With oil hovering around $132 per barrel, the price here at the pump is getting nasty, too. Today I saw two gas stations offering unleaded at 1899 won per liter. That translates into roughly $7.20 per gallon.  As many long time readers here well know, there aren’t many American things (other than the food) I miss here in Korea. The price of gasoline has become one of them. I’m sure most Americans abhor the nearly $4 per gallon cost they, but I’d trade it for mine in a heartbeat.

I saw this lovely t-shirt at the open market today. In case you can’t read it, it says:

Hello!! Mouse In your careers you will meat many people. All are significant. They desaeve your allantion

Doubtless, some Korean will buy it, not know what the hell it says or why. Almost everyday I see a Korean in some t-shirt that was either, like this one, poorly produced or a cast off from a western event/concert/sale that never sold.

When I first came to Korea, I was fairly non-materialistic. It was hard to justify buying anything non-consumable that wasn’t going to make the eventual trip back home. Even simple things like house plants were left alone.

These days, I guess I’m feeling more entrenched and less transient. Last year, we bought the big TV (better for my old-ass eyes, I reasoned) and a few weeks ago, we got a new car (the old one was really getting flaky.) But now I’m finding myself doing the simple domestic things that make a house a home.

For years I’ve had a fetish about water gardens. I built my first one in 1995 and have made several since. I’ve got another one now. It’s not the same being on the 4th floor where no access to dirt makes it an above-ground thing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be beautiful and enchanting. Somehow, the sounds of water is soothing and MyeongHee and I both enjoy sitting near the new pond, watching the small fish and listening to the water music.

As with all of my water creations, they are a work in progress. Plants grow, die, get replaced and the falling water is altered to make new music. While this one has only a small fountain in the center, my eventual plans are for a cascading waterfall of pottery jars. I’ll also have some clingy, gangly plants that will hang over the side to obscure the basin for a more natural look. For now, we think it looks great. MyeongHee thinks I’m a genius. She’s right, of course. 🙂 Stay tuned.

My Zang-Mo-Nim, Korean for mother-in-law, left yesterday afternoon. She’d spent the weekend here, partially for a visit and partially to watch the dog while we went to Seoul for the marriage. It was like having a built in personal servant cum slave. She cooked, she cleaned, she organized, she ran errands. Definitely an old-style Korean woman. Few American women would  do the amount of work she’d done  without complaining one iota. I could barely stir my morning coffee with sugar and  milk and she’d have the spoon washed and put up.  That’s no exaggeration. She cleaned  and organized our refrigerator and it took me a while after she left to find all my western food like cheese and bacon and sliced turkey. She likely had no idea what they even were since none of them had any Korean writing on them. Today, as I got dressed I noticed my underwear drawer and sock drawer had been all organized and everything neatly folded.

I asked MyeongHee if her mother was bored and she said no, that’s just her style. She lives to care for others. She left for the oldest son’s home on Sunday and he’ll get the same treatment. That’s just her way of going through life- caring for her children, no matter their age or stage in life.

Now, if we had enough room to have her stay here without crowding out MyeongHee’s son and afford us our newlywed privacy, life would be even grander.

May23rd, 2008, MyeongHee Kim and Martin J. Rehder were married.

I had brought my video camera hoping to catch some of the ceremony, but there wasn’t one. Not a hand was raised in oath, no vow was uttered nor a ring exchanged.  No one asked if either she or I would take this man or woman to have and to hold until death do we part. The Korean marriage is a civil service and it encompassed all the love and warmth of getting a driver’s license renewed. We didn’t even get a smile from the two ladies who handled the paperwork, except when they knocked over a small desktop calendar in passing paper back and forth.  Often, people in Korea have a ceremony with all the guests, cake, dress and so on, but they still must undergo the official bureaucratic nightmare to make it official.

Ours, in fact, was doubly bureaucratic as we had to jump hurdles for the American government and the Korean government in order for it to be recognized in both countries. A vital concern for when we come home to US one day. The US Embassy in Seoul was better than I expected and the Vice Consul was especially pleasant. Standard red-tape existed, meters of it, in fact, but at least they were pleasant.

