혈의 누 (Blood Rain), directed byKim Dae-sung, was a film that I once told Lime I wanted to watch, and she said she’d already seen it and didn’t wish to re-view it. At the time, she told me it was about a “serial killer” or “a murder mystery” (I can’t remember how she put it) “in the Joseon Dynasty”. Which, to me, sounded fascinating, but I bided my time, until today. Well, I watched it tonight, and have to admit, I indeed did find it quite fascinating. It reminded me of nothing more than the film version of The Name of …
Category: KOREA
Anomie Pop
I have the first of my two or three class meetings for British Popular Culture planned out: a powerpoint giving a basic “crash course” in British popular culture, followed by an episode (probably episode 1, or else the Pub Quiz episode) of The Office, with some discussion interspersed. For the second lecture, I’m thinking we could discuss sport culture, and I have a great episode of the TV program Life on Mars which deals with soccer, hooliganism, and all kinds of 70s pop culture. The third (maybe, probably) meeting, I’m thinking we could watch some of Brassed Off, and I …
The Wow Factor — Grading, Education, Whuffie, And How To Really Learn
Making fair exams can be really, really hard. Evaluation of students is sometimes difficult. In fact, I’ve mentioned in several classes that I think the quality of University education would skyrocket if grading was abandoned. Now, instead of grading, they’ve said, you need something. They’re perhaps right… but maybe not. It doesn’t exactly matter how well a doctor does on her exams throughout school — if she flunks the licensing exam, she flunks; and it doesn’t matter whether a doctor flunks every exam going through school, if he gets 100% on the licensing exam (and then goes home and forgets …
The Ajumma
For those of you who don’t live in Korea, here’s a hilarious article explaining what an ajumma is. In the sauna, should the ajumma let out a fart and people stare at her, she will just leave without saying sorry. Ladies show respect to everyone, even their juniors. They are well aware of etiquettes in public places. They tend to be strict with themselves and generous to others: with ajumma it is the other way round. Really, so very bizarre, and yet sort-of-right, one has to admit sheepishly. At least, right in terms of the Jeonbuk ajummas I encountered on …
Marmot on NK
Two worthwhile posts among all of them over at Marmot’s: A snipe at Security Secretary Song Min-soon, which includes a very cutting, but, according to my recent readings, reasonable mention of the riole of local collaborators in the “comfort women” industry in Korea under Japan. I’ll start learning Arabic and/or Farsi right now and maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll make a killing pimping American women to the Iranian army. Harsh? Yes. Wrong? Hmm… of attempted coups in the North. Not that there’s any hint we should expect one now, but… this is my biggest worry. If there is a coup, …
Bucheon (Images From the Past)
In the comments section of this post, bulgasari provided this link to pictures of Bucheon city in the good old days, for several definitions of “good old days”. Very neat. My first comment was that there was less litter in the good old days. But it’s just neat to see this place, that long ago. One of the pictures is about 20 years old, another probably 25, and it looks really different from today. Thanks, Bulgasari!
The Best Cabbie Ever
Coming home this evening, I was crammed into a subway car so tightly that, seriously, I could not move without pushing someone over. It was horrible. This is life in Seoul. Sometimes, it makes me think back to the days of taking cabs and cycling back in Jeonju. Man, there were some interesting cabbies back then. Much better than the Lebanese cabbie I had the one and only time I remember taking a cab in Montreal… he was unstable, and his girlfriend was eating stinky food in the car — which was all but killing my drunk/food-poisoned friend beside me– …
아이 앰 모기 킬러
Are others in Korea noticing ridiculous numbers of mosquitoes zipping around their apartments for this time of year as well, or is it just me? I killed five of the bastards this evening alone, and there’s still one of them flying around right now, buzzing in the distance. And that’s with a mogi-tab in my 홈 매트 thingie, freshly put in a few hours ago. Seriously, what the hell?
Dasepo Naughty Girls (다세 소녀) Review
This review of the film and the comments combined represent my feelings about it — it could have been quite brilliant, and it wasn’t bad, and it put a lot of things front-and-center that most people around here seem more comfortable not looking at directly — things like teenaged prostitution, for goodness’ sakes, or the “requirement” to have a religion (it killed me to see how many of the high school girls, once ensorcelled, took up Islam and Hinduism) — but it wasn’t quite a brilliant film. The “Bollywood” numbers were more like numbers from any old musical, if you …
TechHopeless
Okay, so this is a bit dweeby, for different reasons depending on who is thinking about it, but anyway… I was fiddling with this super-phone that Lime gave me, the one with the camera, and I noticed that it has this function to connect to a PC via IrDA. No cable was included for such a function, nor was software included, but since it’s second hand, that may not be surprising. I’m wondering how worthwhile it would be for me to go dig and find out. I know that Nokia phones are very user-modifiable — ringtones all over the net …