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5月22日 Apkujong vs. HongdaeIt was just last summer when people could say I was the quintessential "Apku" girl and they would not have been entirely wrong. My best friend at the time was, after all, a model and we did spend a fair bit of time shoe shopping and drinking coffee by Dosan Park. We did usually end up having dinner at different friend's places in Cheongdam dong and we went to all the trendy parties at Club Garden. Somehow we were always at some brand launching event or other. While I enjoyed all this glam fluff, I always preferred the creative vibe of Hongdae. No apku friends ever wanted to go there with me. Now that they've all left town, I've been making a more concerted effort to go to Hongdae, just for graphic design inspiration alone!
Some people don't know this about me but I spent my formative years in the East Village of Manhattan in the late 80's early 90's. It was dangerous, raw and extremely artistic. All my friends were artists, musicians, poets, filmakers, and fashionistas. I even got to rub elbows a few times with Andy Warhol!
Back then I'd sometimes partake in performance art pieces, I only dated muzos with long hair and I worked in a vintage clothing shop.
Back to Hongdae- The spirit there is similar to the spirit of the East Village back in the day (without the drugs and crime of course). I was sitting on the terrace of an Apku cafe a day after one of my exploration tours of Hongdae and I realized while both places have their merits, I would really rather be at the beginning of a creative idea or concept rather than at the sold-out, unjustifiably-expensive, saturated end of it. I realized I wanted to be doing something good for the state of the world instead of idly drinking coffee with pretty people. (I've got nothing against pretty people mind you, to each his own.) I looked back on last year and the things I liked to do and I realized I had evolved. Had I evolved? or had I just come back to a place where I always knew I needed to belong?
I finally found someone openminded and curious enough to accompany me to gatherings in Hongdae. The other night, we went to a benefit Poetry Slam for PB&J, the party promoters with a social conscience. The benefit was to raise money for a teen sex education center. Talented poets made spoken word performances turning words into lyrical music. It was a cross between watching a stand-up comic and an acoustic singer. Most of the poems were about the struggles of people who were different from others.
Ed Bok Lee, a kyopo who was the star of the show, wowed everyone with his amazing performance. Go see him at Seoul selection bookstore this Saturday. After having been inspired by the depth of the poetry, our next stop was BricXX where all female DJs were spinning and a female drum band was going to play. There was a guy sitting outside the club who said he needed a "breath of fresh air". No Doubt! As soon as we walked in, a cloud of damp sweaty air and cigarette smoke engulfed us. The place was packed with an unidentifiable crowd. The I put my finger on it. It was the Kscene crowd.
Luckily we got there just in time for the drum show and we didn't have to stay too long. The drumming was fast, frenzied and vaguely ethnic. It reminded me of Nanta or Tokebi Storm, if they happened to be touring in Mongolia, for example. Truthfully, it was so smoky and packed in there, it was going to be too hard to socialize, specially since we weren't drunk. Still, it was a good night. It was different. We passed by Route 66 bar and my friend said " Oh that place is so sketch. It's a good place to go if you want to get sloshed on, ogled and chatted up by some foreign guy with an over-inflated ego just becuase he's been in Korea too long. And they can't even find anything better to do than teach English!"
Well like I said, to each his own.......
