Vietnam: Dying in the Rough...

all the usual disclaimers of my computer's limitations and bla bla bla...

This is what I captured on my 10-day excursion in south Vietnam, late Feburary 2010 (Saigon, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Mui Ne). Though I could never hope for pure elucidation of my thoughts and experiences onto film, this video captures a few moments of my time there.
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CCR "Run Through the Jungle"

Harry Nilsson "Everybody's Talkin'"
Her Majesty's Sound "Odd Phantasms in Unique Moments"

Jimi Hendrix "Hey Joe"
Boards of Canada "Left Side Drive"

Up In the Air...

In less than four days now, I will be in Hong Kong for an overnight, before I arrive in Saigon for 9 days of (hopeful) bliss, reflection and discovery. It looks like I’ll be sticking to the southern end of the country, since the northern end is a bit cold and rainy right now (as my foreigner friends indicated upon their return from Vietnam a couple weeks ago.)

A friend of mine asked me what the purpose of my trip was. Is it to experience the food? For adventure? For the history? Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m just kind of…going. Though, I’ve been thinking about it some more and I do think that my trip there will be instrumental, after all. I realized that when I return at the end of February, I will exactly be at my 6 month mark here. Which means…I’ll be leaving in 6 months. And…contrary to what I thought were cemented plans for what I’ll be doing by then…I’m still undecided. I’ve been giving some pretty serious thought to some pretty serious alternatives and hope that Vietnam will give me the insight needed to follow through with preparing for…well, not going back to NYC right away. That’s all I can say for now.

Oh also—there was a 5 second earthquake in the Gyeonggi Province (where I live) a couple days ago. It’s pretty telling that at the time I automatically assumed it was North Korea finally calling its own bluff(s) and then two seconds later, concluded it was just another annoying vegetable truck barreling down my street—well, a barrage of them anyhow (it was pretty damn loud). Nope, it was just an earthquake. Apparently there was also an earthquake in the Chicagoland area? Strange stuff…

Anyway. Maybe I’ll come back looking like Moses when he came down from the mountain, full of knowledge and awareness and an awesome Moses tan. Or I could come back full of red blisters and malaria, having accomplished nothing more than slowly dying in my Saigon hotel room (see: Apocalypse Now)…

I’ll let you know when I get back. Wish me luck!

Isn’t that odd? Part I: Korea At School

In lieu of doing a post called: Boredom, Part II, I figured I’d try to write about something interesting— like, say, observations of Korean weirdness. I know I have mentioned a few things in the past (students staying at school until 10pm, seas of red electric crucifixes, the ridiculous presence of phonebooths in ‘the most wired place on earth’ and how Koreans actually use them, etc.). But, I’ve come up with a few new ones, namely: those things that I’ve grown so used to seeing everyday that I don’t notice them as completely and singularly, Korean, anymore. While beginning to jot these things down, I noticed that there’s a lot of them, so they will be condensed into sections, starting with Part I: At School, since this is, technically, where I spend most of my time.

Also, writing about such things allows for a list, which really saves me time on having to connect things in an eloquent way and…well, saves time on thinking. So, here goes!

l Everyone at my school (myself included), has been wearing a winter coat all day long since the cold weather started because Korean schools don’t currently find heating hallways as cost-effective . This has allowed for two subsequent observations: 1). Korean women collect winter coats. Some of my co-workers have a different coat for every other day of the week and others have a new coat for every day. They’re usually very cute, manicured-looking coats that don’t offer a lot of warmth. And 2)., the wearing of my coat has officially upped my status of looking ‘slightly homeless’ to ‘full-on homeless’ while at school, since 1). I can’t be bothered to work on looking presentable that early in the morning and 2). the added hobo coat just pushes me over into the full-on homeless category. My students still manage to take me seriously, some of the time, so if they’re fine with it…I’m not changing it. Also—it’s really comfy and warm!

l You can’t wear real shoes inside the school. It’s been suggested (mandated) that I only wear slippers while inside. But, being the renegade that I am, I’ve continued to wear my real shoes everyday- mainly because I don’t see the point of wearing slippers if I have to walk outside, on dirty pavement to get to the side of the school where the language lab is. Truly- teachers will walk around in fluffy animal slippers that have disgusting gray munj on the soles and still find the gall to stare at my very normal-looking brown boots as if I am committing some horrible foreigner crime.

l About once a week, someone will bring in treats to share with the other teachers in the teachers lounge. Most often, it is either a huge box of clementines or an assortment of rice cakes. It is considered rude to not partake, even if one isn’t hungry or doesn’t especially like eating the provided treat (granted, most of my friends don’t seem to mind them and admittedly they do look delectable, but I find Korean rice cakes to be excessively bland in taste, --imagine what raw biscuit dough must taste like).

