Now that we can all stop worrying about terrorism...

... we should move on to the important issues.  Like fan death.  A fairly common belief in Korea is the existence of this phenomenon where having a fan on, in a room where the door(s) and window(s) are closed, while sleeping can lead to death.

This isn't a picture of a fan in my apartment (I've been forgetting to take a picture of it) but fans in Korea tend to come with these timers so you can set it before you go to sleep so you will reduce the likelihood of death by fan.

This isn't a belief held by a few people, but a widely held fact.  Some of my students, when I've mentioned I've slept with a room while just asking for fan death and have obviously survived (unless of course I'm Bruce Willis and everyone else is Haley Joel Osmont) they have been fairly surprised.

Here is a Korean news report on a fan death incident... obviously it's in Korean so... yeah.  I think you'll understand who the alleged murderer is when the camera acts like it's hiding from the killer.


Those brave reporters tempted the wrath of the dreaded fan.  From what I've heard, especially in the summer, there will be several stories on the news about the death of someone caused by a fan.  Korea can build smart phones, ships, cars, and various other pieces of technology but still reports on the physically impossible phenomenon of fan death.

I also found a video taken by an expat who talks to a few Koreans on the subject.


A Wikipedia article on the subject identifies some odd explanations for fan death.  These range from changes in air pressure to hypothermia to the cutting of oxygen molecules.

Does anyone know of any other strange widely held beliefs, from anywhere, that are hugely illogical?

So I guess I'm doing requests now? Sort of? Let's end sentences with question marks?

So a fan was wondering what the eats are like.

Generally I eat lunch, during the week, at work where people volunteer to cook lunch for the staff.  So has ranged from a Texas Chainsaw Massacred Denver Omelet (a.k.a. scrambled eggs with stuff in it) and fried potatoes (I promise nobody died when I cooked) to Kimchi Jjigae (김치찌개, a kimchi soup) to Burritos.  It was actually pretty amusing to see Koreans make Burritos... one of my roommates just balled it all up, and told us not to look when people noticed.

In the Gangnam area, where I work, there's a decent amount of food that fits a Western palate.  Like... Popeye's Chicken, Subway, Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger Hunter, Taco Rico, Dublin (a pub/restaurant) and some others.  Korean food, while it has a deserved reputation for spice, has a pretty solid array of foods that lack it.  Donkass (똔깟?) is fried pork, Bossam (보쌈) is steamed pork, and Samgyubsal (삼겹살) is grilled pork.  Donkass is actually Japanese but seems to have endeared itself in Korea.  And yes Koreans do love pork.


Pork aside, there's a decent array of food and I don't imagine it would be terribly hard for someone to find stuff he or she likes here.  Though, it doesn't seem to take very long until you're a bit numb to spice.  I had something with Tabasco in the sauce... it was tangy.  I guess it could be that there just wasn't much in it.


Street food is kinda interesting.  Go to 3:45.





The first item, which he mispronounces, can be romanized Tteokbokki (떡볶이) was voted the most popular street food by expats in a recent-ish survey.  Sundae (순대) isn't too bad... but it's still blood sausage.  I had a somewhat humorous encounter in a class with Sundae.  Myself and another teacher were playing a take on Pictionary and one of the words, Sundae as in ice cream, was misinterpreted as blood sausage.

A street food staple not found in the video is Odeng (오뎅), it's... kinda like Spam but fish instead of ham.  I can't say it's my favorite food but it's not terrible.  I don't think I need to discuss Bundaegi anymore.


For someone in search of something pretty benign there's always Kimbap (김밥).  Think California Rolls with some fish (cooked) or some other meat.  It comes in a pretty wide range so yeah.  There's also the standard fare that people are usually aware of, Bibimbap (비빔밥), and Bulgogi (불고기).  I'm kinda tired of listing foods already.

So...

For the picky ex-roommate there's a bit of news I know you'd appreciate... pretty much every restaurant will either place a jug of filtered water on your table or have some self-service filtered water.

Pictures!

So I posted some pictures of my life in Seoul on Facebook.  If you can't see them it can be discussed.  I'm hesitant to use my Picasa for it because of the limited storage space.

Splitting Hairs and Cultural Imperialism

Yeah I know it's not the best picture.

Important things first.  I gave myself a haircut for the first time.  I think the motivation came as a combination of wanting to be cheap and seeing one of my roommates doing it.  Admittedly he has a much simpler haircut than mine... not that mine is complex.

