Sunday was a noraebang night. Noraebang is the Korean word for Karaoke room and is a national pastime here. Entire TV channels are dedicated to this style of singing.  We hadn’t been to one in a while, so after another veranda picnic with MyeongHee’s friends at our house we all piled in the cars and headed into town.

Noraebangs can be, although not always, a family affair. Sometimes, like yesterday evening, whole families and friends make a night of it. Sometimes, after a night of drinking in the bars and nightclubs adults like to go out and sing. And sometimes, single men go to the underground noraebangs where “helper” girls will sit and sing with the customers and for a few 10k notes let a guy feel them up.

We did the family noraebang. With nine of us, it was a challenge to find one with an empty room big enough to accommodate us all.

I have a few songs I regularly sing when at the noraebangs. They have a smattering of western pop songs in their songbooks, mostly the big hits, including some oldies. I usually sing “Love Potion Number 9” which seems to be in everyone’s book and most Koreans know. I do “Under the Boardwalk” when I can find it, which is not often. The Beatles always get the Koreans dancing while I sing. Joe Cocker’s “The Letter” gives me a change to growl.  I can’t tell if the Koreans like my singing or are just being polite.

Just a side note here – MyeongHee was worried about her hair when we come to America in two weeks. She usually straightens her hair with an iron (similar to a curling iron, but flat) every morning. When I told her she couldn’t bring it (different power/plugs here) she had a mild panic attack. No iron? How will I fix my hair? She solved the problem by giving herself a perm. Just a few waves, but enough not to have to deal with ironing her hair.

It’s raining today. No deluge, but just a soft, gentle, cool rain. We needed it. It’s been rather dry lately. Yesterday, Sunday, was wonderful weather and I wasted it, mostly indoors. I had gone rock climbing on Munsu on Saturday and taxed myself on somne good cliumbs. Fool that I am, I trusted the weatherman that Monday would be a nice day for a bike ride and I could safely relax on Sunday and get my cardio in later. Nope. Looks like today is another inside day, curling up on the sofa with a good book and my dog until time to go to work at 1:30pm.

Tonight, I’m off on a new venture. I’m holding a meeting of English Teachers. While I’m damn happy where and how I teach, not everyone gets the good deal that I get in the business of teaching English here in Korea. There are some shady schools and a new national organization hopes to help with that. I am trying to start a local chapter of ATEK.

This is the hair shop that recently opened across the street from MyeongHee’s hair shop.  She was initially worried about the new competition but since it’s been open the woman has had few customers.  Maybe it’s because it’s not bright and airy and easy to see in side. Maybe it’s because the owner wears the exact same clothes for weeks on end.  Or may it’s simply her ostensible command of the English language.  The name she’s chosen for her salon, “Build Vallum,” make no sense to me. MyeongHee was very curious what those two words meant and for the life of me I can’t figure it out. “Build’ I understand, but “vallum”  is not so easy.  I’ve found a definition for Vallum that is an ancient Roman wall or fortification, and an anatomical wall. I’ve also found vareious things named Valume such as a poetry periodical,  a poetry blog, various pubs and B&Bs and even a software package called Micro-Valum.  I thought she might be trying to make a play on a clothes/hair designer or a shampoo name, but for the life of me I can’t think of one that might be similar. Bill Bellamy, the actor/comedian comes up in a search, but nothing else. If you can think of something the poor woman might be refering to, please post it in the comments. The Korean name for her shop (slightly cutoff in the vertical sign board) is the same – that also makes no sense in Korean.  What the woman was trying to convey escapes me.

Of course, it could possibly be the fine architecture of the adjacent building. This small addition smacks of just so much sophistication with its corrugated tin siding and roof.

Said the long-tailed cat in the room full of rocking chairs.

It’s April 12th. We get on a plane around 2pm on May 12th, just four short weeks away, and fly to America. I’ve already started the countdown on the left side of the page.

I’m pumped. MyeongHee is excited and her friends are all jealous. I can’t wait to see all my family and friends.

