Outside of Seoul

Gosh, I really haven't posted in a while... Here's some photos to fill the void:
Snaps from various 2009 and 2010 weekend trips outside of Seoul...
I'll be back to posting more stuff soon....

Have a wonderful Lunar New Year and may your Tiger year be grrrrreat!

Cheonju 전주



Gunsan 군산



Gyeongju 경주



Busan 부산



Jaecheon 제천



Donghae 동해

Guest Post @ Everthenomad

Yay, I have a guest post about Seoul over on Ever the Nomad! Go check it out!

Ever the Nomad is a travel blog run by Anja Mutic, a traveler and talented writer who freelances for Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Time Out and Travel + Leisure... What a job!

These days, Gavin and I have been taking a lot of walks. Gavin's usually in charge of navigation. I am in charge of the camera. The recent passing of a friend was making me look all the more carefully at my surroundings, thinking philosophically about impermanence. I dedicated my guest post to "disappearing" Seoul -- the neighborhoods and character-laden streets that are being bulldozed throughout the city in the name of modernization. Time marches on and cities must change -- that's inevitable and necessary -- but I wish that the Seoul and Korean governments' insatiable hunger for bigger and shinier things could somehow accommodate some element of the past, a bit of local color, some stories to grow on...

Below, some photos of alleyways in Korea...


1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Things I learned about life from Emil Goh (1966-2009)

Last Tuesday, the 8th, I was sitting upstairs in MMMG cafe, hunched over at my laptop working through some revisions when my e-mail sounded a new incoming message. The little red email icon bounced in the dock, but I ignored it as I concentrated on the project at hand.

Finally, I took a break from work to sip my coffee and check my e-mails. When my eyes fell on the message from Doug, the first words made me catch my breath. "I got a call today that Emil has passed away." My heart was in my throat when I called Doug to confirm, hoping fervently that this was some crazy mistake. The next several hours and the next several days proved heartbreakingly that it wasn't so. It was a heart attack that took him, too young at the age of 43, on the morning of September 7 only 4 days after the opening of a group show he was in.

This past week I've read numerous eulogies of Emil online. Eulogies from his inner circle friends who've known him much better and for much longer. I pondered for a while whether I should, could or would add my own thoughts, as I'd only known him for a short while. Normally I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, nor am I comfortable sharing my emotions online. But online is precisely where I met Emil, and although he may not have known it, he played a huge part in shaping how I came to see Seoul, my home away from home. I think the best testament to a human being's legacy is how he or she affected the people and the planet left behind, so I thought I should record this: things I learned about life and about how to see things, from Emil...


Photos via Superlocal: 1. undecided, 2. cute animal xmas couplelook, Edae, 3. yellows, 4. snow white bingsu

Not long after I arrived in Korea, I noticed another Flickr member posting photos of Seoul. His Flickr name was Superlocal. Superlocal had an eye for the delightful and beautiful aspects of everyday things. He snapped photos of people sleeping on the subway, people with funny hats or mismatched shoes, the odd details of modern life with a fondness for the everyday, the more mundane the better. We had a common interest in food and design, and we were both living in Seoul, so I casually made him a Flickr contact so as to keep up on his observations about my newly adopted city.

He was such a prolific poster, that it got to the point where it was hard to walk down a street in Seoul without spotting something and saying to Gavin, "Oh, right, Superlocal posted a photo of that last week!" After following his photostream for a bit, I realized that we shared a common Southern Chinese ancestry, a background not often found in Korea. We started trading comments and e-mails back and forth, becoming Flickr friends: lamenting the lack of Hong Kong style dim sum in Korea, celebrating the discovery of some delicious buckwheat noodles in a back-alley in Jongno, bemoaning our poor Korean-speaking ability and our fruitless efforts to acquire it.... always trading travel and restaurant tips and noticing how we always seemed to "just miss" each other at exhibitions or cafes. On one occasion, I found myself eating patbingsu at MMMG at the same exact moment that he uploaded a photo of the same patbingsu he had eaten not long before.

If I was ever feeling momentarily down about living far away from family in a foreign country, I only needed to take a peek at one of his funny photographic observations to set my brain on a more positive course. How silly to dwell on the negative. There was so much awesomeness in this city! There was so much awesomeness... everywhere! Get out onto the street and look for it!


Photos via Superlocal: 1. weekly fix, 2. twinset, 3. #FF0066 girl, i think, 4. deep fried bun

Emil was a bottomless fount of information and was always eager to trade recommendations: for iPhone apps and YouTube videos; quick to send links about the delicious deep fried bun he had in Fukuoka or to ask where he might find a passable Vietnamese banh mi in Seoul (Sorry, Emil, I don't know of any). Though obviously well-composed and carefully color-balanced, his almost daily photographic notes were prosaic in tone. I noticed with bemusement that in his written descriptions, he almost never used the word "I," preferring instead to be an anonymous "eye," giving his mostly international viewers the feeling that they had somehow been teleported into the heart of Seoul from abroad, with an instant zoom-lens view of snacks sold on the streets and sneaker trends on the subway. Actually, it's quite unusual for me to have online friends, but "Super" aka "Emil" was a stellar online communicator, shooting off e-mails and comments with a regularity that belied the busy-ness of his offline life.

