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Bullets over Busan
Street Food
Silkworm and sausage aside, Korean street food has so far been an eye-opening experience.
All good in the hood
Chalet Suisse
Skippered by the affable Mr Lee, and his grinning Setter/Spaniel “Clarinet,” Chalet Suisse transports its occaisonal patrons (numbering no more than about 10 at one time) from the scooters and blaring neon of the Busan street to the intimate confines of a swiss log cabin high in the Alps.
Upon entering the small space, the uniqueness of Chalet Suisse becomes clear. On one side of the room, a huge mural depicts a majestic Alpine scene of blue skies, rolling slopes and jagged peaks, while the remainder of the wall space is given over various items of Swiss culture and provenance; Male and female traditional folk costumes hang in dry cleaning bags on one wall, a cast iron leaf weaved with various wooden dolls and puppets straddles the door, while photos of a younger Mr Lee (presumably in Switzerland) hang proudly in the gaps.
Added to this is an orchestra of musical instruments. Covered shapes betraying the larger string instruments loaf in the corners, while a brigade of beautifully crafted and exotically shaped ukeles, banjos and the like hang pragmatically from a roof beam. As the evening progressed, Mr Lee produced and played a number of these instruments, accompanying yodelling songs with a Guitar, a Banjo and an Accordian, and at one point eliciting that I was from Ireland, playing “Danny Boy” on the Clarinet.
Chalet Suisse is undoubtedly a labour of love and appears to be more a place where Mr Lee can indulge his passion with friends than a business (after we ordered drinks he had to run out to the shop to buy them!) Going there renewed in me the sense that there is something special and uplifting in the human spirit’s capacity to find and cultivate a passion, even from the most remote and diverse of backgrounds, and I cannot but admire Mr Lee’s commitment and sincerity.
I aim on dropping by again when I’m next in PNU. Europe may be thousands of miles away, but at least Switzerland is only a couple of stops on the subway.
Galbi glorious Kalbi!
As you might have guessed, Galbi is damnably good, and a typical experience could be described as follows:
You arrive at the Galbi restaurant with your companions and are immediately hit by the distinctive sounds and smells of sizzling flesh. As you breathe in, the aroma permeates every cell in your body, turning your mouth into a swimming pool and pulling your belly up into your chest. By the time you reach your table you are about 100 times hungrier than when you were at the door, a situation exacerbated by the visual effect of Galbi being consumed heartily all around you.
You sit down at the table, and after a cursory glance at the menu the Korean amongst you orders for everyone. If there isn’t a Korean amongst you don’t worry – these restaurants basically serve one thing and God gave you fingers for a reason. After the order has been dispatched you attempt polite chat but it’s hard to concentrate. You pick at the Kimchi (fermented cabbage in chilli sauce) with your chopsticks and prod a few other side dishes distractedly.
Just as your stomach starts calling you names your server arrives with a big plate of chicken marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli and garlic (I think) and slides it into the smoking circular pan in the middle of the table. It instantly hisses into life, popping and spitting and catching as your server kneads the chicken around the pan expertly with two great big wooden spatulas. It cooks like this for 5 minutes or so, your server every so often returning to massage it until, with a final flourish, he sets the spatulas to one side and turns down the heat. It’s now ready to eat.
Delirious with excitement, you extend a pair of trembling chopsticks into the pan, pinch a piece of chicken and place it on a sesame leaf along with some thinly sliced onions from your bowl of soy sauce, and a dab of spicy bean paste. You then wrap up the whole neat little bundle and pop it in your mouth in one go, taking care to allow a dribble of soy sauce to run down your chin. The finely serated sesame leaf, lightly perfumed and almost sweet tasting competes ably with the deep, brooding heat and flavour of the chicken, which you find particularly tasty where it has charred and become semi-stuck to the pan.
This process is then repeated until about half the Galbi has been eaten, at which point rice is added to the pan followed by – if you are that way inclined (and I think you are) - cheese. The rice has the effect of turning the pan into a great big paella type thing, while the melting cheese, although admittedly an odd addition, binds the whole mixture together perfectly into lovely chopstick-friendly clumps.
An indeterminable amount of time passes, you rediscover your companions, then without quite knowing how you got there you find yourself at the till making patting motions appreciatively and paying another ludicrously small amount.
You love Korean food.
The job (including lunch)
Our day begins at about 9:10am, when we start the slow, sweaty trudge to school from our “love motel” (which is pretty much exactly how you imagine it.) On one side of the road, huge apartment complexes dominate the skyline, while on the other side, convenience stores and small enterprises jostle for space with small restaurants boasting large tanks of docile fish and slithering eels. Here and there workmen clamour over building sites industriously, while pavement-mounted scooters zoom past perilously close and taxi’s pore out of every intersection.
