Yes, I'm still here, alive and kicking. Well, walking, for sure, with a painful foot: Morton's neuroma and hammer toe. The pair makes for a lovely foot.
I can't even remember when I last wrote something here.
April is the month when I feel especially weepy and vulnerable. It's the month when my mother was born, and 67 years later suffered and died. My dad always says: 'my Ana went out, like a candle." That candle took away the  light from my life and left me in darkness for a long while. Even now, almost  13 years later, I feel the absence of that warm light. Most acutely. But I carry her in me, and still, every night before falling asleep I wish her a good night, telling her that I love her, that I forgave her, and beg her to forgive me. I lost her just when we started being friends, not just a mother and daughter. Life's like that - a box of bloody chocolates. Of the bitter kind.

You can't spoil these siimple soups

Pumpkin soup

Lisa, chop-chopping

I am starting Korean Level 3 at Seogang University tomorrow. Yahoo! I am excited and a little bit worried. December and half of January are going to be incredibly busy. The first two weeks of December are the two last semester weeks at the school where I work, and the first two weeks of the semester at the school I'll be attending. When the regular work semester ends, I'll jump right into three weeks of winter school, where I'll be teaching English for Presentations. This every day, 3 hours. That's not all. I'll also be teaching three hours three times a week at our graduate school. While I have heaps of experience teaching English for presentations (and now am creating quite acceptable power point presentations myself), I don't know what to expect in the 'graduate school.' The students are the ones who keep failing their regular English requirement and cannot graduate. They are frustrated and I expect quite resentful. God help me with this one. Since I also need to review my Level 1 and Levels 2 Korean, between now and tomorrow, not an easy takes considering it's already 9:00 pm, I'll cut the long work story short and say that for about a month I'll be spending 9 hours in the classroom, 6 as a teacher and 3 as a student. And this immediately after the two last hellish with grading weeks of the semester. Fun!It is winter here: an early, beautiful, bright, crisp winter.The sky has been incredible. I am addicted to daily walks in the nearby park where the fallen leaves and withering grass smell wonderful. It is cold, though, so I crank up the heating in my house, except when I go to sleep,when I turn it way down. I can't sleep when it's hot in the room. Then I wake up with a headache and cemented sinuses.What I really wanted to blog about is how I'm planning to keep my energy up 'in this long dark winter days' of work and study voluntary slavery.First, I will keep walking in the park, of course. I'll add some yoga/ streching and light weight training. I've been pretty good in the past month with that. Pretty good, I say, which means, I have to be better.Second, I'll eat well. I'll plan in advance. This means I'll make a huge pot of healthy soup, divide into individual servings and freeze. I bought great German bread to go with it, and individual one-serving packages of cheese. I have fruit, vegetable, big pot of yogurt. I should be fine. I must be fine. I don't want to fall back to junk when I feel exhausted.While looking for a recipe to use up two heads of broccoli, I found on youtube that scary Hell Kitchen guy, Gordon Ramsey, showing how to make a fabulous broccoli soup with only three ingredients.The recipe:2 heads broccoliwater to boil it ina wee bit of saltLEt water boil rapidly. Add broccoli floweretts and boil till you can cut a knife through it easily. Get your blender; transfer broccoli into the blender, add the cooking water to cover about half the broccoli. Carefully blend. Check for taste. Add salt if you want. OHMIGOD! It was so delicious:broccoli in its own juice with salt.He served it with two slices of goat cheese and some walnuts placed in the middle of a soup bowl and the soup carefully poured around it. I didn't have anything fancy like that. I added some milk. Yummy!I finished my soup that day, sharing some with my Korean teacher and friend, Prof K.Later that day she gave me a big pumpkin. It was a specila pumpkin because when prof K went to the market she said she had bought one for herself, one for her son -and one for me. I had told her that I love pumpkin. Isn't that really thoughtful of her.I experimented with this pumpkin, applying "the Ramsey method." Simply, I washed the pumpking, seeded it, cut in four pieces, and boiled until it was tender. Then I removed the skin, cut the flesh in chunks, added them to the blender, and added some cooking water; blended it carefully, as to prevent 'explosions', pusling at first then going into bolder modes. For more flavour I added cinammon and nutmeg. Heaven!!!On Friday, I went out for dinner with my friend Lisa. We ate at Zelen,a Bulgarina restaurant, whose name Zelen (green) should not fool you: meat abounds there - nice juicy, perfectly marinated and grilled meat. We admired the food and the warm atmosphere almost as much as the plentiful attractions of the young Bulgarians: the waiter, the cook and Misha, the owner himself, who played Kusturica for us, acknowlegding our mutual eastern European roots. We stayed out late,so Lisa slept over at my house. She needed to go to a wedding quite close to my place the next morning. In the morning while she was getting ready for the wedding, I cooked a.k.a. burned us some pancakes from the batter mix I had brought from the Philippines last summer. I fed Lisa, then turned her into my slave, 'ordering' her to chop a bowlful of champignons and shitake mushrooms. I made a mushroom soup a la Ramsey, with some modifications. I sweated some onion, added mushrooms and salt, and waited till most of the yummy juice oozed out of them. For pureeing, I used mostly milk instead of water. The best! Maybe because I really love mushroom soup...Lisa loved it, too.

