Living in Annam, new surroundings

After living in the same neighborhood during all of my previous time in Korea, I decided to try something new and see more of this city outside of my apartment in Daebang. Last week I settled into a boarding house in Annam, a neighborhood populated mainly by students going to nearby Korea University.

Spending my weeks working at the Gwanghwamun and coming home late, I haven't had much time to explore, but I hope the picutres below give a sense of my past month.


Night time as cars flow out of town in Kangnam.



I had one eventful Saturday afternoon attending a Fourth of July picnic at the ambassador's home. The building is the original from the late 19th century, it was definitely the first time I had seen bunting in Korea.





If you look closely, you will see that this is a doghouse.

Chance of stolen bike recovery: nil

2010-2011
R.I.P.

Honolulu giveth and Honolulu taketh away

As of now, 4 out of the 6 people in my department who bought bikes this year have had them stolen. If anyone moving to Honolulu reads this, get a really really good lock.

Me vs. Google

I've often wondered about the likelihood of my job being made obsolete. Obsolescence was supposed to be unlikely for white collar jobs and academics, then I read something like this and I get worried all over again. I have often reassured myself when confronted with programs like babelfish or Google Translator that machines will never hold a candle to a living person when it comes to acting as a translator. But if voice translation is already within our grasp, how much longer until we will have usable text translation and no need for an interlocutor?

How can you stop yourself from becoming obsolete? Should you even try?

D.C. bus-under-throwing makes news in Korea

In an indication of just how far I have traveled from D.C., mentally and geographically, I first heard about the D.C. city government getting arrested in protest of the new budget from this site. While of course my first reaction is bitter laughter, I'm sure I'd be feeling nothing but outrage if I was still a resident. It seems like a ridiculously petty and specific move on the part of Republicans to single out Washington for their campaign against social programs.

On a similar note, for any of my non-Korean speaking readers, I found this site that carries translations of articles appearing in Korean newspapers that cover issues in America. While there is no shortage of English-language articles in Korean papers about American issues, these, as they were translated by an American volunteer, present a more critical (and realistic) portrayal of how Koreans see America.

Edit: While I have yet to learn a phrase in Korean that equals the passion of "throw someone under the bus" Koreans do have a surprisingly similar word for "scapegoat" (희생양-sacrificial sheep)

Grave concerns for my favorite food

Those who know me well may have learned about my deep romance with breakfast. There is no meal, be it at sunup, lunchtime, or evening, that I like more than a bowl of cereal. I don't really know why something so simple brightens my day, but on more than one occasion my last thought before sleep was "yay, breakfast comes soon!"

To anyone with a similar love of good mornings, this is a good read.

Giving it all up

Most of you probably know that I have been doing my best to be vegetarian during the past two years, a surprisingly easy effort that I fear may have to come to an end once I return to Korea. The reason is simple, while it is easy to pass on the meat and enjoy myself with options like this in my neighborhood, it becomes much more difficult in a country where vegetarianism is barely understood and certainly not widespread.

On numerous occasions, other students in my program have crowed about how much pork they'll see me eat once I get off the plane in Incheon. There is certainly no malice in what they are saying, I only assume they bring it up (often) because everyone likes to have their peers enjoy doing the same things they do. Who likes to go out for a drink after work with a teetotaler tagging along?

I won't pretend that there aren't certain foods I would enjoy eating in Korea, notably the spicy, sweet, rich



But my fundamental logic for passing on animals hasn't been shaken over the past two years. Although sometimes even I think it is an overreaction, I just can't shake the conclusion that unless I am willing to eat all animals (dogs, cats, and horses included) I have no right to limit myself to only those which we traditionally eat.

Of course there are the health benefits, but what keeps me from ordering a big mac is not the cholesterol, but the fact that it would be fundamentally similar to ordering a plate of braised dog meat. I couldn't conscience such a thing.

This gave me chills

As much as I have studied Korea, statistics like this (end of the article) still catch me by surprise, 60%?!

A change in tone

Rather than waiting until the accumulated guilt from not posting enough pictures forces me to write a new post about my life here, I am going to write about what I find interesting and what preoccupies my mind. Don't worry, this won't devolve into tweeting, but hopefully it should become more regular, varied, and entertaining.

