Adam in Asia

Tokyo time-lapse

2010-09-08T15:24:00.000+09:00

Inter // States is the latest Tokyo time-lapse piece by photographer Samuel Cockedey. The soundtrack is "Paradigm Flux (Tokyo Cut)" by Woob, from the new "Paradigm Flux" EP.

Fullscreen this badboy.

inter // states from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

Time-lapse Gundam

2010-09-08T14:54:00.001+09:00

Last weekend, some friends and I took a big road trip to Shizuoka, where this 1:1 scale Gundam was built, for a completely different reason than visiting the giant Gundam. Why we didn't go check it out, I don't know, but I don't think I can ever forgive myself.

Wajima Taisai Festival!

2010-08-19T17:40:00.001+09:00

*whoosh*

That's the sound of me blowing the dust off this blog. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, and so is my time here in Japan. As I rapidly approach one full year of being here, I look back on this blog and feel ashamed at how little I've put up on it. The usual excuses come up, too much to document and too little time, as well as Facebook becoming more of a central place to post pictures and updates. But I'm going to try to go at this thing with renewed vigor, which means going back over the last 12 months and trying to recap some of the more memorable things that have gone down here. Starting with the very beginning....

I have had the following blog post sitting in my draft box since last August, about 75% complete. It's about my town's big summer festival. Since this festival is happening again this upcoming weekend, I figure it's probably time to call this one done and put it up. So let's step in the old way back machine, to August 2009, and....

WAJIMA TAISAI!

For the past 4 days and nights, my quaint little fishing village (Wajima City, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan) was turned completely upside down as people poured in from all over to celebrate one of the biggest festivals on the Noto Peninsula.

Hot-Ishikawa.com describes it as thus:

10 meter tall festival lanterns called Kiriko as well as smaller portable paper lanterns are carried through the town streets along with portable shrines called 'omikoshi'. At the festival climax, a special bonfire by the sea is lit, and Gohei (decorative strips of white paper used in Shinto rituals) that fall from the top are scrambled for by brave men wearing loincloths. It is believed that the person who catches Gohei strips achieves success in everything he does. The giant Kiriko lanterns are indispensable to various festivals celebrated in Noto. Wajima's festival kirikos are especially distinctive because of their famous magnificent Wajima lacquer coatings.

The kiriko in this festival were similar to the ones in the Isaaki Hoto festival I posted about previously, but smaller. Still plenty heavy though.

From Taisai Blog 2009

The Mikoshi - portable Shinto shrine, serves as a vehicle for the divine spirit during Japanese festivals. Basically it's like the god's RV.

Opening Ceremony at sunset on Wajima Beach

Each night of the festival takes place in a different neighborhood in Wajima, and each night has a different feel, which is one of the things I enjoyed most about it. The first night was just a warmup, the second two nights were full on insane, and the last night got the kids involved with smaller kiriko for them to carry around as well as a dramatic street battle between a giant fish, the omikoshi shrine thingy mentioned above, and a crazy purple kiriko lantern that tilted in all directions and was festooned with discoballs, tinsel, and purple, yellow, and green strobe lights in a style that could only be described as 'Japanese mardi gras.' (All the other kiriko were pretty traditional wood and rice paper so this one really stood out.)

Kiriko lined up in front of a very serious fellow

On the two craziest nights (Saturday and Sunday), dozens of kiriko teams march their kiriko around the city, racing them at breakneck speeds across bridges and spinning them around insanely in the middle of street intersections.

Once you realize how solid these things are (it takes about 20 guys to lift one), those feats seem much more impressive...and more than just a little bit dangerous, especially when you add the constant threat of the 20 foot tall lanterns hitting power lines or traffic lights. I saw several people come very close to getting flattened during the spinning and the races. Did I mention that people are constantly thrusting 3 liter bottles of sake and shochu (cheap rice wine) in your hand and then cheering as you go bottoms up? Yep. Good times. :)

From Taisai Blog 2009

Taiko drumming is featured prominently throughout the festival. Each kiriko lantern has a drum attached to the base of it, and the drum is constantly manned by a rotating cast of team members. It's pretty awesome, the city really comes alive with the sound of the drums (and flute/bell accompaniment) echoing all over.

During the festival I found out that the Wajima area is home to some of the best Taiko teams in the country, and from what I saw, I believe it. I still haven't decided whether it's more fun to watch the really really old guys do it or the really really young kids who can barely see over the drum.

While they are drumming they all get this blissed out expression on their face, just pure enjoyment--it's great. And contagious, I frequently found myself smiling without even realizing it. I hope to start taking taiko lessons on my own soon, more on that later. Here's a video of some taiko highlights:

The first Taiko performance in that video is from the opening ceremonies on Day 1 on the beach. I don't remember the name of the group, but I remember hearing that they won a national competition last year. The second clip at night is a form of Taiko called Wajima Daiko, and is specific to this area of Japan. I think it started about 500 years ago when villagers tried to scare off invaders by dressing up in ferocious masks wearing seaweed "hair". These guys perform almost every night of the week during the summer for tourists, right outside my apartment.

On the first night of the festival, my co-worker Brian somehow landed us an invitation to join one of the "teams" that runs the kiriko on the second and biggest night.

At first, I was pretty stoked. And then I thought about it for a bit. And I started to wonder what he had gotten us into. 7 hours lugging around a 1,000+ lb wooden lantern, all while sake is being generously poured (forced) down my throat? Sounded like a recipe for hospitalization. But I couldn't reject a generous invitation to participate in this thing, not without insulting our host, and I figured that wouldn't be the best way to start off my time in Wajima. So I shook off my doubts and dove in headfirst, and I'm glad I did because it ended up being one of the most memorable nights I've had in Japan so far.

My Kiriko Team

Brian and I showed up at our host's house at 7pm ready to join in the fun. We were loudly welcomed by a crew of maybe 30 or 40 very well-lubricated people, our kiriko team. Judging by the amount of empty Asahi and sake bottles in the house they had been hitting the sauce hard for most of the day. We were handed our team's signature hapis (traditional robes) and bandanas, then after a couple group photos we hoisted the kiriko onto our shoulders and headed off into the night, marching to the beat of the taiko drum and the trill of the festival flute, launching the kiriko into the air with jubilant shouts of "So-re!"

I would love to give a detailed narrative of the rest of the night, and the rest of the festival --all the different rituals and taiko and dance performances that I witnessed, descriptions of the intricately crafted and decorated kiriko lanterns, but honestly I can't remember half of what I saw, and I couldn't tell you much about what the other half meant because I was just kind of going with the flow and not much was explained to me (not a lot of English speakers 'round these parts.) You'll just have to watch the videos. I can tell you that after the end of the 4th day, I felt like I had been run over by a truck (or several trucks), but it was really the best kind of exhaustion. In addition to overall soreness from kiriko hoisting, I had a large welt on the back of my head that I received during a massive brawl to grab a "lucky" piece of bamboo that are placed on top of the bonfires. Probably should've given the bamboo up a little sooner than I did.

There were a ton of other JETs that came up to Wajima from all over Ishikawa for the festival (I had 8 people sleeping on the floor of my little apartment), and it was a great way to meet a lot of the people that I'd be spending my year here in Japan with. Nothing forges a friendship quite like a boatload of sake and a crazy summer festival.

The party was not without it's moments of drama and injury. At one point, I saw a man catch on fire-insert Burning Man joke here-when the big bonfire on the second night fell to the ground a little too early. See the video below for (somewhat graphic) details.

I also saw the head honcho for our kiriko team, our elderly benefactor, fall straight onto his head from about 15 feet up off the ground. He had climbed to the top of our kiriko to secure one of the sacred bamboo poles we had won after the bonfire, and it was pouring down rain, and he was drunk as a skunk. Not a great combo. Slipped on his way down, and even now two months later the thought of it makes me wince. But he was fine! I think. He popped back up onto his feet and wobbled around and found some more sake and nobody seemed too concerned. Can you picture that happening in America? Grandpa does a nose dive onto the pavement and it's no big deal? Yeah. They really are a hardy bunch out here. (In the video below, you can see the old guy placing the bamboo atop the kiriko, right before he fell.)

Bonfire pre-ignition

Oh, yeah, and then there was this guy:

????

MORE VIDEOS:

Day 1 - The opening ceremony down by the beach and nighttime parade with the omikoshi (small portable shrine)

2nd Night - The night Brian and I joined in the festivities. Footage of our crew getting in on some taiko action, as well as the youth group from Wajima (so good!) and at the end video you can see me carrying the kiriko.

Finally, I have some thoughts about festivals. In my travels, I have had the incredibly good fortune to stumble upon and witness a pretty diverse sampling of annual traditions, festivals, cultural parties, rituals--all of them various forms of human celebration. From the paper mache goblins of Nyepi in Indonesia, to an entire city being transformed by the rainbow colors of Holi in India, to the magical floating lanterns of Loi Krathong in Thailand, as well as various New Years celebrations in Nepal, Japan, and Australia, and Buddha's Birthday in Korea. Back in the great US of A, there's Mardi Gras, Austin Carnaval (an extension of the Brazilian tradition), and of course Burning Man. While each one of these events has their own distinct color and flavor, sights and sounds, rituals and costumes, and some have been celebrated for 1000+ years and others are relatively brand new, I think that below the surface, underneath the stylized pageantry, they share a lot of fundamental elements.

Take Burning Man, for example. This incredible arts festival in the desert can be viewed in many different ways, (and sure, not all of them are positive), but from the right angle I think it can be seen as just a modern outlet for a basic human urge that we all have buried somewhere deep down to run around, banging on drums, with painted bodies, wearing ornate costumes, hoisting giant structures on our shoulders, yelling really loudly and lighting stuff on fire. (Getting drunk and naked seem to be an optional part of a lot of these events.) The more I travel, the more I find these things to be surprisingly universal in all types of cultural celebrations. This is especially true for the 2 most basic and primitive elements of all: fire and the beat of the drum. The Wajima Taisai Festival only confirmed this theory of mine. After all, if the unfailingly polite and conservative people of Japan can get this wild and crazy for 4 nights*, then it surely must be something hardwired into all of us.

* [as intense as Wajima Taisai was, things reportedly get even wilder and crazier during the Abare Matsuri Festival in July (the name translates to Fire and Violence, so that gives you some idea of what's involved) click that link for videos]

Animated stereoviews of Old Japan

2009-11-18T17:21:00.004+09:00

One of the coolest things I've seen in awhile, had to share this.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan. Check this blog for several more.

A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here, which were created from Flickr images posted by Okinawa Soba.

Buddhist ornament dealer

Meeting at the gate

Inari Shrine, in Kyoto

Sumo wrestlers

Funny how some things have changed here over the years, and some haven't at all. In my countryside neck of the woods, a few of these photographs could've been taken last week.

I got mail!

2009-10-01T23:27:00.005+09:00

Today, I opened my mailbox, as I do every day just for kicks because I know I never have mail, and LO and BEHOLD, there was a small parcel! My kickass friend J sent me a most bodacious and gnarly gift, an Edward Gorey 2010 Postcard Calendar, with 26 detachable postcards!

So effing cool, and so unexpected, it totally made my day. Felt I had to put it on here.

Pics are backwards, don't have the time to fix it. The second one says "The Broken Spoke", and made me think of Austin. aww.

Thanks, dude!

Everybody else, if you'd like a hip but creepy postcard with art by Edward Gorey, send me your address.

Party Time in the Noto, Kiriko Style!

2009-08-23T00:03:00.009+09:00

Quick post just to get this up, been an absolutely jam-packed month so far. It's festival season here in Ishikawa, especially up on the Noto Peninsula where I live. I found this out pretty quickly, as my first weekend here my co-worker Brian, a nice American chap who has been here for a year, took me and Katy, a fellow newbie from KC, MO, to the Issaki Hoto Festival in the nearby city of Nanao. And it was awesome.

This region is famous for the giant lanterns or "kiriko" used in most of the festivals. They are really beautiful decorative things made of rice paper and wood or sometimes (if it's a really nice, expensive one) lacquerware, and they are unique to this area in all of Japan. That's pretty cool! The big ones can...well, I'll let this Japanese tourist website do the work here:

The Issaki Hoto Matsuri is one of the biggest and most lively summer festivals of Noto where spirited men from the area around a fishing town called Ishizaki parade through the streets bearing Kiriko lanterns. One of the attractions of this Festival is the giant Kiriko lantern which is 15 m high and 3 m wide and weighs almost 2 tons. It takes 100 men to carry it and parade it through the streets. As the men shouldering these giants lanterns dance and parade through the narrow streets, the 6 giant Kiriko lanterns dance with them. As the skies get dark, these lanterns are lighted up and they create a fantasy like atmosphere. The Festivals continues till late night as the firecrackers light up the skies and as the climax nears the Kiriko look even grander as the competition among 6 giant Kiriko bearers becomes fiercer.

A fantasy like atmosphere indeed. I would say a 'rowdy good time' is more accurate. One thing that blurb doesn't mention is that there are about a dozen kids sitting on each of the kiriko, playing drums and flutes in their summer kimonos and looking cute as only Japanese kids can. There is also one older taiko drummer who keeps the beat with really impressive style. Here's a vid I cooked up on my shiny new Macbook Pro:

As the night goes on the guys carrying these massive towers consume more and more sake. This makes things very exciting. As the different kiriko teams charge back and forth and shake and rattle their lanterns in their attempts to outdo the other teams, you can't help but wonder as you cheer them on "Is that thing going to topple over and crush us to death?" (Apparently last year some poor old lady was in fact caught underneath one of the kirikos as it stampeded through the streets. As a result, this year there were police all over the place for crowd control, apparently a first in all the hundreds of years they've been doing this.)

Here are some pictures:

I have to get some sleep now, BIG day tomorrow. Today was the beginning of the biggest and best festival of them all, the 4 day long Wajima Taisai! (I live in Wajima.) There are JETs coming in from all over the prefecture for it, I'm gonna have at least 6 or 7 people sleeping on my tatami mat floor for the next couple nights.

Here's the real kicker though, and the reason I wanted to get this up now: earlier tonight, my coworker Brian managed to strike up a conversation with a girl whose father happens to own/manage/run a kiriko (no idea how this works...anyways, dude's got the hook-up). As a result...TOMORROW NIGHT...for SIX HOURS, I will be thrusting 2000 pounds of lacquerware around the streets of my little fishing village on my shoulders. :-O A few days ago, it was kinda nice being taller than everybody else. Now...notsomuch. Did I mention that alcohol, specifically rice wine, is a big part of this festival? They will be forcing it down my throat at every opportunity. Needless to say, I've made my peace with God. I'm pretty sure this will be the end of Adam in Asia, as well as Adam in general. Oh well, it's been a great run! Sayonara!

(expect more pictures and video if I survive)

Wajimacallit?

2009-08-06T10:27:00.008+09:00

cue music:

♫ Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside. ♫

Yep. Okay, so I made it! It was a long and arduous journey from Austin to my new home of Wajima, but I've had worse. It was mainly the jet lag that kicked my ass. I figured that if I stayed up all night packing before I left, I would sleep like a baby on the plane and wake up chipper and rearing to go for our 3 day orientation in Tokyo. This did not work. Instead, I started getting sick (which was not helped by general stress and trans-pacific airplane A/C), I couldn't sleep on the plane, and I was completely out of it in Tokyo, probably talked gibberish to the plants in the hotel lobby but it's all so hazy I can't really say for sure. Who needs drugs when you can just cross the international dateline?

The schedule in Tokyo was pretty jam-packed, 2 full days of informative seminars taught by current JETs with titles ranging from "Driving in Japan" to "What is that on my plate and why is it moving?" and "How to keep your tatami mat sparkling!". (Okay I made that last one up.) If I could remember anything I learned during these sessions I would be more than happy to share them here, unfortunately my brain was like a sieve. I had several former JETs recommend skipping these seminars altogether and just going out to explore the city. Ah, that would've been fun. Once again, non-functioning everything kept me indoors for the most part. I actually slept through the official Welcome dinner (and then some--went to my room for a power nap and ended up sleeping from 4pm - 230am...whoops. I was awake then so I went outside for a walk and stumbled onto a dozen or so JETs getting sauced in front of the 7/11 across the street, including a classy fellow from Northern Ireland who ran around shirtless until someone informed him that he could get arrested for it.)

On the last night in Tokyo there was an all-you-can-eat-and-drink dinner with the other JETs from my prefecture (state), Ishikawa, which would've been a lot more fun if I could've kept my eyes open.

Pics from Tokyo Orientation

The next morning we were up early for checkout. After throwing away the 20 pounds of paper I was given during orientation, including several books from the U.S. Embassy on American History and Economics (I'm an English teacher, not a propaganda tool?), it was off to the Noto!

The Noto is a peninsula sticking off the northwestern coast of the main island, Honshu. Looks kinda like a lobster claw (if you can come up with something more inventive I'd be glad to hear it).

I live on the knuckle, in a city called Wajima (Wajima-shi in Japanese). Here is a map I made:

(the map sort of makes it look like an island, but it's not. definitely a peninsula.)

and google maps

View Larger Map

I'm not sure the exact population of Wajima, but it is something like 30,000. and it is very much in the inaka. This is a Japanese word I will probably be using a lot on this blog. It means "rural" aka "the countryside", "way the eff out there", "BFE", "non-existent nightlife", etc., and it is one of the many interesting perks that comes with being a member of the JET program.

Just to give you a little info on how I ended up here, on the JET application you have the option of requesting your "placement". You can put down a specific city, or a region, somewhere cold/hot, even urban/rural. However, getting placed where you requested seems to be a pretty big roll of the dice. At orientation I talked to JETs who requested Big City and got placed in a town of 500 in Hokkaido, the snowy sparsely-populated northern island. Others got exactly what they wanted. I didn't put down anything, because I didn't really care and I wanted to leave it in the hands of fate, cuz she's been pretty good to me so far.

And once again, fate appears to have thrown me a tasty curveball.

(Pictures of Wajima)

While I am not jump up and down high five everyone in the room excited about my placement, I am very, very happy and optimistic, and I think I will really love it here. Why? Several reasons.

+ Nature! It is absolutely gorgeous here. Lush and green like few places I have ever been. I have yet to fully explore the peninsula, but the few drives we have taken to other towns have been incredibly scenic. The air is clean and fresh and filled with these huge wild hawks that screech in a most awesome way. Apparently some of the best hiking, camping, and birdwatching in the whole country is all within easy reach.

+ I can walk to the ocean in five minutes.

+ Obviously, there are many advantages that come with living in a small town that big city JETs don't have. I look forward to getting to know the people in my community, maybe joining some clubs (taiko drumming perhaps?), and just immersing myself in daily Japanese small town life. Which leads me to...

+ Learning Japanese. A huge goal for me here. And pretty much a necessity since I am 1 of 4 foreigners in this whole town, and hardly anybody in my Board of Education office speaks English. Obviously this is a much better learning environment than hanging out with lots of foreigners in a big city, which I know I would do if I lived in one.

+ Festivals! Lots and lots of festivals. In the past week I've already been to one and missed one b/c of jet lag. More on this later.

+ I get a car! I have freedom. It does not come cheaply, but that is definitely an overall plus in my book.

+ My predecessors have all told me that the kids here are really awesome. Can't wait to start teaching. Too bad I have to sit in this stupid office for the next 3 weeks with nothing to do until school starts.

+ I live two hours from the capital, Kanazawa, which is supposed to really, really nice, they call it 'Little Kyoto'. for the record, I think Kyoto is the most beautiful city I've visited in all my travels, so that bodes well. I'm going to Kanazawa for the first time later today and again next weekend, so expect some pics.

+ and last but not least, my apartment! its not too terrible! it's about 4 times as big as the coffin I lived in in Korea! it has tatami mats!

okay, for the sake of Fairness and Balance and just generally getting it off my chest, I am NOT happy/looking forward to the following things:

- WINTER. SNOW. LOTS OF IT. NO CENTRAL HEATING. gonna be rough for this Texas boy. real rough. it is also the rainiest part of Japan. All that green lushness comes with a price. trying not to think about either of these things right now, because ain't shit I can do about it. plus the sun finally came out today.

- time and expense of traveling into civilization. I'm going to Osaka this weekend, 7 hours by bus and even the buses aren't that cheap here.

- did I mention the lack of central heating?

- I will be teaching at 8 different Jr. Highs and Elementary schools, traveling to a different one every day. This means I won't be able to get to know my kids as well as, say, a high school JET who works at the same school all the time.

So there it is. The pros and cons, as I see them currently. I'm sure both columns will have things added or removed day by day.

Now it's time to head home (using school internet until I get it hooked up at home). I think today has been a productive day at work, considering I spent most of it writing this post. You're welcome, Gramma.

JETting off to Nippon

2009-07-29T06:55:00.004+09:00

Alright, I'm writing this from my room at the Keio Plaza Hotel, in downtown Tokyo. The plane flying to my new hometown of Wajima-shi, Ishikawa-ken, leaves in an hour so I'm running out the door. Just wanted to get one first post up. Here's a note I wrote my family a couple days ago, hope it suffices until I get internet set up in my new apartment (it might be awhile).

Howdy y'all,

I hope this message finds you healthy and happy (and near some air-conditioning if you are experiencing an epic heat wave like we are down here in central Texas....we've already had something like 40 days of triple digit temps...ouch). Just wanted to give all you important people a real quick update, because exciting things are happening for moi and I hate to think of anybody being left out of the loop. ;)

Earlier tonight I was eating sushi at the grand residence of the Consul-General of Japan here in Houston, and in about 9 hours I'll be getting on a plane bound for Tokyo, with 43 other fine young folks (ehh..I guess I'm not that young anymore, since I joined the quarter century club and all..) as a representative of the USA (and Texas!) in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, also known as JET.

What is JET? Here's a quick description a la wikipedia:

The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme or JET Programme is a Japanese government initiative that brings college (university) graduates—mostly native speakers of English—to Japan as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) and Sports Education Advisors (SEAs) in Japanese elementary, junior high and high schools, or as Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs) in local governments and boards of education. JET Programme participants are collectively called JETs.

The English Teaching Recruitment Programme was started in 1978 and initially was exclusively for British university graduates. This programme became known as the "British English Teachers Scheme." American teaching assistants were later added under the "Mombusho English Fellows Program." As more countries were included, the programmes were folded into a single entity, the JET Programme, in 1987. Its aims were revised to "increase mutual understanding between the people of Japan and the people of other nations, to promote internationalisation in Japan's local communities by helping to improve foreign language education, and to develop international exchange at the community level."

As of July 1, 2008, there are 4,682 participants (384 CIRs, 4,288 ALTs, and 10 SEAs), making it the world's largest exchange teaching programme. Of that number, about half are from the United States (1808), with Canada (618), Britain (577), Australia (316), New Zealand (242), Ireland (95) and South Africa (94) for ALTS as well as China (77) and Korea (59) mostly CLRs, making up most of the remainder. The focus of the program is on English language learning and teaching, so about 90% of the participants on the programme are ALTs; the remaining 10% are divided between CIRs and SEAs. The number of alumni totals over 40,000.

Yes, that's right, I will once again be teaching the tortured nuances of the English language to well-behaved miniature Asian people who will sadly never, ever be able to say rice correctly no matter how hard they try. It'll be a really nice change after substitute teaching the punks over at Bastrop High school this past spring. And yes, as an English teacher I am allowed to say things like tortured nuances.

I'll be living in Wajima, a very pleasant (or so I'm told) little coastal town of 38,000, on the Noto peninsula, on the main island of Japan (Honshu, the one with Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto and that big mountain named after the film company). Wajima is very famous for its lacquerware. If you're into that kind of thing. and there's this, from wikipedia: "This town celebrates an annual light festival (matsuri) in which the residents place one candle in each of 10,000 sake bottles and then arrange them in geometric configurations after dark while listening to traditional Japanese music." Doesn't that sound fun??

