Some things I did in December 2015

December was mostly occupied with preparation for my PhD defence, while grading exam papers and finalizing student grades. I had two defences. I'm happy to say that I passed the defences without too much problems, although I was quite nervous.

I went to several dance performances, finally saw Miyavi perform live, and also went to see Star Wars on the biggest screen in the world.

And a family member came to visit me. My brother arrived on Christmas day and visited me for three weeks. Within his first couple of nights in Korea we went to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, and also to the Light Festival at the Garden of Morning Calm, close by Chuncheon. I also made my brother wait to see Star Wars because I wanted to see Macbeth first, before seeing Star Wars again. Macbeth was great, and seeing Star Wars a second time didn't disappoint.

"Bitter, Sweet, Seoul" -- A Beautiful Depiction of Seoul

Bitter, Sweet, Seoul is a beautiful unnarrated documentary about Seoul. It was put together by brothers Park Chang-Wook and Park Chang-Kyong. The former is one of Korea's most celebrated filmmakers (e.g. Old Boy and Joint Secure Area), and the later is an equally celebrated artist and occasional filmmaker (e.g. Manshin and Night Fishing). The documentary is a montage of video clips that were sent in by residence living in Seoul of whatever they found interesting. The cinematographic selection is clearly heavily influenced by Park Chang-Kyong's artist's eye; while Park Chang-Wook is most likely behind the narrative line. This movie is a professional accomplishment of my amateur attempt of representing Korea on my blog Korean Minute. What I like most about Bitter, Sweet, Seoul is that unlike other typical Korean "promotional" depictions of Korea which seem very one-sided and plastic, only focusing on the beautiful aspects and hiding the negative, this film doesn't hide the grime and uglier parts of Seoul. As a Seoulite myself, I find Bitter, Sweet, Seoul a much more authentic rendition of Seoul than what is usually shown. So, if you have an hour to sit back and just enjoy the sights and sounds of South Korea's captical, then I highly recommend watching this dreamy documentary. As I mentioned earlier, there is no narration, no "story" so to speak, creating a mesmerizing flow of images, allowing the viewer to find their own narrative line. 

Some Things I Did in May

Goodness, it is June already! This means that the semester is coming to an end. This coming week will be the last teaching week. Next week will be final exams, the week thereafter I'll do grading, and the following week is arbitration week and final admin stuff. And then, I'm happy to announce, I will have a well deserved vacation. But first, here is a quick recap of some highlight from May.

PhD Stuff

My PhD course work is going well. I recently did a presentation which I think went quite well. At least a couple of my classmates found it quite useful and some of them came and asked me afterwards for my sources. My discussion with my philosophy professor, who is also my thesis supervisor is quite fruitful, I think. Although I have not read as much as I would have wanted to for my thesis research, I have honed the outline of my paper a lot. I may or may not have to give another presentation this coming Monday... Korea can be a little ambiguous at times.

Work Stuff

The end of the semester came rather quickly. This coming week there is a public holiday on both Wednesday (for regional elections) and Friday (Memorial Day), so I will only have a two day work week (Tuesday and Thursday), since I am off for my PhD studies on Mondays. There is much that needs to be done in these two weeks, but it is all nicely coming together.

Baseball Game

Baseball is not something generally played in South Africa, and as far as I know, we do not even have a dedicated baseball field in South Africa. Needless to say, I've never been to a baseball game, nor really ever had a true interest in going to one. However, a professor from one of my PhD classes took his master's degree class out on a field trip to a baseball management's office, and afterwards a game, and invited the PhD group as well. Here are some photos of the stadium management "behind-the-scenes" areas as well as the pit and bench and so on.

It is the Jamsil Stadium in Seoul. It was quite a pleasant first game, and luckily I had a friend who could explain to me the finer details of the game. Baseball isn't too complicated and I had already known the basic rules of the games, having watched enough Hollywood movies to deduce the rudementaries.

Guitar! 