(my friend Alex and I sizing up the rice cake spread in Insadong)

l There is no coffee-maker in the teachers lounge, rather a multitude of Maxim packets—instant coffee that consists of about 70% sugar and 30% coffee-like substance, for which it is normal to put into 2-sip Dixie cups and shoot like tequila.

l The other week, my co-teacher hooked up her furry slippers via USB to her laptop to warm them up. Provided, she wasn’t lying on the floor, but it still looked every bit ridiculous.

l Occasionally, random (sometimes vagabond) salesmen are allowed into the school to sell their wares. The first salesmen I encountered was selling socks and stared at me for about a minute, deciding whether or not to pursue the ask. He didn’t.

l Things that I observe my Korean students doing at school:
Between classes: They will inevitably be doing one of five things: furiously jumping rope in the hall (for exercise), practicing K-pop dance moves in front of the large mirrors on the stairwells, brushing their teeth in the bathrooms, eating dok boki (out of small Styrofoam cups) or ice cream cones – either from the vendor down the street or from the school’s snack shop or screaming (and I mean *screaming*) and running down the halls in large herds.
During class: intently examining their faces in their standard-issue little (though some are large) plastic mirrors about every five minutes, using what I can only describe as ‘face rolling tweezers’ as they say to “get small face”, i.e. to reduce the size of their jaws. I tried to find an image of these things on google by typing ‘korean small face tool’, but feared failure when the first image to come up was a map detailing forest fires in North Korea and the second, a picture of what I guess to be a British band called The Small Faces. Further down the page however, appeared a quite intriguing picture of a Korean woman sitting in a plastic bowl and naturally, decided to do some investigation. It took me to a website called Digital Chosunilbo (English news about Korea) where they thoroughly detail the array of low-cost Korean aesthetic tools, among them what I had initially searched for, officially called a ‘face massage roller’.

“What are you doing just sitting there doing nothing? If you moved your hands even once, you could make your face look smaller. “ (Available at GSWatsons for W11,500)

By the way, what I thought to be a Korean woman sitting in a large plastic bowl is actually a Korean woman sitting on a ‘pelvic correcting basin’:

“This is not a basin that holds water. It closes the pelvis after it has expanded during pregnancy while lifting a droopy behind and straightening a crooked pelvis. The device offers much more stability than a sofa or a chair and welcomes rears of up to 100 cm in diameter. While reading or watching TV, any user can get the three daily sittings of 15 minutes out of the way. D&shop W29,800.”

That’s all I can gather up for right now, though I’m sure more Korean weirdness at school is bound to pop up in the remaining months…so be sure to stay tuned!

On Boredom

You may recall that last week I wrote (complained) about how it’s really the lack of things in this country that’s tampering with my mental balance. I’m still appreciative of everything Korea’s given me and blablabla… -- but, as it turns out, unsurprisingly, I was mistaken. There is absolutely a presence at work here. It’s the overwhelming presence of the lack of things. Or, what you may know as… boredom.

I read a NYT book review the other day: ‘Our Boredom, Ourselves’, by Jennifer Schuessler and came away exultant. Exultant. “Boredom, like the modern novel, was born in the 18th century…” Alright, that wasn’t the line I wanted to point out, but isn’t it funny?

Ok, for real now: (Schuessler musing about Patricia Meyer Sparks’s Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind) : “[Spacks] describes it as a luxury — and a peril — born of the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the rise of individualism, leisure (especially female leisure) and the idea of happiness as a right and a daunting personal responsibility. “Boredom presents itself as a trivial emotion that can trivialize the world,” Spacks writes. “It implies an embracing sense of irritation and unease. It reflects a state of affairs in which the individual is assigned ever more importance and ever less power.”

(My Korean translation) Boredom: a luxury and a peril. Yes. A luxury that I have been granted this undeserved reserve of seemingly unlimited free time to muse about whatever the hell I want and still find extra time to grumble about said undeserved reserve. Still, underneath it all I do find it pretty luxurious that I can wallow around in my own cerebral muck and not have to constantly worry about making rent.

A peril. Amidst the indulgent wallowing, it will somehow seep into my consciousness that important things are happening in the world and that I am just passing my days, looking at the world through a foggy prism of watered-down interest and persistent reminders of that ‘daunting personal responsibility’: happiness. But, more on that later...

