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If Kimch-jeon is a marriage made in heaven, I am a home wrecker.

In my last-post-but-one I felt I had purged myself of my often inappropriate love of pajeon, the Korean seafood pancake. I thought that was it for my online paj-love, and I was just coming to terms with the comedown when I happened across another Korean pancake classic, kimchi-jeon, being served on the street behind the Lotte Department Store in Seomyeon.

I documented my then burgeoning affair with Kimchi on my old TV Casualty blog, and since then the relationship has flourished. I routinely hoover the kimchi at our lunchtime diner and though I’m still too much of a lily-livered westerner to stomach anything that’s been fermenting too long, I think I’m getting a good grip on the range of tastes that’s out there.

Kimchi-jeon marries the best of both worlds. The crisp, doughy batter plays a gracious host to the kimchi, which in turn passes on all its best assets to the pancake. Although kimchi is spicy, it’s rarely a tongue-burner and it’s rounded, garlicky heat shines through in the jeon, which takes on a sort of spongy texture in response.

Kimchi has the added bonus of taking on a new dimension when it is cooked, with the fried-out fish sauce kicking things up in the flavour stakes. As usual the pancake was great on its own but elevated by quite a few notches when dipped into the accompanying dish of soy sauce.

I just hope the pajeon won’t get jealous.

Michael helps me remember

My Korean Expiry Date

With all of my bags finally loaded onto a cart, I took one last look back at my father's SUV. "Barring something unfortunate happening between now and the end of my contract, this will be my last trip to Korea". I'd been debating what to do for a while and didn't realize that my decision had already been made until I said it out loud.

My reasons for coming to Korea in the first placed were varied and uninteresting, as these things tend to be. I was poor but wanted to travel; I didn't like what I was doing but didn't have any idea what it was I wanted to be doing; I was interested in education but taking a year off work to go back to school wasn't feasible. There are more, of course. There always are with me.

My reasons for coming back to Korea after my first year were a little more specific. I enjoyed teaching more than expected and wanted challenge myself by teaching in a different environment. I wanted another year of teaching experience under my belt so that I could potentially teach elsewhere. I still had a number of friends here. Blah blah, whatever.

When I signed that second contract, I promised myself that if I passed my Korean Expiry Date during the year, it would be my last. But when does one know if they've passed their Korean Expiry Date?

I was in a bathroom stall at some pub when I was in Ontario for my sister's wedding a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, so were a herd of 12 year old girls. Talking. Awful. I got lost somewhere between, "like, oh my God *squeeeeeeee*!" and "eeeeeeeeeee! Me too!" I really wish that I was just being lame and was not actually subjected to that primitive level of discourse. I really do. It was here that I remembered one of the finer points of living in Korea (and having only a basic grasp on the language): how awesome it is to understand little of the meaningless drivel that spills out of other people's mouths. Other people are boring. Sure, I'm boring, too. It's just that my brand stupidity and vapidness is far less offensive than yours. As these thoughts, and worse, tortured my imagination while I attempted to piss rather than bank my head off the side of the stall in agony, I realized something: as absolutely excruciating as that moment was, when I'm in Korea I feel like that at least once nearly every day.

While it would be fun to point out all of the things here that make me feel like I did in that stall, I still have a number of months to clock. There is a contract to be finished and some loose ends to be tied. I haven't quite figured how I'm going to make it all work, but I'm pretty sure that a list of negatives isn't the place to start. Today. No promises as to how I may roll next week.

OK, so maybe that wasn't the best idea

Japchae

Down a side street not far from Gukje market, the bustling pace of Saturday Nampodong suddenly slows a little as you hunker down amidst a clutter of metal buckets and plastic stools and let one of the resident ajummas take care of your eating needs for ten minutes or so.

These ladies specialize in one or two dishes maximum, and it requires little more than a point and a smile to get you on your way. In this instance, I was extending my finger toward a bowl of glass noodles, sliced carrot and sliced leek, which the vendor promptly dumped into a small pan on a portable gas burner and cooked along with a ladle of dark brown bubbling stock from a nearby pot.

