It's a Celebration!

No, folks, the birthday festivities will not go unreported. Worry not. I’m sitting on the stage downtown in the glorious sun, having just finished eating some ice cream from the newly opened Cold Stones. I slept a total of two hours. Why? Because last night was epic.

To begin the story at the beginning, yesterday afternoon I had a little birthday dinner for myself. There was delicious Indian food, seven lovely ladies and myself in a cute private room with Bollywood tunes playing in the background. Perfection. Dinner was relaxed and entertaining. After dinner, Nakia, Shakara and I took a little stroll along the pond near the restaurant before heading to our respective homes to get ready for the night ahead. Now three weeks ago, a dude with whom I have mutual friends announced he was having a toga party for his b-day. Sine I’m me and just don’t plan that far in advance, I realized I would be sharing my birthday celebration night, which was actually totally fine since I wasn’t planning on making the night on the town aspect of my b0day very planned. Now some of said mutual friends decided that, rather than wearing togas, they would interpret the ancient world theme rather loosely and dress as Spartans instead. More on this later.

So I headed downtown, met up with a couple of folks and got to dancing, as I tend to do. More and more people started to arrive at GoGo Party, but no Spartans. I live in the same building as the ringleader of the group, so I had received a preview, but I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything beforehand. Eventually they appeared. Nine dudes, wearing the following ensemble: black boxerbriefs, red capes, shinguards, shields, and spears. People just did not know what to make of them. Especially when they chanted and brandished their spears. At this point the bar was packed and people were dancing and limboing and generally doing it up right. At some point we switched locales, to Thursday Party and did eve more getting down. At 5 am, we left Thursday and parties went a few different directions, but mostly home. It was insanely late/early and I’d just danced long and hard, but I was feeling wonderful until I realized I didn’t have my camera. At first I was sure I’d left it in a cab that me and Shakara had gotten into and gotten out of and I was worried it was lost forever . Then I thought that it was probably still at Thursday and resolved to go get in the afternoon. Luckily, I thought, people tend to return stuff around here. I slept for maybe two hours in half hour chunks before giving up and being awake. Around noon I got a glorious call from a friend informing me that they had my camera, which was a huge relief. I showered up at hip hop class but since it is run and attended by the same folks who were out til all hours last night, we all agreed to forgo dancing for the day and went to eat instead. As the always sober one, it’s always fun to tell people what they did the night before and laugh as they don’t remember.

This brings us to where I began the entry. The others had their own business to attend to and I had to kill time before the theatre meeting so I got some ice cream and enjoyed the sun. The theatre meeting was sort of a meeting-audition hybrid. We’d picked two one act plays to perform and were trying out various roles. Casting isn’t final yet but I’m definitely going to be in one of them. I’m excited about getting back on stage. the last time I acted was maybe five years ago and even though I’ve performed on stages in various other ways in the interim, being in character is something I’m really out of practice doing, This weekend I’m writing for the 24 Hour Theatre Project, which is going to be fun as well as insane. Wish me luck!
Anyway, I went to bed super early Sunday in order to recuperate from the lack of sleep and only got unlazy enough to finish this entry now so here it is.

As for the music recommendation situation, I admit that I haven’t been listening to much kpop lately. the last while I’ve been listening to a few things over and over again (If you are interested, it’s this somewhat bizarre array of music: Vampire Weekend, Robin Thicke’s “Sex Therapy,” Chromeo, Nate Dog and Warren G’s “Regulate,” and Architecture in Helsinki). This has made me pretty useless in the recommending kpop category so I’ll hold off til I find something I can get enthusiastic about ‘round here. In the meantime, I shall spend my evening kickin’ it.

Love,
AAA

It's true, I was born.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to my birthday entry. I don’t have a ton to say but I thought it would be nice to commemorate the day by writing. I turned 24 today, which is a number I like because it is the number of hours in the day. I’m one of those people that loves getting older for whatever reason so I’m pretty cool with the whole birthday business. I celebrated today by taking myself out and about post-work. I liked the idea of a solitary birthday of self indulgence and self focus. I was going to go to a movie but there wasn’t anything showing that I really wanted to see so I didn’t. Instead I loitered in a bookstore that has a little English section. You all know I can’t be in a bookstore and leave empty handed so I treated myself to a few books and then spent some time wandering the streets. Street wandering is basically the Asha equivalent of meditation in that it’s when I both think and don’t think best. One of the sweet things about doing stuff alone is that you can be totally indecisive and not feel bad about it at all. So I couldn’t decide for a long time where to sit down and write this and the place I finally picked is actually closing soon so it wasn’t the best choice but whatever. It’s my birthday :D

To back track (doing stuff in order? Pah!) I started out my day getting up early so that I could wash my hair , which I took out last night (which took long enough that I had enough time to watch the Bourne Ultimatum, Milk, which are both great movies, and a couple of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is a show I have just started to get into, more than a decade after it started air, because I always like things way after they are popular). I wanted to start a new age feeling very clean (any my hair had been twisted for six weeks, so, not so clean). It was lucky because I caught my dear brothers online and got to chat with them for a bit. Work was pretty normal. The only notable event was when one of my Korean coworkers came over with a piece of paper and said “Your childhood.” On the paper was a picture that someone had used in one of the writing books of a little black girl with an afro and a head band holding it back. It was both hilarious and random. Also, I got invited to one of the managers’ wedding. That’ll be interesting. Korean weddings are apparently really short and don’t have a reception in the sense that I am familiar with. After the wedding, everyone eats in the sort of cafeteria place in the wedding hall with all the guest s from all of the other weddings happening in the hall. Pretty different, eh?