I was very surprised at the Korean side of red-tape. As a grown woman of 42, MyeongHee must still get “permission” to wed. Apparently, women are not allowed to make those kinds of decisions alone. She needed to have her older brother (now the official head of the family after her father passed away in 2005) and her mother (evidently unable to approve alone.)  Well, we didn’t know that part so didn’t obtain their approvals before going. But we didn’t need to turn back home in order to get them. Koreans don’t sign anything – they use stamps with their names engraved in them. So, no problem, we went across the street from the city office and had a stamp made. Viola! Both brother and mother now “approve.”

After the red tape was completed, I signed my part and she stamped hers, we decided to see a little of Seoul. Just outside the heavily defended US Embassy there were plenty of people passing out fliers on the “dangers” of American beef and how Koreans should not only avoid it but impeach their president for trying to get it in country. I crumpled up several fliers handed to me and tossed them back. One old man tried to force another flier on us and got his hands spanked for it. Some fist shaking and middle finger waving later on and we were shopping the open markets. For a non-holiday workday it was amazing how many people were there. Throng isn’t the right word, horde doesn’t come close, but perhaps cloud or swarm might suffice.  Whether its shoes, clothes, bags, cooking utensils, meat, veggies or prepared food, its all there. Cheap, too. I found a pair of sandals and MyeongHee found a nice lace dress. She also picked up a blouse for her mother who is here for the weekend.

We started our day early to fly to Seoul so we made a quick exit and left the city around 2:30 by train. We were home by 8pm but too bushed to even properly celebrate our wedding night. Maybe after the mother-in-law leaves.

well, not the chapel. But the US Embassy, the Seoul ward office and then the embassy again. All for the purpose of getting officially married, although we’ve  been living as if we were since February. Tomorrow, May 23rd, it will be official. We’ll fly to Seoul early in the morning and hit all the offices we need and then take a slow bus back home. Planes are fine, but their schedules are limited. Buses, meanwhile, run constantly and we can hop on one once we’re finished.

I’m bringing the video camera, so I’ll try to have some video of whatever ceremony a local ward office performs.

Ta ta for now.

It’s gotten really strange now. Today there was a van cruising through the neighborhood blaring its loudspeakers, exhorting residents to press the government to prohibit American beef. It’s still all about mad-cow, but where’s the beef? There isn’t any, as far as I can tell from the news I’m able to read here. Do any of my American readers know any different? And the big scare with mad-cow is that one might catch Crutzsfeld-Jacobs disease and die. Again, where’s the beef? The odds of that are damn slim – only one poor guy in England died of the disease.

One would think that Koreans would have more to worry about than American beef. For example, their economy slipped from 11th (based on GDP) to 13th. Or that there’s a bigger scare of bird flu in the northern and eastern sections of the country. Or that they pay me damn good money to teach their kids English, but outside the walls of the school damn few of them practice it and therefore still can’t carry on a decent conversation.

Yesterday we got a new car. Only new to us since it’s second-hand. But its a very clean, low-mileage car that we got on the cheap. We got a 2001 Hyundai Avante XD. It has only 60,000km (about 37K miles) which is quite low for a seven year old car. Engine size is the same, but newer technology and thus better kpd. I wanted to get something really small and fuel efficient like a Matiz, but they are so underpowered I couldn’t imagine getting a car load of friends and climbing gear *and* my big ass up a mountain. Plus it’s standard transmission.

The old car, a ’94 Elantra, still ran well, but was getting old and making occasional embarrassing noises. It was also a 5-speed and MyeongHee wants to learn how to drive. I tried teaching her, and she did very well, but switching gears was just a distraction she didn’t need. The big learning curve is learning how to avoid an accident in Korean traffic.

However, defensive driving skills alone aren’t the only methods of accident prevention in Korea. Last night I learned of a new one. I have no idea if it works, but I guess that will come in time. Many Koreans hold a new car ceremony when a new vehicle is purchased. They toast with makoli, a milky rice-wine, some fresh fruit and then bow deeply to their new vehicle in the hopes that their show of respect translates into the car avoiding accidents. We didn’t do that. We’re far to cosmopolitan and intelligent to think that bowing to an inanimate object will prevent accidents. Instead, we went out to a 4-way intersection and stopped in the middle. Then MyeongHee placed one raw egg behind each of the four tires. We backed up over the eggs making a nice mess. This is done, I’m guessing, to offer the breaking of eggs rather than any breaking of the car. I went along with it, in part, to learn Korean customs but also to make the missus happy. For the record, she thinks its a little silly, too, but customs are customs.

