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I've taken on some extra part-time work this week, so have been forced to favour my computer screen this long weekend rather than partake in extended family rituals this year.
This also means that instead of gorging myself on festive foods indoors, I've experienced the one time of year that Seoul closes down. Shops and restaurants might be open on Christmas Day in Korea, but the 24-hour convenience lifestyle is annually renounced for the first day of the year by the lunar calendar.
This year that day is today, Monday 26th January.
One thing that the second national turnaround does give, is an excuse for establishments to keep their excessive Christmas decorations up a little longer, much to the horror of Korea's western residents. Although the shops are shut, Yongsan's CGV was screening some films which gave me the perfect excuse to dust my camera and snap some shots at the I-Park Mall - hence the unseasonal photograph.
Subok and I checked out Changeling, and despite craning our necks to view the big screen from the second row as we battled all the other cinema-goers on this national holiday, it was an excellent choice. Definitely recommended.
So much to the amazement of my friends as the cinema was booming with action, I managed to fall asleep for the first twenty minutes of the film. I woke up right in the middle of the loud sound effects feeling I'd missed most of the plot lines, but soon realised that I hadn't actually missed much that I couldn't catch up on. Granted it's a James Bond -- it's not supposed to have the most complex of storylines -- but to sum up there was: a lot of action, Bond going off the rails, a distinct lack of Bond girl action, oh, and more action. I'm not saying there wasn't a storyline, there was just a whole lot more shooting and not a whole lot of dialogue for my liking.
Also, against usual Bond film norm, this was a sequel to the previous -- much better -- movie, with many references that would be lost on you if you'd not seen it, and apparently (I'm not astute enough to have really noticed) storylines have been left over for the inevitable trequel. This isn't necessarily a criticism, but it's recommended to have seen the previous one first before heading out to catch all the nuances of this one.
Still, it was well-acted with a great cast, and it's a good job they kept Daniel Craig on to keep the attentions of the bang-bang-tired such as myself. The continuation of this 007 was certainly a highlight for me. But despite my feelings, I know some of my friends thoroughly enjoyed it. Each to her own I guess.
Spent most of this weekend sick which was a tad bit annoying. Haven't thrown up from non-alcohol related reasons like that in years. Not so pleasant, but I still managed to whoop Brian's ass at Guitar Hero...
I take the bus three stops down the road every day to work, turning a 40 minute walk into a five minute ride. Other than this I've found the subway to be very convenient for taking me elsewhere in the city; it's clean, fast, and all the maps have English translations. I've even heard other foreigners go so far as to wonder why you would ever need to take a bus, and that they wouldn't know how.
After having had my attention turn to this convenient website (use with IE), I've started to be more adventurous with my bus travel. Travelling south of Seoul for the Korean harvest festival - Chuseok - to visit family, it was a good opportunity to avoid a four-transfer subway trip in favour of a direct bus all the way there.
Regarding the holiday, hanging out in the countryside was definitely what I needed after a long stint in Seoul, but I did feel mildly awkward not being able to follow my hosts' break-neck speed conversations! With an extra day off on Monday to play with, I went to see Mamma Mia: the Movie with my cousin. Once I got over how incredibly lame the storyline is, it was actualy quite entertaining. And just to note: I love popcorn in Korea! Having a mix of salted and caramel HOT popcorn is a much better idea than drying out your mouth with just one or the other that British cinemas insist you eat!
...is a grammatically correct sentence.
Yesterday, "sparked by my mathematical background and free time on [that] national holiday", I wrote a really long blog post showing how for every number of words 'buffalo' strung together, the string would make a grammatically correct sentence. With too much time to think on the subway I'm not really satisfied that what I wrote was 100% accurate, so have decided to come back to it later. This might take a long time though, since at this point in time I never want to hear the word 'buffalo' (or at least type it) again. So!
TODAY (which is now yesterday, and considering it's gone midnight, two days ago) I went to the Latin American Art exhibition in the Deoksugung museum. Pretty weird stuff. Lots of dismembered limbs, definite space theme going on in gallery 3, and gallery 4 messed with my eyes/brain. I enjoyed it.
TODAY (or Saturday, or today, or yesterday, depending on *just* how pedantic we're being) I saw The Dark Knight. Loud and long was how my friend described it, which I don't think is an unfair evaluation, but the raving reviews of Heath Ledger as the Joker were completely justified. It doesn't need to be said, but the lack of his masterful performances from future cinema screens will be missed.
