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It has been over one year and six months since my last submission, and frankly I’m apologetic. But as a means of earning your forgiveness, I present to you the grand return of everyone’s favourite World Famous (but all too infrequent) If I Had a Minute to Spare Global Caption Competition of Death and Love and Harmony (yes, regulars will now not the World Famous (but all too infrequent) If I Had a Minute to Spare Global Caption Competition of Death and Love is now harmonious).

Imagine, December 2011 was the last time this competition graced these humble pages. It’s not because I don’t love you and your love of this wonderous competition, it’s just that I haven’t found the right moment captured by a humble lens, if I have bothered looking at all.

So my humble followers, I present the grand return and your chance to wax witicisms aplenty of the magicalness of this photograph, courtesy of Vocie of Ameica’s  Steve Herman over on the ould tweeter.

Today's page 1 Rodong Sinmun photo of Kim Jong Un (29?) guiding top brass with likely combined age of 500. http://t.co/ieXV8Bhg82—
Steve Herman (@W7VOA) May 07, 2013

Yes he is factual, but surely we can provide something a little more fanatical for such a fanatic. It’s something about that stick, those men in uniforms with their smaller pens, it’s … it’s … it’s over to you!

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Spring is all about flowers in Korea. The weather is warm with a pleasant cold tinge, birds are back and the flowers are in full bloom in myriad colors! Perfect time to walk with friends in a field of tulips or hand in hand with the loved one under the cherry blossoms or to click away at the gorgeous blooms with yourself in between. Goyang Horticultural Festival is one beautiful place to do just all of that!

Located close to the Ilsan lake, about an hour's ride on the subway from Itaewon, Seoul, is the Goyang festival. The subway station to look out for is Jeongbalsan on the orange line bound for Daehwa. The horticultural festival, with all the white tents can be easily spotted from the exit 1 and is around 5-10minutes walk from the station.
----Koreabridge Edit-----
Official Website at: http://www.flower.or.kr/eng/overview/overview07.php
April 27~May 12, 2013
More info at the bottom of this post. 

 

The Africa Exhibit of the festival. There were exhibits depicting all the other continents too!

There were pretty pathways all decorated with flowers

And many decorations made with flowers

Adding more interest to the displays by depicting scenes from a Korean day

Pretty places for photo ops! I just discovered the Korean Kraze for pretty backdrops for the pictures they take!

This looked right out off a sci-fi movie. Airplants hanging in glass bubbles. Very pretty and very interesting

I never knew cactus comes in such colors! Wow.  More budding cactii pics here.

Airplants dont need soil or water to grow. They can be pretty display pieces and easy to maintain. and hard to kill.

Clean Ilsan lake with cherry blossom petals.

Tulips come in so many different colors!

Cactus come in strikingly different colors and shapes too!

My favorite section- The farmer's market.

This was my favorite! Yellow cactus.

Framed plant. Which can be watered :)

Cute carry case for the flowery purchase!

This wel"C"ome display reminded me of Aiyannar statues in my hometown

I spotted this very close to the entrance of the Goyang fair. Crashed Eagle-Aircraft Restaurant?

 

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Tim Burton arrives for his first visit in Korea ever to promote his show ~ pic via Korea Herald

This year Seoul’s Museum of Art (SeMA) became the FINAL host to the amazing Tim Burton show put together by the MoMA!  The show originally launched in New York during 2009 and was met with amazing success~ currently it holds record for the third most visited show in MoMA ever.  Since then it has been all over the world before making it’s final stop here in Korea!

The show had 862 pieces of his original work on display~ early high school projects, college work, doodles ripped from sketchbooks, concept drawings, you name it! It was like exploring his young mind and watching who he was take form~ you could often see doodles of things that would return in some way years later within his movies!  They had several rooms, including a large one to display dozens of movie props from this films, it seems almost everything he worked on was represented!

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Something extra cool about this show here in Korea~ For the Seoul show, SeMA curators worked with MoMA curators to add approximately 100 new works including a new section devoted to the director’s latest movie “Frankenweenie.”