In all seriousness though, this is a great privilege and I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky and blessed to have this once in a lifetime opportunity. I couldn't have done it without the support of my family and friends, so thanks from deep, deep down. I will be serving a 1-year contract initially, and after that I can choose to re-contract up to 5 times. At this point I plan to stick it out at least 2 years, to put some roots down, get to know the community, and learn the language. After that, who knows. Maybe I will get an apprenticeship at a lacquerware factory...

My new address to which you can send me boxes filled with American delicacies:

Hisaoka Haimu 7-3, Fukamida 41
Sugihira-machi, Wajima
Ishikawa
928-0011

My new phone number, not sure why you would ever need it but: country code +81 768-22-3067. If you have Skype, my username is "adamnforay" without the quotes, add me so we can chat. If you don't have Skype...you should get it. It's free. www.skype.com

Finally, I hope to breathe some life into my waaay out of date travel blog (still lacking reports from India, Nepal, Canada, Burning Man, and Costa Rica): http://asianadam.blogspot.com
I store most of my pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/adamfore

I will miss all of you mucho grande. By the way, if you have ever thought about visiting Japan but put it off because you thought it was too expensive, well now you don't have an excuse! free place to stay! plus I will have a car. Road trip to Hiroshima! (just fyi, it's not as expensive as you probably think. prices have come down a lot since the astronomical highs of the eighties. google is your friend)

Alright, that's it. Can't believe I managed to write this whole thing without making a single crack about Japanese brides, Godzilla, or bird flu...

愛 (Love),

--Adam Fore

Adam in....Oz???

2008-11-26T13:46:00.005+09:00

Yep. Flew in this morning.

AUS --> PHX --> LAX --> MEL

that's MEL as in Melbourne, Australia. not Mel Gibson's house, as I originally thought. apparently mel gibson's house does not have a 3 letter airport code.

[a quick note: this blog is ridiculously out of date. many adventures from the rest of India, as well as Nepal, Canada, and Burning Man still beg to be written. Hopefully, I'll get to them before they evaporate from my mind grapes (thats a 30 Rock joke. 30 Rock is awesome). until then, I'm moving on]

My current trip began on a very auspicious day. In the hours before my flight left Austin, I accomplished two major feats:

1. Mailed off my application for the JET Program, which I spent a ridiculous amount of time on over the last couple weeks. Hopefully it will land me a gig teaching English in Japan. Which would be beyond awesome.

2. Damaged my parents' newly (and somewhat poorly I must say) built mailbox by lightly tapping it with a trailer.

Yep. Mailbox explosion at the Fore-Wakehouse residence. I'm tempted to make a bad joke about going out with a bang but I know my Dad and Stepmom will probably not find it very humorous. Okay, make that definitely.

Sorry guys, really and truly.

Anyways, back on track. I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Why am I here? Long story short, to kill time and make some money (picking fruit) until I find out about JET. And Shawna will be flying down to meet me in Sydney on new year's eve day. how's that for exciting?

By the time I walked out of Melbourne Airport this morning I had heard the following words/expressions used in normal conversation: "Crikey!" "Here ya go, Tigah." "Dingo's breakfast" "Ridgy-didge" and "a fair dinkum." This bodes very well.

I'm couchsurfing with an awesome British guy named Zak who lives in a sweet apartment that his work pays for in South Yarra. He's only been here for 5 weeks so he knows nothing about the city, he claims to have done $2400 worth of nitrous in one evening, and when he drove me to the city centre just now he bumped sweet techno tunes at earsplitting levels the entire way. Srsly, MAX VOLUME. We garnered many a stink eye from the pedestrian populace. He's basically my new best friend.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet up with my friend Raquelle who lives here that I met at Burning Man.

Off to go wander around. I'll leave you with the LP's description of this city that I am in:

It's one of the world's youngest cities yet also one of the longest-inhabited places on Earth. Sophisticated and slick, edgy and rough, Melbourne’s physical and cultural landscape is shaped by a dynamic population, ever-ravenous for a bite of global culture. The result is Australia’s most accessible multiculturalism. Ornate Victorian-era architecture and leafy, established boulevards reflect the city’s history, and cutting-edge developments such as Federation Sq exemplify its enigmatic contemporary style. But, Melburnians still keep their urban frenzy to a deliciously sedate pace. Trams lumber back and forth on routes radiating out like spokes from central Melbourne, and cycling is a common way to get from A to Z.

Character-filled neighbourhoods, such as Fitzroy, St Kilda and Carlton, hum with life and the city produces some of the best art, music, cuisine, fashion, performance, design and ideas in the world. Melburnians are also devoted to their sport and they go ballistic around the Australian Football League (AFL; ‘footy’ to the locals) finals and during Spring Racing Carnival. They love to shop, eat and attend the myriad festivals that the city offers. You’ll even find them defending the city’s temperamental weather, and if you’ve ever experienced Melbourne’s inclination to plummet from searing heat to drizzling rain in the space of an hour, you’ll understand that this must be the true definition of unconditional love.

An Indian Motorcycle Diary

2008-05-09T15:52:00.004+09:00

From Motorcycle Diary

(click on the picture to see many more from this album)

On my third day in Pushkar, my Irish friend Niall and I decided to rent ourselves some motorbikes and do some exploring. By the way, I have firmly resolved one of these days to take a trip where I travel cross-country (or countries) solely by bike. Every time I have rented one on my travels so far it has resulted in some of the most memorable experiences of the entire trip. And this day was no exception.

We set our initial sights on some Shiva temples situated a few miles north of Pushkar. We checked our map and our compass, revved all 150 cubic centimeters of our 'hogs', and headed out into the scrubland. After an hour of riding on dirt roads through mud hut villages, past wizened goat herders and a lone desert rickshaw overflowing with passengers (all staring intently at us), we took a few more turns and found ourselves on the noisy thoroughfare of a busy city. What the...! This wasn't right. We discovered we were in Ajmer, a crowded hub 15km south of Pushkar. My natural, superior sense of navigation had failed us! Fortunately, it turned out there were actually a few interesting things to see in Ajmer, including a Jain temple that held a huge and incredibly detailed golden representation of the Jain universe. We also stumbled onto the massive Dargah Sharif, a tomb for a Sufi saint and one of the most sacred shrines in India for both Hindus and Muslims.

It was my first real encounter with Islamic India and I felt transported. There was a distinctly different atmosphere than the previous holy places I had been so far, most of them Hindi, and I spent a long time walking around the huge space inside the shrine (after going through metal-detectors, giving up my bag, and being patted down by imposing military police), which was filled with thousands of worshippers, separated by gender of course. The air in there was powerful: thick with the strange tonal and rhythmic prayers of the mullah and the devout, the heavy musk of burning incense, and the pungent scent of flowers from the many offerings. I felt out of place, and I'm sure I looked it, but surprisingly I didn't receive too many stares. I learned later that this was one Muslim place of worship that was open to all people, regardless of caste or creed.

Back outside, to exit the general area of the shrine, we had to slowly inch our motorbikes through a fantastically colorful and narrow bazaar jam-packed with people. It took us close to an hour until the crowd started to thin. At one point we passed a couple filthy butcher's stalls with the usual fly-encrusted meat being run by a few kids who couldnt've been more than 10 years old. After we got free we discovered Niall had a flat. We found a local tire shop where the mechanic worked some magic with a patch kit and a blow torch and somehow had us back on the road in minutes. Who needs AAA, anyways?

photos:

We took another extended detour on our way back to Pushkar, but this time it was intentional: we wanted to stay off the main road. Soon after we left the city, we came across a very strange place...it felt almost like a modern suburb in the states, moderately nice block housing (nice by Indian standards at least)...but it was completely deserted, a real ghost town. Very weird vibes there. We left quickly, turning onto yet another dirt road that we were fairly sure would take us to the Shiva temples. On the way, we passed through several more tiny villages. At each one a pack of village children would run out to greet us, which made for some good photo-ops, but a few times we barely managed to escape the smiling mobs of outstretched hands and chants of "school pen! rupee! school pen! chocolate? school pen! which country?". One of their favorite tactics was to grab the back of our motorbikes and slide on their feet through the loose dirt. A few times this almost caused our bike's to tip over. They loved posing for pictures, and after the click they'd all go absolutely insane trying to grab it and look at each other on the screen. They were always confused and disappointed with my Nikon. So used to digital cameras, they could never understand why there was no picture display on the back. I took a liking to the kids from this one village in particular, and I promised them I would come back and bring chocolates the next day, but we never made it. Still feel a little guilty about this.

Finally, 8 hours after we had first set out, we pulled up to the temples; two tiny buildings set against a small rocky outcropping, guarded by a dozen wild peacocks(!). Extremely picturesque. Niall went off to get pictures of the sunset, and as I approached the temple, an old orange-robed sadhu (Indian holy man) bent over a stick came out to greet me with a warm smile. He invited me to sit down and drink chai with him. So we sat. And as the sun disappeared behind purple hills, this man told me in broken English the story of his life. His name was Daya. He had become an ascetic when he was 20, going into the forest and living on nothing but berries and leaves. He gave up his family, his friends, and his possessions to live "the baba life," he said. He told me he had been living at this temple, eating nothing but "patato and plant leaf" for 40 years. At one point he showed me his bedroom, situated on the roof of the temple. It was more like a cave; the ceiling was an overhanging rock and his bed was a concrete slab. A large pile of "patatos" filled up half of the space. Trying to understand how he could exist like this, I asked him "You don't get sick? You are strong?" and he laughed this amazing laugh that I can't describe and said "Strong? What is strong? God is strong!" pointing up to the sky.

An indescribable feeling came over me while I sat there and listened to Daya. His face, especially his enormous weathered smile, and his body, the way he moved...peace and love and calm literally emanated from this man. But his eyes...they were unbelievably intense and piercing, so much so that I found it took physical effort to break away from his gaze. After awhile we ran out of things to say and so we just sat there together for a long time, enjoying the silence punctuated every so often by a peacock sitting in a nearby fruit tree. Eventually Niall came back, and Daya invited us to stay for a dinner of...guess what...potatoes, but Niall was worried about going back in the dark so we made our apologies and said goodbye.

On the long, slow ride back to Pushkar, the hills surrounded us, looming dark shapes against the pale light of dusk. Along the way the stars began to come out. I yelled ahead to Niall to stop, and we turned off our lights and sat there on our bikes, appreciating the silence and the surreal brown and purple and dark blue landscape. Out of the dark walked an old man in a full length white dhoti carrying a large axe. He hardly registered our presence. I threw out a "Namaste" and he responded in kind without looking up, and then he was gone. A mile down the road we also encountered a middle-aged French guy walking next to a bicycle attached to a small cart with a cover. We stopped to make sure he was okay, because while an axe-wielding Indian might be a fairly typical sight out here, this was not. After using my flashlight to check some sort of injury on his foot, he said he was 'fine, thanks for asking, goodnight', and continued pushing his bike cart off into the blackness. Another Westerner embarking on his own personal journey in India. So it was a typical sight after all.

Back in Pushkar, I stared at the ceiling in my hotel room and tried to process the day's events. I couldn't. It all seemed too cinematic and epic to have actually happened. Larger than life. Before I came here, I had an idea of India in my head that had been illustrated by various movies and books and pictures. I expected the reality to be different somehow, but time and time again during my trip I found myself in a scene that could've been pulled straight out of a colorful Bollywood film, or a book about Western spiritual seekers exploring 'the Exotic Subcontinent'. Even now, after spending 2 months here, everything still seems larger than life. Sure, the intensity has faded a little...or rather, I think, my senses have adapted, numbing themselves in order to cope with the overload, like how your pupils dilate when exposed to bright light for a long time. But I still go to bed every night with a sense of disbelief that this place exists.

India: Pushkar and Agra

2008-05-04T10:39:00.000+09:00

From India - Pushkar

A cricket bat in Pushkar

From The Taj

Me and the Taj

**********************************************************

After another brutal overnight and half-day journey, my beat-up tin can of a bus pulled into Pushkar, 150 miles northeast of Udaipur, on March 25, three days after Holi. Maybe it was just because I wasn't on the bus anymore, but I immediately took a liking to the place. wikipedia says:

Pushkar means born due to a flower. In Hindu mythology it is said that the gods released a swan with a lotus in its beak and let it fall on earth where Brahma would perform a grand yagna. The place where the lotus fell was called Pushkar. It is situated 14 Km from Ajmer and is one of the five sacred dhams (pilgrimage sites for devout Hindus.) It is often called "Tirth Raj" - the king of pilgrimage sites.
Pushkar lies on the shore of Pushkar Lake. It has five principal temples, many smaller temples and 52 ghats where pilgrims descend to the lake to bathe in the sacred waters. One of the primary temples is the 14th century temple dedicated to Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. Very few temples to Lord Brahma exist anywhere in the world. Other temples of Brahma include those at Besakih in Bali, Bithoor in Uttar Pradesh, India, village asotra near balotra city of barmer district in rajasthan INDIA and Prambanan in Indonesia.

The town sits on the shore of a small lake, and it is packed with temples, some big, some small. Along the banks of the lake are 50 ghats where pilgrims go to bathe in the sacred waters. One of the main temples, from the 14th century, is dedicated to Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. Apparently it is one of the only Brahma temples in the world. the reason why goes something like this:

Brahma wanted to perform the yagna at the most auspicious time but his consort Savitri whose presence at the yagna was vital for its performance kept him waiting. Irritated by this Brahma married Gayatri, a milkmaid and installed her instead. Savitri on seeing someone else in her place was infuriated and cursed Brahma that he would be forgotten by people on earth and never worshiped. She relented on pleas from other Gods that he could only be worshiped in Pushkar, hence there are no Brahma Temples elsewhere.

so there you go. it's a very calm, serene place-except for the wild monkeys-but there is also this strange sort of carnival-esque atmosphere floating on the air, because of all the lively ceremonies and colorful pilgrims and holy men wandering around. Every night there is a parade through the center of town; dozens of people carrying lights all on long wires and rolling a diesel generator on wheels behind a large float of some pudgy Brahmins and a Sun God deity of some unidentified sort, with a small ragtag band marching in front. the first time I encountered this procession, I was totally caught off guard, just walking down the street and then suddenly I'm surrounded by dancing ponies and a crushing mass of people. another foreigner nearby saw me taking pictures and said "You are really lucky, you know, this only happens once a year. Take a lot of good ones." then, when the parade happened again the next night, and every night after that until I left, I got the joke.

I made friends with the band. Sweet keyboard, eh?

I stayed at a hotel called Mount Everest that was run by a very friendly old Indian man. He offered me a cup of chai when I checked in, and we ended up talking for awhile about Texas (he was a big Houston Rockets fan). His nephew helped him run the place and was also really nice. I had some real hassles with my guesthouses in Udaipur and Jaipur, and started to expect the same for the rest of my trip, so this was a pleasant change.

Met several good people during my stay, including a Dubliner named Niall and an Israeli girl named Aya, both of whom I would end up traveling with several times later on in my trip. One day, the three of us forced ourselves out of complacency (which sets in quickly in Pushkar) and climbed up to a nearby mountaintop temple. There were monkeys. The view was sublime.

On my first day in Pushkar I was a little perplexed by the factt that every other restaurant on the main street seemed to specialize in Falafels and Laffa, often with giant signboard menus in Hebrew, and I was constantly getting 'Shalomed' by the shopkeepers who thought I was Jewish. This was my first experience with what my Israeli friends dubbed "the Hummus Road": certain places in the subcontinent that are super popular with Israeli backpackers, most of them having just finished their military service. And let me tell you, when Israelis decide that a certain place is worth visiting, man, they really take it over. A few of the Israelis that I became friends with actually complained about it, saying they felt like they might as well be back at home. I didn't really care though, I was just ecstatic that I finally had another option besides Indian food (not that I dislike Indian food, I love it, but a little variety is nice, ya know?), and while I was there I took full advantage. After 4 memorable days in Pushkar, I was forced to move on by the vastness of the subcontinent and my relatively short time within it.

So I headed east, to Agra and that big tomb you might have heard about, the Taj Mahal. Truth be told, I wasn't dying to see it, but I didn't want to deal with the countless conversations back home of "Wait...you went to India and you didn't go to the Taj Mahal????" Just one of those boxes you have to check off here. (Another reason I was hesitant to go was the price of admission. Fifty cents for Indians, $20 for Foreigners.) But it was worth it. A really sublime piece of architecture. I got there around 5am, just in time to witness a perfect sunrise delicately paint the Taj light shades of orange and pink.

I spent several hours walking around the complex (and met a big family from Austin! that was really nice, made me very homesick. the grandma in the group offered to call my parents for me when she home to tell them I was doing okay. I thought that was so funny), then I came down with my first case of 'Delhi belly', and spent the rest of the day moaning on a rock hard mattress in a cinder-block hut that I paid 40 Rupees for at a hotel that had seen much better days, near the train station.

After 6 hours of misery, I started feeling better, and got out of there as quickly as I could, jumping on an overnight train east to the holiest of cities: Varanasi...

India: Holi in Udaipur

2008-04-21T01:43:00.001+09:00

I just got back from 2 weeks trekking around the Annapurna Circuit, more on that exhausting but exhilarating expedition later.

going all the way back to March 20:

From Jaisalmer, I continued my loop of Rajasthan by heading east to Udaipur for the madness of Holi, the Festival of Color. wikipedia says:

Holi (Hindi: होली), or Phagwa (Bhojpuri), also called the Festival of Colours, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India and Nepal. In West Bengal, it is known as Dolyatra (Doljatra) or Boshonto Utsav ("spring festival").
On the first day bonfires are lit at night to signify burning the demoness Holika, Hiranyakashipu's sister.
On the second day, known as Dhulhendi, people spend the day throwing colored powder and water at each other. The spring season, during which the weather changes, is believed to cause viral fever and cold. Thus, the playful throwing of the colored powders has a medicinal significance: the colors are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Āyurvedic doctors. A special drink called thandai is prepared, sometimes containing bhang (Cannabis sativa).

for those not in the know, that last part there is about weed.

I rolled into Udaipur at 5:45am, fresh off my first Indian bus experience, an overnighter from Jaisalmer, which was as whacked out as the rest of my trip up to this point. The travel agent sold me a "direct" ticket on a "deluxe sleeper" from Jaisalmer to Udaipur, but of course the bus I got turned out to be "very crappy"with a "2 hour stopover" for no apparent reason in a largish city called Jodhpur. During this time I met the only non-Indian passengers on the bus, 4 women from Thailand, aged 20, 24, 36, and 50, none of them related but all traveling together. talk about random. The older one was incredibly entertaining, she had this classic Thai smile, and at one point she got into a jokingly heated argument with the Indian bus driver when she had some problems with the location of her assigned seat (she said she would throw up if she sat in the back). By the end of the lengthy exchange, which she lost, the entire bus had taken sides and was cheering on their favorite.

For the overnight portion of the bus ride I was crammed inside a little box above the seats; my bed. I gave up trying to sleep after a couple hours because the road was apparently covered with giant boulders and the driver liked to hit his extremely loud, musical horn every five minutes (presumably to warn cows and water buffaloes off the road), so instead I watched the Indian countryside and villages pass by under the light of an almost full moon. seriously, who needs drugs when you've got Indian overnight bus rides? Anyways, I got to Udaipur in one piece and sat outside my pre-booked guesthouse for an hour until the old lady who runs it woke up and opened the door, all the while fending off my rickshaw driver who kept checking on me every 10 minutes and wanted to take me to his "brother's hotel". Spent the day wandering around the streets of Udaipur, which The Book says is 'one of the most romantic cities in India'. and it really was gorgeous. Udaipur's claim to fame: They filmed the Bond film Octopussy in the palace that sits in the middle of the town's lake.

On almost every corner I came to, locals were building small towers out of bundled straw and dried cow/camel dung. That night, all of these bonfires were lit up, and the view from the rooftop I was standing on was a-mazing. Popping firecrackers and flumes of fire shot up for hours across the entire city. Directly in front of this rooftop, however, was the most amazing sight of all, the main bonfire. This thing was big, maybe 30 or 40 feet high, and towering over it was the enormous Jagdish Temple. people crammed into every available space. we were down there in the human crush until we realized that it might be a bit more uncomfortable on the roof.

For about 2 hours before they lit the bonfire, a couple trans-gendered individuals in saris entertained the (mostly male) crowd by belly dancing on a makeshift stage.

very strange. and then some of the GOOFIEST white people I've ever seen (the kind where you just shake your head in shame...), got up there and awkwardly moved their bodies around for an amount of time that was far, far too long. after the Indians made sure us tourists were thoroughly humiliated, they moved the stage and lit the giant hay/shit pile on fire with a firecracker fuse that was several blocks long. this was the biggest and slowest fuse i've ever seen. it was a fireworks show in itself. finally, it reached the payload, and this mother went up quick and the heat was intense. it burned my face even though I was on a rooftop 6 stories up. Mind you, there were also hundreds of people on the ground next to this thing. I have videos, hopefully I can post those later.

after the fire died down, the locals spent the next few hours carelessly shooting fireworks at each other and dancing around wildly to a raging bollywood beat. one of the firework shells nailed a main power line and cut the power to half the city. from our rooftop we could see everything go dark, leaving only the hundreds of bonfires to light the alleys of the old city. a huge cheer went up, the music was put on a backup generator, and the party continued.

and that was just the beginning of Holi.

the next day was the Color part of the festival. I bought a disposable camera to take pictures because my other ones would not have survived the onslaught of colored powder and water:

From India - Holi

in case you can't tell from the pictures, it was a lot of fun.

this whole time I'm thinking to myself: Why don't we have festivals like this in America? Really, what do we have that compares to this...Halloween and the 4th of July? It's pathetic.

for me, having just gotten to India and getting to see one of the biggest festivals of the whole year, Holi was really an amazing experience, especially the opportunity to see all the Indians let loose and, you know, "mix it up" with us foreigners. there was this distinctly different, relaxed, positive vibe running through the whole city. I lost count of all the Indians who came up to me with cheers of "Happy Holi!", wiping color on my cheeks and embracing me. (unfortunately for foreign women, the festival is not such a positive experience. most girls I talked to spent the day hiding in their hotel rooms because a lot of the locals use Holi as an excuse to grope and fondle.)

It was a trip walking around the narrow, winding alleyways of the old city after the festivities had died down. The empty streets, the walls and telephone poles, even the dogs and the cows, everything was painted with splashes of brilliant color. weeks later you can still see evidence of the festivities. At one point, standing in the middle of the town square during the peak of the "color play", I was reminded of that very touching scene (gag me) in...one of those volcano disaster movies that all came out in 1998...where everyone is covered with ash and a little girl says to her Dad "Look...everybody is the same color!" Of course in this case, everybody was a lot of different colors, but it had the same effect...you couldn't distinguish anyone's race or age.

here are all the pictures I took on my digital camera:

India Dig. - Udaipur, Holi

after Holi, I spent one more day in Udaipur and then headed to Jaipur to meet up with my British friends Emily and Jessica that I had originally met in Bali. I saw the world's biggest sundial at Jantar Mantar which was pretty cool, broke my camera, got my camera fixed, found the Pink City and it's palace kind of a yawn, and bought a bus ticket to Pushkar.

