08. 24. BREAKFAST

육개장: yukgaejang

That is much too sensible a caption for my tastes, but I am a bit worn out from the ranting in the previous post and you can always Wiki the word if you’re really curious. I see no reason why you should be, or would be — pretty standard fare. The only two things on the breakfast menu for the hotel were this and the beef rib soup from the day before. I think they’re being considerate to those with hangovers, but it’s ostensibly a family hotel and there were only two other groups we encountered that were lodging there, both families with tiny children. Anyway, again the soup was boiling hot and I wept to have to wait. But it was good. Honestly, I am all typed out for today but I still have a couple more posts lined up so bear with me if I don’t gush about everything I ever ate, even if it was very, very tasty, thank you Geoje Family Hotel.

08. 23. BREAKFAST

갈비탕: clear beef rib soup

Clear beef rib soup. It is ridiculous. I love it. The hotel we stayed at had two options, either you could reserve a room with a kitchen unit, or you could get a room without one but with breakfast service for free. Since obviously we weren’t going to be cooking anything anytime, we went for the latter. The hotel is situated amazingly, ours wasn’t the super magnificent best suite in the building exclusive partytime room or anything but we had this utterly gorgeous view, and those pictures aren’t going to be on this blog but seriously, this was such a great vacation. They served breakfast in the little cafe attached to the hotel, charming cushions, flowered wallpaper and everything. For all that the breakfast menu was stubbornly Korean, but I liked it. You need something hearty for a day’s worth of sightseeing. The catch was that they brought the food out to the table while it was still boiling fiercely, and since I am not so good with hot foods I had to let it sit for a long excruciating while until it was edible, and even then it was incredibly hot, but ugh so good. James Franco, where are you when I need you?

08. 17. DINNER

beef and rice on a perilla leaf (깻잎)

I didn’t want to snap away only to put off the ingestion of the actual food, so all the side dishes and other various odds and ends are unpictured. You know, I’ve realized why I haven’t been updating as faithfully lately. It’s because now it’s not just a record, it’s a countdown. The tempura horizon strikes again. We still have a family vacation planned for next weekend, and it’s going to be a lot of fun with great food, but I can’t ignore the sinking feeling that August is drawing to a close — and then September, and the the fourth of September, and then we board the plane. This vacation is like a lesson in patriotism; I don’t know how I can leave. It’s not just the love that might hold me back, but it’s a sensation of safety. Like nothing can go wrong so as long as we all stay here, huddled under the shadows of our mountains. Being away makes me antsy. I almost don’t want to go to grad school abroad. Imagine, I won’t spend spring or fall or winter at home until more than half a dozen years later. What do I do with that, in the meantime? Nine months of waiting, sitting still in frantic anxiety, never quite knowing what’s going on but just hoping for the amorphous best. Until you are delivered — until human voices, &c., &c.. It’s frightening to think that I won’t recognize this land under any other season. Been so long since I spent Christmas where I always should have. Where it doesn’t feel good, but nevertheless feels right. Cheer up, emo kid.

08. 02. LUNCH

beef ribs (LA갈비), anchovies (멸치) and lettuce

Lateral Axis, not Los Angeles — I forgot to mention in the last post. It’s probably not Los Angeles. Just that the meat is cut perpendicular to the bone, not along it. But you can’t say LA without thinking of the city, which is probably the reason for all the apocryphal relocation epic tragedies concerning the origin of this cut of meat, involving small furtive Korean communities in Los Angeles getting blind drunk together and talking very loudly about home while, I guess, eating beef. Cut laterally. Unrelated to this, unless you’d like to use the word “cut” as a segue, I got my hair cut today. I strongly dislike how they insist on blow-drying it smooth after they do the cutting, though I do enjoy reassuring myself that things are not so awkwardly trim after I wash it again. In fact I think I’ll go wash it right now, it’s so enjoyable. I also need to straighten it sometime next month, it won’t dry flat and I keep pulling out stray frizzy strands. You know what they say, spare the toxic chemicals, spoil the hair.