Tonight's Seminar

As part of my program as a scholar affiliated with the East West Center, I have an obligation to attend a weekly seminar put on by the center. Each week has a different topic, loosely connected this semester around the theme of migration. The seminar consists of a professor or expert speaking to a group of about 100 master's and phd students, the vast majority of which are from other countries.

This week's seminar linked a problem that is impossible to overlook, poor health among native Hawaiians, with racism. A summary can be found here. While the thesis is interesting, essentially linking perceived racism to high levels of stress, which translate into higher levels of cortisol, a chemical in the body that has been blamed for a lot of diseases, there were gaps in the logic and the quality of the research that begged to be pointed out. A lively argument ensued.

While racism in Hawaii and Hawaiian health problems are something I could not have cared less about before coming here, living in Honolulu and gradually becoming more exposed to different layers of Hawaiian life has forced me to realize that there are significant and intriguing issues. The speaker tonight, who identified himself as native Hawaiian, despite his mixed ancestry, (another issue), stated the problem thusly, (heavily paraphrased): "look at the schools, or the hotels. Who's the janitor? Filipino. Who's the security guard? Hawaiian or Samoan. Who's the teacher? Japanese. Who's working the hotel desk? Japanese. Who's the principal and the manager? whites."

At the same time, Hawaii as a state takes pride in portraying itself as a successful multicultural entity. Owing to the countless waves of colonization and immigration that make up its history, it is the most ethnically diverse state in the nation. (source) There are phenomena here that I have never encountered before in America. For example, in the elementary school where I volunteer, the kindergarten class spent one afternoon celebrating Chinese New Year. Not just with a quick mention of the holiday as it was celebrated by other people, but by having each child whose family celebrated the holiday bring in food associated with it. Thus there were Vietnamese candies, Korean rice cake, and Chinese sweets for everyone to try. The children even lined up and received a penny in a lucky red envelope from the teacher, (또 중국 식으로 절했어요).

The fact remains though, that Hawaii is really really racist. For all of the apparent inclusion, the problems remain and people are viewed through a race-based state of mind. The sister of a friend of mine who works here shared a story of what she had seen on her Facebook feed recently. Someone had written a post complaining, to the effect, about why all the damn haoles are so racist. (haole being a mildly derogatory term for white people in Hawaii). The irony of criticizing a particular race for its racism evidently did not occur to the poster. Of course, my impressions are all anecdotal, and I don't claim that Hawaii is more racist than any other state in nation. However, I do take issue with the public relations line that Hawaii is a place of many different peoples living together harmoniously.

Shanghai: Hangzhou and Suzhou

End of the week, I just finished a presentation on the 2008 Anti-American beef protests in Korea. I have seen just about every combination of evil cow, sad looking Koreans, American flags, and skull and crossbones that Korean political cartoonists could dream up.

My report on my trip to Shanghai this past summer is long overdue, but consider this post the world premiere, it should be more exciting that way.

I traveled to Shanghai and some nearby cities during my last week before coming to Hawaii this past August. I'd been invited by a friend of mine who was working at the American pavilion at the Expo being held in the city, I figured it was a great opportunity to see this China place everyone has been talking about lately.

In a way, I'm glad I had six months before I uploaded this, the interval has given me time to parse what I saw and gather some conclusions. Obviously, my time in the country was limited to eight days and I did not stray far from Shanghai, but I did try to walk a bit off the beaten path.

To be honest, as my plane took off from Pudong International Airport to return me from whence I came, my impression of Shanghai was this:



I, like thousands of other tourists on the river that night, saw the bright lights and the glitz. On one side I had the Pearl Tower



and on the other, the magnificently restored line of art deco buildings that survive from the era of foreign domination of Shanghai



Suffice it to say, China does a very good job of cleaning itself up for visitors. I got a real kick out of this familiar piece of sculpture, covered with tourists posing for photos.



I had to travel out to one of the satellite cities to see any shred of the China I heard more about as a kid, social realist and authoritarian.



This was part of a little park in Hangzhou, a mere satellite city to Shanghai at 4 million residents. I had a fun day riding around the city and the surrounding tea plantations on these great little rental bikes that you could have for the whole day for a nominal fee, (you can see it below).







