traduttore tradittore

not sure if i got the spelling right. it's an italian maxim that says "translation is betrayal." and for some reason, after centuries of theorizing, it still seems to hold true. translating from one language/code to another will always entail making choices, deciding what to carry over and what will have to be sacrificed in the name of brevity, readability, &c. there are lots of fancy words for this: information load, cultural content, etc. anyway, the current darling among translational approaches is target-oriented translation, aka fluent translations, in which the text must not appear to be a translation, so that the translator is in effect rendered invisible. sort of like a magic trick.

i would love to be able to do this 100% of the time but with the kinds of texts i'm working on, it just doesn't seem possible. i'm on my third batch now, each batch being a section in a book of poetry characterized by linguistic play and other such experimentation. the first batch of seven poems was difficult because of the various language registers used (dated slang, archaic Tagalog, some dialect) and the fact that several of these featured acrostics. good grief. but i managed to finish those in 2 weeks.

wrestling with the second batch turned out to be much much bloodier. that took me...well, much too long. on the surface, it looked like just four poems that played with repetition and patterns. the first, "balimbing", was easy enough. the second proved more difficult but it was mainly a problem of language register. the third poem was hellish, involving an acrostic, and seemingly endless repetition of the same 8 words in 80+ lines but with different patterns, and therefore different meanings.

the last "poem" in that section was actually a whole series of 20 concrete poems (!!!) that also used a lot of punning, aural and visual. that was like mission impossible for me. most translations scholars will tell you that you just don't/can't translate concrete poetry . at most, you do a prose translation or write a note explaining the content. but no... i actually finished the darned thing, and even managed to replicate some of the sound play via alliteration and assonance. yes, i'm that good, haha. ha.

and now this last batch. fifteen pages of rhyme and meter (the poems follow a traditional tagalog form), some very obscure references and even words that don't apear in my tagalog-english dictionary (the one prepared by father leo james english). argh. been working on this for four months now but very little progress. good grief.

okay, back to work.

meet my friend, kim mincheol

taken one sunday in may outside some museum at the grounds of some palace. i know i should've taken notes of where we went exactly but i just couldn't be bothered at the time. the palace brochure is among my piles of notes here somewhere.

at 3:51 pm today, my good buddy mincheol sent me an sms, which i'm reproducing in its full korean-english glory:

"Your camera have been repaired~! [1]
It costs 33000 won
Whenever the repair shop open,
we can receive your camera~!"

i felt so happy, i almost cried. really, i don't know how i can ever say thank you to this guy. from the day we met, he's been nothing but helpful--giving me lessons in korean language, taking me ice skating, bringing me to the acupuncturist when i hurt myself ice skating, bringing me to palaces even if it bored him to tears, teaching me the fine art of swilling soju like a true kuryo de hakkyo student. he's helped me send postcards at the ujekuk (post office), has waited for me in the rain for follow-up acupuncture sessions, even showed up to watch me take part in some ridiculous fashion show activity in between his exams and job interviews.

technically, he's my dowoomi, a helper or buddy assigned to me by the korean language and culture center of the institute for foreign language studies of the korea university. he volunteered for this because as he says, "i want to help foreigners adjust to life in korea." and he's so devoted to the task that he even sat through a whole church service in english with me, even if he could follow only 15% of what was going on. other people met their dowoomis only once or twice; we've been meeting up at least once a week, sometimes more because he says i really need to practice korean.

mincheol is 26 in korea but is actually 24 anywhere else in the world. like most korean guys his age, he's done his two-year military service. he'll be graduating with some kind of engineering degree in january and has recently been accepted by the software division of samsung. his girlfriend, hyun-ook, has the prettiest brown eyes i've ever seen (apparently a rare kind of beauty in korea) and is an environmental science major. they make a cute couple, spending the late evening hours studying at the library together. last month, they gave me a copy of shel silverstein's the giving tree in korean translation, just so i can practice my hanggukmal.

when i broke my camera at the korea-togo football game, he was the first person i called. he was studying and watching the football game on tv at the time but immediately, he said, "yes, i will help you when i'm free." and true to his promise, he did bring me to technomart last sunday to have my casio exilim repaired. he lives more than an hour away but he was there to meet me at the korea university subway station, looking as always like a woozy 5-year old just up from a nap. but for once, he wasn't carrying a schoolbag.

"today, i am free!" he lisped. he has a funny way of talking, half-lisping in english, and miming like a kindergartner. he had just finished his exams and a final project where he figured a way to use a mobile phone to control the elevator even from your apartment. it's perfect for lazy, perpetually late people living in high-rise apartments or for people who just don't want to waste a single minute or five waiting for an elevator to come up to the 38th floor from the lobby. what a brilliant kid.

his doowomi duties technically ended with spring term but here he is, still helping me. he said he signed up for dowoomi duties again for summer term, and wants us to be buddies again, if that's possible. i doubt if we'd be allowed to do that but it doesn't really matter. we're good friends now.

taken one saturday afternoon in april by mincheol's friend, kelly (can't remember her korean name). that's mincheol, hyun-ook, and my then-new pink fedora. at an italian fusion place somewhere along chamsari-gil, near the anam subway station.