This is the new car:

This is the old, retired car:

And it’s already sold. I placed ads yesterday and went to one of the local foreigner bars. The first guy who saw the ought bought it.

One other thing…you might wonder why both cars are white. I’d estimate that 90% of the cars here are either white, black or gray. They aren’t for flashy cars here much. You don’t see many bright colors on the road. Asian culture does not emphasize individuality. Group or team togetherness is more important. So, a color that most will agree on is best.

This past Monday was Buddha’s Birthday, so we had a 3-day weekend to enjoy. We decided to go to GeoJeDo, an island just south of the main Korean peninsula. Had I realized it was both so beautiful and accessible, I’d have gone there long ago.

We left on Sunday morning and drove the long way around, past Busan and Masan in the west and around to TongYeong, a city on the island accessible via a series of bridges. We spent two fabulous days driving around a looking at the wonderful seascapes, flowers and mountains. Coming home, we took the ferry for a short 40 minute boat ride back to the mainland.

I made a short photo gallery of the trip, which can be viewed here. I also took a few short video clips of my and my gal. Check that out below.

Three-day weekends should come more often.

Korea is a very outwardly conservative place. Bikinis are not the norm. Neither are a lot of the revealing, sexy or clingy types of clothes. Even the panties are conservative. Being a good, old, red-blooded American male, I like a few sexy things on my woman. I’ve always been a fan of thong panties but women here don’t wear them. I’ve never even seen them in a store, magazine or catalog here, although they all know what they are and even call them that – thong panties – no translation required.

MyeongHee was interested in them (at my urgings, of course) but too ashamed to ask for them in a lingerie store in case they might be hidden somewhere. So, when I was in America back in February of this year, I made it a point to stop in at Victoria’s Secret and pick up a few pairs for her. Nothing terribly outrageous or see-thru, just some cute panties.

When I came back, she wore a single pair once but complained that they were uncomfortable.  I figured she can’t get used to the thong in her booty.

In doing some laundry the other day, I pulled out one of the pairs I’d purchased for her but she’d never worn. Just a nice little black and pink polka-dot thong with a bow on the back on the whale tail. I told her how sexy she’d look in them. So, she tried on a second pair and went to work. Last night when she came home she complained again at how uncomfortable they were and how they bugged her all day.

Without revealing too much about our private lives, I have to say I didn’t watch her get dressed or undressed. She’s modest and doesn’t like to show off too much. I had only previously seen her behind from the outside of her slacks or with the lights off. In either case, things looked just fine to me.

But when she bent over after changing into some jeans I couldn’t see the cute  little bow on the whale tail. That’s when I discovered the great clash of the cultures. She’d been wearing the thongs backwards, thinking the wide part goes in the back. Same with the cute little bow, which are up front on all Korean panties.  Had she been less modest, I might have discovered this aberration sooner. But despite her discomfort, she’d worn the things backwards – twice, mind you. As a man, I can only imagine the discomfort involved as the little rear end of the panties was not nearly enough to cover her koochie up front.  Imagine, if you will, a clam attempting to consume, length-wise, a fish twice as long as its own shell. That’s a lot of squirming going on.

Having rectified that situation, she’s now happy and comfortable in her new thongs. I am, too. Now I’m off to check on Victoria’s Secret’s web site and see what their shipping costs to Korea are.   We have some catching up to do.

As promised, a short video of when I took my dog to Ulsan Grand Park on Children’s Day. Although not all the city’s residents and their offspring were there, it sure seemed like it.

My dog always draws a crowd. But as Peggy sez, it’s cuz Koreans think its funny that we foreigners play with our food.

Now the teachers are getting into act, posting malicious nasties about US beef and poisoning young minds. Somebody stop the madness.

I chanced upon this quote from an article in the Chosun Ilbo online newspaper.

I asked a broadcasting official why the TV channels have exaggerated the issue so much. “It would be appropriate to regard it as a skirmish,” replied the official. Asked what the main battles are, he cited “KBS restructuring, MBC privatization and broadcasting market opening.” The broadcasters are primarily interested in preventing these efforts, and are in effect confronting the Lee Myung-bak administration over them. “The television channels are flexing their muscles in front of the government,” he added. If these remarks are true, we’ll be seeing more uproars like the mad cow disease one.

