Silhouettes

At Batu Feringghi Beach in Penang, Northwest Malaysia, two days before Christmas. All in all there are much better beaches in Thailand I think, and a much better beach scene, but in a pinch, it'll do.

A Day on the Scooter in Phuket

Quick snaps of a couple of the things you will see right on the roadside driving around in the less-crowded countryside in the northeast corner of Phuket Island- a fruit shake stand and some marsh grasses.

Another First!

I have slept through several mild earthquakes in the past (including, from a great distance, the one that caused the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami). Tonight, I can finally say I FELT a quake - which turned out to be a magnitude 4.8 -centered west of Kangneung in Kangwon province, maybe 200 km east of Seoul. Lasted a couple of seconds and felt like a soft yet deep shudder, like you sometimes feel on an aircraft just after takeoff. Hopefully there was no damage to report out on the beautiful East Coast.

Paradise Recovering

Two years and three days after the tsunami that swept away most of the structures and people on the densely packed, tiny tourist island of Phi Phi in Southern Thailand (made controversial by the filming of Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Beach" a few years earlier), I visited there this past holiday season, staying only a few hours on my way from Krabi to Phuket by boat. Having been there three times before, I was a little afraid of what I might find . I have friends who spent time in Phi Phi within months of the disaster and returned with depressing stories of giant piles of debris lining beaches, children left parentless and without schools, and corpses still being found both on land and at sea. Most of the island has now been cleaned up and the tourist hordes and uncontrolled cheap tourist-trap development that, in my opinion, always had largely ruined the place's picture-perfect-south seas tropical beauty, are returning. It is a little sad to see that some lessons don't seem to have been learned very well, and that the government there don't seem to have dedicated themselves any more than before to sustainable development. The hardest-hit end of the village, which was wiped out, is still eerily empty. Where once there were dozens of bungalows (in which I remember staying) there is now nothing but sand dunes interspersed with bits of broken floor tile, pipe, cement from broken foundations, and this longtail boat washed up on land a couple of hundred feet from the shoreline. Having seen the photos of the carnage after 7 meters of water tore ashore with no warning, and remembering people I had met who had worked in the now ruined, empty shell of a dive shop and restaurant, I found it a little hard to get into the spirit of the merry beer drinking European tourist hordes who once again throng the streets of the place. It may be a while before I return to Phi Phi.

Happy New Year

This is the first opportunity I have had to post since coming on vacation - I've been in Southeast Asia since December 15th, first in Bangkok, then Malaysia, and then back to Southern Thailand again. I spent last night (New Year's Eve) on the beach here in Phuket where revellers were celebrating by firing off anything they could get their hands on - which makes for a great show. At the appointed time, all the yachts out on the Andaman sea blasted their horns and everyone grabbed their cans of Singha and whoever they brung and toasted in 2007. A much happier scene than two years before when this very beach was still reeling from the effects of the great Tsunami. Happier days are back again, it seems. May 2007 be a happy one for you too.

Konglish Part 1

It's been ages I know, but the end of the semester is coming and things are hectic (you'll hear me making this type of excuse often:-))

Unfortunately, it is not that often that I find a decent example of mangled English on signs or printed material here anymore - it used to be an endless source of entertainment.

Anyway, I found one not that long ago at Everland, an amusement park near Seoul.

Funny Fashion Photos

Photo courtesy of Getty Images and Chung Sung Jun

Check out Canada.com's hilarious photo-by-photo commentary on some of the wacky outfits on display at the recent "Ubiquitous Fashionable Computer Fashion Show" in Koyang City, near Seoul. http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/photogalleries/wearable.html?g=0

Korean Culture Through TV. Part One: Women

Korean Tv has evolved in the years that I have been here. Cable and satellite services now provide dozens of channels, some digital, some high definition. There are news, sports, home shopping, religious, educational, documentary, cartoon, and computer gaming channels - not so much different from back home. Many channels play movies and other programs from English-speaking countries subtitled in Korean - thus I never have to miss an episode of the Amazing Race, American Idol, or Lost. Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and CNN offer their usual lineups.

But Korean TV is undoubtedly different, as you would expect. Whether a country's TV offerings reflect or create the everyday reality of ordinary people is always a subject of debate among those who care about such things.

I only wanted to show you some of the things I noticed about Korean TV that people elsewhere might find interesting.

So I recorded bits from TV dramas, movies, and advertising that I felt were representative of what is on screen every day here.


VIDEO 1


VIDEO 2



VIDEO 3



Today, I wanted to show how women are portrayed on the tube here. Feel free to comment. Are these depictions of women different from those you would see where you are from? Are these images positive in your eyes? Are they an accurate reflection of the roles played by Korean women and their character as a group and as individuals? Or are these stereotypes? What message do these images convey?

Jeju Tangerines

This past week was the mid-term break at KIS and I spent four oh-so-relaxing days attempting a return to human (vs. cog-in-a-machine) form down "home" on the island. We are now just about at the peak of tangerine (감귤) season when countless thousands of crates of the honey-sweet, tangy orbs are being harvested from groves up and down the slopes of the grand lady, Mount Halla (nothin' makes me wax poetical like good ole Jayjoo-doh).