After mentioning a throw-away thought of holidaying to Egypt next year, Ian gave me a look of fear as he told me he was scared of scarabs. This look was nothing however compared to the look of horror he gave when he realised the reference was lost on me. With The Mummy 3 imminent to Korean cinema screens, we bought the two prequels (I think this particular subway seller was actually legit) to aid my impending education.
Being a big fan of Egypt, Rachel Weisz and American jokes, they went down well. The latest film, however, unfortunately misses out on the beautiful lead actress, and although we came up with some plausible explanations, Alex's cut-sharp English accent was disappointingly replaced with an all-American one. On top of this, the plot was poor. Basically they revived the mummy far too early and I fell asleep during the action. With the film set in China, none of my reasons for liking the earlier films were fulfilled in this one.
So that was Ian's last night in Seoul. I packed him off on the City Limousine Bus (it's just as plush as it sounds) on Tuesday morning to Incheon airport, tried not to get too teary as a further half year of long-distance-relationship looms, and set about enjoying Lauren's last night in Seoul.
Earlier in the day Lauren had met with her now ex-boss, who'd kindly loaded her off with some cash to splash on her last day. After packing and re-packing a year's worth of accumulations (let's not even think about how much stuff got sent home; I'm thinking of having a clear-out soon) we went to a fancy sushi bar. One of those all-you-can-eat buffet places. We agreed that Korea definitely does buffet restaurant a lot classier than England. For some reason they threw a mental when I wanted to take pictures of the food, though.
As a last-night memento we also went to one of Korea's many sticker booths. With make-up shops and face-rollers to slim down your cheeks rife, it is little wonder that Koreans are obsessed with taking photos of themselves. It's not uncommon to see people on the streets/subway/drinking coffee with their phones out posing for self-pics. I guess sticker booths just aid this obsession. They're just like ID photo booths, except there are wigs and hairbands to try on, and you can decorate the photos afterwards with pretty backgrounds and borders.
So that was Lauren's last night in Seoul. I packed her off on the City Limousine Bus (still plush) this morning to Incheon airport where my unexpected tears appeared as my Korean-adventure friend set forth for the security gates and beyond. I'll miss her tonnes and I wish her all the best back in the UK...and I guess I'd better get used to the idea that the holidays are over and it's back to work tomorrow!
There's a Pixar exhibition going on at the Seoul Arts Center near the Nambu bus terminal.
Ian and I went to the DVD bang especially to catch up on the latest Ratatouille movie on Thursday morning before heading down to see what the makers had to say about it.
It was interesting to see all the original drawings/character studies/explanatory films that went into the making of the animation pictures. Definitely had an aura of "Look! It's not just all computers. There are people behind this!" going on.
The exhibition is running until September 7th, so if you're a Pixar fan (I hold Finding Nemo to be the best film of all time), then it's not a bad exhibition to get to.
It was cheesy. It was long. Obviously a Spielberg movie, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing these days. Was glad to see the map and hat in full flow, though. I'm no Indy connoisseur, having only seen the Last Crusade for the first time last year, so I'm not going to go into a historical rant about poor jokes and references. All I can really say is that: it was cheesy; it was long. If cheesy and long is what you look for in a good movie, it's probably right up your street.
And holy Moses, it got HOT. But not that nice kind of bright sunshine with a nice breeze hot. We're talking full-blown mug. This is the first of it, and it's only gonna get worse. Now my gas bills are down to a sensible price after that long icy winter, I now fear for my forthcoming electricity bills with visions of the AC on high ^^; *sweat*
A while back, Lauren, being a sucker for watching late night horror by herself, called me in to watch the American version of The Grudge with her that she'd scoured out on MegaTV. It was pretty rubbish. Sarah Michelle Gellar flitting about her countryside Japan getting spooked by unforgiving souls in a haunted house.
Having said this, that night I was envisaging black haired freaky girls crawling about my ceiling as I retreated to my apartment...alone... (I like to get into these things and scare myself; kind of like focussing on the spinning background while riding the kiddy rides at funfairs to get some kind of adrenaline rush that you're not supposed to get)
Now the "good" thing about this version of the movie was that they tied up all the loose ends. Sure, it was a horror film so there was a nice spooky cliffhanger, but the story was explained and we kind of understood the reasons behind the 'grudge'. Man kills wife due to unforgiving affair; wife upset. Not too much thinking involved.
