Capricorn's Corner: December 10, 2006

The greatest Japanese invention of the 20th Century

1.Andrea went out for a better shot.
2. Then she got a bit closer.
3. ...and the closest, you can count the pores on my nose

Yep, you guessed right, didn't you? I'm talking about ramen, or as we say here in Korea ramyeon. I am sure that Koreans would object to ramen being called a Japanese invention, since they are Chinese in origin, - and anything is better than having to give credit to the Japanese.

During my first year in Korea, I would have at least one serving of cup ramen a day, usually in front of the TV, late at night, watching reruns of Ally McBael and drowning my sorrows in the hot broth. I was a walking storage of MSG and all that other bad stuff found in ramen.

My favourite brand was and still is Shin Ramyeon. Shin might mean "Chinese" but it also may have a different meaning. One thing all of us in Korea hear more than enough in lieu of explanation when we ask about a mystifying piece of vocabulary is that "it, oh, comes from a Chinese character, which is different but same." Translation: it's a different character, also differently pronounced in Chinese, which is a tonal langauge, but not differently pronounced in Korean, which is not.

Anywhere from 40-60% of Korean words (depending who you ask) come from Chinese, and you can only imagine what that means: Korean ended up having one word, spelled and pronounced in the same way, with numerous different meanings. This (among other things) makes learning Korean a nightmare from which I am still refusing to wake up, hoping that one day all of it will fall into place.

I lost my habit of eating ramyeon, or rather train myself not to eat them. I don't even like them that much anymore. However, they are still perfect as a quick snack on a cold night, in between parties.
Lisa, Clare and I felt a bit peckish before the 'after party' so we stopped by at a local family mart, where we slurped our unhealthy snacks while Andrea immortalized this aspect of life in Korea on camera.

The After Party at V's Studio

Photographs:

1. 'Show us some skin' - and we did
2. Toothy grins and a serious Teutonic Kwien
3. They call themselves a 'dream team."
4. What's in in the fashion world?
5. The Brit is about to bare it
6. The babelicious Boy CD
7. Groovy Girls, Andrea and Lisa.
8. Clare and Lisa chilling out

After the opening ceremony of Anguelique's exhibition, we were invited for an 'after party' at Vincent's photo studio. Clare, Lisa, Andrea and I walked quite a bit shivering in the freezing night air, before any taxes appeared. We also got to play the role of good Samaritans, saving an elderly drunken man from hypothermia. He simply collapsed at our feet, and we packed him into a taxi and sent him on this way.

The studio was pretty cool, as far as such places go. It is situated in an ugly, dirty building with the grumpiest doorman you can imagine. A bare concrete staircase, blackened by years of grime and cigarette butts, leads you up to V's studio. The walls surruonding the entrance to the studio are covered in some kind of 'frescoes' and graffiti, while the hallway leading to the studio was adorned by ( I suppose) his photographs and illuminated by tiny fairy lights. Quite a nice effect after the smelly staircase.

One side of the studio is occupied by a huge white panel that covers about 3-4 meters of the floor and then streches in an uninterrupted line up to the ceiling. The other side has a bar, or a reception area, or both, I am not quite sure. Beside it, an enormous artifical tree casts a shadow upon a couple of love seats. The rest is of the studio hardly has any furniture, but there are many interestig trinkets and collages of Vincent's photographs on the wall.

There were lots of young good-looking girls milling about dressed in the fashion of the moment, which is shorts worn over semi-see-through tights and knee-high boots. Lots of shiny black hair was being swayed around, and lots of young guys were there to admire it. The loudest of them was a handsome British chap who liked to use the word "London" in every sentence and in the end showed everybody his underwear.
I spent most of the time chatting with people I know. My mingling skills, never something I could brag about, have been deteriorating.

The party was nice enough, and I had fun, mostly watching people. It was a bit on the 'vanity fair/foney' side, but interesting, nevertheless. Vincent seemed to be having a very good time, basking in the spotlight, surrounded by all the pretty packaged estrogen around him. Angelique should have had that spotlight, but she is a very self-effacing young lady.

