Brunch Recap

You know, me and Melz just straight brunching all last week. How it went down:

Monday


A photo of my awesome Korean handwriting that's supposed to impress you, unless you speak Korean, in which case you're not supposed to point out any errors. It says, "Melanie Mouse had a test Monday so we couldn't meet for brunch." It was either that or a photo of me eating brekkie by myself, without any pants on.


Tuesday


Gangnam Butterfingers. I don't understand why more Koreans don't open western-style brekkies considering every one I've ever seen in Koko has space for 50 people while the sidewalk outside has space for the 150 others waiting seven hours for pancakes. And omelettes start at $12. I know rent is high in Seoul, but maybe a hashbrown cart? Get this shizz started, yo.


Wednesday


I was supposed to go to the DMZ but tours were fully booked. Watched the Tigers beat the Rays (I see you, Rouleaus) and ate ramen instead. Again, no photo because no pants. Pasty whites represent.


Thursday


Got our Vietnam on, if only so I could brag about how awesome I am because the exact same $18 meal only cost $2.75 that one time I was straight ballin' in Saigon. $9 of that $18 was coffee.


Friday


We were all, Fah brunch since we have to meet up for 불곰's Indian birthday dinner tonight. 불곰 means Fire Bear. Fire Bear's Korean name is so much better than mine: 인절미, Injeolmi. Ja, Google, Wiki, or whatever either the Hangeul or Romanized version of my cool new name and, ja, again. At least I didn't spill anything on my shirt.

Summary
Five brunch dates in five days, a testament to my preference for never planning ahead: Had Melz and I made zero plans the week before we would have met for brunch twice regardless plus 불곰's birthday dinner. So don't bother asking what I'm doing next weekend because I don't know.

DSLR Punk

I'm waiting for the subway the other day and notice the most punk rock Koreans I've ever seen on the peninsula, one taking photos of the other. I send a text to no one in particular and four seconds later homegirl checks her phone, coincidentally.




She is confused because it says something about "nice photos, eh." She shouldn't be because she was just taking photos of her man, so duh. Boyfriend comes to have a look.




Then they're both like, durrrrr, we just said our goodbyes to Jerms four seconds ago.




Also, he's fat; let's take a photo of him taking a photo of us.




Now they are double-checking: Yes, he's fat.



Then everyone lived happily weekend after, the end.

Profiles of Me

A screen shot of my friend's blog:



Oh hai, that's me! Wonder what she wrote. Probably something deprecating since no one's ever had anything nice to say about me, at all. I can either copy and paste it here or you can read it there. I'll go with read it there since it made my day, week, and month but not my year since my low self-esteem will overwhelm me by mid-June and Sarah's blog won't make me smile anymore.

Though, on second thought, perhaps you shouldn't read her blog since you'll forever call me a hypocrite whenever I make fun of hipsters. Get off my lawn, obvs.

Seoul Represent

Seoul-shi is all purty on the internet this week:



Would probably do a bit more for me were I no longer living here and wanted to indulge in a bit of nostalgia. Even then it needs more perms and possibly a few old businessmen sleeping on the last subway home, dressed in their own vomit.

Also, CNN said Seoul is the world's greatest city but probably changed their mind when it was time to write the same thing about a different place. Commenting on each of their 50 reasons why should be my next Tumblr but for now will just list the ones that resonate the most with me:

49. More side dishes than main dishes
A typical Korean meal comes with seven or eight separate side dishes. And free refills. There’s more color on a Korean table than at Lotte World on Children’s Day.

45. Sleeping is for losers
Cafés, PC bangs, restaurants, spas, shopping centers and fast food chains are open any hour of any night. The streets of Gangnam, Hongdae or Dongdaemun offer countless anytime venues for drinking, eating and all kinds of play.

43. Beautiful women
Who cares if a lot of them are plastic? We’ll keep staring.

28. Excellence in flight
After flying Korean or Asiana Air, it’s a rude shock (literally, visually) to fly any other airline. Sorry, P.C. disciples, but the epic hotness of KAL flight attendants sets the modern standard in the sky. R.I.P. Singapore Girl.

26. Bibimbap
Korea’s most recognized dish after Korean barbeque, bibimbap is rice bowl mixed with sautéed roots, marinated beef and chili paste in a hot stone pot. It was Michael Jackson’s favorite dish. It’s still the signature lunch aboard Korean Air flights. You can get it almost anywhere, including local institution Go-gung.

5. Bright happy jjimjilbangs of fun
Korean saunas (jjimjilbangs) draw on an age-old tradition of thermotherapy to help you sweat out stress. The best jjimjilbangs -- like famed Dragon Hill Spa -- feature multi-stories of whirlpool baths, mineral rooms, massage parlors, nail salons, TV rooms, manga cafés and restaurants where you can relax before and after soaking, scrubbing and steaming your way to rejuvenation.

Commentary in respective order: Side dishes are free, and when I go for dinner with people who order BBQ I only pay for the water that's also free; hahaha, sleeping is for losers because I sleep 100 hours a day and am shorter than 180 cm; every Korean woman is hot from 50 meters away, short skirt and long legs; if you press the call button on a Korean Air flight then five of the most beautiful women you've ever seen will bring you water, rub your shoulders, sing you a lullaby, etc.; I've eaten over 700 bibimbaps since I've moved here; and the only thing better than true love is the jjimjilbang.

Namz Whuh?