[1] since i arrived in seoul, i've noticed an inordinate use of the tilde among koreans. maybe because it's frillier (and therefore, better) than any other punctuation mark.

things looking up

had a good sleep last night, which is to say i actually did some sleeping instead of the tossing and turning that had been my wont the past week or so. and today i actually woke up in the morning, at 6:30, instead of noon. am also getting ready to have a breakfast of barley tea and nutella on wheat-and-rye bread. i know this is the most mundane & boring blog post in the world but i am just so glad right now to be going through a normal boring morning.

photos stolen from jon's blog*

this was taken at sokcho beach. me telling tenzin to stop filming me drunk. he didn't stop. i am such a source of amusement for these crimson house boyz.

me and tenzin on the subway, on the way to the football game event at city hall. this is what happens when two strong jawlines meet--nothing much, heh heh.

pinoyz at sokcho beach. me, all puffy-faced and tipsy. chef tristan the gym addict the only sober person around (he was chugging some kinda sports drink). the intrepid jose carrlos working to add something to project J. yes, he always turns red with too much alcohol.

this is sokcho. not quite like the beach towns we're used to at home. lots of dilapidated condos and deserted lots. but always always trying to make things better. never got to visit those mountains, me too lazy. the beaches face the opposite direction--east. the sea here is very wittily called "the eastern sea." clever, eh?

this is jon dewey doing an impression of a crazed football fan. and me with horns (a gift from min, siege's buddy) doing an impression of a happy sairo. probably taken before i broke my camera.**



* not really stealing because he gave me permission. yay.
** which is now at the repair shop, well...being repaired. thanks to my good buddy mincheol for all the help. you rock! kamsahamnida!

perma-smile

it's starting to rain here and it's gloomy outside. what passes for sunshine is cold and grey and smoggy. still, i'm so giddy it's ridiculous. and my cheeks are starting to ache. hee hee.

about a boy

i have a playlist on my palm that i've been listening to for the past few days. see, i'm having such a hard time sleeping lately. been thinking too much, i guess. and apart from reading posts and looking at paris photos in my favorite person's blog, this is the only thing that helps.

nick hornby's high fidelity (the book and the movie) was the first to make me realize (yes, i'm dumb that way) that a mix tape--or in these mp3-intensive times, a playlist--is a narrative of sorts. at the very least, it can be a compendium of sounds, feelings, thoughts*, longings, memories and promises.

• los amantes - ana d
  
• womb - sugar hiccup
  
• nothing but the sky - ivy
  
• un rayo del sol - le mans
• cry me a river - ella fitzgerald
  
• when i'm thinking about you - the sundays
  
• on paper - three o-clock
• a waltz for a night - julie delpy
• sexual healing - marvin gaye
• thank you - dido
• je t'aime tant - julie delpy
• panaginip - brownbeat allstars cover
• come here - kath bloom
• teardrop - massive attack
  

* incidentally, the title of wislawa szymborska's poetry collection. been savoring this since i arrived here end of march. and as with this sojourn, i'm just about halfway through the book. i don't know what the last poem in the book is but i want to read it with the person most important to me.

just three things

1) back in the 80s, korean tibaks apparently studied pinoy tibaks so they could learn how to fight park chung-hee. i met a korean man named saeed recently who is in love with the idea of the philippines having jungles so that the CPP-NPA would have a place to hide. labo.

2) palestinians are very very persistent people. and here, for a particular group of korean writers, they are the cause-of-the-moment. said korean writers are some of the coolest koreans i've met, in that they're not brainwashed into thinking 'corea da best, corea number one' like everyone else in this country. they're a little more critical, and may seem like left-wing bleeding heart liberals because of it. or maybe they really are that.

3) had tequila for the first time last night. (yes, i'm a pathetic late bloomer in that sense. but then, i've always been a straight vodka or dark beer kinda person.) anyway...it ain't all that. i don't see the whole point of it, the so-called thrill or mystique. had 5 or 6 shots and i didn't get drunk at all. just a bit buzzy at the edges. where's the traydor-ness of it all? or is this beginner's luck?

like being underwater

almost like drowning, but not quite. it's a good feeling. this is how i've been all day since i had a talk this morning with a person very important to me. was crying during most of the call and so i'm not sure whether he said what he said, or if i'd just imagined it. it sounded like there was a promise in there somewhere.

so at the risk of saying something tacky... right now there's something like the beginnings of a smile--not sure where exactly--but it's in here somewhere. maybe at the corner of my mouth or in that place a little below my heart. it's lodged in here somewhere so that there seemed times today that i had to remind myself to breathe.

