Meditation2

Santa Cruz, day at the beach

Santa Cruz with Monkey, Chris, Huy, Antonio, May 11th
Chris hasn't had a day off in a long time so we decided to take him to the beach.

Monterey, Big Sur, Pebble Beach

Brendan, my brother, Jed, and I took a day trip to the Half Moon Bay area and Big Sur on May 21, 2005. Monterey was a lot cheesier than I remember it being. Pebble Beach was much grander and richer than I remember. And, Big Sur was amazing! The shoreline is breath taking. The water is so blue. It was pretty windy that day too as the photos will show.

Big Sur

Monterey

Pebble Beach

2005 April 12-13, Las Vegas with Dad and Antonio

My dad suddenly decided that we should all go to Vegas. We ended up getting tickets for Zumanity and Lance Burton too.

Zumanity: Funny, risque, and outrageously hot. Just don't go with your dad like I

Lance Burton: Personally, I thought his tricks were kinda boring but it wasn't bad. My dad loved it, though.

Louisiana and Mississippi

New Orleans, Louisiana

Poplarville, Rodney (ghost town!), and Natchez, Mississippi

Korea 12/14/04-1/9/05

Most of the these photos are taken in and around Busan, Korea. Note the Irish pub in Korea named O'Kim's.

Gurgle

My stomach just made a sound like a manatee.

I think I need to eat. However, after my eating binge in Korea, I think I'll keep it light for a while. My brother and I had our official weigh in after we got home yestetday. He gained about 6 pounds and I about 4 pounds. Yay holiday eating.

Jet lag truly sucks.

Upon unpacking I realized how very little I shopped in Korea which strangely made me a little sad.

My brother bought a stuffed toy of Buddhist monk at a temple gift shop. It's soooooo cute!!! It has a bead bracelet, a gray monk outfit, and even a drawstring backpack. Koreans can even make monks look huggably cute.

I definitely need a new cell phone because mine is a dinosaur compared to what I saw in Korea.

The long way home

The weather is cloudy and bitingly cold. From time to time the sun breaks the thin clouds making the gray sky silver with light. The rays catching the country dust particles and making white steamers comg down through the car window.

We're driving from my dad's new home in Pusan-- at the waterfront on the 10th floor of a 31-floor concrete apartment building with a partial view of the most beautiful bridge in a city of bridges-- to his hometown. My brother, my dad, and I in my dad's shiny, black, new car. I think it's the most expensive domestically made car available. My brother and my dad talk the whole way I'm sitting in the back dividing my time between the LCD screen that tells me what street we're on and the window that shows me the view. I'm thinking about everyone who ever meant anything to me the feelings don't come back; it seems the feelings are trapped in past.

Three hours of driving brought us to a hosptial where his favorite cousin laid in bed for the the 40th day in a row after he fell several feet while working on the new subway construction in Gwangju. He was in good spirits and made jokes non-stop. He asked us what we had planned for the night as if he was asking to see if he would be interested in tagging along. I was a bit surprised considering he was wearing a large, heavy plastic brace around his torso. He wanted to come eat dinner with us and so he did. He even drank a fair amount of soju. My dad's friend dropped him back off at the hospital and the rest of us went to my second oldest uncle's house. His wife and their daugther were there. There aren't too many families left that live in a house anymore, but they do. In the morning we drove my aunt to the corner store she and my uncle own. It's a tiny store that sells soju, cigarettes, ice cream, soft drinks, and tons of other junk food. My dad says they make only $100 a day. They let us drink and eat whatever we want. I just take a pack of candy and gum. My aunt, who runs a restuarant on a quiet street, arrives on a bus. We all pile into the car and head out to a Buddhist temple in the mountains. As a child my dad went to this temple many, many times on school field trips. The figures at the gate of the temple complex used to scare him, he tells us. Ever the obsessive photographers my brother and I whip out our Lomo cameras to snap photos. There's absolutely no one at the temple so we spend a decent amount of time there posing for photographs in front of the intricately painted buildings. It's cold and cloudy but there's no wind and the view is subtly beautiful.