I was on my way to the bus station when I suddenly realized that I didn't have my wallet. My stomach dropped out. I thought it must have fallen out of my backpack when I got out of the rickshaw. I quickly and panickedly retraced my steps. No, no, no, no, I kept saying, this isn't happening. I am too experienced of a traveller to make a rookie mistake like this. Fuck! fuck! fuck! then, i sat down and gave up. and then i found it, right there at the bottom of my backpack. i wouldn't be writing about this but during my 15 minutes of freaking out two things happened that are now, looking back, pretty funny: I almost cussed out a beggar woman who just would not leave me alone, not understanding that I had just lost all my money and access to money in this foreign country (atm card). also, at one point I asked a store owner if he had seen a wallet on the ground, and he got excited and said Yes and then I got excited and came over and he went in his shop and came out with a shoe box filled with brand new wallets and a big stupid grin on his face. I did one of those cartoon "Doh!" face slaps and just turned and walked away. I think he is probably still wondering why he didn't close that sale.

heading out for a bit

2008-04-08T02:22:00.002+09:00

Things have been moving along much too quickly to catch this blog up to date. And now I am leaving civilization behind for about 3 weeks to trek the Annapurna Circuit. Hopefully, when I return from this most epic of adventures I will have some down time to get my feet massaged and write an update with some pictures from the huge pile that continues to grow.

By the way, I'm in Nepal now. Pokhara, to be exact, a gorgeous town with a lake where I have been staring at views of the Annapurna Mountains every morning with breakfast.

it took me a long time to commit to this trek, supposedly one of the best in the world and the longest one that you can do here. it passes above 5000m at its highest point. it will be a real test, but i know ultimately it will be deeply rewarding.

more info on the Annapurna Circuit HERE
and HERE.

so thats it for awhile...here goes nothin'...

-adam

Gems from the Island(s)

2008-03-31T02:35:00.002+09:00

I saw the Taj Mahal yesterday.

but that's no big deal. let's take a break from India for a moment to look back on paradise.

the following pictures were taken on the Indonesian islands of Gili Trawangan, Lombok, and Bali:
(click on any of the pictures to go to the albums to see more...)

India: Week 1

2008-03-22T23:56:00.010+09:00

Delhi:

Jaisalmer

There is a sort of time warp that occurs when you are traveling, especially at the beginning of a trip. It starts the moment you walk off the plane, when your brain lurches out of auto-pilot in order to come to grips with this brand new space. From that point on every one of your senses is so busy trying to make sense of the flood of unfamiliar stimuli, that time as you know it in your daily existence, changes, distorts. I used to think that it was pointless to travel somewhere, especially an exotic location, for a weekend or even a week as some people do, because in normal time a week seems so short to me. It flies by. But every new trip I take I realize more and more that a ridiculous amount of experiences can be squeezed into a single day.

I only mention this because I've now spent 2 weeks in India, and it feels like a year.

Right now, there are 2 old beggar women standing two feet to my left. They are holding filth-encrusted babies. I'm finding it hard to concentrate. I have been told not to even recognize them by making eye contact; I have read that their babies are possibly not theirs but rented out and then drugged to make them look sick, and that the money will go to drug lords. Signs everywhere say giving to beggars is a social crime. I assumed the longer I was here, the easier the abject poverty would be to ignore and brush away. But I was wrong, it is only getting more difficult.

Welcome to Incredible India, the tourist billboards say.

When I got off the plane at Indira Gandhi Intl. Airport, I thought I had arrived after some sort of terrorist attack. The terminal was totally destroyed...I had to avoid random wires and broken ceiling tiles falling from above, there were huge chunks of the walls missing and birds were flying in from outside. I learned later that there is a major renovation going on, and that it has been delayed for years, but I didn't know what the hell to think at the time. My disorientation was increased even more when I got to immigration. I was faced with two lines: the one everybody was standing in, and an empty one clearly marked Diplomats/Officials. After waiting in the main line for 20 minutes I was told it was for Indians only, go to the other one. Okay. I walk over. The man looks at me with an odd expression. "You are a diplomat?" No. "Hmm...." He checks my passport, then checks it again, then he looks at me again for a few minutes. Then he gives me a small brown object and motions with his hands. "Eat." Wtf? "Eat." I finally clue in and realize that it's some kind of fruit. So I take a bite. "Good?" I nod. Huge smile, "Okay!" He stamps my passport and sends me on with a handshake and a grin.

At that point, as if I had doubted it before, I knew India was going to be completely insane and unlike any other place I've been to so far. It hasn't disappointed yet.

Now for a quick recap of the first week.

Delhi was awful. I hated it more than any place I've ever been. That hate started to lessen by the time I left, 3 days later, but if you had offered me a plane ticket home on that first night I would've taken it. I was scammed 20 minutes into my trip there, when my airport taxi was diverted to a shady travel agent who told me my hotel was full and I'd have to relocate, and the attempts to rip me off and lead me astray didn't stop until I was outside of the city limits. My hotel was in an area called Pahar Ganj, apparently one of the dirtiest places in the city. Everything was so much more in my face than I was ready for at the moment, and experiencing it alone was difficult. I'm not ashamed to admit, it totally overwhelmed me. It didn't help that I was coming straight from the most beautiful and friendly place I'd ever been in Bali. Up to my arrival in Delhi, I think it's safe to say I was starting to get a little cocky about my traveling abilities, with X amount of countries under my belt, I figured I could handle pretty much anything India could throw at me. And I've managed to survive so far, but at the outset I couldn't have received a bigger ego check. This place is wild, intense, and many other adjectives that mean "very strong".

On my second day in Delhi, I booked a 'city tour' through my hotel. They ushered me out into a waiting bus and sent me on my way. 5 stops later and this bus had filled up entirely with Indians. The tour guide? No speaka Engrish. I won't go into details, but the next 9 hours (yes, 9 hours in a hot, dirty bus with only Hindi-speaking Indian tourists) were quite possibly the longest of my life. To be honest, I did see a lot of things. I just have no idea what a lot of them were. After the first 5 hours, the rage within me at getting ripped off yet again had subsided, and I was able to sort of laugh at the comic tragicness of it all, and even made friends with a Nepali man who taught me how to eat my first authentic Indian meal with my hands.

here's my first roll of film:

View Album

Get your own

So that was my introduction to the maddening part of this country. And it was probably for the best that I was initiated so fully at first, just to get it out of the way. I am proud to say that I am rolling with the punches like a pro at this point, and dealing with the constant hurdles with a smile. Case in point, I was sold a ticket on an overnight sleeper deluxe bus last night, but what do you know, it turned out to be a bus with seats only. Of course, sleeping on a bus chair while driving recklessly over potholed Indian roads is...difficult. But, what're ya gonna do? Put on the headphones and watch the inky night time scenery go by for 10 hours.

Anyways...back to the beginning. I headed west on a 19 hour train to the desert town of Jaisalmer, as far as I could possibly get from Delhi, and I immediately fell in love with the place. A huge sandstone fort rises up on a hill overlooking the town. Families still live inside of it, and it claims to be the oldest living fort in the world. At sunset, it gives off an incredible yellow glow. There are equisitely carved temples and noble houses called "havelis" scattered throughout the fort and the town.

On the train I met two Irish travelers, Celine and Kevin, and ended up shacking with them for my stay there. We did a 2 day camel safari together, along with 3 couples, Chinese, Russian, and British, and it was awesome. We cameled out far away from the city and into the Great Thar Desert, a mere 20 miles or so from the border with Pakistan. Something I learned on the safari: Camels are enormous. Really, really big. When you are sitting on it, and it stands up, you go up for a long time. To me they seem closer in relation to some prehistoric beast than to anything familiar like the horse. During and after this safari, my ass was extremely sore. But watching the sun disappear behind the endless sand dunes, and then sleeping on said dunes under the open night sky, was an experience I will never forget. The downside: I'm still getting sand out of certain places.

here are film rolls 2 and 3. you can click on 'view album' to see bigger versions, the slideshow is for lazy people:

I spent the next 3 days after the safari just enjoying the unique Jaisalmerian atmosphere, getting to know the endless windy alleys, and just generally coping with the idea that, Yes, I really am in India.

Next post: Holi celebrations in Udaipur

Bali Finale

2008-03-19T19:47:00.012+09:00

Okay, big things are afoot, and it's time to catch up. It has been an insane 3 weeks. feels more like 3 months. I've been in India for about a week now, and it has been...something, to put it mildly. But I can't move on without recapping the rest of my stay in Bali, which was so incredible that by the end of it I was desperately trying to find a way to stay there longer and shorten the India portion of my trip.

here we go...photos will have to wait, which is frustrating because words can't possibly do this place justice.

(if you don't know anything about Bali, like me before I went there, it might behoove you to read the wikipedia page or just google some general info. I was ignorant when I arrived, but enlightened when I left, and needless to say there is much more to the island than surfing, resorts, and terrorist bombings)

March 6: Shawna, Katie, Keri and I woke up early, left Allie and Jon on the beach to nurse their 'hangovers', and got in a small wooden longboat heading to Lombok, the big island nearby, with Sunny and Danny, two of our local island friends. They had invited us to go with them to watch the parade taking place that day in Mataram, the capital. The parade was a precursor to Nyepi, aka "the day of silence," one of the most interesting holidays I've ever heard of:

from Wikipedia:

Nyepi is a Balinese "Day of Silence" that falls on Bali's Lunar New Year (March 7, 2008). It is a day of silence, fasting, and meditation.
Observed from 6 a.m. until 6 a.m. the next morning, Nyepi is a day reserved for self-reflection and as such, anything that might interfere with that purpose is restricted. The main restrictions are: no lighting fires (and lights must be kept low); no working; no entertainment or pleasure; no traveling; and for some, no talking or eating at all. The effect of these prohibitions is that Bali’s usually bustling streets and roads are empty, there is little or no noise from TVs and radios, and few signs of activity are seen even inside homes. The only people to be seen outdoors are the Pecalang, traditional security men who patrol the streets to ensure the prohibitions are being followed.
Although Nyepi is primarily a Hindu holiday, non-Hindu residents of Bali observe the day of silence as well, out of respect for their fellow citizens. Even tourists are not exempt; although free to do as they wish inside their hotels, no one is allowed onto the beaches or streets, and the only airport in Bali remains closed for the entire day. The only exceptions granted are for emergency vehicles carrying those with life-threatening conditions and women about to give birth.

the highlighted sentence above I found particularly cool, and symbolic of the overall kindness and generosity encountered in people here. an article in the newspaper said that hotel rooms showed a large increase over the weekend, as non-observers, especially families with noisy children, checked in to hotels so as not to disturb their Hindi neighbors. that would never happen in America.

anyways, back to the parade. in the weeks leading up to Nyepi the whole community constructs giant monsters (called ogoh-ogohs) out of bamboo and paper mache, meant to scare away evil spirits. Supposedly, at the end of the day these monsters are all burnt, but we saw some surviving demons on the side of the road all over the island many days after Nyepi, which made for some interesting scenery. here are some ogoh-ogohs; teams of kids and young adults carry them by their bamboo frame, and take turns screaming and running in a circle and generally shaking the out of the monster, to make it seem alive.

Yes, the parade was awesome.

afterwards, our driver Chip, an old local who was very weathered and friendly, took us for a leisurely cruise around the city's colorfully grungy back alleys in our little jeep and then back through the lush jungle mountains to our boat for the return trip to Gili Trawangan. that night, Shawna and I laid out under the island's (cliche-warning) blanket of stars listening to music. and life seemed pretty good.

March 7: I went SCUBA DIVING! and it was sweet. me Allie and Jon did a discovery dive while Shawna and Katie went deeper and longer, bc they think they are pro's. if i had had a tiny bit more time and a good chunk more money, I would've gotten my open water certification. alas, that will have to wait. saw a ton of different fish including a giant puffer fish and some scorpion fish, coral, starfish... no turtles though :( big ups to our unintentionally hilarious Italian instructor, Frederico.

later that night there was a huge party at a bar called Rudy's. the whole island showed up. (it's a pretty small island). very awesome fun times that was, sweating it out on the dance floor to some hard house with other travelers and then as it got late just the locals until we didn't know what time it was and didn't care. next day, feet were hurting.

***a couple days prior to this, I got a massage from a quiet and wise-seeming ancient woman named Lydia, who lived in a small hut next door to our bungalow. she used her own massage oil, making it as I laid there on her table, crushing aloe and some other stuff in a bowl to make some super strong concoction that made me want to scream when she slapped it on my sunburned regions. well, that was a cool experience on its own, but it gets better. at the dance party...guess who is standing right next to the DJ booth in skin tight spandex pants and a neon pink headband, looking fantastically badass under the blacklight, sipping some Arak from a flask? Yes!! Lydia!! she had some feckin' moves too, she was really grooving. and that's not all...she had a plate of some nasty dried and salted fish that she had brought with her, it was just sitting up there on the dj booth. sure, why not? Lydia does what Lydia feels like doing. and Shawna and I were forced to eat some of it, with a smile of course. I have pictures of me and her dancing, it kills me that I can't put them up right now. such a great memory, it still makes me laugh now.

March 8: I got a tattoo.

it's a slightly modified version of the symbol of the 3 Gilis (Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno, and Gili Air). the white stuff is sunblock.

I'm pretty happy with it.

the tattoo artist deserves a whole separate blog post. since I don't have a picture, I'll just say that he was a wild man from Borneo who looked like a Native American. we're unsure of his exact heritage, after doing some investigating online I think he might be indigenous Dayak.
twice while we were on the island we got to see him perform tribal chants at a local club. he would take the stage for 20 or 30 minutes in between the in-house reggae band, and during this time the entire bar would go silent as everybody got caught up in the rhythms of his voice and he danced like a man possessed.

Shawna and Katie also got ink done; a lotus flower on the back and some script added to an already existing flower on the foot, respectively.

this was our last night on the island, and we had a small little farewell at the Horizontal Lounge that night around a bonfire with a local named Audi who had become quite a good friend during our stay. it wasn't so sad though, i know i'll be back one day.

March 9: epic day of travel. 2 hours on wooden longboat to Lombok, 1.5 hour bus to ferry port, hours on ferry back to Bali, 1 hour minibus to Ubud. I had been dreading the ferry ride, but it was actually very scenic, met some nice people, worked on my tan on the sun deck and read a lot. the drive from the port to Ubud, at sunset, was gorgeous.

March 10-12: spent 3 glorious days in Ubud. here are some snapshots...

-walking the rice terraces, narrowly avoiding death by falling coconut, sipping tea at the organic Cafe Sara in the middle of the rice fields (along with some obnoxious older hippies-"um, excuse me, if i had one suggestion for your cafe it would be to provide cloth napkins, you know, because of their carbon footprint"- and some nicer younger hippies from calgary/san francisco).

-went to see a Balinese Kecak dance, aka the Monkey Chant, performed in an old temple in the jungle...if you've seen Baraka you have seen this intense form of storytelling where no instruments are used, just a chorus of men chanting "kachakachakachakacha" in a syncopated rhythm. it was seriously hipnotizing. here's a random youtube clip:

-took a Balinese cooking class, learned a lot about spices and native island cuisine, ate way too much delicious food, got a cookbook and an official "Bali Cooking Team" apron out of it.

-rented a motorbike and took off with Shawna to explore on our own. this was possibly the most incredible day of the whole trip up to this point, which is saying a lot. we stumbled onto this huge but completely deserted temple...deserted except for us and the grass cutter and 3 old women giving offerings. Shawna and I stood silently behind them for what seemed like forever. I can't really put it into words, but it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. as we watched they went through a simple but elegant ceremony pouring water on the ground from a half dozen of these old decorated containers of different shapes and sizes, waving incense in the air, waving flowers in the air and then putting the flowers in their hair, bowing, chanting, and repeating the cycle. this is one of many reasons why I fell in love with Bali...you see this marriage of faith and life everywhere, every day, in every person you meet. and it's clear that the people here are not doing it for tourism's sake, they would be doing it regardless of our presence. you don't have to look hard to feel the age of their rituals, to know they've been doing it for a thousand years. and one of the things I find most powerful about all of it is that unlike a lot of other countries and cultures I have witnessed, the modern age seems to have hardly made a dent in the inherited customs and structure of family and village life. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, seeing as how it has already persisted through Dutch colonization and pressure from the rest of Islamic Indonesia (the entire population is 88% Muslim, 1.8% Hindu).

Somebody told me that the Balinese believe when you die, you don't go to heaven, you go to Bali. I don't know how accurate this is, maybe it's just something they tell the tourists, but I love it, I think it fits perfectly.

Speaking of death....from the temple, Shawna and I were taken on motorbike by one of the temple caretaker's friends to a cremation ceremony that was being held in a village down the road. I found this website with more information on this practice and some great pictures:

Balinese religion is based on respect for and worship of God and ancestors, and
is a combination of Hindu elements and indigenous Balinese culture. After death,
the body must be dissolved and returned to its original elements. The cremation
ritual is a purification rite which frees the roh (soul or spirit) from its
temporary earthly house and facilitates its journey to its next existence.

The ceremony we witnessed was for a priest, so they were burning a (fake) large white bull. We pulled up just as they were setting the 10-meter tall funeral pyre on fire (another moment of perfect timing in a week full of them...fifteen minutes later and it was almost completely burnt). It was a chaotic scene, almost festival-like, and we were quickly surrounded by old women selling traditional sarongs, scarves, and hats, which we bought so that we wouldn't stand out like the white foreigners that we were. And after the ceremony wound down, our 'guide' took us to his little village house and introduced us to his family and showed us his small painting studio (we declined to purchase anything). And so the gods of Bali provided us with yet another unforgettable experience totally out of the blue.

That night we were invited to go watch the owner of our bungalows and officially "nicest woman ever", Maday, play the gamelan during a traditional Balinese dance performance (she also drove us 20 minutes out of town for the Kecak dance the night before. like i said, nicest woman ever). This, like everything else, was absolutely captivating and strange and beautiful. don't have time to find a youtube clip right now but you should look it up yourself, really.

And last, but not least...Shawna and I took the motorbike out for one more cruise on my last morning in Bali before I headed to the airport. I figured nothing else exceptional could happen in such a short amount of time. Well, we took a wrong turn somewhere, got completely lost, stopped at what looked like a remote bungalow operation to get our bearings, and ten minutes later we were being given a private tour of a rather large collection of traditional South Asian masks and puppets. The owner of the collection, whose name I forget, saw us on the bike, came out and greeted us excitedly, unlocked the doors to his buildings, turned on the lights, and walked us around, telling us what he could about different items with his limited english. His collection was huge, I can't imagine how long he had been collecting or how much money, and it was actually really impressive; all the moreso considering it was IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and we had found it by pure chance.

After the tour, he told us how to get back to Ubud and sent us on our way.

Back at our bungalows I said my goodbyes to Shawna and Katie and Maday, which wasn't easy, and headed to the airport. Spent the 4 hours I had left laying out on Kuta Beach (which is 15 minutes from the airport), caving in at last to the persistent but friendly old Balinese women selling bracelets and foot massages, and enjoying one last sunset in paradise.

20 hours later I was thrust into the madness of Delhi, and I wanted to cry and run screaming back to the beach.

Tra-lalala in Indonesia

2008-03-03T16:53:00.006+09:00

from wikipedia:

Gili Trawangan is the largest of Lombok's Gili Islands and is the only one to rise significantly above sea level. It is 3km long and 2km wide with a population of about 1000. Of the Gilis, Trawangan has the most tourist facilities; the pub Tîr na Nôg claims that Trawangan is the smallest island in the world with an Irish pub. The most crowded part of Trawangan lies on the eastern side.

On Gili Trawangan (as well as the other two Gilis), there are no motorized vehicles. The main means of transportation are bicycles (rented by locals to tourists) and cidomo (a small horsedrawn carriage). For traveling to and from each of the Gilis, locals usually use motorized boats and speedboats.

Some of the first inhabitants of Gili Trawangan were from Sulawesi who are fishermen and farmers. Previously Gili Trawangan was covered in forest and deer lived on the island. (Source: Inhabitants of Gili Trawangan - no printed source available)
With spectacular sunrises over Lombok's Mount Rinjani volcano and breathtaking sunsets that illuminate Bali's towering Mount Agung volcano, together with warm hospitality of the Gili Trawangan residents, it's not surprising that most visitors end up staying longer than originally plan.

no, it's not surprising at all. I came to this island 3 days ago, although it feels like months, and I've only got a week left, but I'm already dreaming of coming back in the future and staying for much longer. This place is utter paradise.

Disclaimer: I've been on the beach drinking Bia Bintang, frozen margaritas, and jungle juice since noon.

now that that's out of the way...the last 3 days have been the most amazingly mind blowing days I've had since...well possibly ever, but definitely since the last time I was in southeast asia. a quick recap (it has to be quick because I hate being on the internet here, moreso than Thailand, which is saying a lot...but I feel like I need to post this before it fades from memory)

Day 1: Met Shawna at Bali airport. spent the day/evening in Kuta, 20 minutes from Denpasar, enjoying the beach, boogie boarding, and generally trying to figure out how it was possible to be in a place like this when I was at work in Korea (where it was below freezing) only 48 hours before.

Day 2: took a 2 hour speedboat to the island I'm at now, Gili Trawangan, arriving at 10am. our friends Jon Allie (CAN) and Katie (USA) had arrived the day before, and had reserved a bungalow for us 15 feet from the boat's dropoff point, beachfront. talk about hassle free. our bungalow is perfect, open air bathroom in the back with aloe vera plants growing out of the ground and a painted mural of a tree on the wall and at night you can see a million stars while you shower off all the sweat and sea water from the day. so we checked in and by 11am we were in the ocean snorkeling, and by 1130...this is no joke, i was swimming along side a giant sea turtle. he seemed pretty laidback about the whole thing. i was kind of freaking out. sea turtles and hundreds of different kinds of tropical fish. in my front yard. yeah...

Day 3: more snorkeling, beach sitting, sun tanning/burning, exploring the main strip of the island where most of the bungalow operations, bars, and restaurants are located.....general awe of my current situation (this has not abated). that night was the 'big party' of the week-every couple nights there is a Party in a designated bar/club, the location rotates throughout the week. got to see some locals getting wild and crazy on the dancefloor and the bar.

speaking of locals....THE PEOPLE HERE ARE THE FRIENDLIEST PEOPLE I'VE EVER MET. hands down. no contest. in all the countries I've visited. and most of it seems genuinely genuine. really, of all the awesome things i have seen since i got here (4 days ago, ha), the almost universal hospitality might rise above it as the best part of this whole experience. i'll try to talk more about this in a later post...

not finished with Day 3 though...after the Party, Shawna and I were walking on the beach heading back to our hut, and I happened to kick the sand...and it glowed. i kicked it again, same result. it took a few minutes for my jungle juiced mind to realize what was happening...luminescent plankton. once our eyes fully adjusted to the dark, we saw it everywhere, and spent an hour running around the beach kicking up sand to watch it sparkle. every time a wave would come in, it was full of the stuff. they offer 'magic milkshakes' at every bar here, and we might even give that a go in the next couple days, but i can't see the need for hallucinogens when you have this kind of phenomenon occurring every night for free. i really can't explain how cool it actually looks. you just have to be there, on the beach, under the stars, looking at hundreds of softly blinking lights in the water to understand it.

whew...okay Day 4: we rode bikes around the entire island, went offroading and discovered a vast coconut grove complete with islanders shimmying up and down the trees with hands and feet and knife to hack down some coco nuts. hiked up to the highest point on the island...felt like I was in an episode of Lost and had to get back to the hatch to push the button...found a Japanese cave (dont know what it means, thats what the sign said). sat in a hut on a deserted beach and watched the sun set behind a volcano. went to bed early because, you know, we were fucking exhausted.

Day 5...okay something is off here because I know it's Wednesday, which means I've only been here for 4 days...but looking back at the rest of this post I honestly can't figure out where I went wrong. this is actually very fitting because time does not exist on this island. so let's just overlook the historical accuracy of this post.