I got a guitar as a gift. One of my neighbors had a guitar which she didn't use and felt that it was just taking up space. I on the other hand have been looking for a guitar for quite some time now, but just couldn't get myself to buy one--being very selective on what I spend my money one. Well, I was most happy to take it off her hands.

Dongdaemun

 

I went to Dongdaemun, which literally translates as "East-Great-Gate", possibly two or three times in May. Dongdaemun is known as a fashion shopping area. Visiting Dongdaemun Market is quite an experience as it truly comes to life as a night market when people from all over (including abroad) come to buy whole sale clothes, or hunt for bargains and sales.

I did do some shopping too. I bought a pair of summer pants, a nice matching shirt and also new frames for a new pair of glasses. I've always wanted round steampunk / Harry Potter style glasses, but whenever I put them on they really don't match my face. However, this frame gives the illusion of being round, but they are tempered on top and match my face much better than actual circular ones.

Home-made mayonnaise

I made mayonnaise for the first time. I based it off of a video I saw with Jamie Oliver. Making mayonnaise is surprisingly terribly easy. I don't think I will ever buy mayonnaise again. It just doesn't make sense to buy it, if you can make it easily and cheaply and with organic ingredients.

New Pots

A friend saw the states of my cooking pots and then gave me a sincere and serious talk about the ill-effects my old pots may have on me, and that I should not be using those teflon-sprayed stuff, as it is not healthy, so I took her advice, threw out my old pots, and bought two new ones, with a ceramic coating. I bought one big pot and one small one. I need to buy one medium sized one. I might do it this in June or maybe next month.


MODAFE 2014

The annual Modern Dance Festival was held over May 23-31. I would have loved to attend all of the dance performances, but could only see seven dance routines. Nevertheless, it was great. The highlight was the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company with their performance entitled "If At All", choreographed by Rami Be’er.


I also saw "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", "Foot, Foot, Step, Sound and Step", "Landing Error", "Swift Shift", "The Song", and "Waiting Tree". This list was grouped into two shows with three performances each.

At one of the performances I met a really nice guy who is a the producer / director for a 3D animation series currently running on a Korean TV channel. We had a great time talking about the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company performance and other art related stuff. I guess I made a new friend.

Taijiquan

I attended a Taiji workshop, focusing on joint mobility. It was painful, but in a good way.

Personal Life

As for my personal (romantic) life, all I can say is that it is the stuff that soap operas are made of!

Media

I watched "Her" Saturday night. A very nice movie.

I also watched the series "True Detective". Very good.

As well as some documentaries that are worthy seeing, like Generation Rx and The World According to Monsanto.

I also downloaded the book "The Science Delusion" after watching this TED Talk on my app and started reading it over the weekend.





Well, that's all the major things I can think of.

Oh, and I voted.

Some of the stuff I did in February

So here are a couple of the things I did in February.

Jaehyuk

Kim Jaehyuk and me

My friend Jaehyuk and I hadn't had an opportunity to hangout in a year. When I realized that a year has passed, I called him up and told him it is high time to get together. It is not that we are not in contact -- we occasionally chat on KakaoTalk and are KakaoStory friends, so we are up to date with each other's activities. However, it was just nice to sit in each other's auras again. (Something that electronic communication cannot offer.) With our mutual schedules so full, we decided to make appointments about every other month, long in advance.

Jaehyuk, who is Mr Korea 2013 and went on to represent Korea at the Mr International pageant in Indonesia last year, and I met during a martial art photo shoot some time back.

Seoul Art Center & Myung-Il's Play

 

When I lived in Korea the first time, one of my favourite places to go to were the Seoul Arts Center. I especially enjoyed going there on Sabbath afternoons, as their is a beautiful little mountain just behind it with some short trails, and in the evening there is a music fountain, or other enjoyable activities to do on a Saturday night. Unfortunately I don't live close to it anymore, so I seldom visit it these days. However, my friend Myung-Il, who is a theater director recently had her production "The Closed Door" there, so it was wonderful to go there again and reminiscent about the "good old days". Myung-Il's play was probably one of the best in her ouvre I've seen so far. I'm also starting to notice some recurring motifs, so I'm starting to think about writing an article on her work sometime.

