5 "first things" that happened this weekend

1) friday night, had fruit-flavored soju for the first time with mincheol, my dowoomi (korean buddy) and his girlfriend, hyun-ook. it was more peach juice than soju so we ordered the plain stuff and mixed that in. apparently, korde students are known for being sul-kureh, which translates to "drinks like a whale." which is what some people call me here. now, i don't drink at all that much...maybe they're just surprised to see me knock back shot after shot of the fiery stuff. maybe because i don't look like i drink at all?

2) went ice skating for the first time saturday noon with mincheol. there's a skating rink at the university and so through the alcohol haze the night before, i agreed to check it out. just getting there was a chore; korea university is a big campus, not quite like diliman but seems bigger because it's hilly and the way to the rink was mostly uphill. will spare you the painful details but the whole experience can be summed up as "two hours of falling on my ass." at the end of the futile exercise, my right wrist was swollen (here i blame an old wall climbing injury) and i had bruises all over. mincheol kinda panicked and brought me to...

3) an acupuncturist. actually, hyun-ook brought us there. mincheol mainly made the strange hissing noises koreans make to show that they're deep in thought. btw, they don't like the term "acupuncturist" here in korea. instead, these venerable professionals are called oriental medicine doctors because as yeajin said, "they really are doctors." i just don't like the term "oriental", is all. reeks of exoticization. anyway, after 15 minutes of putting my pincushion of a wrist under a heat lamp, the swelling disappeared. went for another session today and if it still hurts tomorrow, i'll have another go at the needles. now i have to go around wearing a wrist support. it makes a good fashion accessory, and attracts sympathetic cooing from people. while it's not my first acupuncture session, it's the first time that i was actually scared for myself here in korea. i could've really broken something.

4) met a couple of palestinian writers at a party thrown by a group of korean writers. so...first time to meet people from palestine, and first time to hear korean writers talk without feeling a little embarrased for them. i still get a twinge of annoyance when i remember some of the non sequiturs i heard during the seoul young writers festival. granted, the korean writers at the festival had a different agenda. and this gathering was really a sort of "bridge between korea and palestine" (the title of the event), at times overtly political. some people read poems, most of us just ate and boozed.

5) first time to attend a church here in seoul and felt truly blessed by the sermon. the first one i went to (on palm sunday) was myongdong cathedral, the next one (easter) was a baptist church that just left me in a foul mood the whole day because they turned out to have the kind of redneck us-versus-them hellfire-and-brimstone theology that gives christians a bad rep. another one i attended near my dorm has potential but i didn't get much out of the sermon; i will definitely go back there because it's a mere 10-minute walk away. so anyway, last sunday, i attended onnuri community church. a most misleading name because it's a hyper-duper-turbo-megachurch that has its own TV station and everything. masyadong kano yung accent ng kor-am pastor pero may laman yung message that reached out to me.

all in all, a pretty good weekend. also: went malling at LOTTE department store with other pinoys from korde (joan, tristan, ferdie, siege + raffy from some other univ), and to a nurebang (karaoke) at jonggak district where we sang, among other things, some eraserheads and ogie alcasid and other such standards. they even had "anak" by freddie aguilar pero di na namin pinatulan.

playing with light

some recent photos taken in a small room at a traditional korean village somewhere in andong, south of seoul. you'd be surprised at what you can do with a camera, a window, and that little bit of time given to you between lunch and a tea ceremony. photos by jose carrrrlos, taken may 10th at around 3pm.

where have all the flowers gone?

i expected spring to last much longer than this. we've been here for only a little less than two months now and already, we've had a taste of three seasons. when we arrived end of march, the air still had a touch of winter chill and there were days of cruel freezing rain. then spring happened, so slowly that we barely noticed the changes. the first day of class, the row of small trees below looked pathetic with spindly branches that were more like bare twigs. we could see the bird nests perched high up in certain trees but they were all empty.

we knew it was spring when we started hearing birdsong mingling with the sounds of early morning traffic. the birds came back from their warm vacations down south, some of them to their deaths. i remember seeing one drop at our feet during one breaktime sometime in april. we hang out right outside the international studies hall where we take our classes, drinking vending machine coffee and basking in weak watery sunlight. and so one morning a bird just plopped dead right in front of us. some people said something about bird flu. i just thought maybe the bird saw some clouds against a stretch of blue, and mistook the glass windows on the third floor for the sky.