Today was the most amazing day yet, which is sort of incredible to say, and I figure that there is no way tomorrow could be better than today, but I said that about yesterday and the day before, so I'll just play it safe. Today was awesome, and I'm running out of time so unfortunately this is gonna be brief. We woke up early, went outside, and were caught up in the middle of a large ceremonial parade. the local village schoolchildren led the way, followed by a band of percussionists and flutists playing traditional songs, followed by hundreds of Gili Trawanganers and other locals from the other nearby islands.

we later learned this was Mandi Safar, an annual festival where people wash themselves in the ocean to purify their inside and outside. really would like to go into detail here because i'm not going to be online for awhile hopefully, the sights and sounds and tastes were all equally incredible, but i have to run. the gist is this: ceremonial drumming, prayers from the Koran were read, and then we got to sit down and eat traditional food with the locals in a grove of trees near the beach, including cocunut milk rice cakes, fish, some flaky seasonal dish we dipped the rice cakes in, meat and eggs. deelicious. there were several hundred people on the beach with us, some tourists but overwhelmingly Indonesian. after the food, there was a "banana house" made out of palm trees draped with fruit that was torn apart by the crowd, then this happened: locals started dragging each other into the ocean, regardless of whether or not the people wanted to go in they were getting wet, young and old alike, everybody was laughing and having a great time.

and then THIS happened: there is a turtle hatchery on the island, we checked out the little turtle tank when we first got here, it had about 40 baby sea turtles. well on this morning, they brought the turtles out onto the beach in a big tub, and the village elders each took a baby turtle and walked it down to the water and released it. after that it was a total free for all, 'grab a turtle and go', and guess who got to hold one on its way down to the water, thats right, me. obviously, i got the cutest baby sea turtle in the whole bunch. it was kind of difficult to let it go.

we spent the rest of the day sitting on beach cushions sipping margaritas and reading and, still, being in general awe of the current situation.

tonight there's a party at the irish pub, tomorrow we are going to Lombok (a much bigger island nearby) with some locals we have befriended to see a ceremony for this holiday, after that scuba diving, then Ubud and god knows what else.

and to think, this was just supposed to be a relaxing stop-off between Korea and India. while it is definitely relaxing, it has also overwhelmed me in every possible way. i will be coming back here many, many times, if my life and luck allow it.

since I can't post any of my pictures, here are some links to other peoples' stuff, the first hits on google:

Gili Trawangan (this island)

Mandi Safar (big festival this morning)

one last thing, i am thinking about getting a tattoo before I leave here. my BFF, J, has drawn this up for me, and I dig it, a lot.

I'm also thinking about getting a "lone star" texas star. wanted that for awhile. kind of unsure about location, if you have any suggestions, toss 'em out.

okay i'm done. goodbye long time. i'll be on the beach. if you're not jealous by now, you're not paying attention.

Why I Love My Job

2008-02-26T19:36:00.001+09:00

I can't even begin to say how much I'll miss these kids.

Adios, Korea

2008-02-21T15:53:00.005+09:00

There is a large slab of ice on the sidewalk outside the building where I teach. It used to be a puddle and then winter came and it has been frozen solid for as long as I can remember i.e. about 4 months. It was something I could count on, that mini glacier. It looked pretty much the same day in and day out, maybe growing a little if it snowed/sleeted. Sometimes when I needed a little pick-me-up after a long day with the monsters I would get a running start and slide across it. Yesterday, I noticed the outer edges had gotten all slushy. My pulse quickened. How to explain this strange occurrence? My first instinct was to blame global warming. But then it all came back to me in a rush. Faded memories of flip flops, cargo shorts, and water gun fights in Lake Park. Green trees and pink white cherry blossoms. Yes! I thought, There was a time when life was....not really fucking cold all the time!

Okay...so I typed the above paragraph last week, when the weather seemed to be taking a turn for the springlike, and I started feeling sentimental about leaving. The original title of this post was going to be "the ice is melting." Well, screw all of that. It snowed all day yesterday. It's still really fucking cold. And I am freakin' ecstatic that in one week I will be hundreds of miles away on a hot sandy beach sipping (or gulping) something with tequila in it.

I am leaving Korea in 3 days. Last Thursday, 2/21/2008, was my one year anniversary of arriving here. Mind blowing, ain't it? What a blur. This last month especially has flown past, I've spent a lot of it tying up loose ends here and dealing with future itineraries. I'm not in a very "reflective" mood right now, which is probably for the best, since the writing that comes out of me when I am in one of those moods makes me cringe when I read it later. I am also selling my monitor to a girl in about an hour, so this post is going to be much shorter and snappier than it should be. Korea deserves a better goodbye from me. But right now I'm wiped, hopefully I can dredge up a retrospective somewhere down the long and winding road...

speaking of that....here's a quick look at the future of Adam (in Asia):

3/1 Fly to KL (Kuala Lumpur for you Asian rookies), Malaysia. I'll spend my 12 hour layover over night there with an old friend, a British girl named Hannah who is featured on this blog way, way, way back in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where we went on a 4 day trek in the jungle together. She just happens to be in KL the same night as me, so we're going to meet up. This is slightly mind-boggling to me. small world?

3/2 Fly to Bali, Indonesia. I'll spend 11 days CHILLING THE @#$%! OUT with Shawna "the Canadian" Manske and friends. and surfing. and possibly getting Dive certified. eat that, snowy korea.

3/14 Fly to Delhi, India. For the next 2 months, I will be backpacking around the northern half of The Subcontinent. I am intensely excited and anxious right now just thinking about this trip. Something I have wanted to do for a long, long time. This is my ideal and very generalized plan as of now: I hope to explore all the major sights Rajasthan, then head east to Calcutta via Varanasi, then north to Darjeeling and Sikkim, before ending my trip in the northern tip (Shimla, Amritsar, Ladakh, Leh).

5/17 Fly to Houston. Attend Radiohead concert that night.

5/18-5/30 SLEEP.

this summer I'll be bouncing around the States (after a nice long reacquaintance with Austin of course) ((god i can't wait to be home)). Got tix for Bonnaroo (june) and Burning Man (august), hope to crash some couches in NYC at some point. at the end of June ill be working in Idaho for my friend Katie's mom's landscaping company (long story), then up to Calgary for The Stampede(!). never hurts to stay busy, right? now I just have to find out how to pay for it all.

And now for some final thoughts.

Let me start by saying I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about coming here. The last year has been as rewarding and educational as the 4 years I spent in college, without a doubt. I can't really believe I just typed that out, it sounds crazy...Austin vs. Seoul? not much of a contest (don't get me wrong, Seoul is very kickass at times. it's just that Austin is my people). But it's true. In the past 12 months I've learned an immense amount about myself. Probably one of the most useful things I've learned is that I can live on my own, far far farrr away from everybody and everything I know and love. I've learned that it can be extremely lonely at times, but I've also learned how to cope with that loneliness. I've learned that I still can't cook. Dammit! Next time I'll have to request a real kitchen, instead of a small counter near the bathroom. I've learned that I absolutely love teaching and working with children. Looking back at the posts on this blog over the year, I realize there's little to no information about my job, which is sort of strange since it's the reason I'm here and where I spend most of my waking hours. Maybe I was afraid of being too honest and having coworkers or supervisors reading it. More likely I probably just wanted to think about anything but work once I got home from yet another exhausting day. It's a shame, because I had so many revelations working with these kids. (I'm frustrated right now because all I can think to say is cliche drivel like "they're just so full of wonder and curiousity!" or "they're so pure and innocent, they haven't yet learned to be apathetic and cynical life-haters like the rest of us!") I'm sure this is something all first time teachers experience, and I know there are much better writers out there who have captured it more eloquently. So I'll just say that these kids have completely renewed my faith in humanity. To put it mildly. For a demonstration, just look at this random picture I took a couple days ago:

Seung-ju is telling Soo-Min a secret. A Secret! And he's not just telling it, he's Whispering it! Because Secrets must be Whispered, that's just how it's done. And Lion is sitting over there in the corner just dying to get in on the secret whispering. All the while Rachel is down there on the floor pretending she is a cat, wishing everybody would hurry and wrap up all the drama so they can get back to playing House.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, or you think I seem a little too attached to my students...spend 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for a year, with 15 seven year olds...no wait, make that 15 incredibly cute Korean seven year olds. Then you'll know where I'm coming from.

Tomorrow I have to watch them graduate from kindergarten and say goodbye, probably forever, although I've explained the concept of e-mail to them. Tomorrow's going to be a tough day.

to change the subject...

I'd also like to think I've gained a lot of insight into the way other people think and act; the endless different ways people live and how they all exist and co-exist. Which is what drew me to travel outside of the States in the first place, so in that sense alone this year has been an enormous success. (although now I am sure I will have all these notions of existence blown to smithereens in India.)

oh and one more thing: i've met some of the most amazing people i could ever hope to meet here.

alright time's up. gotta disconnect my computer. hopefully i'll be blogging from Indonesia/India. but not too often.

안녕히게세요 Korea...it's been a wild ride.

R.I.P. Namdaemun

2008-02-19T22:02:00.002+09:00

Link to news article

Last Sunday, Feb. 10, South Korea's #1 national treasure and the oldest wooden building in Seoul burned down. The 600 year old gate to the old city, protected through several wars and invasions, was set on fire by a 69-year old nutjob who said he was pissed about the government's handling of his appeal in a land development case. I know I'm really late putting this up, but I would feel remiss if I neglected it completely (especially seeing as how the gate's picture is the header of my blog). This really was one of the few beautiful and majestic monuments in the city, one of my favorite and most visited areas of Seoul, and I felt almost sick to my stomach when I saw the pictures of the damage. I didn't have a chance to drive by it until this last weekend, but when I did it looked even worse up close. Terrible loss for Korea, and I really hope they are able to rebuild it close to or better than its original stature.

Lunar New Year recap

2008-02-10T18:47:00.000+09:00

Tomorrow will be the beginning of my 52nd week in Korea.

Today is my 358th day here.

I originally sat down to write about how I'm leaving Korea in a few weeks and my thoughts and feelings on that, but now methinks it's too soon and honestly I have no idea where to start. So let's talk about something else.

I am currently at the end of a much needed 5-day weekend, thanks to the Korean Lunar New Year holiday. Tuesday, the last day of work before the break, was a special day at my school. All of the kids and the teachers (yes, me included) dressed up in Korean traditional clothes known as 한복 (hanbok). It's like a Korean kimono.

There seem to be an endless amount of different varieties. Most of them are incredibly bright and colorful and, I think, quite beautiful. This is the 2nd time that I've had the chance to wear hanbok at work, can't remember if I put up any pictures the other time (during Chusok, Korean Thanksgiving) but here's a picture, see if you can pick me out of the crowd:

Hint: I'm wearing a brown undershirt.

We spent the whole morning playing traditional Korean games. A quick rundown on a few of them:

Yutnori, a board game that involves one player tossing 4 sticks in the air. Each stick has a curved, marked side and a flat, blank side. Depending on the position of the sticks when they land on the ground, you get to move a certain amount of places around the game board.

So that was fun. We played one version with small sticks all thrown by one person, but when we combined all the classes together in the gym we played Super Size Yutnori. Since these yuts were bigger than most of the kids, each kid only tossed one. It was pretty entertaining to watch.

We also played Too-ho, a game where you throw a sort of arrow/spear thing into a box a few feet away. And then there was Jaeggi, which is basically hacky sack. I was forced to step up and destroy the competition, breaking all previous SLP Jaeggi records for consecutive hits. The crowd went wild and proceeded to rush the field. a shot from the post-victory celebration:

eat your heart out eli manning.

another memorable part of the Lunar New Year festivities was the bowing. At home on the actual day of, children are supposed to bow to their parents; a very slow, formal, kneeling, head touching the ground bow. Me and my partner teacher Christine were bowed to by our 15 students, and then in turn we gave them each a gift. It was a very nice little ceremony.

So that was Tuesday.

On Thursday, I went to Everland, Korea's Disneyland. aaaand it was pretty awesome. Went with a large posse of about 12 other teachers, and because of the holiday we had the place to ourselves. But it was really really really really cold. So we did what any sensible Everlanders would do and everybody bought their own furry animal hat.

Best Pic Ever? Possibly. (Funny story: later when we were back in the real world we all walked into a convenience store and the Korean woman behind the counter almost lost her shit. You'd think she had never seen a dozen foreigners wearing plush animal hats before. She was actually crying, when we left she was wiping tears out of her eyes.)

The park itself was a little disappointing after all the hype, although to give it credit we didn't get a chance to fully explore the whole thing because the sun went down so early. And not to brag but I have been to some of the better theme parks in the states so the bar is high. Only 2 coasters there...and they were alright...there is a new one just about to open that looks wicked awesome. The highlight of the visit hands down was the 'Light Parade' at night, which featured a dozen huge parade car float things and tons of lit-up costumed characters dancing their way through the park. This was followed by an impressive fireworks/light show. There was also a Safari, with bears and LIGERS, yes ligers, but it was more sad than anything else. Those ligers looked really cold and miserable.

My favorite part of Everland is how generic it all is. The park's creators (it's operated by Samsung) obviously went to great lengths to avoid having Disney's lawyers knocking on their door. All the characters and rides and buildings are clearly NOT associated with any of Disney's intellectual properties. Yep, no Mickey's or Donald's here, just your standard generic friendly cartoon fox bear thing. They did rip off Alice in Wonderland a few times, which makes me wonder if that trademark has lapsed or something.

Anyways, here's a slideshow of the days tomfoolery:

For the rest of the break, I spent most of my time hanging out with a very special Canadian girl named Shawna who has kind of flipped my world upside down in the last few weeks. You might know her as 'that gorgeous chick next to Adam' in a lot of the recent pictures. I'm not sure how to approach this on the blog, since I know she's probably going to read this at some point and that's a bit awkward isn't it? so I'll just introduce you real quick...blog readers, meet Shawna. Shawna, say hello to blog readers.

also, it was my good friend and recent Korea transplant J's birthday. Happy Birthday Scuzz!

In 3 weeks, I will leave Korea, my home for the past year, possibly for good, who knows. Next, I'll be spending 12 days in Indonesia with Shawna and friends. Then, I'm flying to India for 2.5 months. But that's a story for another post...

Fujifilm2

2008-01-22T21:30:00.000+09:00

here are the rest of my 35mm shots. enjoy the scroll, it's a long way down:

Nara

Kyoto

Osaka

believe it or not, there's more. click here to see the whole album

Fujifilm1

2008-01-20T21:00:00.000+09:00

more from Japan.

Tokyo:

Asakusa and Senso-ji Temple

Ueno

Tsukiji Fish Market

Mt. Fuji National Park (Hakone)

click here to see the whole album

Japan-o-rama!

2008-01-16T13:25:00.000+09:00

I usually try to provide a little narration when I put pictures up, but there are just so many damn photos from the trip to Japan I'm taking the cheap and dirty way out: facebook photo albums, with captions! (just for my digital stuff. I'll put another post up with my film shots)

Here ya go, each picture below links to a full photo album on facebook. enjoy:

Tokyo 1

Tokyo 2

Tokyo 3

Mt. Fuji National Park

Kyoto 1

Kyoto 2

Osaka

New Year's Eve

Japanese funerals

2008-01-06T16:57:00.001+09:00

still working on getting all the pictures from Japan online. I really wish there was a way to simplify the choices of posting stuff online. between facebook, this blog, picasa web albums and flickr i don't know what to do. and thank god i quit myspace. in the meantime here is some interesting stuff I found on wikipedia about Japanese funerals.

A Japanese funeral includes a wake, the cremation of the deceased, a burial in a family grave, and a periodic memorial service. 99.82% of all deceased Japanese are cremated, according to 2005 statistics.[1] Most of these are then buried in a family grave, but scattering of the ashes has become more popular in recent years, including a burial at sea and even on rare occasions a burial in space. The average cost for a Japanese funeral is 4 million yen (that's $40,000 folks), the most expensive in the world. One main reason for the high cost is the scarcity of funeral plots (it is almost impossible to buy a grave in Tokyo). Another reason is the price gouging common at Japanese funeral homes, combined with the hesitation of the relatives of the deceased to negotiate and to compare prices.

While Japan has a mixture of Shintō and Buddhist beliefs, funerals are almost always Buddhist ceremonies, and 90% of the funerals are Buddhist style.

It is believed by some that certain days are better for a funeral than others. For example, some days are known as tomobiki, literally "friend pulling", which is great for weddings, but to be avoided for funerals, as nobody wants to follow a dead person into the grave.

The funeral is usually on the day after the wake. The procedure is similar to the wake, and incense is offered while a priest chants a sutra. The ceremony differs slightly as the deceased receives a new Buddhist name (kaimyō). This name supposedly prevents the return of the deceased if his name is called. The length and prestige of the name depend also on the size of the donation of the relatives to the temple, which may range from a cheap and free name to the most elaborate names for 1 million yen or more. The high prices charged by the temples are a controversial issue in Japan, especially since some temples put pressure on families to buy a more expensive name.

A cremation usually takes about two hours, and the family returns at a scheduled time when the cremation has been completed. The relatives pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn using chopsticks, two relatives sometimes holding the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks (or, according to some sources, passing the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks). This is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. At all other times, holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing an item from chopsticks to chopsticks will remind all bystanders of the funeral of a close relative and is considered to be a major social faux pas. The bones of the feet are picked up first, and the bones of the head last. This is to ensure that the deceased is not upside down in the urn. The hyoid bone (a bone located in the neck) is the most significant bone to be put in the urn.

Some graves may also have a box for business cards, where friends and relatives visiting the grave can drop their business card, informing the caretakers of the grave of the respects the visitors have paid to the deceased.

Many companies have company graves in the largest graveyard in Japan, Okuno-In on Mount Kōya, burial place of Kūkai (774 - 835). These graves are for former company employees and their relatives, and often have a gravestone related to the company business. For example, the coffee company UCC has a gravestone in the shape of a coffee cup, and a metal rocket sits on top of the gravesite of an aeronautics company.

Passing the bones with chopsticks. Wow. There's a lot more on the main wiki page, including a section on the kickbacks and price gouging within the funeral industry. Pretty despicable stuff. I found it really interesting that almost 100% of all Japanese are cremated...anybody know what the statistic is in America?

I'm gonna go watch some Six Feet Under...

Wabi-sabi

2008-01-06T16:26:00.000+09:00

Wabi-sabi (in Kanji: 侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" (according to Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers). It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence — Anicca, or in Japanese, 無常 (mujyou, or mujō)), Impermanence.　Note also that the Japanese word for rust, 錆 is also pronounced sabi (the borrowed Chinese character is different, but the word itself is of assumed common etymology), and there is an obvious semantic connection between these concepts.

[hide]

[edit] Description

According to Koren, wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty and it "occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West." Andrew Juniper claims, "if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." Richard R. Powell summarizes by saying "It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."

The words wabi and sabi do not translate easily. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered". Around the 14th century these meanings began to change, taking on more positive connotations.^[1] Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.

From an engineering or design point of view, "wabi" may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and construction/manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; then "sabi" could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or limited mortality of any object, hence the etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi, to rust.

A good example of this embodiment may be seen in certain styles of Japanese pottery. In Japanese tea ceremony, cups used are often rustic and simple-looking, e.g. Hagi ware, with shapes that are not quite symmetrical, and colors or textures that appear to emphasize an unrefined or simple style. In reality, the cups can be quite expensive and in fact, it is up to the knowledge and observational ability of the participant to notice and discern the hidden signs of a truly excellent design or glaze (akin to the appearance of a diamond in the rough). This may be interpreted as a kind of wabi-sabi aesthetic, further confirmed by the way the glaze is known to change in color with time as tea is repeatedly poured into them (sabi) and the fact that the cups are deliberately chipped or nicked at the bottom (wabi), which serves as a kind of signature of the Hagi-yaki style.

Wabi and sabi both suggest sentiments of desolation and solitude. In the Mahayana Buddhist view of the universe, these may be viewed as positive characteristics, representing liberation from a material world and transcendence to a simpler life. Mahayana philosophy itself, however, warns that genuine understanding cannot be achieved through words or language, so accepting wabi-sabi on nonverbal terms may be the most appropriate approach.

The wabi and sabi concepts are religious in origin, but actual usage of the words in Japanese is often quite casual. The syncretic nature of Japanese belief systems should be noted.

[edit] Wabi-sabi in Japanese arts

Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen and Mahayana philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux, and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic. Here is an incomplete list:

honkyoku (traditional shakuhachi music of wandering Zen monks)
ikebana (flower arrangement)
Japanese gardens, Zen gardens, and bonsai (tray gardens)
Japanese poetry, particularly haiku
Japanese pottery, notably Hagi ware
Japanese tea ceremony

[edit] Western use

During the 1990s the concept was borrowed by computer software developers and employed in Agile programming and Wiki wiki to describe acceptance of the state of ongoing imperfection that is the product of these methods.^[2]

konichiwaaaaaah!

2007-12-23T19:44:00.000+09:00

this picture of shinjuku's skyscrapers

perfectly conveys how i feel right now another momentous chapter in the adam in asia saga/adventure/aimless traveling existence; Japan! or as they say in korea...ilbon. as i mentioned before my mom came out to korea for a couple days which was a great success, will post pictures later, and today we arrived in Tokyo (after overcoming a couple potential derailments including my flight getting cancelled.) went from the airport to shinjuku station, the busiest subway station in the world, and proceeded to get on the wrong train. but this was quickly corrected because i am a master navigator and decipherer of japanese kanji. we just checked into our hostel in shinjuku, close to the heart of the city, and it's a really cool place, all the beds are built into these wooden boxes that you have to climb into. very cozy and different, japanese style. the plan is 2 full days in tokyo, 1 in Mt. Fuji national park, 3 in kyoto with day trips to hiroshima and nara, and finally 2 nights and a day in osaka. as epic as the china trip was, this looks like it might be a topper. if you happen to read this in the next few days and you have any Japan sightseeing tips lemme know.

for now its off to explore the madness in a asahi-fueled buzz with my new camera.

and i don't know how to say goodbye in japanese yet...

Far from Home for the Holidays

2007-12-17T23:24:00.000+09:00

the mercury has finally stopped dropping here in Korea...settling into a daily average of...Freezing. or below. Plus the wind chill. Can't forget about the wind chill. So I figured it was time for a long overdue update. I still have to put up the rest of my seemingly endless China pictures, and that has prevented me from posting much for months...I really wanted to keep the travelogue continuity and whatnot. But continuity be damned, it's time to bring this blog up to speed.

It's December and it is cold. Fortunately I am in a Western-loving, Christian-filled country and Christmas lights, Korean versions of classic Christmas carols, and dancing Santa's abound, helping to take the sting out of the frosty air. I also got a new hat, which keeps my big ears warm:

As you can see, the ladies love it. Actually, that girl is complimenting my practical thinking. And my bow tie. That picture was taken on the night of The Twins' birthday party a couple weeks ago, which was a nice formal affair at their place. It isn't very often here that you get 30 or so people together to party, especially wearing suits and cocktail dresses. Leave it to the twins to pull it off.

-Thanksgiving slipped by without any real notice here. Besides the constant phantom hunger pains I got from all the turkey and stuffing and pie I wasn't eating. I remember some of the strange Canadians at my workplace saying something about Thanksgiving being in October...I can only assume they were high.

-We lost a good Texan a couple weeks ago, while gaining another. My friend Mike left for Austin rather suddenly, citing workplace issues (alcoholic boss for starters) and we were very sad to see him go. The guy loved a good dance party. But as fate would have it, in the same week, Jay, one of my best friends from Austin made his grand debut in Korea. He's working for the same hagwon chain SLP on the other side of Seoul. He likes graffiti, kimbap, and riding tandem bicycles. It is really good to have him here. It's always nice when somebody new comes because you get to see their reactions to all the "normal" stuff here that you barely notice now but which totally blew you away when you first arrived. Which of course makes you appreciate everything all over again. His being here has also re-motivated me to learn Korean, and I've been taking lessons at a church in Seoul for the last month.

