Random thoughts of Korean-ness

Afterthoughts from my rant above, that I wanted to talk about but it didn’t fit in my stream of consciousness above.

-When I wrote “see next post” about ‘IN LAB,’ that’s cause people outside of lab, aka Korean strangers, are generally pricks in Korea. Get the fuck out of their way, they are far more important than you, especially if you are a foreigner. I saw this often when trying to cross the side walk. If there were enough people waiting to cross, then the cars would GENERALLY stop at the red light. If it was only you, then you might have to play Frogger trying to get across the road when THEIR LIGHT IS RED, while having them honking at you because you are using your right of way. Koreans honk, a lot, in their car, regardless of what is happening around them or if the person they are honking at has a choice. I also saw this when riding the subway in Korea. In Japan, people politely stand to the side and let everyone out before they try to get in. In Korea, people stand right in front of the door and try to push their way in while people are getting out, because, you know, they are so much more important than you and it’s apparently easier this way.

-Korean anniversaries for relationships are every 100 days, instead of the 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, then yearly as I think it is in the USA, or whatever. I dunno. If you’re one of the 4 people I know who read this, you probably have a MUCH better idea than I do about what the intervals are.

-All utensils are steel in Korea. Their chopsticks are thinner and flatter than “normal” chopsticks. The slick metal surface makes it hard to eat noodles, especially ramen. Weak

-Public transportation is the shit; cheap-ish, quick, and reliable.

-Ice cream in Korea is fuckin awesome, also cheap.

-Koreans have a problem with eating rabbits in the same way that we have a problem with eating dogs. Rabbits are usually a large part of their myths/cute shit, thus not readily as eatable.

-Gardens are everywhere in Korea. If there is a little green area available, chances are someone is going to put in a garden, regardless of where it is.

-PC Bangs (pronounced bohng in real life, but bang for humor by us ignorant and crass Americans) are places where you can pay an hourly fee to play computer games on a really high end computer with a ridiculous monitor. It’s cheap and the computers are fast, so me and some other guys (get over it grammer nazi) from the trip would go there to play some games and blow of some steam. We once saw a teenage-looking kid watching hardcore porn while at one of these, and recording it on his cellphone. It was HI-larious. It’d be like watching hardcore porn at an internet café or David Lawerence.

-I feel like in Asia, mostly in business or formal settings, most language is veiled to hide their true intentions, or make them seem not selfish when they are actually being selfish. I find this really really annoying.

-Korean’s think they are the center of the world, much like most Americans, but the difference being American pop culture is usually globally known and Korea is not, but growing. They kept asking me what my favorite Korean athlete in America was or Korean music artist was, and I was like, “No one listens to Korean music outside of Korea except for a select few.” And they couldn’t believe it.

-Korean men are required to go to the army for 2 years and go back once a year for training afterwards. During their stay in the army, they get paid about $80 a month. This is what really was foreign to me. In the USA, we always have a choice. Freedom of choice and speech is what makes America awesome (and often stupid), but they don’t have a choice whether or not to join the army! Fuck that. I think this cripples them and contributes to their lack of personality/free-thinking/general drone-i-ness by accepting orders for 2 years when they have no desire to be there in the first place. North Koreans have to serve 10 years, 5 years for women.

-I like Japan a lot better (yes, I’m bias), but it is a lot more crowded in Japan.

-Asians in general have closed minds. It’s their way/culture or just not acceptable, with no alternative even when presented with evidence contrary.

-In Asia, there is no room to spread out like in the US, so instead they build up and down, leading to high rise apartment building EVERYWHERE and underground malls at every subway station or major shopping area. We would often call the underground areas in Korea “The Hive” where the Koreans prosper underground.

-I still have no idea how the Koreans in my lab meet other people or date, yet they all have girlfriends. They are in lab 6 days a week from 9AM to 10PM, and 9AM to 4PM on Saturday. Apparently it’s “hard,” but I don’t know if most girls I know who would be able to handle that.