On Wednesday, in the company of Alex - a nice, protecting, strong man, able to look after a pathetic girl such as myself - I thought it'd be a good idea to get in on some DVD horror watching. I really want to see the Japanese version of The Ring, having totally been haunted by the American version since I saw it, but if I really wanted to be scared, Alex recommended the original Grudge instead.
From the point of view of not wanting to be jumping out of my skin every other minute, I was definitely glad to have seen the re-make first. It's the lack of music and other devices usually employed to make the viewer comfortable that makes you feel, well, uncomfortable. But in terms of who was going to pop round the corner next, I felt pretty much prepared.
Regarding story line: HUH?? Everyone who goes in the house dies? The woman is a cat? The cat has a grudge? The boy has a grudge? The girl is the girl? The girl died? Where's the man? Who now? What?
Evidently I came out utterly confused and not that inspired. Images of extra hands running through my hair in the shower were forced to the back of my mind and nightmares were avoided.
But now I've dragged this up I'm probably not sleeping well tonight.
Life
Somehow life got busy. I don't know how, or when, but not so long ago the days at school were seriously dragging and I was struggling to get through to the next 'checkpoint', be that the next national holiday or kindy field trip. But somehow, I guess since we stopped feeling guilty about leaving over an hour earlier than the other teachers at school, the days are flying by and with them the weeks, and now, months.
But not only that, it seems my Sundays in front of MegaTV have been somewhat limited lately. It's a shame, since I do love a good Sunday afternoon film, but travelling Korea's most "well-touristed" sights, fuelling my growing salsa dancing obsession several times a week, and working on my slowly improving Korean skills seem to be taking up the majority of my free time. Nonetheless, last Sunday I sneaked in a morning film.
SerenityReminiscent of my childhood obsession with vampires, I spent a good portion of my revision days at university watching all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer plus commentaries and generally falling in love with creator Joss Whedon. On chatting to a fellow Whedon fan about Buffy's final villain Caleb, I learned that the actor was the star of another of Whedon's creations: Firefly.
Now I've heard several times over that the show was a flop due to FOX airing the series out of order, and yet a good handful of my geeking acquaintances were selling the series to me. The concept - set in the future after "Earth-that-was" has long been destroyed, a bunch of misfits follow captain Malcolm Reynolds in his Firefly spaceship, taking on whatever jobs they can to rub a few pennies together - honestly sounded a bit, um, crap. Sci-fi isn't my preferred genre of big-screen action, but in true Joss style, the characters are so endearing, and Mal is so dry-humoured and witty, that to this show, too, I became addicted.
So of course watching the follow-up film Serenity was a must-do on my ever-long to-watch list. I am in fact amazed that it took me this long to get around to it.
If I'd not seen the series I'm not sure I'd have been quite as enthralled: even though the plot was well executed I didn't feel all the characters were developed well, and that it was taken for granted that the viewer knew the background of their relationships. (Like, was there any sexual tension between Caleigh and Simon? And where did Inara spring from?!) Nonetheless, Mal's character shone through from the start, and the film resolved all hanging issues nicely. And of course, someone had to die; I can only apologise for the spoiler.
OK, enough rambling about random films I'm watching.
Another national holiday
Yesterday was Buddha's birthday and thus another day off work to take advantage of. Unfortunately due to frolicking in Busan, we missed the Lotus Lantern parade last weekend. Still, last night Lauren and I got to Jogyesa Temple in central Seoul to witness the lighting of the lanterns that have been slowly increasing in number across the country over the past couple of months.
It was a beautiful ceremony, and I was dead impressed at that monk playing that really big drum, but not being of remotely Buddhist origin the mass praying became a bit much for us.
Meeting the locals
Now admittedly people often like to practise their (occasionally limited) English skills on foreign passers-by. You can feel the covert looks on the subway, and can tick down the seconds until they pluck up the courage to engage you and ask the inevitable "Where you from?".
Not quite so covertly, on the ride home last night a bunch of high school boys were rock-scissor-papering it up under my gaze, daring one another to talk to me. Not fitting the usual motives, it actually turned out they couldn't even understand my basic "How old are you?" question despite the fact they've probably been studying English at school for a good several years now. Rather raised some doubt regarding the intense Korean education system. Still, it was amusing watching the boys beating each other up (literally and mentally) and simultaneously handy getting a free Korean lesson in at the same time. As politely as I knew how, I declined the invitation to meet them again...