-The fall foliage here was amazing. Sometimes the landscape here can be pretty bleak, depending on where you are and how thick the smog is. Bleak might be too harsh...maybe monochromatic would be better? Anyways the whole place came alive from October until just recently. It was my first experience living in a place where this happens, getting to see the seasonal change from beginning to end. Really nice. Here are some pictures, click on any of the thumbnails to go to the album and view them full size:

At the end of October I went with Ronika Colin and Helen, along with half the country apparently, to view the fall colors on Seoraksan Mountain, the 3rd highest mountain in Korea (in September we hiked up the 2nd highest, a volcano on Jeju Island).

My friend Ronika is an amazing photographer, click on the picture below to see the whole rad album:

In other big news, my Mom will be flying into Seoul this Thursday, to spend 3 days here, after which we will both fly together to JAPAN for 10 days. I cannot tell you how stoked I am for this. First of all, my Mom gets to meet my kids! Plus I have wanted to go to Japan forever, long before I even thought about Southeast Asia or Korea. And to be able to travel there with my Mom...it's going to be awesome. Several friends from work are going to be there too and we plan on meeting up a couple times.

And finally....FINALLY....I got a new point and shoot. PowerShot SD850 IS. So now I can finally see the pictures I'm taking! In case you forgot, I have been shooting blind with my old broken PowerShot since I got here (broke the screen the night before I left Austin). After getting home with the new toy I started wishing I had gotten the SD800 with the wideangle lens, but oh well. So expect more videos, more pics. Now it's time to start saving for a DSLR...

I should mention that I have to decide this week whether I will extend my contract to June or leave as planned in early March. Really on the fence. I will probably stay because I need to save more money but the idea of being free in 2 months is really, really nice. Work is fine for the most part, I have just been feeling the travel itch a lot lately. I figure there's a good amount of holiday homesickness involved too.

Speaking of.....Happy Holidays. To anybody who actually read this far, here is your reward. season's greetings from the Wonder Girls:

merry merry m-m-m-m-merry christmas.

First Snow!

2007-11-19T21:01:00.000+09:00

shortly after I took this video, the snow turned into cold rain accompanied by lightning and thunder. Hello Winter!!

Halloween Day

2007-10-31T23:50:00.000+09:00

Ilsan SLP went all out this year.

Highlights: one of my girls picking her nose through her mask; the 'Haunted Gym'; Witches Kitchen with cauldrons full of 'dragons vomit', 'wiggly worms', 'fingers', and 'frog eyeballs' (remember those feely boxes? scary stuff); Tarot card readings; making 3 kids cry; and the very popular "grab bag" costume, consisting of at least one accessory from spiderman, batman, superman, devil, witch, Harry Potter, and generic monster.

It also makes me really happy knowing that 70 or so Korean kids now know the full version of the trick or treat chant. as in: "...if you don't, i don't care, i'll pull down your underwear!" (don't look at me, i didn't teach it to 'em.)

Shanghai - Day 4

2007-10-30T16:06:00.000+09:00

When we last left our hero, he was stuck in Shanghai for an additional day thanks to a Chinese cab driver who apparently couldn't read a simple Chinese train ticket. But you gotta roll with the punches, right. With our tickets re-booked for the following evening (overnight train to Beijing) and our panic level on its way down, we met up with The Twins and Minnie for dinner and drinks. We soon found ourselves in a really touristy spot of town with a lot of old wealthy-looking Europeans walking around in pasty white clumps and smoking cigars. It was late and we couldn't be arsed to find cheap Chinese food so we ended up eating at Papa John's. So far from home, and yet so close. after that it was back to Lauren's to sleep off the debacle of an evening.

The next morning started out solidly: Lauren cooked me some muy excelente migas for breakfast. Mexican food in China!! then she left me on my own to run errands. With my trusty Lonely Planet Shanghai in hand, I headed out into the wild urbanity.

First mission: tackle the Shanghai subway. Admittedly this was not the most difficult thing in the world to do since most signs are in both Chinese and English, but it did take some navigating and cartography skills, and it helped my confidence a little bit, finding my solo adventuring legs. If you have gotten lost in an American transportation system, like the NYC metro for example, you can only imagine how much easier it is to get off track in a place like this. And once you get off track here, you can't exactly tap the guy next to you on the shoulder for directions. I get lost a lot...even back home, if I was at a fork in the road there was a pretty good chance I would go the wrong way. As a result, from early on I developed a definite "wherever you go, there you are" mindset when traveling, never getting too stressed if things took a turn for the "where the @#$! am I?". And I have found that this is actually a better way to move...taking the long and difficult route, guessing my way around, is usually a lot more interesting.

As for differences between the Shanghai and Seoul subway systems: oddly enough I noticed the poor lighting more than anything else. it seemed a lot darker and gloomier here. maybe they were trying to save energy? it's just as crowded but people were way pushier. i think i've mentioned this before, but for an ancient civilization responsible for so many important inventions throughout history, i find it so interesting that the Chinese have yet to figure out this crazy notion of "waiting in line". Of course, this is true in many Asian countries, but from my personal experience it is exponentially worse in China. A complete and total free-for-all. It's so bad, in fact, that the govt. has initiated several large-scale campaigns to change people's behavior in time for the Olympics in 2008. This includes a monthly Queue Day to encourage...well..queuing.

So I went first to the 'world-renowned' Shanghai Museum and ended up spending most of my day there. A sure sign that I am getting old, I think. If you had tried to walk me through this place with the accompanying audio guide 4 or 5 years ago, I would've been snoring my way out the door in ten minutes.

Wikipedia says:

The scope, depth and quality of its collections, and the striking architecture and use of modern technology make the Shanghai Museum one of the most famous if not the most famous in China. It covers an area of 38,000 square meters, with a scale that surpasses the old museum severalfold. The exterior of the museum utilizes the shape of an ancient bronze ding, specifically a Chen ding, with its rather archaic flavor. The structure and materials of the entire building, however, are an accomplishment of the most modern technology.
The Shanghai Museum is mainly a museum for ancient arts. At present it is divided into ten sections. These are:
ancient Chinese bronzes, sculpture, ceramics, jades, seals, calligraphy, coin and currency, paintings, Ming and Qing-dynasty furniture, and crafts of China's national minorities. Among the holdings of the Museum many items are superlative works of art and are unique in the entire country. These include in particular the bronzes, calligraphy, paintings, and Ming and Qing furniture.

Here are some of the highlights...sorry for the lack of descriptions, all factual information has faded at this point. Click on any of the pictures to go the album to see more.

the last two are from outside the museum, which opened onto a large public square, the biggest in Shanghai if I remember correctly, only a little smaller than Tiananmen.

from the museum I headed over to the Bund, which I mentioned in a previous post. We had gone clubbing there at night but it was nice to finally see it during the day. One of the most historic, iconic parts of the city, the old International Settlement was centered here and it made up the financial hub of East Asia in the 19th century, many of the buildings used to be big banks or posh hotels and foreign clubs. click here to see more pics of this "museum of international architecture."

the area across the river from the Bund, the Pudong business district, was equally extravagant but in a different direction. or a different era, rather. for every historic gothic landmark on the Bund there was a metal and steel monument to match it in Pudong. an interesting contrast. it's most notable features are the Oriental Pearl TV Tower (bizarre, hypodermic needle looking thing) and the Jin Mao Building...7th tallest building in the world and home of the world's tallest hotel, the Shanghai Grand Hyatt (floors 53-87):

the Aurora building is outfitted with some sort of LCD panel siding, at night it turns into a giant video screen.

a Monument to the People:

a guy selling crickets (for luck) in little wicker boxes:

After I had my fill of wandering aimlessly I headed back to Lauren's. I got home before she did and was locked out, so it was um...time to wander aimlessly again. This time through the slums behind her apartment building.

The broken buildings were good subjects for photographs. I highly doubt the poor families forced to live there appreciated their aesthetic qualities.

I came back and sat in an open window frame on Lauren's floor to watch the sun set, enjoying the hot city summer air, listening to some Kings of Convenience I think, and thinking about the whirlwind of the last few days. As I sat there, a man came out on the roof of a rundown building across the street. I watched him. He crouched down to fiddle with something for a few minutes. then he stood up and threw a small dark ball in the air. i wasn't sure what i was seeing until the ball started to flap its wings.

The bird joined a flock of others that were flying in lazy circles around the roof.

not sure what it meant. didn't really care. it was nice to look at.

And that's how my last day in Shanghai ended. couldnt've written a better one. missing our train turned out to be one of the best setbacks ever. Really enjoyed that last day, and it gave us time to recuperate for the epicness that was to come in Beijing. We made our train with time to spare, and apart from not being served in the diner car on account of our whiteness and being stuck in a sleeper car with 3 LOUDLY SNORING Chinese men, not much else to mention.

next: Beijing, The Square, The Wall....need I say more?

Shanghai - Day 3

2007-10-15T19:54:00.000+09:00

Onward thru the fog...

From Shanghai - Da...

Lauren had to tie up a lot of loose ends before we left for Beijing that evening (to recap, she had been teaching English in Shanghai for the previous 6 months and was now leaving to study in Portugal after a quick tour of southeast asia). So The Twins and I went exploring on our own. We cruised around the gorgeous French Concession area for awhile. Tree-lined streets with trendy boutiques and tons of art-deco architecture. A nice change of pace from the megalomaniac streetscape of the downtown/business districts we had seen so far.

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I had found a small entry in the Shanghai LP talking about a Communist Propaganda Poster Art Center, supposedly located in our neighborhood, so I convinced the twins that we should check it out. Finding the place was an adventure in itself, and in a rare moment the detailed and usually accurate Lonely Planet directions (ask a security guard where to find Building B, use the first elevator on the right, etc.) let us down. Temporarily, at least. After a few dead ends we finally found it, and weren't really sure that we were in the right place until we walked into the room. The "Art Center" turned out to be a small room (plus a gift shop) tucked away in the basement of a rundown, nondescript apartment complex.

However, the place was well worth the hassle of locating it. The gallery owner, a Mr. Pei Ming Yang, had collected over 5,000 communist propaganda posters and memorabilia from the last 40 years. He did it, he told us, because nobody else would. He said he literally pulled some of these from the trash. And it is a good thing he did because these posters are a fascinating look into an era of revolution and repression. It was a very D.I.Y. operation; some of the posters were taped up on the wall, some were under thin, chipped plexiglass. But all the pieces had English translations which was very helpful. It was particularly interesting to see how the style and content of the posters changed over the decades, as the problems facing the country evolved and new Enemies of the People arose, and as The Chairman became a godlike figure, often pictured with Lenin and Stalin bestowing power on the people. Below are the few pictures that I was able to get off when nobody was looking (no cameras allowed), here is the main site and another one with some high quality scans. Some of the posters were unintentionally humorous; others were a little disturbing, like the child soldiers below finishing off a sickly McCarthy and South Korean President Singhman Rhee (i'm assuming). I loved the symbols and iconography in most of them...representing Japan as a prowling wolf wearing a rising sun bandana and so forth...so many of these posters were real pieces of art.

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I should note that before this trip my knowledge of Chinese history was embarrassing, so I spent a lot of the trip educating myself on the back story of this incredible country. As much as one can learn about a 5,000 year old culture in 8 days.

After the Prop. Poster Center we all got massages. We weren't too happy when they put the 3 of us in the same small room together, but what'reyagonnado. Then back to Lauren's apartment to pack up and get ready to ship out to Beijing.

Here is the view from Lauren's bedroom window:

The city had knocked down this neighborhood, to make way for some new high-rise I'm sure, but as you can see in that first picture they had failed to completely remove it's former tenants. I wish I had more pictures from this area; at one point I went down and walked through it and found dozens of families living in those brick shacks that seem on the verge of collapse. Obviously, not everybody in Shanghai is riding the modern wave of success. The most recent run-in I had with this sort of poverty was back in Thailand and other parts of southeast Asia, but the disparity between the rich and poor is so much more pronounced here in Shanghai because of the immediate contrast with the skyscrapers, flashy corporate elite, and obsessive consumerism.

It was a struggle to go out and enjoy myself on vacation when I knew that I was spending in a couple days what many people in China make in a year. I realize that I haven't talked about this much on this blog, the conflict of conscience that occurs when a middle class American travels to a developing country, the ongoing debate of whether my tourist dollars and even my presence is hurting or helping things, and I don't plan on getting into it here. But I do think about it, a lot. Even in Korea where there is far less inequality compared to China, there is a little voice in the back of my head that pops up every so often trying to put things in perspective. But I always conclude that there isn't much I can do about the injustices of the world, not right now at least. Besides not travel at all, and that's really an option. I guess that makes me apathetic. Oh well. Can I blame that on Bush?

Enough serious stuff. Ever gotten your hair cut by the local sidewalk barber?

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So the plan was thus: Lauren and I were going to take an overnight train to Beijing where we would eventually meet up with The Twins and Minnie who were catching a plane the following morning.

Around 7pm Lauren and I say goodbye to our friends and hop in a cab. We show the cabbie the train tickets that Lauren had purchased in advance. And he precedes to drive us across the city to the wrong train station. We didn't know this yet, and thinking we had mere minutes to catch out train we sprinted about half a mile with our giant rucksacks through the train station to the gate. Remember, we're in China so nobody speaks English. At the gate, as the line builds behind us the attendant yells at us angrily in Chinese and motions to the other side of the train station. So we sprint to the other side, where we are met with a similar response. Except this guy just makes an X motion with his arms and shakes his head.

It is at this point that we realize we are at the wrong station, and that we are completely @#$!ed. We have no idea what to do, and have one of those moments where ya just kind of stand and stare and try not to scream or punch something. Lauren holds up remarkably well. Until we go to the ticket counter to try to sort things out. It's a busy weekend, and there are 100+ people trying to shove their money under the ticket window. In China, people don't wait in lines, they just shove and shove and push and elbow. (I actually got a little too used to it while I was there--it's sort of liberating in a way, having a free license to be an asshole and forgo any pretense of politeness--and had to readjust when I got back to Korea.) So here we are, trying to get some information about trains we might be able to take later that night or the next day, and we just keep getting shoved aside, and none of the attendants speak English or will even acknowledge us. It was madness.