Ranting on Korea

Been done for ten days in Korea, but been vacationing in Japan during. Here’s some wrap up thoughts on the experience, and it’s me ranting (so don’t expect much flow, just puking thoughts onto the page. It’s how I write, stream of consciousness, get over it.) in Incheon Airport in Seoul because it stirred up some memories.

Let me preface this post with the fact that it was an awesome experience and the people IN LAB (see next post) were incredibly nice. Having known what I know now, I would still choose do to this experience given the choice at the beginning of the year. However, if I had to do the experience now, again, for 2 additional months, I would have to politely refuse staying longer in Korea.

See, this experience has taught me that I seriously don’t belong in Asian culture. Sure, I got privileges of being an ignorant guest, but towards the end of it, I was expected to follow custom, such as bowing to professors, even if they weren’t mine, shit like that. And I like the IDEA of society first, individual later. I try to put other’s needs before mine in ‘Merica, but when an entire society does it, it suppresses the individualism that I so cherish in American culture. I feel like Korea, and maybe East Asia in general, are a society rather than a collection of individuals like it is in ‘Merica. You are more than likely to find the same values, thoughts, and reactions from individual Korean to another Korean. Why? Because the culture is so homogenous and if you stick out, you are hammered to conform to everyone else. One of the members of the IRES remarked once: “I remember someone once told me that if everyone was the same, life would be pretty boring.” I experienced it to some degree in Korea. The men and women were like carbon copies of each other. The ones whose names I remembered and became friends with had more personality than others and showed it regularly, until occasions called for their silent obedience to the elders. Like two sides of a coin; one a vibrant person who jokes and jostles, the next moment a lackey getting the professors shoes after the soccer game.

Age rules all here. Without fail, I would first be asked my name and then my age, so I could be properly placed into their age hierarchy. At this rule supersedes everything. If your senior is a lazy asshole who does no work, and takes credit for yours, you still have to pay respect just because he is older than you. This is what really sucked about Korean culture. Fuck that. You earn respect through your own personal actions, not by some happenstance that both parties had no control over.

And everyone was fine with this!!! It was normal!!! I wanted to ask them, “Aren’t you frustrated?!? Don’t you want to speak your mind, tell your seniors sometimes to shove it and that you can make your own decisions?!?” But I didn’t since I didn’t want to be disrespectful to their culture. I’m a filthy American, what the hell do I know about society order and following social bullshit?

Korean/Asian women born here seem to lack a whole lot of personality. Most were giggling masses of hands over mouths since they are way too shy to talk, or seemingly mindless girls who could only make small talk. And their interactions with boys/men were so….childish. Like they were stuck in highschool or grade school! I couldn’t believe that some of the women in lab were older than I was based on how they acted! I dunno what happens, but I can only venture a guess; both Korean and Japanese highschools are brutal academically, described to me like bioengineering at the Junior level with the amount of work. Every Asian student goes through highschool, studying all the time with what seems to be little interactions with others, specially the opposite sex. All the kids I see running around are so full of energy and fun and PERSONALITY! What the hell happened between these kids and the adults? Most students I talked to were only interested in going through school as quick as possible, getting their masters degree, getting a job and getting married. All of them. Nothing else seemed possible. No travel, no revelation in science, no real interest in the research they were doing. Just a means to an end.

The society seemed to be stuck in a loop of being just like everyone else, and I couldn’t stand another week of it.

But what do I know? I’m just a filthy foreigner.

Food for Serious

The last post was to annoy the person I promised a food post about. I thought it was funny, but apparently I’m going to get slapped when I return to Pitt. Totally worth it.

*******WARNING********: This is a long fucking post. Lots o’ pics though

So food here. Let me start off by saying it’s really cheap here, usually $4 or less will get you a substantial meal anywhere that is delicious and $8 will get you a meal that is high end and really delicious. You can also any food imaginable and have it delivered to your front door.