After some silly photographs were taken and the meagre supplies of food and drink consumed, we were kicked out by the grumpy doorman ajoshi. I don't know where the rest of the merry party ended up, -I suppose somewhere in Hongdae - but I took a taxi and went home.

Angelique's Exhibition at Cook 'n' Heim

Photos:
1.Angelique and one of her photographs.
2. A. and her friend Vincent, a Belgian Korean, also a photographer. ( An intriguing person, I think. He helps her sail through the Korean world of photographers. )
3. A. and her admirers.
4. Lisa and Andrea's tender moment.
5. Clare and her new hat.

I met Angelique last September through Andrea. She's from Philadelphia and she is a trained photgrapher with a degree in Visual Arts.
I was invited to her first solo exhibition in Seoul, at a restaurant/gallery "Cook 'n' heim."

She had about 20 photographs exhibited. Some of them were arrid landscapes of Nevada, some of them eerie images hinting at ghosts and something lurking beside us, perhaps in another dimension we are not aware of.

I am not an expert in photography. I simply love looking at and taking photos. What I can say about these: they suggest the person behind the camera has a great deal of sadness in her and is looking or creating images which reflect her inner feelings. The 'spirits' in the pictures hint at her own spiritual side, perhaps a desire to find out more and know more, beyond the mundane. I liked the photos. They stirred something in me.

Sungyung and 'Uri Bianca'

Going to bed at 5:00 and getting up at 8:00 is the most common cause of feeling (and looking) like an overly ripe persimmon.

I am in my office, tired, with stomach slightly upset by an unappetising lunch that consisted of greasy fish fillets, tartar sauce and an array of side dishes that are not on my fave list: shiny, oil-coated sea-weed strings, potatoes swimming in an ocean of sweet soy sauce, a weird odaeng/carrot/onion/squid salad. I am waiting for the first batch of the oral exam victims that are about to barge in at 3:00 pm. For no apparent reason, I am compelled to write about sungyung. What? Read on.

We have an instant coffee dispenser and quite a pretty stainless steel bowl of steaming 'sungyung' right next to it. Sungyung is a type of Korean rice tea made by pouring hot water over the rice stuck to the bottom of the pot in which it was cooking. Koreans love this transparent bluish liquid and believe it's very good for digestion. They even have a saying, something along the lines: 'nothing beats the taste of sungyung' or there's no other taste like sungyung.' I also heard that in the (g)olden times, this drink was consumed for its alleged ability to supply people with their daily allowance of iron, because the iron from the pot is absorbed by the rice and diluted in hot water. In the hillarious book I read last summer: "A brief history of tractors in Ukranian", a doctor in the impoverished Ukraine advises an aenemic patient to stick nails in an apple overnight, removes them in the morning and eat the apple to get the iron. My own grandmother used to make a soup called "klinchorba" - [klin = nail; chorba = soup] - the nail soup. It's a simple vegetable soup with a curious name. My grandmother claimed that during the war they would add a handful of nails to boil in the soup to get the iron out of them. I thought she was joking, but now I think she wasn't. It was just that my mind was too rigid to accept nails as an ingredient in a soup.

The 'old' D and I always politely declined the Korean iron drink, secretly calling it 'the rotten rice tea." Prof. K. laughed her head off when she heard the nickname. I felt comfortable enough with her to share this mischiveous misnomer. I wouldn't dare to share it with most Koreans. It's a well known fact that the sacred Korean food is not to be disliked or made fun of, even in the most good-natured of ways, and even if you happen to be the biggest fan of the said food.

Actually, the rotten rice tea doesn't have a lot of flavour, rotten or otherwise. It is simply hot water with vague hints of rice taste. Now, after an especially heavy meal, I like to have a few hot sips. What I don't like is listening to other people in the cafeteria, crowded around the pot, holding little plastic bowls, loudly slurping, gulping and - the worst! -vigorously swishing the hot liquid back and front and sidewise in their mouths, rinsing out gochu and other grime from between their teeth - and then swallowing. Urgh! It's one of the sights and sounds of Korea I tolerate the least - that, and people brushing their teeth, gargling and spitting in the sink while I'm making photocopies. Public grooming is an acceptable thing in Korea, and mostly I'm used to it, but some things still bother mem. Clipping nails in the subway is especially annoying, and potentially dangerous as those nails fly around like shrapnels.