On the verge of panic, thinking everything might be booked for summer break and we would never make it to Beijing (where I had to catch a plane in 4 days back to Korea), we somehow managed to force our way in and get our tickets rebooked on a train the next day. This was still a big change of plans and would set us behind a full day. But hey...!@#$ happens. Thank god Minnie, Andrew's Korean gf, had a Chinese cell phone so we were able to meet back up with them and explain the entire debacle. Then it was back to Lauren's place and her surprised roommates to rest up for the next day and hope nothing else went wrong.

~~~I am just now remembering something that happened while we were charging across the train station. One of the craziest things I've ever seen. As we left the first gate to head to the other side of the terminal, from out of nowhere this Chinese guy in motorcycle boots (this is important) runs up from the other side of the railing and angrily leaps over it (or as The Twins would say, "he wesley sniped it"). The attendant and everybody else are too startled to do anything, and as we watch he runs up to a girl calmly walking away with her wheeled suitcase and...this is hard to describe accurately...dropkicks her suitcase. He was actually horizontal in the air, hurtling towards her with his motorcycle boot-wearing feet straight out. He crashes into the suitcase, snapping the handle, and eats it big time. The girl just kind of turns around and stands there, no reaction. Then the guy jumps up and starts yelling at the girl and picking her suitcase up and repeatedly slamming it down on the ground. Still no reaction...almost looked like she was half asleep. Then he chunks the suitcase like twenty yards into the friggin' wall.

This all happened in a span of about 45 seconds while we were literally sprinting past it. It really added a sense of madness and urgency to our sprint.

I still wonder to this day what she had done to piss him off, and what happened afterwards.

next up: an extra day in Shanghai, touring the Bund, Shanghai Museum

Shanghai - Day 2

2007-10-04T02:49:00.000+09:00

From Shanghai - Day 2

Filled with an equal mix of hangover and anticipation, we stepped out into the stifling Shanghainese heat ready to conquer Day 2 of Trip China. Of course, that meant soaking up the previous night's debauchery with a hearty continental breakfast and fruit smoothies, the real traveler's meal. Luckily this is much, much easier to find in China than Korea.

It's hard to get across the immediate sense that I felt in China that I was in a very, very different place. I mean China makes Korea look like the 51st state. if that makes sense. it's a foreign place in every possible way. At this point in the trip I was still very overwhelmed so I'll save the real people watching observations and cultural insights for later posts.

Since we were still getting our bearings and had another night out on the town ahead of us, we decided to take it relatively easy on Day 2. Of course, this meant bowling.

I was startled to discover that bowling in China is remarkably similar to bowling in Korea, which is, believe it or not, almost identical to bowling in America. In fact, you could almost say they are exactly the same. Down to the computer animation that comes up when you get a Turkey. (And I would know, because I bowl turkeys like clockwork.)

How the exact same sport was invented by 3 completely different cultures in 3 different parts of the world, I have no idea, but I think it speaks volumes about the innate need that humans have within them to bowl. Or maybe just throw a ball at a bunch of sticks.

(I don't know if I have mentioned before...we go bowling a lot here.)

There is, however, one aspect of Chinese bowling that makes it much more enjoyable than Korean bowling: cold Tsingtao beer served to you on the lane. Ready for lane-sippin'. Meaning we don't have to stop in at the local 7/11 and mix Powerade and Soju like we normally do. It's a real hassle.

Team Epic & Awesome

Back at Lauren's place to get ready for the night:

gotta make that paper stack. Me and thousands of little Mao Zedongs. or Yuan. Or Renminbi. Or Cuay. currency was a tad confusing at first, especially since we were converting from Korean Won but still trying to think in USD($). But my traveling policy has become pay first, figure out how much my white backpacker ass overpaid later (cuz really when it comes down to it, a couple bucks to me is a day's wages in a lot of places I've been). I think that's why I always go over budget. I also like to hold all my money in my hand like in the picture and then laugh maniacally and throw it all over the room and roll around in it.

Here we are eating fantastic Chinese dinner #2, at a local place near Lauren's apartment. And either this was a family run place, or we got our first taste of child labor in China. You can see one of the 13 year old waitress on the right side of that picture, and also at the very end of the video below.

then we went to a little bar/club owned by a nice French guy (i guess they do exist) that I happened to chat with for a little bit in the worst, hottest, stinkiest bathroom of all time. Worse than Emo's. but a cool soul/reggae/punk band put on a passionate show in the corner.

i miss live music. :(

i love this picture for a few reasons; for one, Minnies doing the cute as hell Korean puffy cheek thing...but also, look closely at the guy on the right. look down. yeah...no pants. that guy sat there next to us for about 2 hours, just chilling, then stood up and walked to the stage. apparently he was performing that night. In his underwear. verrrry interesting.

soon after Underpants Man kicked off his set we left the bar/club and went to some strange dive/dance club in a mall(?) called Windows. it became known as Dirty Windows afterwards for certain reasons, one of them being the chinese hooker that approached Dave at the bar. apparently she seemed really nice at first.

Chinese B-Girl Dance Off! yeah, I know, I like this picture too. one of the more intense dance offs i've seen in awhile. thought that some nails were going to come out before it was over.

self-explanatory toilet art.

needless to say, clubbing on our second night wasn't quite as cosmopolitan as Saturday. no sexy angels with guns this time. but we were still in China, so it was still epic and awesome.

and the trip to Dirty Windows was a fateful one indeed. i'll wrap up this post with a quick story that might blow your mind:

On Saturday, at the sexy angel club (Attica), I ended up dancing briefly with this really cute white girl (sorry if the race adjective seems offensive or jarring...over here it's kind of common practice when describing people. we are the minority after all). after leaving the dance floor several times and then almost leaving the club, I finally got the nerve (thanks grey goose) to go back and talk to her. chat the bird up, you might say. if you were british. Turned out she was from Maryland, and as luck would have it she was also teaching English in Korea. In a city called Daegu about 3 hours south of Seoul. wow, i said. what a coincidence. so we exchanged info and said our goodbyes, and I assumed that we'd be friends on facebook but I probably wouldn't see her again. C'est la vie and all that. And during the day on Sunday I actually did send her a message on Facebook to see if she wanted to meet up with us, but I figured there was no way she would check it in time, and I was right, she never did.

So you can imagine how surprised I was when we showed up at Windows at 2 in the morning and she's the first person I see. Mind you, this is the 7th biggest city in the world. 17 million people. And this tiny club was nowhere near the area that we had met the previous night, or where we were both staying in the city. Totally, completely random. I hope your mind's not blown yet, there's more. We talked again that night and once again promised to keep in touch when we were back in Korea, and once again we both left thinking that not much would come of it.

But something did come of it, and we started dating almost immediately after we got back, and now we're engaged to be married in May of next year.

Ha! I'm kidding! but really we did start dating, and have been for almost 2 months now, taking turns every other weekend on the train to see each other. but that's a story for another post. it's really weird now looking back on this picture, which i took before i had even noticed her. (she's in the middle.) bc had things gone differently it would just be another picture of dancing strangers (of which i have many for some reason).
And none of this would have happened without a crappy club in a mall in Shanghai called dirty Windows. mysterious ways....

okay....sorry for the length of this one but these stories won't tell themselves.

up next: Shanghai - Days 3 and 4; communist propaganda, missed trains, and the shanghai museum.

here are all the pics from Day 2, incl. all the ones I didn't put in this post:

Shanghai - Day 1

2007-09-28T02:42:00.000+09:00

Okay so here it is, at long last....China!

Without any further ado~~

Day 1 - Saturday, July 28, 2007

The twins and I left Incheon around 10 or 11am I think, flew straight to Shanghai's Pudong airport nice and quick like. Had to exit via a staircar (arrested development!) down to the tarmac, where we were herded into a giant tram that took us to the main terminal. There, we met up with Andrew's Korean girlfriend Minnie, who is living in Shanghai studying Chinese (can't tell you how much of a bonus it was having her along for the ride). With our pre-printed Chinese character directions in hand, we took a nice long taxi ride to my friend Lauren's apartment. Lauren had been teaching English in Shanghai for the previous 6 months, killing time while she waited for her fancy shmancy graduate program in Lisbon, Portugal to kick off.

we had about five minutes to catch our breath after we put our bags down at her apartment, then it was off again as we headed to an afternoon pool party on the rooftop of a swanky hotel in the downtown business district of Shanghai. needless to say, this was pretty awesome. hard to believe we were in crappy old Ilsan, Korea (i don't really mean that) just a few hours before. here's a video:

at one point there was a brief thunderstorm, and everybody started cheering and jumping in the water, much to the frustration of this one poor hotel staff guy who was desperately urging people to get out of the pool. apparently he didn't want drunken white people getting barbecued by lightning. go figure.

after the party it was back to Lauren's to regroup. I took a quick nap while the twins set off to buy some pants...you see the clubs in Shanghai are very anti-shorts, and the twins did not pack accordingly. once they were suited up, Lauren took us to her going away dinner at a Teppanyaki place nearby.

$15 all you can eat, all you can drink, all the food whipped up right in front of you by your very own chef. Hands down one of the best meals I've ever had. this was almost two months ago and I still think about it. our chef was non-stop, going through something like 20 courses over the 2 or 3 hours we were there. Throw in some bottomless Sake bottles and Tsingtao beer and you've got yourself a fantastic, fantastic situation. not sure how they end up making money at this place. not sure i care. i hate knowing that i will probably never go back there.

Eventually they kicked us out...and then it was club time. Clubbing in Shanghai is ridiculous. Just like New York and LA, the clubs are huge, the people are beautiful, and it is all about the image, as you will see from the pictures below. If that means dressing a lot of models up like angel birds with laser guns...so be it. This party brought to you by Grey Goose. there were also some Carnival dancers...wasn't sure where that fit into the whole theme but i didn't waste a lot of time worrying.

Keep in mind that all of this is taking place on The Bund, the former heart of the colonial presence in Old Shanghai, so these clubs are in the upper floors of these beautiful old gothic and art deco buildings whose balconies look out onto this:

And all this time I'm thinking, "We've only been in China for 12 hours."

The last picture there is Lauren and my friend Veronica from UT. I told her and Lauren they should get together awhile back and they became friends, and then we got to meet up that night, albeit briefly. Small world. That night we went to bed very late and pissed off one of Lauren's roommates quite a bit. Although, in our defense, we didn't know he was there.

Next up, Shanghai - Day 2

Here are all the pictures from Day 1:

9/11 Inch Nails

2007-09-13T15:27:00.000+09:00

From NIN

So I finally got to see a real concert in Korea. This Tuesday, which also happened to be 9/11, I saw Nine Inch Nails rock the bajeezus out of a couple thousand people at Olympic Hall in Seoul.

We (Ronika Shay and myself) left for the show right after work, but it still took us about 90 minutes to get from Ilsan to the venue on the other side of Seoul. I had read posts online from people who were planning to take four hour trains/buses from other parts of Korea to get to this show, so I couldn't really complain. That is, until we got there at 8:50 and I heard "Survivalism" (the first single off Year Zero) coming out of the doors.

Turns out in Korea, when the tickets say 8 pm that means the headlining act will start playing at 8 pm. That's not when the opening act will play. That's not when doors will open. That's when you should be in your seat (or standing as it were) with a decent buzz from your soju and Miranda cocktail and ready to go. Meh...things don't always make sense here. So we were a little pissed, especially when we were told they would stop playing at 9:50, exactly one hour later. Did I mention that tickets were $90? Yep. At that point I actually decided that I wasn't going in, I told Ronika and Shay I would just wait for them outside. But then at the last second, I caved. Looking back I'm glad I did but I was not happy at the time, thinking of all the shows in the past I haven't gone to because the tickets cost half that much.

We threw our hard-earned Won at the ticket people and ran inside, and the first thought I had was "high school auditorium." The amount of people there hardly filled the huge venue, but that actually turned out to be a plus as we could push in pretty close to the stage. The crowd was awesome though, more people than I would've guessed, and all of them were there to rock. Or be rocked. (Although there were plenty of Koreans in the seated area who...well, they were in the seated area at a NIN show; I think that says it all. They were probably at the Black Eyed Peas show there last month, too. I think they get some sort of street cred for paying $90 to see a Western band, regardless of who it is.) Not that I'm a hardcore NIN fan myself...I was always more into Tool during "that" phase of high school. But still, I'm starved for live music here and I knew they would bring the rock.

And they did not disappoint. My neck still hurts, and so do my ears. (These are good things.) I'm just happy that I can now say I was in a mosh pit in Korea, full of American G.I.'s and Korean goths and even a few elbow throwing K-chicks. There was this sweet little Korean girl next to us for part of the concert, and she was screaming louder and jumping higher than I was. To Nine Inch Nails. That was awesome.

They actually ended up playing for about 90 minutes after we got there, so that made me feel better. Trent closed the show with "Hurt", (I was told he does that at every show), and it was as intense and passionate as anything I've seen live, which totally blew me away considering how many times he must've performed that song by now.

Here's a video:

I like this quote I found on wikipedia about the Johnny Cash video:

In an interview with Alternative Press, Reznor admitted that when Rubin first asked if Cash could cover his song, he was "flattered" but worried that "the idea sounded a bit gimmicky." The power of Cash's cover didn't fully hit Reznor until he saw the video:

“ I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning—different, but every bit as pure.^[2] ”

Reznor still occasionally refers to "Hurt" as "a song that isn't mine anymore."

After the show we waited around the back entrance with a couple other people hoping to meet the band. at one point a TGIFriday's delivery guy went inside. I mentioned it to one of the roadies I was talking to and he said "When in Korea....". thought that was funny. in the end we didn't get a Hello or even a wave from Trent or the others when they finally came out and hopped into their awaiting transportation (which consisted of 5 old minivans? strange.) on the plus side we did snag some sweet NIN posters with the band's name in Hangul ( 나인 인치 네일 = nah-een een-chee nay-eel) which will make my already dorm-roomish apartment even moreso.

here's another clip, this one contains 1200% more Rock, so TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS. i can't be held responsible for any damage to your computer or your earholes. the sound is pretty nasty. the power of Trent was way too much for my little camera. i'm surprised it didn't melt.

in other news, i changed the layout of the blog, hope to tweak it a little more. since I'm up to about 4 regular readers now, it's time to get serious ya know. still working on that epic China post.....meh.....so tired these days....and for what seems like months i've been fighting what i've heard people call the "korean crud", just a constant sickness/congestion from the dirty air or rainy climate or constant air-con or whatever. everytime i think i'm in the clear i get sick again. it's starting to drive me crazy.

sheesh...listen to me. what is this, livejournal? i'll blame it on the cold meds and the Pet Shop Boys and stop typing now.

cheerios,
adam

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Now playing: David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy (Pet Shop Boys Extended Mix)
via FoxyTunes

Killer Fans

2007-08-31T01:50:00.001+09:00

Alright so I've been too busy or tired or sick to sort through my China pics. the usual excuses. besides, that's what weekends are for. In the meantime, read this. Fascinating glimpse into the Korean mind. The part about Media coverage is especially interesting. My friend Tiffany tipped me off to this strange but commonly held belief here...I had heard it referenced a lot but really didn't know what these people were talking about. Thanks, Wikipedia. Apparently there was a show about it on NPR...if anybody happened to catch it, let me know I'd like to find it.

Fan death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many people in South Korea believe that when operated in closed rooms, electric fans cause sudden death, suffocating victims by stealing their oxygen.

Fan death is an urban legend that originated in South Korea, but has since spread to other countries in the Far East. The belief is that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can result in the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. This belief also extends to air conditioners and the fans in cars. When the air conditioner or fan is on in a car, some people are apt to leave their car windows open a crack to avoid "fan death." Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.

Beliefs

The belief in the myth of fan-death often offers several explanations for the precise mechanism by which the fan kills. However, as explained below, these beliefs do not stand up to logical and scientific scrutiny. Examples for possible justifications of belief in fan death are as follows:

That an electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside. In reality, the air pressure at any point in the room varies less than it does during a storm.
That the fan uses up the oxygen in the room and creates fatal levels of carbon dioxide. There is no actual conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide happening; unlike a candle, the electric motor in a fan does not alter the chemical composition of the air (apart from creating some ozone if the motor uses brushes, and outgassing from the materials).
That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.
That fanblades chop up air particles (i.e. oxygen molecules) so that the air is no longer breathable, thus resulting in suffocation. If this were true, regular fans could be used to create chemical reactions. However, air ionisers do turn a very small amount of oxygen into unstable ozone.^[1]
That fans cause hypothermia. As the metabolism slows down at night, one becomes more sensitive to temperature, and thus supposedly more prone to hypothermia. If the fan is left on all night in a sealed and enclosed room, believers in fan death suppose that it will lower the temperature of the room to the point that it can cause hypothermia. Empirical measurements will show, however, that the temperature in the room does not fall, at least not due to the fan; if at all, it should rise slightly because of friction and the heat output of the fan motor, but even this is generally not significant. Fans actually make one cooler by increasing the convection around a person's body so that heat flows from them to the air more easily, and by the latent heat of vapourisation as perspiration evaporates from the body. Furthermore, hypothermia occurs only when the body's core temperature drops below normal, and will not generally be caused simply by cooling of the skin or decrease in the body's surface temperature.
Often, believers claim that a combination of these factors is responsible. For example, it might be claimed that the decrease in oxygen and increase in carbon dioxide, in conjunction with some degree of hypothermia, could prove fatal to a sleeping person.^{[citation needed]}

Electric fans sold in Korea are equipped with a "timer knob" switch, which turns them off after a set number of minutes: perceived as a life-saving function, particularly essential for bed-time use.

Media coverage

The explanation of fan death is accepted by many Korean medical professionals. In summer, mainstream Korean news sources regularly report on cases of fan death.

A typical example is this excerpt from the July 28, 1997, edition of the Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper:

The heat wave which has encompassed Korea for about a week, has generated various heat-related accidents and deaths. At least 10 people died from the effects of electric fans which can remove oxygen from the air and lower body temperatures...

On Friday in eastern Seoul, a 16-year-old girl died from suffocation after she fell asleep in her room with an electric fan in motion. The death toll from fan-related incidents reached 10 during the past week. Medical experts say that this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area. "Excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one's temperature and hampers blood circulation. And it eventually leads to the paralysis of heart and lungs," says a medical expert.

"To prevent such an accident, one should keep the windows open and not expose oneself directly to fan air," he advised.

According to urban legend study and reporter Cecil Adams, when informed that the phenomenon is virtually unheard of outside of their country, Koreans have suggested that their unique physiology renders them susceptible to fan death ^[2] (despite the fact that people of Korean ancestry born outside Korea who have never heard of this phenomenon sleep with fans on and do not suffer any ill effects).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(visit the wikipedia page for more info including a section on "Published Professional Opinion.")

so there you have it. urban myth, or urban killer??? you decide. I am dying to ask my Korean co-workers about it but I really don't want to offend anyone by laughing at a phenomenon that may or may not kill dozens of Koreans every year. Maybe I'll just let this one go...

back on the wagon

2007-08-27T01:34:00.000+09:00

the blogging wagon that is. (would that be a blaggon? a bloggon?) If you can count and read dates correctly you'll see that there has been another hiatus in this sporadic little travelogue of mine. One month, to be exact. Another all too frequent case of a $&!*load of stuff happening and me feeling helpless as to where or how to begin retelling the Adventures.

And, my oh my, have there been some Adventures. Of the Epic variety. don't question the capital letters. and you should start getting used to the word Epic right now. it's going to come up a lot.

It all started in a little country I like to call China. You may know it as The People's Republic of.

For my summer vacation-Saturday July 28 through Sunday August 5-I went to the land of the Chins with my co-workers Andrew and David Robson (known hereafter as "the twins") where we met up with Lauren Denny, a good friend I've known since high school. We spent 4 days in Shanghai and 5 days in Beijing. And it was awesome.

Because of the ridiculous amount of pictures (135 film, 554 digital) and video (60 grainy, headache-inducing masterpieces) from this trip, and really just the overall Epicness of what took place, I'm going to break the whole thing up into a day by day recap. This way it's not as daunting to try and recapture everything that happened during one of the most Epic weeks of my life in one really boring for you mega-post.

I'll put up the first China post tomorrow since I'm exhausted right now, but I'll leave you with a video from earlier today, when we (me Juli Mike and Christin) went to a very unique cafe called Dr. Fish in Sinchon, a trendy area of Seoul.

You pay 8,000 won for a glass of fruit juice, some cake, and then you get to sit for as long as you want with your feet in a pool with 20 other people. Inside this pool are a bunch of little "doctor fish" that come over and nibble all the dead skin off your feet. Strange, right? Not in Korea. Also, it's definitely not for the ticklish. We spent a good part of the time fighting the urge to scream or laugh out loud.

one last thing...my friend Mike from Austin (the guy across the pool in the video in the green striped shirt) just joined the fray over here about a month ago, he is teaching business English to adults in Seoul and he's got a blog of his own that is worth checking out, a good read. way better than mine. He's even started posting vlogs. Vlogs for chrissakes. I'm so behind the times....

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Now playing: Rogue Wave - Chicago X 12
via FoxyTunes

home and back again

2007-07-27T02:10:00.000+09:00

Things have been rather hectic lately. I flew back to Austin last Tuesday for my father's wedding (I was the best man) and got back to Korea on Monday night. I don't have time to write much now, I'll just say it was an epic marathon filled with jet lag, good friends and a keg o' lone star, family, and of course, the main event:

wedding photos:

Beautiful bride isn't she? And she came with baggage, lucky for me. Now I've got a little brosef! well stepbrosef. but still...pretty sweet.

austin pics:

and now that I'm almost used to sitting in one place for more than two days I head off to China Saturday morning to meet up with my old friend Lauren Denny. yowzaaaa

Gimme Five is Back

2007-07-06T22:43:00.000+09:00

I Love Shorts

2007-07-03T11:39:00.000+09:00

This past Saturday was another hum-dinger.

Started out (too) early as the Robsons and I had to go into Itaewon to make arrangements for our Chinese visa (I'm going to Shanghai/Beijing over the summer break by the way...don't think I mentioned that on here yet. Going to meet up with fellow english teacher/traveller extraordinaire Lauren Denny. more on that later). The visa is $80 for Americans, only $50 for Canucks. grrr.

After that I convinced them we should get some Mexican food, as there is a ton of international cuisine in Itaewon, and we found a place called Taco something that was very, very subpar (surprised?) and just made me all the more homesick for Chuy's and Taco Shack and basically the entire eastside of Austin.

Then we split up, and I headed over to an area called Yongsan to meet up with an old friend from school, Sunny Cho.

some backstory: Sunny is a graduate student in the UT film program. She is Korean, her family lives in Seoul, and she is back here for the summer working an internship at CJ Entertainment, the biggest entertainment company in Korea. Back at UT she was the TA for my Film 1 class, a good friend, and we also worked together on several projects, mostly grad-student films. One of them happened to be her pre-thesis film jean=truth, which I recorded sound for and helped with the sound design. Anyways, it just so happened that jean=truth was submitted by Sunny and accepted into the Mise-en-scene's Genres Film Festival (MGFF) in Seoul, "one of the most prestigious short film festivals in Korea" according to their website. And the film festival was going on this weekend.

Sunny had invited me to attend the screening of her film with her, an offer I gladly accepted. Obviously I was pretty excited about seeing a movie I had helped create within this surreal context (a Korean film festival, in Korea! never would've guessed...). I was also interested in getting a taste of some Korean indie cinema. So on Saturday afternoon we met up at the MGFF, which was being held at a megaplex in Yongsan, along with Sunny's friend Lisette and my friend Michael Greene (who was my initial contact that got me thinking about teaching here), both former UT film students.

The whole shopping complex was covered in posters for the festival (see pictures). I wasn't aware of the scale of this thing beforehand so I was pretty impressed. Long story short, the screening went really well, Sunny said some very profound things at the Q&A afterwards (at least I think so...it was in Korean...). Then there was a brief moment where each filmmaker recognized crew members in the audience, and Sunny pointed at me and everyone turned and looked and there was mild applause and I wasn't sure if I should stand or not so I did some kind of nervous wave thing and a festival volunteer took a picture. Twas awkward.

It's worth mentioning that one of the films that screened with Sunny's was called "Son's," and it was really beautiful and if there is a Korean film festival in a theater near you, look for it. and jean=truth of course.

after the festival Michael and I left Sunny and Lisette and met up with my Korean lady friends Junice and Eugene (Korean's have strange English names, just roll with it), and we all headed back to Ilsan for our Canadian friend Shmanky's birthday party. when we got out of the subway it was pouring rain and we all got pretty soaked before Michael had the brilliant idea of buying a $5 umbrella at 7-11.

so...another Saturday, another epic good time.

(just click the play button to start the slideshow below)

Dance Off at Western Dom

2007-06-17T12:27:00.000+09:00

Two weeks ago, a big, shiny, brand new shopping center opened up near my apartment called Western Dom. At least that's what the sign says. I think it's supposed to be pronounced "Western Dome", but....in case you forgot English is not the first language here. The amount of mis-translated English here never ceases to amaze me, even on something as large scale as a shopping center, where you know it had to be approved by dozens of people. You'd think at some point, somebody would check the spelling. Even on one of the books I teach from at school, it says "International Editoin" on the cover. Really. It's ridiculous. At some point I'll probably dedicate a whole post to cringe-worthy Konglish.

But this post is not about that.

This post is about a dance-off.

The day started relatively early, considering we had gone out pretty late the previous night for JJ's party (the one pictured in the last post). Around noon I met up with Andrew and Dave (big Canadian twins), Seeta, Stephanie, Colin, and Colin's friend Grant, and we decided to check out the happenings in Western Dom, since I had heard from a Korean friend that there would be 'many events.' Koreans love to have 'events', like special deals or promotions, anytime a store is opening up or re-opening or whatever.

So we showed up, and it was cool. Lots of people. There was a kind of "Wizard/Fantasy" theme going on, no doubt an attempt to mooch off of the popularity of Harry Potter, so there were Narnia-esque statue-people:

and some cute fairies walking around giving "Love Hugs"

And at the very back of the place was a big stage setup. There was a line forming to get into the seating area, and for lack of anything else to do we got some beers and sat down to wait and watch, without really knowing what was going to happen. An hour later they started letting people in and we got some seats. We spent the rest of the day watching Korean pop group after Korean pop group perform. There were also a few breakdancers, a magician, some live sand painting, and some solo singers. Oh, and pyrotechnics. And they were filming it live with a pretty extensive camera crew. Cranes and dolly tracks were scattered around the place. The entire production lasted maybe 6 or 7 hours, although it got pretty blurry after several trips to the 7-11 to refill our supply of Poju (Powerade and Soju). And it was pretty awesome, all of it.