Pottery making
To back-post even further, on Saturday Lauren and Anne-Sophie, a friend from my Korean class, hit the traffic-logged roads towards Icheon: a small city in the southwest of Seoul famous for its pottery and annual ceramics festival that is currently being hosted. Icheon is also apparently famous for its rice "that tastes so good it needs no side dishes", but it would seem that I'm no rice connoisseur as it neither looked nor tasted much different to the various rice-based creations that are doled out in every food establishment I've visited.
However, rather than a rice tasting day, we booked a pottery tour, of which the highlight was making our own clay creations.
Lauren turned out to be some kind of ceramics master, but without a doubt, despite a self-titled aptitude for arts and crafts, out of our group including the two fellow Brits who'd joined up with us, my attempt was literally the flop as it just failed to sustain any kind of pot-like shape. The nice lady watching over me was even in looks of despair, shaking her head with noises of "어떻게!" under her breath.
Unable to face the failure any longer, I succumbed to my clay and embraced the shape it was insisting on assuming. Still, with a burst in the fiery furnace and a lick of celadon, I'm sure my makeshift dipping dish will serve me well...
On the bus over there in search of coffee and a movie, I leaned over to Lauren and commented in an audible whisper, "The guy next to me is reading the Bible". The elderly man promptly made a large gesture of placing the yellow ribbon on his marked page before embarking on a lengthy conversation with me. Perhaps this was in order to prove to me that he spoke near-perfect English - at least for someone who has never studied in an English-speaking country - or less cynically, perhaps he was genuinely after a chance to practice his language skills.
Either way, somehow or other he swiftly managed to steer from the usual small talk to deep political discussion regarding the North/South Korean divide (rather apt since we only just visited the DMZ the other day). He replied negative when I asked whether he had any relatives in North Korea, but proceeded to tell me about his sister who had fled there 57 years ago to save her communist husband.
With the new possibilities of reuniting families that were separated during the Korean war under controlled circumstances, his sister was able to ask him whether Korea had electricity - back in the days of the war outside of the capital the luxury was apparently scarce - and he was able to learn that the North Korean government feed up those going to meet their Southern counterparts a few months in advance to give them the appearance of being well-fed.
Being only an hour from the border it is somewhat food for thought the lack of knowledge that passes over that 155 miles of demilitarized zone.
Despite drooping eyes, we headed for the Hyehwa cinema. It seems like it's a pretty cool area with many bars, coffee shops and street sellers, though I am yet to explore in the daytime. Opting for an English film, we went for The Other Boleyn Girl. Whether it was totally historically accurate or not, it certainly made for a gripping film. It was also good to hear some good British accents filling the room for a couple of hours, despite the leads originating from America.
If I were to make a list of my favourite activities, as I am indeed guilty of having done with such social networking sites such as Facebook that today's generation of computer users are all too familiar, I would put "cinema" somewhere near the top. On reflection, I'd hope that the list wouldn't be too long anyway, for fear of boring the bored person who would be reading this list, and thus the bottom of the list would too be near the top. So you understand that it is a particular pastime that I am fond of.
To my disappointment I have not recently been able to attend one of these establishments. There has been film watching, naturally, after all, I do have MegaTV. But the big screen and plush seats have been absent from the experiences. Since otherwise this would be among the more pointless blog posts I will have published, you may have guessed that yes, tonight, I went to the cinema.
If you are particularly astute, you may too have suspected that Juno was the film that I saw, what with it being the title of the post.
Unusually I have few cynical comments to pass on this film. The protagonist was endearing; the theme was emotive and topical; the conclusion was satisfying. The light-hearted presentation allowed the humour to be accessible without dampening the significance of the subject. Many questions were raised regarding "morals" and one's "faith in humanity".
- How can we ever be sure that love will last forever?
- In view of this, is a loving single parent a good substitute for a two parent family that may ultimately break down?
My GCSE RE teacher taught me that a Buddhist would answer, "Treat each circumstance on its own merits," to many of the stock morality questions that students are faced with. He didn't teach me that there are approximately a gazillion streams of Buddhism, all of which follow varying variations of the religion. That's right, varying variations. Nonetheless, this simplified view of views rather seems to have it down with my throwaway thoughts.