i was very tempted to call this photo "on seeing the 97% perfect girl one beautiful april morning," after haruki murakami. but now i think "still life with fat face" is more appropriate. i know it's weird to throw fat jokes at myself pero inuunahan ko lang kayo. at least when i say it, i mean it only 46% of the time.
some coy posturing before going to class. seriously, i really miss seeing those all flowers bursting from the strange swollen bumps on the otherwise skeletal trees. the rains swept the blossoms from the branches in less than a week. i wish i could say that the white petals fluttered to the ground like a thousand dying butterflies but it wasn't anything like that. they just fell with each slight gust of wind, turned brown and gross, and gunked up the gutters.

this is a poor attempt to capture that weird white light that can be seen only when early morning sunlight shines through the smooth petal of a flower. if you turn the brightness of your monitor waaay up and stare at it for as long as you can without blinking, nothing special will happen. you'll just hurt your eyes. hee hee.
here's a photo of plummier times, when everything for us was new and exciting. but after a little more than a month, some mild form of cabin fever set in, and we realized that some measure of alone time was needed to keep us from pelting each other with stuffed bunnies and nacho chips. photo taken by asmarani sometime in april.

a quasi-close up of some flowers on a tree i saw on our visit to nami island last april 14th. i tried zooming in more but this is the closest i could get. the tree was pretty high, as can be seen in the photos below.

some random guy taking photos of flowers. i thought it would be cool to do the same so i did. still on nami island, 14th april.

same scene as above, but without the stranger taking photos. here, it's just some woman about to walk across the foreground in a brave attempt to ruin my picture. i think her attempt worked very well. i don't mean to grouse, just that i turned on my TV for the first time today (yes, it took me that long to find the power cord) and saw part of an episode of House. i think some of the sarcasm rubbed off on me. either that or i'm just naturally this charming.

now, i'm not sure why i took this. it's just some branch on some tree on some island. but of course, it can be so much more than that. i just can't really articulate it so i'll just say "it looks nice, noh?"

the roadtrip soundtrack

we've gone on three field trips so far: (1) a school junket to nami island--a riverine islet named after some ancient general that's actually a shrine to the winter sonata TV series, (2) the ACPI-sponsored field trip to historic gyeongju city that included an overnight stay at the golgul buddhist temple where someone threw my slippers into the barnyard*, and (3) the SYWF field trip to a traditional village, a temple and a confucian academy down south in andong or thereabouts.



on all three trips, i found myself surrounded by people sleeping with their mouths open. so for lack of anything better to do, i listened to mp3s on my trusty palm tungsten. i could've read wyslawa szymborska or j.g. ballard but i didn't want to risk motion sickness and the possibility of high velocity vomiting in front people i actually respect. so... here are some of the songs playing in the background as fields, mountains and various greenery rushed past my window:

blister in the sun (violent femmes)
tainted love (soft cell)
life in mono (mono)
caramel (suzanne vega)
love will tear us apart (cover by jose gonzalez)
an ocean apart (julie delpy)
knowing me, knowing you (cover by the lemonheads)
killing moon (echo & the bunnymen)
summertime (cover by janis joplin)
nothing but the sky (ivy)
un rayo del sol (le mans)
#41 (dave matthews & tim reynolds)
with or without you (cover by keane)
moonchild (cibo matto)
je t'aime tant (julie delpy)
come here (kath bloom)
marlene on the wall (suzanne vega)
for nancy (pete yorn)
les kid nappeurs (marc collin)
adios ayer (jose padilla)
bright yellow gun (throwing muses)
in a little while (u2)
devil mood (smoke city)
hwc & supernova (liz phair)
underneath it all (no doubt)
homeward (the sundays)
two of us (the beatles)
our house (madness)
into your arms (lemonheads)
cry me a river (ella fitzgerald)
teardrop (massive attack)
teardrop (cover by jose gonzalez)
what i am (edie brickell & the new bohemians)
mrs. robinson (cover by the lemonheads)
tropicando (thievery corporation)

a little crazy, no? keep in mind, folks, that these were three different trips made in a span of a little less than 30 days. plus my playlist was set to random. heh heh.

