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March 21 In between age groupsI'm going to be officially in my mid-thirties in April and I feel like
I'm floating in limbo. . Some of my friends are responsible expat wives
engrossed in the lives of their children. Many of them are in their
late 30's early 40's. Though I like the company of other wives, I
sometimes don't really feel like I fit in. Perhaps it's because I'm not
intimately acquainted yet with the joys and frustrations of motherhood. The other half of my friends are between 25-28 and they are still out partying, drinking, and being young and carefree. Though people say I look young, I don't quite fit in here either since in reality I'm a married woman in my mid-thirties and what the heck am I doing out partying till the wee hours anyway? For a while I had an awesome group of girlfriends. It was truly a "Sex and the City" type of clan. (This was just last year.) One girl is a model in her 20's and the others are smart, fashionable and fun women in thier early thirties. I always got together with this social group and we'd have an awesome time out dining, dancing and tearing up the town. This group fell apart after my model friend moved to San Fran and after I sucessfully set up the other girlfriends with guys who they are now having serious relationships with. It's funny how the girls just disappear after they start having relationships. I call it the "submarine effect". They just submerge themselves into their new lives with their men and they barely come up for air. Oh well, c'est la vie. I was so proud of my great match-making skills, but now I have no one left to hang out with! Go figure. From now on, I'm not setting up anymore of my friends. March 19 Namsan Tower and Art Gallery in SamcheongThis weekend was pretty chill. There were alot of parties going
on, but for some reason there was no one to go with, so I mainly hung
out with my 'old man' (That's a term they sometimes use in the states
for your husband. It's so old-fashioned, I just think its a funny term
to use.) He's on this no drinking phase due to elite training for his
upcoming ironman triathlon, so we basically kicked back with some DVDs
in the PM. On Saturday, I checked out a cool gallery in Samcheong dong near the restaurant After the Rain. OneNJ Gallery has a split-level minimalist layout made with stone and steel. There's a small garden out front and they happened to be showcasing some photography this time around. One of the gallery's partners invited some of us around to check out the artwork and the gallery for possible future events. Apparently they've already thrown some really fun happenings there since the gallery opened a month ago. I automatically thought of a few types of events that could happen in a space like that and one has to do with the Wine and Women group. Anyone into the arts should definetly check it out sometime. Sunday, we went to Suji's for a laid back brunch (that place gets so packed on the weekends) and then we decided to check out the newly renovated Seoul Tower. It's a great view, but I reckon it would have been better at night-time/twilight around 6pm. March 17 Koreans are not all alikeOne can be tempted to lump all Koreans into a big generic pile, but in fact there are a few who are really out there expressing themselves and breaking the mold. My friend Park Jiwon is one of those people. (In case you don't know who she is, she's a Korean fashion designer and owner of PARK restaurant) She recently showed up in a W magazine spread 8 months pregnant at 40 years old with her Italian lover. It was a huge two page spread showing how their lives crossed paths, complete with pictures of them as children and pics of them on their sojourn in Europe. Jiwon was utterly radiant in her gold "Red Carpet" gown and she had so shame about being different, about being exactly who she wanted to be. Often she's the subject of much jealous gossip just because she lives her life the way she wants to. It was actually very progressive of W magzine to publish this kind of borderline scandalous layout. "GASP!" Korean ajumas might say "She's pregnant at 40 with an Italian soccer coach's baby and there aren't even solid marrriage plans in the future!" Well screw what everyone else has to say. One must live their life "N'est pas?" My husband is another one who broke the typical banker mold. He's so unlike a banker with his creative senibilities and his athletic drive. Recently he's embarked on a mission to learn photography. He's taking a long distance photography class and we've been doing the classes at home. He sent me on an errand to drop off some film for developing in the back alleys of Chungmuro and there, I met yet another character. I was supposed to go to a place called Photoland and I couldn't find the place initally. I called the place and someone who spoke really good English answered the phone. He said he'd escort me to the photoshop and told me he'd wait for me in front of a big blue building. He added that I should look out for a "tall, handsome" guy. The guy that showed up was a beatnik-looking older dude with long hair and the whisper of a goatee. He should have been