Although I am not going anywhere this winter vacation, the idea of improving my Korean, catching up on sleep/reading/writing, having long walks, and eventually lazy winter weekends at home with popcorn and movies, is really appealing - especially with all the great veggies waiting to be pureed into soups. Bon apetit!

What's the gist of your literary list?

"I like to see my fish* on my plate, not in my book." (Anonymous)
*whale is not fish, while tomato is fruit -strange world we live in, ain't it?

I oficially revive my blog with an entry about something I read in the New York Times. Now I start my sentences like my bestest friend, but imitation being the best form of flattery, yada, yada, she shouldn't mind too much. That 'something I read about' is "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," by Peter Boxall, a lit prof at Sussex University.

Isn't the concept of the book a bit ageist? And what's this obsession with numbers? What if you are too old to start plodding through the list? It's been calculated that by reading one book a month, you'd finish in 2063. I'll be in my 90's then, if already not grazing sweet grasses of eternal pastures. And, what if you happen to be a slow reader? I prefer careful reader, by the way...
Life is too short to read what other people think is good. Read what you want and when you want, not what is 'in', or when it's in, or what's on various bestseller lists. Whose book taste should you trust anyway?

I have a book that proclaims to be "a collection of world's 50 Best Short Stories ever written." Best, my derriere. While some of them are great, others are merely mediocre, and some plain bad. Lucky, they are short, and I can, if I want to, read them all before 2063. Even the bad ones.

Anthologies, collections and lists that claim to compile 'the bests' are to be taken with a grain of salt. I say this lightly, but I don't follow my own advice. It's pure peer pressure. I always feel that if a book contains the best of the best and the most famous of the famous, everyone must have read the stuff. Do I want to be the only ignorant one who hasn't? Of course not. I go to parties, too, and I also need to talk intelligently and name-drop an author or two, so I keep buying the darn collections, admittedly mostly if they are second- hand and cheap. I don't necessarily read everything that's inside, busy perhaps reading something I enjoy more, or maybe watching "Bianca's TV" - youtube and yahoo videos. No smirking please: they can be very educational.