One conclusion I did come to is that "edgy" doesn't equate to "trashy". You can be perfectly creative and interesting without getting wasted, being dysfuntional and without all the trashy dramatics. Maybe I'm just getting old, but if that's the case, then I'm happy to have evolved. It's getting hot in here!!From 2000-2003 I was on a really serious female dragonboat team. It's a popular sport in Hong Kong where twenty people (ten on either side) row a long teak boat. It was challenging to say the least. After sprinting for 250 meters and feeling all this lactic acid coursing through your muscles you feel like you just can't go on. But then you bust through the wall of pain and this amazing adrenaline just keeps you pulling that water. It's a killer. There was a fair share of screaming going on inside that boat. I've never really been that fit, but at that time, I really got into it. I had muscles in parts of my body where I never even knew muscles could exist. All the team members on my diet and workout regime and we were kicking ass and taking names. They used to call me "Commando Liza". I was pretty scary. Girls shouldn't have veins on their arms from working out, but I did. Anyway, my husband pulled out some old photos of me 'back in the day' and he said to me "Should I post these onto your computer screen somewhere so you remember to get off the computer sometimes and do something active?" So yesterday my girlfriend insisted that we go to Bikram Yoga and in the spirit of 'Commando Liza' I could not refuse. Bikram Yoga is a type of yoga that takes place in a very hot sauna-like room. The idea is to sweat and get deeper stretches. She wasn't feeling 100 percent due to the yellow dust and she wanted to get rid of the toxins in her body. I had done Bikram 3 times before. Ther first time, I felt like I was going to suffocate, the 2nd time was great, the third time, I was just bored. There's something odd about an excecise that makes you feel dizzy or nauseous. I was both during the class. I admit my fitness level isn't very good these days. The only thing that gets a workout is my fingers tapping on the computer keyboard. Anyway, my friend liked it and her skin looked really nice afterwards. As for me, I've decided Bikram yoga is definetly not my thing. Later on the same night I ran into this guy at an opening party for a new Cheongdam restaurant. His usually pale face was beet red and he was sweating profusely. Did he have malaria? No. The diagnosis: Bikram Yoga. He had done the yoga about an hour before and his body wasstill releasing toxins and burning calories and hour later! 5月14日 A few weeks in the life of seoulstyleTwo weeks have flown by and I haven't had one second to blog. Seoulstyle activities have gone on overdrive since I got back from Vietnam. I was asked to give a speech at the Working Women's Network which is special interest group for women who have jobs or who want to find something to do with their time. Good thing I used to be part of the toastmasters club. The public speaking skills I learned there helped me keep the audience's attention. My topic was "How to use your resources to enrich your life in abroad" I also essentially told the whole story about how seoulstyle came into existence and how it ended up going from being a crappy personal blog to the site that it is today. It was a great chance to network and quite a few of the ladies were interested in working together with seoulstyle. I ended up having all these follow-up meetings with each individual during the rest of the week. I also drew up some contracts and business plan ideas as well as having a few brainstorm sessions with different potential contributors or affiliates.
Last weekend, the Hi Seoul festival was going on and I got to catch the parade and watch some indie bands perform in Kwanghwamun. Here's the article I wrote about that with photos:
http://www.seoulstyle.com/hi_seoul_festival.htm That Saturday a bunch of us went to Bar Nana which is easily the funkiest watering hole in Itaewon. It reminds me of a bar that would be in Hongdae. They had a bunch of bands playing and we got to catch this really good SKA band called Bombtori. If you ever hear about any of their gigs, go see them! They sound a little like the Mighty Mighty Bostones. Who knew there were SKA bands in Seoul? They had really groovy style as well. The singer was wearing a leather belt as a tie. At the Hi SEoul festival there was another good Rock band called PAINARK. The guitarist had all these groupies. He had the make-up and the bleached hair and the aloof attitude. Rock Star stuff. Another night I ended up dragging one of my friends to Hongdae to do some research about the underground bars in that area. I wrote down all the word of mouth info, printed out all the maps I could get off the Korean sites, plus brought some other articles I had been compiling from different publications and off we went on a quest to find the funkiest boho bars in Hongdae. Though I already had info on places to go, we also stumbled accidentally onto some other gems that I will be writing about very soon for seoulstyle. You