08. 01. DINNER

rice with cod pancake (대구전) and beef ribs (LA갈비)

We could again go on at length about the difficulties in translating the word “전” — pancake or not? — or the mysteries regarding the name given this cut of beef — Los Angeles or not? — but food is not the item of interest on my mind right now. Well, I mean, it always is, but not this meal in particular, which was good enough but nothing to write home about. Well, maybe e-mail, you could e-mail home about it, but there wouldn’t be any point, because you’d be writing the e-mail from home anyway. So. When they remade Blondie’s “Maria” for the film “200-Pound Beauty” (this name is also incredibly stupid but at least it’s grammatically correct — incidentally it does nothing for the asinine content of the movie, which is like Shallow Hal without the depth, complete with half-hearted pun), I thought that they would really do something extraordinary. Debbie Harry is beyond reproach, but the problem is that the song doesn’t really do anything with the line “Ave Maria”, it’s just kind of thrown in there because she’s singing about Maria. If you know me, you know my illogical fondness for religious references in popular culture, so you can presume what a loss of opportunity I deem that. Also she pronounces “Maria” the way you’d actually pronounce the name “Maria”, so it’s not exactly exotic enough to fit into the phrase “Ave Maria”. Since Korean takes care of that little problem, that’s one edge the remake could have had over the original. And Kim Ah-Joong’s voice isn’t bad, either, she makes the song sound a lot cleaner and less, you know, Banging Hot Latina Chick from Two Blocks Over. But (and there is a but, otherwise I would not be ranting) everything failed because apparently nobody wants to give half a thought to all the things they could have done with this song. Now it’s no longer a serenade about this fabulous broad, but it’s become a vague empowerment anthem about self-realization. It’s as fittingly amorphous and bland as you’d expect to find in a movie about a girl who finds eventual happiness through extensive amounts of surgery BUT NOT REALLY BECAUSE THE HEART IS WHAT MATTERS!!1 So maybe it’s unfair of me to be complaining, if the entire movie is that boring you can’t ask the theme song to be much better. But it’s such a waste. Ayumi Hamasaki’s “M” comes slightly closer, but it’s not pulling all its weight either. Yet another reversal, but — but you can’t blame all these songs for falling short, when the standard they need to live up to is “Hallelujah”. BUT BUT BUT, don’t give up, songwriters of the 21st century! I don’t think there’s been a definitive Mother Mary Aid Me in My Hour of Need song yet, so that’s a good topic to tackle! And then send your demo tape to me after I form my wildly popular band, The Naysayers.

07. 11. DINNER

beef ribs

These are called “LA ribs”, and until about ten minutes ago, I always thought that it stood for Los Angeles. That when the first wave of college kids went to study in the States in the 80s, they brought back some sort of newfangled food-related fad that had something to do with cutting the ribs this way instead of, you know, the other way perpendicular to this. But actually, it doesn’t stand for anything like that at all, and Los Angeles has nothing to do with anything. LA stands for “lateral axis”, the meaning of which is now self-evident. I have no words. I am beyond words. I have been lied to all my life. Can I ever believe in anything anymore? The cake is a lie.

07. 04. DINNER

rice with beef and white kimchi (백김치)

No, I lied. I’m not going to show you what the new WordPress thing looks like, because frankly it is ugly and also it wreaks havoc with my rounded corners. If they won’t support transparent pngs and they won’t support white backgrounds, then LET IN THE PAGANS AND THE VANDALS what is going on. I will continue to code things this way even if it means that I need to manually a href and img tag my way through. What a martyr. Anyway, I think that this high-pitched supersonic wail coming from my computer’s fan, coupled with my frequent lack of nourishment until close to nine at night or two in the afternoon, along with having half-portions of everything during those meals, is giving me a persistent migraine. This is a problem. The computer situation will be solved soon, hopefully, since it also has a faulty adapter that won’t charge the battery, and a crack down the middle. I don’t know what to do about the eating thing, but classes will be over by the end of July and maybe once I’m okay with my weight (trust me, I have a very reasonable goal) I’ll start eating more. In the meanwhile, I am reading A Tale of Two Cities. 60 pages down so far!