LSS

argh.

listened to my new mp3s on the train to daejon today and now i can't get this one thing out of my head. it's not a riff, not even lyrics... it's the start and refrain of that old "womb" song by sugar hiccup ("uh-ha, uh-HAH...uh-ha, uh-HAH...uh-ha uh-HAH..." ad nauseam).

argh.

and it's not even something i can sing along to, because that melody chick's voice is like 8 octaves higher than mine. so it's just here in my head bouncing around. maybe going into that sound chamber at KAIST today messed up my circuitry.

tama naaaaaaa!

HUBO't hubad...

...yung nakita naming robots kanina, except for one who just got back from a junket in singapore. said jetlagged robot's name is HUBO (human + robo) and he speaks with an american accent. funnily enough, he only understands commands in korean, and can only answer in english. HUBO was an honored guest at a recent CNN special on future technologies. nitpicky me noticed slight lapses in the robot's grammar. but it was still really really cool. which you can't really say about them call center flunkies, give or take a few exceptions.

we spent the day at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), a sprawling campus in daejeon city, 50 mins by express train from seoul. it's where they grow science nerds here in korea, their MIT of sorts.

it's very competitive there, only half the graduates of top science high schools here make the cut. the science high schools already are hard to get into; only 30 students per level. so most KAIST fresh meat are 16 or 17 years old, very young by korean standards because most kids here enter college at 19 or 20. so those bespectacled little geniuses we saw tooling around in cool-but-dorky bicycles should actually still be in middle school but breezed through high school in 1.5 years. at KAIST, says our guide, they never have vacations. no sem breaks!!! no wonder there were all these crazy installations all over the campus.* mass nervous breakdown, anyone?

HUBO is only one of many robots being developed at KAIST, and they all have their special talents. we took photos of ourselves with the little darlings, of course. actually, the other writers took photos while i pathetically begged them to take pics of me too. now we have robots to add to Project J. if you haven't seen the Project J photos, look at them now. you won't regret it, i promise.

so anyway, and this robotics lab we visited is just one of more than a hundred labs at KAIST working on projects too esoteric for me to comprehend.

for example: a sort of "soundless" lab that has these foamy spongy wedges on the walls, ceilings and under our feet (beneath some metal mesh floor) to absorb sounds and echoes. they use this room to study sounds in a "pure/clean" environment. the waves bounce into the wedges, become smaller and sorta disappear into that place where the sloping parts meet. i'd show you a picture if i could. curse me for breaking my camera. argh.

entering the soundless room was...unsettling. we could feel some kind of pressure, like walking and breathing underwater. but of course there isn't any water or pressure. it's just that the absence of ambient sound affected the way our minds/bodies processed/experienced that place. and when we talked in there (asking questions, ooh-ing at the otherworldly feeling, whispering secrets into wedge-shaped holes a la 2046), it was like you were hearing everyone's voices inside your head.

we were there for only a few minutes and i felt weird for a long time after. imagine what it would be like to stay they for an hour. or a day. or a week. our guide, prof. kim**, said the longest a person's been in the room is 20 minutes. longer than that and you start going nuts. and they're not really interested in trying to see how long a person can last in there. they study music and physics, not madness. yes, i asked.

so why were we there? to talk literature with prof. kim tak-hwan, one of the few cool korean writers we met at the seoul young writers festival at the beginning of may. he teaches digital storytelling at the graduate school of culture technology in KAIST. it's a 10-year experiment, all about studying the tech side of humanities -- music, film, writing, photography, internet, etc. the cool thing about kim tak-hwan is when he writes, he thinks multi-platform: one story can be a novel (2 versions: with footnotes for geeks & critics, tapos lite pop version para sa madlang people), a tv drama series, a movie, a video game, etc.

what's funny is that he made his name writing historical novels. and his best-seller is has a feminist tone and agenda, and the persona is a gaesang (korean equivalent of a geisha) who was also recognized during her lifetime as an exceptional poet. the novel is told from the first person POV, mimics the language of the joseon dynasty, and uses no conjunctions at all. but now he's decided to focus on SF because of where he teaches now (how can he not???).

and he's in the middle of writing a historical love story about a frenchman and a korean chick and is set in various exotic locales like paris & casablanca etc. there's enough romance & tragedy in it so that it's going to be filmed, a collaboration of 3 countries: korea, france and the US. he'll be flying to paris and morocco next month to do ahem research for the story. lucky.

* e.g., an eviscerated toilet bowl lounging in an inflatable kiddie swimming pool, foil-wrapped topiary, and what siege called 'old school'--some big super mario coin thingies pasted on some building's wall. i didn't get what he meant, being old school enough myself to know only atari-era games like pong, pacman, space invaders, etc.

