Day 4: Picture Perfect

I'm surprised I lasted this long without posting a picture of a cafe; expect many more pictures of cafes as many of them in Korea are amazing and lovely. This picture comes from a new cafe, "The Boiling Pot", a rame cafe. I took the picture to talk not about how much I love this cafe and how it's a regular cafe I go to, although I do love this cafe and will make it a regular cafe I visit. No, I use this picture to talk about Korea and 'fusion', something that one can find any which way one turns. It's hard to call a cafe 'fusion' these days as much of that seems self-evident. But this cafe has taken it to a new level. Firstly, the idea of a ramen cafe is new to me, and in all my years living in Korea this is the first time seeing one. He serves ramen, ice cream, coffee, wine, and other yummies, and no one is favored over the other. The decor, as you can see, is quite eclectic, not quite mainstream as Ikea, but something similar. The reason for this particular picture is not to highlight the furniture, though he has a variety of chairs, all different, and none of them matching. Nor is this picture used to talk about the openness of the cafe, with its high ceilings and large window doors that open out onto the patio deck. No, this picture is used to highlight the stuff that is actually on the bookshelf. In one section he has Korean graphic novels, in another he has Korean novels, followed by magazines, and finally various textbooks in English, including Child Development and Human Evolution. Finally, in the bottom right corner there is a picture of Bi (Rain, the Korean pop star) from Nylon magazine. The randomness of all that was on this bookshelf, including the novel "Confessions of a Shopoholic", blew my mind and reminded me that such randomness can be find all over Korea, obviously in a good way. This is Korea's new trend, be it intentional or not: random, unabated fusion. Be it food, fashion, or interior design, this is definitely one of my favorite attributes of the Korea I live in.

Day 3: Get the Juice Ready, Mom

Dear audio diary, today at work I saw some girls in the lobby playing a flute, clarinet, and oboe and wanted to shoot myself in the face, greater than sign, hyphen, less than sign, semicolon. Anyway, today's picture is brought to you by Severance Hospital, my current place of employment. Go figure, a BA in Japanese and Religion and an MA in Korean Studies lands me a job at a hospital. This is the largest hospital in Korea, the new building you see here built in 2005. It is also the first Western hospital/ institute in Korea, modern Western medicine brought over by Christian missionaries in the later part of the 19th century. There are 2065 beds and 1004 rooms, and the reason for the odd room count (or rather even) is actually interesting. In Korean, when you say 1004, 천사, it is the same word (different Chinese characters) for angel. It may seem corny, considering that many Korean companies, businesses, etc. do similar things, but this was actually the first time I'd heard about it, back in 2008, and so it stuck with me. Here are some interesting things to know about hospitals in Korea. When you visit someone in a hospital, you don't bring flowers but boxes of little juice drinks or fruit baskets, and they are actually not for the patient but rather for those who would come visit the patient. Also, if you work in Korea you are automatically signed up for the national health insurance, which is a 50/50 system: you pay 50% and the insurance pays 50%. For me, working at the hospital, I get at times double insurance and so hospital visits can potentially be free. Also, if I decide to get plastic surgery, which is not normally covered under the national plan, I would only have to pay 50% because of my job. Best part of this hospital? There is a Burger King, pizza/pasta place, bakery, and Haggen Daz all located on the lobby floor across from admissions. So you can have yourself a Whopper with cheese, a chocolate ice cream cone, and large mocha latte before walking (or crawling) over to hospital admissions, carrot sign, underscore, carrot sign, semicolon.

Day 2: Who Said My Weenie's Teenie?

