Paper Day

There's a paper art museum in Seoul. There are two, actually. There is an art museum that was constructed using massive cardboard tubes and another, smaller museum on Subway line 3 that displays art made from paper. I went to the latter. The museum was a long ways from Suwon, and the question loomed during the journey: "Is it worth it?"

A sign for the museum is conveniently placed right outside the train exit. The modest museum space is located adjacent to a giant church with copper siding that looks like Frank Gehrig designed it. The museum itself takes up the bottom two floors of a stubby brick office building. A security guard sitting behind a desk in the tiny lobby greets visitors absently since the museum is free.

Paper Elephant: Scarier in 3D

The first floor is the only floor that allows visitors to take photographs. It's more annoying than it sounds, since most of the good stuff is on the second floor. The first floor houses some work done by students who attend the paper art academy on the third floor. Sure, the student work is good. But, is it worth an hour and half spent sweating in overheated buses and crowded subway cars?


The student work mostly consists of collages of compressed nature scenes nature scenes that are mounted on the walls. One thing the photography floor does have going  for it is  a 1:5 scale paper jungle scene standing in on corner of the which included a monkey climbing a palm tree and an elephant folded out of what appeared to be a single enormous sheet of gray construction paper. Additionally, there is a painted plywood cutout of Santa and and elf presumably left over from Christmas. The head of both characters have been extracted, leaving two ellipses for people to awkwardly shove their heads into for photos.

This is a paper motorbike and this is the photo
that made the Korean attendant confront me!

The second floor had much more going for it. There was a glass display protecting a pair of shoes and some baskets that looked like they were woven from hemp along with a life-sized turtle that looked like it was carved out of stone. After she reprimanded me for photographing the displays the attendant told me that, indeed, everything on display was made of paper. Once upon a time, people wore paper shoes here! Who knew?!  There were some swell paper statues, too, which had been made by modern Korean artists. There were also some killer paper airplanes. On the side of a matching pair was written "Japan Areospace Program: Please Contact with Serial Number if Found." I wondered if these two planes, which were shaped like space shuttles and looked as space-worthy as a paper plane can, had been dropped from the edge of the atmosphere and then landed in Korea. There was no way for me to tell since the information plaque was in Korean. But, there were no serial numbers on the planes, even though there was a clearly marked space of the wings on which "SERIAL NUMBER:" was written.

So, in the end, was it worth the trouble? I spent half an hour in the joint tops. It doesn't help that all the information is written in Korea. Was it worth the trouble? Did I experience a happiness profit? Who knows? I am not a robot economist. I was curious about the place, though, and now I'm not, after having scratched my paper itch.

It's hard to remember to write when you're out drinking! Enough about me.

Anecdotal estimates put English teaching at an all time low in demand. One man at The Dugout says that English teaching jobs in Asia are disappearing. He's looking for work in Saigon after failing at finding any work in Korea as an English teacher.

A Couleurless Cafe

My coworker Matt says that if you go to coffee shops every day you're bound to be approached by a Korean girl who's curious to know what your book is about or what you're writing about or why you're sitting alone in a coffee shop. No girls have come up to me yet, but I have been to a lot of coffee shops.

Koreans do the whole cafe thing much differently than people the US or Europe. Sure, plenty of people take dates to coffee shops when they're starting off their romances, but here dating almost exclusively cafes are used for.

There are coffee shops in Korea where it is quietly understood that anyone without a romantic partner is not allowed. Cafes with names like A Twosome Place and Angel in Us are packed with couples drinking expensive variations of milk and espresso. They don't even open until 11 a.m. in many cases, which eliminates the elderly newspaper-reading community. The drinks, like the clientele  almost exclusively come as couples: espresso and steamed milk, tea and espresso, espresso and water (otherwise known as an Americano). Straight coffee is a rarity outside anywhere but Starbucks.

The PA systems in these romance cafes blast music incessantly, be it K-pop or adult alternative. This is to drown out the frequent silences couples experience while they check their phones, ostensibly to communicate with other, less-significant others (but probably to play another round of Angry Birds or Dragon Flight).

