Old-ish Mural by Guro Digital Complex Station

Went to dinner last night with old pal Adam, and he located a good place for 0-차, and sent it to me on Kakao.


Guro Digital has a wonderful eating street, but this post is not about that.
No, it's about this:


This mural on a wall across from the CU, which is in a very new building. The wall and the mural, by contrast, not particularly new, and seem to depict life in Seoul in the eighties (?).


This area used to be a grimy manufacturing hub until new government came along and tore everything (well, a lot of things) down to convert it into a high-tech hub, a digital complex. In the background below, you can see one of the big blue-glass office buildings that now dominate the landscape.


Below is a photo of me and the "neon lights of Guro-gu" taken by Tanner back in 2011.

Chuseok at Emart, 2021

Spam, or other brands of spiced ham processed meat food product like "Ri-cham", are the most popular Chuseok gifts. Chuseok, of course, is the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, the mid-autumn festival, during which time people return to their hometown, and they do so bearing gifts. The center of the second set above flavored Dong Won tuna--olive and grape. Below is a row of "anshim" or rib meat, more tuna, and a variety of cooking oils.


Check out the price of those mushrooms: 13,000 W, about US$12 per 100 grams! Below, a dried anchovy, sardine and shrimp set, and a variety of red ginsing and garlic sets.


I was surprised to realize that I have only done one post similar to this during my whole time in the Seoul Patch, back in 2009. You can have a look to see how much inflation has occured since then: when it comes to high-priced mushrooms, the answer is, not much. But gift sets aren't just food. Here's body wash, shampoo and six tubes of toothpaste, and a sanitizing nod to the times we live in:

It's that time of year ...

Springtime! And election season!

Starting with election season.


School elections first.

March is also the time when flowers start to bloom here in The Big Big City, the earliest barbinger being the kenari, or golden bell, below the first blooms and then in full bloom:


But the cherry blossoms are probably everyone's favorites:



Next Wednesday is a major by-election, particularly for mayor of Seoul--the previous mayor, Park Won-soon, seoul's longest-serving mayor, committed suicide last July in a sexual harrassment scandal. The dozen or so mayor candidates are identified by number according to party, and use a few means of feet-on-the-ground canvassing:


Same intersection, different days:



You see, and mainly hear, a lot of these, too. Trucks with giant video screens and several volunteers singing and dancing while loudspeakers blare--at my intersection from 7 AM to 8 PM, non-stop:



Big, beautiful magnolia blossoms:


And, as April arrives, the azaleas are just beginning to show off:

Christmas Cake 2020

I realize Ihave not posted in about eight months, and there is a reason for that, which I may get into later (Oh, I'm fine, no worries, aside from this terrible Covid pandemic), but there are only two traditional annual posts on this blog, and one of them is the annual trip to the Yeouido Spring Flower Festival. That is the post immediately preceding this one.

And this is the other one. The Korean Christmas cake. I know this one looks a lot like last year's, but sometimes that can't be helped. To see more, click on the Christmas cake link in the label cloud.

And Merry Christmas to you all!

The Post Where the Yeouido Flower Festival Should Be

Sadly, this year's Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival was cancelled--not just the tents and shows and activities, access to the street was closed down. Frankly, every year looks pretty similar, as you can see by clicking on "cherry blossom festival" in the Label Cloud on the right, but it has been a highlight of springtime in Seoul for me since 2009.

So, instead, I'm going to post up a few pictures of flowers I see every day during my ten minute walk to and from school.

These are literally on the walkway once inside the school grounds.


The hillside that abuts the campus on the sidewalk is ablaze with azaleas:


Here's hoping that next year Seoulites will be able to visit the cherry blossoms around Yeouido, and that I will be among them, to share pictures with you then!

Spring 2020 is coming!

As the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted virtually every aspect of life here in Korea and around the world, my annual "first blossoms of spring" post serves this year particularly to remind us that, in the larger sense, life goes on. Korean public schools have been postponed for a total of five weeks so far, baseball and soccer seasons will have a late start, the Tokyo Olympics will be rescheduled, but the flowers are blooming on their regular schedule. Gotta love Nature!

As the first photo shows, with the Magnolia campbellii in the foreground, spring has even managed to spruce up my school frontage with a nice splash of color.


On the other corner of the main building at school is a purple variety:


But the first flowering harbinger of spring is always the "kenari", the Golden Bell, scientifically Forsythia koreana, which is the bush that lines both sides of Airport Highway along my walk to school.


Another of our first bloomers on the peninsula is the azalea, member of the rhododendron family:


My recently downloaded plant recognition app (PlantSnap), which is really really cool--take a picture, inside or outside the app, and it does a pretty good job telling what plant you're looking at--insists this is Prunus cerasus, or sour cherry, but I think it's the "Chinese apricot"--maehwa in Korean.


And finally, right next to the school, is this fabulous entry, that I think actually is sour cherry:


Caveat, I am not a botanist, I am just a middle aged guy who likes flowers. Regular visitors to my Seoul patch surely know this, but if you didn't click on "flowers" in the label cloud for 41 other posts that have lots of pics of, um, flowers. From Korea, and from my travels around Asia since I came here in 2008.

Majang Meat Market

I had heard of this place, and was excited that my buddy Adam organized a dinner trip to the eastern side of Seoul, just past Wangsimni sta. on line 5, the Majang Meat Market.


It was pretty deserted during this outing, since the coronavirus has led many Koreans, quite sensibly, to stay at home. Just an update after my Cambodian vacay, I spent two weeks in "self-quarantine" before coming back to work this week. School has been postponed until (at this writing) March 23rd from the usual opening day of March 2nd, but teachers are expected to periodically come to work for planning.
A covered arcade of three or four streets, mostly retail customers deal with shops like this, which offer high-quality 'hanu' beef at reasonable prices.


It is also a wholesale center, with highly photographable offal like intestines, beef hearts, livers and etc.


We selected two packages of different "modem" or sampler sets, totaling 120,000 W (approx. USD 100) for four guys. They look pretty damn good! There are numerous restaurants, mainly upstairs, where you take your prize to grill up.


We went to Hanu Town, where they charge a 5000 W plate fee per person, which is pretty reasonable, since that's paying for your real wood charcoal and all the banchan--kimchi, samjang, vegetables, etc. And they get the proceeds from all your beer and soju.


We ate and drank and conversed delightfully for a good two hours. Each cut of beef, curated by Adam, was better than the one before. Then we finished up at a foreigner-run pub for a couple drafts from Magpie before finally making the long, full-bellied trek home.


Highly recommended! A great evening out, coronavirus and all!