** prof. kim something. i feel awful not remembering her name because she is such a character. she's a cellist and sound scientist who also teaches at KAIST. but dammit, why do they all have to be called kim something-or-other. honestly, i know the following people: kim yeajin, kim tak-hwan, kim mincheol, kim eung hwa, and my professor who i just call kim sonsengnim (an honorific equivalent to ma'am or sir). every other kim, i just forget.

shite, i just cannot resist saying this, even if i know it will make me feel dirty: i know kimchi and kimbap. ang corny ko talaga pag madaling araw.

dammit, my teeth hurt

because i got this box of goodies from my mom in the states
because she wanted to, not because i asked her to
because they don't seem to sell or use antibac hand gel in this country
because subway handrails are the filthiest things in the world
because i've been using Crest (tm) tooth whitening strips recently
because i drink too much tea and coffee
because the peroxide gel penetrates the tooth enamel and jangles the little nerve endings

dammit, i can't sleep. third sleepless night in a row.
what am i doing wrong?

because this is easier than cleaning my room

lately while listening to mp3s on the subway, i find myself hitting the skip button more often than usual. either my palm's SD card is getting too crowded with mp3s or it's time to make changes in my music library.

some stuff i'll delete:

• all eraserheads songs (anti-homesickness songs; but after hearing "maselang bahaghari" for the 5th time, i remembered why i've outgrown ely buendia's caterwauling)
• all michael buble songs (icky sticky sappy)
• all norah jones songs (ditto)

stuff i'm definitely keeping:

• cry me a river (ella fitzgerald; for those senti moments)
• all pete yorn songs (mahal ko pa rin siya)
• all jose gonzales songs (ditto)
• teardrop (massive attack; back to back with jose gonzales cover)
• bright yellow gun (throwing muses; keeps me awake on road trips)
• nothing but the sky (ivy; gives me a buzz every time)
• sexual healing (marvin gaye remixed with shaggy toasting/rapping in background; so i can dance in the subway and get more strange looks from ajimmas)
• selected early liz phair songs (can sing along to these because we have the same severely limited vocal range)
• panaginip (hotdogs tribute by brownbeat allstars; because i can)
• lanca perfume (that old brazilian song from the 80s; ear kitsch)
  

new stuff i'll transfer to the palm:

• songs from shirley bassey remix album
• songs from cafe mundo (pang-counter sa oppressive monoculture na nakikita ko araw-araw, token multiculturalism ba...)
• van morrison (because pico iyer told me to)
• selected tracks from francesca beard, and il postino, english patient & red violin soundtracks (para may WTF moments naman ako)
  
• random weird stuff downloaded from salon.com

been looking for stuff by shrift (bagong banda ni nina miranda [dreamy vocals behind smoke city]) both online and in stores here but so far nothing i can actually carry around. tsk, ang hirap talaga magnakaw ng musika. so i just listen to a lot of yahoo radio, especially the chillout station. memoryado ko na ang radio ads ng subway sandwiches.

stupid realization #1

it is a truth universally acknowledged, that two people in possession of similar/identical items/vocabularies/tastes/ideologies/etc., must be a couple.* of sorts. this is why:

• when you really like someone, and you go out for dinner or coffee, you get whatever he/she has, say, a triple espresso or tazo chai redolent with black pepper, or a cherry-infused green tea, even if all you really want is a blah cafe latte or a caramel frapuccino.
• after years of watching the same movies, reading the same books, listening to the same songs, you find yourselves finishing each other's thoughts and sentences, and you know exactly what the other person means even if all you read in the message is a single punctuation mark.
• in korea, couples of various age groups declare couple-hood by toting/wearing exactly the same items (e.g., fake nerd glasses [what siege calls artificial intelligence], green baseball caps worn backwards, orange hi-top chuck taylors, hot pink t-shirts--sometimes all four items worn by just one middle-aged couple)

theory has never been my strongest point (or more honestly, just not my point at all), and probably never will be. but here's a try: maybe we do this mirroring because we want to believe we have found the Self in an Other, we want this one-ness so badly that we change the Self into the Other, even if it's just on some wonky level like turning marxist after being poststructuralist for years simply because the Cute Boy/Girl wore a che guevara t-shirt to graduate class one day.

i just read over that previous paragraph and it looks a helluva lot like (a) bullcrap, (b) pointing out the obvious, (c) the result of yet another sleepless night, and (d) all of the above.

at the end of The Global Soul, pico iyer writes of his japanese girlfriend. they've been together for 12 years and yet, they cannot read a single word in the other's language. although (or because?) educated at eton, oxford and harvard, iyer speaks japanese like a three-year-old and gets laughed at by toothless octogenarians in his suburban neighborhood. how the heck did they manage to even last through a day together, let alone a dozen years??? iyer then writes about a private language, what a much lesser writer would call a mother tongue used by a society of two.** simply put, having a private langue is one of the defining features of a couple. the complex theory needed to explain that is sadly beyond my ken.