It must be a human fetish to dress animals up in human clothing, for we do it too often in ways that are all-too disturbing. Meet the Teenie Weenie bear; this particular one stands outside the large Myeong Dong store for Teenie Weenie. Now, if you are thinking to yourself 'oh, they must sell children's clothing', you'd be mistaken. In fact, this lovable 6 foot tall bear dressed in a sports jacket and tie is trying to sell teenagers and young adults clothes. I refuse to even go into the store because it scares the crap out of me, not to mention I am not walking around with a giant bear dressed in clothing on my clothing; it seems counter productive and paradoxical. I don't quite understand why the brand is called Teenie Weenie, or why they use bears, but it does lend itself to a deluge of jokes by the average English speaker with only an inkling of a dirty mind. I'd say that we should respect those who have the courage to wear clothing from Teenie Weenie, but I don't see that happening... ever. Rather, I think we can sweep this under the category of 'Korean things that just won't work outside of Korea', which you'll see over the next 98 days, many things reside in this category of Korean stuff. In reality, the only people I see go into the store are women, couples, and young Koreans. I've never seen a Japanese tourist go into the store, and when the Japanese women are steering clear of the store you know it's just a bit too Korean. But hey, if it works for them it works for them. You see Americans walking around with pictures of farm equipment on their clothing, Japanese dressed as maids, and Canadians liking hockey, so to each his or her own.

Day 1: No Pears Allowed!

I took this picture yesterday, and before anyone starts in on the 'fruit' jokes from the countless angles one could possibly tackle this joke, don't even bother. While some may think of this, in lieu of the title, as a prelude to a discussion of a certain academic journal started last year, it sadly is not. I'm sure I'll talk about that at some later day; there are 99 days left. No, today's picture was taken on my way home last night, around 6.30pm. As you can see, this is a truck with various fruits and vegetables parked on the street. This truck is literally a one minute walk from my front door and has some of the best fruit around. A little known secret about Korea: the best fruit is not found in the grocery store but in the basement of the department store, but the second best fruit is found on the side of the street in trucks. Most of these truck fruit vendors are independent sellers, either with family in the country growing them or small business owners. You can find these trucks all over Seoul in the residential areas, and if you can't spot one, you can definitely hear them, as they have loud blow-horns that repeat the same word over and over again: 과일 (or fruit). I suppose they expect people to run towards the truck like the ice cream man. The irony of this particular fruit truck, though, is that it is parked out in front of a chain store of 도시락(Korean lunch boxes), Hansot (the prices at this place are so cheap, but the amount of fat and calories that they put into these things would shame us all, well besides the middle and high school kids that swarm there everyday) and across the street from an actual store that sells nothing but fruit. Needless to say, the owner of the truck doesn't pay attention to irony all that much; he is just trying to sell himself some fruits.

100 Days of Korea

I've lived in Korea for nearly 3 years straight, making it the longest place I've lived since I graduated high school. Needless to say, I've made Seoul my home and know the city quite well. But what people often forget is that I am no tourist; I am not simply here for a short period of time only to leave and never come back. As such, I often overlook those things that distinguish Seoul as a possible 'tourist spot' and look at the city quite differently. There are two ways one can live in Seoul: on the surface and deep within the streets of the city. Most foreigners who come, I've noticed, live simply on the surface, not necessarily a bad thing, but one obtains only so much culture and information from there. I, on the other hand, have rooted myself as deep as I can given my own drawbacks and see a different side of Seoul, a side that few allow themselves to see.

It is from this point that I start this challenge to myself, this mission to unveil 'My Seoul'. For 100 days until my 25th birthday on August 7th, I will take a picture of something I feel is 'Korean', post it, and blog about it. In doing so I will be able to dump all the information I have about Korea and hopefully share with at least one or two people things about Korea they did not already know. I am in no way going to be giving a complex history lesson or rundown of Korea because you can pick up a book and do that yourself. My pictures and blog posts are to share with whoever comes across them a piece of Korea they either didn't know existed or find particularly interesting. I am no photographer, and I wouldn't even call it a hobby of mine, and so most of the pictures for the time being will be taken using my cell phone camera, which I think takes pretty good pictures anyways. As an individual, this allows me to chronicle the things I love about Korea, especially Seoul, and also allows me get my writing juices flowing as I've been in quite the slump these days. All pictures will be taken by me, unless otherwise stated, and will be taken within a week of when I blog about it. I hear people are doing a picture a day for a year; I'm just not that disciplined. But I suppose 100 days is a start. FYI, I didn't take the picture in this blog post. ㅋㅋ