The upshot of all this is that it ends up being impossible to read a book anywhere but Starbucks. In the US, I avoid the chain at all cost. Its inoffensive decor takes away from the rich atmosphere that makes me willing to pay four dollars for a cup of coffee at smaller coffee-shops. But Starbucks is the only place in town where I can sip on something without hearing every nonsensical lyric of "Ice Cream."

The best joint in town ( Starbucks near Suwon Station)

"Did You See The [Beginner Guitarist's] Hair?"

Got a haircut today in at the salon below one of the buildings at Royal Palace. I noticed some hair growing on the back of my neck when I was psyching myself up in the mirror before class. Matt came in the bathroom and I told him about the dream I had last night, the one about getting fired for giving beer to a couple of my students. It wasn't really a nightmare, I told him, because it wasn't scary and I didn't feel bad about the whole thing, except for corrupting the children. Don't worry, someone is thinking of the children.

The salon below the palace is nice, but Korean, as one may expect in a country like Korea. The staff there speak just enough English to have light conversation, usually involving how handsome I am or the children of one of the stylists. I've had the same one twice now, she has braces and is a staunch Christian. I say "staunch" because I assume anyone who brings up her religion in a barbershop introduction must be a staunch-something. One of her children is dead, she told me lightly, like she was broaching a new avenue in the conversation.

That conversation was another time; today, I didn't talk to her. I talked to Luke, the Korean chemical salesman, next to whom I sat while getting my hair cut. (That "whom" business is a real bother, isn't it?) His real name is Kwong-Suk. He studied in Connecticut for a year and his English is great because of it. He tells me that, since Vietnam, the city he stayed in has been very poor and "there are many Spanish and negroes." He does business with Chinese companies and tells me the people over there are very lazy. He asked me if I could drink (literally, "Can you drink?") and I said I knew how to drink, so we exchanged numbers. Surely, I will be arriving to work hungover within the next two weeks.

I left with a haircut approximate to what I wanted. I had the translation application on my phone convert "Short sides, long top" to Korean. The stylist had no idea what I was talking about, and asked if I liked what I got last time. She gave me a hard-boiled egg when I left.

People are pretty damn good at jump rope in Korea

Who's that Tome?

It's day three of intensives, and I'm wondering why the phrase "going hagwon" has not gained traction in Korea as the equivalent of "going postal." Enough about school.

Instead of bringing a gun to work, I had my catharsis in the form of a nap on the 7780. I was on my way to pick up books! Buying things makes me happy, and buying books makes me feel happy and accomplished. Since I never experience either sensation at work, this was the perfect option for me.  The 7780 is one of the commuter buses, the workhorses of the Seoul Metro bus system which go from the distant suburbs to the edge of downtown Seoul. The nap took me to the end of the line, which is a place called Sadang. Sadang has what must be one of the last remaining Krispy Kreme store fronts left on the planet.

From there, you take the line two to Samgakji, then the six to Itaewon. Get out of the tunnel, look for a shoe store called ABC-Mart (I don't know why anyone would name a shoe store ABC-Mart), and walk a little further until you spot What the Book on the second floor of a four-story building.

It's a wonderful place, really, especially if you came from America with only a couple old classic literature books you brought because you thought you'd be forced to read them. Sorry Fielding. Sorry Joyce. And sorry Donne. Maybe I'll finish you when I'm stranded on a desert island, assuming a copy of Goosebumps doesn't drift ashore.

Yes indeed, What the Book is a real breath of fresh air, disregarding the literal air, which is appropriately musty, and even a little gnarly if you stand by the B section of used fiction, which is next to the restrooms. What the store lacks in volume it makes up for in selection. It seems to stock everything a young, educated ex-patriot such as myself would require. Every book I've looked for has been somewhere on the shelves, even a copy of Clive Barker's Books of Blood, which I thought was going to be an impossible find. They are lacking in the self-teach guitar department, but one can't have everything, and it's still a ma' and pop store at heart.

Today I spent 63,000 won on four books. Some, I will read. Others, I will lend to Matt.