I personally was very interested to see this exhibit as an artist and fan, so I am really glad I had an opportunity to view it here in Korea at SeMA.  I am an 80′s child and grew up with a lot of his work~ the original Frankenweenie, Beetlejuice, Peewee’s big adventure, and I remember seeing Nightmare before Christmas as a little kid in the theaters and from that moment on it was a favorite of mine.  I am not a die-hard, but I enjoy a lot of his current work and signature style….the artist part of me likes other artists that have a kind of style consistency to the work they do~  even if I do not enjoy a particular movie he has worked on I can always see his stamp someplace in the production or designs and I respect him a lot for that.

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I was also eager to view his early work as a student and see if his set style now was apparent even way back when!

The show ran from December 12, 2012 – April 14, 2013  but due to work we kept putting it off till it was down to the final week of the exhibit *_* Nara was too busy to attend, but thankfully my friend Yuri also wanted to go and we had a free weekday to slip in and attempt to miss the crowds since we were sure it would be PACKED on the weekend.

As soon as we hit the entrance I had a good feeling about this show~

Spring came late this year so while the show was going on all the trees still had no leaves from winter, it kinda worked out perfectly and gave the entrance a neat creepy vibe!  Did you plan that Tim Burton? lol

 

Even though we came on a weekday it was still really crowded!

Time to grab our tickets!

Tickets ran 12,000 won for this event~ not too bad considering how huge it was

The inside of SeMA was amazing! It did not disappoint!

Really nice creepy entrance to the main show!

Time to enter!  After this hallway photography was not allowed…but I did ninja just a small amount for you guys to see a tiny bit of what it was like because I am naughty lol

Enter!!

The exhibition was divided into three parts~ 

Part 1: Surviving Burbank which covered his early years from 1958 to 1976.

Part 2: Beautifying Burbank which covered the years 1977 to 1984 including his time with Cal Arts and Walt Disney.

Part 3: Beyond Burbank which covered his most productive years from 1985 to the present.

One of his very early projects from High School!

Very early concept doodles for Edward Scissorhands

This random glow room was amazing *_* just like some sort of creepy spinning carousel~  is this a movie prop or from anything?  Yuri and I could not recall, but it was really cool!

In one of the exhibit rooms they had a corner roped off to screen a very early Tim Burton feature (I think from the late 80s or very early 90′s) as well as a short live action film  he did that only aired once in 1982 on Disney , “Hansel and Gretel”. It was extremely bizarre, painfully slow, and for some reason the cast was all Japanese and the evil mother was cross dressed and had on like a weird old school Japanese wig that almost looked like sumo hair lmao.

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It was so odd and weird, but still resembled his work complete with appearances of his trademark stripe curling trees~  Super WTF, someone link me if it is online because I could not find it.  Read info about it HERE

The clock was an amazing prop from the movie, I wish I could have snagged a better pic of it~

In the following room they had the original storyboards from the 1982 film on display~ they were very colorful and interesting! I could see what he mentally had in mind for the short film a little better that the budget (or effects at the time maybe) did not execute as well lol  when Hansel and Gretel ate the witch’s house in the movie it was really gross (all this rainbow goo ran out) but in the boards it looked really awesome haha.

Final room in the show was filled with movie props. SO sad I could not at least take photos in this room~ because it had amazing pieces from almost every movie he worked on.  Not large collections, but at least 1-5 cool pieces.  Edward’s outfit, Sweeney Todd’s razor set, figures fro Mars Attacks, Batman’s mask, and many more~

Vincent price is pretty awesome!

outside the exhibition rooms they had plenty of things up to take photos with~

as well as a giant wall of human-sized doodles! Everyone enjoyed taking photos with these characters the most!

Yuri found a new boyfriend!

Outta mah face creepy batman! Sadly it was rainy and freezing outside so I was sloppy and did not dress up themed for this event… major regrets now! Anyway~

On the top floor they also had a decent gift shop filled with Tim Burton items~  art prints, postcards, vinyl figures from his book series, and DVDs mainly.  The DVDs seemed to be quite popular, I think many Koreans were unaware of a lot of his other older films so it was a good chance to buy them.