[ETA] OH ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WordPress changes all instances of the word “wordpress” so that the “w” and the “p” are capitalized always. That is so obnoxious! Less that they change it, but more that there’s a capitalized letter in the middle of a word! I hate that for reasons similar to why I hate Comic Sans.

06. 27. DINNER

rice with white kimchi (백김치), beef and pork belly (삼겹살)

I am starving by the time I get home. Today, moreso than usual because I trekked out into the wild populated regions of Seoul in order to register for my German class. It’s in the same neighborhood as the funtime partyland district I mentioned yesterday, and early evening is definitely not a good time to be there. Everyone is coming and going and there is no space to walk at all and I am not joking when I say that it’s the most crowded sidewalk I have ever been on in my life. Actually it is probably always like that near the evenings, but I’m usually not there in the evenings — something that will change, starting on the seventh of July. I’m not looking forward to wading through that mess of humanity six times a week back and forth. If there were less people I might consider shopping around, clothes, shoes, bags, what have you, but as it stands I just want to survive.

06. 26. DINNER

garlic rice and beef with kiwi

By the time I was back from teaching the spastic yet tragically stressed out sixth-grader, my mother and my brother had left for their respective places of physical exertion. There was a plate of grilled beef out with a lone slice of kiwi trapped in between the meat — I assume it was because the meat was so tough last time and this was my brother’s way of attempting to counter that somewhat. I’m not sure if it worked, but at any rate it was never so tough that it was inedible. Also there was garlic rice, which I’d been harping on about for ages; the good thing about it is that you get to eat garlic, but there’s no bite and there’s no lingering odor afterwards. Dad and I were talking about making rice with garlic and bean sprouts some weekend, maybe this time if shopping permits.

grilled croaker (굴비구이) with green peppers (고추)

There was also a little note with an arrow pointing to a thawed-out croaker that said “EAT”. So I did. I have a fear of burnt protein, so that’s why I usually and accidentally end up with things that are not completely cooked — but I overcame that somewhat today and grilled it to perfection. Well, that’s not true, I got sidetracked and forgot about the fish for a while, so the other side is a little blackened. But not too much. You know.

06. 25. DINNER

오이김치: cucumber kimchi

We have three types of kimchi in the house right now because that’s what my mother does, she goes to grandma and she steals her kimchi. I’m sure there are filial things done in return, but as it stands, there are three types of kimchi in the house and I really need to learn sewing from someone which is not really related except that perhaps it has something to do with grandma. It’s confusing.

백김치: white kimchi

My absolute love. My favorite thing to eat with meat in possibly the whole wide world. It’s just salty enough to keep the meat from getting boring, but it’s not spicy, which keeps it from interfering with the actual taste of the meat, et cetera, et cetera, other plausible reasons why it is superior to other things anybody might consider eating with meat. Oh, also it prevents cancer, I think. And SARS.

beef

And here is the meat in question. Beef. It was spectacularly tough. But I don’t think anybody noticed because we may or may not have been watching the Duggar family on TV. Wait, that could have been before dinner. Anyway they are so painfully ridiculous that I even feel bad for wanting to laugh. Honestly, Jim Bob Duggar from Arkansas? When I talk about my Mason-Dixon racism, I’m only ever half joking, because half the people actually deserve it. I’m not linking sentences or ideologies here — but that the Duggar family spends three thousand dollars on food every month and fifty-four dollars on dental bills. That amount bothers me profoundly. Why fifty-four dollars? The odd precision of that calculation. Why? I think it’s a diversionary tactic. While we’re obsessing over that mysterious number, she’s just going to go have another baby.