Apologies for the unnecessarily pretentious tone of this post. It's what comes of listening to Radio 4 immediately prior to blogging.
Been making my way through the 'romance' films on MegaTV. In the last few days have seen Because I Said So, The Notebook, Laws of Attraction and If Only. A splendid use of my time, I'm sure. Contemplating love, life, and all that.
But this evening we headed to the Nowon Lotte Cinema for the big screen version of Sweeney Todd. Despite the rather twisted storyline, this has got to be Tim Burton at his most wacky and Johnny Depp at his most brilliant - equal to many of his other works. So refreshing to get a talented young actor in, too; Ed Sanders is brilliantly cast, though great things come expectedly from Bonham Carter, Rickman and the rest.
Perfectly dark, creepy and disturbing - picturing London at its most atmospheric - I revelled in this new masterpiece.
So as I forced myself to relax as we missed the turnoff for the airport, it was futile once I realised my flight home has been delayed by one and half hours. Hence, the increased facebook activity and pointless blog post.So. News. Ha!- "Happy Birthday Jesus!" we exclaimed into a video camera, approached by churchy types on the street in exchange for free choco pies.
- Being such a frequent goer of the PC방, they made me a member, lol. Now I get to clock up mileage points, or something. And since I don't know my address, they just filled that part in with PC Bang. Ha ha.
- Saw Ghost for the first time last night in the DVD방. Despite despair at the cheesiness, I cried as Patrick leaves Demi forever...
- I have 1 minute left of my time online at the airport. Guess I'd better wrap up this thrilling entry.
Ciao!
Unfortunately since our passports are currently with immigration (note to self: pick it up tomorrow) we were unable to go to the army base to see the film last weekend. So we had to wait until the 19th along with the rest of Korea to see it at the regular cinema yesterday, but this did give me a few extra days to speed through the book again before seeing it on the big screen.This was a mixed blessing - it allowed me to enjoy the magic of the book with the benefit of hindsight, recalling the characters and fully absorbing the nuances of the text without getting confused with the plot. However, it also made me recall every detail that they played out differently in the film, preventing me from enjoying the medium for what it is. Comparisons aside, I wasn't particularly impressed by the film. Sure, there were lots of loud bangs keeping me alert, but it's always the case when they dramatise a book that your imagination gets warped by Hollywood actors and computer graphics. In view of the latter, I guess they wanted to make it all seem magical, but Lyra's clean face and the gold sparks flying around trivialised a lot of the seriousness for me. And despite the name of the film, I wasn't particularly convinced of the powers of the alethiometer, or golden compass as it's referred to, and I certainly wasn't convinced of Lyra's power to read it. I would have liked to have seen some swinging needles on the compass(maybe with some images of thought sweeping across the screen, or something equally as corny to remain in tune with the rest of the film) instead of the whooshing into the depths of its 'mind', in order to really gauge the girl's concentration on the instrument and the amazement of others at her skills. Another problem is trying to fit in five hours or so of reading time into an 180 minute film. I wonder if I wasn't acquainted with the plot whether I would really have understood the bond between human and daemon, or understood why Asriel was hanging out in the snow. But I think my main issue with the whole thing - since despite my ramblings above I felt that on the whole they portrayed the plot well, and the concept of a talking bear was done as realistically as one could hope, and Kidman fulfilled all my expectations of Mrs Coulter - was that the girl who plays Lyra was wrong on so many levels. For a start, the whole point is that she hasn't reached puberty. I dunno, but I'd say this girl definitely had. Secondly, she was supposed to be small for her age. Again, I felt this girl (*looks up her name...ah yes, Dakota Blue Richards) is really quite tall, though I forget how tall I was at 11. Her accent rubbed on me like a coarse cheese grater and her acting skills mirrored my own - poor, and overdone. I felt it was just a shame since there are plenty of small, genuinely common accented gifted actresses out there, but for some reason it was this one that was given her chance.So on looking up published reviews, it would seem my views on Miss Richards are not to the consensus. But as far as the real magic and fantasy goes, I think my thoughts follow the trend that they were overridden by computer animation, which unfortunately also drown out the emotional nuances that drive the reader to turn the pages of the book. Despite a fantastic cast to get the public into the seats, The Golden Compass is a generally underwhelming adaptation of such a magnificent book.
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I've taken on some extra part-time work this week, so have been forced to favour my computer screen this long weekend rather than partake in extended family rituals this year.