* adapted from the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice. but you already knew that. what you probably don't know is that all these months, one of the kookier teachers here has been insisting that s & i like each other, are in fact a couple, an item (such a quaint term!) because we carry identical lime green flippy LG mobile phones. it was more mundane than anything: a result of sheer cheapness on our part--part of the hard bargain we had to drive to lower the price by 1,000 pesos.

** that cringing much-lesser writer would be me. cringe, cringe. ok, i'll stop now. gotta sleep.

video night at crimson house

well, not really.

more like: here are some links to videos my friends made, in which i have some cameos. can't annotate really so just be patient and watch out for my fat face appearing every so often. best seen over a broadband connection, especially the 9-minute namsan extravaganza by siege.

so sit back, relax, and click on zese leenks:


sports day - in which tenzin tsetan choklay, tibetan auteur extraordinaire, captures one day in may where were we forced to do cruel and unusual activities (like learn the world cup dance) at fricking nine o'clock in the morning (!!!). if you listen closely, you will hear me whining in the background every so often. i'm the goof in the pink fedora and wall-climbing pants; watch me spazz.
cast: mongolians (sunder & bayarku), vietnamese (phuong, hung, son), tenzin, kalinga, siege, me, kang sonsengnim (our kooky teacher), and a host of other unfortunates roused too early and forced to cavort on plastic grass


we go to the game - in which the aforementioned tibetan director captures the insanity that is world cup fever in korea. this is the night six unsuspecting foreigners get caught in the red-shirted, balloon-waving, horn-wearing crush, and a digital camera and a girl's heart get broken simultaneously. also features a song that is absolutely perfect for that mad, mad night. pinoys may find the size & mood of the crowd familiar--the last time we partied like this, we kicked a president out of office.
cast: assif (the GI bear from azerbaijan), jon (tall emo-haired kano), tenzin, kalinga (cinematographer from anuradhapura, sri lanka), siege, me


to the beach - yet another small masterpiece by tenzin, this time chronicling the first day of our 4-day stay in sokcho, a resort town with mountains in the west and beaches facing the eastern sea. that day was cold and rainy, so most of us kinda looked miserable. the rest of our stay was much better. am glad tenzin didn't put in the footage he took of me after too much soju too fast at the beach the following night. i'd have skinned him alive. beautiful music and even a poem somewhere in there.
cast: tenzin, kalinga, jon, siege, tristan (gym-addicted pinoy chef & church buddy), me

namsan and then some - a nine-minute epic shot by the intrepid jose carrrrlos during our recent trip to seoul tower. features sarcasm, a cable car ride, strange signs, septuagenarians hooking up, toilet humor, and an unfortunate little reindeer who may or may not have been violated at some point in its sad & lonely existence. watch out for the windows! a must-see!
cast: siege, me, slightly annoyed people in the cable car who kept leaning as far away from us as possible, random people na nilapastangan on camera nang hindi nila nalalaman

seoul under siege - primarily a five-minute slideshow featuring seoul, nami island, historic gyeongju city, and andong in the context of siege's cheekbones. i put this in here mainly for the occasional sandra cameos (always worth the wait, hey?) and one particular photo at 2:39 or thereabouts, where an ahem homely* girl makes kapit really tightly around the arm of the featured boy. watch out also for a curly-haired romanian poet** with a nice jawline & a tiny paunch. nota bene: most of these photos were taken by moi. not bad, noh? man, i miss my camera.
cast: siege's cheekbones, siege's razorcut and very flippy dyed hair, me, lots of other people, more like a benetton ad than anything else (if you can get past you-know-who's cheekbones)


* i must admit: i had, in the past, cruelly labeled her "mukhang katulong" which resulted in some very upsetting moments over a coupla pints of guinness several weeks later. pero look at her naman... o sige, you be the judge na lang, ha?