So when I finally met Emil Goh face to face early this year -- it was a chance encounter at a gathering of some design-folk in Gangnam, the sort of thing I almost never go to -- it felt as if we were picking up in the middle of an ongoing conversation. I think with anyone else it would have been strange or awkward -- online and offline personas sometimes don't match -- but Emil was apparently exactly the same in real life as he was online -- constantly upbeat, constantly noticing quirky things, constantly snapping photos, gushing about his favorite finds, and always always on the go. Eager to share his passions: design, creativity, modern and vintage ephemera, the industrial shops along the Cheongyecheon, camera and print shops in Chungmuro, and food! Always, he was in search of deliciousness!
Now instead of e-mails I got text messages, brief but almost always about snacking...
"at mmmg this afternoon want a cuppa?"
"i'm having fried mantou u hungry?"
"fave tempura place in hongdae 죽촌!!! "

After a couple of meals with Emil, I noticed that he had a million friends. He could spot them from across the room or from a block away. He introduced everybody to everybody -- and then reintroduced you, if you happened to forget that he had introduced you before -- yet never made anyone feel like they were unimportant or forgotten. The unique aspect of Emil's style of socializing was that instead of being a social butterfly, flitting from friend to friend in search of someone more important, everyone just gravitated to him. There was surely some kind of electromagnetic or metaphysical force that caused friends and acquaintances to cross the street, turn a corner and suddenly bump into him, wherever he happened to be.

Emil was relentlessly positive. I never heard a bad word about anyone or anything out of him, although goodness knows he must have faced the same difficulties that any traveler faces in a foreign country. He also didn't seem to forget things or people -- he retained names, faces, obscure details and references -- and he almost always followed up loose conversational threads with emails and texts peppered with exclamation marks and sounding just like he spoke: "that iPhone app I talked about!" followed by a link and then a half-dozen more. "thanks a gerzillion!" "ace!!!!" He always seemed to be bouncing in his seat whenever we met for a "cuppa" and I imagined that he was even bouncing in his seat when he tapped out these short messages. Though Emil obsessively acquired Apple, MMMG, and Muji objects, he didn't buy these things so much to increase his coolness factor -- actually, I think it might have been the other way around -- but because he was endlessly curious about things. He had to play with a zillion gadgets figure out how they worked, had to examine every item's form and function, reveling in their individual charms with a sense of wonderment and joy. He could obsess about anything from a rubber band to his beloved iPhone (which can't even work in Korea), and he loved to share his discoveries with friends and... well anyone. He just loved to share.


Photos via Superlocal: 1. italian stovetop coffee maker, 2. old school rubber bands, 3. raffia, 4. old skool lead

For all his generosity of spirit, I realized after his passing that I just didn't know that many personal details about him. We talked about design and art, and we connected (as he did with so many of his friends) over a shared love of food, but he closely guarded matters of the heart. He was simply one of those rare people who could endlessly give to others, without asking for very much in return. I found it rare to meet an artist who was so humble, who spent so little time self-promoting (or so much time promoting others) or even talking about his own art projects. I know he must have shared this aspect of himself with many others who were connected with him in the art world, but I honestly didn't realize he was such a well-known artist until after he died. Possibly, he was too busy living to even bother having his own health checked out. To me, Emil was simply the first person I thought of whenever Gavin and I found a delicious hole-in-the-wall restaurant tucked in some forgotten neighborhood of Seoul. "I had some awesome naengmyeon today in Gyeongdong Market! I'll post it when I develop the film..." I emailed him a month ago. "naengmyeon sounds great! can' t wait!!!" he responded, all lower case with exclamation points in a hurry as usual. So, Emil... I'm sorry I'm rather late...

On Friday, I went to his funeral at St. Francis of Assisi Chapel in Hannam-dong. In one eulogy, a friend read a poem describing him as "secret agent" from outer space, whose special mission "to save everything humble and every event miscellaneous from the destiny to be perished on Earth," a description that I found exactly right. I do think that Emil is somewhere out there in the ether, he's moved on from Earth to find better food, cooler and funnier object-things, fantastic intergalactic details of design, in some other galaxy or universe. He's already found a million new friends, they're sharing an absolutely awesome, space-age version of a shaved ice frozen dessert! And all the while, he's snapping photos, observing and sharing, like some superhappy ethnographer, just like he was here on Earth.

Rest, Emil -- but keep on going. You keep inspiring me.

More memories of Emil via arteri, artlife, douglaswillis, usccharles, arduino, legsup, poketo, jasonglewis, yourboyhood, jythings, westwoodMan, chungwoo... Emil Goh on Seoul, published here and here. Art here and here.

Seoul

I don’t post very much about Seoul. Here I am, living half the world away from my hometown, occasionally writing about traveling in Asia, but no posts about Seoul, my current city of residence.

Its not for lack of topics. Or maybe there are too many topics? Actually, the longer I live here, the less qualified I feel to write about this place. Not sure how to narrow down a city of 10 million people into a concise list of “must sees” and “must dos.”

