No bored!

These are some Korean boy-band members competing against each other in a quiz. They’re answering elementary school-level questions, so if they answer wrong they’re up for some Koran “face-loss”! People, that’s the part we like!

The questions were ranging from spelling (Korean spelling!) mathematics, Korean mannerism and Korean traditional values. Sort of.

I hate to brag but I handled every question well except for one – the math question. Which means I’m better at Korean traditional values and language than at the all-universal language math? And as you can see from the headline(?) I’m getting better at Konglish and apparently worse at English. Konglish has that effect on you.

But math has been my arch-nemesis since my elementary school days. I wanted to graduate solely in order to never have to solve another damn math problem again. And while I don’t remember studying much during my school years, I suppose I did the necessary homework and that was it.
But I do remember sitting over my math book for at least 3 hours every evening. And now will come a long post about my childhood, so be prepared or just scroll down until you find the youtube-video.

The reason for the length it took me to finish my homework is pretty simple: my mum is the pedagogical hero in our family but my dad was the one who studied economy in school.
Too bad my mum was never as good at math as she is at her job, she’s a pre-school teacher. So as per agreement made a long time before they even had kids, my mum would take care of our scholastic upbringing during pre-school and after that it was dad’s turn to help us with the homework.
So every evening, mum would cook dinner and after we ate my dad would wash the dishes. After that mum would go watch television, while me and dad usually sat in the kitchen where he tried to explain how to solve my much hated homework.
Out of those three hours approximately two of them were usually spent screaming at each other. Yes, I’m sorry to tell you that there was not much love between us during that time – at least not from me. And notice how it took me one whole hour to solve the homework. But I did graduate and I never failed a math test in my life so I guess all that time was good for something. Unfortunately it also made me hate doing homework. The Koreans call it “슬럼프” or “having a slump”. I’m about to cure it, just as I got rid of my fear of giant prawns and shrimps – but more on that in another post.

Stinky cheese and garlic

I took a garlic-shot yesterday. Boiled garlic and put in a “barley tea”-tea bag before drinking it. And after 2 nights of sleep and 2 days of skipping school, I’m feeling pretty much alright. I know there is no scientific proof whatsoever that garlic will cure a cold but it seems to have worked out for me! Or I don’t know, but my colds usually last for a week and then I’m as healthy as a peanut again. At least I won’t cover any other people than my flatmates with snot.
I managed to scare the hell out of the Korean flatmate earlier today. Slept until 1 o’clock so he probably thought no-one was home. I don’t know what scared him most, me emerging from my room or the wonderful not-washed-in-4-days bedhead I had at the time.

Anyway, on Saturday we’re gonna have people over. People who bring food, which is nice. I’ll dish up some instant desserts, instant creme brulée and instant chocolate pudding (thank you my mother). Then I noticed we have some crackers – the kind that goes well with stinky cheese. Maybe I should head to E-mart and buy some of that expensive, stinky cheese they have there? Otherwise it’ll just seem like a half-done job, but that might also overdo the hot-pot thing. But I need plastic cups anyway – do they sell plastic cups over here?
And I noticed they. Don’t. Sell. Pears. At all.
Cheese + crackers + pears + grapes are essential if you want to play the adult.

Frans, jag har inget bättre för mig

I found a blog in Swedish a while ago. And I thought it was funny, considering the blogger is a nerd in middle school, I mean a kid gone cynical so early in life can’t be boring to read! Right?

Newsflash: the guy is in highschool – and suddenly he became more sad than funny so I stopped reading. It’s like the Swedish Melodifestival* when the host said something about this young girl being really good for a 14-year old. Turned out she was older than that, and then she wasn’t as cute anymore.
It’s not cool that a highschooler only writes cynical stuff about his school-life. Well, this kid seem to (pretend to) have no friends but still.

I tried to find the blog a couple of minutes ago. But what was the name of the blog? Can’t remember. Couldn’t even remember the name of the kid, other than that his name was real nerdy. Was it Måns? Fred? No…
I googled and googled and then I found the site where the blog was held at. Frans, I still feel sorry for you.

—

* the Melodifestival is an annual Swedish singing competition where the winner get to compete in the international Eurovision Song Contest. The local competition is famous for a lot of things, Sweden has won the international competition earlier several times – the most famous representatives are probably Abba. Many Swedes follow the competition with an immense fascination.
Nowadays the competition usually have the same  singers and song-producers participating, though they seem to take turns in the participation. Some unknown musicians are always thrown into the mix to give the viewers a feeling of fairness, although we all know what’s really going on.