Road FC

Since the gym I'm associated with also practise amateur MMA we sometimes attend MMA competitions. Road FC is a touring pro MMA championships in Korea -- it was a nice evening, although the fights were a little dreary at times. Luckily my friend John joined us so we had great conversations through the boring parts.

Friends' Graduation

Dr John, me, and Dr Leo

Speaking of John, he and Leo, another close friend, graduated recently--both getting their PhD degrees. It was nice to attend the ceremony and get a taste for what will hopefully also be my achievement this time next year.

Temple Stay

An interesting cultural experience was staying overnight at a Buddhist temple and partaking in the religious services. Their was much of the experience that I enjoyed and many things about Buddhism that I found appealing, but the experience also confirmed some ideas I had about the basic Buddhist worldview that I am at odds with. It is a religion that I can appreciate, but not one I can fully embrace.

Community Supported Agriculture

I decided to join a CSA-group here in Korea, which provide me with fresh, organic (i.e. non-GMO) produce from local farms once a week. I ordered a sample package (picture above) and after thinking about it, decided to join as of this (March) month, so from next week I will be getting my weekly supply of fresh organic food. Here is an explanation of CSA:

CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, is a mutually supportive relationship between producers and consumers where farmers are able to have a reliable market for a variety of products and the community is able to attain fresh organic produce from responsible local farmers. Consumers pay for a specific time’s worth in advance and every week, or every other week, a box of fresh in-season produce is sent to the consumer’s doorstep directly from the farm. This lump sum payment provides the necessary capital and safety for the farmer to successfully grow his/her crops and in turn the farmer provides the consumers with trustworthy, fresh organic food. While both producer and consumer may share and reap the benefits of a successful harvest, they also share the risks that are undertaken while farming.

See some pro's and con's of CSA here. CSA are also part of a greater WWOOF-network, something I'm thinking about -- even as a form of holiday. As a tourist, I'm not really into the typical touristy places. Instead, I like to see how the locals live and get my hands dirty with local activities. This I find to be a much better cultural experience that just going to tourist sights (although I may do that too). One way of getting involved with the "locals" in a country, and actually living with them and interacting directly is to go work on a farm. Here is how it works.

Movies

During January and February I saw a number of movies. The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle are both really good films, but I found them disturbing. With both, after seeing them, I felt that this is exactly what is wrong with America (and the "West") today. Hedonistic greed. Speaking of problems in America, Dallas Buyer's Club was very touching with great performances. A story about HIV/AIDS and pharmaceutical companies' hording of medicine. (Greed again.) The most recent movie I saw, and the one that probably touched me the most was 12 Years a Slave. I came out of the cinema with an awful feeling in my stomach, as if I have just been given the news of a death in my family. It is not an easy film to watch, but it is a superb film. I force myself to watch these things, to remind myself of the evils man are capable of and hopefully be inspired to be a better person -- daily.

The new Robocop was a pretty good remake of the sci-fi action movie of my childhood. Similar to the remake of Total Recall, I found the new Robocop to be close enough to the original, but inventive enough for a new audience used to superb special effects and CGI. It didn't disappoint. I also watched some children's animated films. I strongly discourage anyone to see the new Tarzan movie. While the CGI was brilliant, I found the story to be quite poor and highly sexist. These gender stereotypes are not the values you want to teach your children. On the other hand, Disney's Frozen. It was beautiful on many levels and did a great job at dispelling gender stereotypes. I saw it twice.

I also watched Stephen Chow's new Kung Fu comedy, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Such fun!

Students' Poems

After quite some time of editing, I finally got my students' poems published. Download the ebook for free here.