If it’s true what Schuessler suggests: “Boredom isn’t just good for your brain. It’s good for your soul”, then my cup (brain and soul) overfloweth with goodness (boredom). Along with my daily 10am yogurt delivery, my Korean life also boasts the prompt and ever-reliable on-the-hour delivery of freshly baked boredom. What will come from this bittersweet gift, I’ve yet to see. Whatever it is, I hope it’s meaningful (and not, in and of itself, boring).

As a sidenote: my work and home computers seem to have entered into a suicide pact by slow starvation (but really, they're just plain dying). And-- as a result have been messing up big-time, leaving me beyond frustrated with all of the work I’ve lost and how much time I spend watching pages load at the rate of a dying turtle. So I’ve written this (now much shorter) post about 4 times over now. So I apologize if it’s not that coherent, but I’m seriously sick of rewriting and editing—so you are warned—the next few posts might be entirely convoluted. So read at your own risk (of boredom, most likely)!

Something that I hope lasts...

Most of you know that while Korea has been resplendently entertaining these last four months what with its never-ending parade of ethical and cultural surprises, I’ve been a pretty consistent naysayer, feeling every bit the sometimes lonely foreigner in a strange land. But…

Wait, before I go on. This post is not meant to catalogue Renee’s transition into Being A Happy Foreigner inKorea. Not by any means. Indeed, most mornings I still wake up looking like this:

(taken on New Years Day. I think the combination of the nauseous look on my face and the Smile Day shirt makes a pretty bold statement about how I’m starting out this new year. I think it says “I may be nauseous, but I’m still going to attempt a smile, damn it! Or at least attempt putting on a shirt that has the word ‘smile’ on it!”)

It’s come to my attention, however, that I’ve been complaining a lot. Last week I had a lovely dinner of shabu shabu with two of my closest friends here. It was a feast- I gorged myself on Korean pancakes, apple salad and fresher than fresh kimchi (yes, I honestly like the stuff.) We got to talking about the level of stress Korean life offers and how its affected us, individually. I heard myself say, “Yes—my stress level is much lower here, but the stress that is present is one made from the absence of things, not the presence.” Hazaah! The absence of things!

Could it be that the actual lack of something can wreak more psychological havoc than a real, existing presence of something? It seems it can, in Korea, for me.

That being said… whatever absences are currently wrecking my psychological wellbeing as a result of living here- its also afforded me the opportunity to have:

- Lovely, lovely friends. I will say there aren’t a lot of winners out here amongst the expat masses, but I’ve found several gems much to my overwhelming surprise

- more free time than I know what to do with

- a disposable income that allows me to take trips to places like Vietnam and Europe

- the opportunity to listen to more new music and watch even more movies than I did in the States

- to reflect in an unhurried state

I’m sure this passing ‘Korea doesn’t completely suck’ mood will soon drift into my bin of fickledom (and probably much too fast—it’s always the good moods that travel there the fastest.) – but for now I am weirdly content. For now. Certain amazing people will be leaving much too soon and will not allow me to have the ridiculously amazing weekend that I just had, but as someone wise told me once…perhaps I’d be better off actually enjoying the moment rather than dive into my all-too-frequent habit of being anticipatorily nostalgic.

I’m certainly going to work on it.

My Top 10 Films of 2009

Ok, so I was going to do this extravagant 2009 wrap-up, detailing highlights of the last four seasons of my life in blogalicious chunks of sentimentality and whimsy. BUT. Having read over it, it barely skims the surface of what I feel I’ve really experienced this year and so—suffice it to say,I lived in New York City up until late August at which point I moved to South Korea. There you are. Or…there I am.

What I really found myself wanting to wrap-up was this year’s best films. So, I have included my top 10 for 2009. Keep in mind, these are all movies I saw in 2009, though some are listed as having been released in 2008. Also keep in mind that I’ve been away from my beloved indie movie theaters (yeah, they don’t really exist here—and if they did, they obviously wouldn’t have English subtitles). I am aware that there might be a few, perhaps even several, movies missing from this list. I’ve been away from (quality film) civilization for four months- so give me a break!