really need to literally pound the pavement to get the latest info. It was this friend's first time down parking lot street and she was freaking out about all the interesting things for sale. We both decided nerdy reading glasses were fun, so we bought a pair and wore them all around Hongdae. We visited tons of places: retro 60's places, smooth Jazz bars, dark candle-lit underground places, places with tons of LP's lining the walls, hole in the wall hip hop joints etc... I also rejected some of the recommendations which I originally had written down on the list. Last night, I went out to Chi Miggi's Spring in Session party at the Woo Bar to take photos. Usually W parties aren't that much fun, but this one was really good for some reason. The music was latin-ish and there was a guy with dreads playing live drums. It really got the bootie shaking. It wasn't super packed but the crowd that was there was great. Because it wasn't too packed, it was much easier to mingle. I met up with many of my social contacts and I even found myself having real conversations with people I hadn't really spoken to before. Then we danced. I think there's a trend going on for micromini-skirts and shorts. I practically saw one girl's behind. I'm going to post the photos in the next few days.  5月2日 Check out cool pics from VietnamPeople always tell me that I never should have gotten rid of my old
Liza's Virtual World site because the format was really nice and the
photos were really fun. This MSN spaces is pretty crappy becuase
the pics are so pixelated and badly formatted. Anyway, I'm in the
process of resucitating my old blog. In fact, I'm hoping to make the
design even more exciting if I can. Unfortunately due to severe time
constraints, I cannot do this very easily. For now I will be posting
photo links to my new upcoming URL. Here are some super pics from Vietnam. I didn't have a great time there this time around, but we did get some extremely cool snaps. All these photos were taken by me and my hubby. http://www.liza-world.com/lizaGalleries/vietnam/lizacover.htm Beachfront in Vietnam- The flip flop graveyardMy hubby and I flew to Vietnam for the weekend on the advice of a friend of ours who works down there as a pilot for Vietnam ailines. He said the govenment was allowing foreigners to buy beachfront land down there on an island called Phu Quoc, and that Phu Quoc is going to be the next Bali or Phuket since they are building an international airport down there. My husband has been a banker for so long now and the stress of his job makes him have these fantasies of retiring on a nice beach somewhere and becoming a photographer. He insisted I come to Vietnam to see if we could possibly open some kind of dream resort there. I told him the hotel biz is a pain in the ass, but he wanted to dream about a different life, so I humored him. The first time I went to Vietnam in '98, I was a backpacker who was completely comfortable staying in stinky dirty one-dollar-a-night youth hostels. The chaos of third-world countries was fascinating to me at the time and I just wanted to learn what I could about history. Well now that I'm older, I have less tolerance for dirt, or chaos for that matter and I can see firsthand how the outdated governmental system (communism) hinders progress and development. First of all, we missed our trip to Vietnam last weekend because we didn't have visas. We had to postpone the trip by a week to get a visa. (That was a sign. "Do not buy land in a country that you're not sure you can even enter.") Our plane landed at 1AM and bleary-eyed from the all night journey, we were greeted with the thick humid smell of moldy farts. The only other place I know which smells like Vietnam is India. A few short hours later we boarded an small propeller plane to Phu Quoc. The driver brought us to some resort which looked like a concrete box. "They have air-conditioning." he proudly proclaimed. Perhaps Chinese tourists dig this kind of thing, but not us. NEXT!! We got back in the car and bumped down some dirt roads to a decent resort with thatched-roof bungalows. It was no surprise that the resort was being run by a European guy. A man with really bad teeth whose brother was on the govt. council came to take us on a real estate tour. There are no real estate agents in Vietnam. There's only this local guy with a bad accent and bad teeth who knows which plots of land the govt. might allow to be developed. Of course it was going to come 'at a price' since you need a business licence. (In other words, you were going to need to bribe the right person to be allowed to build). Plots which were available yesterday suddenly became unavailable and re-available for the right price. The loose-toothed man showed us a bunch of dirty beaches encompassed by swampland. There was no native architechture like in Bali or Thailand (unless you call wind-torn huts with tarp walls and rusty corrugated aluminum roofs 'architechture'.) It's sad that the general population is so impoverished. When corruption and bribery is so blatantly widespread, it's clear that something isn't right with the way the government