Korean Technology Update: Going Old-School

It's been a while since we suffered a technological meltdown over here, so really, we should have expected this. We've blogged before about ondol, the Korean system of heating apartments by running hot water pipes through the floors. When working, ondol is a beautiful, beautiful thing, far superior to Western forced-air heat that dries out your skin and blows all duct-dust into your lungs. (Side note: try saying "duct-dust" three times fast, and leave me a comment if you actually succeed).

But there is a dark side to ondol. Last spring, in our old apartment, our ondol just decided to turn on and stay on, thereby resulting in apartment temperatures in the mid 80s. We called up the building ajeosshis ("old dudes"), who honestly don't have a clue what's going on. I sort of don't blame them personally - I suspect many of them grew up without electricity and therefore cannot be expected to be able to fix digital floor-heating interfaces - but it's really frustrating how they show up, mash buttons, and then leave as if it's fixed without actually fixing anything. I mean, I can do that.

Anyhow, last year, the verdict (eventually) was that there was some kind of piping problem and that, in defiance of all Western rental custom, the tenant would be responsible for fixing it if we wanted it fixed. Since we were moving in two months, and it was April and we didn't need heat, we decided to cut off water flow to the ondol manually and leave it for the next tenants, who presumeably could argue better.

This year, the ondol has bitten us again: since activating the ondol, we have been unable to get any hot water in the bathrooms. It's not that it's impossible - our coworkers in the same complex have both floor heat and bathroom hot water - it's just that something's wrong and we don't have the clout or linguistic skills to fix it. We've had two ajeosshis over so far and gotten nothing more than the hiss of death (a sharp intake of breath accompanied by a head cock that in Korea indicates that you are SOL).

We do, however, have hot water in the kitchen sink. So last night, tired of lukewarmity and tepitude, I decided to kick it old school, a la Farmer Boy, and manually schlep pots of water from the kitchen to the bathtub. It took about fifteen minutes, but you know what? It worked. Not that I want to do it again, although I'll probably have to.

Send us positive technology vibes as we work to get this fixed, or at least not get billed for it.

PS. While wondering about the likelihood of the ajeosshis growing up without electricity, I stumbled up on this paper on the history of electricity in Korea. The Internet is a mighty place.

Wacky Japanese Condiments

On our recent ski trip to Niseko, Japan, Nana and I came across a couple blogworthy condiments.

Exhibit A: Non-dairy creamer.Apparently, you're supposed to use the ones with your birthstone on it. It's a good thing I like my coffee black!

Exhibit B: Ingenious butter-and-jelly pack.You can find something similar at fast food restaurants in Korea, but of the jelly-only variety. You break the pack down the middle into a V-shape, then squeeze the two flaps together. Twin streams of jelly and butter squirt out from the point of the V. See it in action below:

Cool, huh?

Fan Death: Koreans Aren't the Only Ones

Korean fan death gets a shout-out in this humorous editorial by Joel Stein on American hysteria over nut allergies. Just goes to show that, when it comes to medical mass delusion, South Koreans aren't alone.

Editor's Note (by which I mean, um, my note, in an attempt to head off the inevitable nut-allergy horror stories): Yes, I know, nut allergies exist, and severe nut allergies can be deadly. But: 1) nut allergies are fairly rare, and severe nut allergies are incredibly rare, and 2) the draconian measures taken to safeguard supposedly-allergic children are, in my humble opinion, every bit as absurd as doctors telling you not to sleep with the fan on.

OMGHOLYCRAP Part VI: Marrying the Captain in stores now!

Carla Kelly was kind enough to send me an advance copy all the way in Korea. I've held off on gloating until it was available in stores, but let me say now... I LOVED it and can recommend it without any hesitation. It's sweet, it's funny, it's romantic, it's touching, and it's got just enough sizzle for me to feel slightly awkward reading my name in it. And the even better news? There's a sequel coming out in Many and I'm going to be in that one, too! Does life get more fun than this?

Synopsis:

Ever since her father tried to sell her as a mistress to the highest bidder, Eleanor Massie has chosen to live in poverty. Her world changes overnight when Captain Oliver Worthy shows up at her struggling inn. Despite herself, Nana is drawn to her handsome guest….Oliver planned to stay in Plymouth only long enough to report back to Lord Ratliffe—about Nana. But he soon senses that Lord Ratliffe is up to something, and Oliver will do anything to keep this courageous, beautiful woman safe—even marry her!