But first, here are some films that really disappointed me (as in I thought they would be good, but ended up being really painful to watch):

The Disappointments

Watchmen, Nine, 9, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, New York I Love You, Funny People, Away We Go, JCVD, The Limits of Control, Whatever Works, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, The Invention of Lying (to be fair, the 2^nd half of this film really messed things up- the first half was quite good- the first 15 minutes were utterly hilarious), Visioneers, Broken Embraces

Guilty Pleasures, or really good movies that I’m too embarrassed (or snobby) to put in my top 10:

The Guilty Pleasures

Duplicity, Inglorious Basterds, Adventureland, Avatar (solely for the special effects), The Hangover (mostly because of Zach Galifianakis), Julie & Julia, Orphan, Taking Woodstock, Fighting

And now, for the good stuff. These are not ranked, btw. It’d be like some parent ranking which child they like the best. You can’t do that! So, in completely random order, here are my:

Top 10 Films of 2009

Up

As cute and colorful as it was, the inclusion of the wife’s death sequence was still both haunting and deeply moving. The movie as a whole was heartwarming and genuinely unique. Pixar surprised me with this one.

Saw this at the cute little Davis Theatre in Chicago with my Mom. : )

Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire

Precious tells a story that not many of us rush to the theaters to see. Gabourey Sidibe’s portrayal of a 16-year-old, pregnant, obese African American girl living in Harlem with her monster of a mother, however, brings the viewer to his knees—desperately trying to understand why this is not typed as a horror, but rather a more than realistic display of what some American girls actually live through day to day. And by the end, the writer, director and cast manage to convince the audience that Precious will somehow find her way in the world- despite the onslaught of horribleness she has been dealt since birth. An amazing achievement.

Two Lovers

Heartwrenching. And easily Joaquin Phoenix’s best career performance. Easily.

Warning: do not watch this film if you’ve been recently heartbroken. Just…don’t.

It’s rare that I see a film where the main characters’ display of vulnerability leaves no more depth to plumb. At times, it is like witnessing a car wreck—but over and over again and with sympathy for the intoxicated driver- knowing the heaviness in his heart is what makes him wreckless and hungry for validation, even though he knows there is a high likelihood for a fiery wreck. And what flames!

Saw this at the Landmark Sunshine with my good friend, Daniel.

Treeless Mountain

It’s funny (not the movie)—how living abroad can really open your eyes, if only to see yourself more clearly. If this had come out one year earlier, I would have watched this in NYC at one of the countless arthouse theaters I frequented, and would have come away thinking I knew more about this country called ‘South Korea’ and would have been hopped up on how cultured and knowledgeable I was for seeing a movie like this. And I wouldn’t have known that the SK shown in this film is but a small slice of what it really is. To be more clear: South Korea is a country FULL of contradiction.

::A new cellphone comes out every 3^rd day, but there is a mass of payphones everywhere—and people actually use them! South Koreans clock the highest number of hours worked in the world and yet are statistically, the least productive. Can’t talk about mental health—no way, that’s crazy! Yet it ranks 1^st among OECD countries for suicide and last year’s president killed himself by jumping off a cliff—but it was justified because he was trying to ‘cleanse’ his tarnished career.

But before I write a 20-page mini-thesis on what further South Korean contradictions there are, let me get back to the film…

The cinematography and acting were so realistic that I often had to remind myself this was a drama, not a documentary. The two little girls in this were stellar, especially the older sister. It’s a sleeper, no doubt, but it weaves a touching tale of loss, with frequent close-ups of the fragile hopes of childhood, specific to South Korea.

The Hurt Locker

The grocery store scene embodies what scares me to my core about the new, emerging America.

The writer and director do a flawless job of masquerading the war in Iraq and the soldiers fighting in it as what this movie is truly about. …What I saw was this: America in all its shining glory and patriotic glitteriness…and what people do to get away from it under the radar, but in full view. I should be more specific—it’s only those people that are aware, that have woken up from the hazy dream (or nightmare) that is American life. I realize these statements require more throroughness, but I’m afraid it would come off preachy (if it hasn’t already.)

It’s a great movie though.

Saw this at the Lincoln Center AMC (NYC) with Daniel.

Food, Inc.

I had bought a diet coke and my friend had bought some kind of sugary confection at the concession stand. Halfway through, our sipping and munching had come to a halt (and not only because the very things we were consuming were specifically mentioned and deconstructed on the screen).

Elegantly edited, funny, charming and thoroughly frightening in its unapologetic telling of what’s really going on behind the scenes of American dinner tables.

I saw this at the quaint little State Theatre in Ann Arbor with my good friend, Jeremy (as I remember, it was right across the street from the lovely Michigan Theatre.)

In Bruges

I get depressed when I think about all the great movies in the world that I’ve passed up because of how horrid their trailers were. I got lucky with this one. I remember seeing the trailer for it in the theatre and actually said to myself, out-loud, “GOD does that look bad.” But Netflix kept yelling at me to see it with its 4 star rating suggestion and one, cold lonely evening, I decided to give in.