For all of my preconceptions of brusque locals and a difficult time traveling alone, I have to say that I had a pretty warm reception wherever I went. I'm sure one reason for the friendliness was the intense push to welcome international tourists during the Expo, but the help I received figuring out the bike rental, getting a room for the night, and figuring out internet cafes seemed genuine and spontaneous.

Hangzhou is also famous for the lake which lies in the center of the city, rightfully so.



From Hangzhou's cavernous train station I took what was supposed to be a two hour trip to another nearby city, Suzhou. With images of Suzhou's famous emerald gardens in mind, I took my seat and got a lot more than I bargained. An hour in, my train came to a slow stop and then stood still for two hours, for what reason I still do not know. As people stood jammed shoulder to shoulder in the aisles and the car gradually grew hotter, I began to feel the strain of my travel schedule. The exit into the darkened Suzhou station convinced me to take the high speed train back to Shanghai twenty-four hours later.

My complaints were forgotten the next morning as I enjoyed the gardens though, one of the few sights I have ever seen where the original beauty has survived decades of tourist overexposure. I regret not taking better photos, but it was hard to capture the attraction of these gardens. Rather than stunning with bright colors or impressive symmetry, their charm lay in their ability to present well-composed views with each new vantage point.









I sincerely enjoyed Hangzhou and Suzhou and appreciated the differences between their relatively raw environments in comparison with Shanghai proper. I'll give a full treatment to my time at the Expo and in the city in the next update.

End of my hardest semester to date

Finals ended this past week. My first days wholly free of obligations and worry have been spent in blissful sleep, sunny beaches, and recovering from the social isolation that became necessary to complete my work. I owe all of you an update, not on the work, which has been challenging, if tedious, but on the brief moments this semester when I have actually done something worth sharing.

In mid-October, one of the few Korean students in my building asked me for help with a big international food festival they have for my dormitory. As our building has students from almost every country in Asia, it was going to be an impressive affair. While my friends who cooked for the American food delegation gave me a hard time about betraying my country and cooking for Korea (they ended up making chicken-fried steak, cinnamon apples, green beans, and tex-mex), I'm glad I had a chance to practice my Korean cuisine.



We were a pretty subdued bunch, especially compared with the Indonesians.



The dormitory, while more of a communal experience than I've had before in terms of housing, has been fun. I quickly discovered that when you are surrounded by people from countries you know embarrassingly little about, the best way to start a conversation is about the food they cook. Just tonight I spent an hour listening to an explanation of why Iraqis eat so many dates and the trouble of being a date farmer.

Thanksgiving was a series of fantastic potluck dinners, similar to the way I spent it last year with friends in Washington. With the few days I had free for the holiday, I also sneaked out of the computer lab to hike near my valley. Past a waterfall that is reputed to have been a favorite of Obama as a child and up Mount Tantalus is a view through the mountain range clear to the other side of Oahu.



You can just barely see the ocean over the wild coffee trees.

As lush as Hawaii is, I have sadly not been able to live out my dreams of eating nothing but tropical fruit. Since almost all of food is imported from the mainland or Asia, even the papayas and pineapples are actually more expensive than they were back in Connecticut. To bring a little local variety into what I eat, I started getting a weekly subscription of produce from a farm on the island. Below you can see one of my first delivery boxes, with basil, limes, eggplant, and green onions.



The only difficulty of getting the deliveries is identifying and finding out how to cook some of the randomized produce I receive.

With the arrival of the winter vacation, as paradoxically as it seems, I have finally started going to the beach. It is a balmy 75 degrees here most days, and the only reminder I have that it is cold on the East Coast is the change in cup designs at the Starbucks.

When I go to the beach, alongside the tourists from the mainland and the far more tan locals, (I'm still pale as can be) there are also many Japanese tourists. Areas of Waikiki feel more oriented toward the Japanese than to Americans. I realized the extent of this when I visited a beach near the heart of Honolulu, which was filled with honeymooning Japanese couples getting their vacation photos taken. I took this picture just as a group of schoolgirls from Japan had discovered a couple and moved into the shot.



