Catching up

Goodness, it's been a while since I last posted. I see that my last post was about the hot rainy season, and now Korea has tilted a little bit further from the sun, the leaves have turned fiery shades of red and yellow, and the scarves and winter coats are coming out... I should at least make 1 post per season, right?

Actually I only meant to take a *very brief* hiatus from posting. I told myself I would NOT ALLOW myself to make any blog or Flickr posts until I got off my lazy butt and updated my online portfolio, which I hadn't touched in 2 years. Then the updating turned into a full-scale redesign, with me trying to hack through a Wordpress theme and teach myself CSS at the same time. The website is done (sorta) but I've concluded that I'm no longer a fan of Wordpress and I've been toying with the idea of doing it all over again with Expression Engine. Yet I haven't been able to bring myself to look at any code for a month. There's a reason why I'm not a programmer, it's cuz lines of code makes me fall asleep.

Getting myself to do things that I know I should do but don't want to do is a fine art. Lately I've tricked myself into exercising thusly: No playing with the Nintendo DS unless I'm doing situps at the same time. It's actually kind of worked as intended: I'm playing the DS less, certainly.

Recently I had the ghastly thought that what if, one day, I look back on my time in Korea and it's just some kind of hazy memory, kind of like college is for me now? So now, for my own sake if no one else's, a brief recap of what happened over the past few months:

> We went to New York to see family. Twice. There were some family issues to deal with.
> We also went up to Maine to see Gavin's family. Twice. I walked through my first corn maze.
> I smuggled some yummy cheese back to Seoul. And sausages (shhh).
> We had two wine and cheese parties. Almost done with the cheese now.
> We went to Jeju Island and got stuck in a typhoon.
> We bought folding bikes. Gavin has a black Strada, I have a red MacKinley.
> In freelancing news, I finished a website, started another one, and bid on a few more jobs and didn't get 'em... In between, there were some postcards, web banners, and other little jobs of varying levels of interestingness.
> My logo got shortlisted for Tokyo Design Week's Love Your Earth competition. ^^
> A dear friend moved to Singapore. (*sigh, expat life... always saying goodbye...)
> I joined Facebook. I suck at Scrabulous. I realized I don't have that many friends compared to some folks. But I have good ones :-)
> Seeing as how degrees are a big deal in Korea, I contemplated actually getting my Master's by finally finishing my thesis, only to discover that Pratt won't let me do my thesis off-site. Unlike other normal Masters programs. Phooey on them.
> We stayed out too late eating barbeque a few times too many. I completely screwed up my sleep schedule and digestive system for a few weeks. It is possible to jetlag yourself without leaving your own time zone.
> went through a mood swing or two, but I cured them with pastries. This time, I didn't break my phone.
> I baked some bread. I baked some pies.
> I sewed and sold a few more iPod cozies, and I am studiously procrastinating on developing cozies for the iPhone or the new fat iPod video nano.
> I've been dreaming up more things to sell on Etsy for the holidays.
> I designed some stickers for the iPod shuffle. You can buy them here.
> We went through an inexplicable spurt of listening to sappy country tunes and cracking up at the lyrics. Right now Conway Twitty's "Lying here with Linda on my Mind" is on my iTunes.
> I bought a sewing machine. I am sitting here looking at it, and it is looking at me.

Freelance projects have died down slightly (Temporarily, I hope. Anyone need a website or a brochure?), there are no immediate trips on the horizon (at least not til December), and I have a backlog of photos that have not made it to Flickr yet, so I hope I'll be better at blog-posting in the coming weeks...



If you have a good vocabulary, you can help feed people.

Sometimes, I am left brained; most of the time I am right-brained. What are you?

Ice Cream Fondue

Ice Cream Fondue!
Originally uploaded by annamatic3000.

Baskin Robbins Cafe in Korea offers an Ice Cream Fondue. Mmmm. I think it's brilliant! They've been offering it for almost a year, but Gavin and I only got around to going last weekend, as a belated White Day celebration (White Day is a holiday in Korea where men are supposed to give their girlfriends or wives a treat. On Valentine's Day, it's the reverse).

Unfortunately, you don't get to pick your own flavors of ice cream balls. If it were my choice, I probably would have forgone the pink bubblegum and cherry flavors. However, it was all good. The set comes with some fruit and brownies for dipping as well. Yummm. I love to dip the ice cream in the melted sauce, then watch the chocolate slowwly solidify into a crunchy choco-shell...

In other news, I haven't been doing much other than working steadily. I can't believe I've been at my new job for nearly 3 months already! It's been frustrating at times, especially with the language gap. In my better moods, I try to think of this as a lesson in not being so much of a control freak. In my worser moods, I have mini-mental breakdowns at home and yearn to upload the Korean Speaking Ability Upgrade directly to my brain via Firewire cable...

We made a recent short trip out of the big city to Cheonju for one weekend. Click here to see photos.

Present

Sock monkey
Originally uploaded by annamatic3000.

I got a sock monkey in the mail! (He arrived in a box with some really yummy chocolate and a pair of cute stuffed kittens) I've brought him to the office to sit on my desk and stare at me as I work. Thanks, Michele!

I've uploaded some pictures from January... Here they are.
This month has just whizzed past so quickly. I can't believe i am in my 4th week at work already! So far, so good... but it's definitely been keeping me busy....

Holiday update

I hope everyone had a merriest christmas and happy hannukah. Let's hope 2006 is a year of peace and good cheer!

Recent goings-on in the lives of Anna and Gavin in Seoul:

>Gavin is working.
There's not much to say about Gavin's work. Except that there's a lot of it, and we are really grateful to be living a 5-minute walk away from his office. Well, can't complain much about billable hours, considering the fiery demise of his last firm. Gavin is planning on visiting New York for one week at the end of January. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make that trip with him. Next time!

