment buildings are all designed so that they are tall and skinny, one apartment wide, so you can open your balcony and front door and get excellent airflow. (I should mention at this point that most Koreans live in apartment buildings that are essentially of the same design.) The use of motion sensors is one of the best areas of efficiency. All the lights in the stairwells and corridors of our apartment building have motion sensors, so that they only turn on when someone is actually walking there. All of the escalators have motion sensors, so that they too stop running when no one is using them. The light in the entryway to your apartment is on a timer, so that it’s only on for a short period while you’re entering or leaving the house. The printer in our office at school is filled with paper that has already been printed on one side. The city is designed so that there are pockets of commercial areas surrounded by the aforementioned apartment complexes, so you can always walk to the basic necessities. I’ve already discussed the urban agriculture. Add to all these major practices all of the clever little things I see on a day to day basis (for example, when there is a connection between two electrical cords outside, they use a cut up plastic bottle to protect the connection from rain), and it is amazing how cleverly life is organized here. It’s so nice to see people living in ways that actually make sense.

Seeing the way people live here really turned the cynic in me upside down. All of a sudden, I can say what I wanted to all along, namely that people can and will change their lifestyle to be more efficient. The world really can make sense! It may be a bit early for a victory celebration, though. The fact that Koreans will adapt their lifestyle towards efficiency is very much centered around a cultural heritage that emphasizes the common good over the individual. You separate your recycling, because it is just HOW THINGS ARE DONE, and to suggest that you’re too lazy to do so would really reflect poorly on you. There is nothing like the feeling of entitlement to a certain lifestyle that you find so prevalent in the US. And, aside from thousands of years of collective cultural conditioning, Korea doesn’t offer any real concrete examples of how to deal with that stubborn attitude. Of course, there are both positive and negative effects of this kind of culture. Everything is efficient, there is incredibly little crime (people often don’t even lock their bikes on the street) and everything is clean. But I’ve complained on more than one occasion about the blandness of all the residential buildings looking exactly the same. People have very little to no personal flair or style; everyone looks completely homogenous. There is seemingly no kind of counterculture (though I’m sure there is in Seoul). And there are no drugs! This is good if you’re talking about the absence of junkies and crack-heads on the street, or meth-heads rifling through your personal belongings, but kind of a bummer if you’re a lowly dope-fiend, a little homesick and looking to get stoned.

I’m not totally willing to accept that this is a perfect trade-off though. I’m far from convinced that in order to have a decent recycling program, city and apartment designing that is energy efficient, and lifestyles that make sense, you have to give up architectural aesthetics and rock and roll. This is to say that the Korean cultural identity is not the only way to convince people to live efficiently; it is just a very good example of the fact that it can be done.

urban agriculture

2006-10-05T23:26:00.000+09:00

i think i've technically been a proponent of urban agriculture ever since, as a small child, my mother read me a story about a farmer who moves to the city and makes it beautiful by planting all kinds of wonderful things (by the way, if anybody knows the name of this book, please feel free to tell me). in the past seven years or so, i've taken this childhood fascination with a cute story and honed into a more or less coherent set of beliefs. chief among these beliefs is that we need to bring small scale agriculture back into our personal lives and into our cities. there are many reasons why this is an important practice to take up. first, a tremendous amount of energy goes into transporting food from where it is grown to where it is consumed. since the majority of the world's population lives in urban centers, producing food in these urban centers with save considerable amounts of energy in food transportation. second, producing even a small amount of your own food where you live allows you to eat healthier, fresher food, save money, and refrain from participating in the industrialization of farming. third, with a little creativity, there is an amazing amount of space that can be used for food production within urban centers. the more food there is produced in the city, the more land there is that could be returned to natural habitat for native plant and animal species. fourth, the act of gardening is really good for you. it clears your mind, gives you some exercise, and helps you to understand the cycles that allow energy from the sun to become the energy that sustains your life. finally, i just think that urban gardens look and are really cool.

for all this talk, i'm certainly not any kind of full-fledged city farmer, though i've certainly dabbled in urban agriculture. most notably, i had a rooftop garden just off the bustle of SE 39th ave in portland last summer, that was surprisingly productive. i also assisted mr. ian blazina in a highly sucessful garden in sellwood, and observed his wonderful efforts in recent years turning nearly his entire backyard into a lovely grounds of everything from hops to blueberries. overally, portland is an excellent city to observe and take part in urban agriculture. a stroll or bikeride down nearly any street of the city's east side will attest to this. however, for all of this gardening in the residential neighborhoods, seeing any kind of food crop growing downtown is nearly unheard of. truly urban urban agriculture is not really seen, even in portland.

in daejon, on the other hand, urban agriculture is EVERYWHERE. i'm not really sure why or exactly how this phenomenon occurs, but on a short walk around my neighborhood (which is in no way populated by houses with yards and gardens) you will see tons of food being grown. the most common crop you will find has got to be chili peppers. these things are literally growing everywhere in this town; in pots in front of restaurants, adjacent to parking lots, in the little dirt area in front of apatement buildings, everywhere. this could easily be explained by the amount of chili pepper used in korean food; the country probably needs to grow these things wherever possible just to create the alarming amount of spice koreans demand from every dish. the urban farming phenomenon extends far beyond chili peppers, however. there are several other crops that you will find in odd places, most notably strips of land between sidewalks and parking lots. you will most often see squash or pumpkin. a close second would have to be soybeans, followed by greenbeans, which are often grown up the stalks of corn plants. some sections of town have corn planted in with the trees along the sidewalks (depicted above), though this corn will never make it to harvest, and seems to be planted for more decorative than productive purposes. rooftop gardens are also quite popular.