is running things. After the swampland tour, we traveled for what seemed like hours on unpaved roads to reach a secluded beach on the southern tip of the island. There was no water, no electricity,no restaurants, no shopping. Nor was there jetskiing, golf-courses, spas or any natural attraction that a tourist might want to visit.There alot of great are places in the world where you can get away from everything and just sit on a great beach and do nothing. This beach was nice, but it just looked so dirty and neglected. The beach was strewn with flip-flops, bottles, driftwood and all manner of washed-up debris. I'm sorry but Phu Quoc has centuries to go before it could even come close to being Ko Samui. At night, our bungalow was crawling with every type of bug imaginable: red ants, sand flies, spiders, millipedes, mosquitos, moths and other unidentifiable creepy critters. I cast the mosquito net and turned off the light. It was pitch, pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. I could, however, hear the sounds of nocturnal animals in the distance: Dogs howling, cicadas, and OH MY GOD was that a snake hissing??? (We had seen a few snakes earlier on the road.) Well, we survived the night with nary a mosquito bite. We flew back to Ho Chi Min city early the next day and wandered the city. Sunday happened to be a holiday called reunification day. It's a celebration of Ho Chi Min and the truimph of Communism. The South Vietnamese call this holiday "humiliation day" since they lost the war. The rivers had a distinct sewer smell and the streets were choked with motorbikes. Our friend who lives there says he's seen so many horrific accidents. People splayed out under buses, people with their brains oozing out of their ears after a bad crash etc... Nobody wears a helmet or looks where they are going. Consequently, people are constantly blowing their horns. Having said that, I will say that Vietnam has it's charms. Especially for older white men. Foreign money stretches far and wide enough to buy an old wrinkly dude a clan of nubile young Vietnamese girls. Apparently there's even a contingent of expat women whose husbands all left them for Vietnamese girls. They even have their own club (support group). NICE. Sounds like a place I really want to move to tommorrow. NOT!!!!!! 4月27日 TrendspottingI've been taking a couple of trendspotters from a company called Pophouse Australia around Seoul the past few days. Pophouse does market surveys of different cities and writes up informative reports for businesses looking to innovate. They contracted me via seoulstyle and asked me to be their guide while here. (Great! another paying job!) My job was basically to show them the different ways in which people do business specifically in Korea.
First, I took them up to Namsan tower to show them how the city is going through a renaissance and trying to modernize and up it's hip factor in the eyes of the rest world. I also introduced them to the gift shop there where they sell millimeter milligram products. Instead of tacky kitschy stuff, they actually sell really cool "design-oriented" souveniers that you would be proud to wear of display around the house. Then we rode the cable car down and descended to Myong Dong where I showed them the norebang, PC bang and the DVD bang. The whole "room" concept is very uniquely Korean. Afterwards, we proceeded onto Salvation Paradiso, the "fashion category" shop. I wanted to show them how there were all these different kinds of themed fitting rooms. There's the punk dressing room, the boho dressing room, the disco dressing room etc.. Depending on what kind of outfit you try on, there's a different fitting room environment to inspire the look. They scored some really cute clothes at the shop. For lunch we had a spicy chicken dish called tak kalbi at Andong Jim Tak. The chicken was divine, but the kimchee almost made one of the girls puke. I guess kimchee will not be marked down as a world trend anytime soon!!! Onto namdaemun where we saw veggie trucks, quick service delivery guys and pojangmachas. Then I tried to find them a love hotel with a parking lot that had big rubber curtains hiding the license plates, but we couldn't find one. We did see some love motels and we deliberated outside of one of them for at least 15 minutes in order to work up the courage to ask to see the inside of a room. After all the posturizing and discussing and planning we finally we in to see a room. It was so basic and looked and smelled like a stinky yogwan. Anticlimactic! The receptionist probably thought we were Russian hookers. The girls concluded that the place smelled of bodily fluids because there were particles of it floating in the air......... We went to insadong, samcheong dong, Ewha women's university and finally we ended up in Hongdae. They loved Hongdae, as I do. We stumbled into a cute new cafe called Catchlight and I asked what I thought was one of the hosts if 3 people could have a seat. The guy didn't even work there and he turned out to be some famous drama actor who happened to be there filming an episode of the drama called 'Seoul Mate'.