Afterwards we take perilously narrow gravel and dirt roads up hills, alongside rivers, and through thick bamboo to reach a tiny cluster of buildings. It's where my dad went to the school only the school building isn't there anymore. My aunt and uncle are loudly recalling where everything used to be. The garden on the corner, so and so's house on the beside the school... We don't get out of the car though. We still have a long drive to where my dad spent 15 years of his life.

The windy, bumpy, narrow country road makes me nervous but there's no coming down the road toward us. I haven't seen a single soul anywhere yet.

My aunt, uncle, and dad start loudly remembering and my brother and I get the I-walked-a-hour-through-the-snow-in-barefeet-to-get-to-school story only this isn't at all an exaggeration. From the looks of it must be an understatement. Some parts of the road have washed away into the river which only has a little trickle of water and is surrounded by prickly, dry, leafless trees. The road must get very little traffic now as the branches of the trees are scratching the sides of my dad's, now, dust covered car. He doesn't seem to care about that nor that the gravel is scraping the underside of the car. He hasn't seen the house he grew up in over 25 years.

Along the way we pass by the homes of my aunt, where she had her two children away from hospitals and doctors. She mentions where my dad's best friend, to this day, lived and where they play.

Finally my aunt says, "That's the garden" and points to a small field where several white and black goats are now grazing. The car continues around that former garden and up a steep hill finally arriving at grouping of three old, country homes.

It looks like a scene out of a movie. It's a wreck. The house is a delapidated shack made with dirt and covered in newspaper. The door is made from rice paper. The kitchen is completely dark and the ceiling is pitch black with soot. And it finally sinks in that my dad and his family grew up in mind-boggling conditions. No running water, no electricity, no heating or cooling, just a roof over their heads and mats to sleep on. They never grew up hungry but they ate bowls of barley instead of more expensive rice and they only ate meat once or twice a year.

An old woman is standing outside and her little grandaughter is playing with piece of paper wrapped around a stick. She turns the stick to make the paper slide down and flips it over to watch it slide down again. My aunt inquires about a man who she knows still lives there. He comes down and they chat for a while. He is one of the few who still remain there. When my dad's family lived there, there were 11 other families in that small area too.

My brother is too shocked to take pictures. He's not at all his chatty self. Later he starts sobbing. I can't explain it but I think you might know what he was feeling.

Seeing the tiny house made of mud and paper where my dad lived with his mother, father, and six siblings and then coming back to his new large, fancy, high tech apartment where it's just him and his girlfriend is just remarkable. It's hard to believe, really. I saw it and I can barely believable it.

10, 9, 8, 7...

The world didn't end, again.

This Asian herbal medicine tea/whatever is disgusting. After I knock a cup of this dark brown goo back, my body shakes in disgust.

Korean apartments have enclosed verandas around their windows to keep the cold air out of the rooms. It's so cold oustide that it's cold enough to use the verdana as a second fridge; there's fruit and some leftover pizza out there.

My cousin's friend said my voice sounds like that of a movie star's. Which movie star I don't know.

Everyone keeps reading my face like it's a palm and then reports to me that I have a lucky face.

People also tell me I look like a cute little high schooler.

Gotta take the good with the bad, right?

New Year's Eve festivities were kinda boring. We went to a hotel lounge that over looks Haeundae Beach in Busan to ring in the new year. We were given party hats, noise makers, and balloons on the house. Apparently at like 5 AM there will be thousands of people on the beach waiting for the sun to rise so they can pray for a good year. I'll be sleeping thankyouverymuch.

A business deal that fell through left my dad feeling totally enervated so my brother and I figured it would be good for us to drag him out of the house so we spent the entire day at the mall shopping, having lunch, people watching, sipping coffee. My dad bought me some awesome looking Lacoste knee socks which match a shirt I already own. My dad's girlfriend bought me a very french looking short-brimmed black wool hat-- it makes me look all precious like Amelie.

