Cafe 1010
Last Friday was a public holiday in Korea, and Youngdoo and I met in Hongdae to drink coffee and play with toy cameras. It was a summery day, begging for hot dogs and ice cream cones, so instead of coffees we opted for late afternoon beer and sausage sets at Cafe 1010 (www.cafe1010.co.kr) So cute!
Part [...]
Buddha’s Birthday
Each spring, Seoul comes alive with glowing lanterns strung along the streets and among the temples in celebration of Buddha’s Birthday. The Lotus Lantern Festival is a 2-week affair of temple events and lantern making, culminating in the famous Lotus Lantern Parade through downtown Seoul, a particular favorite among expats and visitors.
Regularly Scheduled Programming
In two weeks time, this dog and pony show will return to its regularly scheduled programming. Though I’ve not been around here much, my cameras have been very busy in the background. And while work has been on the consuming side of things, there has been a lot of fun and canoodling going on in [...]
Bittersweet
I’ll admit it. I’ve been bitter. I was overly optimistic when I returned from Singapore and stood outside Incheon Aiport in only my wool sweater; when I returned to my sunny apartment and found no reason to turn on the heat. As someone who gets cold at 20ºC, this was a marvelous revelation: Spring has [...]
Plasticam
While my New Year’s Oath, taken in October of last year, was to slow down and enjoy a quieter 2010, Life As I Know It is having none of that. To cope, I have taken up the habit of acquiring new cameras. Plastic ones, to be precise.
It all started with Santa,
Café
The Coffee Lab in Hongdae serves fresh roasted beans, a mean affogato and a perfectly quiet Sunday morning.
Fifty Things
I love lists. I always have. So while enjoying a perfectly simple holiday-birthday weekend, I was quietly concocting a way of sharing some of my favorite bits of the last year. A Little Miss Year in Pictures, if you will. And then the Queen of List-Making, the irreplaceable Andrea, made this list. And it made [...]
It would have been perfect if only…
I moved a large marble table to get the perfect framing. I moved the lever back and forth endlessly until I was certain the focus was perfect. But when I pulled the tab on the polaroid, the film came out sliding on the emulsion and a gooey, unfortunate, light-leaking mess.
Not so perfect.
On New Year’s Day, [...]
First Snow in Seoul
There have been flurries and snowsqualls, but this was the first one to stick. It made everything in Seoul so, so quiet. Well, except for the screaming college girls. They weren’t very quiet. But their excitement and snowball fights and giggling almost made up for the screaming.
Not From a Helicopter
Last Friday I left my apartment in the dark hours of the early morning to take a bus to the southwestern corner of Korea to scout the location of the show I will be producing in the spring. The scout was supposed to include a helicopter tour of the area, yet true to my theory that [...]
Adventuring
Ganghwa Island, just 90 minutes and 4,200 Won west of my front door, is a lush and quiet landscape of rice paddies, verdant mountains, Buddhist temples and mud flats on Korea’s western shore. The island lies just at the edge of the North Korean border and has a long history of blah blah blah invading [...]
Third Time’s a Charm
As if I do not have enough to do this week, I decided Sunday was the opportune moment to cook dinner for my girlfriends. Given my monstrous to do list, I wanted to keep it small and simple, so I prepared a menu of dishes I’ve committed to memory. My favorite way to eat in [...]
Sunday in Samcheongdong
Given the Very Long List of Things I Have To Do Before July 19th, I should probably not be prancing about in Samcheong on a Sunday afternoon, lollygagging in cafes, drinking Mango smoothies, buying necklaces, shooting Agfa, poking heads in shops, eating woodfired pizza and having a rather perfect summer afternoon with a Finn and [...]
Today the sky opened up
This morning, I woke to thunder. The really loud kind. I’d been dreaming I was on a boat on the ocean in the middle of a storm. There was a party going on inside the cabin, but I walked out onto the deck to feel the rain on my skin. Waves came spilling up to [...]
Chocolates, polaroids, hot hot heat and a guitar named Karen
As of late, life has been of the variety in which one does not know if one is coming or going. While there are presently some rather large question marks in front of me and the juggling act is reaching epic proportions, I am fairly certain of a few things.
It is difficult to wince in [...]
Into the Presence of Still Water
Two months before I moved to Austin, I stopped through the city on my way back to Massachusetts from California. I took a small room at the Hotel San Jose on South Congress, where I drank cold beer on the patio, stuck daisies in my hair and listened to Toni Price sing her heart out [...]
I have a question
If, say, you were to stumble upon some fresh radishes at the market behind your apartment, and you happened to chop them up with japanese cucumbers and your favorite Korean green that you still don’t know the name of…if you squeezed a lemon over it and drizzled some good, chilled olive oil over it and [...]
One morning, last November…
One Saturday morning last November, after inadvertently closing down Baby Guinness the night before, Youngdoo and I slept late and then meandered our way down Namsan Mountain, through the winding streets of Haebangchon, in search of hamburgers.
Along the way we stumbled on a tiny little shop with ddeokbokki steaming in the window. For $1, Youngdoo [...]
Summer Night, Around the House
Thursday evening, Summer: A trip to the lab, drop off/pick up, a run on the river at sunset, This American Life, freshly picked flowers on the table, mushroom spaghetti, tending to plants, washing clothes, chatting with Doo, a blue couch and freshly washed windows.
사랑 우리 나너
It’s been a long, weird week. Between the former President’s suicide, the rumblings north of the border, and the swine flu quarantine of a slew of foreign English teachers (of which a friend is part of the house arrest quarantine), Korea has been all over the global airwaves, and it’s not been very pretty. I [...]