I think a part is slightly shorter than the opposite side but two of my Korean roommates don't think so.  Maybe I'm just paranoid... or maybe it is and I'm still paranoid.

As I work on this a female coworker (I trust her opinion more than my roommates') stopped by and said it looked good.  Mission accomplished!

Disclaimer:  Not all Koreans are like this.

You know it's good when it starts with a disclaimer.

Moving on to the subject of cultural imperialism.  From what I've seen and heard from expat friends, Korean culture has some not too nice parts to it.  Specifically, this ugliness is in the treatment of strangers.  Early in my stay here it was explained to me that Koreans (especially more old school ones) see Westerners and wonder why they're so friendly to strangers and cold to their friends.  A less charitable characterization that I've taken to using is, Koreans view people on the street as obstacles rather than people.  This is more an issue with the ajumas and ajushis, the women and men in their 40s-50s, I suspect it's because they're old enough to be fairly high in the age hierarchy but not so old they can't push someone a bit.  For instance... I was told a story about how a friend's fiancee, while she was getting out of a seat on the subway, was grabbed by an ajuma and pulled up.  Or those people who stand in the doorway to a subway car and, by doing so, block your attempt to get on the train.  Not because there is no room mind you... but because they want to stand by the door.

Hmm....  There's the standard of feminine beauty that is pre-feminist movement America with modern technology and fashion.  That is to say, there are billions of ads for plastic surgery, very high standards for how women dress (I've been told some women wear heels when they hike) that aren't mirrored for men, and a image of what an attractive woman should be that is remarkably shallow:  Cute and docile.

For the sake of fairness, compared to older generations the modern Korean woman is much more likely to have a meaningful career.  Is this a male dominated society?  Yes.  Has it been getting better?  It seems so.  Does it have a long way to go before it's even to the standard of the US?  Definitely.  Not all Korean women fall within the older expectation of what they should be like and there are those who fight against it.  One of my students mentioned a feminist rally where women walked down the street smoking (apparently it's a bit of a taboo for women to walk while smoking).  He disagreed with it... because it involved smoking... and he's a doctor.

One thing I saw in the Philippines that bothered me a lot was the presence and use of skin whitening products.  While they don't seem as common here, there is still whitening makeup available here and on some occasions I've seen people skin that looked a shade or two too white (and on one person you could see where the makeup stopped).  As a brown person who grew up in Caucasian neighborhoods, that REALLY bothers me.  To be perfectly frank I'll go ahead and say it... the American image of a beautiful person is, more often than not, white.  It has been getting better with the rise of various attractive celebrities of color but I wouldn't call it fixed.  To come to the other side of the world, to the place of my birth, and find that people use whitening makeup to make themselves beautiful makes me wish to use language that would prevent my niece from reading this blog.

This post is getting bigger than I expected.  It's 2:14 a.m. right now so it's a bit late but I will soldier on... I can always sleep on the weekend right?  Anyway....

Korea is extraordinarily homogenous.  I went to the CIA World Factbook to pull their data on the racial demographics of Korea and found:

homogeneous (except for about 20,000 Chinese)

So yeah.  I think Asia gets away with racism more than most other places.  In Korea, it probably helps that there isn't really anyone to complain about it.  When I've had conversations with friends about dating between Koreans and foreigners the hierarchy is something like: 1. Korean 2. Caucasian.  After that it sounds like it's pretty much a list of light skin to dark skin.  I suspect Japanese and Chinese are lower than their skin tone would normally place them considering the history between the countries.

Before I continue I think another disclaimer bomb would be nice here.  Not all Koreans are like that.  This is a problem with traditional households who, by the way I'm characterizing them, sound like the Korean version of the Tea Party... the Green Tea Party!  Wow that's a horrible joke.

There are some problems with borderline xenophobia.  By that I mean restaurants/bars/clubs that won't permit foreigners.  Awhile back, before I came to Korea, my fellow foreigner roommate went to a restaurant with a Korean friend.  Another day when he went with another foreigner they weren't allowed to enter, presumably because they didn't have a Korean with them.  For some of these places it might just be a reaction to negative encounters with foreigners.  I've heard some places near/in Itaewon won't allow foreigners to enter so, given Itaewon's reputation, the negative encounter theory probably has some weight to it.