After lunch, I headed to my office. In front of the elevator I met Profs L and S and a bunch of other profs I don't know. I exchange some small talk with L and S, and one of the other profs asked something about me in Korean, to which Prof. S., quite affectionately, actually, responded: "Anieyeo! Uri Bianca eeyeyo!" (No, she isn't. She's Our Bianca.) I don't know what he asked , most likely if I was a visitor or something like that, but I liked the response: Uri Bianca! Didn't even mind too much that they were talking about me as if I wasn't there.

Perhaps it's time to prove my Uri identity by starting that swishing sungyung ritual and walking along the hallways with a toothbrush sticking out of my mouth.

Christmas Tree Decorating Party

It's 4:22 a.m. now, and I've been blogging for almost two hours, finallly, at about 2:30 giving up on tossing and turning in bed and coming over to my faithful night companion, Toshiba. If I can't sleep, I can certainly blog.

Last night was Angelique's exhibition. After the opening ceremony, we proceeded to her friend's Vincent's studio for the 'after party.' It was interesting, a whole new world that deserves a blog entry of their own, but tomorrow , perhaps.

I got home at 1:00 a.m. and got up at 12:00 today. After coffee and a few slices of cheese and pineapple for breakfast, I decided that it was high time for me to rearrange my bedroom furniture. My bed was directly under the window, so each morning I'd wake up stiff and half-frozen thanks to the typhoonic draft, the direct result of the infamous Korean heat insulation, or the lack of it. I was in the midst of admiring a cute zoo of dust bunnies that established itself under the furniture, when Gwen messaged suggesting an early dinner. Great idea! Cheese and pineapple seemed to have canceled each other out quickly.

We met at 4:00 p.m. and had a very nice warm dinner at the Thai Orchid. Say what you will, but in my eyes, both the food and the atmosphere beat that other trendier 'cooler' Thai restaurant. After dinner, I declined G's invitation to move over to the RMT to meet some of her friends, since I had papers to grade. Instead of the Rocky (aka Smoky, as Gwen quipped) mountain I climbed two flight of stairs at Starbucks and flopped down to business. How silly of me to have ordered and consumed that enormous bucket of coffee, elegantly renamed to "Grande." Its 58 milion mg of the Best Seattle Caffeine certainly gave me an extra grande case of sleeplessnes in Seoul.

I was so absorbed in the book (American Fuji, by Sarah Backer) that Clare lent me to read that I couldn't put it down, ending up with a total of five graded papers. Plan A had been to have them all graded. I had to resort to plan B: wake up early tomorrow and finish the additional 18 papers for the day class and work on the ones from my night class later in the day. Not! Since I 'm not sleeping now, my planned wake up time will surely be my bed time. Now, I have to come up with plan C. How about telling students to come and pick up their papers from my office on Wednesday. Sounds like a plan to me.
On the upside, I'm really on top of my blogging, -over the top, actually.
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But, now off to my description of the X-mas decorating party this past Friday.

Two years ago it was Jiwon and me. We had fun. Last year it was a bunch people, and again good times were rolling. Wanting to recreate that feeling with my family of the heart, since my family of the blood is, sadly, rarelly with me at Christmas, I threw another X-mas decorating party this past Friday, December 8th.

Friends came over around 8 pm. We ate, drank, laughed, decorated, relaxed on the floor, reclined in chairs, danced a little and even waited for our 'salary man' friend Jungshik who came after work at 1:00 a.m.

The decorating elves did a great job, and only a bit of alteration was needed on the following morning, - as was to be expected from a bossy hostess who likes to direct people. Hehehehe! So, sew me!

Shown here in the picture with Clare is the tree before, and then w/o Clare, the tree after. I didn't change a whole lot - just removed the sugar canes and Santa's boot, moved this or that and added some tinsel.

Pretty Women Ad for Desserts

It was a holiday for anyone with a prominent sweet tooth. Offered on a dessert table:
1. a great bake, weirdly named 'Andersen Christmas Cake' (association with his fairy tale "The Ice Queen?, or some other winter tale)
2. a devine cherry pie
3. another great bake -German Christmas Cake (Christstollen)
4.Chocolate orange pudding
5. Rice-pudding

Although we gave our chewing muscles an incredibly intense workout, still I am stuck with so many leftovers. At first, I thought I'd invite my colleagues, but I have no time for that before next Friday, and by then the sweets will have lost all of their appeal.