Three Five-Star reviews on Amazon (counting the Kindle edition)! Positive buzz at All About Romance! Most importantly, of course, MY NAME!

What are you waiting for? Go buy your copy!

Amazon, where it is ranked #1 in Harlequin Historicals sales

Barnes and Noble

Powell's

It's a bad economy. Your country needs you.

AIrport Review: Connecting Internationally at Beijing Capital International Airport

We've had some interesting times flying in and out of Seoul - recall our bus chase? - and all things considered, our last trip, routed through China instead of Japan, went pretty well. Still, I think we're going to add Beijing to our international Do-Not-Connect list, at least for the time being.

The problem with connecting through Beijing is that most international airports keep all international flights in the same security zone - that is, you don't have to go through Customs if you're not staying in the country. China not only doesn't keep all flights in the same area, it doesn't keep them in the same terminal. And then all of this is made more complicated by Chinese visa restrictions and bureaucracy.

Flying home (Seoul-Beijing-Newark-Pittsburgh) looked like this. Keep an eye on the number of times somebody checks our passports.

1. Get off plane and go to international transit counter. Luggage is checked through to Newark but we don't have boarding passes for Newark. Lady checks passports and handwrites us boarding passes. Techno-savvy!

2. Lady escorts us to quartantine/customs. Quarantine officer checks our passports and stamps them. You get oval stamps when you enter China, rectangular stamps when you leave, and hexagonal stamps when you're just passing through. It's this kind of hot insider knowledge that you all tune into School of ROK to acquire.

3. In spite of the fact that we haven't been outside of a secure area since we left Korea, we have to go through another security checkpoint. This means that they take away our water bottles, and the guy says (in Chinese) "Why do the Westerners never know about the water bottles?" Maybe because in the West, you don't have to go through security again unless you've gone outside security! Passports are checked again, twice.

4. Our escort picks us up again and takes us to the bus for Terminal 2. Terminal 2 bus driver checks our passports and our boarding passes. The bus rumbles through the airfield, passing intriguing barb-wire fences. It takes at least ten minutes to drive between the terminals.

5. The people at the bus station check our passports and direct us to our gate.

6. We ponder buying duty-free liquor as a Christmas present for a friend, but decide against it because we're not sure if they'll take away liquids again when we board the plane. Lo, we are correct, and our luggage is searched again before boarding. We frantically pound water in the line and wonder where, exactly, they think we got explosives between the security checkpoint in Terminal 3 and the gate in Terminal 2. Duty-free, perhaps? Oh, and they check our passports before we board.

Total passport checks: 7. Did you catch them all?

Flying back to Korea (Pittsburgh-Newark-Beijing-Seoul) was more frustrating.

1. Disembark plane, where we have been told not to fill out a yellow form. The customs line for "International Transfers" has no staffer, so we get in a normal line. Of course, you know and I know that what this means is a) of COURSE we had to fill out the yellow form and b) of COURSE there is an International Transfers line; it's just the one marked "Handicapped." In English, by the way. Maybe they're making some kind of statement about people who don't stay in China?

2. Show proof to the Customs guy that we're not trying to stay in China without a visa. This means that if you're connecting through Beijing, you MUST MUST MUST bring a physical printout of your itinerary. Otherwise, I've heard, they make you buy a ticket someplace before they let you connect. Or you go to the gulag. Or perhaps, adding insult to injury, they make you buy your own ticket TO the gulag. We don't aim to find out.

3. Reclaim our bags. I'm not sure if this was a policy thing, or if the woman who checked them in Pittsburgh just wasn't very competent, because some other people had to do this and others did not. It may depend on your origin city.

4. Catch bus to Terminal 2, which takes a lot longer because it goes outside the airport (no fences this time). Basically, when we got to Terminal 3, it was like starting our trip from scratch: schlep bags to a check-in counter, wait in line, check in, get boarding passes, and go through security (where, of course, they would have taken away our water, except we drank it. Nyah!). This has only happened to us once in the U.S., in San Francisco, necessitating frantic sprinting. This was the same trip where the airline (Asiana) pulled a nasty bait-and-switch, only informing us at the gate that for some reason, our ticket "fare class" meant that we couldn't get frequent flyer miles on the trip. We are consequently never flying Asiana again.

5. Clear Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine. Again. This one is not random bureaucracy but rather the outcome of bad traffic flow. Remember, it's like starting the whole trip from scratch, and we're in the same line as people who haven't been checked at all that day. But based on the redundant security screenings, I wouldn't put it past them to check us twice anyway. In case, you know, we caught Ebola somewhere in Terminal 2. Perhaps at the same Duty-Free shop that sells exploding water bottles.