Food is a very large part of the culture and where I get most of my intimate interactions with my lab members or other Koreans on the weekends. Almost all meals consist of a main dish and a shit ton of small side dishes. I think that they are supposed to be an odd number of total plates, but I don’t care to ever count while I am eating. Every utensil is steel, from the chopsticks (which are super thin, I brought some back if you want to check them out), spoons, and bowls. They say that it is easier to clean and less waste then having so many wooden chopsticks, which I agree with I guess. There is ALWAYS kimchi. For those who don’t know, kimchi is an absolute requirement for every meal. There is nothing comparable in the USA that I can think of. It just HAS to be served as a side dish. It’s a mixture of vegetables that are pickled and has a lot red-pepper-like spice (gochu) on it. I actually don’t like it, but eat it so not to offend anyone. It’s a texture and taste thing. Just imagine eating a cabbage that’s pickled and sprinkled with red peppers, and that’s what I think it tastes like.

There are SO many different foods here, it’s going to be hard to talk about them. In general though, you can expect to have a lot of gochu and vegetables in most of your food. A lot of meals have a stove in the center of the table, and the vegetables and meat are put into a cauldron on top of the stove, usually with a soup base. The food is then cooked in front of you, and everyone enjoys it by ladling some out of the middle:

This is in the middle of the table (Source)

There are many forms of this style of meal, but in general, they are all spicy and they are all boiling hot. I had 3 different styles in 3 days, and was seriously done with that shit for awhile. It’s good, just not that often.

Outside of the spicy big-cauldron stew is one of my favorites, sam gep tang, or three-layer pork. They bring out the pork raw and then you cook it with a grill in the center of the table:

Also in the middle of the table(Source)

After the pork is cooked, you take a piece, dip it in sauce, and then place it into a lettuce leaf. You can then add anything you want from the side dishes, such as garlic, pickled radish, kimchi, onions, etc. Once you have everything you have, you stuff that shit in one bite. The lettuce wrap process is called “sam,” and this also comes in a variety of forms, such as chicken with rice cake, veggies, and a spicy sauce, also another dish I liked a lot whose name eludes me right now:

Sam gep tang from my B-Day. Lettuce, some side dishes and things to put in the wrap, grill on the right.

Individual dishes include a lot of soups, noodles and rice dishes. Soup dishes are roughly the same as above, except in individual sized portions and already cooked so you can eat right away. Most soups come out in a steel or iron bowl, and are still boiling when they serve it to you. Not sure why it served this hot, but I tended to avoid the soups while I have been here since you have to wait about 5 minutes before you can even attempt to eat. Out of the soup category, I think my favorite is sam gye tang, literally ginseng chicken soup. It has a whole young chicken in the soup, and the inner cavity is filled with rice, dates, and a few ginseng roots. It is a little of a hassle to eat, but I really like this dish:

Usually doesn't look this picture perfect (Source)

There are also a whole lot of noodle dishes, which is awesome since I’m a noodle man, if you know what I mean. I love me some ramen, which is pronounced rah-mee-yen here, and it is available everywhere for purchase at restaurants or in Cup-of-Noodle style containers at any convenient store. All convenient stores have hot water dispensers, so late at night, we would often head to a convenient store, buy ramen, add hot water (as well as spam if we were feeling ritzy), and eat at the store. This is something I will dearly miss when I leave. The ramen here is also pretty spicy, but I like it like that. The other noodle dish I like is naengmyeon, a buckwheat noodle in a spicy seasame seed oil sauce that is served with ice cubes in the bowl to keep it frosty. It’s refreshing to eat:

There is a ring of ice cubes that might be a little hard to see. (Source)

As far as rice (bap in Korean) dishes go, there is the world famous bibimbap, a dish with rice, veggies, and sometimes meat all severed in a metal bowl. I infinitely prefer the hot bowl to a cold bowl, since the hot bowl is served with a raw egg and just tastes so much better in every way. When the hot style bibimbap is served, you mix everything up, the egg gets cooked kinda and everything sizzles together into a wonderful orgy of food. Add some chili sauce and it’s even better. A less well-know dish is bokumbap, a kinda like fried rice, but instead of soy sauce, they use a chili paste (of course) and serve it with a fried egg on top:

(Source)