Fat (for a Korean girl)

Today's Adventures-in-Korea continued with a trip to the alternative medicine shop where they administered medically questional tests on me. (Since when did ancient Chinese medicine get so high tech with their computerized tests and printouts???) I got to see my blood cells on a monitor attached to a microscope. There was a scary looking seahorse-like shape swimming with the healthy cells but I was told it was okay and that I wasn't about to die. My brother had cells that looked like those spikey balls attached to a stick on a chain they used to hunt animals with or whatever hundreds of year ago. They said I am at my target weight and healthy (even with my slightly low blood pressure) but that I should try to get more exercise. I dunno how they figured this one out but they said that I have a normal level of stress but that I have a tendency to hold it all in. They said my liver needs a tiny bit of help; I can thank numerous gin and tonics for that one. I think that beginning tomorrow I have to drink heinously digusting and painfully bitter herbal medicines three times a day for the next two weeks. As a (ovo-lacto-pesco) vegetarian I think I should say nay to the deer antler tea they'll probably give me but the brown liquid is mysterious enough for me to let it slide. I am not looking forward to this.

I think I consumed every variety of Korean sea creature for lunch today. :loosens belt:

That enormous sashimi lunch was followed by an almost as large buffet dinner at a rather swanky hotel.

After dinner my brother dragged us out on the, literally, freezing cold beach to light roman candles. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! Fireworks are so freaking fun but after igniting about four roman candles my hands were frozen stiff. My brother lit about a zillion more and made the lady selling the fireworks pretty damn happy. I haven't seen him that happy in ages.

We went to a video store looking for some Korean movies watch but the video rental shop had a serious lack of DVDs. No My Sassy Girl, no DMZ, or JSA, or Old Boy so we went home with Troy. Yes, that movie with Brad Pitt. And no, I did not watch it.

Did you know that in addition to PC bangs they also have board game bangs in Korea? Apparently no likes hanging out at home. Well, I wouldn't either if I was 22 and living with my parents.

Now it is time to eat some more delicious Korean junk food.

Interested is Interesting

It's unfuckingbelieveably cold here in Korea.

Also, my eating binge continued last night with an ice cream sandwich that looked like a gold fish.

Korea has very, very nice rest stops along the highway but unfortunately the bathrooms have cold air hand dryers not such a good idea when the weather is dipping below 30 degrees.

13 hour plane flights in economy class are insanity inducing. At least the 5 year old sitting next to me was incredibly well-mannered and so adorable. The inlight movie, The Borne Idenity, wasn't that good.

You know those "love hotels" they have in Japan? Well, they have those in Korea too and that "motel" my dad owns is actually a "love hotel." Mmm, kay....

Euro trip photos: Sierre, Switzerland

View from our window. Mathias (sp?). Me and Mike after the drunken swim.

Why do all my boyfriends love flipping the camera off? Matthew, Mike's roommie. Mike.

Happy, Jean, Joy, Mike. The school. Samsom, Mike's other roommate.

not soon enough

I called my brother and he said that Dad is no longer flying in tomorrow with me-- he is coming in about two weeks instead.

I cried about two tears from embarassment today. It involved Mike being pissed off about the hostel's check-in time and the hostel manager not having any of it. Ugh... it was so.... ugh.

I'm never flying Iberia airlines again. I will probably never visit Switzerland again.

This Swiss girl is growing impatient of my using the computer for precisely 8 minutes.

I cannnot wait to get home.

secret message: See you soon, "Bart."

Bonjour!

So here I am in switzerland. This keyboard is a a french one so some of the letters on the keys are in different places the Y is where the X should be for example.

I left my apartment at 2:00 PM on Thursday and it took me until 9ish PM (Swiss time) on Friday to arrive at the apartment Mike is staying at. He's living with two other Swiss boys who go to the art school here in this town of 10,000 people. The locals look at me funny, I think, because I'm asain and this is a small backwater town. I know almost no french so communicating is a but tough. This is about all the french of know and i might even be wrong on some of them:
Please. see boo play
Thank you. merci
Thank you very much. merci bow coo
Hello. bonjour.
Bye. au revior
With. avec.
I don't know. je ne se qua.
Do you speak english? parlay voo anglias?
Cheese. fromage.
Excuse me. excoos ze moi.
Exit. sortiee
Entrance. entree
Passenger. pass ah ge
Toilet. toillette

Uh, I think that's about it. I know a few more food related words. Speaking of food, it's horrible here. I ate at a grocery store cafeteria yesterday. And there were a lot of people there and it was 10 fracs (1 franc is about 85 cents). Everything is also expensive. The chocolate isn't too shabby and bread everywhere is great. I did get sick from a sandwich I ate for lunch though.