6. Terminal 3 is the largest airport terminal in the world, which means it takes a very long time to get from gate to gate. We sat upstairs from our gate (nicer chairs) and found out in the nick of time that they only actually run boarding announcements on the lower floor. Then you have to take a bus out to board the plane and line up in the cold. They checked our passports before we got on the bus but not before we boarded the plane. Imagine, all the identity-theft shenanigans that could happen on that bus! The potential for disaster is mind-boggling!

In spite of all of this, though, China knocked one thing out of the park: we arrived in Korea twenty minutes ahead of schedule, squeaking us in in time for the last airport shuttle runs of the day. We got to go home on the regular airport buses instead of on the airline charter buses, which are 0-2 in getting us home in under three and a half hours (in addition to the bus-chase incident, we also had a late-night bus take a wrong turn downtown and get stuck in the middle of last spring's anti-US Beef protests). So instead of getting home at 3:30, we got home just after eleven, and socked out.

Overall verdict on flying though Beijing: mixed. It's much more of a hassle than flying through Tokyo/Narita, but if you have a long layover, what else were you going to do with that time? I can, however, see so many potential disaster spots - if you forget your itinerary, if your bags don't come through, if you get one of the MANY employees whose English is not as good as they think it is (I had to use my Chinese at least twice on each leg). Yet the airport is huge and weather-resilient, which helps with delays, and China is very inexpensive, which can shave $20 or more off a trip through Japan if you decide to have dinner or snacks and more than that if if you like to airport shop

Bottom line: if the airfare is a lot lower, go for it. But schedule a long layover and be prepared for some wackies.

Back in Seoul

Nana and I returned safely late last night, much less disastrously than landing at Incheon normally entails--then promptly collapsed from exhaustion.

We'll keep you posted as the new semester starts!

Lotto Adopted

In tribute to our most recent foster dog, Lotto, who was adopted Dec 6:

Dog... or teddy bear?






We anticipate picking up another dog in January. We'll keep you posted!

Irrefutable Proof!

That Nana is becoming a skier.

I Love the Japan: Vending Machine Beer

Yes, that's right. Vending machine beer.

Justin Drinks Weird Stuff for Your Entertainment: Australian Beer Edition

Now, Korea isn't exactly known for its beer. A few of the local brews are decent--"the Hite" comes to mind--but few breweries stray very far from light, malty lager, and when they do, the results tend to be pretty mediocre. What's worse, there are few foreign beers available, and even fewer at a reasonable price. As a result, I rely pretty heavily on Asahi and Heineken, which are generally available in most small stores.

However, there is one bright spot on the beer horizon in the ROK: many supermarkets stock a handful of Australian beers that are still relatively rare in the US. Thanks to Fosters, Aussie beer has an undeservedly poor reputation in the States. Most Aussie beers, though, fit squarely into the British Empire mold. You can find two examples below.

The first is Victoria Bitter, which is actually a mildly hopped lager. The fact that this is the top-selling Australian beer bodes well for Aussie tastes: it's full-bodied, flavorful, and very refreshing.
The XXXX Export Lager is the overseas version of XXXX's popular Queensland brew. XXXX is both hoppier and fruitier than VB--similarly refreshing, but it would be harder to drink more than one or two in a row.

Long story short: if you get a chance to drink either of these fine beers on a hot day, or alongside a nice burger or some spicy grilled meats, do.

Home again, home again . . .

After the longest birthday on record (36 hours), I returned to Chez Goff at 11:45 last night with a very sickly Nana in tow.

For those interested, we'll be in Pittsburgh through Christmas morning, then in Columbus through New Year's morning--then it's back to Seoul on the 2nd. You can reach us at my old cell phone number in the meantime.

Expect a post or two after the jet lag has worn off.

Back in Seoul . . .

. . . for 36 hours. And after two-and-a-half days of pretty epic skiing (it dumped snow the entire time we were there), we're beat. Expect pics tomorrow or right after we get to the Burgh.

Hello from Japan!

Justin and I are settling in for the evening at our hotel, the Freedom Inn, in Niseko, Japan. Justin says that today was his best day of skiing since his knee injury. I've never skied on powder before (or just "skied powder?" I've never done it so I don't know!), and it was a novel experience.