Beautiful. Hilarious. Yes, it’s another tale of compassionate hit-men, but then…it’s not. It’s different.

Brendan Gleeson charmed the socks off me as did Colin Farrell….in his Colin Farrell way. Go see it.

Tokyo Sonata

Not the most together movie, but stirring nonetheless. The Claire de Lune performance at the end makes the film. You’ll have to see it to understand what I mean.

Saw this at the IFC Center (NYC) with Daniel and Laura.

District 9

I am *not* a sci-fi fan. Like, at all.

I’m sure it didn’t hurt that director Neill Blomkamp thematically fused this film with allegory of South Africa’s history of apartheid. Or that the lead actor, Sharlto Copley displayed acting talent I hadn’t seen in awhile. Or that it was produced by Peter Jackson. Yeah—none of these things hurt…like, at all.

Saw this at the CGV at Suwon Station with my co-teacher, Ji-Eun.

Big Fan

Alright, alright. I will admit right off the bat that the appearance of this film on this list was influenced by Patton Oswalt being in it. …and rightly so!

Oswalt (one of my favorite, if not my favorite, comedians), portrays Paul Aufiero, a 30s-ish, portly parking garage attendant, still living with his mother in Staten Island, whose only joy in life revolves around anything and everything New York Giants.

The friendship with fellow Giants fan, Sal (brilliantly played by Kevin Corrigan) put the icing on the cake for me—at times, I wanted to cry witnessing their pathetic lives, but only because they weren’t aware of their patheticness. Having the world meant sitting in the Giants Stadium parking lot, listening in to the game as thousands of fans who actually got to see the game cheered, just several feet away.

There were a couple turns in this movie that I really didn’t expect, especially toward the end. But it all turned out for the best. Great little movie.

Saw this on my last day in New York at the Angelika with Daniel. Got to talk to writer/director Robert Siegel (writer for The Wrestler) after the screening. Honestly, he was kind of an ass, but he’s talented, so what can you do.

Honorable Mentions

An Education, Up In the Air, Adam, The Messenger

Ghost Stories and Random Things of Note

• I was a venerable American ghost for one full evening. My bank called me to let me know that I needed to physically go back to the bank and pay my transmittance fee for my recent transfer of funds to the States. They couldn’t just take it out of my account? Anyway. I get to the bank and try to the use the ATM. 1st machine didn’t work. Move on to the next. Same thing. Move on to the next. Same thing. A Korean teller comes out and tries her hand….voila—Korean magic strikes again! Confused, she takes my hand and physically puts it on the touchscreen. Nothing. She uses her Korean fingers again. It works. She feels my fingertips and loudly stammers, “You have no fingerprints.”
  Coming home from Christmas gimbap night in Seoul, I take the bus from Sadang that drops me off right in front of my school (which is great, since my apartment is only a 5 min. walk from there) – I try to be polite and let an old man walk in front of me to exit the bus first. He stops to press the red button again, realizing the next stop is his. I move past him toward the exit when the bus driver, looking right at me, closes the door. I yell “Yogi! Yogi!” – (here, here), not knowing what else to say, but he continues on in his Korean-bus-driver-robotic way until the next stop where I make sure to be first in line. It sucks being an American ghost.
• To all my Jewish friends: get ready to laugh. At my last English teacher class, we got on the subject of relationships (this comes up a lot). When I told them that I used to date a Jewish guy and that I have a special Yiddish name: shikse (non-Jewish woman), they looked at me and laughed saying, “You were his meal?” Shikse (shik-suh) is the exact same word for ‘meal’ in Korean. How bout that.
• Christmas Eve. I generally greet the students with the usual “good morning/afternoon, how are you?” and scold them if they say “fine and YOU?” or “so-so”, telling them they sound like textbook robots or applauding their use of correct normal, everyday English responses. But today, several students have responded saying “sad, teacher.” Why sad? It’s Christmas Eve! “Stay til 10pm, teacher.” Oh. So I’ve been hauling out even more candy than usual, hoping to lift their spirits with momentary distractions of sweetness.
  It’s still sad though.
• I’ve officially booked my tickets for Vietnam! Stopover in Hong Kong there and back, 10 days alone in this beautiful country. Much research and visa-getting to do, but for the moment, I’m dreaming of Saigon and Halong Bay.
  

It’s perhaps unnecessary to write here, but despite my Saigon dreams and lost in translation distractions, I’d still give anything to be in Chicago, Ann Arbor and NYC for the holidays. Alas.

Merry Christmas everyone!