They had an art book for sale special for the event, but it was extremely disappointing… just a few sketches used on the postcards as well, and they were not particularly interesting so sadly I decided not to buy~ although honestly I was ready to throw down a large sum for a nice book of concepts from this event :/ especially since photos were not allowed and all that. blah.

Stick Boy and Match Girl figures complete with a little matchbox

After we finished we went to go grab some dinner and it got dark.  On our walk back we passed the building and the huge Jack art illuminated through the trees~ it was an amazing surprise!

For those of you who could not make it to the show, I am happy to tell you that MoMA has uploaded a LOT of the original show pieces online so you can view them on the official site HERE

Did you have a chance to see this show in Seoul or in some other part of the world? What was your favorite part?  What is your favorite movie Tim Burton worked on over the years?  Comment below!

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seahorseteacher:

stacylaughs:

I feel like the meanest teacher in the world when my kids cry. I want to set a precedence by not giving in just because a few tears are spilt. For example, this girl was crying because she wasn’t given a sticker because she didn’t do her homework. I can’t just give out stickers whether kids do their homework or not! Ugh.

Forget “Reasons why my son is crying”, there should be a blog for “Reasons why my Korean ESL student is crying”. 

YES! I also want to create a “WTF KOREA?!” blog, for things like, “Why is my bank only open 9am-4:30pm Monday to Friday?”

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There were lots of firsts this weekend. Saturday I went to my first Korean wedding where my lovely co-teacher, Grace, got married, and Sunday it was the first day that it was hot enough to go out in shorts! I had my pasty pins out at the ready.

I'd heard lots of things about Korean weddings, so I was really excited to have the chance to see one. The first main difference compared to British weddings is that Grace hardly ever mentioned it up until about a month before. I only got my invitation about 3 days before the wedding was actually happening, and she messaged me on the day of the wedding to give the guests details about the party that would follow. Playing it cool, obviously.

She got married at the Aqua Palace in Gwangalli. When we arrived we donated some money to the family, which is custom here and were shown into the 'bride's waiting room' where Grace sat in her massive white dress, people were queued up to get a picture with her.

We got ourselves a table in the ceremony room, which was set out more typically like our reception rooms would be, the guests sat around round tables. Eventually all the chairs were taken so lots of people squeezed into the back of the room.

The mothers of the bride and groom came in wearing their hanboks, which is traditional Korean clothing, followed by the groom and then Grace and her dad. I loved her dad's outfit, he had a neat little suit on and a trendy trilby and white gloves! Very smooth!

The other things that struck me about the wedding was that, there was no one visibly there to carry out the ceremony, rather there was a voice over, I don't know where it was coming from! People aren't silent for the vows, so it was a strain to hear anything (even though I couldn't understand it!)and everything was done in the ceremony, like the best man speech and cutting the cake. In total it must have lasted about half an hour, it was very short!

There was a noticeable emphasis on 'giving' the bride away. The groom had to get down on his knees and bow to the parents.

To top off the whirlwind ceremony, the groom's friends had a little surprise in store for him. His friend, who played a piece for him on what i think was an electric oboe, decided to up the pace halfway through his slow song, put on his sunglasses, and was joined by a handful of guys who started to dance. Even the groom got involved!

We ended the day by going to their party a few hours later, this was a lot quieter than the receptions that I've been to before, only her closest friends went. But everyone was so interested and friendly to us, it was nice to get to know some people that she hangs out with outside of school.

Other things that I got up to this weekend were soaking up the sun while Nick played football, eating amazing sushi with Katie and Alex, and watching This is 40. Has anyone else seen this? Although I loved Knocked Up and I love Paul Rudd, I didn't enjoy this film at all. I found bits of it funny, but I really didn't like the story line. Not one that I would recommend. i hope that your weekend was fun!





















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