*Hallyu*cinations

I woke from a long, long sleep. Candy cane dreams of marshmallow memories later, some New Year’s Resolutions: 

1. Maintain a lower-pitched voice, through all things. Even a 보신탕 ingredient knows that high frequencies only cause undue excitement. And low voices are taken so much more seriously. (Although, it is things set to an elongated whine that get stuck in the head.)
2. Produce more visible output. Time must be funneled into containers, and dreams will be made flesh—either enacted or have their creative essence tapped. All to manifest in pay cheques; hard cash in place of cushy options. Because ultimately, someone will have to pay.
3. Despite the above, regardless the company, abstain from cheaply won distinction. Related: avoid cliches - people, judgment of people, and hence remarks. Self-consciously beautiful and unique snowflakes are so dreadfully predictable.
4. Therefore, defeat boredom. It is a contagion of which I may well be diagnosed a carrier. In life’s pendulum swing between boredom and pain, the weight should lean towards pain. Pain is the reminder that one continues producing visible—manifest, worthwhile—output.
5. To decide for myself the shade of any chosen grass patch. Even if it lies in unbloggable territory, like too many Saturday nights alone eating pasta. The value of $0.02 overinflated, this socially-networked existence. 

At Everland, we were Kim Jong-Ils looking at things. A whole setup stood ready for our perusal, but we maintained aloof dignity from much of it. The conscientious attention given implied that our visit—and consequent endorsement—was an anticipated event. On our part, there was private amusement at how absurd everything really is. Nonetheless, even for those of us with access to the realities of the world outside (adults and Dear Leaders), there were times when disbelief was irresistibly suspended.

Just like Pyongyang Land for the lucky two: a corner of the earth dedicated to personal gratification, where beneath costumes are people strapped into their allocated minor roles in the maintenance of an elephantine fantasy. The North Korean movie 우리의향기 too featured foreigners fitted with Mr. Potato Head smiles. Simulacra of Wonderland.

Later that day, the nightmare that invaded my sleep was so terrifying that both my roommates were woken up. “He’s a good screamer,” we had agreed after a viking ship ride. Apparently, so was I.

[Photo via kimjongillookingatthings]

Snow Like Sugared Ice.

The first snow fell last night. I space travelled by walking against the meteoroid shower of white fluff blitzing face-ward from a black expanse. The snow pats my head, planting kisses all over my face—an apology for the weather’s recent cold-heartedness. In response, I stick my tongue out. Snow tastes better than ice kachang. Though it contains less sugar and comes in smaller size servings, it’s far more satisfying to eat.    

UPDATE: “Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.” - Bill Watterson, the wit behind Calvin and Hobbes.

UPDATE 2: It has become an all-you-can-eat buffet.

[Image credit: The InnCrowd]

The Singapore Dream®.

An ex-classmate of mine, ex-poster boy for academic overexertion, has grown into a new man. He is now an idealist. A series of Facebook ‘notes’ document his lamentations over our national obsession with the rat race paper chase. From forth this electronic pulpit, the ex-classmate—let him be henceforth referred as Bert—preached a tender sermon revolving around the tale of a most unfortunate victim: a seventeen-year-old boy who has no legitimate claim to the fruits of meritocratic labour. Bert thunders against the darkness that veils our hearts from the Truth; he beseeches his congregation of Facebook friends to reach upwards by means of good deeds; “character”, he writes, not material achievements, is that which should be extolled as barometer of success. He wants a real utopia, not a government-sponsored Shangri-la watched over by ivory tower guards. In other words (his own), Bert now stands on the opposite side from “aristocratic technocrats” that run Singapore society. All this from someone who used to volunteer to hand out returned test papers, so as to keep updated on what his classmates are scoring in comparison to his own results.

Bert’s homily is nothing new. Every “unorthodox” Singaporean (I use this mockingly, of course, if you haven’t noted the written air quotes - even in rebellion we operate on a set template) has griped some version thereof before. The education system, blah blah: children drained of independent thinking along with their childhoods etc.

The Singapore system has indeed failed us. You know how I know? A Korean friend pointed out the dearth of sex-appealing Singaporean men - faces as blank as their personalities. A crime against nature has been committed: it is a truth universally acknowledged that men from tropical climes must be in want of a fire-extinguisher. And hey, if Korean men can emerge sparkling from beneath bone-crushing institutions, it is surely lack of chutzpah that leads the Singaporean equivalent to surrender to their machine without even a soupçon attempt at self-preservation.

In all kindness, there’s simply no point talking about an alternative. Bert, for example, wonders how he can liberate his teenage charge when the teenager himself wishes to follow the cash-car-condominium-credit-card-country-club prescription to the last bitter pill. The Singapore system did not last this long simply because some acronymed higher power dictates it to be so. It perpetuates because the population itself has no other conception of The Good Life. People like the way things are in Singapore, however much the taxi-drivers will have you believe otherwise. As for those who do not share the Dream, they wouldn’t want things any different either. How else can we congratulate ourselves on being the ‘marginalised’ ‘counter-cultural’ ‘beacons’ of ‘true enlightenment’?

Exposed by the roadside in the midst of an ongoing cabbage shortage: an emblem of Korean honesty. Elsewhere in the world—where thieving poverty prowls—a friend lost his marbles along with his iPod and camera.

Picture the Children.

Once in Glasgow, a friend warned against taking pictures of child strangers, no matter how adorable they are, no matter how innocent you yourself are. Smacks of creep behaviour, she said. We were near an indoor skating rink, watching the crowd from a far distance, having stopped at a foodcourt for a hit of the kind of junk food that only a down-home Scottish shopping centre could produce. A scene as boring as they come, except to a snap happy visitor. It would seem that there was no problem since no one child is being spotlighted. But really, who but the most depraved of perverts can take interest in random strangers’ children?

Here in Korea, cuteness sighting goes on overdrive. Just the other day on the bus, a boy trooped up the entrance steps and made an inquiry with the driver adjosshi in the most correct business-like manner that made everyone laugh. There may be something in the water, perhaps a daily dose of well-meaning well-being kimchi - darling cherubic creatures everywhere. One benefit of not being a teacher here is shelter from the reality of long-term exposure to children. Thus, freedom to imagine that they are as angelic as they look.  

See that shadow on the right with its head inquisitively tilted? Yours truly, standing just metres away, blatantly snapping shots. Pictures clarify a thousand words better than any well meaning friend can. But do look! Apparently, this boy’s bicycle had suffered a bit of a mishap. No worries though, nothing he hasn’t handled before himself. And in my defence, this is an Anna Brooks/Samantha Harvey angle: no facial identity revealed.  

With cold weather here and the little babies all bundled up like bouncy balls of padding with faces attached, it’s a struggle to not feel like humberty Humbert every too often.

The Power of Words to Isolate.

Writers must be lonely people. Done properly, writing is an endeavour which requires long hours of solitude (“‘What do you do here all day?’…’Write things.’”). A fatal yet definitive occupational hazard if writers are to be entrusted with the job of reading between the lines of human existence.

I cannot write. Literally: my right hand grips pens in such a headlock that it will hurt itself after a few paragraphs; my left hand behaves like a baby around writing tools. Utterly: sometimes words so escape me, all that comes out is a written equivalent of the gaspy back-of-throat hocking sound so often resort to in Korean conversations.

So it goes.