** funnily enough, CK was the main cause of the meltdown that occured over the very tasty guinness pints mentioned in the note above. incidentally, said meltdown was witnessed by our favorite tibetan. thank goodness he had yet to buy his video cam when that happened.

digital zen: the sound of one camera breaking

that was a really dumb title. haha. ha. haaaay.

got back from the beach last saturday night with a lovely tan and no photos except those taken with my little lime green mobile phone. but it just isn't the same without the 6 megapixel clarity of my beautiful dearly departed casio exilim. sigh. so i locked myself in room 304 and started reading a really really bad book (gregory maguire's confessions of an ugly stepsister). it was one of those half-hearted purchases made in an attempt to acquire some light reading for when i want my brain to just zonk out. but dammit, the prose is just so hyper-duper panget. but! being the borderline ock-ock that i am, i know i will end up suppressing my gag reflex and just finish the damn thing. happily, it's just some used book i picked up at itaewon & can easily give away to someone i don't like very much. hmmm... kanino kaya?

much of sunday, after service at onnuri megachurch with chef tristan, was spent alone at hyehwa to buy international calling cards and to get ogled by hundreds of ilocano merchant marines and other random pinoy migrant workers. it was sunday and i figured it was my patriotic duty to give them someone gorgeous to look at for a change. (don't worry, am cringing as i type.) idiot that i am, i spent an hour looking for a hana eunheng (hana bank) atm. ended up walking several blocks to a hana bank building pointed out by a nice family mart cashier guy. only to find out from lawyer friend joan that (duh) you can use other banks' atms! they just charge you sixty pesos for it. attorney stiletto & i ended up talking for hours at a coffee bean and tea leaf sipping scarily expensive ice blended green tea thingies. i tried to ask the barista girl to make it No Sugar Added but apparently, they've never heard of such an animal in this country*. so i had no choice but to suck the sugar in.

apropos of nothing, so i'm back at good old crimson house where i had the biggest scare of my life a little over an hour ago. walked out into the night without wearing glasses or contacts and got ogled/heckled by a couple of drunk ajushees (old men, tanders, thundercats, ta-matands**, lolos) who wouldn't stop giggling hello's at me until i turned and smiled at them. they giggled some more. cute old buggers. i turned a corner and walked to the family mart*** for some much-needed salty while-working snackie-munchies. walked back to crimson with my loot (seasoned dried pollack, soft roasted squid & non-garbage-tasting soymilk) and noticed that the ajussis had gone home. or maybe i'd just imagined them?

anyway, as i approached crimson, i saw three chinese/japanese guys with wildly dyed hair in the smoking area. i'd never seen them before (and with my myopia, i still couldn't see them) and they were watching me weirdly (i think) as i did the whole security card-waving ritual that really is a ritual more than anything else. acting normal but quickly descending into panic, i scuttled into the building, waited jumpily for the elevator, got in and turned... to (sort of) see that the three vaguely threatening-looking guys had come into the lobby after me and were walking towards the slowly closing elevator doors. i panicked, hit the close button, hyperventilated within the elevator's small confines, scooted onto my floor, flat-out ran into my room, and slammed the bolt in place.

i thought i was going to get mugged and the crazy-haired freaks were in the building (!!!). so i fired off a message to siege on ym in an attempt to calm what was starting to sound like my heart about to explode from sheer terror. it took a full five minutes to realize that (uhm) maybe they're just new to the dorm and (uhm) i acted like a total jackass. i'd forgotten that this is bloody korea. people don't get mugged here. you can get spat at (accidentally) on the street or shoved (not/never an accident) in the subway by elderly women in pink Hello Kitty tracksuits and purple sunvisors. but the chances of you getting accosted in the subway between sindang and cheonggu by an indian PhD student whose pickup line is "are you from bolivia?" is waaaaay higher than actual physical assault. but psychic assault... that's a different blog entry altogether. tscha!


* the same way that the first time i went to a starbucks in seoul, when i asked for a pot of "pressed coffee, cafe verona please", the barista guy looked at me as if i had ordered some freshly squeezed iguana juice, crushed skull on the side please.

** horrible dated slang courtesy of siege

*** a.k.a. our favorite convenience store where they sell canned silkworm pupas, canned shellfish that look like blanched foreskins, meat popsicles and benetton brand condoms, salt that looks and tastes like laundry soap, laundry soap that smells like chalkdust, among other delectables. also features a guy behind the counter (the owner?) with a very monk-ish mien. really, he does! i've seen waaaay too many monks in waaaaay too many buddhist temples. i know the look. and he looks very meditative and zen while lugging huge boxes of frozen food into his little flourescent kingdom. will write more later about other characters that populate the family mart kingdom. really, i will! am just in the middle of a crazy translation project right now.

pink flamingoes (clap-clap, clap-clap clap)*

i really don't get tennis. neither do i get football. but we just got back from watching the world cup game vs togo with a gajillion koreans at city hall.

picture this: cool giant TV screens, lots of beer being sold by ajushees (old manongs), fireworks, couples in identical red outfits, girls wearing devil-horn headbands (di nila kayang dalhin i'm sorry), the savory smell of stewed silkworm pupaes wafting through the night air (made me vomit into my mouth every so often). parang edsa 2 but waaaaaay dorkier. all these silly dances and baduy songs/cheers that kinda underscore what looks like an inferiority complex they're trying very hard to hide.