The first run of the day nearly destroyed me - it was the hardest dang green I ever laid eyes on, that's for sure. Earlier in the week, I posted a Facebook status message that read, "Nana is going skiing this weekend and is worried about faceplanting all over Japan." Done and done, five times on that first run alone. My first fall was by far the best. I made it ten feet off the trail, losing one ski and having to poke at random with my pole hoping to strike gold before the ski patrol rescued me, and then once he found it I couldn't get it on because the poofy snow poofed out from under my foot every time I tried to stomp on the darn thing. Justin skied an entire run, came back up the chairlift, and found me frozen contemplating a Cliff of Doom halfway down. (Team Abject Terror, if any of you are out there - you know what I mean). I will man up and admit that some tears may have been involved, which is less than ideal when you're wearing spongy-framed goggles that soak up moisture.

But Justin talked me down and I live to tell the tale - and was dumb enough to try it again, with one fall, and finally vanquish it with complete verticality on my last run of the day. I felt much less humiliated this afternoon when I found out that Dr. Kim's girls saw the same Cliff of Doom and simply refused to have any part of it. They de-skied and walked the rest of the way down. So I'm either braver than elementary schoolers, or dumber than elementary schoolers. Perhaps a little bit of both.

And yet I had a very good time. Oddly enough, the mountain was flatter higher up, and there was a really nice boring flat run just perfect for me I could do over and over to build up some confidence. When I got on that, with the powder flying up over my skis, the only way I can think to describe it is that's what I always thought it would be like if you could walk on clouds.

(The Care Bears used to win all the gold medals in skiing before they got busted for using the Care Bear Stare against their opponents)

Dr. Kim kindly took us out for sushi tonight (fully immobile sushi, this time!), which was phenomenally delicious. I enjoyed the salmon roe most. Normally, it's quite fishy-tasting, but here it was so fresh that it almost tasted sweet. It's amazing that we've reached the point in our Asian adventures that after a dinner with tempura pepper and sea urchin rolls, I just about wrote here that I had nothing interesting to report.

So it's bedtime for me now and another ski day tomorrow before we head back. We'll be in Pittsburgh from the 18th to the 24th and then Columbus from the 25th to about the 2nd. If anybody is around, let us know - we'd love to try to see you.

Dude, the waves in the Baltic are kind of bogus.

This one goes out to Leslie.

From a student quiz:

"Peter the Great was czar of Russia, he brought European culture to Russia and reformed it, he also ordered surfers to build city called St. Petersburg."

Serfs, student. Not surfers. SERFS.

As Justin says: "That's almost too good to be true... you DREAM about that kind of mistake, but so rarely is life so perfect as to give it to you."

North Korean Discipline

Here's to wasting no time making that previous post a lie:

A funny little article from Weird Asia News (site N-quite-SFW; article below is) about how, in a North Korean prison camp, "the punishment is always death." The list of camp rules reads like a joke. Here are the first five:

1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.

2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard’s authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.

3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.

4. Obey your guards. If one rebels or hits a guard, the punishment is death.

5. If you see outsiders, or suspicious-looking people, report them immediately. The punishment for abetting in the hiding of outsiders is death.

You can read the rest here.

Meager Posting

The next two weeks will be wild: school, shopping, ski trip to Japan, long flight back to the Burgh. I'd like to apologize in advance for the scant blog posts, though we will try to put a few up before we get home for the break.

Some fall pepper photos

For lack of a better title.


These were on tarps outside our apartment in the parking lot for much of the fall. (Not these specific peppers, of course - they rotated as each batch finished drying). I'm not sure what the green stuff is. The red ones are (obviously) hot peppers, which play such a significant role in Korean cuisine that my lips have been chapped since August. No, not joking. I woke up one morning in September with lips so swollen that I couldn't talk right. They ended up peeling.

But that's not the point! The point is that I think Justin captured them really nicely in these photographs. I love the translucence on the second shot. And a little green and red, right in time for Christmas!

Nana Drinks Weird Stuff For Your Entertainment: McCol

It's McDonald's! It's Coca-Cola! If they sold it in Starbucks, it would be every imperialist's dream beverage!


Except not.

It is very hard to describe this taste, except to say that it is not good. After taking my obligatory swig, I poured the rest of it down the sink. Justin thinks it smells like tuna and tastes like barbecue sauce. I can be a bit more specific.

In Korea, they have a barley tea (pictured at left). If you mixed it with Pepsi/Coke, that's what McCol would taste like.


