Sports Day 2010

As this post's title might suggest, today was Sports Day at Young-il go. I'll limit myself to three photos from each category. (Remember to just click on a picture if you want to see the full size version.)

Basketball: Only the third grade (HS seniors to you and me) has a basketball tourney on Sports Day, dunno why. So it is kind of an insular affair--but everybody seems to love the new rubberized court surface:




Soccer: While the third year is playing basketball, fisrt and second play soccer. This is followed by a student vs faculty game, which was a hard-fought 2 - 2 tie.




Relay Race: On the dirt of the playground, in tennis shoes, wipeouts are pretty common.





The Kids: A few general shots of the for a feel of the atmosphere and a look at some of the faces of Young-il Sports Day.

Korea at the World's Fair

An article in yesterday's Korea Times reminded me that the 2010 Shanghai World's Fair has been open for nearly two weeks now. But you don't need to get in a panic--the closing date is October 31. Modern world's fairs or International Expos always run six months, and must take place inside one calendar year.

The last fair was in Zaragoza, Spain in 2008, and the next will be held right here in Korea--Yeosu--in 2012. These are both "recognised" fairs, smaller in scale, and lasting only three months. Yeosu, 여수시, 麗水市, literally "peaceful water city", is the largest city in Jeollanam-do at the center of Korea's south coast. The theme of Yeosu 2012 will be: "The Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and Sustainable Activities". Frankly, I think Okinawa 1975 said it better: "The Sea We Would Like to See".

But getting back to Shanghai 2010, it is expected to shatter almost every world's fair record. Size: 1300-acre site straddling the Huangpu River; attendance: 70-100 million people projected (for comparison, all Disney parks combined draw about 60 million in a six month span); participation: 200 countries will be represented. The theme is "Better City, Better Life".

Korea looks to have a really cool pavilion; you can learn about it here (includes a nice video): http:// www.expo2010-korea.or.kr /en/kopavilion/ kor_tour.jsp. The pavilion is a multidimensional cube with 3-D Hangeul characters. The mascot is "Dauri", which means "everyone living in harmony."

But none of this is the concern of the Korea Times article I mentioned at top, which has the following headline: 1900 Korean pavilion in Paris Expo disclosed. Vicente Gonzales Loscertales, head of the BIE (a Paris-based body that sanctions world fair events), donated several rare documents relating to the fin de siecle Universal Exposition. Korea put in its first fair appearance at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, famous among other things for the first Ferris Wheel.

Le Petit Journal, a French daily, covered the Korean Pavilion at the 1900 Paris Expo:

"The charm of this wooden building, colored in primary colors and covered with a roof of Far East beauty, attracts the public gaze," the newspaper said.[...] "The pavilion impresses visitors portraying Korean resources and industry as it displays collections of the king and artifacts brought by French who lived in Korea."

MaeHwa Park in Bloom

This is the small park next to my building; I visit frequently for some fresh air and sunshine during the appropriate times of year. Spring is, of course, the most colorful time, and right now the azaleas are in bloom:





In addition to azaleas and some Chinese apricots (which is what maehwa means), there are stands of bamboo, and a lone peony shrub:


I have written about this little patch of green before (just click on Maehwa Park in the label cloud at right); you cannot travel more than a few blocks in Seoul's residential areas without stumbling across one of these postage stamp parks.

Park Transfer Rumors Abound

Park Ji-sung is the biggest thing in Korean sports--yes, even bigger than Yun-a. So it is only to be expected that the slightest ripple of a rumor involving him becomes a giant wave crashing on the shores of the Korean newspapers and blogosphere.

And so it to be taken with a grain of salt that the Manchester United midfielder is being traded to Bayern Munich, or even that, as the Korea Herald reports, Bayern "is ready to offer the British club 7 million pounds ($10.5 million)" for his tranfer. Still Man U is in a bit of a monetary pinch, having spent big for some big-name players in the last several years. They paid 4 million pounds (then USD 8 million) to transfer him from PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2005.

But Park has received increased playing time of late, is only twenty-nine, and is thought to be one of manager Sir Alex Ferguson's favorites. I agree with the Times' closing sentence on the subject: "Park is not likely to choose to move by himself. Contracted to United until 2012, Park said earlier this week that he wants to retire in a Manchester United jersey."

Meanwhile, Soccerway reports that Park Chu-young is headed back to South korea for treatment after an injury received in his club AS Monaco's extra-time loss to PSG in last week's French Cup final. This in preparation for Korea's World Cup bid.