Recently, I bought two bottles of wine, one red, one white, $3.00 each. They were every drop as awful as I had expected them to be. As a matter of fact, a much fairer deal would have been for the store to offer customers $3.00 to take the bottles away. But, $3 is not a lot of money, no big loss there. And, late night experimenting with spices, fruit and juice turned the vinegary wine into wonderful sangrias ( a photo blog entry about that will follow soon, btw). I treat my bad anthologies like my bad wine: I put them to other usages: as subtitutes for sleeping pills or dusty dinner guests 'impressors" who dutifully 'oh' and 'ah' over my high-brow literary taste. Their greatest use is, however, as an impromtu filing system. I stick in their pages loose receipts and scraps significant enough not to be thrown away but at the same time not significant enough to classify and file properly. Every once in a while, I open my cheap collections of sometimes cheap literature, especially when I am trying to locate a business card that suddenly proves itself important but didn't seem so at the time of casual 'filing.' An added bonus on such occasions is starting to read at random page and finding an unxpected gem.

Reading is a very personal thing, and reading tastes are as varied as fish in the sea. Ultimately, reading should not be about the number of books you read. It's about what you learn from them and how much you enjoy the reading process and appreciate "the artful arrangement of words," which is what Amy Tan calls literature.

A reader of the same article in the NYT posted a comment that says it all. I can't say it better, so I hope that he'll be flattered by my pasting it below and opt out of suing me for plagiarism:

"Lists like this remind me of Dubya's bet that he could read more books over the summer than Condoleeza Rice. He won, I think, but I wonder if he actually learned anything. We are too obsessed with numbers---How many miles do we run a day? How many times a week do we make love? What is our heart rate when we're doing it? I always thought the purpose of reading was to get off the treadmill, to take time out and reflect. You can't do that if you're racing the clock...I shall probably never get to any of the books discussed in this article, and I don't feel any the poorer. And there are many books that have enriched my life --- that will never appear on any list but my own." Beeeeyoootifully put!

I would have thought this guy my reading soulmate except that he owned to spending an entire summer reading Moby Dick only, savouring every word. I, on the other hand, spent 10 miserable Canadian winter days back in 1997 reading it, and then few more agonizing days writing a paper about it. Still, for all my efforts (well, efforts they were!), the most I remember about my Moby Dick experience is the exquisite scent of the two perfect snow white candles made from the fat of an unfortunate Nuntuckett sperm whale that our prof had brought to the class (the candles, not the whale). Oh, and an inexplicable crush I had on him (the whale, not the prof).

The three most recently read books that would definitely make it to my list - were I ever to make such a list - are Jumpa Lahiri's "Namesake," Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" and Dai Sijie's "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." I am looking forward to reading Lahiri's collection of short stories "Unaccustomed Earth."

Eating Oatmeal benefical while studying Korean? Maybe...

I haven't done any propper grocery shopping for a long time now.
I am studying (reviewing for final exams) and I promised to myself that I wouldn't go out till I have covered the first four lessons. I am at number 2 now and I am really hungry.
The fridge is all but empty. Correction: there is milk and grapefruit juice.
I scrambled through my kitchen kabinets, shelves and drawers and found a bag of oatmeal. Seeing 2 apples aging in a glass bowl on the table, I happily realized that I have my lunch:
OATMEAL WITH APPLES AND CINNAMON

Ingredients:

1,5 cup low-fat milk;
(I like my oatmeal creamy so I don't make it with water; besides milk adds calcium)
1 cup oatmeal
1 apple, peeled, cored, chopped
1Tbs brown sugar
a pinch of salt
a dash of cinnamon

Procedure:
Boil milk; add salt, sugar, cinnamon, apple
When it all starts boiling again, reduce heat and cook for about 5 - 7 min.
Pour into a pretty bowl - voila.

Traditionally, oatmeal is a breakfast food, but with lunch foods sadly absent I can hardly afford to be traditional.

Oatmeal is a health champion. It's a source of soluble and insoluble fiber, it has cancer-fighting properties, reduces bad (LDL) cholesterol while keeping the good one (HDL); balances blood sugar level(especially when you add cinnamon); it's a source of important minerals like zinc, selenium, copper, iron, magnesium; it also has Vitamin E.

You already know that an apple a day takes a doctor away. Other healthy and tasty additions: protein powder, nuts, dry fruit, fresh berries - bluberries are little health miracle workers.

