The arrival of spring is better by happy kids.
Does that exist? Because if not, I’d like to create one.
In a line on the way to Seoul’s Dream Forest. You read the right.
So, so cute!
The Korean Children Appreciation Society
Leave a comment
Journal
No Aim, No Gain
Ain’t that the truth.
This was on my running route near the studio in Changdong. Whether it’s Konglish or not, there is a cybernetic point there, no? Goals, people. Goals.
Spring Has Sprung!
Flowers are starting to bloom in Korea. Hurray!
Color. Finally.
On the way to pick up my fourth passport from the embassy—Oh the luxury of smelling and touching a crisp new passport!—even this bear agreed:
Yes, little bear. Yes, it is.
Fare thee well, the winter of our discontent.
White Day Sugar
Unofficial holidays meant for love are quite an event here in Seoul, with people filling out specific roles. In Confucian Korea, I’m quite pleased when people break out of the norm, or when I break it (usually out of ignorance of the custom) and they appreciate it anyway. (For example, last Valentine’s Day, when women are supposed to give out chocolates to the men of their desire, I handed out origami hearts to everyone I knew.)
The month after Valentine’s Day, March 14, may be Pi Day for those mathematically inclined, but here on this side of the world, it is also White Day, a day where it’s the men’s turn to give out hard candy to women they like. Like my belief in Valentine’s Day hacks, I appreciate it when guys do the same and hand out goodies to their friends.
My haul for my first White Day is chocolate from a married studiomate and lollipops from my taekwondo class. The four big lollipops are from Master Kim who handed out an entire box’s worth to the class while the two were from one of the kids. We may not know each other’s languages and have different opinions on eye contact, but hey, there are definitely other ways to communicate. This was, literally and figuratively, quite sweet.
White Day haul. Aww, shucks. ❤
Say it with sugar. Arigato and kamsahamnida, gentlemen!
The Appreciative Meditation of Origami Hearts
(Seoul)—Today for Valentine’s Day, I made origami hearts for all the local people here, mostly from my taekwondo class. I love the quiet meditation that origami brings and sometimes use it in my work. But for this, my goal was to give the locals something they probably haven’t received before. From what I’ve seen, some Koreans give each other flowers and chocolates on February 14th, but I haven’t seen paper valentines. Or at least these kinds of valentines:
Fancy origami hearts by yours truly
I was tempted to write, “You’re waegukin (foreigner) loves you!” but I decided against it. Baby steps, people, baby steps.
Kidding aside, I made these because aside from the fact that I like them, the people I’ve met here have been so lovely and generous despite the apocalyptic language barrier. I just wanted to let them know I’m trying, too! Kamsahamnida!
Welcome to the K-Studio
Scroll below for an informal giveaway!
My desk, January 2013
Annyeong! I’m posting from my studio in Seoul, where I’m based for a while. This is my current desk. See if you can spot the following:
1. My lucky caganer
2. A bubble maker
3. A biography of Robert Irwin
4. Thaumatropes (which have been mistaken for eye masks—yes I am in Korea!)
5. My English and Chinese names translated in Korean
6. Receipts, mostly from Etude House
7. A Post-It pad shaped like a heart
8. Chinese astrology for 2013 (I found it on the back of my bus ticket, which I found interesting.)
9. Something from SVA IxD
10. A Korean bank book
The first three people who can email me a photo with the above items encircled and guesses at least 6 correctly gets a postcard, stickers, and a poem specially written for them. Not kidding.
Moving to South Korea: The Story of an Art Expat
So I’ve decided to move to South Korea. Seoul, to be precise.
When I tell my friends I’m moving to Korea, I have three common reactions:
Common reactions to my move to Korea
But seriously, it’s to do an art residency in Seoul. While it will be my fourth home city (“home” being anywhere I’ve lived in for at least six months because really, it’s probably the only criterion I have left), it’s my first time to live in East Asia.
Seoul, my fourth home city
A big part of choosing South Korea among all other countries is, duh, taekwondo, which I have realized has way more impact on my creativity than I think I give it credit for. Yes, I expect training after studio hours to be the most badass there, so I have high expectations for Dojang/School #15 and Sabonim/Master #29.
Korea, land of taekwondo. Oh la la! Hurray!
I only had a few weeks to pack as much Korean in my head as I possibly could, as I don’t think taekwondo terms will help much. For future expats in Korea, check out the incredibly helpful and hilariously engaging videos of Eat Your Kimchi and SweetAndTasty, which I’ve also written about in a previous post.
Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi
Professor Oh and Friends
Thanks to the internet, I have come with things like deodorant, bedsheets*, and bras that will fit me—things that are apparently very hard to find in Korea.