NB: photos takes april 14th during our trip to nami island, by the talented jose carrrrlos**. they have a swervy music video look to them, probably because the bus was swerving at the time, the photographer had little space to maneuver, and he was restrained by the length of his ipod earbuds. anyway, they also look like they belong to the inside of a CD sleeve. the photo below would be the cover, i think. the snooty artistes among you will immediately recognize the inspiration for it***.



* still haven't figured out if this was (a) the result of some territorial dispute with a band of scary mongolian chicks, (b) a manifestation of how much i am hated because most people here think i'm the girlfriend of a certain beautiful boy, or (c) just some idiot prank pulled by a couple of filmmaker chicks from singa & injaaa. three weeks after the fact, C looks to be the most likely explanation.

** a bad approximation of alejandra c's chilean/argentinian accent. probably the coolest girl i'll ever meet this year. God, please prove me wrong!

*** marcel duchamp's 1919 work/vandalism entitled LHOOQ, which is a cheap postcard-sized reproduction of la joconde plus a mustachio hand-drawn over that very famous smile of hers. francophones, kindly stop giggling and/or rolling your eyes.

out of my funk, finally

so i was in a funk, as some of you may have noticed. no blog updates, no creepy new photos of my face getting rounder with every dish of fish roe on rice that i eat. today is officially one week since i rocked the boat during our roundtable session at the seoul young writers festival. it was a week of "mental calisthenics" (to quote siege), lots of cozy writerly chats with eastern europeans, swooning over the accents of the latin americans and the nice jawline of one particular romanian. the week-long party ended friday night at a club in the hondae district. siege did a performance that absolutely rocked while i crooned my way desperately through noel cabangon's "Kanlungan" a capella. we woke up to the bleakest saturday in the history of human civilization, and the awful gloom officially ended just today.

and so today, after the requisite hours spent learning korean, we hied off to itaewon for some pakistani biryani, then to the philippine embassy for stuff to put in our booth at the international student festival on thursday. we had a long-ish stopover at What the Book?, an english-language bookstore with amazing titles, even within their used book selection. even after swearing not to buy anything, i scored pico iyer's classic Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. i wanted to get a couple more but... pissayo! too expensive. we had been avoiding the city hall area because of too many associations with the writers festival. such memories may deepen the abyss already inside the empty husks that were our selves.

but decided to go anyway today because the philippine tourism office is at the president hotel overlooking the lawn of seoul's city hall. had to subway back to koryo de hakkyo immediately after to watch a pseudo-latin music festival/concert that was kinda crappy (picture 6 girls in frilly white with scarlet satin sashes around their necks and waists earnestly breathing into mikes while clutching at each other's trembling sweaty hands). still, there was one or two memorable acts, including a very gay-looking spanish duo vouge-ing to an acoustic guitar, that made the 5,000 won fee worth it. dinner at ever-reliable kookdang with the wonderful manang kookdang chatting with us as she wiped down a table. and then...

surprise, surprise! siege found a little packet at the crimson house lobby with my name on it. from the philippines! with orchid stamps! and philpost tape sealing the edges! no return address, my name in handwriting i didn't recognize. i, of course, ripped it open and saw a lovely little gift from my friend E. he's back home in turkey now on vacation so he must have sent it before he left manila. it's been a few hours since i saw the packet but the perma-smile is still on my face. and apparently, i'm not the only who's been blessed today. a good friend of mine just got an email that i know he had been dying to receive. it's great to know that some things are rock solid and not just in your head. yes, some engines can keep running on vapors, relying on wind, lift and momentum; but after today, i can truly say that having a full tank makes a world of difference.*

* do excuse the weird metaphors here. i'm too happy to even attempt to play the artiste tonight.

sunsets, or the lack thereof

three more things i'm still not used to:

1) there are no colors in the sky at sunset. at least not like the huge fiery streaks the bleed across the sky like we have in the philippines. the sky here is either white or grey. on sunny days like today, it's a pale blue. some evenings, it's a weird otherworldly blue like the color of your favorite bareta laundry bar, plus 5,000 volts of electricity.

2) there seems to be no sunset at all. one minute there's still light, another minute it's dark as heck. and no telltale fire in the sky to signal the difference.

3) there's still daylight here at 7:30 PM!!! the first time i noticed it, i kinda freaked out. i thought it was still 5 PM (because in my mind, 6 PM means sunset and fiery skes) but i looked at my watch and it was past seven. laugh all you want but i felt betrayed by nature: here, i can't even trust the sky to tell me whether it's night or day! i'm starting to see an upside to this, though. i was told it can be daylight here till 8 PM, which means i can go up to the roof and read until said time. yay.