aside from this slipping in of gardens to any available space, there is an interesting practice that i haven't quite gotten to the bottom of yet. there happens to be a lot of building in our neighborhood; it's kind of the "new downtown" of daejon. anywhere there is a lot of construction, there tends to be a lot of empty lots. here in daejon, those empty lots are full scale gardens with large plantings of crops. they don't appear to be community gardens, because they don't appear to be broken up into different plots. for the most part, it seems like just about anyone can wander through these gardens, though (but, a lot of people don't even lock their bikes here, either). occasionally, i'll see someone out working in these gardens when i'm out cruising around. if i spoke korean, i could just go and ask them what the deal is - who owns the garden, where the food goes, etc. but, well, i'm not quite to that level with my korean yet.

i will post updates as i find out more about this korean phenomenon, and discover new gardens. hopefully my korean will be sufficient enough by next spring that i can try to secure a little plot of land on which to do my own planting.

landscape dresses

2006-09-26T18:20:00.001+09:00

while living in colorado this summer, i spent my free time working on new collection of dresses that portray different landscapes. after spending several months taking in various and beautiful landscapes, i figured it was time to share some of these with the world. then taylor and i did a photo shoot of all in the dresses in a classic colorado landscape of my youth. here are the results.

san gerardo de dota

the yucatan coast

tikal

isla ometepe

guanacaste

the great plains

the lost coast

the dresses are all available at the fabric lab on east colfax in denver, along with other t-rex items. also, look for them on the runway at assorted upcoming fashion events sponsored by the fabric lab in the next month. we're still trying to locate a sewing machine and/or fabric stores, but as soon as we do, i will post an update on t-rex korea.

pohan fish market

2006-09-26T15:15:00.000+09:00

taylor and i had the opportunity to visit the largest fish market on korea's east coast, located in pohan. after having seen a little fish market action in daejon, i was really excited to see the real deal. i was sure that there would be tons of amazingly bizarre things for sale here. and this there certainly was. this part of the east coast is known as a mecca for squid fishing (squiding?), which was made quite apparent by the row upon row of squid hung out to dry on lines along the roadway. also, at night, you could see strange bright lights shining past the horizon at sea. these were squid boats, and they apparently use the incredibly bright lights to attract squid to their boats. so, as you can imagine, there was plenty of squid in this market.
there was also a lot of otcopus, some fresh, some dried, even some that was still alive. also, several varieties of octopus.

aside from squid and octopus, there was a huge amount of, well, fish. many different kinds of fish, long slender fish, wide flat fish, tiny fish, big fish, but no huge fish.

the market was divided into two main sections; the first was what you would expect a fish market to look like, with dead fish on ice, while the second section had live fish swimming around in little tubs.

there were several things for sale that are of the sea, but not what you would generally think of as being "fish", or even edible. there were rays, several unidentifiable invertebrates, and even whale meat.

one thing that was quite surprising about this market was the smell. while it did smell like fish, it was not nearly as bad as i had been preparing myself for. in fact, taylor thought it wasn't even as bad as the smell in the daejon market. it was, however, loud, crowded and crazy. everybody needed to tell you, it seemed, why their fish was better than the fish in the stall next door. some stalls even had samples of the raw fish for you to try out.

we finished looking around, and got down to what we came for: eating. many of the stalls with the live fish are connected to little restaurants. you pick out which kind of fish you want, and then have a seat in the restaurant. then they slice it up and bring it out to you. we had bibimbap, which is a kind of rice bowl with tons of veggies that you mix in, with sashimi flat fish. i don't know exactly what kind of fish it was, but it was in fact, the flat fish. if you're confused about how we navigated all of this, or even made it to the market in the first place, i neglected to mention that we had a korean tour guide, our lively and colorful boss, don.

disclaimer

2006-09-21T22:14:00.000+09:00

i realize that most blogs are devoted to a single topic, or at least a single topic with various offshoots. you may think to yourself: "a blog about everything from fashion to philosophy of science? what the fuck?" and you're right to think that. it is extremely possible that i am getting in way over my head with this thing, and will not be able to address half of the topics i profess to. but, then again, most people pick one or a few things to focus their lives on. i've never been able to really understand this mentality. there's a big world out there, and i want to sink my teeth into just about all of it. this is possibly why i haven't achieved fame and fortune in any of the specific fields i pursue, but i'm willing to accept that. not only do i think just about every area i devote myself to deserves my attention, i feel that each pursuit is informed and enhanced by my dabbling in other pursuits. i agree that it's not immediately clear how my views in the philosophy of science are informed by experiences smoking dope huddled behind a boulder at 12,000 ft., but i just FEEL that they are. and for better or worse, i've got to go with my gut instinct here. and that brings us back to this, here, to this blog, and it's seemingly scatter-brained nature. well, i think all these things, and i do all these things, so why not post all these things in a single cyber-spot? i hope you will find this holistic approach to blogging as satisfying to read as i am imagining it will be to write.