Another dish I enjoy was kongnamul, a bean sprout soup with rice. Whenever it is served at restaurants that have an English description, it always says “hangover soup,” since apparently it’s good for that. Served spicy and not spicy, it’s filling and different than the usual really spicy soups served here:

(Source)

For dessert, ice cream is that way to go since all convenient stores sell some bomb-ass ice cream. It’s hard describe, but the ice cream here is just so much better in every way that the USA. Most of the ice cream served is not ice pops but actual ice cream and usually cost less than ₩800, or about 60 cents. The other dessert I love here is pat bing soo. It’s crushed ice topped with fruit, gummy candy, sweet red bean and ice cream, though there are variations to the toppings. You can mix it all together and eat it or kinda work your way through each ingredient, trying out different combos. I’m definitely of the mixing party. This is delicious and I wish we had something like this back home:

Missing the ice cream, but the best looking one I could find (Source)

NOW, FOR THE BEST EATING EXPERIENCE!!!!!! The second weekend I was here, everyone came down to Jeonju to visit me and they brought a Korean guy from lab who grew up here. He gave us a tour, but more importantly showed us this sweet little place where they had a shit load of food and the most epic thing I have eaten in my life; live fucking octopus. I shit you not, that’s what we had. They brought out the octopus, still alive, to our table and began to cut its tentacles off with scissors onto a plate in the middle of the table. If you didn’t know, tentacles have their own neural network and don’t stop moving when they leave the body. What was left was a writhing plate of goddamn tentacles for us to eat. I was looking for a video of this, when I came across this other blog entry that was written in a way that I felt, so I’ll let him describe how it was (From Deep End Dining):

A couple of soju shooters later, the waiter returned and unceremoniously set a plate in the center of the table catching me and Diane off guard. Some time was needed to register what we were viewing. The sight was uncanny. It was ridiculous and sublime. Both comic and tragic like Greek theatre masks. "What fresh hell is this?" Extremely fresh hell, evidently.

The raging plate of squirming, writhing and willful baby octopus tentacles awed us. If I was the Greek hero Perseus, then this plate before me was the severed head of Medusa the Gorgon with her locks of seething, slithering serpents. Hyperbole? How about understatement. Much like Medusa’s disembodied head, these tentacles still believed they were alive — the limbs attached to a phantom body. Diane’s head spun in a figurative way but bordered on literal. Her brain signals and emotions were cross firing so dramatically that she was laughing, gagging, hyperventilating and sobbing all in the same breath. I offered her the first taste but she replied, “When hell freezes over.” This I interpreted as a “no”.

You have to understand Diane had the wrong perspective on this whole thing. She saw the tentacles as half-dead and I saw them as half-alive. It's all how you see things.

So with a firm grip on my chopsticks I grabbed the first…hmmph, okay…let me start again. So with a firm grip on my chopsticks I grabbed the…alright, just a second…I grabbed my chopsticks and nabbed the first tenta…damnit!!

I was experiencing some technical tentacle difficulties.

You see, one doesn’t grab live tentacles. They grab you. And they grab the plate and the sauce dish and the slices of garlic. In fact, the suckers suction on to anything they contact. If you are able to dip the tentacle into any of the three escorting sauces (a chili paste with raw thinly sliced garlic and jalapeno peppers or the pink, sweet and spicy sauce or a salt and pepper vinegar), then, congratulations, you cleared the first hurdle. Now try getting the thing to come off your chopsticks and into your mouth. This is not a passive piece of toro sashimi we’re talking about. This is an entity that does not want to be eaten alive, dead or otherwise. This is, perhaps, even a thing that would happily take you down with it if it were big enough.

This food hates you and what you did to it!

In every scenario I played out in my imagination as far as eating this dish was concerned, I predicted nothing more than a brief slimy struggle then stillness — the last words of an insignificant creature low on the food chain. Silly me. I could not have underestimated my dinner more because once in my mouth, the tentacle went into attack mode and suctioned on to my teeth, tongue and bottom lip making it nearly impossible for me to manipulate my mouth in order to eat it. My dinner was instinctively trying to preserve its own life while attempting to take mine by asphyxiating me.