Haul:

The Dark Knight Strikes Again
Frank Miller's sequel to The Dark Knight Returns. So far, I'm confused. Is the art stylized, or lazy? Miller's powerful enough to get the benefit of the doubt.

Making Love to Marilyn Monroe: The Faber Book of Blue Verse
I bought this book almost entirely because of the publisher, Faber & Faber. F&F published most of TS Eliot's work, so I trust their taste, even though the original founders are either dead or chilling in iron lungs. Also, I figured if I can't get into classics easily, maybe the classics with T&A would be a little more accessible.

This is How You Lose Her
Just finished Junot Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wow. It had a wonderful narrator, Yunior, who narrates the short stories in this collection.

Arabian Nights: Volume One - Translated by Sir Richard Francis Bacon
This is nice and light. One story about a guy making an epic fart is only two pages. I couldn't find the Bhagavad Gita, so this was my next choice, as odd as that may sound.

Revolution Resolution

Surely the immediate cleverness of this blog title will be lost on me in a couple days and anyone else if anyone else ever ends up reading this neglected web log. So, here's the explanation. The Earth revolves around the Sun approximately once every 12 calendar months. The consequent phenomenon is a "new year." After the aforementioned months conclude, many people attempt to make a change in their lives. This change is called a "resolution," often referred to as a "new years resolution." So, "Revolution" (Year) Resolution." Get it, dummy?

This is the topic for today because 1) I've presented an English lesson on new year's resolutions six times this week, and 2) It's new years day, and eight years ago to the date I made a resolution nearly identical to the one I'm about to announce (via a never-viewed blog entry). After Emily Ty dumped me when I was a tender 14-year-old, I took it upon myself to start a web journal. I opened an account on a website called Xanga.com, which now seems prehistoric by internet standards. Remember Myspace? Well, Myspace doesn't even remember Xanga. (Most telling, the spell check on this browser recognizes "Myspace" as a word, but not Xanga).

This year's resolution? Why, start writing in this blog, of course! I started that Xanga account in 2004 and didn't stop writing in it until halfway through my freshman year of college, nearly five years later. It was a pretty nice blog, if I may say so my self! That blog wasn't even edited! And, mark my words, this blog sure as hell will be. "Writing is editing," an unnamed wiseman once said. You may call it historical censorship, as I once did, but deleting an excess comma here and there is worlds away from airbrushing a cigarette out of FDR's lips. So edit, I will. This resolution is different, from the other one, the 2004 one. Eight years ago I started a blog, with no goal but to have a blog, but this year I resolve to write in it every day. Big words for a little man who got a B on his creative writing thesis. But I will write, and sacrifice quality - whatever that is - if I must. This blog might be boring. It might be scatterbrained. But, by god, it will be long.

Buckets of kimchi three blocks from my apartment

First Night In

The writer started reading a lifehack infograph explaining some "bodyhacks" one can use to live a long and mentally healthy life. After seeing a suggestion to read every day (fiction and nonfiction) the writer picked up a borrowed copy of The Moral Animal, read a page, and stuffed $300 worth of clothing receipts in between the pages. He decided to write an entry in this blog, instead, after four months of doing nothing with it.

The writer is writing mostly because he majored in English, and all English-majors are supposed to become famous alcoholic authors. He's drinking, but still has not gotten anything published outside a couple D-list interviews in a college paper.

Onto Korea:

The people here like to drink even more than my ex's dad. Despite the general stereotype of the red-faced Asian light-weight, many Korean businessmen down alcohol well in excess of two wine bottles apiece on a night out. These nights out happen five days a week for the average Korean man. The president of the writer's hagwon (cram school) announced at a meeting that he too routinely hit the bars five days a week before he herniated a disc and decided to take a couple weeks off to tuck his kids into bed and sleep with his wife for once.

The one time the writer went to bars with his Korean counterparts he was out until four in the morning, when he watched the head teacher of his branch as she was carried into the back of a cab by her two friends. Last night the Korean teachers went out until five. One of the write's co-teachers lived an hour away in Seoul, and didn't get home until after six. She got four hours of sleep to the writer's ten.

In parting, here's a picture of a Korean video game competition. (They're playing League of Legends)