Nothing to write on here lately. Since early this week, it’s been raining every day. The heat has gone and I not only don’t use the A/C at night, I’m not even using the fan during the day. It was cool enough that I actually wore two shirts yesterday. Consequently, I haven’t done anything except walk the dog, go to work, watch a little TV and visit with my girlfriend.
The biggest thrill this week for me has been that Gonzalez has decided he’s had enough and resigned. Good riddance to that chump. I hope Congress still pursues their investigation and prosecutes his lying ass. Even the South Koreans coming home from being kidnapped by the Taliban last month has been overshadowed by that news.
I wish I could say I’ve spent the time wisely and added pages to my latest book, but that just isn’t the case. I’ve got a case of writer’s block. I hope to be back on that soon.
I’ve written before on goofs in Korean grammar and spelling. This time, however, it really strikes me a problem. First it was only hair dryers and dog leashes. Now I’m finding errors on official Korean highway signs.
I doubt this mistake would confuse those with only a minimal understanding of English. No Russian travelors would likely drive in the wrong lane because they don’t understand the Korean or know what “climding lane” means. But it sure does, in my mind, reflect poorly on the government workers who write, edit, manufacture and post these things. Don’t any of them understand enough English to report back and tell someone they goofed? English is required in middle schools and high schools here. A good majority take English in private schools like where I teach. And still, no one caught this one. Funny, but not in a ha-ha sense. Sad, almost, to think of the time and effort spent and wasted here.
I went today to have surgery done on my nose. Ever since last year’s fall during a rock-climbing trip, I’ve had a hard time breathing through my left nostril. I’ve had numerous infections that I had been just writing up as allergies or sinus trouble, but the Dr. here said it all stemmed from having my nasal passage partially blocked. Apparently, the closed-in spaces provided a nice, warm, wet spot for infections to stay.
So today, the ENT Dr. took a hammer to the inside of my nose and reshaped the bones. I have to say, that’s quite a feeling of letting go: when there’s two people hovering over your face – one with a chisel & one with a hammer – and just closing your eyes and letting it happen. Only local anesthetics and wide awake, watching the hammer fall. That was different.
Here’s how I looked last year, after falling and hitting my face (and other body) parts on some rocks. (No, I wasn’t actually rock-climbing when I did it, I was hiking back to the top of the crag on a narrow foot path and slipped.)
Here’s how I look today, with my face stuffed full of gauze and cotton swabs. I feel like someone parked a large truck up in there. My boss gave me the day off today and I’m supposed to rest. I plan on catching up on some reading. The Novocaine will wear off soon and I won’t feel like writing much.
Ok, I’m going to rest now. Nite nite.
p.s. the whole ordeal only cost me about $180 – no insurance needed. What do you suppose that would cost in America?
We’ve hit the dog days here in Korea. Last week was the official 2nd dog day on the 14th. Not only because of the heat, but because they actually eat dog (since dogs don’t sweat, they figure that eating one will help a human, too.)
It’s been wickedly hot and humid the past several days. It feels warmer than Texas ever was because a) its more humid and b) I only have air-con (they leave off the –ditioning part of the word) in my bedroom. That’s fine if I want to sleep or just read a book, but watching TV or jacking around on the computer is just a sweaty mess. Late evenings are ok, but nothings going on. Early mornings are ok, but once the sun is up its brutal again.
This weekend we went to the beach to cool off. So did a million other people. Still it was nice with the ocean breezes cooling things off by 10pm or so. We went to the mountain streams on Sunday, but there were so many people with the same idea that we coulnd’t find a parking spot without walking long distances. We ended up just driving through the mountains with the AC on full. Today, when I got back to school, several students told me they’d gone to the theater and watched three or four movies – just to stay in the AC.
It’s already the 20th of August, so the heat won’t last too much longer. Good thing, too, because my supply of good books won’t either.