wearing a beret, but he wasn't. He looked very photographer. Anyway, we got to talking and he started to tell me about his fotoart. Apparently he spent months and months in East Africa photographing villagers and people. He knew Africa so well, he even spoke some Swahili and he said his African friends and the african people just accpeted him as family. They nicked named him "The White man" and bestowed on him an African name which meant "LUCKY"- Olomunak Kamioru Then, he said Africans were so sweet and so innocent. I, on the other hand find Africa somewhat scary. I told him that I thought Koreans were sweet and innocent and he laughed at the purported falsity of the comment. He invited me to sit down at the computer and peruse his portfolio of National Geographic-style photos. Incredible stuff. Really amazing. I felt like I was travelling. Then I caught a whiff of soju or whiskey on his breath. Whew, so he really was Korean after all! March 16 Sake and SIWA on a rainy dayI drank hot sake in the middle of the afternoon today. It was a grey rainy day and one of my favorite friends suggested we roll up into this dolsot bap joint in Insadong. The restaurant is somewhat Japanese-influenced and it's been in operation for 28 years. Dolsot bap is this smoky rice concotion with mushroom, onion, ginko fruit and tofu skins. It's eaten with sweet marinated radish and fermented squid. The dish is covered with a heavy wooden lid and it's Korean comfort food for rainy days like today. Everytime I get together with this girl we talk about art, life, exisistentialism, fashion, film, self expression, business. She used to produce commericals for LG ads and now she's freelancing. I always get insight into Korean life when we hang out and I always feel the need to write it all down for future reference. We washed down the bottles of sake with some ginger tea in on old Hanok called the Kyung-in Gallery. Then we trekked over to Myong Dong where I filmed some footage for a future episode of seoulstyle TV. In the evening, I met up with the SIWA ladies for an evening mingle at Helios. I caught up with one of the girls who founded the Wine and Women Korea Club and we talked at length about future business opportunities together. SIWA is a women's group which helps expat wives adjust to life in korea. I recently discovered that SIWA was more than just a bunch of bored housewives getting together. Actually most of the SIWA fees go to charities and to helping other people out. I wanted to get more involved in the organization aspect of SIWA because I'd really like to do my share to help others have a better life here in Seoul. These social gatherings are important for me to keep a balance in my life, otherwise I could spend entire days blurry-eyed in front of the computer trying to figure out some new web authoring program..... March 14 "Crazy people walking round with blood in their eyes and all she wants to do is dance"I've been getting alot of e-mails recently from readers saying "What happened to Liza's Virtual World?????" Truthfully, blogging has been on the backburner these days since seoulstyle stuff has been taking up too much time lately. I never leave my house without my digital camera these days and I'm constantly taking pics and doing research. 160 people have subscribed to seoulstyle since I put up the subscribe button a month ago, so I really feel like I have an obligation to keep the content on the site as fresh and interesting as possible. I've done so many things since I last blogged. One day, I spent the day with the SIWA ladies learning how to concoct an Indian feast. Our teacher was this amazing Indian lady who had an arranged marriage. Despite the fact that her marriage was arranged, she seemed super happy with the choice her parents made for her. You could just tell she was crazy about her husband and it was clear she was a great mom and housewife. Her dream was to be a kindergarten teacher and that exactly what she's doing now at ECLC here in Seoul. It just goes to show that everyone has a different dream and different paths to happiness. Throughout the class she kept revealing little tidbits of what it's like to grow up as an Indian. Indians believe you should have many colors of food on the table, that's why they use red food coloring for some of the dishes. Most of her receipes were handed down to to her by her mother or mother-in law. We ate the food after the class and it was just incredible! With all these stories, all the yummy food and all the women just jabbering away, I felt like I was in one of those movies like "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman". Last weekend, I was on the beat for seoulstyle again and I met up with some girls from my French class to try out a French restaurant in Shinchon. Later on I dragged everyone to this bar in Hongdae that I saw in a Korean magazine. The bar is called Nabi and it's hardly marked. It's a cool underground enclave for bohemian hipsters. I don't think there's anywhere like it in Seoul. We were with some kyopos guys and some Korean girls. It was funny how different the girls were from the guys. The girls were super open-minded and two of them had formerly