Two more stories of soccer interest in the Times: first, a report about the national teams preparations for South Africa--the final roster will be announced May 31, only 10 days before the world's most popular sporting event kicks off; and second, a story about FC Seoul's success in building it's fan base and putting rear ends on the seats in the stadium. I have mentioned the increased attendance I've noticed at games this season, and the story corroborates it:

Almost all of the professional sports outfits in Korea, including FC Seoul, fail to make a profit. FC Seoul's gate receipts totaled some 1.9 billion won ($1.7 million) last season, way below the 6 billion won taken by the Lotte Giants in the KBO league.
Still, prospects are bright for FC Seoul's sustained popularity. It aims to attract 30,000 spectators to each home game this season, from 15,919 last year, and it looks achievable so far, the club says.

Here is what Sangam looks like from the north end with 61,000 people inside:

This is (Not) Jeopardy!

Well, yesterday was intended to be a soccer afternoon with friends. But I'll let The Stumbler explain what happened: click here to read! I was feeling 90% better than I had been, so I stayed at Sangam and got in after the lines had dissipated--there was only one section that was not sold-out. And so I did see three goals; Seongnam did not impress, and their offense never put together a sustained attack. (The score was 4 - 0 FCS. The announced attendance at the stadium was over 61,000.)

So, today it was back to the salt mines with the rest of them. You probably know, Dear Reader, that salt was historically a highly valued commodity, for preserving meat and fish, as well as for its essential biologicial roles, in regulating our body heat, among others. So much so, that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, at least in part, or paid in sort of ration coupons for salt, which is where the term "salary" comes from. And so, "the salt mines" as an idiom for workplace.

We've been playing Jeopardy, though mainly without the jeopardy aspect (i.e., losing points for a wrong guess, to encourage participation--except on the Daily Double); there are four teams, each with 9 or 10 players. I have strained the boundaries of geometry in putting together the desks into four large tables, and put four solo desks with chairs at the front. Players from each team rotate into the front chair for their turn at answering a question. If you are right, you stay, but everyone else goes back to the team table and is replaced by the next player.


This stretches the boundaries, also, of minimum participation--being one of nine or ten to rotate in is as far as I would consider going.

In Which Tuttle Has the Sniffles

I mentioned that I have a cold--in the past few days it has blossomed into a rich, bubbling sort of cold, with deep luxurious, productive coughs, but is now beginning to subside. Hopefully, I'll go to the soccer game tomorrow as planned.

I seldom get sick, but the weather has been really funky: cold, warm, cold, wet and cold, warm, etc., so it caught me.

It has been exam time at school, which means I have nothing to do, so I arranged earlier to take a pair of vacation days yesterday and today, since tomorrow is Children's Day, a national holiday in Korea. Meaning I had five straight days for the price of two.

So what did I do on my vacation? Slept. A lot. Like 10, 12 hours a day. And read. Also a lot.

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - "The most influential science fiction novel of the twentieth century", says the cover blurb. Published in Russian in 1921 (trans. by Mirra Ginsburg c. 1972), it is a clear precursor of Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, etc--thus a seminal work of the genre. Unfortunately, that doesn't serve to make it more readable. It is slow going, especially with the ham-handed symbolism, opaque lyrical turns, and a narrator who refuses to finish many of his ... In a future where logic has triumphed over imagination, life is regulated by the Table of Hours, the One State is controlled by the Great Benefactor, and people have become numbers. Indeed, our narrator is D-503, Builder of the Integral, a rocket ship which will soon blast off to carry this ideal system to the rest of the Universe. Except that I-330, a beautiful woman who D has come to love, may complicate those plans ...
  
• Rust by Yang Gui-ja - No. 15 in the Portable Library of Korean Literature consists of two stories, "Rust" and "Swamp". The first story details a Seoul advertising rep's life; rust, which he constantly struggles to remove from his kid's tricycle, stainless bowls, faucets, etc, symbolises his disappointment with how life has turned out. Very ordinary. The next tale is a lot better, a pair of ajumma's pleasant Sunday thrown into upheaval by the arrival--after twenty years in America--of one of them's old friend. His story, of events that happened when he was a middle school history teacher, provide a disturbing glimpse of life in Korea during the Park Chung-hee era of the 1970s social unrest.
  
• The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - Tells the story of the narrator's seduction as a schoolboy by a secretive older woman in 1950s Germany--as the setting might suggest, in addition to anything else, it is a rumination on the legacy of guilt from the Nazis. Even though I could see every twist well in advance, the story grew on me; the novelist's take on the way future events color and shape our memories is interesting, and very effective here. It is also interesting as a morality tale, as Hanna's secrets force Michael to make tough decisions. There is a 2008 movie starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, both of whom seem miscast, from my reading of it.
  