So there you have it. My quiet, reflective birthday. I’m having a dinner followed by dancing on Saturday, so don’t worry – there will definitely be a proper celebration as well. Going to be hitting up an Indian restaurant I’ve heard good things about. I’m also going to get an ice cream cake. Mmmmm.

So I’ve arrived home and on my way I discovered that Thursday night must be official pee on the street time because I saw three dudes doing it, two of whom decided to relieve themselves right on the main road as if it was the most normal thing in the world. It’s not even midnight!

Anyway, as I sit in my first ever bachelorette pad, I look back on the last twenty four years and think, Not bad. Not bad at all.

Love,
AAA

Something Old

It’s Easter Sunday afternoon, and I am taking in the beautiful weather from the patio of Ahn’s Coffee, a little place not far from my house. Holidays are a little sad without family around, and my family is strewn across the globe. However, life is good so it’s only a little sad, rather than really sad.

And life is indeed good, for the most part. Weather is finally looking up, job has gotten less stressful, social activities are lovely. The only ungood thing afoot is that it’s yellow dust season, which means that dust (along with pollution) from China is blowing into Korea like crazy. Thanks for that, China. As a result, me and half the people I know have sore throats or are getting sick. Despite this unfortunate matter, last night I went to Charanga for Chile which was a salsa party / fundraiser thrown by some of my friends. Twas delightful. There were performances, including a hip hop dance by the folks in the class I’ve been going to. The people I’ve net here are some talented folks, which I like to see.

So for lack of a good segue, I’ll just jump into an interesting bit of Korea trivia for you all. Korean law works on the blood money system. If you don’t know what that is (and I only knew because it was used during the medieval period in Europe and you know I love me some Middle Ages) it’s when the perpetrator of a crime against someone is able to make restitution by giving the victim money instead of going to jail or paying a fine to the state. So if I punched someone in the face, I could give the person I punched however many million won and I wouldn’t get charged. I’m not sure how many crimes this applies to – like if you can pay the family of a person you killed, medieval style. I think it’s just such an interesting legal difference. Apparently, here and in Japan, entrapment is totally okay, and that’s how a lot of people get caught for drug use. Korea is super hardcore about drugs. If you get caught using anything, including marijuana, you get in serious trouble, and if you are a foreigner you will likely get deported.

In other news, last weekend I went to a meeting for the Daegu Theatre group and there is a plan for a 24 hour theatre project in the works, which will be fun. Also, the article I wrote for Daegu Pockets is in teh current issue, thus launching my career as a restaurant reviewer :P

I paused writing for a bit to have a pleasant conversation with the enthusiastic barista who wanted to practice her English. I have come to appreciate people like that because even though they are, in a sense, using you, they are a far better set of people to come into contact with than folks who are afraid of foreigners. And “afraid” is not an exaggeration here. There are people who will seriously go out of their way to avoid interacting with you and will be noticeably uncomfortable when they can’t avoid it. It’s very foreign (haha) to me that anyone over the age of about 10 could be afraid of people just based on their foreignness. I guess it’s a product of growing up around people of various backgrounds, but I just can’t imagine reacting to ethnic difference with fear. Part of it is the power dynamics that come with English speaking. English is major social capital so speaking it badly or not speaking it at all looks bad on a person (I know, it’s messed up) so people will avoid speaking to a foreigner so as to avoid revealing their lack of English skill. (When I am using foreigner here, I’m talking about “Westerner” because the dynamics with other non-Korean communities vary widely. A whole other issue is the terrible attitude many Koreans have to Chinese people. They repeat certain stereotypes about Chinese people that are straight up racist and I think it’s disgusting and ridiculous. Especially because the stuff they diss Chinese people about are the same stereotypes that other people have about Koreans. Anyway, I don’t expect everyone in the world to want to talk to me, but it’s pretty uncomfortable when someone does their best to not talk to you. This past week me and M went to Costco and I brought my good old Metro reusable grocery bags from home. So after checking out, I was standing near the ramp waiting for M to get us some water and this couple walks by and then stops as the woman starts to exclaim in Korean how beautiful my bags are. Note: she was not talking to me. She was talking to her boyfriend who also examined my bags. Neither looked at me or addressed me at all. That sort of scenario is so common here that the rudeness sort of wears off slowly.

From where I’m sitting, I can see a big apartment building with water, lily pads and fish painted on the side.

So it’s officially my birth month, which means I should start figuring out what I’m going to do to celebrate. I’m not sure yet but I’m thinking some brunch is in order. French toast is a very ideal birthday food. Hopefully by then the dust has subsided and the weather is delicious. Word is that Korea gets crazy humid in the summer. I’ll keep you abreast of the situation.

Well I should head home and type this up before I head to a temporary goodbye dinner for Susy, who is going home for a few weeks before she starts her next contract. We’ll be going to Maya which is rumoured to be the best Indian place in Daegu. They even have chai. Mmmmmm.

Love,
AAA