When we got to Korea 3 years ago, I promptly set up a Flickr account and took pictures of everything. Everything that seemed a little weird or different or interesting to my non-Korean eyes.

This was something I didn’t do so much back home in NY. Though I loved my hometown (still do), I guess I had ceased to really… see… it. Ironically, at that time, I made a living designing tourism ads and brochures for places that I didn’t get to visit, and I could tell you the CMYK mix of a perfect blue Mediterranean sky.

So when we alighted here on the other side of the world – Gavin to start a new job and me with plenty of newfound time on my hands -- I was determined to not miss a thing. Out came the camera. The most mundane things got documented. I’m afraid I started to bore the folks back home with photos of tangled cable wire and kimchi sidedishes.

A post over at Primitive Culture got me wondering about how my point of view might have changed over the past few years, so I looked through all those early photo sets on Flickr to see what I noticed back then that I no longer notice now. And what I notice now that I didn’t notice then. Sifting through the photos I found that there have been both changes and constants to subject matter, though I'm not quite sure I can articulate what they signify yet.

For now, in lieu of a big fancy post about all the places to go and things to do in the capitol city of Korea, or some grand overreaching statements about what Korea is or isn't, here are some photos of Seoul. Tomorrow, we’re off to Bangkok for a few nights to see new sights and taste new flavors…

First, a few photos I took 3 years ago when Seoul was brand new to me.

1. Shopping, 2. Lotus flower, 3. Wires, 4. Shop, 5. Neon signs, 6. Colorful Construction

And here, more recent photos of what epitomizes Seoul to me now.

1. Seoul, 2. Fumigation, 3. Rain, 4. Seoul, 5. Seoul, 6. Aheondong pojangmacha, 짱

'Tis the Season

1. Cloudy coin purse, 2. Silver lining
It's the rainy season on the Korean peninsula. Last weekend, the weather gods taunted us with a solid wall of non-stop showers. I'm not one of those people who likes walks in the rain (nor piña coladas), so we've been staying indoors, watching DVDs, reading and peering out at our rain-soaked courtyard as precipitation pelts away at our tiled roof. I've been getting a lot of crafting done.

I'd been itching to make something other than iPod cozies for a while. But even after a ton of sketches in my notebook, I didn't have any designs I was particularly excited about. Finally, all this rain yielded some inspiration. Cloudy coin purses with raindrop zipper pulls were the result. Now it can rain money! And, for an extra dose of optimism, every cloud is stitched with silver thread... Each purse comes with two pins: a sunny badge and a thunderin-n-lightnin' badge. You can switch 'em up depending on your mood or the weather. Or use both if you're feelin' kinda crazy. Go check out the clouds in my Etsy shop...


1. 5kg of tomatoes, 2. Cross section
Well all this rain is good for something. Our little cherry tomato plant is sprouting mini-tomatoes nonstop. We can't eat them fast enough. But sometimes mini tomatoes just don't cut it and you yearn for something meatier, jucier...

A few weeks ago, a friend who I hadn't seen in a while e-mailed out of the blue. She lives about two hours southwest of Seoul on her family's farm in Jecheon (제천), and she wanted to know if she could send us some of their organic tomatoes. Sixteen gorgeous, fat, vine-ripened tomatoes arrived by messenger the next day, and thus began 7 days of tomato-cooking and tomato-eating.


Gazpacho recipe
First, I made gazpacho. It made for a refreshing and light appetizer for my friend's potluck lunch.
Then I made some tomatoes with scrambled eggs, a yummy Chineses homestyle dish whenever my stomach is homesick. For brunch, the tomatoes went into an omelet with cheese. And after I picked up a baguette at Paris Croissant I made some garlicky bruschetta as well. Yummy.

And finally, two quarts of tomato sauce. One quart was my typical chunky "kitchen sink" sauce where I throw in ground pork, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, chili peppers, you name it. The other quart I went with this enticing summer recipe from 101 Cookbooks. I hadn't realized that such a light recipe could be so good! The only ingredients in there were the tomatoes, some tomato paste, extra virgin olive oil and some red pepper flakes for a good kick, but despite the simplicity (or maybe because of it) it was addicting.

Growing up in New York, I was pretty much spoiled when it came to having any kind of food, any time of year. It seems silly, but for 30... someodd... years it never really occurred to me that there were seasons for foods. If I wanted oranges, there were oranges in the supermarket. If I wanted bananas or strawberries, bananas and strawberries were in season somewhere in the world, so there they were in the produce section. Everything could be flown or trucked in from anywhere. I had no idea what time of year was the season for tomatoes.

But then again, I hadn't experienced the joy of locally grown, organic, in-season, vine-ripened tomatoes like these, so I didn't know what I was missing. Mmmm.

When I met my friend for coffee last week, we talked about her family farm. They have four greenhouses that are right now -- late June through July -- full of tomatoes and green chili peppers. A little later, during September and October -- red chili peppers will show up on the scene. And later still, in the fall, lettuce. Actually, there are two harvests for lettuce, one in spring and one in the fall. These days, their one cow has been eating a lot of tomatoes, as has been the rest of the family.


