Check it out!

Sometime back in the fall, I hosted a pair of Couchsurfers - Yuma from France and Vineta from Latvia, a pair of Salsa dancers doing a several-year word tour.  They happened to come at just the right time to experience a Daegu Green Living eco-film night and a sweet sweet Daegu Green Consumers Network Vegetarian Dinner for the Earth.  It was cool to be able to share this stuff with a pair of random but interesting and well-traveled folks.  They have been keeping a sort of running video diary of their whole tour.  If you skip to about 7:30 in the following video, you'll see everything that I showed them!  It's like a free trip over, minus the jetlag!

AND YOU ALSO GET TO MEET MY PET IGUANA!

about whom I meant to post, but never did.

Anyhow, have a look.  My section is only about 6 minutes long, and it totally rocks, even though I talk like a robot.

PS Thanks Yuma and Vineta!  Happy travels ^^

Another Bike Milestone

Well, I got no excuse for the recent paucity of posts.  I do indeed have a lot of stuff worth writing updates about - the end of the semester, my decision not to renew my contract, future (un!)employment opportunities, another 10 day retreat, veg night recipes, movie night successes, fragments about Korean, and so forth.  However, for the moment, I'd like to brag a little bit, and perhaps worry the parents and grandparents in the process.

I have long been completely certain that biking around town is faster than busing.  The combination of heavy traffic, bus stops, stoplights, and indirect routes slows buses pretty severely, so it isn't much of a surprise that whether I'm just heading downtown (6km) or all the way to the burbs (12km), it only takes me half as long on my cycle.  Even on trips as far as 70km, if you count the time from house to bus stop, bus to subway, subway to intercity bus terminal, city to city, bus terminal to bus stop, and then bus stop to destination, I can usually come out about even.  One of my favorite things is to head downtown with some coworkers, waiting with them for the bus in front of our apartment, then racing (safely, of course) downtown; I invariably arrive in 15-20 minutes, them in 25-35.  Factor in the time they have to spend waiting for the bus and walking from the bus stop to whatever destination downtown, and I come out the clear winner.  

Tonight, though, I did myself one better.  Having just split up with some friends after dinner, I was on my way home, when I heard a yell from across the intersection: "HEYYYY MIIIIKEEEEYYYYYYYY."  Sure enough, my coworker Niall and his wife were cabbing it home.  I'd often been fortunate enough to cross paths with a bus following my same route, but never a car, so I figured this was a pretty rare chance.  I pedaled full-speed for a solid 13 minutes, luckily managing to hit green at the two big intersections between home and downtown, and pulled into our apartment entrance at the exact moment my rivals popped out of their cab.  I cackled with glee as they pondered, out loud, how two scrawny legs could manage such a feat. Maybe the meditation supercharged me somehow?  Or maybe it was the curry and herb tea I had at dinner, or the recent tune-up a mechanic buddy gave my bike?  Or the nifty little nylon toe-warmers that were my compensation for staffing 6 of the 8 Daegu Bike Festivals this year.    Who knows?

In any case: getting exercise, saving money, saving the world, and saving TIME!  How about that? 

Jang Gi-ha, part 3

Here's the last in my brief series of translations of Jang Gi-ha and the Faces' stuff.  This song is called "그렇고 그런 사이," which more or less means "A relationship that is just kind of ummm." The official title looks to be "Another Relationship," which makes it sound like the singer feels ambivalent about the relationship, perhaps because he's been in a long string of them or something.  The feeling I get from the song, though, has more to do with the ambiguity and the awkwardness of trying to make the relationship status explicit. My Korean friends have told me that the lyrics are pretty vague, anyhow. 

Note the fantastic video. The title says that there are English subs, but I don't see them.  If they're there, I hope mine are better...

The sun came up blazing in the bright blue sky

The weather's the same as yesterday 

but something feels a little different

Everything you've been enjoying

up until now

has vanished into thin air.  

But even so,

it's not like you can just sit around crying.

You know?

Come on, I'm the same me

that you so so so wanted.

From this instant, all the things

that you've been hoping for

are going to happen, one by one.

Since I'm gonna give you

everything you want,

don't you head off

and start snooping around.

Since I can give you

everything you want,

don't even think about anything else,

even when you're asleep.

If you wanna know why, well, starting today,

Because you and me, you and me, yeah

if we're gonna put it into words, you and me,

we're like that now.