* the first photo is the view from my southeast-facing window. the view above is sunset seen from southwest-facing window. see? no bright colors there. but still nice, no?

view from the top

the first time i went up the rooftop of crimson house was also the first quasi-sunny afternoon i spent outdoors in seoul. people who live here say the weather this spring has been very very strange. it snowed a couple of weeks before our arrival at the end of march, and the cherry blossoms and other blooming things were quickly blown away by the freezing rains that came in the weeks that followed. so you can just imagine the utter utter joy i felt that day we went up the roof. the sky was clear and the sun was warm on my face. of course, we had to celebrate by taking a slew of photos. below you will see some ridiculous posturing; call them my titanic evita moment and leave it at that.


this is koryo de hakkyo, as seen from the crimson house rooftop. it was still cold-ish whe we took this. more recently, in these balmy days approaching summer, it's normal to see hordes of students sprawled on the lawns. much like the sunken garden at 5pm sans the trash, the poor kids picking through the trash, and the occasional used unmentionables.


and this is me looking ridiculously happy at not having to wear three layers of clothing. see those pointy spires in the distance? churches. there are lots of them here, most of them sporting neon red crosses at night. but don't let the spires fool you. those could be the only remotely gothic thing about the church; many of them are in squat squalid buildings. the spires just make them look good from far away.


speaking of squalid... it's a word that italo calvino uses many times in Hermit in Paris to describe the 1950s america he saw during his brief travels there. and as we all know, that's not at all how america chooses to remember itself. squalid, squat, squalor--these words are just dripping with malice. which is not my intent with the pictures below. it's just fascinating that there are little pockets of squalor hidden behind the spiffy skyscrapers and wide avenues of this sprawling city. take that seoul metropolitan authority, heh heh. they give the city character, i think.


you can see here some old houses squeezed into the small side streets of dongdaemun-gu, aka my neighborhood. note the traditional peaked roofs and tiles used. i saw exactly the same architecture when we visited gyeongju historic city last week. more on that trip in another post, promise.



from this vantage point, seoul doesn't look very pretty. it doesn't smell very pretty either. and this is what suprises me most about seoul--even in the most fashionable and swanky touristy places like insadong, myeongdong and the hotels around city hall, you always always get a whiff of the sewers when you least expect it. like when you're eating ice cream or laughing with your mouth wide open. mukhang makati CBD pero amoy recto. bad wordplay there but am not making this up.


i like this building because it looks so incongruously european. and if you look closely, the house right beside it has a traditional korean peaked roof with tiles and everything. in the distance, you can see some of the buildings of korea university. at night, they light up in lurid beerhouse colors so that they look like a cross between disneyland and hugh hefner's porn palace.


between those high buildings, you can see the elevated street that runs past my neighborhood. i can't really see it from my windows. on our first sunday here, we walked towards it because we were looking for a church and we had seen some pa-gothic spires and the telltale neon red crosses near it. i was suprised at how huge it actually is. it's so there. and yet at night, it seems to melt into the blackness.

the day i took this photo, i actually ran up and down the stairs several times from the roof to my room. it was a cloudy and very windy day best spent indoors in a heated room but every so often, the sun would shine and i couldn't resist the idea of me basking in the sun on the rooftop. so i'd grab a book and run. by the time i'd reach the top, the sun would be obscured by clouds and it would feel chilly again, so i'd run back down to get a wool sweater and this green silk scarf you see being blown artfully by the wind. that's korde (pronounces korr-deh) behind me. short for koryo de hakkyo, or korea university.


this was taken on that same day. yes, it's a backlit photo and you can barely see anything but i do like the little rainbow i caught there in the middle.


these i took on a different day, a week or so later when the weather was definitely warmer. don't knock it. i really tried to look like a three-headed monster wearing a red sweater in this photo. again, that rare sight of a blue sky can be seen behind me.


the big empty crimson house rooftop with no one and nothing in it. not even me, heh heh. that's my orange camera case in the foreground, some parts of seoul in the background. fake gothic spires somewhere in the middle. i just like how quiet and bare the roof looks compared to the noise and bustle of the city out there.