It has been very interesting trying to make sense out of the diversity in Honolulu, it's completely different from anywhere else I have lived in America. Being in the minority once again also means that it will be very different readjusting to life in Connecticut when I go back this summer.

I will try to soon post the photos from my trip to Shanghai this past summer, (very very late, I know). Have a great winter everyone!

Views from Honolulu

Nighttime at my university.


A praying mantis flew into my dormitory one night, this guy was about three inches long. He just perched on the curtain and imitated a leaf by slowly swaying from side to side.


The dormitory where I live. I have a single room on the tenth floor with a great view of Diamond Head, an old crater right on the beach.


A hiking path I took up Makiki Valley recently. The event was a field trip with the rest of the people in my department and a few professors.


The flowers bloom all year here.


Another view from the path, the valley is a picture-perfect rainforest


The view from the top of one of the mountains in Makiki, you can see my campus on the left and the ocean way in the background.

Watermelon tastes better at the top

Double Rainbows

Grad school is another level of busy I only could have seen in my nightmares, but I'm optimistic.

Fortunately, Hawaii does its best to cheer me up whenever I venture outside of the library, showing me double rainbows and offering some great views.





This is a view from one of the valleys, I went out with some other students in my program during the orientation week to check out some taro farms.



Trees confuse me here. It seems like they grow about ten feet out of the ground, get confused and try to go back in the earth.

Life has settled into a routine, for good or worse. I burn the midnight oil six days a week, then escape during a weekend day and remember I live in paradise.

Welcome ceremony, the East-West Center

While I am at the University of Hawaii pursuing my M.A., I am also an affiliate member of an educational institute that is attached to the university, called the East-West Center. The center funds graduate students and lots of different cultural exchange programs. I have entered into a program of theirs that allows me to stay in a dormitory in their campus, along with about one hundred and fifty other graduate students from all over Asia and America.

The housing experience has been wild already. As prices are higher in Hawaii than anything I am used to, and as it is relatively convenient, I am cooking my meals with the other students in big communal kitchens built into each floor. Alongside my quasi-Korean dishes are pots of Thai soup, chicken being fried by some Iraqi Phds, along with a half a dozen other dishes I cannot recognize from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Phillipines.

During the day, I have been going through orientation procedures with the other students. The organizers kicked off the official welcome with a hula ceremony. It was actually very nice, I lost any preconceptions I had of it being a hollow exercise for the sake of tourists.

Afterward, alumni from our program circulated through the audience and gave us lei's.





With my few hours free in the afternoon, I decided to tour around Honolulu and see a little bit more of the city where I will live for the next year. While the first thing I noticed was the unusual makeup of the city, which is composed primarily of Japanese, Hawaiians, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders. While I make the distinction of their origin, what was even more unusual for me was how Americanized it all was, despite the diverse origins.

In terms of the physical city, it reminds me of a tropical Stamford, with a clean if infrequent bus system, low buildings, and plenty of discount stores and bar and grills.

Arrived in Honolulu, backlog of memories

Hello,

I have been quite busy the past two weeks, as I traveled to Shanghai the day after my internship ended, spent a week exploring that city, then left for Honolulu just two days after I returned from Shanghai.

I will try to upload photos and stories as soon as possible, but I don't want to skip too much of the past few weeks, which were an exhausting, memorable time.

Visiting Suwon

I traveled thirty minutes south of Seoul by train three weekends ago, to visit a satellite city and the castle located in the middle of it. I have been to around a dozen Korean cities beforehand, but somehow I was surprised by how similar this one was to Seoul, Yeosu, Jeju-si, Mokpo, and the rest. Like always, the main streets were a hyperstimulating riot of pc bang, cafe, restaurant, and cell phone storefronts. Just out of the city center were the identical apartment blocks, their even rows evoking tombstones.



The one unusual feature of Suwon was that the city center was encircled by the remains of a fortress constructed about three hundred years ago. If you look closely on the left, you can see the green ring of grass and castle wall dividing the low-rise apartment buildings.



The fortress itself was great to see, quiet and cool because of the trees that had grown up around it.



This was a fantastic public restroom, one of many in Korea. I won't go in to too much detail, but the lighting and decorations made it look nicer than many apartments that I've stayed in. It even had a name, Azalea Flower Restroom.