lived in Morrocco. How interesting! One of the kyopo guys seemed to be orbiting on planet "SELF" and he was making the silliest comments like, "Is this somebody's garage?? I already took a shower today, but I feel like I need to take another one" (I guess he just couldn't hang with all the dread-locked guys smoking their hooka pipes) I told him if he couldn't understand the place, he didn't need to be there. One guy claimed not to be able to speak Korean after having studied Korean for 16 months. He said he could never practice his Korean with Korean girls because all they wanted to do was "have sex". NICE. I do believe that sometimes kyopo guys have this superiority complex when they come to Korea. Perhaps is because they never really feel like they fit in anywhere and being an arrogant asshole is sort of a defense mechanism to protect their fragile egos. Well this kind of thing may work on gullible Korean university students, but it certainly doesn't look good to other people. Luckily there were a few guys with us who were cool. Anyway, afterwards we went to M2 and the place was so packed. I don't think I've ever seen that place so packed. I couldn't move and I was getting claustrophobic, so I dragged out the only other ajuma and the two of us went to the norebang just for shiggles. Unfortunately, this MSN spaces isn't super reliable on the photo front, so I can't post as many photos as I did on my old blog. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to putting up the old Liza's Virual World again. March 12 My Life in a nutshellA lot of people wonder who I am and where I came from because I look different and think very differently from others. Well for those of you who haven’t read my biography on my old blog, here it is: My twin sister and I decided to move into the big bad city of Manhattan, into a dangerous area called the east village. The east village was a very cool underground area, full of artists and musicians, but there were also a lot of drug dealers in the neighborhood. At the time, that was all we could afford. My mom cried when she saw the dump we moved into, but our parents loved us and had faith in us, so they had no choice but to accept what we chose to do. I was working in a vintage clothing store and taking the train back to Queens to finish school. We survived despite the influences of the dysfunctional adults around us and I still managed to graduate school with first honors. Since I had little parental guidance, life was a series of trial and error. Trekking in the Himalayas (three times!) I basically partied my way through all of South East Asia in a perpetually suntanned state, always carrying some kind of pretty dress in my backpack, in case the occasion called for it. I was blissfully unattached, but it was time to grow up. Maturity brings new adventures and now I am happily grounded We`ve been in Seoul since 2000. My website seoulstyle.com started out as my personal blog. Now it’s a commercial website about how to enjoy life in Seoul. This year, the website has become so popular, over 13,000 individual visitors regularly visit every month! Thanks again for logging on! March 10 Welcome to the new home of my Liza's Virtual WorldHello Everyone!
Welcome to The new home of Liza's Virtual World. I'm Liza, the creator of the webzine www.seoulstyle.com Many of you have been following my blog and my site for a while now, and I'd like to say thanks for logging on to Liza's Virtual World and onto seoulstyle.com!  I realize that this msn space design is not quite as jazzy as my former blog, but due to time constraints, I was no longer able to continue the time-consuming effort of formatting each one of my blog pages. I have some really exciting projects in the works for seoulstyle.com as some of you may have already read about in the seoulstyle media site on blogspot. Click here for the link. Basically, I'm going to start producing videos and mini-TV shows in conjunction with seoulstyle.com
Two years ago, I had this ambitious idea to produce an English TV program called seoulstyle for Arrirang (for example) about life in Seoul. It was going to be funny and informative etc.. The only problem was it was too big of a project to tackle for someone with no production experience. Hence, I just started blogging on the internet instead. When seoulstyle first came about in 2004, it was my personal blog about what it's like to live in Seoul. The audience got so big, I had to redesign the site and make it commercial. Now seoulstyle gets 13,000 unique visitors a month! Now that the reader base has grown, I've gone back to the idea of producing a show, only this time, it's going to be on the internet instead of on TV!
I don't know if seoulstyle readers know this, but I had absolutely no experience with the internet 2 years ago. I didn't even know how to use microsoft word and I was completely computer illiterate. Needless to say, I've taught myself alot about how the workings of the internet and now I feel confident enough to start posting new forms of media. Thanks again for logging onto my blog, and please consider linking me to your cyworld or blog! |
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