Posts Tagged by Below The 38th Parallel
Double Oh Seven
| January 4, 2007 | Filled under Blog, Photo Album |
It’s taken me several days to process the awesomeness of everything that happened this weekend, and I also suffered the immense trauma of losing and then finding my notebook again, so apologies for the late start to the new year.
Actually, I’m not sorry at all, because this past weekend, the fourth New Year I’ve spent with my number one best husband, was probably the best new year holiday I’ve ever had. It all started with real live genuine hamburger and margarita for dinner Friday night at TGIFridays in Seoul, and there’s nothing like American food to get me in the mood to party.
Saturday after running with the Seoul chapter of our running club, we discovered that “Hedwig” was playing that very night.
The show was in a tiny, intimate venue with excellent acoustics, and was made even more awesome by the fact that the entire thing (even the songs) were in Hangul. All the people in the audience were singing along, even me, to the parts I could remember, and the funniest part of the show was when Hedwig talks about her first band, the Korean housewives. This was the first time Christopher and I have really seen good live music since moving to Korea and I was surprised at how desperately I’d missed it. I did get my dance on, though. I’ve now seen “Hedwig” live three times in three different parts of the world.
Sunday we went to the Seoul Museum of Art for an amazing Magritte exhibit that put even my favorite museum in Houston, the Menil, to shame. (Sorry, Menil, you know I love you). SEMA’s exhibit had family photos, artwork he’d done on advertising commission, much earlier works that were more Cubism than Surrealism and even some experimental Super 8 home movies he’d made. Sigh. I love Rene Magritte.
Sunday night we walked to downtown Seoul to see the lights around city hall. We ended up at a placed called Ska Bar, which in true Korean style had absolutely nothing to do with the genre of music. Christopher ran through every ska band we could think of, from The English Beat to Prince Buster, but finally when I mentioned No Doubt the bartenders’ eyes lit up. Oh well — they both gave us free drinks and taught us how to say “Happy New Year” in Korean.
A whole bunch of other stuff happened too. We walked through crowds of people on the street setting off fireworks (which are apparently standard issue to all Koreans on any major holiday) and ate some pork stew since 2007 is the year of the Pig. We watched some news on TV at the restaurant and saw some drummers perform on the street and then about 11:30 p.m. we decided to head down towards the temple to see the Boshingak Bell.
Every year at midnight it is rung 33 times (because the number 33,000 is lucky in Korea) and then everyone sings a song that is a prayer for the reunification of the peninsula. As we made our way through the crowd we were greeted by dozens of Koreans wishing us a happy new year. Hearing the bell’s low tones over the screams of people and explosions of fireworks and the ringing in my ears — it was awesome. There are 10 million people in Seoul, and the number of them out on New Year’s Eve was the largest, thickest, most friendly crowd I’ve ever been stuck in, and I’m a pretty claustrophobic person. No one even pushed, which is something you can’t even get on a normal everyday street in Seoul. Just look at how happy these guys are:
I vaguely remember kissing a few strangers on the street in celebration. I remember seeing golden piggy banks everywhere, and somehow made it home with two, because not only is 2007 the Year of the Pig, it’s also believed to be the Year of the Golden Pig, a lucky year that only comes around once every six centuries. Couples are encouraged to have babies this year and everyone is encouraged to save money because it’s supposed to be the most prosperous of signs.
Monday was a shopping day. We went to Goblin Market, where Christopher came across the motherload of 2-dollar record shops, buying me copies of both “The Nutcracker” and a Sylvie Vartan record which we later discovered had never been opened (plus about 20 records for himself). After we got home Monday night we stayed up until about 2 a.m. listening to records.
Halfway through this year I will turn 27. I remember thinking at 16 that in the year 2000 I’d be 20 years old, and how old and how far away that seemed to me. In just a few short years it will be 2010, and then 2020, and by then I’ll likely be a mother and who knows where I’ll live or what my life will be like.
The first few days of this year have already been awesome and promising. Last year was very hard for me in many ways but it was also a year filled with travel and adventure and inconceivable bliss and happiness. I find myself looking forward to 2007 — I can’t remember ever feeling this optimistic about the start of a new year, ever.
Not a girl, not yet a woman
| April 24, 2006 | Filled under Blog |
You know how sometimes things in your life seem to happen in bunches. I think this is often referred to as serendipity, although that’s not the correct definition. Like, for example, when you learn a new word and then suddenly you see and hear it used everywhere.