Here are some videos:

Live Sand Painting (anybody know the song that's playing?)

a kids choir I passed in LaFesta on my way to the Dom

breakdancers. at the end you can see the poju.

some sexy dancers. not sure what else to call them. sorry I don't have a zoom lens guys.

But like I said before, this post is about a dance-off.

Midway through the show, the main emcee (I was told later he's a famous comedian in Korea) came out and pulled a couple Korean girls up on stage. Then, he turned to us. He gave us the universal Korean greeting "Hello! How are you! Where are you from!" (I use exclamation points because it's not really a question.) Then he pointed to our friend Stephanie and told her to come up on stage. He took a few minutes exhausting the rest of his English vocabulary by asking her what time it was, and then the dance-off began.

Here's a video of Steph seducing the emcee:

At this point we were all dying. You have to keep in mind that we were the only white people for miles. There were possibly 1,000+ Koreans packed into this mini-amphitheater. If you notice at the end of that video, the emcee stops the music and points over at us, and you can hear Dave saying "A-Rob...AndrewAndrewAndrew!"

They wanted another volunteer.

I know most people reading this blog don't know the Robson twins, though I've mentioned them here before, but you couldn't pick a better 6'7" white guy to get up on a stage and dance in front of hundreds of Koreans. Born entertainers. (The first thing Andrew did when he got on stage was rub the emcee's bald head. The crowd went nuts.) Video of the madness:

Needless to say, Steph and Andrew won the contest. Their prize: 2 gift certificates to a seafood restaurant (they gave them away to this boy and his mom ).

By the end of the show, many hours later, the whole crowd was up out of their chairs dancing around, and we had made good friends with all the peeps sitting near us, especially these two cutie pies:

Fell asleep extremely tired and happy that night.

Truly, one of the best Saturdays in a pretty competitive list of awesome Saturdays in Korea.

photo album:

Dance Off at Western Dom

goin' out like light bulbs

2007-06-13T03:42:00.000+09:00

hello there....lots been goin on here. it's 3:45 in the morning (again) and I am exhausted but I can't sleep. seems like every time my sleep schedule starts to correct itself, the weekend comes around and there's another reason to go out until 5 or 6. then I'm messed up all week. It's sort of becoming a problem during the day, since I cut back on my Starbuck's allowance.

anyways, there's a bigger post coming tomorrow, here is a random collection of pictures I have poetically titled "May - Weekends in Seoul." I take no responsibility for the quality of the pictures or the behavior of my friends. Did I say friends? I meant co-workers.

May - Weekends in Seoul

Meet me in the club its going down

live music in the park in Hongdae

my first friend date! unfortunately, ice skating in korea is just like ice skating in america. kinda boring.

next to the skating rink, in a big family-oriented shopping center

the sign says "Seoul's Best Toilet 2002." sadly, times have changed.

from the VIP balcony at a club called Catchlight, for our friend JJ's going away party

at a club we visit regularly called FF (funky funky)

random gathering of old men singing and dancing in the subway

more live music at the park in Hongdae

my friend Junice ^_^

and lastly, back in Ilsan, from the roof of my apt. bldg.

Happy Birthday, Buddha!

2007-05-25T01:50:00.000+09:00

I've fallen far behind on keeping this blog up to date, so in the next week expect some enlightening, if not timely, recaps from random points in the last couple months.

-May 19th marked my 3 month anniversary in Korea. Hooray. Only 270 days left...

-Today (Thursday May 24) was a national holiday here in Korea: Buddha's Birthday! I'm sure that many of you were unaware that Buddha had a birthday, as was I, but now you know. Here are some pictures from the day.

at the end of the album are some shots from right outside my apartment, the shopping center known as "LaFesta", where they have erected these huge and very kitschy christmas light gate things. it's kind of like the Barton Creek Mall meets the Trail of Lights)

back to Buddha's Birthday: I was a little disappointed because I missed the main festivities for this holiday: lantern-making craft fairs and a giant parade through the city, which took place last Sunday. But we heard from other people and online (http://www.llf.or.kr/eng/) that there was still some fun to be had, so Helen, Colin, Ronika and I headed into the city early in the afternoon. We intended to visit one of the bigger temples in Seoul to see some kind of "lantern lighting ceremony" and maybe see some special lanterns on display, but we really had no idea what to expect.

It was raining when we woke up, and raining when we left for Seoul, and it actually never stopped, it's coming down even now as I write this 12 hours later, but that did not deter us. Even when we couldn't find the temple and had to walk aimlessly for half a mile, in the rain, we persevered. And at long last, we found the temple, and it was more than worth the effort. The rain couldn't take away the beauty of the place; in fact it made it better in a way, adding a glowing, hazy sort of aura to everything. Every inch of the temple was covered in lanterns, all different shapes and sizes, and Koreans turned out in droves despite the weather. It was a constant battle to avoid getting nailed, or nailing someone else, with an umbrella.

At one point Colin and I spotted a dirt path leading off into the woods behind one of the smaller buildings, so of course we ran into the woods. After a five minute walk we came out onto a small cliff, and in front of us was the enormous Buddha statue you can see in the pictures. That was an amazing sight. There was a gong ringing slowly in the background that added an extra feeling to the air, and we stood there for awhile without saying anything. It made me really miss Thailand.

We thought we had stumbled onto some secret off-limits area, but then we saw another little path leading down the hill. Here's a video from the front of the statue:

we also saw a children's choir, which was crazy cute:

(and yes that's a monk right in front of me, looking slightly perturbed)

In a big exhibition hall there were some incredible handmade lanterns on display, you can see them in the pictures and in this video:

-Saw Spiderman 3 last weekend with a Korean teacher named Kelly. It was strange; after sitting in a dark room for 3 hours, watching an American film starring familiar faces speaking English, I almost forgot where I was. Then the lights came back on and I was surrounded by Koreans again. D'oh. (although I was reminded every so often during the movie when I would laugh at a joke by myself, because the humor was lost on everybody else; and when there was a 3 second delay in their reaction because of the subtitles)

After the movie we got dinner and drinks, Kelly introduced me to some new Korean food, little pancakes made with egg and veggies called pajeon, served with fermented rice wine called makoli. I have come to enjoy a lot of the cuisine here, but my desire to stay on a budget and my inability to eat a ton of spicy food forces me to order one of three or four reliable "go-tos", like gimbap (similar to sushi) and donkasu (breaded pork cutlet), for most meals. And then of course there's always pizza. One of these days I'll put up a longer post about korean food. I have to change the subject right now before I start thinking about bbq and tex-mex...oh, no. too late.

After dinner we found our way to a nearby noreabang ("song room"). If you haven't caught on from my previous posts, this country has an obsession with singing that borders on unhealthy. Every Korean I've been to one of these karoake places with so far has had a really awesome voice, pitch perfect; it's ingrained in their genes I think, singing is such a huge part of their culture. And I love that, I really do. I'll belt it out with the best of 'em (after a few drinks of course ha ha ha). But I sometimes get the feeling that when I'm singing my song, the Koreans in the room are trying not to listen, just biding their time until it's their turn. I'm not accusing anybody of anything...I'm just saying...

anyways, here's a clip of Kelly in diva mode:

if you look closely you'll notice that the video playing on the TV doesn't actually have anything to do with the song. that confused me at first, too. another fun fact: I'm pretty sure that this noreabang doubled as a 'salon' for business men (nudge nudge wink wink), due to the number of middle-aged women lounging around the front desk when we got there, and the somewhat surprised looks we got as a young couple walking in. there are tons of these places around here apparently, not all of them disguised as a karaoke bar, although of course its hard to get any koreans to talk about them, they just pretend they don't exist. i'll bring you more on this as it develops...

earlier in the day Colin and I went into Seoul to try to find an English bookstore, and as always the excursion was full of unexpected surprises, like a mini-festival for kids somewhere downtown that featured guys on stilts with giant mickey mouse shoes, and a live show featuring a troupe of Korean girls singing pop songs and wearing not much.

also: couples wearing matching shirts (all too common here), old ladies wearing traditional hanbok, karate kids, and a very strange sticker I found on a urinal.

Paju English Village

2007-05-10T11:32:00.000+09:00

English Village

(click on the picture to go to the photo album)

there is a married couple at my school by the name of Zach and Heather who are pretty hip and activist-like and they have started an organization they call The E.X.P.A.T. Project, which is a great thing. Basically an effort to get us out of our apartments/routines to do a little bit of good. Zach hails from Seattle I believe and Heather is from San Diego. As the few Americans awash in the flood of canucks and aussies, we immediately hit it off, but I'm sure that would've happened regardless of nationality, because they're just good people.

Anyways, this past weekend they organized a volunteer effort with Amnesty International, to educate children about human rights and gun control. It was held on Children's Day, where Korean's celebrate...um....children (it's a big deal here. they really, really love their kids). About 7 of us foreign teachers and a Korean teacher woke up extremely early on a Saturday (7am), which was really half the battle, piled onto a bus after some Dunkin' Donuts, and headed out to a very strange place called English Village...

I'll turn to Wikipedia for some help here:

English villages are South Korean institutions providing a short-term immersion English experience in a live-in environment where only English is spoken. This is intended to promote English learning and to build students' international cultural awareness. The first English village was opened in August 2004 in Ansan city, Gyeonggi province. Additional English villages have been planned in both Gyeonggi province and Seoul.

English villages employ a mixture of foreign native speakers of English and fluent English-speaking Korean staff. They are intended to help students face the particular challenges of speaking English in the Korean context. Many families seek to improve their children's English ability by sending them to study abroad in English-speaking countries. This results in a substantial amount of money leaving the country. The English villages are intended to reduce this loss, and make the immersion experience accessible to students from low-income families as well. However, many question whether the English villages will be cost-effective.

It's like a theme park, with no rides, and fake western-style streets and buildings and activities. For example, the kids can go to the fake bank and make a fake withdrawal, or go to a fake theater and see a play (i assume the play is real). When they arrive they are all given fake passports in a fake immigration center by fake immigration officials. I was intrigued by the idea of this place when I first heard about it so I did a lot of research online, especially about being employed there. Apparently it's either the best place to work in Korea or the worst. You get paid extremely well, but a lot of people report feeling like a 'dancing monkey' at the end of the day. You live in a dormitory with the 60+ other foreign employees, inside of a fake walled town in the middle of nowhere, so that in itself is strange but not altogether a bad thing. Also, from what I gathered, they employ Russian immigrants in most of the menial jobs, aka the fake fast food restaurants (at one of these they had a photocopied sign advertising Blizzards, but boy was that a let down. it was just soft-serve yogurt. fake Blizzards! boo!), and I read in some places the teaching staff and the 'help' are not allowed to hang out with each other. I also got the sense that the Russians are treated pretty badly in general there (like fake second-class citizens?).

Anyways, we spent the day marching around the Village gathering up kids and taking them to the 'Amnesty Zone', where there was face-painting and balloons and a big banner to put painted handprints on. We danced and sang with the kids while they waited in line, the usual hits like Hokey Pokey, b-i-n-g-o, heads shoulders knees and toes, etc. and had a pretty rockin' good time. At the end of at all we marched up the streets of the Village with the banner, which was dotted with hundreds of little handprints. Here is a video from the exPAT blog:

We left exhausted, but not before we grabbed a *real* beer at the fake English pub, of course.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that we met a celebrity! Kind of. One of the other volunteers turned out to be semi-famous in Korea. And Canadian! Her name was Luveta (probably spelled wrong), 34, and she was one of the most fascinating people I have met in my travels. She came to Korea from Canada several years ago (although she has lived all over the world) and took a 2-year intensive Korean language program at a university in Seoul. At one point she was invited to appear on the pilot episode of a new TV show, whose name translates roughly to "Pretty Women Chatting." It features women from different places in the world sitting around talking, in Korean, about cultural experiences in and out of Korea.

She was invited back again and again and is now a regular character. From what I gathered this show is very different, a fresh idea in the standard world of Korean television, and it has become extremely popular. The Korean teacher who came with us, Jenny, got really excited when we first saw Luveta, although we didn't understand why at the time. All the parents kept forcing their children to pose with her in pictures. We ate lunch together, just a couple of us, and I'm still blown away by her story. She says she can't go anywhere now without people stopping her on the street. She is practically fluent in Korean, which is impressive no matter how you look at it, and-this is the weirdest part-when she speaks English she has a Korean accent. This is, she says, because she has almost no Western friends at this point, and rarely has a chance to speak anything but Korean.

Pretty crazy stuff. off to work for now. thank god the weekend is almost here...
-adam

crash

2007-05-08T23:45:00.000+09:00

looking at the dates I realize it's been almost three weeks since my last post, which is crazy to me. Each week seems to shoot past so fast, and each weekend that I've been here has been totally out of the ordinary. so I am finding it hard to keep up with everything. But I'll work on that. I'm also looking at changing my blog over to typepad...if anybody reading this has any advice either way, as far as blogger vs. typepad, please let me know.

I'll start this post with the bad news. The very, very bad news.

The girl on the right's name is Shay, she's from Canada. She arrived in Korea a few weeks before I did with her friend Ronika, the other girl in the picture. The girls work at a different school than I do but it is owned by the same people, and we live in the same building. Both of them quickly became two of my best friends over here, and we hang out regularly.

Two weeks ago Shay was hit by a car as she ran across the street to catch a bus. She was by herself, so the rest of us didn't find out until later during the workday from our boss, and we rushed over to the hospital. She had broken her right leg in several places below the knee, shattered her pelvis, was pretty banged up, as you might expect. She was talking and even smiling and making jokes in between wincing at the pain, but it wasn't pretty. And she seemed fairly terrified, on top of the pain and the injuries, because she was in a Korean hospital surrounded by Korean doctors and nurses with very minimal English skills, a fear I hope I never have to experience. The hospital staff did not seemed concerned at all with her comfort, several times we saw them move her roughly or adjust something on her bed with no warning at all, causing Shay to cry out in pain. It made me sick to my stomach.

Eventually, they moved her to a small room upstairs, shared with another young Korean girl who also had a leg injury. Everybody from my school (Juyeop) and our sister school (Bekma) came by at some point in the next 24 hours to check on her so it was a hectic time. Since then things have calmed down quite a bit as we have slowly adjusted to this new reality. Shay had surgery on her knee last Monday and the doctor's said it was successful. Our school has come through in a huge way: our bosses John, Ann, Micheal and other staff have visited her daily, taken care of all the paperwork, and best of all, they hired a 24 hour caretaker for Shay since the hospital staff doesn't provide that (which seems messed up?). If they hadn't done this we would've all had to take shifts around the clock, so kudos to them and to the kind old Korean lady who stays with Shay constantly except when she gets one day off on Saturday. We call her "Imo" (pronounced emo), the Korean word for Auntie. I doubt she's getting paid nearly enough, but I guess that's not really my place...

Shay has shown an amazing amount of strength and positivity throughout this entire ordeal. It's not all that clear how long she'll be out of commission, but I've heard estimates from 1-3 months until she's even able to leave the hospital bed. And then of course she'll have mucho rehab after that. Of course the question of flying her back to Canada has come up, I'm sure you are wondering the same thing, but because of her current state I don't think it's an option. And at least once or twice I have overheard talk of this being a common scenario here, 'pedestrian hit by car', and possible settlements in Shay's favor. That's all very hush hush, of course.

We visit her almost every day and each time she seems to be in better spirits. She's even talking about going back to teaching her Kindie class when she's better, which is awesome. She was only there for a couple months but that's a great example of how you can quickly fall in love with some of these kids. There are currently dozens of get-well cards, drawn in scribbly crayon, hanging on the walls of Shay's hospital room. One of my favorites shows her sitting in a wheelchair in front of a big rainbow. Another kid drew a road with a bunch of cars and trucks. Not very tactful if you ask me.

Anyways, that's all for now, I guess just keep Shay in your thoughts/prayers/etc. and I'll post any more updates about her condition here.

Congratulations!

2007-04-21T21:10:00.000+09:00

A few days ago I wrote a nice long witty and well-formatted post about my birthday and then my browser crashed and it disappeared. Grrr. Here goes attempt number two.

This year my birthday was on a Tuesday. I was in a foreign country, a million miles from friends and family. I had only been in Korea for about a month. For the record, I haven't expected much on my birthday since my parents stopped throwing parties for me at Celebration Station like a decade ago, but I definitely didn't expect anything this year.

I was way off.

If you want to go straight to the pictures click below:

Blog - Birthday Bonanza

On the 'big day', as I was preparing my lesson plans at my desk in the school office, I was ambushed with a giant cake, candles, and an office-wide birthday song. Needless to say, it caught me very off-guard. Later I discovered that my good friends and co-workers Dave and Andrew (twins from Nova Scotia) were planning a party for me on Friday at their place. They even handcrafted the stunning flier you see above for the event. (My favorite addition is "children laughing.") They call me Texas. And I'm okay with that. So I was pleasantly surprised with the way things were going, but didn't plan on doing anything out of the ordinary that night.

For dinner, Colin and I went to Mr. Lee's (our regular BBQ chicken joint next door to our apt. building) where we met our new Korean friends Hyun-Mi, Min-Jung, and Clara, the girls I talked about in the previous post. They convinced us to go out and get "one cocktail" with them, so we caved and followed them towards the bars. We walked for awhile, and at some point Clara and Hyun-Mi disappeared, but I didn't think much of it. MJ took us to a nice little sit-down bar and we sat down.

After about fifteen minutes, the music in the bar abruptly stopped and the Korean Happy Birthday song came on, which is just the word Congratulations! sung over and over. In walk Hyun-Mi and Clara, holding an ice cream cake and a special birthday party hat and popping little firework poppers as they sing Congratulations! Congratulations!

And then there is me, with my mouth hanging open, completely blown away.

Video of me blowing out the candles and Hyun-Mi blowing out my eardrum with that damn popper:

Over the next few hours we drank several pitchers of yogurt soju (good stuff) and laughed and talked in broken English and the girls refused to let Colin or myself pay the check. I went home drunk on Korean alcohol and happiness. Something should be said here about the kindness of strangers. I mean we had just met these girls a couple weeks before. When I think about it now I am still taken by how awesome that night was. It was so unexpected, and extremely therapeutic as I was feeling particularly homesick that week. So my first birthday outside of the U.S. was one I'll remember for a long time. But it wasn't over.

That Friday the owners of my school took all the teachers to T.G.I.Friday's (yep, they have 'em here, and Bennigans and Outback too) for dinner. I got to sit at the head of the table! At one point I was given yet another birthday hat, and then the TGIF band came out and serenaded me with the official Korean TGIF birthday song!

Colin grabbed my camera and captured part of this brilliant performance, the song starts about halfway through. Thats Dave with the headband.

How about those bongos?

After dinner a bunch of us went back to the twins' place for the aforementioned "Birthday Bonanza", which included Korean drinking games and lots of mekju consumption (beer guzzlin'). And then we went bowling! And then we went to Tunnel!! I think I've mentioned it on this blog before. It's part dance club, part Korean boy band/breakdancing stage show. and the whole time you feel like you're partying inside of a Transformer. I really can't express the awesome strangeness of this place.

So, at the end of it all, methinks 'bonanza' is a bit of an understatement . This year my birthday was more like some crazy amped up birthweek. And I would've been happy with a card and a few high fives.

Speaking of cards, thanks to everybody who sent me one from home, (and Ronika for making me one here) I was blown away by all of that too. So much love. I think I'm gonna cry.

Next post: Korean Kids Say the Darndest Things!

Catching Up: Insadong and Club Night

2007-04-11T10:32:00.000+09:00

It's been awhile since my last post, got a lot of stuff to put up but no time. I've also decided to try to write less and post more often. I keep falling behind and then there's so much to write about that I end up posting way too much at once or nothing at all. This post will probably fall under way too much, but it won't happen again. Promise.

Club Night

The last Friday of every month is Club Night, and everybody in Seoul descends onto Hongdae to party till the wee hours. Colin and I tried to go to this last month, after we had been in town for 3 days, and it was a miserable failure. We got very lost for 2 hours and went home early. This time I went with my Canadian friends Ronika and Shay, and it was almost another disaster. As I mentioned in the post before there has been some unrest in Seoul because of the FTA talks between America and SK. As we approached downtown, we started seeing more of the same riot buses we saw the week before. Then a big crowd of protesters carrying anti-FTA banners marched past us. Then our bus was pulled over and we were forced to evacuate. Yikes. Riot police were marching/running all over the place, yelling (to pump themselves up I assume). Very intimidating. But for the most part we were ignored, and we hopped in a cab and continued on our way with no real problems.

After the cab ride we were delayed yet again by an old German couple who stopped us on the street. They claimed to be on a pilgrimage around the world, and asked us if they could play us a song. We said sure. The song was pretty good. At the time they were very enchanting, interesting, and definitely an unexpected sight in Seoul. But we all thought the Children of God thing sounded familiar, and after getting home and doing a little research on Wikipedia...well...you can see for yourself.

Children of God, featuring some awesome intoxicated yet artsy cinematography by me:

Not bad, eh? I finally got to meet up with my friend Michael Greene, who is pretty much the reason why I am teaching in Korea right now, so that was nice. Also featured in the pictures below are: Ska Club, where we had the good fortune to catch a dance performance strangely dubbed a "Donkey Show." The golden queen and her minions danced around to Abba for awhile. Nothing scandalous, but very entertaining. Also went to Hole, a dark smoky basement hip hop club that was packed wall to wall with korean guys in hoodies and korean ladies in short skirts who took their dancing seriously. We spent most of our time here because they were throwing down some heavy stuff. Beauty Bar eat your heart out.

Blog - Club Night

We only hit the tip of the iceberg on that club night, there are a ton of other joints to check out in Hongdae, I can't wait till the next one.

Insadong

The day after Club Night, after fighting off an agonizing hangover, Colin and I went back into Seoul with 3 Korean girls we met recently, Clara, Min-Jung, and Hyun-Mi.

Insadong

Clara speaks moderately good English, the other two notsomuch, so a lot gets lost in translation. But somehow, despite not knowing each other's language, we always have a great time. It helps that me and Colin are there together and are both able to laugh at the situation when we hit a conversational dead end. On Saturday the girls took us to an artsy little shopping district called Insadong. I loved the place, had a lot of beautiful artwork in and around the shops and walkways, I definitely want to go back. It had a lot more of a cultural vibe than other parts of Seoul I've seen so far. Almost felt like I was in a marketplace in NY or Seattle, or even parts of South Congress. If a ton of Koreans lived in south Austin. Afterwards we ate at a Japanese restaurant. Colin ordered an octopus (maybe squid, pretty sure it was octopus), despite the waitresses warnings that it was very spicy. He was handling it alright so I thought I would give it a try; it was the hottest thing I've ever put in my mouth. I panicked and swallowed the whole tentacle just to get it out of my mouth. After dinner we went back to Ilsan for drinks, where the girls taught us this Korean drinking game called 007 Bang!

Aren't they just the cutest? Then it was off to Bali-Style for some karaoke. The girls were great singers, put me and Colin to shame.

Ahhh yes...just another weekend in Korea. Really, so far the bar has been set pretty high, and when things start to settle down here (and they're gonna have to because I'm spending way too much money) I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about that.

Off to work for now. Next post, birthday good times.

What Can I Get Adam for his Birthday?

2007-04-03T01:39:00.000+09:00

don't freak out, I know it snuck up on you. it surprised me too. it seems like only yesterday I was blacking out downtown on my 21st and having a potato thrown at me (thanks J). if you feel like making this particular Adam's day "speshul" you can mail me something to put on my walls. that would be awesome. help make my cold little apartment in Korea feel a little warmer and a little closer to home. address:

SLP - Adam Fore
6 Fl. Karam B/D #110-2
Chuyub2-Dong, Ilsan-Ku
Goyang-Shi, Kyungki-do
411-372 Korea

i'll gladly accept anything you feel like shoving in an envelope: crayon drawings on napkins, greasy receipts from Burger Tex (less greasy receipts Veggie Heaven), ripped out 'shots in the dark' from the Chronicle, Lone Star bottle caps, grass clippings from Barton Springs (too much?),...anything, really. no pressure.
i love you.
be sure to include your return address so i can reciprocate.

i miss comedy central

2007-03-27T23:10:00.000+09:00

Take the Power Back; 1 Month Down

2007-03-26T00:38:00.000+09:00

Yo, we gotta take the power back!
Bam! Here's the plan
Motherfuck Uncle Sam!
The rage is relentless
We need a movement with a quickness

Okay, I doubt these protesters were listening to Rage Against the Machine. But it'd be awesome if they were. Here's the story behind this picture.

Today my friend Ronika (from Prince Edward Island) ((that's in Canada)) and I went into 'the city', Seoul, to do some shopping and general Sunday adventuring. As we got towards downtown we began to sense that something unusual was happening. For starters, there were buses with protective grating welded over their windows parked on the street. And not just a couple buses, but a solid line of them for more than half a mile. There were easily 100+. I realized pretty quickly that these were police buses, and that sort of put us on edge, as you might imagine. The fact that I couldn't see any of the thousands of police that must've arrived in these buses didn't make me feel any better.

Coincidentally Colin and I had been in this area last weekend, and we walked through a park where a dozen Koreans were holding a sit-in, protesting the US free trade agreement that Korea is in final negotiations over right now. I have tried following this situation but not too closely as I can't find any god damn English newspapers anywhere here (sorry for the profanity) and all the American media I get my news from is ignoring it. Shocking. So anyways we realized that something big was going down, much bigger than the sit-in. So we excitedly jumped off our bus at the next stop and just kind of fell in line with everybody else heading uphill. After a few minutes we started to hear a buzz, and then we topped the hill and found ourselves in the middle of a huge rally right in the middle of downtown Seoul. Here's a video, you can't see her but you can hear a woman making a very impassioned speech on the PA.

I'm still not sure where all the police were, we saw only a fraction of the amount it would take to fill all those buses.

Update: found these on flickr a mere 10 hours after the event. isn't the internet great?

Imagine those buses stretching out in an unbroken line as far as you can see in each direction, down every road, and you've got an idea of what was there today.

And here are some clips from various articles I found:

South Korean farmers, workers and anti-globalization activists have previously staged demonstrations, saying a deal, if any, could threaten their livelihoods with an influx of cheaper imports which will in turn subject them to harsher working conditions.

Police have banned previous rallies against negotiations for the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) for fear of potential flare-ups in violence, resulting in clashes between protestors and police.

The progressive Democratic Labor Party has sought permission to hold the rally, expected to be attended by 20,000 protesters.

Security around Seoul was heavy all day in anticipation of the rallies. Another police agency official said 18,000 riot police were being mobilized across the city. He said 12,000 were to be positioned around the negotiating venue. Protests during this round of talks, the fourth held in South Korea, have been far smaller than during the second round in July, when about 25,000 people converged on city hall.