Because we're like that now, yeah, we are.

It is kinda weird to say it but

we're like that now, we are.

We're like that now.

Since I'm gonna give you

everything you want,

don't you head off

and start snooping around.

Since I can give you

everything you want,

don't even think about anything else

even when you're sleeping.

...

"Behold, my friends, the spring is come"

While at a thrift shop in Wisconsin not so long ago, I picked up a book called "Great Speeches by Native Americans," figuring it would make decent bathroom reading. You know, lots of stuff a page or two long, no complicated arguments, no plot. It's turned out to be quite interesting, though. \ Also, infuriating. I never really knew much about the Native Americans until I started reading Derrick Jensen, who talks quite frequently about how so many tribes managed to live in more or less the same places for thousands and tens of thousands of years without depleting them. Somehow my high school textbooks managed to omit this stuff, in addition to most of the stuff about how westward-bound settlers and the Army that cleared the way for and protected them deceived, pillaged, killed, etc, in order to expand. Maybe it was in there, but not much? Or maybe not much attention was given to it? Or maybe I just wasn't ready to hear it? Not sure, but I think that if more students were exposed to the words of the conquered and vanishing Indians, and encouraged to think about them and look for modern parallels, we might become a more humble, considerate, content country.

So, here's an especially striking speech from Sitting Bull, chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux, from around 1875:

"Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has glady received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Every seed is awakened, and all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

"Yet hear me, friends! we have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not!  They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not!  They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege.

"This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threated to take that from us also. My brothers, shall we submit? or shall we say to them: "First kill me,before you can take possession of my fatherland!"

This one in particular struck me as relevant because of the clear connections to Occupy Wall Street. I also recently downloaded a movie called "Nonpossession," about the life and thought of Venerable Beob-seong, a Korean monk whose obituary I wrote about here. I'm thinking of doing the subtitling myself and showing it downtown this month or next. 

Jang Gi-ha, Part 2

Here's another song, this one from their second album. Another one that, despite pretty simple lyrics, isn't so easy to translate. Maybe none of them are. Enjoy!

I Watched TV



All the way till my eyes went bloodshot,
I watched TV. (Watched it.)
Ah, ah, ah,
Just sat n watched.

Those people on TV,
they're all happy and sad
Good talkers, too. (Good talkers.)
Ah, ah, ah,
real good talkers.

Whether it's a drama,
a talk show
Comedies,
no matter what. (No matter.)
Ah, ah, ah,
no matter what.

For that moment
while I'm doing it
I don't have a worry
in the world. (Not a one.)
Ah, ah, ah,
not a
worry
in the world.
But why,
in that tiny tiny instant
it takes
for the
credits
to pop up...
Or even
in the time it takes
to go
from one commercial
to the next
That little instant, so short
It's like
it's hardly there
Ah, ah, ah,
ah, ah, ah.

In the end,
till my eyes went bloodshot,
I just watched TV. (Watched it.)
Just sat and watched.

And when I watch,
Man, I laugh a lot. (A lot).
Ah, ah, ah,
quite a lot.

Even if the people on TV
tell jokes
that aren't really all that funny. (Those jokes.)
Ah, ah, ah,
still,
I laugh
a lot.

But why,
in that tiny tiny instant
it takes
for the
credits
to pop up...
I watch
and watch
and then there's nothing to watch anymore
So I switch the channels
up and down
Then once I turn it off
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.

All the way till my eyes went bloodshot,
I watched TV. (Watched it.)
Just sat n watched.

Those people on TV,
they're all happy and sad
Good talkers, too. (Good talkers.)
Real good talkers.

Jang Gi-Ha and the Faces

I have been falling behind on my interpreter of pop culture duties. Please let me introduce you to one of my favorite Korean bands, 장기하와 얼굴들, and the title song of their first album, "My Life Is Pretty Easy":

To celebrate the end of the semester, I showed my students an episode of Flight of the Conchords (Season 1, Episode 1: Sally, for all you fans in the know). Most of them don't find it at all funny - it seems to me that dry humor and awkwardness are extremely difficult to carry over in translation. How do you know if you're missing all the nuances or if the content is deliberately ironic and simplistic, and, therefore, deep and significant? Thus, I don't expect my own (very) rough translation to do justice to Jang Gi-ha. Nor, actually, do I think that I even understand fully. This translation is the result of many most likely annoying Q&A sessions with my friends.