So, it turns out, the broadcasters are using this issue to pommel the president, Lee Myung-bak, by trying to 86 his efforts in the free-trade agreements he and Bush discussed.

Another Choson Ilbo article asks questions as to where the rumors of beef perils spring from, and it appears it’s a much more highly organized thing than just ordinary people. The above quote seems to support the theory.

So, Lee Myung-Bak pissed off some broadcasters and because of that, I don’t get a freaking hamburger. The real news, however, is that South Korea has reported instances of Bird Flu in the past few weeks, so even chicken may be getting harder to find.

The Koreans are going completely ludicrous with regard to ongoing negotiations to being American beef into the country.

Rumors run rampant about the quality of American beef, ranging anywhere from notions of all imported beef contains Mad Cow disease to utter lies of people already having died from contracting human forms of the same disease after eating the beef. Last night the TV was reporting completely crazy things about how American cattle herds care contaminating beef stocks worldwide. I thought only Fox News was capable of reporting BS in order to please political parties, but apparently here in Korea that happens to. I listened to some of the “news” reports incredulously and wonder where in the hell they get their “facts.” They’re saying the Americans don’t eat old cows (the ones susceptable to Mad Cow) but export it when in fact nearly all cows slaughtered in the US are less than 24 months. They also have been saying that Koreans are genetically more susceptible to MCD. Complete bullshit.

Some idiot-ass Korean, somewhere, has even popularized the slogan:

“I’d rather swallow potassium cyanide than eat American beef”

They’re even holding candlelight vigils in the capital to reverse the agreements the president sought when he visited GW Bush last month.

Somebody, somewhere is profiting wildly from selling only Korean beef and is doing a damn good job of feeding BS to the Korean public. Korean beef is some of the most expensive beef on the planet. No small wonder they want to keep it that way.

Yesterday at the park was excellent. The weather was simply unbeatable with bright blue skies and a cool breeze. SaTang and I played fetch for a couple of hours, attracting hoards of kids watching and wanting to play with us.

We sat in the grass in the shade of a maple tree for hours. It wasn’t until we left that I realized I could never do that back home. Between the fire ants and chiggers I would have been eaten alive in Texas.  Here there are neither. I hope the bastard whose boat brought them to Texas from South America back in the 1950s is rotting in hell with a daily dose of millions of the little shits biting his ass.

I hope to post a short video of the park soon. It was crowded with scads of people all taking their kids out and SaTang loved showing off for them.

Today, May 5th, is Children’s Day her in Korea. Lots of gift giving for the little ones. Usually they get more or larger presents than for their birthdays. No school and many business are closed, so there’s lots of kids in the street and in the park. MyeongHee went to work this morning, so there’s no much for me to do. I’ll probably take the dog to Ulsan Grand Park and let her run a bit. She’s too well known here in our neighborhood. So much so, that when we go to the park across the street she’s swarmed with kids who know her and want to play. I don’t get a chance to even throw the ball as the kids all crowd me out. At the big park, she’s an unknown so the crowd isn’t quite so immediate. Once we start throwing the ball, though, we’ll get a crowd of Koreans who evidently think it strange and fantastic to play fetch with a dog.

At some point in the past few days, I’ve stopped receiving CNN  on my cable TV. The channel it was on is now showing some local Korean channel with a mix of news, shopping and human interest. Although that was one of the few English language channels on the tube here, I’m not terribly upset. I can always catch it on the internet. But then, these days, why would I want to?

It seems CNN has gotten the same disease as a number of US news conglomerates: entertainment-itis. The media centers have mistakenly lumped lumped the news sections of their companies under the banner of entertainment where the goal isn’t to inform but to capture eyeballs. Check the headlines on CNN lately? The big ‘news” it seems is 1) who gets the axe on American Idol, 2) how much a piece of prehistoric poop sold at auction for and 3) a rare John Lennon copyright fight. Big whoopdie-frickin-doo.

I think CNN has lots its way. I think losing CNN off the tube here is no big deal. I’m guessing that the Koreans in charge of determining what cable content makes it to everyone’s home think mostly the same thing – CNN isn’t really news. Its ‘entertainment’, although even that is debatable.