Things I was advised to pack
And so the past two weeks were of doing what I now call The Expat Thank-You and Farewell Rounds (Part 7) of saying goodbye and having conversations with close friends and mentors. Closing another chapter through conversations, no matter how short that chapter was, is important to me, hence the lightning round of brunches, coffees, lunches, dinners, and drinks that make me question the human need of saying farewell over carbs. It’s quite sad to leave again, but I choose to look on the bright side. I am looking forward to uninterrupted time of continuing my work in a country that values tradition, skin care, and taekwondo as much as I do. Woohoo!
Ciao, friends! See you soon!
In the past nine years, I’ve always headed out west, and so this should be quite an adventure. Truthfully, it kind of feels like I’m going to another planet, or a parallel universe. I’m going to pretend the entire country is a dojang to minimize any untoward cultural misunderstandings. The bowing, the removal of shoes before getting in the room, shaking hands while touching your elbow—I’ve been doing this in taekwondo for the past 16 years.
Thanks to taekwondo, I feel that the chances of me unwittingly insulting a local are radically decreased.
It seems like only six months ago when I packed up my life and said goodbye.
Oh wait, it was.
Well, here goes nothing.
*Edit: So I’m here in my studio and they DO have bedsheets, or at least something that covers the bed. What the hey, internets.
Learning Cultures and Languages in the Year 2012 (Almost 2013): A User’s Experience
For reasons I will write about later, I have decided to learn the Korean language and culture. More specifically, I have decided to pack as much useful Korean phrases as possible into my head (and know how to say them in context) in the next few weeks.
I didn’t think that open source courseware from universities was the way to go. I love using online resources such as Khan Academy, Udemy, and Coursera, but they don’t really specialize in languages and cultures. In addition, with the timeframe I was giving myself, I didn’t want to feel like I was taking a class.
To my surprise, it wasn’t easy to find good online courses that teach Korean, perhaps because a lot of Korean people already speak English. Still, I believe that learning a people’s language is one of the best ways to understand them. When I lived in Barcelona, it was only when I started learning Spanish and Catalan that the locals started opening up to me. (Not that they weren’t nice to me before, but you get the idea.)
Learning a new language and culture always gives me what I refer to as a “brain massage”—I can feel my cerebral cortex almost groaning under all that cognitive load. Incorporating language classes into a busy schedule isn’t easy, and it was important to find learning material that were easily packaged into digestible pieces that are easy to recall.
Looking at the relatively small landscape of Korean culture and language videos, here are the two that are keeping me up at night (both from Youtube):
1. Professor Oh and Friends (SweetAndTasty on Youtube)
I’ve never come across better styled and more entertaining language and culture videos than those of Professor Oh’s. Her first video caught my eye, and I remembered her because her mnemonic for Korean consonants was to sing them to the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This was something that we used to do in high school, but to remember all the Chinese dynasties. (It’s quite a versatile song, yes?) It’s also really helpful that she points out common mistakes in pronunciation. She’s come quite a long way from that endearingly shy first video, and now she’s morphed into several characters. As someone with many alter egos as well, I totally relate to her. Keep going!
(Also check our her other alter ago as Ramona Champion.)
Professor Oh and Friends: Making the Korean language unforgettable. No kidding. (Photo from their Facebook page)
Because desperate times call for desperate measures, my Korean language notebook has frantically wriitten notes in the five languages I know, to highlight similarities and make me learn faster. Some Korean consonants were very similar to Mandarin, for example. It’s also funny that some words were the same in lots of languages. Banana is, well, pretty much banana in several countries.
2. Eat Your Kimchi with Simon and Martina
It’s impossible not to talk about Korean culture blogging without writing about Eat Your Kimchi. Canadians Simon and Martina Stawski came to South Korea in 2008 to teach English and started doing video blogs about their experiences as expats. They blog about the K-pop industry, but it’s their videos on culture that’s helping me. Now hugely popular, they have more than 260,000 subscribers on their Youtube channel. They even surpassed their Indiegogo goal to register EYK as an actual business.
Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi. Prepping expats for Korean living (and K-pop) since 2008. Whatup, nasties! (Photo from the Eat Your Kimchi Facebook page)
From what I’ve learned from both Professor Oh and Eat Your Kimchi is this—having that human connection where the speaker is looking at you is a plus. Having well-defined characters or personalities allow for more contextualization, and when I remember the words and phrases, I hear the characters speaking them in my head together with their idiosyncracies. It also helps that they seem to be genuinely nice people with normal lives. Thoughtfully written scripts also work well in helping me remember. I switch back and forth from these channels because it’s great to have both Korean and non-Korean perspectives.
These people all feel familiar to me, and I might instinctively give them high fives if I ever see them. Seriously, thank you, for making this process wonderfully entertaining and useful.
Dreams of Flight
My dreams of the sleeping kind are often about flying, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that I’m considering aviation. However, as someone who nearly fell out of a building at 8-years-old, I am afraid of heights. But childhood trauma be damned! As a tiny yet tangible step to being an actual explorer, I went on an ultralight for a ride overlooking the Philippine city of Angeles (about 1.5 hours from Manila) two Sundays ago.