• Between Heaven and Earth by Yun Daenyeong - This book won the Yi Sang Prize, but I don't have the first guess as to why. It's not unreadable, I'll give it that, but there's nothing else good to say. The story centers on a guy who's supposed to be delivering condolences to his favorite uncle on the death of his aunt, but who instead follows a woman in a yellow overcoat (and the shadow of death) to an inn in some little town on the coast. Why does he do this? No one knows, least of all, I suspect, the author. What happens once they're there? Very little, beyond some conversations about fishing with the innkeeper. Oh, and they go to bed together. Note to self: great titles do not necessarily mean good books.
  
• Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith - No. 2 in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series focusing on the sensible and generously-proportioned Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's Miss Marple. Except, well, there's not really much detecting going on--these are not whodunits, so much as character studies, morality tales and ruminations on the history of Africa. And that's quite all right with me, as the book was a quick, engrossing read; it had a satisfying denoument with the unravelling of the over-arching case of an American youth who went missing ten years earlier. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's engagement to Mr JLB Matekoni is complicated by his adoption of an orphaned brother and sister; and the elevation of Mma Makutsi from secretary to Assistant Detective (with light secretarial duties) also occurs.
  

Rooftop on Cheolsan

Shout-out to pal Nick for the most awesome wingding of a birthday party last Saturday. The weather was great--the first really fine spring weather of the season, and here it is May!


The location was a villa apparently owned by Nick's old hagwon, currently inhabited by some of his friends. Dude name of Galen, above with me and Jin fronting the awesome vista looking northeast, spun the tunes and did a great job. I knew it would be good when I walked up and they were chillin' to some some Hank Sr.

Even though I was feeling poorly, and still am (my first illness in Korea--a common cold), it was a great time! Here's a shot of most of the participants before darkness fell and things got kind of silly. I did take photos of that but they aren't very good. Possibly because I was a bit silly, too...


Anyway, Happy Birthday, Nick!

New "Hangover Soup" Restaurant

So, how can I defend back-to-back restaurant reviews? Because I eat three meals a day, perhaps?

Today I went to a brand new haejangguk restaurant outside Deungchon station Exit 1--walk straight out, cross the street, and look to the right of the Papa John's building with the statue of the chrome paint brushes:

Cheongjindong Haejangguk Restaurant

And a nice bowl of soup is definitely in order today, as the temperature remains unseasonably cool. That was me being a master of understatement, since in truth the weather has been unbe-fucking-lievable. Since November, the temperature has not hit sixty-five degrees more than two consecutive days. As soon as the skies clear up and the sun starts to warm one's bones (like Saturday and Sunday) the mercury plummets and a drizzling rain soaks you. Then, the next day it clears a bit but the cold wind whips right through you. It's some kind of record, I'm pretty sure.

So, soup's up, and this place was a good choice! First of all, I like a restaurant which posts its menu outside, especially when they include prices:


I chose the 뼈해장국, bbyeo haejangguk, which is "bone hangover soup", only W4,500. This is the Korean version of ox-tail soup, and it is delicious:


There are several versions of haejangguk, including 선지 seonji-style, which is coagulated ox-blood. The bbyeo soup came with six bone sections from which you remove the meat (a receptacle for discarding them is provided), a bowl of rice, and of course panchan.

Cheongjindong has bench seating and a rustic style, but is brightly lit with a big front window and huge mirrors to reflect the light. I also like that it had old-style kimchi crocks on each table, so you can serve yourself, with baechu and turnip kimchi (on the top in this photo):

Garlic-Fed Duck

The garlic-fed duck restaurant about one block from Deungchon Station. I was invited to a lunch meeting of the Student Volunteering Committee, chaired by Mr Hwang--sure, it meant hanging around school for an extra hour and a half on an exam day, but it's well worth it!

We got the 오리념구이, spicy grilled duck. The heavy cast iron pot is heated up at the table, then the seasoned duck meat, together with sliced potato, string mushrooms, ddeok and onions, is dumped in to fry:


When it's nearly ready, greens are added and cooked down:


You eat all that up until you're down to the scrapings at the bottom of the pot:


The ajumma comes along and puts in some chopped lettuce, carrots, potatoes and rice, and stirs the goodness up from the pot:


Then some dried, shredded seaweed is sprinkled on top, and it's given a few minutes to cook up:


Delicious.