I think I'll feed my evening writing class - sugar up their brains before the exam. Yep. Choun saengan iyeyo.

Mulled wine and Eggnog

Knowing that life's unpredictable and that something might come up to prevent me from having enough time to prepare for the party on Friday, I did all of my shopping and cooking the night before.
When preparing a party for close friends, when you are not trying to impress but simply want to fill their bellies with something simple yet good, then it's a good idea to make a pot of chili, stew, soup, and the like the night before and just heat it before the party.

Thursday, before my evening class I made a dash for Hanam Market to get the chili seasoning, then to Home Plus for cans of red kidney beans, meat, peppers, onions, baguettes, wine...
Since I went out with the two D's for some beer and chicken, I didn't start cooking till 10:30. The chili was done by 12:00, and I saved the cleaning for the next morning. What joy was it to wake up to a sink filled with dirty pots and pans, and chili splatters all over the floor and the wall. Luckily, after the coffee, I tried to think of cleaning as my morning workout. After coffee, I attacked the dishes, pretending I was doing my morning exercise, slightly less pleasurable than
a power walk in the park. My hands got a full aqua aerobics workout complete with bubbles floating around. A good example of spot training.

As I predicted, I was busy all day: a meeting with the head of the department with B to discuss our schedule, then preparing the final written exam for my writing class, followed by making a billion of photocopies. The time simply flew by and it was past 5:30 when I ran one last time to the little supermarket (yep, they are little here, aka corner store) to get ingredients for eggnog and mulled wine.

The guests started arriving around 7:30. They brought more desserts, wine, fruit... and we truly had a feast.

Mulled wine -Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups water
4 Tbsp sugar
1 orange (with peel) sliced thinly
1/2 lemon (with peel) sliced thinly
12 cloves
1-2 pods cardamom
1 small piece fresh ginger, sliced (or powdered ginger)
5-6 peppercorns
cinammon and nutmeg (to taste, add later to individual mugs)
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1,5 l inexpensive wine (Carlo Rossi Muscat is perfect)

Combine the ingredients (without wine) and bring to boil. Let simmer for about 10 min. Add wine and heat until it boils. Remove from stove immediately - you don't want all that cheer to evaporate, do you? Serve in mugs and sprinkle with cinammon and nutmeg.

Eggnog recipe

The truly wonderful version you'll find by googling "Martha Stewart's traditional eggnog." It's a good thing - good of course if you're a domestic goddess with an army of lesser gods to do the work for you. If you're a mere busy earthling, you can fake it. If you're a woman, faking it comes easy, ....ehm...

Try this somewhat unorthodox but surprisingly 'real' and good-tasting eggnog. No one needs to know your secret, except that now everyone (all 5 of you who read this) knows mine.

Ingredients:

1 tub vanilla ice cream softened(depending on the size of your crowd, it can be more); you can either thaw it a bit in the microwave or let it soften at room temp, stirring to speed up the process
milk to add until eggnog reaches the consistency you like
2 eggs beaten until pale and frothy
1 cup of rum or whiskey (or both! why not!), or whatever you happen to find - perhaps soju would work?
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Beat the eggs and add to softened icecream. Stir until smooth. Add your alcoholic beverage, constantly and gently stirring. Add milk stirring until you reach the thickness you desire. Chill.

Serve individually in pretty glasses, or paper cups, depending on the level of your domestic divinity. Have cinnammon and nutmeg handy for your guests to add to their hearts content.
Enjoy. It's good. I promise. Actually, Thugjeong couldn't have enough of it.

CAUTION: Since this version contains fresh uncooked eggs, consume immediatley or keep in the fridge for a maximum of 2 days. Unless, you want to experience the joys of salmonella, which I did when I was about 8. All these years later, and I can still remember the sheer agony this beautifully named but deadly parasite created in my intestines.

And I see your true colours...