Oops, duhhh! Could I not tell by the pancake make-up that the guy was an actor and not a waiter? After that we visited Bau Haus dog cafe where dog lovers can take their dogs or play with the resident ones. Man were those doggies cute!!! They rushed at us as soon as we walked in and one of the trend-spotters jumped back and refused to come in. Apparently she was attacked by a dog when she was 4 years old and couldn't get over the trauma of it. Anyway the whole tour was very exciting and it was interesting to see Seoul through the eyes of trend-spotters vs. just regular travellers.
4月25日 Skype me!Technology never ceases to amaze me. We've had SKYPE (it's a program whcih enables you to make free phonecalls on the internet) for quite some time now and we just installed video capability. Our friend living in Vietnam SKYPED us the other day and he showed us his house, his swimming pool and new mortorbike with his webcam. We also got to e-meet his cute girlfriend. He then pointed the webcam at the pool and showed us his impersonation of an ajuma doing the butterfly. It was all at once hilarious and pixellated. Nevertheless it was truly amazing! I just think it's so star trek to be able to see your friend in Vietnam do his impersonation of a butterfly-ing ajuma over the internet!
Sunday the rain was pouring down in a scary way. There's not much outdoor activity available on a rainy day so we went to the Yongsan electronics market to buy a big screen for my computer. I was designing my website on a 17 inch screen and now that I'm practically a professional, I outgrew the 17 inch and needed something BIGGER (who says size doesn't matter?) However, I still haven't turned into a MAC snob just yet. I'm still on a PC for the time being.
The following day, I set out to close my first "paying" web design job. Up until recently, I did not feel skilled enough to offer a "product" per se, but so many people have been asking me if they could advertise and if I could to do design stuff for them lately that I finally realized that perhaps I do have a knack for the design/internet biz. I managed to close the deal and I will announce the new website when it goes online. 4月21日 Hyperactive BrainMy brain woke up early today, around 6AM. I had no choice but to wake up, open the fridge and have a slice of cold leftover pizza for breakfast.Sometimes creative ideas come to me in the middle of the night and I just can't wait to wake up in the morning and make them happen. Actually I don't like chatboards that much. People are forever flaming each other just because they don't have face to face contact, but I believe in the power of public opinion and there's alot of things that people out there know that I don't. So please register and post your info on my forums and Please! be nice!! (I'm so glad I know how to delete and moderate posts now; unlike a few months ago!) 4月18日 Yellow Dust ruins cherry blossom seasonI walked outside to a blustery wind today and immediately my eyes began
to itch and I started to sneeze. All I wanted to do was turn around and
go back inside my house. The sky was a ominous shade of grey (it almost
looks like judgement day) and all the windows and cars were covered
with a blanket of 'yellow dust'. This phenomenon happens every spring
when strong winds blow germs, pollution and sand from China and the
Gobe desert as far as the Korean peninsula. Unfortunately, "yellow dust" coincides with the cherry blossom season, so as the flowers begin to bloom, the sickening wind makes it simultaneously fall off the trees. Fortunately, we were blessed with an amazing day on Sunday and the skies were clear blue. On Sunday, my husband pried me off the computer and demanded that we go on a photo expedition of Namsan Park. I reluctantly unstuck my hands from the computer keyboard and got out my infrequently used Canon SLR. We meandered through the park shooting photos of the pretty pink trees and I was so glad to be able to take a break from my seoulstyle updates to enjoy a beautiful nature walk with my beloved. We hiked all the way up the trail with one brief stop for some jajangmyon (noodles in a black sauce). Around sunset, we reached the Seoul Tower where we stumbled upon the most happening rave party! There was a DJ pumping out the most jamming set of house, Korean rap and popular dance music. We had just been to see Stephane Pompougnac spin at W hotel the night before and it was so lame compared to the rave party going on at Namsan. The funniest thing was that the people who were emphatically dancing around were not trendy youngsters, but ajumas and ajosshis and some halmonis and harabojis too (grandmas and grandpas)! It was the most hilarious photo opportunity and we ended up taking hundreds of photos of the old folks doing their funky chicken dance moves! They were having so much fun, that on the walk back were heard a few of them singing at the top of their lungs in the forest. We also saw one very drunk visor-wearing ajuma being escorted out of the park with the help of two other ajumas. See some of the photos on this link: http://www.seoulstyle.com/pics_namsan_rave.htm 4月15日 Diamonds and Kimchee??? I'm finally back on my beloved computer. I bought all these training softwares and design books from