Although we had a small false start to spring and then a bitter few days in late March, Spring is finally here.  Not everything is blooming yet, but it seems like the entire world here is ablaze in colors.

It’s a little early yet for the Azaleas, but they’ll be out soon. Right now I’m enjoying the cherry blossoms everywhere and watching SaTang occasionally  chase the flurries of pink petals caught on the wind.

We went down to Busan on Sunday for another wedding. This one was UnZung’s son. UnZung is MyeongHee’s  good friend who nearly everyday comes to the hairshop to chat and share food. I had never met her son, who bears a strong resemblance to Shrek. He and his bride were pleasant enough and the wedding hall was nice.  But the ceremony itself was very disappointing.

This was the fourth wedding I’ve been to here in Korea. Most of them are similar. It was held in a wedding hall (churches don’t seem to be open for this type of business.) A wedding hall is a business just for weddings – anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen or so large rooms set up for weddings, complete with flowers, be-ribboned and bowed chairs and a staff, including the officiator/priest/parson/judge or whatever his title is,  to help move them along smoothly. These people are important because they have a virtual parade of weddings on a weekend day, one after the other.  Hurry up, hustle people in, hold the service, hustle them out and move in the next wedding party. There are never enough chairs for all the guests but still many remain empty as many prefer to stand in the back of the hall and chat loudly. No one bothers to talk in hushed voices or quiet their children. Consequently, the ceremony and guests each contribute their share to a cacophony of noise.

So far, today’s wedding was the same as above and all the others with a few exceptions. Apparently, Shrek and his bride had big plans for their wedding album and it included DVD sales. Throughout the “service” cameramen swarmed around the couple and the judge (he really didn’t look like a priest) taking video and still pictures. They would lean in and snap photos of the couple, the flash momentarily blinding the guests in the front. Other would walk up and down the aisles filming guests.  Twice a make-up woman inserted herself between the bride and groom to dab sweat from his forehead and tears (of joy?) from her cheeks.  With all that commotion it was no wonder children decided there was nothing sacred to disturb and ran up and down the center aisle. In between bits of the ceremony, the emcee (yes, there is one) would inform the guests of the next phase – bowing to the parents, cutting of the cake, etc.  Interestingly enough, there is no putting on of rings or of kissing the bride.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wedding look less like a wedding and more like a movie production. The only thing missing was a clapboard with the scene number chalked on it and a director yelling “quiet on the set!” To have the photographers inserting themselves so incongruously into the ceremony just made me cringe. There didn’t seem to be any respect for the solemnity of the ceremony performed. It’s all just something to get through for the guests until they can quickly leave and go for the buffet.  And leave they do. Once Mr and Mrs Shrek came down the aisle and a few streamers popped that signalled the stampede for food. I used to think it was rude and inconsiderate to make so much noise during the ceremony. Now, no matter how differently Koreans behave  I just consider it “Korea Style.”  If you think I was the only feeling this way, you’d be surprised. MyeongHee also thought all the background noise was rude and the cameras intrusive. Most of her friends think so, too. But, it’s “Korea style,” and tolerated or accepted as such.

I suppose it was still better than our wedding, which by the way is the only “official” part of anyone’s wedding in Korea – the paperwork. All the other ceremonies are just that. They are superfluous and have no official bearing on the status of the couple.

Bound to happen sooner or later. In my opinion, they’d been hanging on by their finger nails for the past couple of years. But it’s finally come to pass. SiliconGraphics (SGI) is no more. SGI was sold on April 1st – a fitting day if ever there was one – for a mere $25 million. When once it was a nearly $4 Billion computing powerhouse, it shrank over the years like an ailing old woman, forever hobbling to fetch the water and feed the cats until she finally just succumbed to the labor of it all.
I was there for almost five years from 1993 to 1998. It was a wild ride and for part of those years it was some of the company’s best. I’m proud of our accomplishments but at the same time I can only shake my head in an “I knew this would happen” sort of sadness.