Mike and I spent way to much time trying to figure out how to use a washing machine. You think it would be easy enough since the washing machine only had icons on it.

Oh my flight over to Europe...
I flew into Paris with no problem. My single serving friends were decent enough. There was young German man to my right and older American woman to my left. The woman drank every last drop of her cocktail and wine and alternated betwen the new David Sedaris book and napping. The young man read one of those paperbacks with the embossed gold type on it and listened to his iPod. I tried to watch Love Actually but the screen was too far away and I quit trying to strech my neck to see the movie. I read Vernon Little God and sleep but neither went to well. I was thinking too many other things. I was happy to finally land in Paris 10.5 hours later. I took a shuttle to catch my connecting flight and found out it was delayed. No problem, I thought. Happens all the time. Well, as it turns out there's a strike going on and they can't get fuel in the plane. They don't know when the plane can take off. We all wait. People get upset. Some people leave, the rest of us wait. I see this familiar face at the gate counter-- it's a model but I can't think of where I've seen here. I spent the next half hour trying to remember what ad I seen her in and finally rememberd, Ralph Lauren. She's in a white and blue outfit, maybe it's a bikini. Anyway, she looks younger in person but still unfairly beautiful. I was supposed ot board the plane at 12:20 PM but we didn't get on until 3:45 or so. I was worried that Mike wouldn't be able to fine me. He didn't give an address or a working phone number so I couldn't call. My flight ended up being about 2.5 hours long instead of 1 hour and 10 minutes because we had to get fuel in the middle of in France. Whoopie. I was a bit freaked out that Mickey wouldn't find me, I woudln't find him but as I exited the customs area I saw this very tall man. In a yellow tshirt. In cool fashionable jeans. With no hair. He looked like a cross between Billy Corgan and Matt Damon. Oh, shit. It was Mickey. Hmph. He's been Euroized and I was very pleased to see him.

Ugh, tired of typing. But here's something funny Mickey noted: "None of them have boxsprings or beds. I wonder if it's cultural or they're just poor."

Korea: Part 2

You know the old cliched saying "a picture is worth a thousand words." So, I'll say a few and you can form your own.

Left: My brother, dad, and me at visiting the palace of our ancestors. My dad claims we're descendents of the king who lived there. Nice place.
Center: Dad now lives in Pusan which I think the second largest city in Korea. That's the bridge that helps you get from one of Pusan to the other.
Right: Cute, smart dogs... too bad they will be stew soon.

Left: My aunt grows bunnies to sell... as food.
Center: This is a re-enactment of what school in Korea was like about 30-35 years ago. It's part of a museum of educational history.
Right: Scary statue at a preserved palace in Seoul.

Left: Here's my dad and his two older sisters at a national park in southern S. Korea.
Center: A drum at the aforementioned palace.
Right: A building at a national park.

Left: My dad and brother getting coffee at a temple in Pusan. It was so cold we had to go home.
Center: My brother posing in Pusan next to a rather interesting sign.
Right: My dad at yet another temple.

Korea: Part 1

I got back from Korea on Sunday morning. My flight left late because we had to wait around for someone who never ended up showing up, but it left an open seat in the business class cabin, which was nice. During the flight the headwinds were really strong so we got more delayed. When we landed someone in the back of the plane had a medical emergency so the medics came and had to let a couple people off the plane first, which further delayed us. I'm happy to be back but it's so quiet and kinda lonely to be back home, away from all my Dad and all my relatives.

Throughout our two week trip my brother had flashbacks to the movie Lost in Translation. Here's the real life Korean version of the Suntory Whiskey ad.

The slogan: "Good whiskey needs no bush." (i kid you not.)

Home sweet home

I'm finally back from the Land of the Morning Calm. I'm three pounds fatter, one shade paler, and 30% more Korean. Now I must lose the weight I gained from too much spicy squid, Chilsung cider, and Lotteria shrimp burgers. Oh yeah, and get some sleep.