1. Vacation, 2. Sea urchins
The rainy summer is not the season for seafood, however. When we showed up at Noryangjin seafood market last weekend, the place was eerily quiet. Our favorite fishmonger was nowhere to be seen, and a Styrofoam board with a "gone for vacation" message scrawled on it was placed on top of his stall's empty tanks. Then we looked around and realized that nearly 80% of the stalls at Noryangjin were closed for vacation until August 3.

We were at Noryangin because Gavin and I had seen a TV program featuring the women abalone divers of Jejudo. They were saying it was sea urchin season, which got the both of us salivating for uni or, in Korean, 성게 (song-gei). True enough, the spiky little fellows were there. We ordered up some, and they arrived at our table, somewhat haphazardly cracked open with their guts spilling forth, moments later. Yup, Korean-style raw fish, or 회 (hui) isn't as prettily-arranged as sashimi, but it gets the job done.

Actually, in case you were interested, it's not sea urchin roe that you're eating when you're savoring uni. It's the mashed up gonads. But don't let that deter you; they're really very tasty, a kind of savory-with-a-hint-of-sweet combination that's kind of addicting. However. Our sea urchins lacked a certain something. They weren't bad, but they didn't seem "ready." Disappointingly, there weren't that many mashed-up gonads inside. And whoever cracked the little suckers open didn't do a good job; there were loose spikes all over the plate and -- ick -- inside the sea urchins as well. It made for a prickly meal.

So, when is the sea urchin season? I did some studious Googling and discovered that, in Korea (specifically on Jeju Island), July is the spawning season for sea urchins. So we were on time, after all. But the spawning season is also when the urchin innards are least tasty. Oh.

These days, I've been hearing a lot about the 100-mile diet, reducing one's carbon footprint by making sure your meal didn't travel the typical 1,500 miles from farm-to-plate that most North American foods do. But South Korea isn't so big, so even if we sit in Noryangjin market in Seoul and eat a sea urchin from Jeju Island, we're still eating a kind of 280-mile diet. Hunting down information about what's-tastiest-at-what-time-of-year-and-where can sure be exhausting, though...

On a completely unrelated note, here are some robot links... Apparently, the future of robotics is.... cute!
I wanna see Wall-E!
Forget the 3G iPhone, I want THIS mp3 player! Cuter video here.
I can afford my very own robot bug.
Huggable robot.
MarsPhoenix tweets! And says "w00t"! And wants someone to send it a 3G iPhone!
Too bad I can't see Robot Chicken in Korea. Here are clips from their StarWars episodes on YouTube.

A Weekend in Jeollanam-do

1. Tea plantation, 2. Ghostly mist
The weekend before last, Gavin and I decided to get out of the city for a bit. It's rainy season, and all this oppressive heat and humidity is better enjoyed among some green, not in the smoggy soup that is Seoul-city air. So we boarded the KTX and headed south to Kwangju, transferred to a slower train and headed further south still, to Boseong, and then took a city bus to Boseong's largest green tea plantation.

Boseong county is on the southwestern coast of Korea. The hills above the ocean have been terraced with rows and rows of green tea plants since 1939, when they were first planted during the colonial Japanese occupation. When we arrived at the tea plantation parking lot on Saturday morning, about 5 hours after we left Seoul, it was still morning. The day's temperature was already creeping upward, and a thick fog hung over the hills. Droplets of morning dew clung to every leaf and spiderweb strand. There were a lot of spiderwebs everywhere, so delicate and spooky in the mist.

There are 4 green tea harvests throughout the year, timed to the optimal tastiness of the leaves, but it's not harvest season now and the fields were empty of workers. The sky was threatening rain, so only a smattering of tourists had come out that day, but I was glad because the fog made the view extra picturesque. A few family tombs were nestled up in the hills, watching over the plantation.

We spent an hour hiking around the plantation before heading back down to the shops at the base of the hill. To tell you the truth, the shops were the most disappointing part. There were a lot of gratuitously-green-tea-themed paraphernalia, like candles and soaps, but a lot of it looked a bit kitschy and like it had been made somewhere else. But I did come away with a bag of local green tea and some green tea salt (which I've since tried, and it's quite good!). Afterwards we shared an awesome green tea milkshake. Mmmm.

1. Aqua nets, 2. Yellow traps
We hopped in a cab to go down to the beach. It was low tide and the tidal flats stretched far and wide. A few people were poking sticks in the mud to catch crabs. With our stomachs grumbling, we walked through the sleepy fishing village scanning the seafood restaurants. A shop owner advised us that it wasn't the season to have any particular raw seafood, so we ordered some steamed clams. They came out in a spicy sauce with a lot of side dishes and were pretty tasty. After that there wasn't much left to do in Boseong, so we took the train back to Kwangju and stayed in a jjimjilbang (24-hour sauna) overnight. It was the most uncomfortable jjimjilbang I've ever stayed in; there were no blankets or mats and it was overrun with hormonal teenagers!