In fact, that's probably what it is. "Maek," in Korean, means barley - "Maek-ju," or "barley alcohol," is the Korean word for "beer." So "McCol" is actually "Maek-Col," or "Barley Cola." Hence, in retrospect, the picture of the stalk of barley on the can.

Mediocre Korean skills FTW!

I've seen the best minds of my generation . . .

. . . well, not exactly starving hysterical naked (she's calmly eating a corndog), and I doubt the whole "best minds" thing . . . but destroyed by madness--she's got that one covered.

Why else would any sane teenager be wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt with the cover of Allen Ginsburg's Howl and Other Poems on the back? Bonus: it's the exact same edition of Ginsberg I have sitting on my desk right now.

They put the strangest stuff on T-shirts in this country.

Changdeokgung Palace

Two weeks ago, after the long-awaited end of our collective GRE travails, Nana and I spent the afternoon at Changdeokgung, one of the Five Grand Palaces of Joseon-era Seoul. (We've already visited three others: Gyeongbokgung, Deoksugung, and Changgyeonggung.) (Previous posts: 1, 2, 3)

Of the Five Grand Palaces, Changdeokgung isn't the grandest--that distinction belongs to Gyeongbokgung, Seoul's downsized version of the Forbidden City and the traditional seat of government during the Joseon Dynasty. Changdeokgung, however, is the only one of the five that's a UNESCO World Heritage Site--along with the Jongmyo Shrine, the only one in Seoul.

Whereas Gyeongbokgung, the ceremonial heart of the Joseon kingdom, was built to impress the stream of official visitors he received there (with the exception of the emissaries of the Chinese emperor, who were deliberately underwhelmed), Changdeokgung was built as an urban retreat for the Joseon royal family, and is still today the largest swath of greenspace in downtown Seoul (that isn't a mountain, of course).

Check out the photos below.

First, some gratuitous shots of the sky, which was perfectly cooperative--golden light, white clouds on bright blue. The tree above it a ginkgo. They're all over the place here, and the two weeks of brilliant yellow they give you in early November almost make it worth the horrible stench of their fruit.

Another cooperative sky below. Note the lack of color in the architecture: one of the Joseon kings built this residential complex for his wife's family, who specifically requested that their place be done in the country style. Most Joseon-era buildings in Seoul, as well as most Joseon-era temples throughout Korea, are famously colorful.
Here's another shot of the same building. The effect is very Japanese.
The Chinese are associated with red and blue or red and gold; the Japanese with black and bare brown wood (except for the Chinese-style Buddhist temples); and the Koreans for an explosion of greens, pinks, whites, reds, and blues. The buildings below are unmistakeably Korean.
In this next shot you can see the main throne hall of Changdeokgung. Just to give you a sense of the scale, the doors are a little less than twice the height of a grown man. The raised path in the foreground is for the king's exclusive use (except for when an emissary of the Chinese emperor came to visit, in which case the emissary would walk the high road with the Joseon king behind and to the side). The little tablets mark the positions various officials were expected to take during royal ceremonies.
Below is the Joseon king's office building, a short walk from the main throne hall. Note the deep blue tiles of the roof--these were a symbol of the Joseon royal family, just as the golden tiles in the Forbidden City symbolize the imperial family of China. To this day, the president of the Republic of Korea lives and works in the Blue House, under a blue roof.Changdeokgung rivalled Gyeongbukgung as the king's primary residence during the late Joseon period, and along with Deoksugung, which features a Western-style reception hall, Changdeokgung was the Joseon dynasty's preferred site for meetings with Western emissaries. As a result, the sedan port was widened into a modern driveway to accomodate Western-syle coaches and, later, cars.
One of the cool things about Changdeokgung is that, unlike almost any other historical site in Korea, an attempt has been made to make parts of Changdeokgung look like they did while the palace was in use. The late Joseon kings used the room below for receiving Western dignitaries.
And the bench below, wildly tricked-out with mother-of-pearl, was the queen's showiest seat.The real attraction of Changdeokgung for most visitors, however, is the Secret Garden. Below is the royal library (drool . . .) perched above a neatly manicured koi pond.

Nana was somewhat unimpressed with the Biwon, but it did provide some wonderful photo ops.
The fall foliage made the scene particularly nice.
And our final treat, on the way out: Nana mugs in front of a half-millennia-old juniper tree.
Nana: "Come on--you have to. It's a five-hundred-year-old tree!"

And still fragrant.