For Independence Day, we went up the Taewha River to Eonyong where the river’s origin is in the mountains. It had rained the past several days and the 15th was really hot and humid. Too hot to stay in the city. I picked up MyeongHee at her hair shop and convinced her to close up shop early and she decided the cool of being in the trees and splashing around in a cold-ass mountain stream would be a welcome relief.
The river/stream isn’t big enough to tube or canoe on like we’d do back on the Guadalupe on Texas, but there are stretches where you can do some limited floating. I didn’t have anything to float on since we came last-minute, but I enjoyed just putting my tootsies in the water and watching the kids spill along the small rapids on their floats. Being one of the big summer holidays here, it was thick with families having picnics and frolicking in the water.
Several of the larger rocks have old-style Korean writing chiseled into them – the Korean form of tagging. No spray paint for these guys. Pretty permanent stuff, but at least its only names, not vulgarities.
This is me in my best spare tire pose. I could probably have floated just on the fat ring around my ass.
This is my hottie girlfriend, dipping her own piggies in the water. My pup, Satang, is behind her. She thought we were nuts and wanted no part of the cold water.
August 15th marks the day in 1945 that Japan was thrown off the Korean peninsula after colonizing it for 35 years. It also marks the day that South Korea was formed as the Republic of Korea in 1948. Slate Magazine’s pictures of the day are all about Korea. Check it out. Pictures from then and now.
I get a kick out of the packaging I find sometimes here in Korea. Many times its completely in Korean and I have to translate what they’re selling to see if it’s what I’m looking for. Other times, there’s English to help me decide if the product is right for me.
Today I bought a self-retracting leash for my dog, you know the kind – there’s a spring that rolls up the leash when she’s close and let’s it spool out when she wants some freedom. It’s convenient to be able to reel her in when cars come since the sidewalks are nonexistent in many places here.
Anyway, the leash packaging was pretty funny. It was the only one they had, so regardless of their poor copywriting I was going to buy it. The first thing I saw was the stars and bold print announcing that this was a “High Class Product.” I knew I’d find gold if I looked further. Sure enough, the back had copious English descriptions of why it was so high class.
“Stainless steel is better than normal and has powerful and tenacity elasticity.”
I’m not sure what “normal” spring is made of, but this one sounded good. It gets better.
“The stainless steel spring never rust, so it’s to use long turm…”
I like long turm. You can never find enough long turm stuff out there, so I had to snap this one up. But if that isn’t enough to sell you, this clinches it:
“This products got TUV from Germany, so we can guarantee good quality.”
I have no idea what TUV is, but since it comes from Germany, its got to be good. Koreans have great respect for German engineering and a keen eye for Germanic descent. I am sometimes asked if I’m German, and when I tell them I am part German, they always follow up with “good engineer, Germany peoples.” Whatever the case, it makes for good marketing and the leash folks unleashed it here.
“This products used to natural rubber, so it’s very strong protect from all kinds of demege.”
Love the spelling and grammar. I just wonder who they write it for. Each English line has its corresponding Korean marketing blurb above it, so they’re not relying on these lines to sell locally. I swear there’s an enormous market for proof readers here. There ought to be a way I could tie in my German heritage with it somehow thereby guaranteeing them good quality.
Saturday was almost perfect weather. For pictures, anyway. The humidity was nearly 100%, but the air was clean which is rare in these parts. I took the opportunity to climb Munsu Mountain, not in the sense I usually do, with ropes and harness, but just simple hiking. There are numerous trails from several starting points around town to the summit, one of which begins a mere 200 meters from my apartment.
So, Saturday afternoon, Satang and I headed up the mountain from our neighborhood in Cheonsang. 3 hours and a bucket of sweat later, we made it to the very top. It was worth the heat and humidity. The best view I’ve ever seen of Ulsan I got on Saturday. The usual smog and mist was gone and I could see the downtown, the harbor and dozens of ships off the coast. The Taewha River runs through the center of Ulsan and is visible on the far left.
I took this series of pictures and spliced them together. This is my world. Ulsan, South Korea.
Click on the thumbnail to get the full view.