1. Tall, 2. Rice paddies
The next day, we headed to Damyang by bus. For 500 won extra, the bus driver agreed to drop us off right near the bamboo forest instead of at the bus terminal. Damyang's claim to fame is their bamboo forests. In the fragrant shade of this tall grass, Gavin and I imagined fighting monks leaping from the canopy, with crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon kung-fu moves. The forest was bigger than I had imagined it and it's breezy shade was a welcome respite from the day's mounting heat.

Right outside the bamboo forest was a beautiful traditional house. A young man by the door beckoned us inside and introduced us to an elderly gentleman who was sitting in the corner, silently shearing thin reeds off of a bamboo stalk. This was the artist, a designated Intangible National Treasure and one of the last living masters of bamboo weaving in Korea. Currently he is without apprentice and can't find anyone to hand down his techniques to. He and his wife made nearly all the products in the shop, traditional multi-color gift boxes called "chesang" (채상). Each was beautifully constructed with attention to every detail. The volunteer explained that it took the master and his wife 15 days to complete just one box. The fine workmanship is evident when you hold each piece in your hand; it just feels tighter and sturdier than the crafts (suspiciously labeled "Made in China") we saw in various shops in town. The master's effort is reflected in the price; just one "chesang" in a set of three was 3 million Won (about US$3000)! We wanted to support his work, however, so we opted for a much smaller jewelry box that was 60,000 Won.

Afterwards, we rented bikes in town and enjoyed the view from the long tree-lined road running alongside the stream. The banks of Damyang's stream are green with lush rice paddies, much prettier than the concrete banks of Seouls' Cheongyecheon. The bike rental was only about 3,000 W.

For lunch we had raw bamboo shoots! The meal came rice steamed in a bamboo cup and lots and lots of side dishes. I really appreciate how one gets so many more side dishes when you eat out in the countryside... The bamboo shoots were all succulent, tender, fresh, tasty.... of course. We ate everything on the table, even the hongeo.

After lunch, we cabbed it to Damyang's second bamboo forest which is further from the town center than the tourist map would have you believe. I'm not sure but I think this one was a little bit smaller than the first. With a dirt path, buzzing mosquitoes and less signage, it had a more rustic feel. The heat was blistering by the end of our walk, so when our cab driver informed us that it was a steep hike up a hill to see the Geumseongsanseong Fortress, we opted instead for the air-conditioned confines of the Damyang Bamboo Museum. The museum provided an interesting insight to the region's history of bamboo crafts. Damyang has been the location of an ongoing bamboo craft market (open on days ending with a 2 or a 7) for decades.

Sometimes, when speaking of Koreans and Korea, I hear both foreigners and locals alike refer to Seoul and Korea interchangeably, saying things like "In Korea, everyone is in a hurry," or "In Korea, everyone drives big cars." But that's just about as accurate as using New York City to describe all of America. On the way back to Seoul that evening, I looked out the train window at miles and miles of farmland zipping past. I'll always love train trips more than car rides for the difference in view. On the highway, everything is asphalt and concrete and traffic jams, but from the train, you can glimpse something else: people's backyards, drying laundry, families grilling barbeque, cows dozing off, farmers taking stock of the day's harvest before the sun sets...So different from Seoul, and actually a lot more like America than you might think...

Moving & Making

1. New house day, 2. New house night

May and June turned out to be kind of hectic months for us. The owners of the house we were renting suddenly sold it, and the new owners wanted to move in, giving us 3 weeks to scramble for a new place to stay. Add to that the fact that we were leaving for vacation in a week when we heard the news, and you can understand why we were kind of in a panic.

Luckily, in Korea, everything that can be done, can be done quickly. It's the "bali bali" (Korean for "speedy, speedy") curse, but it's also a blessing. We knew that we wanted to continue living in a traditional Korean house, so within a week a real estate agent showed us a flurry of "hanok," we fell in love with one of them, Gavin's firm handled the details and we signed the lease.

The week we were to move coincided with the largest protest that Seoul has seen in two decades, and since we were moving to a neighborhood near the President's Blue House, roads were blocked every night and traffic was mayhem. The owners of our new home only just managed to move out before the police blockaded their area, but they didn't have time to clean. We spent the night before moving day cleaning the new house from top to bottom.

In Korea, moving companies offer a packing and cleaning service as well. What a godsend! On moving day, two men and an ajumma (a middle-aged Korean woman) arrived at our old house with boxes and crates. The ajumma immediately set to work in the kitchen, taking all the contents out of the cupboards, packing them into crates, wrapping plates and breakables, wiping the kitchen down. The men packed our wardrobe and drawer contents into plastic boxes. In our new house, everything went back into the kitchen cupboards and drawers in the same order. They started at 8:30 am at the old house, and finished by 1 pm at the new house. It was amazing! I wish moving companies did this in the States. Here are some photos of the new house. I'll post more as soon as I get it looking homier...



1. Elephantasy Journal, 2. Elephantasy Card
3. Sir Hamilton, 4. Goggles

Amazingly, I was able to get some crafty stuff done during this mayhem.
Elephantasy is an illustration that I sketched out ages ago that I Gocco screenprined onto some journals and greeting cards. The journals are made out of handmade mulberry paper that I bought in Luang Prabang, sewn with hand-spun and dyed silk thread that I also picked up in Laos. I've posted them on my Etsy shop, so go take a look.