Every so often we hit a stench pocket, where the overwhelming smell of human waste hums in the air like a localised hell. The final stage of our walk takes us down a side street and past a neon cross topped church and into the pretty courtyard of our school, which is where the mayhem really begins.
Even before we’ve changed into our “inside shoes” we are typically assailed with lisping cries of “Danny teacher!” and “Sarah teacher!” from all directions. From here on in a tide of bobbing heads and exuberant greetings follow us up two flights of stairs to the tiny staff room, which we share with four other Waygooks and four Korean teachers. There is usually just enough time to hastily photocopy a few worksheets, gather our shit together and check the days’ schedule before scattering to our first classes at 9:40am.
The “morning” comprises of six periods; two 30 minute classes followed by a 20 minute break, another two 30 minute classes, an hour for lunch then another two thirty minute classes. For some reason I have been designated science teacher, so a good deal of my morning classes are spent fiddling about with ill-conceived science experiments while trying to silence a growing cacophony of “teacher help!” and issuing empty threats about the use of the Korean language. These experiments rarely demonstrate any scientific principles a seven year old could grasp and usually involve a lot of sellotape, swallowable parts and Korean-only instructions. It’s a race against the clock to make sure everyone has successfully constructed their experiment, packed up and if there’s time, learnt a few words of English in the 30 minutes allotted time slot. More than once a Korean teacher has had to wade in to help while I, red faced and sporting a child on each limb have uselessly appealed for calm. My other morning classes involve working from books or worksheets, and generally a lot of colouring in and some songs thrown in to waste a little time.
After the first four classes there is an hour lunch break which at 12 noon, is a little earlier than I’m used to but more than welcome after 2 hours with the Kindergarten terrors. There are four choices nearby for lunch; Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours, Camp and “The pasta place.” The first two are large chains that differ only in that Tous les Jours serves coffee. As you may guess by the names both serve a Korean take on French Patisserie - with varying degrees of success. If you have ever been in a quandary over whether to go sweet or savoury then go to one of these shops. Croissants come with a glaze of sugar and donuts which look normal on the outside, reveal a bean paste when bitten into. I’ve even heard tales of jelly and cheese sandwiches coming out of these places and though I’ve never experienced it myself, I don’t doubt it for a second. In some ways they get it right however; Mini bagel pizzas with sweet tomato sauce and a cheese and ham (and egg?) topping are perfect when you can’t look at a bowl of rice, while a coffee and (real) donut from Tous les jours is a great energy boost for the final classes. Camp on the other hand is the decidedly Korean lunch option, serving Kimbap (like Sushi rolls) Bi Bim Bap (an egg, rice, veg and chilli concoction favoured by the Duchess) spicy beef soup, Mandu (dumplings) and such-like. The service here is efficient and the food, as with most Korean restaurants, tastes good and is shamefully cheap. Forensic analysis of each dish should be expected sometime in the near future. Although I have yet to go to the “pasta place,” I’m sure the time will soon come when, more through curiosity than anything else, I will check it out.
The afternoon schedule consists of four 50 minute periods separated by 10 minute breaks. According to my schedule I should only be working three of these, but teacher shortages of late have often meant doing all four twice a week. These kids are at the elementary level, so the material is more advanced and some, though not all, can hold a decent conversation in English. The nature of these classes differs from that of the morning classes. The kids are generally (though not always) easier to control and the material a bit more challenging. I start a few of these classes by letting the kids sing a pop song. Most recently it has been “Ob-la-di-ob-la-da” by the Beatles and “You’re my inspiration” by some eighties power rock band but in future I get to choose. Youtube here we come! The rest of the class is taken up going through the assigned text book, some of which still have the original CDs (which makes things a lot easier,) but others that require a little creative improvisation.
At 6:20pm the school day finally ends and we set off in search of something to eat. Recent choices have included slices of tender barbecue pork, gloriously fatty and transformed into little morsels of piggy heaven when dipped in deep chilli sauce and wrapped in fragrant sesame leaves. But that’s a different story.
Shabu Shabu
Literally translated as Swish Swish, Shabu Shabu involves simmering meat and vegetables in a rich spicy broth, to be eaten with a variety of side dishes and a wonderfully intense dipping sauce (of which more later.) As with alot of Korean food it seems, ther is very much a DIY element to Shabu Shabu, the low tables of the restaurant coming equiped with gas burners on which on which dinner is cooked in large communal pots to be shared with one's companions.