In its heyday, SGI was involved in some fantastic technology. They got into so many different areas, it was hard for me as a technologist to keep up and stay current, especially given my role in sales support as a technology cheerleader. It had become harder and harder to understand all the areas they wanted us to sell into and be worth a shit at any of them, much less all of them.  I saw the writing on the wall as early as 1996 when we bought Cray Research. They were already failing and I suspected some arm twisting by the US government to keep their technology afloat. We bought them, cannibalized them and threw away lots of good people. Then sold it years later for a fraction. We got into Nintendo – big deal. Nothing good ever came of that.  We got into telecommunications and sold into Travelocity – that was fun. We made some great deals, lost some great deals and for me personally, it was a tremendous growing experience as I spent the last few year in management.

The biggest deal for me was when they decided to go after the PC market with a Windows NT system. They wanted us all to learn Windows (we were Unix heads) and become experts. Then they made a custom system that wasn’t even pure Microsoft. They fucked up their one attempt at mainstream computing. When I learned it was going to be a custom “Windows” machine I lost my faith in the company. I bailed before they could lose the rest of their company.

I kept up with several people and followed their careers. I worked with former SGI people at subsequent companies, too. We knew that SGI was a tough company to work for and if you could make it there, you’d do well anywhere. We trusted each other. I went to work for Platform after SGI – huge numbers of Canadian SGI people had already gone there. When that petered out, I went to newScale, another place where SGI people drew me in. I stayed there un September of 2001 when the bottom dropped out of the tech market.

My last business contact with anyone in SGI was with Harry Eaddy, the first sales manager I worked with in 1993. In July of 2006, I heard he was looking for another engineer to help sell.  We had lunch, we talked and I researched SGI carefully.  I was excited about getting back into the company I loved so much in the 90s, but after a careful reading of their story, hardware, software and plans I decided to bail. They were down to selling Linux systems and a handful of graphics beasts to the core market they originally sold to in the early 90’s – engineering firms. That’s when I made the decision to come back to Korea. 

And the rest, as they say, in history.

On a side note, the old SGI campus in Moutain View, CA is now the home of Google.

This is a relatively new addition in the neighborhood.  I don’t know how I could have missed the construction phase of this fashion department store. It must’ve taken enormous amounts of manpower to find just the right busted-ass concrete blocks and boards to level out and correctly place in this parking lot. Hoards of workers scoured the area for additional busted-ass blocks to cordon off the parking “area” in front of it. They spared no expense in making it the newest fashion centrepiece of our fine community.

This “building,” which apparently spent a previous life as a shipping container, is now the home of “Cool Cat.” At least that’s how I would translate it. The first two syllables, “Naeng Dong,” mean freezing or refrigeration and the last three syllables mean “goyeongi” or cat. It’s not terribly uncommon for boxes to be re-appropriated as places of business here in Korea. Usually, however, they end up as shoe or clothing repair places where function not fashion is the order of the day. Sometimes they end up as a side-walk food vendor’s hovel, which is particular appetizing. This one is the first that tries make a purse from a sow’s ear.

I can just imagine the conversation women in town might have:

“Where ever did you find that lovely blouse, Mrs. Han?”

“Why, thank you, Mrs. Jin, I got it at that new store in town, Cool Cat. Only the coolest cats shop there.”

“You mean that bright yellow box trailer with the chrome window frame? Why that looks just like the dumpster that was behind our apartment hive. And now its Cool Cat! Where do you find these little jems?”

Personal style here in Korea is very big (unless you’re talking about the ajumma’s). A home’s cleanliness and fastidiousness is very important.  Even a store must be clean and tidy to attract customers. But it still amazes me that once outside the door of a home or business the care stops. Trash or just plain trashiness, much like the cinder blocks haphazardly placed for the leveling are everyday occurrences. Such juxtapositions of inside spotlessness and personal style next to outside rubbish and jerry-rigging still amazes me.

But that white and lavender shirt in the window does look fetching.