The finish is a soup with vegetables and pieces of white meat in it, kind of bland to cool the tongue after the spicy main course:

Some Flowers for Today

We had cooperative weather this weekend, so I went to Yeouido Park, my favorite, and got some photos of the spring flowers.

Below, Baby's breath, L.: Gypsophila (the Latin name means "lover of chalk", which correctly describes its preferred soil type):


A red flowering shrub, probably a Rhododendron:


The park has a few Bradford pears (Pyrus calleryana), uniquely fragrant, which are native to China and Korea:



Here is a magnolia flower on the walkway leading to the park. Wikipedia says magnolias evolved before bees; they were pollinated by beetles, so their blooms had to be tough to avoid damage:


Finally, people enjoying the nice weather in the park:

KIA Tigers vs Nexen Heroes

"Best baseball game ever," was the verdict of fellow traveler to Mok-dong Stadium Andy, who attended last Friday's match along with me, Nick and Jeremy. Chris and Max begged off--a big mistake! You will see why.

The game itself was exciting, as it was the first extra-innings game I can recall going to (2 - 2), and so therefore it was the first extra-innings game in which both teams scored in the added time.

The game was between cellar-dwellers Nexen (aka Seoul Heroes, Woori Heroes, Hyundai Unicorns, Taepyungyang Dolphins, Chongbo Pintos, Sammi Superstars, et al.) and the league's reigning champion KIA Tigers, so the result was unexpected. In the top half of the tenth, the visitors scored, but the Heroes pulled even in the bottom. Nexen reliever Son Seung-rok sat the KIA batters down in a hurry, and the Tigers' closer Lee Dong-hyeon started throwing a little wild, with passed balls allowing the winning run to advance to third then scamper home.


Nexen won 4 - 3, but not only that, they whitewashed KIA for the three game series to leap over Lotte into seventh place in the standings. This is all good, but it is not why "best game ever." This is:


We found seats, led by Jeremy, in the third row, right next to the Heroes cheerleaders. We had an up-close view of the action, in more ways than one (if you know what I mean, har har).




So, Mok-dong Stadium is awesome, and its amenities are very nice, as well. On the one hand, it is practically the only stadium that does any kind of security check; but on the other hand, it is the only stadium I've been to with the 1000 cc beer bottles for 6000 W! One full liter, that's big! How big? Look, it's the same size as Hyperion Tower, the tallest building in Korea!


ADDENDUM: My friend Mr Hwang tells me that he saw me cheering at the end of the game--he watched his Samsung Lions play Doosan via streaming video on naver, then switched over in time to catch the last of our game. And there I was.

Going Buggy

In the nineteen months that I have lived in my officetel, I have never seen a single cockroach, or ant, or any creepy-crawly. Likewise, I have rarely seen such critters in the streets or sidewalks--while it's true the unpleasant piles of garbage only lay around for a day or two at most, one would still expect to see a few decomposers seeking a treat.

And the same is true of flying insects--I can count on my fingers the number of mosquitos I have seen. They are big 'uns, though, I'll give 'em that. I have on a few occasions spotted the mosquito truck, however, with a small crowd of children trailing behind, dancing merrily in the noxious cloud it emits.

Therefore, I was a little surprised to read an article today in the Times about widespread fear resulting from reports that a species of mosquito transmitting viral diseases causing brain inflammation had been found. Apparently, the insect repellent aisles have been swept clean by worried citizens arming themselves against winged pests. Even though they've only been spotted on Jejudo, an island at the far southern tip of the peninsula, about as far from Seoul as it's possible to be, and still be in Korea!

I for one welcome our new insect overlords. But the article wasn't really about the mozzie scare: its headline is "Koreans Swayed by Herd Mentality"--not that that's necessarily news to some of us. According to a Seoul "analyst" quoted in the report:

Koreans are susceptible to herd mentality. When their neighbors do or believe something, many of them just follow suit. I regard Internet witch-hunting, real estate speculation or regional dominance of a certain party to stem from such a perspective.

Even the country's top financial officer worries about the unforseen effects of massive liquid asset shifts on the markets, particularly in real estate, once the recovery is on full steam.

In the bluntest language I have heard on the topic, the article, written by Kim Tae-qyu, also has this to say:

Another downside is that the mindset may call for mere conformity while intruding upon innovative thinking as amply demonstrated by partisan regionalism. In other words, herd mentality may choke innovation.
The nation's partisan regionalism, basically the long-lasting conflicts between Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces, has been improving over the past few decades.
However, such antagonism has still sprouted up during national elections. [... T]he only factor that counts is which party supports the candidate.