yes, i'm still wearing my devil-horn headband, a gift from siege's doowomi (korean buddy-helper-tutor dude), min. mwahaha. ho ho ho. anyway...we really wanted to get hammered while watching but walking to & from the toilet through a snarling mob of koreans didn't quite appeal to us.

the game sucked big time. bano yung parehong team eh. nothing happened for like 40 minutes, just some desultory kicking of a ball around some big green field, accompanied by lots of racist hissing and sneering laughter from the xenophobes all around us whenever an african (athlete or audience, didn't really matter) appeared on the giant TV screens. togo scored the first goal. after the break and more pointless kicking, some hottie from the togo team got a red card, and korea managed a goal.

the crowd went into paroxysms of multifarious insanities too underwhelming to describe here. but i had to stand up just like everyone else or risk getting trampled by crazy kids finding validation and profound meaning in the scoring of a goal. yes, horns still on. but be patient, dear reader. there's a reason for my being snappish tonight.

to be brief about the nadir of this night: I BROKE MY CAMERA. it slipped from my wrist 30 mins before the game started, and it hit the pavement smack on the corner of the retractable lens. AAUUUGH. gusto ko umiyak but i'm still in a state of shock about it. hope to get it fixed as soon as we get back from the east coast beaches. must cut this short; gotta pack now. we leave at dawn.

* this is what we thought the korean football crazies were shouting every couple of breaths. apparently, it's "deh han-ming-guk" or "the great republic of korea." i like our version better.

a message from 4 years ago

was flipping through my journal just now (am waiting for laundry's rinse cycle to end) and saw that i'm pretty erratic about writing journal entries. i only write when something terribly interesting (or simply something terrible) had just happened. and so my journal makes my days seem more anguished than they actually were. funny how we never really put in stuff like: "brushed my teeth and flossed very carefully after having a huge albap lunch with my two professors" when in fact such mundane events are really the stuff of our lives.

and so i saw that i'd jotted down an SMS sent by a good friend on 31 may 2002, right after a breakup with a certain poststructuralist i had hooked up with. it's a quote from louise gluck and it was exactly the thing i needed at the time.

"we are all human. we protect ourselves as well as we can even to the point of denying clarity, the point of self-deception. and yet within this deception true happiness occured. so that i believe i would repeat these errors exactly. nor does it seem to me crucial to know whether or not such happiness is built on illusion: it has its own reality. and, in either case, it will end."

naui chinan chumal*

as i write this, i'm watching house on OCN (channel 21), eating red ginseng chocolate squares (white chocolate studded with rice crispies & smelling/tasting like a dank-ass moldy potato). am also jumping to the world cup game on MBC ESPN (channel 31) even if i dunno what the hell is going on; the commentary is in hanggukmal. that australian guy who plays dr. jesse spencer is such a hottie. am still a little disconcerted to see robert sean leonard breathing, walking and mugging for the TV cameras; in my head, he's still that sad kid in dead poets society who blew his brains out. i love that dr. house looks constantly demented. he's a hottie too, and the only actor who has me convinced of actually having attended med school. everyone else looks too damn pretty.

so anyway, i had a great weekend.

friday after class, we (me & jose carlos & j.d. from minneapolis na tinatawag naming girl emo; don't ask) went to a tourism trade fair at COEX mall. we had free tickets courtesy of pax coreana, a korean who'd grown up in baguio and who'd attended UP diliman around the same time i did. he's cool. so thanks to our buddy pax, we scored bagfuls of tourism-related loot like pens and cellphone thingies and brochures. we had a nice omurice (omelet+rice) fusion dinner then went home to attend the crimson house roof party.

we shouldn't have bothered. it was sad as heck, just mr. manager, his friend, the ex-manager and a couple of not very scintillating guys from the 2nd and 5th floors. i had to go rescue the two boys by reminding them that we had an appointment we were already late for. am not very good at lying through my teeth so i let j.c. do most of the oh-i'm-so-sorry-flustered acting. we then went to nearby chamsari-gil: j.c. in a pink tank top, j.d. in emo-ish floppy hair, and me wearing a chemi issoyo green silk top. we were kinda playing the "agawan ng demographics" game. ever since j.d. started hanging out with us, we noticed that we had been getting fewer stares than usual from xenophobic koreans in the subway. the stares from angry-looking korean men were now being directed at our thin & looming friend (he's of scandinavian stock, so tall he has to duck to enter the train). so j.c. decided to show some skin, and in a manner of speaking, so did i. for the first time, i beat them both. ha. ha. ha. if i knew it was that easy, i wouldn't have bothered.