Bangkok, so I've literally been staring, blurry-eyed, in front of the computer for the past week. I had a bunch of articles to format from the writing contest I had for seoulstyle. The contest yielded some brilliant entries, but these are the top three. Vote for your favorite story here! http://www.seoulstyle.com/vote.htm Scroll over the titles to read the articles. I was so busy this week I barely had time to take a dump, but one of my bridesmaids flew into Seoul for a surprise visit, so I had to take her out. One night, we went for Korean BB-Q at my favorite local dive joint in Itaewon and for some reason incomprehensible to me, she was dripping in diamonds! She had on 6 carat diamond drop earrings, a ten-carat diamond necklace (which almost blinded me) and a 10 carat diamond braclet which had a lacy pattern. On top of that, she had these sexy high-heeled Louis Vuitton wooden clogs on AND (this is the clincher) she's seven months pregnant! Good on her. I guess you're allowed to be an empress when you're preggos. She actually said she liked being pregnant because people are so nice to you and you can get away with anything, even wearing diamonds to a stinky, divey BB-Q joint. This same friend was just in Bombay visiting another ajuma/empress and apparently in Bombay, all those diamonds are considered casual lunch wear. In fact, the ladies in Bombay supposedly wear much more jewelry. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Personally, I think the Bombay ladies should sell some of their jewelry to feed the all the starving people over there. Activities down underEver since the demise of my old blog, I've been incredibly remiss with my entries. Sorry about that. Well I was on holiday, far far away from my beloved computer.... I had such a fab time down under with the Aussies and their lovely blue skies temperate weather and awesome beaches! However, I wouldn't want to live there because it really feels like the end of the world. You can distinctly feel the isolation. People are taught to be friendly, just like Americans, but you can tell there's an slight undercurrent of protectionism and dare I say- ignorance?, probably just due to the fact that they are so isolated. Having said that, I only had wonderful experiences with the Aussies I met. And I had plenty of time to get the know the shops on Oxford street quite intimately. In fact, I swiped my credit card so many times, it got demagnetized! I thought I spent an obscene of money, but every girl I spoke to said it was nothing. Whew, That's a relief. I had a Korean girlfriend getting married to an Aussie boy down there and I had a chance to catch up with my old clan of Korean ajuma girlfriends who moved away from Korea last year. The wedding was breathtakingly lovely, but the hen's night was a bit of a disappointment. I was trying to recruit some male strippers to dance for the bride and I finally found some young hot footie players who were willing to do it, but one of them was injured and he was at the club on crutches. All the girlfriends were complaining that the only stripper I could get was a gimp! Then, they were complaining that the strippers were too young! AJUMAS! Come on! On the other hand, the gimpy stripper thought I was 24 years old, so I personally thought he was really cool. (Tell me more little boy... heheheheee..) Our hen's night was cut short when we acidentally caught up with the Stags. The night was over after that. Other than that, my hubby and I really loved Port Macquarie where he was doing his 6th Ironman triathlon. I was drooling over all the gorgeous and unique beach houses with their incredible vistas of the ocean. My hubby kicked ass in his Ironman Race. He did his personal best: 10 hrs and 7mins. That's 123 out of 1700 competitors. Top 8 percent! Way to go my man! However, it was not quite good enough to get him qualified for the Ironman Championship in Kona, Hawaii. After the race, we stayed at the Park Hyatt in Sydney where we had this amazing room with a view of the harbour and the opera house. It was so slick. I felt really priveledged. We also got to visit our plot of land in Avalon, north of Sydney, where we are building a house for investment purposes. We bought this land two years ago, sight unseen with our friend who is a pilot in Australia. It was sweet! and it had endless views of the sea and some yacht harbor. Apparently some celebrity gardener is building a 4 million dollar house right on our street!!! The property values will be going through the roof when his project is completed. Cool. very cool. 4月1日 Down UnderAfter a few days of massages, shopping and seeing the sights in Bangkok, I flew down to Oz to meet my hubby. I missed him so much, but after taking this mega-sleeping pill on my all night flight to sydney, I could barely manage to lift an eyelid when I met him at the airport.24 hours later, after I recovered from my lorazepam-induced haze, I woke up to a brillant sea view outside my hotel-room here in Port Macaqurie. This sleepy beach retreat is just north of sydney and is the new home of Ironman Australia. I tell you I feel so out of shape after seeing all these mega-fit triathletes training around here. I better get off this computer now and go for a run or something!