On the backside of Munsu, is Cheonsang. In this picture,
Cheonsang is in the foreground, with its sister neighborhood, Guyong, just across the Taewha River. The river takes a hard left just after Cheonsang and courses west through the mountains and valleys, with its headwaters coming off the mountains further west. We went there a few weeks back and visited a temple there.
This is Monday morning rush hour in downtown Beijing. Sure, there’s cars and buses, but every major street has lanes set aside strictly for bikes. There’s money, but it’s not all trickling down to the common folk at the level they can all afford to buy cars – yet. Our guide mentioned that motorcycles are very cheap, but they slapped a $5000 registration fee on them which puts them back out of range for most folks. Why? They don’t want Beijing to turn into another Bangkok, where scooters and motorcycles far outnumber cars, control the traffic flow and dominate the noise/air pollution.
We toured the Hutongs (old Beijing) on the other half of our free day. This was probably the most interesting – even more so than the temples and palaces. It provided a stark contrast to how the royalty lived and breathed. The hutongs were little more than shacks at times. Others, modest homes at best. We tried walking them at first, but it was just too damn big. We never would have walked down some of the lanes our rickshaw driver took us – just too scary looking. Many of the places only had public baths – no water in the homes? Even scarier. We saw people washing themselves in the streets. It made us thankful to have a roof over our head and hot and cold running water. At the end of the hutong tour, we stopped at the Bell Tower, a large 17th century structure with, as you can imagine, a big-ass bell. It started to rain afterward, so we canceled the tour of the adjacent Drum tower (I can imagine a big-ass drum well enough), although we did get a nice view of the hutongs from above.
Without our guide, getting around in Beijing was a real pain in the ass. We had a card from the hotel with the address and map to it, both in English and Chinese, but we must have hailed a half dozen cabbies before we found one who knew the way. I’ve never been in a city where so many cab drivers didn’t have a clue as to where to go – even with a map, an address and phone number – and they all had hand phones. I figure they were either lazy, illiterate or both. When we did find a cab driver who agreed to take us back to our hotel, we got only a few miles. He stalled his car at a light and could not get it started again. He found another cabbie for us and we were on our way again. We weren’t even that far (15 minutes) from our original location. It wasn’t just us, either; several others in our tour group had similar experiences for their free day. Beware, travelers to Beijing – bring a translator, a guide or your own damn vehicle. The Olympics should be fun for lots of people next year who attempt this.
The next section of the video is the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven. Hundreds of people were there early in the morning performing various exercises, dances, sports and other activities. Our guide said it was a way to reconnect with people – so many live in crowded condos and apartments they’ve lost the sense of community that the older villages provided. It was interesting to see so many older folks working out. It gave us a real sense of Beijing and its people.
I may pull together a few more photos and videos for another post, but this might be it for a spell. We visited several arts and crafts factories (don’t you ever wonder where all those “Made in China” products come from?) and I’ve got some nice pictures of sweat shops. Making these videos takes time, although I enjoy doing it. I hope you enjoy watching them.
After seeing the palaces of Chinese royalty, it was time see some of their religious practices. the first stop was the Lama Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist style temple. Myeong Hee and I were surprised by the number of deities that were whole or part animal. Although she is a (sometimes) practicing Buddhist, she’s never seen animals in the temples or on the altars. We figured that was the difference from Tibetan Lama style and Korean style, in which there is only people, albeit multiple deities.
The Lama (as in Dalai Lama) temple was far grander than any other Buddhist temples I’d seen – either in Korea, China, Thailand or Japan. Not surprising it was highly recommended as a stop. We went to the temple on our free day, in which no guide was along to hurry though all the places. We took our time and strolled along, reading what we could from the minimal English placards. Myeong Hee thought how lucky I am to have been born in America and speak and read English. No where but Korea and maybe a few adjacent airports was there any Korean for her. I did a lot of translating, although she does understand a lot on her own.
