Dog Days

A new season has assuredly arrived here in Korea. The rappers have fled the country (namely G-Unit and Lil Kim), the heat has been ratcheted up a notch, and the cicadas are continually emitting car-alarm like screams, pitying themselves for living brief lifespans of only 14 days or so. And whereas before my writing reflected the classic literature I was reading, I am currently steeped in works like Little Women and The Borrowers, and I have a sneaking suspicion my writing style is beginning to resemble that of a 19th century woman's.

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Today one of my 6th grade students was absent. He was getting circumcised.

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Almost all of my students have been talking about a psycho Korean politician who was recently released from jail. I can't remember his name, but apparently this guy has previously run for President and lost. His prominence, however, allowed him to spread the word that he can have out of body experiences, sending his mind into outer space in order to talk to aliens. Apparently he became part of the government, got put in jail, and is now free and ready to wreak more havoc. One of my students told me the guy's more entertaining than Korean comedians.

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I was wandering around in Insadong today when I realized that traffic on the sidewalk had stopped and that people were swarming around a film crew. Curious, I slipped into the crowd and found that the crowd had formed for none other than Zhang Ziyi, who was spending the day shopping with a Korean friend (or maybe it was for a TV show?). She looked a lot better than the last time I saw her in person, although a bit more perturbed, understandable given the fact that a mob of Koreans were stalking her and taking pictures with their super-advanced camera phones.

When I made my way back down the street a few minutes later, the crowd was still there, laying wait outside the store Ziyi had entered.

Upon researching the matter on the Internet, I found that Ziyi didn't just happen to be in Korea- she's actually here promoting her new movie, Sophie's Revenge (hopefully it doesn't have anything to do with my mom).

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Two of my favorite cultures converged last month when news broke that a popular Kpop group, Girl's Generation (or SNSD, but I don't know how that would be an abbreviation for "Girl's Generation"), had plagiarized a song by Uzbek singer Dineyra. Take a listen:

Then people realized that the Uzbek singer had actually stolen an early cut of the Korean song and recorded it herself.

This little incident isn't all that surprising, given that Uzbeks have borrowed from Koreans before. Consider GM Daewoo's Damas and Tico models, somewhat popular in Korea:

Damas are the minivans of choice in the Uzbek region of Kyrgyzstan, but Ticos are the all-around vehicles of choice, as evidenced by the picture below, where 80% of the cars on the road are Ticos.

Maybe they feel justified because Stalin basically dumped all the Koreans who were in Soviet territory into Central Asia, which was (and possibly still is) considered a no man's land at the time.