Sir Hamilton is a flying pig with high hopes to become your favorite iPhone / iTouch cozy ever. And Goggles is... well Goggles is a mutant-3-eyed-frog iPhone / iTouch cozy. It's happened; increased pollutants in the air and water (and an exhausted slightly delirious Annamatic) have given Goggles one more eye than his fellow frog cousins. He's a bit self-conscious about it, so try not to stare. Goggles and Sir Hamilton will be making more appearances in my Etsy shop soon, so keep checking back.

Linky stuff that I've bookmarked over the past month (sorry, but I've forgotten where I've gotten most of these links... it's been awhile...):

some never-ending web interfaces that i'm loving:
>> helloworld from softbank
>> good things should never end from the orange network

music in unexpected places:
>> the super mario theme played on bottles by a remote control car
>> david byrne turns an abandoned building into a musical instrument

unwanted home improvements?
>> repairing broken spiderwebs
>> snail shell painting

too cute to eat
>> marzipan characters
>> sushi art

Alternate worlds

1. Mini Forbidden Palace, 2. Mini Versailles, Korea

I'm inordinately fascinated by mini theme parks. We've been to one in Jeju-do, and just two weeks ago, one in Bucheon (a few subway stops from Incheon). I think Gavin comes with me to humor me. I like to see just how detailed the artists make each replica, and I like to imagine being one inch tall and walking through a garden of plaster trees.

When my nieces and nephews were a little younger, I used to entertain them with conversation starters like "If you were only one inch tall, how would eat dinner with us?" ("Well, first, I'd have to climb up the leg of the table, and it would take HOURS, and THEN the broccoli would look like a tree and I'd only eat one little tiny bite of it and I'd be FULL....") "What would you do if you met a spider?" ("I'd run for my life!")

When we went to Aiins World (the mini theme park in Bucheon) it was raining. I kept imagining that if I were one inch tall, the raindrops would be huge and lethal.


1. Furs, 2. Stamps

About 200 meters from Aiins World is Fantastic Studios. Gavin saw an article about it in the JoongAng Daily and somehow knew I'd want to go. Sure enough, the words "dusty," "abandoned," and "ghost town" caught my eye, so on a perfectly dreary and rainy day, we went.

Fantastic Studios is an open-air film set built to look like a colonial-era downtown Seoul. Signs for teahouses and movie theaters have been painted in the old style. The architecture is anachronistic, ranging from pre-colonial hanoks to the brick buildings of the Japanese occupation era.

You can see a replica of the Cheongyecheon stream, BEFORE it was paved over with highway and subsequently unearthed. You can see an old trolley on Jongno road, and a replica of the Bosingak bell, which still exists. The weird thing about it is that everything seems to be scaled down a little bit -- about 75% of their actual size. And the building facades are are only about 1 meter thick, so when you look at the in profile you can see that they're fake.

Movies or music videos that call for street scenes from the 40's, 50's or 60's are still sometimes shot here, although not as frequently as before. I guess that whenever a production needs a certain backdrop, they renovate just that one section. So some buildings look well-kept while others are falling apart.

It was strange to realize that here, miles outside of Seoul, was a little piece of old Seoul, somewhat inaccurately replicated so that you can catch some glimpses of it in a movie or a TV commercial. Meanwhile, back in the big city, developers are still steadily erasing the architectural remnants of the past as if they are all a bad memory...

Coziness

1. Diablo, 2. Gregory, 3. Nibbles, 4. Boris

Last week I had a little bit of free time again and started stitching up some more iPhone and iPod Touch cozies... I'm going to try to keep them in stock over in my Etsy shop, but if you don't see the one you want there, just send me a message and I'll do a custom order...

Part of the fun of sewing up different styles of iPod cozies is giving the characters names and personalities. If you know me at all, you probably realize that I anthropomorphize EVERYTHING. So... Everybody, meet Diablo, Gregory, Nibbles and Boris!

Diablo comes from an notorious family of iPod and gadget accessories including Mr. Devil and Mrs. Devil, who dedicated their lives to taking care of Nano and Video iPods, the Quintuplets, who left home to seek their fortunes as cell phone and holiday ornaments, and 99.44% pure evil Lucky, who brings mischief and misfortune to those with iPod Shuffles.

Nibbles is... Well, to tell you the truth, nobody knows what Nibbles is. Rumor has it that she's a hamster, but since she can't talk, it hasn't been confirmed. Let's just call her a critter, shall we? Nibbles the critter has a pouch on her back to tote earbuds in. Cuz, frankly, I'm always getting my earphones tangled up in a big mess and a pouch to tuck them in seemed like a good idea.

Boris also has some illustrious family members. You might remember Benjamin, his little Nano-lovin' brother, and Big Ben, his cousin of Video cozying fame. Boris' feisty friend Bounce, prefers iPod shuffles. Who doesn't love bunnies?