(More description of his battle, but I’m skipping to the last paragraph)

The dust finally settled. After all that, how does live octopus tentacle taste? A little like fury fused with fear. …. There is no aftertaste but there are aftereffects. (Just don’t think about what the tentacle might be doing in your stomach.) Almost devoid of any flavor, it doesn’t taste a thing like cooked squid and nowhere near fried calamari. The tentacles are highly viscous, more resembling mucous. As far as attitude, it’s the meanest and rudest piece of food I have ever brawled with. And this was only the first piece.

And now a video, since you just have to see it to know exactly what it’s like. Just watch the first 20 seconds!!!!

Fantastic

Food

I forgot about a request once upon a time, long long ago, like a week, to write about Korean food.

It’s good.

(Source)

Medical Schoolio

For those of you who don’t know, I did really really shitty on my MCAT, below average overall score and one section FAR below the average. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed in myself and felt that I had let everyone down who said that I would be a good doctor. The low score has not stopped my from applying for this cycle, since I realized 2 things: 1) I can’t even tell you how much I don’t want to take the MCAT again, so anything that’ll prevent that from happening is worth trying and 2) I want to be a doctor, WTF do I care if I learn it from Stanford or the lowest ranked college there is? This is, however, the first time I have ever applied to anything as a below average canidate. The very thought of being below average just strikes a nasty cord in my stomach, even as I am writing this. I dunno where I got this behavioral tick, but it’s definitely there. (Before any of you jump to “because your Asian” bullshit, my parents are the most supportive people in the world and never pushed me into becoming a doctor or studying more. Hell, my parents tell me to get out of the library every time they called me last semester!) Anyways, I’m looking at an uphill struggle to get to medical school, even more than I anticipated, and I am expecting a lot of rejection letters. I just need to get past the “number barrier” i.e. schools that filter based on your MCAT and GPA scores and begin to look at other aspects of your application, because I think I have done well outside of the MCAT. I just hoping for an interview so I can show them who I am, not just a shitty MCAT score. Here’s a list of schools I’m applying to for those of you curious:

George Washington University

Georgetown University

Loyola University Chicago Stritch

Mayo Medical School

Medical College of Wisconsin

Oregon Health and Science University

Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

Saint Loius University

University of Colorado- Denver

University of Maryland

University of Minnesota- Minneapolis

University of Vermont

University of Wisconsin

Viriginia Commonwealth University

Wake Forest University

That post left a sour taste in my mouth, so here’s a love poem to lighten it up, because I want a love that’s as unexplainable as she is

DMZ

I haven’t written for awhile, mostly because I’m lazy and the trip is almost over, but at the request of 3 feminine entities, I decided to write some shit about stuff and things, starting with the DMZ.

So two weeks ago, our professor came to Korea to take us to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone which is the border between North Korea and South Korea. Yes, it is open to tourists, but it is much easier to go as a foreigner since apparently we aren’t a threat or something, I dunno. Woke up at 7 after the heaviest night of drinking I’ve had here. Got on the bus and my professor said I smelled like soju (whoops), and said that they don’t let people in if they smell like alcohol. I proceeded to buy some gum and chew vigorously, since it was my breathe that smelled apparently, and we continued on our guided tour. It took us to various monuments about the Korean War and thinga like that before we finally reached the actually DMZ, where we had to show our passport and be all official and stuff. They were adamant that there are only certain areas that we can take pictures due to security, blah blah blah. Anyways, we drive past a bunch of barriers and whatnot while the guide is rambling about history and important people. We get out, get oriented about what to do and what not to do in the DMZ area and then (FINALLY) go to the DMZ. We drive around and see the village which is located in the DMZ whose members get special benefits from the government so they stay there and make South Korea look good. Then we saw two flag poles, including the largest flagpole in the world, infront of their respective propaganda villages, one being actually inhabited in the South and just empty shells of building in the North. Then we finally went to the border, were North Korean and South Korean guards stare at each other:

South Korean soldier leaning forward as much as he can while staring at the North. For our protection

North Korean Soldiers protecting their country by reporting on the dangerous tourists (Source)

During this portion, we were told to only take pictures in a certain direction, no pointing or hand gestures, etc. We were then allowed in a South Korean controlled building which spanned into North Korea, so we could technically be in North Korea. There were 2 guards in there “for our protection”. After that, we drove around for awhile and looked at different sites and the “Bridge of No Return,” where once upon a time, people decided to go North or South, some never returning. Afterwards, we were driven back to Seoul then we partied with our Professor, who drank more soju than I thought possible.

So what did I think of the DMZ? Honestly, it’s like two children debating about who is better, Batman or Superman. I think that there is no way those guards above stand like that all day, leaning towards and staring diligently at North Korea. I don’t think that the guards in the building stand there all day and stare at a goddamn wall for security purposes. There’s cameras EVERYWHERE! WTF do they need to pay people to stand and stare at each other all day??? The only firearms are shitty handguns in this particular area, so if anything does happen, they would have to have hissy fits at each other first before the actual soldiers arrived. So I thought it was mostly for show, for tourists and for trying to pretend to be better than the other half. It was intense, but mostly since the tour guides and “guards” were all stringent with their rules and pretending like there were dire consequences if we pointed at the North Korean side. Afterwards though, I just thought it was all bullshit. Good to experience propaganda at its finest though.

Seoul Land

This weekend I went to Seoul to see the National Museum of Korea with Alex since everyone else didn’t feel like going or something, I dunno. The museum was HUGE, and we spent 3 hours just in the interior and didn’t explore the exterior at all since we were pretty tired anyways and started to walk through the exhibits pretty quickly. Neither of us was interested in pottery or calligraphy, which there were a shit load in the museum. After that, we decided to head to Seoul Grand Park, not knowing anything about it except that it sounded sweet.

So we got out of the subway station and started to wander around, generally following the flow of people since we didn’t know what it was or where to go. As we approached a larger building, it appeared to be a zoo of some sort, but there was a large walking path around a lake so we decided to just start walking around the lake rather than paying for anything because we didn’t know what we were getting into. As we walked around and saw some monkey in an enclosed area and other zoo like features, we came across something called Seoul Land, an amusement park area. It was about $22 bucks to get in and we were debating if we wanted to go in or just keep walking and start on our gift shopping, which honestly feels like a damn chore to us men, but we have to do it eventually for all the ladies back home. We went in since it didn’t look crowded. We also noticed that there wasn’t a whole lot of teenage/younger people there, which was worrisome.

Regardless, the best part of the night was our first roller coaster ride, when there was a “Wet” line and a “Dry” line for the same roller coaster. Being the ignorant Americans that we were and since NO ONE was in the “Dry” line, we just jumped into the “Wet” line and figured they changed the track or something for the wet runs. It was a double loop roller coaster and that was about the only highlight since the rest of the track was a series of bank turns and some tunnels. The real scary part was that most rides in Korea have a height LIMIT, so that really tall people don’t kill themselves in the tunnels and stuff. While on the ride, we thought a couple of trees and the tunnel ceiling were going to chop off our heads, so that was probably the scariest part of the ride.

That’s not the best part though. After the double loop, Alex and I were just waiting for the “wet” part of the ride. We went through a series of banked curve, ducked the trees of death, and then went through another tunnel. Right before the last tunnel, they turned on some water streams that sprayed everyone in the face! WTF?!?!?! The ENTIRE ride, we were anticipating something sweet with water, and it was just getting blasted by some automated hoses in the face! My immediate response was “Well, that was completely un-fucking-necessary!” (sorry mom) I think we were laughing about how absurd it was more than being angry about it.

Rest of the night was fun with other rides and having some screaming contests with kids while we were riding the coasters. Sunday was spent at Hwaseong Fortress, being tourists and climbing a “mountain” aka steep hill in Colorado.

Still doing nothing in lab, so I’m really really bored during the day…