While I have been too busy to do much sightseeing on this trip to Korea, traveling to Suwon reassured me that, for better or for worse, I haven't missed much. Put simply, all of the populated areas in Korea look very similar.

Commuting

I normally just drift off into a half-sleep during my commute, but in case it would be interesting to any of you, I've put together a short video of the way I take every morning and afternoon.

My school for 2011-2012

I also took a quick trip to my future university today. My M.A. program in Hawaii includes a year at Korea University (고려대), so I figured I should visit the campus and get a picture in my mind of where I'll be living. To my great relief, the campus is actually quite beautiful, quite different from other campuses I've visited here. True to form, I left my camera at home, so I will have to rely on a publicity shot.



Among the groups of faux-Ivy League buildings, there was an amusing set of banners accusing the government of misleading people as to the true cause of the sinking of the Cheonnan. Having heard every conspiracy theory, ranging from a Korean War mine to a warmongering America attacking with one of our own torpedoes, my only response to such shrill polemics is shaking my head.

Travels with Auntie

Differently from the last year when I was a student in Korea, my days are now kept busy with going to work and commuting. While it feels fine and dandy to finally be working 9 to 6, wearing a suit, and using Outlook, it means that I get little chance to travel or spend time with friends like I had last year. Instead, I end up spending the few hours each night between the gym, dinner, and sleep, watching Korean soap operas with my host mom and her sister. What I have lost in raucous exchange student revelry, I have gained in gossip and overacting. Both women are fun to talk to, and probably the best language teachers I have ever had, if only for their patience and constant willingness to answer my questions.

My host mother is actually suffering from some kind of pain in the nerves in her neck, (as well as a half a dozen other symptoms, I really don't know what to call her illness. She is also apparently supposed to avoid bread and milk, per order of her doctors) so she doesn't get out of the house very much. When I am finally free from work on the weekends, she decides its a fine time to go on trips. Most of the time, I tag along on her excursions.



She is literally the most high-spirited and outgoing Korean ladies I have ever met. It was a stroke of luck that I found her through a homestay website the first time that I came, and now she insists that I call her Imo, (이모) which means "the sister of my mother". The picture above is from when we went to park in the middle of the river that runs through Seoul. As you can tell from the massive sun visor she is wearing, as well as the parasol her sister is carrying in the background, they both share the Korean woman's primal fear of sunlight and getting a tan.



The above is a picture I took earlier today, when we went to visit her two younger brothers, (both married) at an apartment in the northeast of the city. Today is the day before Chobok, traditionally the beginning of the hottest period of the summer. In order to make it through this draining period of high humidity and higher temperatures, people normally eat chicken stew with their relatives. I was just glad they didn't ask me to dine on dog, another food that is supposed to restore energy.

In the picture, she was sitting with her family and playing games with the children on one of the flat wooden platforms that Korean use instead of picnic tables, or tables in general.

My host mother originally took care of her three younger siblings when they all moved into a boarding house in Seoul in order to go to a decent high school. Children living apart from their parents (who remain in the countryside) in a city in order to go to school isn't that unusual.



You probably know this scrub. I'm standing in front of a tomb of one of the Choson-era kings. The setting is quite nice, which is why my host mom's family chose to picnic in the area. The only interruption to the quiet forested tomb was the sound of gunfire from nearby, as it is adjacent to a military training camp. Bullets sound remarkably like firecrackers.

I'm in the midst of planning for a trip to Shanghai right now, I have about a week in between when my internship ends and when I have to report to Hawaii, so I want to see a little bit more of my neighborhood. If anyone has any specific suggestions for things to see in the city, let me know in the comments.

Donating to your Uncle

I found this link today, to a U.S. Treasury website that accepts donations to pay off the national debt. While there isn't much connection to Korea, it reminded me of the national drive here back in the final years of the 1990s to pay off the loan taken out from the IMF. Koreans remain very proud of having paid back the debt years before the scheduled date.

I hope you are all doing alright amid the current heat wave. It isn't much cooler here, my host family and I cope with a combination of half a dozen oscillating fans, cold watermelon, and cold showers.