Well, lately my life has been all about she-males. See, it all started last week when we got the movie “Saint Jack” in the mail from Netflix. This film is based on a Paul Theroux book of the same name, and even though Theroux is typically considered a writer who appeals to men (a la Hemingway or Bukowski) this book of his is one of my all-time favorites. Even before watching the movie I was torn about it because I cannot friggin’ stand Peter Bogdanovich but I love, love love Roger Corman, who produced the movie, and of course I love the book.
The story is about a laid-back American who lives in Singapore and runs a whorehouse. Now, there is not a whole lot of talk about lady-boys in the book, but that is one of the things Singapore is famous for. So, in the movie, which had a pretty small budget, almost all of the peripheral characters are real people playing, essentially, themselves. This is one of Corman’s trademarks.
Anyway, this means that a lot of the prostitutes in the movie are not women at all, but trannies. This is pretty interesting because neither Christopher nor I had any idea until we were watching the commentary special feature.
Worst drinking game ever: Watch the director’s commentary of “Saint Jack” and take a shot every time Peter Bogdanovich uses the phrase, “This was real”, “These people were real,” “This was a real building,” or “He/she was a real …”
Even better drinking game: The first person who notices an actress with both breasts and a penis (and you can most definitely see this, if you look closely) gets to drown their subsequent misery in an entire bottle of the booze of their choice.
So just a few days after we watched this movie, Christopher and I were out for a jog when we came across a sign for a new bar opening up here, called — wait for it — TANK TRANSGENDER BAR.
This is quite curious, I thought to myself. I mean, we live in a very small town, essentially in the country, for one thing. Secondly, Korea is a verrrry male-dominated, masculine society. Unlike in Thailand or Malaysia, most of the time you can’t even get a Korean to admit that there is such a thing as homosexuality, so the idea that something like a transgendered community could exist in our tiny little town just sort of blew my mind. You know, Koreans use a lot of English in their advertising, and most of the time it’s pretty bad English — misspelled, or misunderstood or just plain misused, like the fact that the building we live in is called Beverly Hills 2. So I thought maybe it wasn’t really a transgender bar — maybe they’ve used the wrong word here or something.
It is definitely a transgender bar. And they have a floor show, which my friend Jaynie described as “educational.”
I haven’t been yet, but you can read someone else’s experience of the place here. And there are pictures.
Seoul survivor
| February 15, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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A couple of days ago Lance sent me this e-mail:
Subject: license to il..
n. korea has the bomb now, yikes! dont forget to pack your sunglasses and geiger counter. i got you a going away gift as well…”How to Survive In a Postapocalyptic Wasteland for Dummies
This same friend, my dear Lance, also called me at work the other day to find out when C and I were going to be leaving for South Korea. All panicky, as if we weren’t going to tell him.
“This sucks,” he said. “When you and C move to Korea, that means half of all my friends will live in Korea.”
We likely won’t officially move until summer, and then we’ll be gone for three years. But suddenly all of our usually flaky friends want to spend as much time with us as possible.
I was talking to my Mom the other day and she started crying uncontrollably. “I don’t want you to go,” she sobbed.
“But why, Mom? I’m happy. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“Yeehehehesss,” she replied. “But you’ll – be – so – far – away – from – mehehe.”
Two years ago, after years of false starts, I finally moved out of Oklahoma. Moving to Houston was the best decision I have ever made — not because Houston is that great of a place or because Oklahoma is that horrible, but because I am in a better place. People always say you can’t run from your problems, but I did it and it worked pretty good for me.
I marvel at how much happier I am here. I had gone through a series of devastating relationships, all my friends had moved away, and I felt like college had been the peak of my life, the top of my performance, and there was no place to go but down. You can only be an overachiever for so long before it gets old.
When I moved to Houston, my mom was not very happy. I did so desperately, with very little planning and only $500 in my pocket, a car full of clothes, and a Boston terrier.
The best decision ever. Almost immediately I made some wonderful friends whom I love dearly. I only wish I would have known before how easy it was going to be to transplant myself, because I would have done it much, much earlier.
Now I am planning to leave all this too.
My Mom and Grandma call randomly. They don’t really have anything to say to me, they just want to know if I know when we’re leaving yet.
And our poor friends. They act as though C is just going to steal me away under cover of night, whisking me off to Korea, where I’ll live as his kept woman, writing my memoirs and eating kimchi.
Which I will. But don’t worry. We won’t leave without letting you throw us a going-away party first.