This photo-not-shop of Sossusvlei was making the rounds through the internet last week:



Looks fake but it's real because National Geographic says so, and they never lie. Mention it here because it precipitated a bit of a back and forth between me and Kristi about the time she, Nate, and I drove well over 100 mph through the night from Cape Town into Namibia before finally falling asleep just outside Mariental, our cue to turn left. Namibia being what it is, we planned our route to where this photo was taken by looking at a map and deciding to turn at an entire town.

We awoke just after sunrise but at least three hours before the groceries opened and so started on our way to Sossusvlei. Kristi or Nate probably mentioned getting food but since they were just visiting and I actually lived there, I insisted we press on because we can, like, get food wherever, man. Whoops, Sunday. And also whoops, could have bought water at any of those petrol stations we passed an hour ago. Awesome desert country we're traveling through, eh.

Selah, we made it, albeit a bit cranky. And we managed to pick up a loaf of bread somewhere along the way that we ate with one of the 97 bottles of wine we'd picked up a couple days earlier in Stellenbosch, which we drank in cups cut out of Coke cans. I took this photo the following day and now we have something funny to reminisce about. I'ma sign this post, Jeonsa.

Brunch Challenge

My students have their annual three-day camping field trip this week. School is closed Thursday so everyone can "recover" and then Friday the students go to Olympic Park to draw pictures or something. Even though I don't have to teach any classes all week I still have to make my way to school and deskwarm, which is synonymous in Korean ESL parlance with house arrest. I mean, fun to catch up on movies and articles and Korean lessons and whatever else, but I'm generally so stir-crazy by Tuesday afternoon that I don't catch up on any of that because I've chewed my arm off in boredom.

But lo! At 4.23 pm on Friday afternoon, seven minutes before I knock off for the weekend, one of the admin higher ups finds his way to my office to say, Hahahahaha, you don't have to come to school at all next week! So I blow him a kiss and skip home. Hooray for me. 

So now I have an unexpected week off with no idea how to spend it. Unfortunately, I still have a couple obligations Seoul side that are preventing me from flying off to China or Mongolia or some other capricious spot, so I need to plot something here. I'm thinking I should finally cross the DMZ off my list of things to do, as well as a few museums, but really, the only thing I'm absolutely looking forward is to brunching all five days with mademoiselle:



My beloved Melz is leaving Koko in six weeks so we're going to fit a year's worth of brunch dates into a single work week then go to a German beer / Mexican food festival on Saturday just because we can. And because there's a lake. The photo above wasn't taken during a previous brunch date but it was taken during mango tango smoothie time in Thailand, so jeonsa us. I will create a Tumblr to document our brunching, so ja, hit F5 ad nauseum until I update again.

Tumblr Empire

I've stopped thinking of this site as a blog and started pretending it's a depot for the 1000 different Tumblr sites I've started. Or would have started were I not so brilliant and disguised them as separate posts on a single blog, supported by a platform more attractive to the cat ladies who donate their clothes to the Salvation Army than the hipsters who re-label those clothes "thrift finds."

Here is my latest faux-Tumblr. Pretend the fonts are loud and smell like patchouli.

Junior High Boys Dressed as Korean Junior High Students

Today, May 2011

Three days ago, December 2009

One week ago, October 2009

And like every other Tumblr I've lost interest three posts in.

AMR

I just realized my niece's initials spell amirite? I think she is going to speak one day the way I write now, like a 16-year-old gurl on Twitter.

Homegirl is one, two, three-years-old now.



She told me she wants a bass guitar, a princess dress, and a Barbie outfit for her birthday. Basically, she wants to be outrageous: truly, truly, truly outrageous. I can live with that.

Summary

It took a trip to Busan to finally understand that Korea is what would happen if the entire American Midwest borrowed Vegas' neon lights but no one was allowed to eat meth or shop at Wal-Mart. Okay, let's go templing instead:



Haha, templing. I love gerunds. Probably would have found inner peace there at 해동용궁사 but turns out it's difficult to stand still let alone meditate when the 9 million Koreans I find at every out-of-the-way place I've ever gone are elbowing you in the kidneys. Selah, I'm in a forgiving mood because that's what Jesus' friend the Buddha guy would have said in between bites of birthday cake.



Happy 2574th-ish, homeboy.

Buddsan

I remember during the few years I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan that Eid meant being one of five people in class because all the Muslim and make-believe Muslim kids were home celebrating. (You're wearing a hijab? Isn't your last name O'Reilly?) Fine, cool, it's religion so don't come to school, but how come you get our holy day off but we don't get yours? God wasn't fair.

But 20 years on and the great big Muhammed in the sky has finally made it up to me by giving me next Monday and Tuesday off for Buddha's birthday. So good on religion, otherwise the only holidays I'd get off from work would be to celebrate the glory of the people's revolution, or something.

Me, headed to Busan with a pretty lady friend of mine so we can sit on the beach recreating the inverse boy-girl-what-instrument-are-you-playing of this song:

Osama bin Ladead

Haha, I knew a week before everyone else that Obama was going to feed OBL's face a strawberry-flavored bullet:



That is from an assignment I gave Obama last week. He's in my ESL for Muslim Immigrants class. You probably don't read Korean so I'll go ahead and lie by telling you 동현 is how you render Osama bin Laden. I am good at keeping secrets.

Parturitionday

It's my mum's beeday today. I told my students and they broken into an entirely spontaneous rendition of Happy Burr no kids sing it in Koreeeeeean Sang-il Chook-ha-hap-nee-da.



Mom's bouffant has a birthday too but not for another four months.