There's something amazing about the light in the Southern hemisphere. You really feel like you're at the end of the earth. One night in BangkokActually I'm in Bangkok for a few days of fun. That means SHOPPING! yes, I make no apologies for this, I'm a girl and girls like to shop. It goes as far back as the caveman days when women were gatherers and men were hunters. Funnily enough, I came here to shop for clothes and knick knacks for my house but I found myself instead being drawn to bookshops and computer software stores. Thais have the most amazing design sense. In fact, it almost seems like the government is pushing Thais to become specialists in every field of design. There are big posters at the skytrain, for example, which say "What would life be without design?" Bangkok also just had an intense and highly publicized fashion week which the city spent millions of dollars on. They are trying to give New york, Paris and Milan a run for the money. One of the magazine editorials shamelessly said "What could be better that keeping young, fit and trendy-looking?" Everything from web design, interior design, to clothing, ads and magazines is all so trendy and future forward. I ended up marveling at the immense design section of this one book shop and I was so inspired. After purchasing a bunch of books, I wandered into a section full of furniture shops. I almost hyperventilated at all the cool stuff they were selling in those stores. I was literally trying to find the best way to ship the whole mall back to Korea with me. In another mall, I discovered a design museum where they were showcasing design items from Japan. They had several screens split in threes with artsy footage being projected onto them. Next door was an exhibit for the best designed kitchen utensils for 2006. There were huge cutout boxes covered with blurred kitchen images and somewhere in the middle of it, a window with halogen lighting featured some neeto bowl or some futurisic mortar and pestle. After the air-conditioned mall-hopping, I took the skytrain out to Jatuchak market (also known as the weekend market). This vast behemoth market has everything under the sun! You can find Rubix cubes, live animals, used jeans, furniture, toys, candle holders, fried crickets etc... etc... etc... The problem with this market is the claustrophobia and the heat. People are packed together so tightly in the little alleyways. As you move through, you're always brushing up against someone else's sweaty arm. EWWW.. However, if you're willing to brave the crowds and the heat, you may be rewarded with some really interesting buys. Again Jatuchak is the realm of the Uber-trendy kids of Bangkok. There's an immense section selling DIY (do it yourself) punk and vintage gear. Shaggy haircuts, side burns and 70's Bruce Lee looks seem to be all the rage with the teens. Anyay afer hours of sweating up a storm, I decided to cool my heels and refuel at a vegetarian restaurant on soi 39. I started off with carrot sticks dipped in hummous made from almonds, then I had a fruit soup with mango and coconut water garnished with pineapple and banana. For the main course, I had the most amazing pasta-less lasagna made with eggplant, zucchini and tomato. If i could make veggies taste this good myself, I'd never eat meat again! It was so yummy and refreshing. Exactly what I wanted after a hot day of shopping. 3月21日 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. 3月19日 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. 3月17日 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! 3月16日 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..... 3月14日 "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. 3月12日 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! 3月10日 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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