In the end the winner is usually someone very popular among the older Swedish population living in the countryside, and is usually unknown to the former Russian republics who hold the real power of votes in the Eurovision Song Contest. And since most countries as a thumb-rule only give high points to their neighbors, Sweden won’t stand a chance in the competition since we only have four neighbors – and none of them want to give us high above 5 points if we send crappy songs, as compared to other countries who give high points to Russia regardless of song quality. But as a side-note, Russia has only won once in the competition’s history even though they’ve finished 2nd place two times.

We can also no longer use the saying “When Finland wins the Eurovision Song contest” (instead of “When hell freezes over”) since they actually won once, 2006. Quite surprising actually.
The whole competition is usually filled with political statements of different kinds, especially since some countries seem to have rightful beef against other countries. This makes it interesting to watch, you never know what will happen.

The countries usually take to any means possible in order to win – Russia used skating-champion Evgny Pluschenko, Germany used Dita von Teese 2009 although it probably didn’t help them out that much. And the winner 2009, Alexander Rybak, was said to have been seen having dinner with one of the judges before the competition.
With Sweden having had such participants as the Ark and, Bodies without Organs and Alcazar, the whole competiton has proved to be crap; the Ark didn’t do well in the Eurovision even though they won by a landslide in the local competition, whereas BWO and Alcazar never got first place in the local competition even though they’re immensely popular in the rest of Europe and particularly among said former Russian republics.

I wonder why we can’t be more like Iceland – they place among the top 5 every time, or at least it feels like it. How can a tiny country such as theirs produce som many high-quality songs? Or, maybe not…
It’s lucky that Sweden has music-producers making songs for other countries, and even Swedes competing for other countries (1,2), so we have someone to cheer on.

Korean life

Well, Korean life has finally started to kick in, and Koreans are also treating me really nice nowadays. It only took about 4 months but hey, I’m thankful! Our grocery lady giving me three cherry tomatoes as service, or the snack-ajumma giving me a big-ass bowl of soup instead of the ordinary tiny paper-cup. Whatever it is, I receive it with a smile!
I don’t really care about people saying that Koreans have no manners – they do have manners, but they’ve got their own rules.
An old lady who told me to sit down in the subway when I tried to offer her my seat kind of warmed my heart. I realize that if it had been another day, the same lady surely would’ve cracked a rib or to on me without hesitation when elbowing her way out of the full-packed train. Since old Koreans tend to do that. But the nice people I’ve met in this country are usually old people.

By the way, the other day I saw an old man urinating at the subway-stop. Hm…

Ps: I’ve started to drink the tap-water here. The taste isn’t something special, quite the opposite actually – I usually hold my breath when drinking. But still, it’s tapwater!

Not our house nor our train-stop. Just felt like it.

At the gay bar

We were gonna celebrate some birthdays – and so, we went to Hongdae! The ultimate place for a brithday celebration? I doubt that, but it’s still a damn good place! Can’t complain, really.

There we had shabu-shabu and bought cakes which we brought to Luxury noraebang.

Shabu-shabu

Happy birthday Yaz!

At the noraebang. View was strangely amazing, we could see people passing by and they could see us! The service was so-so, we had problems with the sound which took about 15 minutes to fix and we didn’t get any free time as “service” back. 20,000 KRW for about 45 minutes of singing + 1 free cone of free ice cream. But the first clean toilet at a karaoke-place I’ve been to in this country.

Sam’s birthday too, she’s to the left. Sofia to the right.

Another birthday-kid, doing the doggy.

About the cake – our favorite cake-place didn’t have any big cakes left so vi just bought whatever pieces they still had left and made a cake out of it. Two kinds of chocolate cake, one with mousse and bananas, and a strawberry-cake with cream.

And now over to the next part of the evening: we grabbed two guys and went to another place to relax. The place is always closed when we try to go there but we swore that night would be our last try.
What awaited us was crappy music and lots of non-Koreans dancing to that crappy music in some kind of drunken frenzy. I can assure you all that I’ve only seen guys dancing to Wonder Girl’s “Nobody” on youtube before that night – and I would’ve liked if it had stayed that way.