We had fun with fairy lights, ornaments... Andrea got a kick out of using huge shiny objects as her personal costume jewelry.
Girls wrapped themselves in fairy lights and shone even more brightly...

Elves at Work

Shown here: Chris and Sohee are genuinely happy while rummaging through the x-mas ornaments box. The other picture, while we were certainly filled with joy, is a bit enhanced with added enthusiasm. This is Rockwll meet Seoul X-mas tree decorating party.

You should have seen these big kids attacking the task of decorating the tree: such zest and passion are rarely to be seen. All I did (the following morning) is rearrange it a bit. Really, only a teeny tiny bit. Hey, it's me, I can't help it.

I reminded myself of Monica Geller in a Christams episode of friends. She allows everyone else to decorate the tree and doesn't direct them. Rachel commends her on allowing them to do that. Monica retorts that the tree is about love, friends, family, and that it is far more important to have her friends' dear hands do what they want to do and enjoy it than having a perfect tree and a bunch of annoyed friends. After they are done (and they did a horrendously bad job), she simply turns the tree 180 degrees so that her 'perfect' previoulsy decorated side faces the room and her friends' side the wall.
I didn't do anything drastic like that - just removed two huge ugly (what was I thinking when I bought them?) sugar canes off the tree and added some tinsel.

The Tree Task Force

At the dinner table, the whole gang.

Party's Over

Jungshick showed up at 1:00 a.m. We were waiting for him, but were quite tired. In the end everyone collapsed onto the warm ondul floor. Andrea was tired way before, so she snuggled with my twins on the sofa.

Rudolph's poison

The next morning, I spent most of the day in my pj's puttering about the house, washing up (it seemed every single plate, bowl, mug, cup, glass, spoon, etc. had been used) and photgraphing Christmas objects.
Rudolph about to indulge in eggnog.
Santa and Snowman buddying up.

Mysogyny? Feminism? Both?

Wire mesh item entitled:
'High-heeled shoes.

' Perhaps belonged to the woman who's been out and about?

I said a couple of days ago I'd go back to our school's gallery/exhibition space to look at the strange images more closely and sneak a few photos. I didn't need to sneak them - the artists seemed very pleased by my lense's attention.

The imagery in most of the exhibits had something to do with the feminine, either women and violence, women and sex, women and their reproductive organs, explicit or implicit. A somewhat shocking exhibition, but quite unforgettable, most likely because of the shock factor.

I really loved the melting sculptures. About 15 statue candles were burning and changing right in front of you on a big metal tray in the middle of the gallery.

The artist ( a young girl that looked anything but) seems not to belive in that 'ars longa, vita brevis' stuff, as her art was disappearing before her very eyes. Or, was she saying that everything, indeed, has an expiry date, even art? I should have asked her... perhaps I will if the exhibition is still on on MOnday.

Melting away

A simple idea. I like it. Artist filled moulds in the shape of famous sculptures and filled them with wax. Then, at the exhibition, these 'candles' are lit. As the wax melts, body parts are deformed, twisted, bent and broken off in quite a unique, sometimes disturbing, sometimes very aesthetically pleasing way.

Open minded

These series of pictures is entitled "Open minded." The portrait of a woman sitting with her crotch open wide, wiht gaping empty eyes is truly disturbing. You can actually stick your fingers in her eyes.
Does the artist criticize the new 'open-minded Korean woman' as someone who just simply opened her crotch, while she lost her inner beauty - heart, soul, traditional values?... Moooolah.

Buhgayna Monologues

My colleagues and a few Korean students said, 'flowers.' I don't know if they were playing dumb out of embarassment, or if they can't see what's obvious ...at least to me - or, my dirty mind.

I kind of gasped when I saw these canvases in all their 2x1.5m glory, hanging on the wall, side by side. I suppose , I lived in the prudish North America too long and felt weird looking at them with a bunch of little kiddies milling about the gallery.
Well, dmire the flowers that look to me like they have just been deflowered.

Pictures in a series: Fetishism

Aren't the custom of sitting on the floor and the newly "ubiquitious" (that as of late just happens to be the most used and abused English word in Korea) mini-skirt and hot pants in the midst of winter a paradise for 'fetishists'? Not to mentions an inspiration for a young (male) artist.