we got hammered by chugging down a pitcher of yogurt-flavored soju (a little like yakult that delivers a giant kick in the head) and chewing on an equally giant dried squid. we then dragged ourselves through the rain to a nure bang (karaoke room) run by a nice old ajimma (old lady). the toilet was expectedly nasty, as these places go, but being confronted by a crusty squat-type thingy when you can't feel your feet is just the most horrific thing ever. especially in a country that styles itself as being of the first world. so you learn to hold it in, as real men do. up at the nure bang, we were all drunk enough to pick faintly emo-ish songs from the english list. i remember we screeched & moaned through stuff like "with or without you", "stan", "new year's day", "the tide is high" (which j.c. was surprised i knew; kala niya talaga atomic kitten yung original; tsk kabataan nga naman), "tom's diner", "never been to me." the high point of the evening, i think, was seeing j.d. writhe and shake his very skinny ass to something by the cranberries, "dreams" i think. my personal favorite was weezer's "say it ain't so"; made me feel ten years younger. was suprised to see mono's "life in mono" on the list too. how does that work??? anyway, we saw the rain had stopped so we crawled back to crimson house at around 1 in the morning.

saturday, i think i got up at 2 p.m., having spent most of the night reading pico iyer's video night in kathmandu. went to itaewon with the two boys for breakfast/lunch/dinner at our favorite pakistani resto, spitting distance from the big mosque. this was around 6 p.m. as always, we went by subway getting the same curious/slightly antagonistic stares from the usual xenophobes that often haunt the seoul metro. at itaewon, i had a good mutton biryani (yes, i know it's meat; minsan lang naman eh) and a horrible watery dal soup that i had to make timpla with the salt and pepper shakers on the table. we then went to our favorite english used bookshop What the Book? where i scored iyer's tropical classical. i put the book in my bag with a mixture of thrill and horror and promptly declared an indefinite moratorium on book acquisition. that was two days ago. it hasn't been easy but i think i can actually manage this.

sunday was cool. tristan & i got j.c. to attend church with us. we go to the 11 a.m. service of the onnuri english ministry at its seobinggo campus. yes, that's what they call it: campus. onnuri is one of the super-hyper-turbo-megachurches here in seoul; it even has its own TV station. walking from the subway station to church, we are greeted by row after row of imported cars owned by the onnuri congregation: lots of BMWs & benzes, the occasional porsche & jaguar. the service and the message was good, even if the preacher (a guest pastor from some church in LA) was a little scatty, like a beat poet high on God but having terrible acid flashbacks. we then subwayed our way to COEX mall for a somewhat awful sbarro lunch, then waited for our other pinoy friends. we didn't really do anything, just talked outside, had a high-endish food court dinner, hung out. kinda like what pinoys do on sundays in manila. my friends wanted to buy perfume at the COEX duty free shop but that involves the insane requirement of picking up your purchase at incheon airport, 2 hours away from seoul. WTF??? wag na lang noh.

today is not technically part of the weekend but it sure felt like it. it's the last day of the spring term and there were only four hakseng (students) in class, out of our usual 14. the news team and their engineers went on a junket to jeju island, courtesy of their sponsor organization, the filmmakers had to finish some projects, and i think asma wasn't feeling well early today. we mostly filled out evaluation forms then learned about the weather in korean. after a good lunch at well-being refectory (free yakult!), we went to namsan (a hill they like to call a mountain) where you can find the seoul tower. seoul is supposed to be famous for it but frankly, i'd never heard of seoul tower till a month after i got here. havig said that, the tower has some lovely features better expressed visually. pictures here soon. really, i will. dinner was supposed to be at the swanky Lotte** food court in nearby myeongdong but the department store is closed today for some reason so we ended up eating rather good cheap-ish shrimpburgers at Lotteria, a fastfood place like Jolibee but without mascots and they use real cheese from the netherlands.


* my last weekend
** this is a nation of conglomerates. Hyundai is not just a carmaker; there's also Hyundai department store. Lotte makes not just gum but also drinks, snacks, random food items. it's a department store much like Rustan's but it's also the force behind Lotte World, sort of like a korean disneyland, complete with the gaya-gaya castle logo.

notes to self

note #1
1) stop overreading; there is no subtext.
2) melodrama is best overheard, not self-inflicted.
3) knock it off; it's all in your head.

note #2
1) play the seoul tourguide sunday & monday to stepmum's best friends who arrive tomorrow for a medical conference in busan.
2) instead of studying for finals next week, go to insadong on saturday to work out a walking tour for them.
3) buy stuff for the family; do not forget the all-important hanbok (traditional korean costume) for kitty.

note #3
may be useful for writing -- here in seoul, they use the word "well-being" (n) instead of "healthy" or "natural" (both adj). hence, you can buy a loaf of "well-being bread" at LOTTE for 200 pesos. the word is further corrupted by being pronounced "welbing" or "welping" depending on the speaker's place of origin.

note #4
1) stop blogging now.
2) memorize your speechee for tomorrow.
3) stop blogging now.