>Anna has not been working.
I am so sorry to my few freelance clients out there. I have used up all my excuses. All I can say is, my brain will be back from its extended vacation next week, for sure.

>I took a one-week trip to Cambodia.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you in advance, Mom & Dad, but I went to Cambodia for a week by myself. I was worried that you would worry. And you know how we do it in the Lee Family: we worry so much that we worry about each other worrying... Anyway, there would have been no need to worry, since Cambodia is now a very safe place to travel. Though I went by myself (Gavin was too busy at work), I had a great time! First, I went to Phnom Penh, the capital, for a day. Then I took a fast boat up the Tonlé Sap River to Siem Reap. I stayed in Siem Riep for 5 days.
Here are photos of Phnom Penh.
Here are photos of Siem Reap.
I also did some sketches.
(The Flickr "slideshow" button helps you view the photos faster, but keep in mind that you won't be able to read the captions that way.)

There are usually two things that people will think of when you say "Cambodia" to them: the genocidal holocaust committed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 and the glorious temples of Angkor Wat, built in the 9th-13th century. Today, tourism to Angkor Wat may very well represent Cambodia's future, while the horrifying legacy of the Khmer Rouge recedes into the past. One can only hope that this is the direction that Cambodia will take. It's still one of the poorest countries in Asia, with 36% of the population living below the basic-needs poverty line, lacking access to fresh drinking water, good nutrition, health care or education. This is the kind of thing that looks so picturesque in National Geographic photos but is so heartbreaking to see first hand. A continually corrupt government ensures that even as tourism to Cambodia has risen in the last decade, most regular folk only see a pittance of the profits, while the bulk of it lines the silken pockets of corrupt politicians and foreign investors operating luxury hotel chains, like Raffles International.

I took a lot of photos. There were also a lot of photos I didn't take. I highly recommend visiting Cambodia to see it for yourself. The power, beauty and vastness of the Angkorian temples (Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious monument) is awe-inspiring, something that cannot be fully appreciated in art history textbook photos. And the people I met were exceedingly kind, displaying a strong, frank, resilient temperment that can only come out of centuries of struggle. Accommodations can be incredibly cheap in Cambodia (as low as $5 a night for a guesthouse room!) but if you absolutely must relax in the lap of luxury, here's a responsible hotel. The tuk-tuk driver I hired to take me around the temples told me, "Please visit Cambodia again. I will never be able to visit your country. But you can visit mine."

>We had a good quiet Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at a hot springs.
Christmas isn't a very big holiday here, although it's growing in popularity. To avoid dwelling on missing our families too much, Gavin and I went to a hot springs about an hour train ride outside of Seoul. The air was bracingly cold and there was a fresh layer of snow on the ground, perfect weather to don swimsuits and run outside to jump in a hot pool, right? Right!
By the way, this here is a promotional photo from the hot spring's website. Really, I don't know these girls.
On the downside, the place was filled to the brim with cute little kids who were laughing, playing and trading cold viruses. So, of course, we woke up Christmas morning with a nasty flu.

>I took a one-day trip to Osaka, Japan.
To receive or change your visa in Korea, you need to visit a Korean consulate. The closest Korean consulate is an almost 2-hour flight away, in Osaka, Japan. My new company booked a flight and hotel room for me, so off I went on my first-ever trip to Japan. My flu and I left on the morning of December 26 and returned the evening of December 27. I guess that's more like two days, but if you subtract the time I spent waiting in the Korean consulate for my brand-spanking-new E-7 employment visa, then I had about 1 day of sightseeing.

My first impression of Japan confirmed what many have already told me: it's clean and the people are so polite! To that I would add: the Japanese have a profound sense of aesthetics, particularly in the realms of "cute" and "design." Truckloads of cute design. And sushi. Needless to say, my wallet was particularly susceptible on this trip... And, of course, I took lots of photos. Click here to see them.

>I start my new job on Monday, January 2nd.
I'll be a Level I Senior Designer in Brand Experience at a company called Design Continuum. Wish me luck... I'll let you know how it goes...

Eating

I just downloaded a bunch of pictures from my camera and discovered that I've been taking pictures of nothing but food for the past few weeks! Well, some buildings and stuff, but mostly food. Have I been doing nothing but eating lately?! Maybe the cold turn the weather has taken is making me hungrier... ? Well, click here for some pictures of food.

Gavin's been quite busy working late lately, and I've been busy... doing nothing. Apologies to everyone, but I have not even gotten any Christmas shopping done yet... since, well, it's kind of easy to forget about Christmas in Korea. If only I could mail you all home-baked brownies!

In the last few weeks I've been taking evening Korean class and filling my days with: shopping, reading, baking (brownies, cookies and bread, mostly) and eating. Occasionally, I meet a few friends for coffee. Once, I tried my hand at ping pong and learned how to hold the paddle correctly. Interestingly, however, I hit the ball more often when I hold it INcorrectly. Last weekend we were hit with a sudden snowstorm! I did not have my gloves with me and was unable to defend myself properly in an impromptu snowball fight. Next time...

I am happy to report that my visa application was FINALLY completed about a week ago, and now must wait about 2 more weeks until I am --hopefully--approved for a brand spanking new E-7 employment visa! Woo-hoo! Finally, after 2 months of waiting around, I can start working at my new job! I have some concerns about being back in the workforce after 5 months of being unemployed and not having to respond to deadlines or design critiques... And, having to navigate this brave new world with a combination of my minimal Korean-speaking abilities, charades, sign-language, and sketches boostered by English. We shall see...