And finally, Gregory the frog. Most frogs like flies, but Gregory loves earbuds. Just tuck the earbuds into his mouth and he'll gladly carry them around all day for you. Although it really doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to on your iPod, Gregory wants you to know he prefers hip hop. You know.... because he's a frog... and he likes to hop.... Ok, so I'm corny. Whatever.

About frogs
I've been partial to frogs ever since we moved into our home two years ago and found that our courtyard was inhabited by two adorable amphibians. We called them Mr. & Mrs. Chombagi (Chombagi means "spotted" in Korean) and followed their antics all spring and summer. Sadly, after they went into hibernation at the end of that summer, they didn't return. I'd been thinking of them again at the start of this spring, and casually drew up a pattern for Gregory before going off to Coffeest to meet Younghui.

Sometimes we meet to do our respective design work or sewing or knitting or whatever in some local cafe. On this particular day last week, Younghui was working on a logo next to me while I was stitching up Diablo. Gregory was still a half-sewn pile of felt when the owner of the cafe, who'd been sitting across the table from us, leaned over and asked (in Korean), "What are you making?" Younghui (Thanks!) became my interpreter and explained that I was making iPhone cozies.

Hereupon, the cafe-owner became very excited. Firstly, she loved the cozies, and would declare to anyone in the cafe who would listen, "Hey, look at these pouches for iPhones! Aren't they BEAUTIFUL?! Aren't they cute?! Do you need one?!" Finally, after a flurry of questions and inspections of my products, her companion plopped 25,000 Won (about $25) down in front of me and declared, "I want the frog." And so, Gregory got stitched up and sold right then and there. After attaching the snap buttons to his feet that evening, I returned to Coffeest the next day to drop him off with his new owner.

About gadget-love
Anyway the aforementioned exchange kind of prompted a weird Apple gadget geek orgy. The platform of choice in Korea is Microsoft, and the favored gadgets are made by local kings Samsung and LG, so to see such a convergence of Apple love was a little funny.
Roughly translated from Korean,
"Oh my god, you have the iPod Touch?! Can I see it?" exclaimed the cafe-owner.
"Sure," said I handing over the Touch.
"Hey look at this," the cafe-owner said to her companion, demonstrating the multi-touch features.
"Mmhmm," he says looking it over with interest before glancing up and exclaiming to Younghui,
"Oh, wow, you have a MacBook Air! I've never seen one before! Can I see?"
"Oh, sure, take a look," says Younghui.
"Oh, hey! That guy over there also has the iPod Touch!" the cafe-owner says, pointing across the room.
"Where? Oh, no I think that's an iPhone, it's a bit thicker...."
"No, not THAT guy, the one at the next table!"
"Oh, hey, right, that's funny, there are a lot of Apple products in one room here..."
"Yeah, the girl over THERE has a MacBook..."

Then it was my turn for gadget-envy, because I noticed that the man sitting at the table right behind me was holding the brand new Sigma DP1, the camera I'm drooling over at the moment.

That's one thing that's great about Seoul: It's a city of early-adopters who aren't shy about geeking out over gadgets. People love their gadgets in New York, but you can't be too public about it or you'll be asking to get mugged.

Some linkage:
Using Google Maps to navigate... text.
Read magazines here.
Read a short story here.

Leeum Art Museum

1. Museum 2, 2. Museum 1

Younghui and I went to explore the Samsung Leeum Art Museum on Friday. I'm glad someone finally clued me in to the fact that the Leeum is now open to the public regularly (visitors used to have to make a reservation first). Thanks, Younghui!

The Leeum is made up of two parts: Museum 1, designed by Mario Botta, is dedicated to traditional art. Museum 2, designed by Jean Nouvel, is for modern art. Both buildings are beautiful and intriguing architectural spaces. In Museum 2. we enjoyed seeing such a nice collection of well-chosen contemporary standards like Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney. In Museum 1, there were landscaped ink paintings as well as Koryo dynasty celadon and Chosun dynasty buncheong ware. While walking through both museums, we were guided by a Samsung-made audio guide. When we stopped in front of each piece, a little black disc in the floor communicated with a sensor in each audio guide to prompt the recorded segment about that piece.

I wonder if having two separate buildings for such express purposes forces an unnatural dichotomy. Many a work of pottery or ink painting display distinctly modern-looking forms, while contemporary artists might draw from ancient themes. The continuity is hard to see when the art is forced into two separate buildings...

Maybe one day Leeum can make a Museum 3, a special place to exhibit the merging of past and present, of traditional alongside contemporary....? Art, just like any other aspect of culture, doesn't inhabit boundaries so much as it crosses them... I propose that they don't even have to build a separate building for it! Museum 3 can be Seoul itself, with the prompted descriptions emanating from inside Samsung's little audio guide as visitors run around the city... That's the kind of curatorial experiment I'd love best...

UPDATE: oh, hey, whaddya know....

Favorite Food in Korea

We go through this conversation every weekend.
"What do you want for dinner?"
"I dunno.... What do YOU want for dinner?"
"I dunno...."
Today I went through my Flickr food set and discovered that there's a TON of yummy stuff we've been eating in Korea.
Maybe this list will make it easier to decide. Or, maybe not...