Yes, there are three main pillars of the economy on Jeju: tangerines (and an ever-diversifying range of citrus), fishing and tourism. Yesterday, a great friend of many years (Robert) offered to lend me his Honda Shadow motorbike for a tour in the warm mid-November sunshine - an offer I gratefully accepted. It was a truly glorious day for a ride and I was having a lovely time of it until mechanical issues ensued:-) So- I was forced to stop alongside the road at a tangerine orchard where an "ah-joom-mah" (auntie) phoned a bike shop for me. As we waited, we shared some Vitamin C and chatted about the evils of the now-in-negociation Korea-US Free Trade Agreement. I tried to argue the point (one I sincerely believe in, by the way) that Jeju citrus could go head-to-head with anything the states produces and win hands-down. She was not convinced. I expect to see her on TV throwing Molatov cocktails at the next anti-FTA demonstration. Power to the people, ajuma, power to the people.

Palace Guards

From 1392 to 1910, Korea was known as the "Kingdom of Great Joseon" and was ruled by a royal family which was deposed and sent to Japan for re-education after the Japanese occupation began. The capital of Joseon, relocated to Hanyang (later Seoul), was the site of the Royal Palace at Gyung-Bohk-Goong (경복궁). The palace, parts of which were destroyed by the Japanese occupiers, has been and continues to be restored as a tourist attraction. On national holidays and on weekends during the summer, the palace, now a tourist attraction, is the site of re-enactments of royal parades and changing-of-the-guard ceremonies, one of which is pictured here.

I took these photos on a film camera and when I had digital images made from the negatives, the photos turned out rather grainy. I decided to soften the images to solve the problem - it lends a faded, glimse-into-the-past kind of effect that I think is actually quite nice.

Why can't military, police, and public officials have uniforms like this anymore? I, for one, would love to wear hanbok to work every day.

Swirling Lights

Another photo from my archives - going way back to about 2000, when I was still living in Jeju.

This is the rotary in Suh-gui-Po on the south coast of the island. Korea's "riviera", the town is home to tangerine groves and beaches, palm-lined streets, and more waterfalls per square kilometer than anywhere I can think of. I miss it.

Reflected Light

Lights reflected in an office tower's windows in downtown Seoul at night.

Takraw Balls

Thailand (and Laos) have what have to be, in my opinion, two of the most interesting sports in the world to watch: Muay Thai or Thai kick-boxing is a brutally tough yet almost dance-like, ritualized martial art. Takraw, played with the kind of hollow rattan ball pictured below is an incredible display of leg-and-foot agility. I took this photo of takraw balls for sale in Luang Prabang, Laos, this summer

"Cross soccer with volleyball and mix in a bit of gymnastics and kung fu, and you’ve got the ingredients for one of Southeast Asia’s favourite and most spectacular pastimes: sepak takraw. Countless variations of takraw are played throughout the region, but the basic objective of each is to keep the hollow, grapefruit-sized ball from touching the ground by keeping it airborne with the feet, knees, head, shoulders, elbows — or nearly every part of the body except the hands. "

(See more on takraw: http://www.tatnews.org/emagazine/2813.asp)

Blue Mood

Back to Chunn-Gyey-Chunn (천계천), the rehabilitated stream system in the center of Seoul...

Where once Korean children bathed and "ah-joom-mah" beat their clothes clean on the rocks, couples now take romantic strolls, taking in the moody lighting and the sounds of the splashing blue waters.

And a little more abstract - a close-up. Looks a little like steel cables or TV noise...

아줌마 tending to her 과일

This one comes form many moons ago and was taken in the outdoor city market in Sug-Ui-Po, Jeh-ju-doh (sorry for the weird spelling, for those who are used to a different one - I have decided to pioneer a new, logic-based system for transcribing Korean words into roman letters. Maybe it will catch on and those hordes of poor hapless foreigners will have a chance at pronouncing the language a little sooner and more easily). Single white glove and hat - she obviously still thinks "Thriller" was the best album of all time."Ow!!"

아줌마 or "AH-joom-mah" usually translates into "auntie" in English and is usually used to describe or address any woman who is married and / or over the age of about 30. Younger Korean women dread the day they will be called 아줌마 , perhaps partly because of the stigma that comes with it. These ladies hold a lot of power in their families (ALL the power). Many have had to endure many hard times in their lives and are determined that their children will have better lives - and God help anyone who gets in the way. Any semblance of feminine submissiveness in youth gives way to blunt, brute force and plain-talking, line-jumping aggressiveness that can be intimidating. As a teacher who deals with Korean parents all the time, I never quite get used to it. However, if you don't get on their bad side, these aunties can be among the most dedicated, caring, selfless, and funny ladies you will ever meet. As an example, one ah-joom-mah in a restaurant I frequented used to yell at me for not finishing my rice (bloody near a capital offense in Korea). The next time I visited, if I was a good boy and cleaned my plate, she would teach me words of Jeju dialect and then laugh her 엉덩이 off with her friends as she had me repeat to all of them what I had learned . I'm always happy to be of entertainment to others, even at my own expense - "Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog! Now roll over!"