The remainder of our free day, we spent among the common folk in Beijing and the pictures and video didn’t juxtapose well with the Lama Temple as the Temple of Heaven, a place we went to on our final day in China. I’ve got media from the common areas that was, in some ways, far more interesting than the palaces and temples. I’ll share that in another posting. The Temple of Heaven, the second part of this video, is where the Emperor conducted the yearly rituals to pray for rain or a good harvest. They conducted enormous ceremonies with animal sacrifices for the “god of heaven”, altar fires and flowery speeches. It was interesting to compare and contrast between the Buddhist temple and the state religion of Imperial China.
China is a strange land with a mysterious past and an even more complicated present. The Buddhist Lama temple is tolerated, even protected, although a Christian church was nowhere in sight. The Christian churches are nearly on every corner in Korea, and especially easy to find at night.
This was Monday, July 30th. We went to first Tian’anmen Square and then on to the Forbidden City. The Square was large, but otherwise unimpressive. The Mao Mausoleum was closed (as were many structures around town) for renovation in preparation for next year’s Olympics. The other structures were simply monuments to the glory of the people and its armies and revolutions. A lot of wasted space, in my opinion, especially since they aren’t going to be allowing the students to have demonstrations again like they did in 1989.
Adjacent to the Square is the Forbidden City, a place where for centuries only the Emperor, the Empress, concubines, and government officials were allowed to go. Just as commoners were not allowed in, some of the royal court did not go out and spent their entire lives within the walls. Two of the largest structures, as you will see in the video, were undergoing renovation and the scaffolding marred the view. Understandable, given the timing, but lamentable nonetheless. The Forbidden City was still quite impressive. Again, I wondered how many royal feet walked the same steps as I, strolled though the same hallways and sat in the same garden. Centuries of history passed through this place and its magnificence was intoxicating despite the renovations.
The Square and the Forbidden City encompassed what seemed like miles of walking. The heat and humidity was oppressive and we were soaked in sweat. The bus ride to dinner only served to chill the sweat on our shirts and not really cool us off. After dinner, we went to an acrobatic show which was excellent. The costumes were bright and colorful and the acrobats were talented.
This tiny little lady balanced several stacks of plates on every part of her body while she twisted herself around the platform. I don’t think I’ve seen one so bendy as her. She could hold a platter on the sole of her foot and twist herself around from stomach to back and even her head without so much as a jingle.
This is probably one of the best shots I took of the evening – the clarity, the costumes, the cuties…too much.
Although the photo is a bit fuzzy, I kept it anyway. This guy balanced on one hand as he walked/hopped first down the steps from the platform, and then back up again. The strength and balance it must take to do jumping, one-handed push-ups has to be extreme.
These girls did all manner of tricks on their bikes. At times, it was hard to tell who was riding and who was driving.
By the end of all this, we were more than ready for an early bed time. Day three we would be on our own, exploring Beijing without the benefit of our guide but at the pace we wanted.
I’ve decided the only way to properly document a trip like this is to do it just like I did – a little at a time. I can’t possible squeeze all the photos and video clips and words into a single place and do justice to the beauty, pageantry and and just plain awe inspired by such a place. Beijing simply reeks of the glory of a history that spans thousands of years, and whatever upheavals they’ve had along the way, they’ve managed to protect and refurbish as needed their valuable treasures. Nearly everything we saw, whether it was ancient history, recent political turmoil, the grandeur of royalty or just the stark reality of poverty caused us to suck in air followed by an exclamation of wonder.
I’ve also decided to continue my recent trend in multimedia. Sure, stills are great and they’ll continue to be a big part of this blog. But photo galleries just don’t capture, for me, the essence of a journey. I like the immersion of a video, photos and music all combined into a single focal point.
And with that having been said, here’s Day One of our trip to Beijing.