So before I sign off for tonight and I'll leave you with one more wonderfully uplifting thought.  I've been told that people who visit Korea love it here and people who live here end up hating it.  Interestingly, I remember someone saying almost the exact same thing about Boston.

Later.

Hmmm time for ketchup.

I made a pun!

But on a not so serious note it's been awhile eh?  Last Friday was my first Korean lesson; between that class and studying Hangul I can, with some patience, read Korean.  I don't really know what I'm reading most of the time but yeah... my pronunciation of some characters can be kinda iffy still but yeah.  Apparently most Koreans don't pronounce some of those characters differently anyway.

On Saturday I met Pres. Obama...

Though he seemed kinda inanimate!  Because he was wax.  This was at a place called the 63 Building on Yeouido Island on the Han River.  Went to dinner with a friend and then to another friend's house... ate chicken....  Koreans really seem to love their chicken.  Like.. a lot.

Today (Tuesday for me) I cooked lunch for the office and... it seemed to be a success.  Denver scrambled eggs (Denver omelettes would be too difficult to cook for a dozen people at one on a 4 burner stove) and some fried rosemary potatoes.  Wish I had more potatoes but had the exact amount of eggs necessary for the people at the office at the time so it went well.  Hopefully nobody wakes up tomorrow puking their dinners.  But I'll go ahead and fly the mission accomplished banner now.

I also managed to get a phone.  I tried to get one yesterday but the timing and limit options given to E-2 visa holders didn't mix well yesterday.  Had much better luck today... obviously.  Hmm... what else?  In two days I hit the one month mark

Anyway....

End of Month 1

It hasn't really been a month in Korea but my first round of classes have finished.

Some things I haven't mentioned before... because I'm absentminded.

My normal day-to-day expenses are usually pretty low... if I wanted to really kick it into saving mode I can spend about ₩2,000 a day during the week to cover my transportation costs and eating lunch and dinner at the office instead of a restaurant.  Right now Google is telling me that's about $1.81.

The area my hagwon (학원, the school/academy/place where theoretically learning occurs) is Gangnam (alternatively romanized as Kangnam, 강남) and includes some major financial buildings and a swanky shopping area makes me feel hugely underdressed.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but yeah... jeans and a t-shirt don't really fit in with suits.  When it warms up I'll start wearing shorts and all will be well.

Seoul is huge.  Well... with approximately 24.5 million people (thanks Wikipedia) to think Seoul would be small would be pretty silly of me.  On Sunday I went to Hongdae (홍대, romanized as Hongik University on subway maps) via car and came back to Seongnam (성남, where I happen to live) took something in the neighborhood of 1.5 hours.  Though, my wonderful iPod application, Jihachul, estimates the trip at about an hour... I don't think it calculates waiting time for transfers well.  But yeah... Seoul is big.

Anyway... I haven't posted many pictures.  I should start posting more pictures in the nearish future... hopefully, now that I have a way to take pictures of things I see in my daily life without having to carry my camera.  For special outings I'll probably stick to the camera because of the high quality pictures.

I've learned so much about English grammar from this job.  Last night two of my roommates and I discussed the use of "would," "have," and "would have."  Crazy stuff.  I've been learning more here than when I was supposed to be learning this stuff.

And with that... good night.

Thanks Immigration

Today I went to the immigration office about an hour away from my school to apply for my alien ID card and was almost turned away.  Luckily, I had left the paperwork from my adoption at the office so they were able to fax some of the documents needed to prove my naturalization and name change.  Despite this, they still require that I complete some additional paperwork officially renouncing my Korean citizenship... which I don't think I have... but yeah... it's kinda bizarre.

Hopefully my ID arrives in the 10 days or so the internet tells me it will take to process so I can open a bank account and get a cellphone... I'm kinda debating what kind of phone I want, a smart or normal phone.  We shall see.  What is complicating it is that I want to get an iPod which has some redundant capabilities with smart phones.

Let's see... what else... the T-Money card we use to pay for public transportation is extraordinarily useful.  Besides the shops in the subways (lotion stores, clothing, convenience stores, shoes, music, food, etc.) there are some other institutions that accept it, notably: cabs and McDonald's.

I'm sleepy... this time because I was only able to sleep for about 2 hours last night.  I'm surprised I haven't passed out yet.  I would say I'm about to go to sleep but I have no idea.

P.S. I was invited to someone's birthday tomorrow... I guess it's kinda far away so I'm not 100% on whether I'll go.  Maybe I'll just stop by to say hello.