The occaison was dinner with our newcolleagues, and after taking off our shoes and settling in cross-legged around the table, the burner was soon fired up and coaxing a large pot of broth and potatoes into life. Next to arrive were the vegetables; large plates of oyster mushrooms, whole bunches of parsely and crispy green beans literally singing with freshness. Not long after these sank into the maelstrom of the now bubbling broth came thje coup de grace; Wafer thin slices of blood red beef, translucent and marbled with rich white fat towered on serving platters in what seemed like ludricous proportions.
Within a few salivating minutes it was ready to eat. As expected, the broth was spicy and intense, a perfect home for the earth parsley and mushrooms that were every bit as fresh as they'd looked. The meat itself was plentiful, delicate and flavoursome, even more so when dipped in the small saucer of soy sauce with a smudge of dissolving wasabi on the side. The soy sauce here, i should say, is unlike anything i've ever had in the UK or elsewhere, with a flavour so intricate that i thought it must be something else entirely! As the broth bubbled down and the falvours deepened, gratin sized slices of potato appeared, by this stage al dente and infused with the cooking liquid. When these had gone, thick udon noodles arrived to flesh out the remaining broth and ensure a few more minutes happy slurping.
At the end of the meal, as i sat happy, converted and satisfied, a Canadian colleague observed that the swirling reds and lazy bubbles of the remaining broth was the closest thing you'd get to a drug trip in Korea. Fine by me
I blame the wire
Hi, remember me? I used to blog regularly on this site until The Wire entered my life and effectively killed my TV consumption for four box sets.
Set in and around the projects and high-rises of Baltimore’s deprived South Side, HBO’s most thrilling export to date (and there’s been a few) for a time dominated my life and pushed all other TV to the margins. Thus, while Delia was getting intimate with tins of canned lamb, Neighbours was moving to channel 5, and Michael Sophocles was shitting all over Sir Alan in The Apprentice, I was more concerned about Omar’s next stick up and what was happening in Hamsterdam to give a shit. I realise this amounts to nothing less that a dereliction of duties and an affront to my flashing friend in the corner, but it’s just so good I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself.
But that’s only one half of the story. The truth is that after watching The Wire I began to get a little disillusioned with my attempts at pop cultural analysis and plaigirism so I tried to turn my hand at fiction. You can read the results at Dead bodies weigh heavier than broken hearts and Fikipedia and judge the results for yourself, but all I can say is it’s damn difficult!
Anyway, while I no longer technically own a TV, I’m still managing to cram quite a bit of viewing into my drying eye-holes through the wonders of i-player and other streaming video, so without further snivelling, allow me to embark on by overdue, over-stylised and over-compensating TV round up of the week.
Battlestar Galactica was recommended to me by several sources, none of whom were overt Sci-fi geeks, so I decided to give it a go. Armed with the 2hr + pilot and an open mind, I decided to let the DVD do the talking and wasn’t disappointed.
The show follows the fortunes of the last remaining humans from the 12 Gobol space colonies as they flee the Zylons, a deadly band of robots turned rebels, looking for the mythical 13th colony - which happens to be our dear own Earth. As the opening sequence dramatically reminds us each week, some of these robots look and feel human (not to mention are pretty hot) making the task ahead even more deadly as the Zylons hide within the humans’ midst.
This is a sexed up version of a 70s show by the same name, and with a kick-ass premise like this makes for addictive viewing (I’m half way through season one.) While it tends to drift towards the cheesy side a little to often for comfort, and the script can lag in places, Battlestar Galactica nevertheless punches with the big boys when comes to plot, drama and suspense. Plus there’s four seasons, making my unemployment quite frankly a breeze!
Also on the radar this week was Kidulthood, a gritty drama about the lives of the deprived teenagers at a West London school (available on BBC i-player.) as they deal with the aftermath of a pupil’s suicide. Written by Noel Clarke, who also plays the terrifying school bully Sam, Kidulthood doesn’t hold back when portraying the sex, violence and drugs of Britain’s modern youth, and has frankly made me terrified of anyone under 18!
Although quite similar in some respects to Larry Clarke’s 1995 directorial debut Kids, Kidulthood manages to carve out a space of its own when it comes to shocking the viewer and offering nothing but unrelenting bleakness as it eulogises the fate of Thatcher’s last, unwanted children.
It makes for compelling viewing, and with the sequel Adulthood out in cinema’s tomorrow, you could do worse than give it a shot.
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