Years ago in Canada, before going to school/work, this wonderful meal for breakfast would stick to my ribs and prep me for freezing Canadian mornings. Needless to say I was muhc healthier and shapelier in those regular oatmeal days.

Note to self: start eating oatmeal more often. Long live Avena Sativa
To read more on oatmeal, visit:
http://www.dentalplans.com/Dental-Health-Articles/Oatmeal-A-Magical-Food.asp

Cabbage Patches for Pain Relief

As I am typing this, I am eating something special. The simple dish, "Flekice sa kupusom" (pasta patches with cabbage) is what my maternal grandmother liked to whip up for her brood of grandchildren who visited every second summer or thereabouts.

Why flekice? Half a head of cabbage had been graying and vilting in the fridge next to a small tub of aging and almost ailing fatty plain yogurt. Perhaps my subconsciou self, reluctant to throw these two away, pushed to the surface the memory of flekice.

Cabbage - a health champion, detested for its plainness, uncouthness and the unfortunate images it evokes, images of grim German fraus or warty babushkas in head scarves,chopping and hacking, mincing and kneading in their steamy kitchens.

My maternal grandmother was actaully a tiny emaciated woman who after a life time of bigger and smaller diasasters developed a dictionary worth of debilitating digestive problems. She rarely ate herself, -usually a plain boiled potato with a drop of oil on it,- but she loved to cook for us. Few basic ingredients and even fewer condiments were enough to make for true culinary miracles.

She'd serve her famous cabbage dish ( a favourite only among children, though) in chipped soup bowls. A couple of heaping serving spoons, a generous dollop of sour cream, freshly greated black pepper on top... The creameness, the sweatness, the warmth from the dish and grandma's body hovering over us... In my memory, she remains a frail black figure by the huge kitchen table smiling wistfully at her grandchildren's open busy mouths that looked like dripping abstract miniatures framed in white sour cream.

My work on the dish was automatic. I had never made it or watched it made, but I knew what to do. I also knew that it would taste right.
The only thing I am not sure about is the apple. Did my grandma really add an apple to cabbage? Or did I confuse grandma's recipe with the recipe of my roomate in Germany who loved to saute apples, onions and cabbage tossing them with boiled pasta and generously inviting me to have some. No matter. In the end, the taste of my flekice was quite the taste that stuck to my palate all these years.

Recipe: Baba Ljuba's* Flekice** sa*** kupusom**** i kiselom pavlakom*****
Grandma Ljuba's pasta patches with cabbage and sour cream

* Ljuba =Beloved
**Flekice = a type of pasta, small squares
*** sa = with
****kupus = cabbage
*****kisela pavlaka = sour cream

INGREDIENTS
1/2 small head of cabbage, grated
2 cups of dry flekice (o.k., I cheated here, used tricolori fusilli)
1 apple, peeled, cored, grated
1 Tbps any cooking oil
1/2 Tsp salt
fresh pepper to taste
sour cream - to your heart's content

PROCEDURE
Cook the pasta according to instructions on the package.
In the meantime:
Heat oil in a frying pan; add cabbage and salt; saute at medium heat for about 5-7 min; add grated apples; saute for 5 minutes. The cabbage and apples should be 'sweating'(letting out juices) not browning or blackening.

Add cabagge/apple mix to drained pasta. Serve in bowls with a dollop of sour cream and grind fresh pepper on top.
It's simple. It's delicious. It's true comfort food.