Att röra sig till musik

Det varm varmt i utomhusbadet vi åkte till men nu är vi tillbaka i storstaden där det är kallt och otrevligt om man vill jogga. Moa har därför börjat med en ny hobby, nu för tiden – sedan för ca 30 minuter sedan – lär jag mig att röra mig till musik utan att det ser alltför fånigt ut. Hej youtube för att slippa plugga inför midterms.
Och jo, man får upp värmen fort eftersom det är så förbaskat SVÅRT men själva rörelserna går så där…

To the hot springs!

So this is what I know: flatmate Yaz and I are leaving the house in 45 minutes to go to some bus station which I don’t know the name of but Yaz does. There we’ll meet up a friend of her friend’s and have lunch with him, or them – since we’ll be at least four people.

After that we’ll go by bus to a for me unknown place 20 kilometers from Seoul. And we’ll stay there overnight – PLUS we’re going to some kind of hot spring!! So be prepared for photos when I get back home!
As you can see, I’m just tagging along when it comes to locations and directions. I’m so directionally challanged that I almost got lost at Yonsei University the other day.

I have no expectations when it comes to the housing but I’d like the place to have a decent toilet and if possible also warm water. I still remember a place in Italy where I met a 70-something old french bicyclist coming out of the showers stark naked. And it’s also where I got my almost-cured fobia of shrimps but that’s another story.

Att sakna Benjamin

Moa says: (4:31:20 PM)
månen är upp och ner här
Benjamin says: (4:31:35 PM)
what?
Moa says: (4:31:41 PM)
ja
Benjamin says: (4:31:42 PM)
nej va?
Moa says: (4:31:44 PM)
du vet när det är halvmåne
Benjamin says: (4:32:11 PM)
ni är knäppa

Avatar me

What can I say? It was Avatar. It had lots of action, a story and some loving.
And we were very fascinated by the 3D-glasses.

I heard some people got depressed after watching the movie and having to “come back” to their own life. Supposedly some cinema even had questionnaires about the after-feeling of the movie. Well, Sam got part of the depression and was pondering some on our way home.
Being childhood tv-gamers has probably accustomed us to wonderful fiction-worlds, so me and Yaz didn’t get as depressed, if at all. Me? I’m waiting for Final Fantasy XIII (and also here and here) which is arriving this March. Why get depressed over some movie when you can actually walk around in a fantasy realm with your own avatar? Or, at least experience something very close to it.

Sexy lady in 3D-glasses. This is before I cut my bangs with a nail-scissor over the sink.

It was Sam’s birthday so we got free popcorn!

Sexy ladies who took the 3D-glasses with them home. They told me that we just had to take a picture in front of that thing, and I happily obliged.

Korean bus. I hate riding buses in Korea but since the subway had stopped going we didn’t have a choice. I dislike cabs too, all taxi-drivers in this country drive like mad and the bus-drivers are exactly the same but with a bigger vehicle. The only vehicles I can cope with are the subway and the trains.

Pancakes and people

We went to a Korean sauna in Kangnam after some karaoke. And during the course of the night I somehow managed to lose my friends. Since everyone’s shoes were still in the locked see-through boxes I figured they were still hanging around and we’d find each other in the morning. And so I went to sleep in one of the female-only sleeping-rooms.
Next morning my friends called for me – through the sauna’s speakers.
Yaz had a funny idea about me getting into the sauna, then become dizzy and having to be relocated alone to a hospital without money or means of contacting anyone (or speaking decent Korean). So she was really worried after having searched for me without finding me, thus the solution with the speakers. I actually had similar thoughts along those lines but ended up falling asleep during my second search for them so they found me first.

Anyway, after I was found we went out to grab something to eat. I had thought I only had 5000KRW left since I ended up paying for some of the sauna tickets – and that also meant I couldn’t leave the sauna AND eat even if I’d wanted to since the taxi fare was around 3000KRW and jjigaes all cost around 5000KRW. So since I was a lost lamb, I saved the money for the eventual taxi ride back to the station. Tough luck, but then I suddenly found 10,000KRW hidden in my wallet and I could pay for my own food.
Food turned out to be an excellent american-style breakfast – which came pretty cheap at 7000KRW for the pancakes and 12,000KRW for the double-set enough for two persons including different kinds of pancakes, bacon, sausages, salad and egg.

And then we went to get a haircut.

The café.

And yes, that is a slice of cheese. But can you guess from which store they bought the table-ware?

Moko was sleeping until right before the food arrived.

Sam.