So there was a lot of security but the rally was completely peaceful, at least while we were there. It was very cool to see that activism is alive and well in this country.

In other news, Zach and Heather, a couple from my school, had a really nice 'fiesta' at their apartment last night with awesome burritos and sangria, and another teacher brought some seven-layer dip and I thought I was going to die because it was all so good. On another activist-related note, Zach and Heather have started something called the ExPat Project that involves throwing parties, charging a cover, and giving the money to international charities, and it's pretty badass. I'll post some more info about that later.

During the day yesterday I walked around Ilsan with Ronika and took pictures (she's got a really rad old-school camera that I am jealous of), I will get those on a CD when I develop the roll. I still have two rolls of film from my trip to southeast Asia and I can't wait to see what's on them.

March 20th marked the end of my first month in South Korea! So far, very good. All things considered. I do feel homesick, but I have recently come to terms with the fact that it is never going to disappear completely because let's face it, Austin is the shit and there is no replacing it. The weather here is starting to feel very springish and that, my friends, is very good.

Looking forward to that first paycheck on the 5th....2 million bucks!...I mean won. goodnight for now, more pictures to come tomorrow.

South by South Korea

2007-03-19T03:38:00.000+09:00

I don't need Austin, or SXSW.

You hear me all you stupid hipsters back home? I don't miss the free day shows with stupid old barbecue and Lone Star tallboys, or any of the lame bands rocking/droning on at Emo's and (insert 'hip' new club that has opened since I left). Dozens of emotionally charged sets from Arcade Fire wannabes? Yawn. Hell, I'm GLAD I'm not going b-a-n-a-n-a-s at all your stinky late night dance afterparties. Who gives a shit? Not this expat, thats for sure.

As you can see in the following media, I am having more fun than you can shake a rice cake at, and I am not bitter at all.

So there.

(I hate you all.)

Videos:

These are from Bali-Style, the 'luxury' noreabang across the street from my apartment. Noreabang means "song room," aka karaoke. This place is ridiculous. When my co-workers took me there for the first time two weeks ago it totally blew my mind. Every room has one or two giant flatscreen tv's, insane laser light shows, two wireless mics, hand percussion instruments, and a king size bed/couch. Some rooms have floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the street. In the hallway floors they have these miniature dioramas underneath glass, and they change with the seasons (apparently). Last time we went in they were white and snowy and wintery, now they are green and springlike. If I haven't made it clear yet, this place is totally awesome.

These videos aren't great (yes, I was drunk!), but I just wanted to give you an idea of this place and how crazy it is.

After we got back from climbing a mountain (pictures and story below)and before Bali-Style, we came across these coin operated go-carts. For two minutes, we owned that plaza like Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. in that one movie. with the fast cars.

Pictures:

Here's a slideshow and a quick recap of this Saturday, which was amazing. And I thought last Saturday was going to be impossible to top. Me and Colin from Chicago, or C-Bear as we like to call him, journeyed out to the old Fortress Wall that we read about in the Lonely Planet. We didn't realize we would end up exploring Buddhist and Shaman temples, climbing on rocks that looked like they came straight out of a Salvador Dali painting, and basically conquering a mountain. The weather was amazing and so was the view from the top. Seoul is SO ENORMOUS.

That night we went on what you could call a double date (but not really) with two Korean girls that Colin had met the night before. They work at a chocolate factory here in Ilsan. We got dinner and drinks and that was some good clean fun, and tonight we went and saw 300 with them. (movie sucks) Only one of them really speaks english, so communication is difficult in an awkward but humorous way. But for some reason that doesn't seem to matter as much as I expected, we still manage to have a great time. And they are our first official Korean friends outside of work. Exciting stuff, people!

(it might take a bit for the slideshow to load. you can go straight to the album page if you want by clicking HERE)

2007-03-16T02:33:00.000+09:00

As if mp3 blogs didn't take enough of my time, I've now become addicted to photoblogs. Goal for 2007: buy a decent camera.

quote of the night: "I like to think that disposable cameras are like wine. The longer you wait to develop them (or drink them) the better they are."

additional words to remember: look up for a change. or maybe...look up, for a change? open to interpretation.

Korean Love, Egg Art, and Arcade Fire

2007-03-13T23:24:00.001+09:00

the previous Saturday was possibly one of the best all-around days I've had in a very long time.

It was an exhausting 20 hour adventure that included a Korean wedding, a tour of the self-proclaimed "world class herb theme park" Sangsoo Herbland, followed by dinner in the countryside home of a Korean musician and a tour of his wife's Ostrich Egg Art gallery, all topped off with a night of live music and dancing in Seoul's bar district.

(sorry but this post is gonna be another novel. skip to the bottom of the post if you just want pictures)

Early in the morning, me and some other teachers took our own little private school bus to a city called Daejon (i think thats the name) 2.5 hours south of Seoul for the wedding of Michael, an assistant manager at SLP. Easily one of the most genuinely nice and helpful people I have met here so far. He says some pretty funny stuff in bad English, like "today it is raining....dog and cat!" but he's always enthusiastic and smiling this trademark giant smile. bashful is a good word to describe him. anyways my point is he's a great guy, and i felt honored to be invited to his wedding and super pumped to witness some real Korean culture along with a part of the country besides Ilsan and Seoul.

it definitely exceeded my expectations.

the main wedding ceremony took place in a big hotel and was fairly Westernized, except for the bubbles (lots of bubbles) and the bowing (lots of bowing). Oh, and they cut the cake with a samurai sword.

Michael grabbed a microphone at one point and sang his bride a Korean love song. Apparently he had to do this because he had screwed up when he proposed somehow and he had to make amends. He told us earlier in the week that he didn't want to do it, and we thought he might wimp out, but he manned up. It was off key and his voice kept breaking, but it was one of the most romantic things I've ever seen and a lot of people were reaching for tissues afterwards.

After the main ceremony the bride and groom disappeared for awhile, and we polished off a few bottles of Mekju (beer) and Soju (Korean sake). Then they returned wearing traditional Korean costumes and did some ceremonial bowing to their parents. Michael got all the way down on the ground to show respect.

Group photos of the wedding party were taken (including one with us!), then people started to leave. I assumed we would too, but at that point the Director of our school, Michael's uncle, ushered us upstairs into a small room where we witnessed the following:

A Korean bride is welcomed into the groom's family by participating in the P'yeBaek, or Introduction Ceremony. The bride's makeup includes a large red dot on each cheek to ward off evil spirits, and her silk gown is colorful, except for the sleeves, which are all white. The table is filled with symbolic offerings, such as wooden ducks (ducks mate for life and symbolize loyalty and fidelity).

The groom introduces his parents, sitting at the low table, to the bride. The groom and bride bow to their parents, and then offer wine. The bride bows in a special way, sitting all the way down to a cross legged position, then putting her head down to the ground. Her assistants help her back up. The father of the groom (here both fathers participate, in a modern adaptation) offers special words of advice to the new couple, then drinks the offering wine.

The groom offers his parents wine. The groom's mother and father then collect a handful of dates and chestnuts, respectively (they symbolize their hopes for many grandchildren, dates symbolizing girls and chestnuts symbolizing boys). They then toss a chosen number of dates and chestnuts at the bride. The bride then tries to catch them in her large wedding skirt. The dates and chestnuts are then collected for the bride and groom to eat on their honeymoon.

The bride and groom then offer each other wine and drink wine. The bride and groom then share food -- the bride holds a date in her mouth, and the groom eats the other half of the date.

There were only 20 people in the room, and that included me and seven other foreign teachers, so I felt very lucky to be there.

After making some awkward bows of our own, we left and headed to the Herb Land I mentioned at the top of the post. Not your everyday tour folks. It's a giant herb garden, the biggest in East Asia. It also features an Herb Love Tunnel. And a Penis Rock. (see pictures) Apparently it's a big tourist attraction for Koreans. Right.

We were all allowed to pick out two little potted herb plants to take home, I got some Curry and some Pineapple Sage. Not sure what to do with them now, maybe throw them in the 1 dish I know how to make, spaghetti?

After this we drove to the home of the school director's best friend. Apparently he built this house because he was tired of the city, and it was....just perfect, situated on a hill with a great view surrounded by water.

I almost felt like I was back in Texas in a homey little bed and breakfast in the hill country. On top of all this, the man's wife is the head of the Korean Egg Art Society, and we were given a tour of her workshop/gallery. Really amazing stuff, if you scoff at the idea of egg art, here's a sample:

she uses ostrich eggs. there's a couple more in the slideshow at the end.

i also found this awesome, ancient journal with some sketches and Korean poetry that i probably shouldnt've been touching as it seemed about to fall apart in my hands, but I really couldn't help myself:

At the dinner table we were filled to busting with barbecue pork and some kind of homemade Korean liquor called mokoli. The end of the meal featured a rousing group singalong to "Let It Be."

Finally we drove back to Ilsan, but not before stopping to get more drinks, of course. We had been hitting the sauce since the wedding, so the ride back was a 'bit' rowdy. I brought my portable speakers for my ipod and we basically sang Arcade Fire and Johnny Cash at the top of our drunken lungs for an hour and a half.

For the record, I love my Canadian co-workers.

This was already the longest day I've had in months, but apparently it wasn't over yet, not even close. Somehow we found the energy to go into Seoul and hit up a club called "FF,," (say: eff eff comma comma) that featured a half-decent wannabe Killers band, I could care less though because it was live music (finally), and then dancing, and for a couple hours I felt like I was back in Austin. okay that might be a stretch. especially since I met these guys in line for the bathroom:

We left around 4:30 am, and then of course we had to wait until 5 for McDonald's breakfast. we found these 3 poor souls completely passed out in the back:

Last time we went to McDonald's at 5am I almost got into a fight with an Irish guy because I asked him if they were serving Egg McMuffins yet. But that's a story for another day...

Final Bedtime: 6ish. almost 24 hours. these damn Canadians are going to be my downfall, I know it.

Slideshow from the whole sordid affair (please let me know if it's not working for you):

you can still run

2007-03-12T02:13:00.001+09:00

Originally uploaded by vermeer48.

right now i'm completely wiped out, this weekend was utterly draining.
in the best way.
i'll post tomorrow.

i just wanted to put a song up. i downloaded the new One A.M. Radio album today. great for slow, thoughtful times.

The One AM Radio - In The Time We've Got

Yeah, they are all this cute

2007-03-09T03:28:00.000+09:00

luckily i stopped filming before she stuck out her tongue and then picked up her teddy bear and strapped him papoose-style to her back (seriously) or my camera might have exploded from a cute-overload.

edit: i forgot that i took a picture of the teddy

Snow City!!!

2007-03-07T22:48:00.000+09:00

Woohoo! The other day was nothing compared to this, this actually stuck to the ground! And I'm sure this is nothing compared to the average snowfall here, but hey, I'm from Texas. Big fat flakes falling from the sky for more than two hours might as well be a blizzard.

I hate that I didn't have my camera on me when the kids in my class noticed it coming down outside the window.

I love that we all had the same reaction: run to the window, stand there and go "oooooo!" for ten minutes until the bell rang. This is so cheesy I'm cringing as I type it, but for those ten minutes, it didn't matter what country we were from, or how old we were. cheesy but true.

too tired to post much else right now, i'll finish the jumpoff trilogy tomorrow, complete with videos of the craziest club ever. and bowling. can't get enough bowling.

The Jumpoff, Part 2

2007-03-07T19:04:00.000+09:00

Onward with the catching up....this time we'll start at the very beginning....Incheon Int'l Airport.

---The school director and his wife were late because it was the Lunar New Year (Korea's Christmas) and half of Korea was out on the roads (scary thought), and so I walked out of baggage claim to see twenty people holding signs with names, but no Adam. After thirty minutes I was about to officially freak. Luckily they showed up right then and I took a nice deep breath.

---The next day the director's wife Ann, a funny little Korean woman, showed me around my new neighborhood. My school is a 5-10 minute walk from my place. So are 2 department stores and a big shopping/bar area. Nice. Then she left me to fend for myself. And I started panicking. The question "WTF did I get myself into?" ran through my head constantly. I hadn't seen any other foreigners when I was out and about, and while I am all about getting to know other cultures, it's kind of difficult when you can't remotely read or speak their language and most of the population speaks little to no English. Not even Engrish. I mean I could barely figure out how to get a computer at the internet cafe or buy bottled water. I realized very quickly that many simple, everyday activities would now be a chore, not to mention more complicated transactions like asking for directions. I had this image of me locked in my apartment for a year going insane with boredom and isolation.

I had also just finished an entire book on Culture Shock in Korea, which was both helpful and unhelpful at the same time. It teaches you how exponentially different this society is, and then it tells you that almost all newcomers to Korea experience culture shock, if not at first then in the first 2 or 3 months. So I guess I started freaking out about the fact that I was going to start freaking out. Obviously the purpose of the book is to prepare you, and it did that, but it sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lastly, I spent much of my free time reading internet bulletin boards filled with the bitter rantings of other teachers in Korea who had a bad experience here. Because of my disoriented situation, I latched onto those and ignored all the positive posts from people who love it here, of which there are plenty. Big mistake on my part.

Luckily, on the 4th day, I met some white people!

---I had to attend a 3 day teacher training program in Seoul. There, I met the other new teachers at my school, Colin from Chicago, a cool Canadian girl named Shay, a couple Korean teachers and one of the school managers, the nicest Korean ever-Michael. more on him later. By the end of that week Colin and I had gone exploring into Seoul a couple times and I was starting to feel much better about living here. We checked out the biggest electronics market in Asia, Yongsan, and a couple other big shopping districts. It's amazing how much better it is to experience something new with somebody else. Moments that would ordinarily make you scream, like what happens in the next paragraph, just become another story to laugh about. It definitely makes getting lost more fun. Speaking of getting lost...

---The first Friday night we were here happened to be the 'biggest party in Asia,' according to the Korea Lonely Planet. It's known as Club Day, happens once a month, and basically you can get into some sweet clubs for cheap, so everybody in Seoul comes out. So me and Colin headed into the city to meet up with some fellow teachers. But instead of partying till 5am, we spent an hour and a half driving around in cabs ($75 cab fare) because the drivers didn't know what we were saying.

There is a big problem with the romanized translation of Korean words here, tons of discrepancies, and the fact that many place names are already similar only makes it more difficult for us white people. In our case, we said Hongdae, and the driver took us to Gyongdai or something like that. regardless, it was a place very far away from Hongdae. the whole night was pretty much a wash after 2 very lengthy failed cab rides. somehow we did find the place, but by the that time all we could afford was one beer and then we caught the very last bus back home, by sheer minutes. if we had missed that bus, it would've been a long cold night my friends.

---tired of reading? here are some pictures:

Ilsan & Seoul: Week1

(i just discovered that you can put slideshows from Flickr on other sites, with a little coding magic. hooray. wish i could've done this for my southeast asia trip. sorry the pics are awful for the most part, i'm shooting blind with my broken camera. hopefully i'll be upgrading soon, maybe to a digital slr??) ((also lemme know if that slideshow isnt working for you, or showing unrelated photos))

okay, enough for one post. see you next time.

The Jumpoff, Part 1

2007-03-06T00:20:00.000+09:00

At long last my new computer is up and running. In my new apartment.

In South Korea.

Which means it's time to dust off the ole blog.

Not sure where to begin, so much has already happened it's impossible to keep up-and I've been trying. My first stint at keeping a daily journal since elementary school has already become a tri-weekly effort at best. I'm hoping that this blog won't become an excuse not to write in it, because I've already found that it's different. Better. More immediate I guess. And there is no backspace on paper, what comes out first is what you get. I will always regret not taking my friend Kristin's advice about keeping a paper journal on my previous backpacking trip.

Damn this 21st century and its easy technology. I wish I was a Luddite.

But I have to start somewhere, eh? (please excuse me, I've been hanging out with a lot of Canadians lately) So I'll start with this morning. It snowed. It has been relatively mild weather since I've been here, but today it dipped into the 20s. This morning I was walking to work in this vast, alien city with snowflakes sticking to my cheek watching small child-sized bundles of coats running off to school and old Koreans with bent backs waiting for the bus, and this song comes on my ipod:

"The sprite ones on the corner, dream of something warmer. A semblance of their old ways, what has happened to our handmade days?"

It was beautiful. (i've had this song on repeat for days now, it's so damn good.) On top of that, some guys were changing out these really enormous silkscreen advertising banners that hang from the side of the department store across the street from my school, and they left a couple of them fluttering in the breeze. Yes, I used the word fluttering, if you saw it you would too. It's hard to explain but it was hypnotizing, watching something so big move around in the wind like that, so fluidly. And then the sun comes out from behind the clouds and the whole side of the building started glowing. It was quite the American Beauty moment, if you know what I mean.

Some other highlights from today include:

getting my check card back from the management at the Korean bank where an ATM ate it on Saturday, and then promptly losing it again in the machine next to the first one. D'oh. (Apparently it is listed as a stolen card, even though I told my bank I was going to Korea before I left. Awesome!)
having to defend my home state to a 7 year old Korean girl who can hardly speak english when she told me that "in Texas they kill people." At first I thought she was talking about the death penalty, which would've been bizarre enough, but no folks, she was talking about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My entire class of 7 year old Korean children was familiar with this movie. Why? How?
finding out that I have a student whose name is Duck-Man.
getting an invite to Oink, the best music site ever, and finally being able to download albums like "Thai Beat A Go-Go: Volumes 1-3" (a comp. of bizarre Thai music from the sixties) and "The Best of Hanna-Barbera". So money.

I realize that I probably need to put up some basic information about where I am and what I'm doing, since that's all you people really care about, so here goes that.

MY CURRENT SITUATION AS IT STANDS, CURRENTLY:

I am living in a small, but not too small, studio apartment with cable TV, washer, and one of the best shower heads I've ever had the pleasure of using. Very good flow. There is one giant window that looks out onto a parking lot and some buildings, which sounds boring but is actually pretty interesting, especially at night because this city has more neon signs than Las Vegas. I'm not exaggerating, I'll try to get some video up at some point.

Here is Wikipedia's take on Ilsan, the city where I live, (which is apparently not technically a city):

Ilsan is the name of two districts or wards in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.

Compared to Deogyang-gu, which makes up the rest of Goyang, the recently developed area of Ilsan-gu is more organized and planned, and its residents are generally more affluent. Ilsan is located northwest of Seoul. Like other satellite cities in the Seoul National Capital Area such as Bundang and Pyeongchon, Ilsan was planned in order to alleviate housing shortages in the city of Seoul. Ilsan has experienced phenomenal growth in the past 15 years; usually drawing in younger generations of upper middle-class Koreans.

Ilsan is also home to Lake Park (호수공원), which is the largest man-made lake in South Korea. There are several recreational facilities such as biking, inline skating, walking, and a jogging trail that encircles the entire lake. Lake Park also features a cactus arboretum, botanical gardens, and a toilet museum. The area surrounding Lake Park is a large and sprawling commercial district, which include the Lotte Department Store, Grand Department Store as well as the huge La Festa shopping complex, which hosts hundreds of stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, and bars. The nightlife in La Festa is also evident as hundreds of young people can be seen and businesses are always bustling. Ilsan is also the site of an annual electric lights festival.

Jeongbalsan Park is located in the center of Ilsan, and it is a large residential park which features a large hiking hill with trails, a large Buddhist temple, some historical thatched roof houses and an outdoor gymnasium.

Ilsan is serviced well by lots of public transportation that constantly goes in and out of Seoul. Ilsan is served by Seoul Subway Line 3, also known as the “Ilsan line”, as well as various buses that go in and out of Seoul.

If you can't tell, I lucked out big time. (At least I think so.) And not just because of the toilet museum. While there is no Barton Springs here, Ilsan's got about as much nature as you can expect to find in one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Ilsan has a pulse without the crowds and the pollution of Seoul (2nd most populous city in the world with 23 million people). Seoul is still easily accessible though, just a quick subway ride. I've been in to the City about ten times so far and will share those adventures in future posts.

This post is getting lengthy and I need to sleep so I'm just gonna wrap this up with a video.

---disclaimer: This is not mine, I just found it. But it gives you some idea of my 'hood. This is Lake Park, just two minutes from my apartment. (Might want to turn down your speakers)

I gotta point out that this next one is not mine either (interesting music choice). some of it is shot right outside my building, down the street, etc...unfortunately right now it is not so much a winter wonderland.

Next post: More on my school, the awesome people I have met there, the Adventures of Duck-Man, Tunnel Nightclub and the Korean backstreet boys, and bowling. Lots of bowling.

Christmas and Communism

2006-12-13T21:27:00.000+09:00

So it all comes down to this.

In seven hours I will get on a plane and go home. For almost 3 months home has seemed a million miles away and now it is staring me right in the face. I don't have enough energy in me right now to tackle the immense challenge of summarizing this trip and the effect it has had on me, I'll save that for later...or maybe never. I think maybe I shouldn't, or don't need to. I know that once I am home I will soon be swept back up in the flow of home-things and this experience will fade into the background. But that's the way it goes, eh? (We were travelling with two French girls for a short time in Cambodia and now I can't stop saying 'c'est la vie.')

I am equal parts excited about getting back to Austin (and my people!) and sad to be at the finish line. I noticed a big change in my attitude once we got into Vietnam; hard to describe but I lost what I would call 'travel enthusiasm', and just started going through the motions. Guess the fact that I had to go home eventually finally hit me, and I resigned to this fate earlier than I should have. Part of it was also because I had to travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi (go find a map...that's a lot of ground) in a week and a half and I was anxious and frustrated about missing a lot of things Vietnam has to offer. In the end though, things couldn't have worked out better and because I was forced into action by a deadline, I think I might even have seen more than if I had leisurely cruised up the coast. But it has been like that throughout this entire trip...something that seemed like a setback would lead us to a personality or a place that would change everything for the better, or at the very least for the more memorable. (Except for the motorbike crashing. That was all bad.) ((Actually that's not true...we met some of our favorite people this whole time while Jason was recuperating on Koh Phangan. I guess I'm still bitter about the money...)) And I know now that that is the beauty of travelling without a schedule, choosing your itinerary day by day, taking unexpected but unavoidable detours with a smile on your face.

I would like to give a big shout out to J. Lo. right now, for being a kick ass co-pilot, and friend. Sure, the guy likes to sleep late, but he was on vacation for crying out loud. If you can't sleep in on vacation, when can you? Looking back on this blog I realize that I don't mention him specifically very often, but I hope you can tell by all the times I write 'we' and 'us' that he is right there with me, in the thick of it. I met a lot of people travelling alone, and they all enjoyed the advantage of flexibility but admitted that they were lonely a lot of the time. I also met people who were visibly sick of the people they were travelling with. I think that me and Jason had an ideal partnership; the ability to separate was a crucial part of this trip for me, but every split was followed soon after by a happy reunion. And ultimately, I wouldn't be here, looking back on the trip of a lifetime, if it weren't for Jason. He came up with the idea and the destination.

Jason: I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that this experience has permanently changed my life and the way I look at the world. So thanks for that.

Enough with Sapfest 2k6, I've got a plane to catch and one last batch of postcards to mail off. To those who expected but never got a postcard, I'm sorry...at one point I left about 10 of them fully written, addressed, and stamped, at my guesthouse in Siem Reap and I am hoping that the management mailed them for me but I have no idea. I think several also got lost in the rickety southeast asian postal system along the way. Other than that I have no excuse besides being overwhelmed with everything, and of course sheer laziness.

It's been grand.

Sayonara,
Adam

p.s. I finally got a chance to upload some more pictures of Hoi An and central/northern Vietnam. Click on the picture to see a slideshow:

Ha Long Bay

2006-12-13T20:16:00.000+09:00

I just got back from a 3 day stay on Ha Long Bay, which was amazing despite me being stuck with the lamest tour group ever: a Malaysian family (bad English), the Frenchiest French guy ever (got to share a room with him. yessss!), a British guy and his Vietnamese girlfriend (hooker), and a family from Seattle.

The French guy complained all the time when everybody else was perfectly satisfied with the level of service, and on top of that he wouldn't pay his bill at the hotel despite drinking everything in the minifridge, because 'there was no price posted.' So he just assumed it was free. Even though you have to pay for everything here. And it says so in every brochure and every program guide. So the rest of us got to wait in the minibus for 30 minutes while he argued with the guide in his obnoxious Frenglish. I almost paid his bill for him because it was only five bucks and I'm pretty sure the concierge was going to have to cover it for him, which is probably 3 days salary for him. But this time the French did not surrender, even though it looked for a few minutes like they might call the police.

Sorry. I really had to get that off my chest.

The family from Seattle were so nerdy I can't quite put it in words. They were such a classic stereotype of a nerdy family it wasn't funny. Okay, it was actually really funny. Here's a picture that I think sums it up pretty well:

Despite my desire to mock these people, I have to give them some credit. They were out there travelling, taking their son to some pretty awesome places. (They had just come from India, Morocco, and Turkey.) Now, I find it impossible to actually picture this family in those places, I'll have to take their word for it, but they get kudos nonetheless for making it happen.

We stayed overnight on a junk in the bay the first day, and then went trekking and stayed in a hotel on Cat Ba Island the next. Cat Ba is a national park right next to Ha Long Bay, full of several hundred islands of its own. I had a great time, the sun even came out on the second day despite a forecast of rain and clouds. We also went kayaking; at one point our guide took us through a little opening in the bottom of a huge rock wall, on the other side it opened into a beautiful lagoon full of birds diving into the water and catching fish. Very cool.

Click HERE to see a slideshow of pictures from Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, including a traditional water puppet theater show that I went to. Laugh if you want, it was sweet.

Adam in Asia

Tokyo time-lapse

Time-lapse Gundam

Wajima Taisai Festival!

Animated stereoviews of Old Japan

I got mail!

Party Time in the Noto, Kiriko Style!

Wajimacallit?

JETting off to Nippon

Adam in....Oz???

An Indian Motorcycle Diary

India: Pushkar and Agra

India: Holi in Udaipur

heading out for a bit

Gems from the Island(s)

India: Week 1

Bali Finale

Tra-lalala in Indonesia

Why I Love My Job

Adios, Korea

R.I.P. Namdaemun

Lunar New Year recap

Fujifilm2

Fujifilm1

Japan-o-rama!

Japanese funerals

Wabi-sabi

Contents

[edit] Description

[edit] Wabi-sabi in Japanese arts

[edit] Western use

konichiwaaaaaah!

Far from Home for the Holidays

First Snow!

Halloween Day

Shanghai - Day 4

Shanghai - Day 3

Shanghai - Day 2

Shanghai - Day 1

9/11 Inch Nails

Killer Fans

Fan death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beliefs

Media coverage

back on the wagon

home and back again

Gimme Five is Back

I Love Shorts

Dance Off at Western Dom

goin' out like light bulbs

Happy Birthday, Buddha!

Paju English Village

crash

Congratulations!

Catching Up: Insadong and Club Night

What Can I Get Adam for his Birthday?

i miss comedy central

Take the Power Back; 1 Month Down

South by South Korea

Korean Love, Egg Art, and Arcade Fire

you can still run

Yeah, they are all this cute

Snow City!!!

The Jumpoff, Part 2

The Jumpoff, Part 1

Christmas and Communism

Ha Long Bay