NOTE:For all health benefits of cabbage, visit:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Health-Benefits-of-Cabbage&id=78014

Bus Must Go On

Along a wide Yeouido boulevard golden ginko tops sway gently greeting a breezy November night. The air smells of sweet dry leaves and winter promises. It’s around midnight, unusually peaceful, almost serene. I walk with a friend towards the nearest bus stop. A drunk shaggy-looking man, hair disheveled, cheeks purple and pudgy, black sagging pants covered in vomit, is fighting with the bus driver who is trying to kick him out. Other passengers, expressionless, are glued to their seats and cell phone screens. It doesn’t concern them. The bus driver manages to get the man off the bus. The man clings to him and pulls him out, as well. Together they land on the sidewalk. Within seconds, the drunk is punched and kicked several times by the enraged bus driver. The drunk falls to the ground. The driver, straightening his tie and smoothing his shirt, walks slowly back to the bus, starts the engine, and drives off.
I see my bus arriving and urge my friend to start walking towards her bus stop on the other side of the street. She walks off. I got on. It’s a long way home from here, and I am happy to find a seat. As I'm flopping down, I see in the front of the bus the drunk man boarding. He can barely stand upright. I want to warn the driver that he is a potential troublemaker, but decide that my language is not good enough for all of that.
Secretly, I observe the man who is now i the center of the bus. With both filthy hands he grabs onto the overhead handles and hovers above a young boy in school uniform who is snoring in his seat. A moment later, the boy is awakened by the stench of alcohol and stomach acid that escape from the man. Stubbornly, the boy remains in the seat, burying his offended nose in his jacket.

I can’t see the man’s face, only his shaggy hair. He seems to be sleeping while standing. By now the whole bus stinks like a cheap drinking hole in a bad part of town. No one shows any sign of disturbance. Stone faces everywhere. The man suddenly looks up. His mouth is open. It reveals what looks like a handful of broken French fries of uneven length. His teeth. They appear even more yellow in the middle of his unfortunately arranged purplish face. His eyes, unripe persimmons, swollen and yellowish, don’t have any light in them. With these half blind eyes he spots a seat at the very back of the bus and stumbles in that direction.
He hurls himself onto the seat. I half turn around and see that he’s next to a young girl on one side and a middle-aged man on the other. There are also two more people sitting next to the window on both sides of the bus. The only stir that the arrival of the man provokes among them are barely audible half-hearted sighs and smirks. A couple of hands fly to the noses.
We drive across a beautifully lit bridge. Underneath, the Han, like a long necklace studded with shimmering diamonds, flows peacefully disappearing in the night far away. The late night autumn sky is the color of deep blue pansies. Pretty.
“Aeeeshhh” – a hiss comes from the back. “Kibbun-ee jinja nappayo” [you are really spoiling my mood]. The drunk is upset with the girl next to him. He might have fallen asleep and put his smelly head on her shoulder or lap. Or, started fondling her. She might have objected. Somehow, she offended him. The young man sitting next to the window on the left and the girl switch seats. The girl is very young, short, stocky and warmly dressed. The drunken man repeats over and over, “ Kibbun-ee nappayo.” The girl retorts with apologies, “Chaessong-habmnida. Jal motthaesoyo” [ I am sorry. I am sorry]. Who did what to whom is not important. She is younger and must apologize to him. She’s a well-mannered girl. The raspy complaints from the man and the squeaky apologies from the girl continue as the bus speeds on.

A sound of punch followed by a scream. The man’s mood is so bad now that it had to find a relief in the fist landing on the girls face. The young man between the girl and the drunk, grabs the fist. There’s some commotion on the bus. The drunk frees his fist and punches the girl again. Some passengers ask the driver to stop. Others look out the window. The driver ignores the requests for a while.

As the punching and screaming continues, the bus finally stops. The driver, an apparent former king of village dances, broad-shouldered and big-headed, all stiff permed hair and oversized patent leather shoes, walks towards the back of the bus. By now the girl, imprisoned in the corner by the window, is hysterical. The only buffer zone between her and the enraged drunk is her lukewarm defender, the young man who’s unwillingly holding down the man’s fist..

Seeing the bus driver, the drunk loses it. He starts sending random punches and kicks in all directions. The middle-aged man on his right decides that at this point intervention cannot be any longer avoided. He grabs the fist closest to him and holds it pinned down to his chest. Two men from the front of the bus appear and grab the drunk man’s legs. The buffer zone is now in control of the other fist and the drunk’s neck. Quite bizarre, this scene. It looks as if though the drunk is about to be quartered.