I'm gonna tell you something really surprising.
Listen up.
You probably
won't be happy
when you hear it.
Wanna know?
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
I got nothing to worry about
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
That's right, not a single care.

I'm gonna tell you something
I'm almost sure
You'll find unpleasant.
There's no way, tonight
you'll just plop down in bed
and get a good rest.
Wanna know?
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
I got nothing to worry about
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
That's right, not a single care.

This next one, you'll definitely
not want to believe.
You'll really wish
that it weren't the truth.
But
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Each day is pretty nice.
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Every day kicks ass.
I think life is fuuuunnnnnnnnnnn
Each day is pretty nice.
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Every day kicks ass

It's great.

My life is pretty easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
My life is pretty easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Each and every day
Is really...meh!

November's CSBS

Apologies for the delay - with the help of my good buddy Niall, I cheffed for the Green Consumers' Network Earth-friendly Veg Night two Tuesdays ago, but I left my camera there at my friend's house and didn't get it back until the subsequent meal. Blogging about the 1KFTFFF has also kept me quite busy, as you may have noticed.

Last time, I was feeling a little guilty about my veg night offerings. Everyone liked everything, but the last-minute canned tomatoes and well-traveled chick peas and coconut milk made me a bit uncomfortable. Plus, I kind of slipped up and used some (decent) eggs from my CSA in the Pad not-quite-Thai, forgetting that just because I'm not as vegan as I once was doesn't mean that I don't have to follow CSBS protocol. Thus, this time, I resolved to shift ever closer to local and seasonal ingredients.

Sometime until about November 10th, everyone was talking about "Indian Summers" and wondering when the cold would hit. Then, it did, so Niall and I opted for something warm and hearty. We also wanted to keep it simple, given that it was a school night. Here's what we came up with:

The usual hummus recipe (yeah, I know, not local, but it was a special request and appears to have become tradition), this time with some spinach blended in. The taste didn't change much, but the color was nice, and it was probably a bit healthier. Served with sliced bread, carrots, celery, cucumbers, and bell peppers.

Niall's carrot/ginger stew. Stir-fry a bit of onions and garlic, then add in a bunch of carrots, ginger, water, and maybe a sweet potato or two to increase the creamy factor. Simmer for a while then blend it up and season with salt and pepper. Nice and warm, goes down easy, and has a nice kind of kick. Almost certainly good against the cold. And...uh...VERY easy to digest, yaknowwhattImean?

(one benefit of cooking soup: napping opportunities)

My lentil soup: admittedly not the prettiest thing I've ever cooked up, but definitely among the most delicious. Again, sauté some onions and garlic, add in some potatoes, carrot, and celery, fry for another minute or two, then add in a bunch of lentils and slightly more water than is necessary to cover them. Drop in a few cubes of your favorite vegan bullion (or use stock to start with) and cook for 30 or so minutes, checking every now and again to make sure the water hasn't boiled off. When pulled off correctly, the potatoes absorb the broth and turn out all creamy and delicious, nicely balancing against the heavy graininess of the beans. Squeeze a little lemon juice into the soup for some extra awesomeness and you're good to go.

And...that's all!

Astute enough to notice the unusual decor? This time, rather than dining at our usual headquarters (known as the "Un-awkward Warehouse"), we gathered at friend and dependable member Bohemian's house in order to warm it. After the nice meal, we hung out and I taught everyone a card game ("Oh Hell") that I learned this summer staying with my family out west. Ever tried explaining the rules to a card game in a foreign language? When there are people who don't know the difference between Ace, King, Queen, and Jack present? It's a chore, but once you've mucked through it, very satisfying in that hey-we-all-share-the-basic-elements-of-humanity way.

In any case, Bohemian, congratulations on the new place and the completion of all repairs.^^

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I thank you for reading and caring about me even though I'm so far away. There's a song lyric that has been more meaningful to me for the last five years than just about any other, and now seems like a decent time to share it:

"I do not exist," we faithfully insist,
Sailing in our separate ships and from each tiny caravel.
Tiring of trying, there's a necessary dying,
Like the horseshoe crab in its proper season sheds its shell.
Such distance from our friends,
Like a scratch across the lens,
Made everything look wrong from anywhere we stood.
And our paper blew away before we'd left the bay.
So half-blind, we wrote these songs on sheets of salty wood.

(MewithoutYou, "Messes of Men")

Hope all is well with everyone!