1. Manwon Hengbok "10,000 Won Happiness", 2. Patjuk -- red bean porridge, 3. Kimchi Jjim (Kimchi with tender steamed pork), 4. Dolsot-pap, 5. Ja-jjang-myun, 6. Steamed, 7. Makguksu (막국수) Close-up, 8. Mackerel sashimi, 9. Steamed egg, 10. Jokpal, 11. Espresso Club, 12. 커피한잔 (A Cup of Coffee), 13. Steamed Seafood, 14. Sashimi, 15. 매밀 (Mae-mil, cold buckwheat noodles), 16. Kalmegi-sal (pork skirt meat), 17. Oysters!, 18. Before and After, 19. Abalone sushi, 20. Haemul Jjim, 21. Grilled cuttlefish, 22. Gazen, 23. Kyushu Senin, 24*. 유림올갱이 (Yurim Olgengi) 25*. Jjuggumi (쭈꾸미), 26. Bossam (보쌈), 27. Sujaebi (수제비), 28. Haejangguk (해장국), 29. Lamb kabob, 30. Barbequed pigskin (돼지껍데기), 31. Burger, 32. Tuna with Grated Yam (산마와 참치), 33. Steamed egg (계란찜), 34. Blowfish Bulgogi (복불고기), 35. Gyeran Mali at Gazen (계란 마리), 36. Steamed chicken (찜닭), 37. Beef Tongue Stew (어복쟁반)

[* Edit: The starred restaurants are now, unfortunately, closed ]

Seoul Design Festival

1. Pong, 2. Harmony, 3. Working Man Walking, 4. Abyss

Some of my favorites from the Seoul Design Festival this year.

Created with Flickr Toys.

Weekend: Sound Day, Sleeping Day, Sewing Day

Friday was Sound Day in Hongdae - 15,000 Won and you can visit over 30 different acts at 9 different live music clubs throughout Hongdae. There's one Sound Day per month, but I heard some rumors that they are planning on combining Sound Day and Club Day (when you can pay 15,0000 Won to visit all the dance clubs in one evening), which should pretty much make the day insane and unnavigable...

Here's my quickie recap of who I liked/ didn't like, so I remember which bands I want to see next time...


네스티요나 (Nastyona) was pretty awesome.
Actually I have her CD. She's a very talented keyboardist with a big goth-punk sound. Oh and she's a dead ringer for Emily the Strange.
Here's her website, which has some spooky music looping on the front page.
One of my favorite songs is called "Cause You're My Mom" in which she tells her mom that she's not going home because she'll be sleeping with her boyfriend.

안녕바다 (which either means "Hello Beach" or "Goodbye Beach," or maybe just "Hey, Beach" -- I'm not sure)
Eh. This guy and his lead guitar had cool hair. I got the feeling that these boys were incredibly psyched to be in a rock band with all the gratuitous head banging to show off their awesome hair, and waaaay tooooooo much-ch-ch reverb..


넘버원코리안 (Number One Korean)
Fun ska-punk, complete with tuba and trumpets! We came late so we only saw them perform their last piece. They seem to be a happy bouncy band; they exuded positive energy. The tuba player was a big guy with a yellow mohawk.

카온터리셋 (Counter Reset)
Hmm. Your standard punk rock band. The first two songs they performed were covers. There was some obligatory moshing. We got bored and left.


트리플노이즈 (Triple Noise)
Wow, this girl was ANNOYING. She has a decent voice and nice range, but kind of swayed around with her eyes closed alot, like she was consumed by the sound of her own talent. The songwriting sounded like the stuff you hear in the background of sappy Korean dramas. I like the set design though, very funky, lots of black light.

미스터찰리브라운 (Mr Charlie Brown)
Funk jazz ensemble. I really really really liked these guys. They were ALL about the music, had a great rapport with one another and the audience, and were just full of groovy funky soul.
Here is their Cyworld site. Unfortunately I can't post the permalink, because apparently Korean web programmers don't believe in permalinks, but just click on ♬Mr.ⓒ oRigiNal and ♬Mr.ⓒ [Live] in the left nav, and you should be able to see some videos.

와이낫 (Why Not)
They're listed as a "funky rock" band, but maybe they meant "punky rock," cuz.... I didn't hear no funk.
I was pretty amused by their punk cover of Billy Jean (is Not My Lover), which I thought was better than the original, but the rest of their stuff was kind of standard -- a lot of rebellion against nothing in particular. The difference with 카온터리셋 (Counter Reset) was that we were in FF, a bar with mostly foreigners, which means there were taller, drunker people moshing. We left so as to not get squashed. Oh, the one notable thing about this band is that the lead singer totally looks like an Asian Woody Allen. A 15 year old, Asian Woody Allen.

Ok. So if Friday night was Sound Day, then Saturday was... Sleeping Day.
We slept.

Sunday, I went to a Stitch and Bitch meeting. There was stitching. There was bitching.
I made 6 more ornaments in one sitting. The first set of ornaments is on sale at Etsy now.
Oh, I almost forgot. I made some holiday cards. You can buy the full color design for charity (Doctors without Borders) through MOO, or you can buy gold silkscreened ones from me.