Before long, the drunk is thrown onto the floor and held down by five man. A sixth man calls the police. We wait. The former king of village dances supervises the operation, chewing gum and loudly smacking. The girl is convulsing in sobs. The man is writhing on the floor. The five vigilantes are panting.
A middle-aged woman, an ajumma, with a seat right in front of the abused girl, is visibly annoyed by the wait. She casts nasty glances at the girl. She screams abuses, alternating between the girl and the bus driver. She shouldn’t wait. She will not wait. The girl’s sobbing stops for a second giving way to yet another series of respectful “Chaessonghabnida’s.” More and more people are siding with the ajumma who doesn’t want to wait. Soon there is a cacophony of complaints about the delay. I need to get home. Yobo waits. Children study. What’s the big deal? A drunk man, a punched girl?! Just another night in Seoul. Let's remain calm here.

The driver is a good public servant, only too happy to concede to the chorus. He asks the five men to let the man go. The man who called the police opposes. He wants to wait. He looks at the girl and asks: “Kwaenchan-kessoyo?” (are you o.k.?). The round checks, punched, flushed and wet nod in agreement. She doesn’t want the police. She is late in coming home. Parents are already angry. She doesn’t need any more trouble than she’s already in. The phone man is still reluctant. For such indecision, he gets an earful from the ajumma. She yells at the driver: “kaseyo, kaseyo, kaseyo” [go!, go!, go!]

The girl is now eager for the man to be let off the bus. Her wish is granted. His body is briefly flying through the air as he is thrown out by the force of four men. He lands with a thud onto the sidewalk but then rolls over to the black oily puddle below. He tries to get up, but falls back again, not moving anymore. The bus doors close and we drive off.

The bus flies along the streets of Jongno and Daehangno, finally reaching my stop. As I get off, a black cloud of ‘salary men’ shrouded in a light soju mist, their coat tails and ties flapping, bags swinging, boards the bus. Black creatures praying on blue buses.

At the same time, somewhere in the city, the bruised soaked drunk is waiting for another bus with another girl to punch. I walk home, safe, content even. It can't be me.

___________________________________________________________________
NOTE: This is a true story. The events related in it happened on a November Friday this year, on the bus 162, on my way home from Yeuido.
When I was asked to write a story that would somehow fit the theme “identity” I had lots of ideas but very little time. In the end I chose to include this one. You might ask: “what does all of this have to do with identity? “ Lots, I’d argue. It has to do with mentality and what is socially acceptable in some cultures. All of this is deeply connected with identity.

In Korea, you are not supposed to interfere with the affairs of people you don’t know. Four years ago, when my cousin was visiting, on her first outing in Seoul, she was hit by an older drunk man. He intended to punch her in the face, but she lunged so his fist landed heavily on her shoulder. A lot of people were around, but no one tried to help us. I screamed at the man in English. His friend finally pulled him away.

Of course, incidents like these happen everywhere. You probably know the infamous case of a New York woman killed on a street corner while many people residing in the nearby apartments watched from their windows, without running down to help.

However, in Korea this “I don’t know you so I don’t care and I am not obliged to help” attitude is more exaggerated than in Western countries. Not to mention the ‘balli, balli, we cannot wait” mentality.

It’s difficult to change people’s mentality, but what about the bus driver? Shouldn’t it be his duty to call the police and have the dangerous drunken man put away for the night.
I saw this man stir trouble on two buses, the trouble being progressively worse. God only knows what he did on the third bus, or what was done to him.

Dinner with Deb, May 12th

Jenn, Clare, Deb and I had a mediocre dinner at an ethnich food restaurant in Itaewon.

The most terrible wine I've tasted in a long long time.

It was nice to be with Jenn and Deb.