We started out on Sunday morning to Badaling, the closest to Beijing of several areas accessible to the Great Wall. Along the way, we stopped at a jade factory to watch them carve, polish and finish jade artwork. I’ll publish more photos and video from this stop and others, including a pearl shop, an earthenware factory and a porcelain factory, in another posting. But one of my favorites is this piece of carved jade – worth over US$100K
It took almost 90 minutes to get to Badaling, and it was swarming with tourists, both Chinese and foreigners such as ourselves. We had another 90 or so minutes to explore the wall and climb as much as we wanted. Ultimately, we ran out of time before energy and had to double back before seeing all we wanted. MyeongHee had always wanted to visit the Wall ever since she was a little girl. She was thrilled to be able to see it firsthand, despite the hot weather, terrible humidity and horrible pollution surrounding it.
After the Wall, we headed back to the city and stopped at a stoneware factory and store where they also served a hearty lunch. Fabulous food and Chinese beer and tea and we were all primed for our next outing, the Summer Palace. Designed as a place for the Emperor and his court to retire during the hot summer months, the Summer Palace is a beautiful getaway on a man-made lake in the city. Again, the pollution was terrible and some of the photos show just how murky the air was. Distance shots were nearly a waste of time. Still, the Palace was phenomenal and made me wonder how many royal feet walked along the same pavilion and strolled the same gardens and we were. I could even imagine them, dressed in brightly colored silks, being rowed about on the lake in front of the palace. Little has changed since those days and the Chinese have kept the place remarkably well.
After the Summer Palace, we headed back into town and had a Xiabu Xiabu hot pot for dinner. That’s a boiling spiced soup in which you drop pieces of meats and vegetables to be cooked right at your plate. Each of us had our own hot pot, adjusted for our own spicy tastes. MyeongHee and I had ours on the hot and spicy side – Korean dishes are, in general, far hotter than their Chinese counterparts, so we’re used to the red.
After walking several miles at the Wall and Summer Palace, and pounding down two scrumptous meals, we were ready for a rest. A short nap at the hotel and we hit the streets to inspect Beijing without our tour guide. No surprise, things in town are different, too. Who needs a ballroom? Locals regularly will form an outdoor dance floor in summer after a good meal to help beat the heat. The music was some sort of waltz, done with a classical one-two-three beat, but with more typically Chinese instruments. I wish I’d had the video camera instead of the just the still camera.
Just catching up on my reading from being out of town for a few days. On Madhu’s blog, (who is a friend of Antje and I may have met once, but have seen numerous emails from) I found this link to a quiz that “determines” the right religion for a person depending on their beliefs. I think the recent trips to the many temples in Korea and China as well as the Imperial rites and customs practiced by the Chinese may have gotten me wondering.
Regardless, I came out of the quiz like this:
You scored as Satanism,You scored as Satanism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Satanism! Before you scream, do a bit of research on it. To be a Satanist, you don’t actually have to believe in Satan. Satanism generally focuses upon the spiritual advancement of the self, rather than upon submission to a deity or a set of moral codes. Do some research if you immediately think of the satanic cult stereotype. Your beliefs may also resemble those of earth-based religions such as paganism.
Before anyone else starts screaming, I only matched Satanism at the 65% percent level. Christianity came in a close second at 60%. Interesting that the two would be so close. Do your own quiz and see where you land.
Wow! What a trip! We spent five days in Beijing and just arrived home last night around 10:30pm. As I suspected, no time to catch email or write in the blogs, so I’ll be catching up this week. I took many more, but of the good ones, I have 208 pictures and 81 video clips. It will take a little time to get some of it together to display on this blog. We had a fabulous time, though. Great food, incredible sights, lots of walking and sitting on a bus.
I don’t have to go back to work until next Tuesday, so I hope to have some relax time and some time to put together some of the best photos and video to share. We expect some rain later with the next typhoon headed toward us. so maybe I’ll have lots of time to upload things.
In the meantime, here’s just a small sample of where I’ve been.
The Great Wall (above) and The Temple of Heaven (below)
Although the photo is a bit fuzzy, I kept it anyway. This guy balanced on one hand as he walked/hopped first down the steps from the platform, and then back up again. The strength and balance it must take to do jumping, one-handed push-ups has to be extreme.