“Japchae,” as I found out it was called, is a deceptively simple noodle dish I’ve only ever seen for sale in this particular alley in Nampodong. The dark brown stock I saw ladled into the pan soon identified itself as having sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil components, along with a slightly fishy under taste that suggested there may have been a few bones lurking around in the bottom of that pot.

The sliced carrot and leek did more that add colour to the dish, alternately giving a little crunch and bite to mix things up a little, while the thick glass noodles retained all the flavour of the stock and had a nice slurp-happy consistency.

Not bad for an afternoon when my other purchases consisted of a pair of Obama socks, some fake Ralph Lauren shorts that were too big for me and a KFC Zinger Burger!

Beomeosa in black and white

Took a Sunday stroll up Guemjeong and witnessed evening rites; visiting bhikkus from Thailand were led around in their orange robes and the abbot of Beomeosa passed everyone a gift of his calligraphy (us too). The temple was muffled in dribbly evening haze. Five people quietly watched the monks exit the hall single file and chant the heart sutra into the mountains like a hoarse fight song; an ode to awakening. Metaphysical mercenaries. Many were quite young. I was surprised. Drums and bells echoed and reverberated, tinkling and bouncing through the evening air as white mist mushroomed off the southern peaks. It was a long weekend, and a bleary eyed Sunday, also the first day of monsoon season, and the scene, my mind swamped in stale smoke and alcohol,made me wonder why I don’t go up there more often.

Posted in Busan, South Korea, Zen Buddhism Tagged: Beomeosa, Busan, monks

Sarkozy and the full body slam

South Korea Trip - Daegu 대구

Alright you can check out the video of my trip from Busan to Daegu in South Korea. The trip in total was 420 kms. I rode the #14 highway out of Busan to the #25 all the way to Daegu and went back the same way to Busan. On the trip I checked out the Daegu National Museum, rode a cable car and went to Woobang Land.

From One Side of Seomyeon to the Other

Finally. I have left my shit hole neighborhood in the dust and moved on to greener pastures. My former neighbors - two love motels, a booking club, and a food n' booze tent - have been replaced by car dealerships and office buildings. My poorly lit, one room closet of a living space, has been replaced by an apartment with high ceilings and a loft. I can finally cook without expecting a sea of cockroaches to flood the sink. Count the Number of People Excreting in Public is no longer a valid game to play on my walk to work in the morning. I can finally leave my apartment, walk a block, and not need a shower. I hardly know what to do with myself anymore.

The week before I was due to leave for my short Canadian vacation, my supervisor stopped me to share the great news: rent in my building was going up 30 bucks by the end of September. My poorly located, cockroach infested, shithole of an apartment was jacking the rent (just because everybody in Seomyeon is jacking rent doesn't mean that this is okay). While my employer subsidizes a significant portion of my rent, unfortunately I have to pick up the rest*.

Before I could even consider huffing, puffing and accidentally blowing a gasket at work, my supervisor suggested that if I didn't want to pay extra for that apartment, that I could move into an apartment that a former coworker had just vacated. No brainer. I didn't even need to look at the new place to know that I was moving (of course, I did look. I'm not a complete idiot).

The truth is, I nearly insisted on a move ages ago. After two days in that apartment, I knew that I wasn't going to like it. I weighed the pros and cons of moving. Then, New Year's happened. Suddenly I had more important things to worry about than the fact that I lived in a craphole. I put the idea of moving on the back burner. I waited. And the second that I was given an out? I moved. Win. Now I just wait and hope that they don't stick one of the new kids in there. Bah.

*There are more than enough contracts floating around that will pay your entire rent here. In that regard, some may say that I have a shitty deal. However, this year I was looking for very specific things in a job and wasn't willing to compromise that - even if it costs me a few bucks a month. If there had been more time to find the "perfect job" (what the fuck is that, even?) I may have found a better deal. Or not. I only had one year's experience and no teaching credentials to speak of; I wasn't really entitled to a better job. Either way, it is what it is and I have absolutely no regrets.

Koreabridge