September 30, 2007
September 25, 2007
September 22, 2007
September 20, 2007
September 18, 2007
Rest In Peace Robert Jordan!
No one will ever say that I am an intellectual and I hate to read, but I have kept up with the Wheel of Time series since 1990.
He died September 16, 2007 from complications from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (cardiac amyloidosis).
The Wheel of Time Books:
- A Memory of Light (uncompleted)
Jasmina Tešanović: Korea - South, not North
Essay by Jasmina Tešanović
Photos by Bruce Sterling
Korea: South, not North
When I checked in for my flight to Seoul at the Belgrade aerodrome, the desk clerk was bewildered. She had heard of Korea, she had even heard of Seoul. But: oh my god, she exclaimed, I do mix them up so, the north and south.
When I finally landed in Korea -- no visa required -- they had never heard of Serbia. I had to trigger that magic word "Yugoslavia," so that the Korean computer blinked in nostalgic approval and allowed me into the country.
The wild demilitarized zone between the two Koreas is a major tourist attraction: so I was told. Not for me it isn't, I said: I've seen too many of those borders, from Berlin, to Serbia, to the rest of the world.
The American Cold War propaganda is surely bad enough there, but in North Korea they are segregated so drastically from the rest of the planet that everything they say sounds shallow. South Korea wants to reach out to the North, to build cultural bridges, communications, diplomacy, finance, the usual, yet the North seems entirely uninterested. What must the people think? All this fanaticism without even the luxury of an ethnic division.
Until 15 years ago, in South Korea, women would get a driver's licences whenever their husbands got one. Women never had to take any driver's education courses, as it was presumed that women would never drive. Then women took the wheel and finally the law changed.
A huge, rapid transition for women, says a guest at the LIFT event in Seoul: I am an optimist. He is a foreign expert living as an optimist in Korea, he hopes his daughter will marry a Korean and that two Koreas will re-unite.
People are lively, hard working, and, I notice, strangely silent: this huge Asian metropolis of over 20 million is quieter than a small town in Italy. The airport is as clean and solemn as a hospital ward. The service in malls, restaurants, hotels is like something from a science fiction movie: everything is possible, just let me know from which planet you come.
The shopping malls are crammed with the usual Western luxury brands, and hordes of Korean women shopping: when the women meet for lunch, for once, they let themselves talk loudly.
The city never sleeps, but the workers are allowed to sleep at work if they have no urgent duties or customers to pester. Empty shops are manned by slumbering clerks. Unemployment is next to zero: everybody is doing his/her small task in the mighty chain of the big civil utilities, the Korean "chaebol" cartels.
Love hotels are rented by the hour, ten dollars for a bed in a tall shiny building without architectural glamour. The skyscrapers are as anonymous as the city's black and white cabs. Nameless buildings bear numbers in nameless streets which are also numbered...
Beauty shops, beauty clinics, medical anti-aging clinics, in a city where obesity seems almost unknown if not expressly forbidden.
What do they eat? The famous Korean dog-meat, live octopus hastily chopped into violently wriggling shreds, a putrid pink fish which reeks of ammonia. This pink fermented skate fish, stinking and crunchy with cartilage -- the natives of the Korean deep south long for this fish when they are in Europe, surrounded by stinking European cheeses. And hot Asian peppers, even big Korean garlic cloves that are searingly hot, as hot as hot can get; they might not cure cancer, but one bite of those obliterates culture-shock.
The farewell event was a champagne party, sponsored by the French, aimed at Koreans. Hundreds of beautiful Korean girls dancing to Brooklyn rap music, dressed in their silky local fashions and stiletto high heels, men in dark or silver business suits with long, pointed, narrow black shoes... One woman at the party told me how hard life is for a feminist in this very chauvinist male society. She wants her career: society wants her to have a baby. Perhaps that was why, after swilling much free champagne, she suddenly jumped into the discotheque's swimming pool, fully dressed. Her boyfriend jumped in after her and they lived there happily ever after.
Seoul's statue of the Maitreya, the huge Buddha of the Future, was built only 11 years ago. In downtown Seoul this Buddha Who Is to Come oversees the bland skyscrapers with his tolerant, easy worldly wisdom. In his towering concrete meditations, perhaps he will open the door to futurity for the one Korean people, so sadly divided by that military business they call the Past.
September 17, 2007
September 16, 2007
Sushi: Japanese Tradition
Humorous etiquette guide on how to properly order and consume Sushi created by Japanese comedy duo the Rahmens.
September 15, 2007
September 06, 2007
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