Rorsketch: The Flying Edition
The desire to fly, or be up in the sky without the stressful ordeal of commercial flights, to which I am no stranger, also has something to do with my cloud project. For years now, I’ve looked up at the clouds. It would be awesome if I can actually be at the same height as them!
Arayat is a mountain with its own share of myths that feature gods who battle other gods and/or giants in nearby mountains or disguise themselves as humans. It’s pretty. I want to climb it. But that will be another story for another day.
On the way, the clouds were already teasing me:
Arayat. With clouds that look like the food chain. Thanks, Stephanie, for stopping the car.
It’s difficult not to imagine the Wright brothers, who worked on planes and gliders of a similar size. The smallness of it! It’s like a bike with wings. But here goes nothing:
So this is an ultralight. From afar, it’s like a dragonfly.
Fist in the air! I’m afraid of heights, but it was not the time to think about that. Photo by Steph Tan.
Up, up, and awaayyy!
A bicycle in the sky
Flying via small planes has often been compared to being on a roller coaster with invisible tracks. Unlike commercial flights, which can give you the similar, and sometimes even better views, there is no barrier between you and the atmosphere. You control the vessel (well, Captain Max who was sitting on my right did, but he let me work the controls for a bit) and it is like riding a bike in the air. It’s quite exhilarating. And the skies told their stories:
The clouds are like the net that’s catching the moon! Do you see it?
What I like about flying in relation to this project is that it makes me a part of the canvas now.
Yes, I’m in there! Photo by Steph Tan.
The change of height and vessel also brought about one crucial, if not obvious, thing: I can see the ground below. And so grass and fields and roads turned into playgrounds of visual perception as well. Living in big polluted cities all my life, it is always startling to see huge patches of green. While we were rocked by scary gusts of wind, it was air that tasted of rain and sunlight and coconuts.
I see a tangram. Sort of. You?
Broccoli!
That day, my friends and I witnessed another plane doing aerobatic sequences in the sky using a bright yellow biplane. My jaw dropped, and I stared for several minutes. Then I started squealing. I can’t wait to do that eventually.
It’s a bright yellow biplane and it’s absolutely gorgeous. And I think it was doing the sky equivalent of cartwheels.
A hangout in the hangar (Yes, puns are not funny)
When the plane landed, I marched up and interrogated the pilot, Captain Mike, who humored us and described how the plane was made. Back in the hangar, he pointed out a pair of wings being made. Each part has its own paperwork so that it can be traced should anything go wrong.
The skeleton of a wing.
Even the hat and glasses are very steampunk. Look!
I want that hat.
Planes in the hangar. Valet parking provided.
On the way back, we had fresh coconut juice from the roadside. The sunset painted the clouds a pale orange, and I caught two that looked like dolphins. The day was almost too cinematic.
I see kissing dolphins!
I grew up loving Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and was thrilled to learn that the author himself was actually a pilot. I’ve devoured his other writings, especially Wind, Sand, and Stars, Night Flight and Flight to Arras. I think traveling in general allows for creativity, but traveling alone allows you to get lost in yourself and discover these pure grains of truth that shape you without you consciously knowing it. I think this has been the reason why I keep moving and seeking new and strange experiences, and once you start, it’s difficult to stop.
Steph and Kristel Tan, and me. Thank you, ladies!
Thanks to Stephanie (@StephLTan) and Kristel Tan, The Angeles Flying Club, Captain Max, and Captain Mike!
Rorsketches to be posted soon. But check out previous ones here.
Thanks, Jesse: Proposals, pauses, and perspective
Last week, Jesse, an American soldier in Afghanistan, sent me a sketch for DrawHappy, a project I started in December 2010 where people can draw what makes them happy. (Sheesh, that sounded redundant. How about “embody their sources of joy and elation through illustration?” Better?)
bluebird
In his email, he wrote, “I know the scan doesn’t meet the requested requirements, short on resources out here.” (I usually ask for jpegs, and he sent a pdf.) I screamed to my computer, “Oh who cares about my requested requirements?! You drew a bluebird in the barracks in Afghanistan! And you sent it to me!” Hurray!
I know this is a piece among the many amazing drawings sent to me, but I will remember this (among numerous others) because of the timing. In the past two months, I’ve been neck deep in grant proposal writing, an activity that I find only slightly more agonizing than a root canal. My shotgun-like prolificness that were the two years at SVA, which seem like five years instead of five months ago, has slowed down into pockets of dreaming that have not been helped by tropical inertia. Because that is what these applications are: dreams. Intangible ones where you have to know what you want to make and how long and what it’s for and what are the things you previously did for them to even consider you and how your project is going to be amazing so please for the love of all things wonderful, pick me! These are pricey dreams, which require time, willpower, and a considerable FedEx allowance. They are infinitely less rewarding than actually going ahead and making them, but alas! you need the powers that be to say yes so you’ll have time and resources to actually execute them. And so this nail-biting process continues.
These are dreams that have yet to be realized. But still, they are the only things I have right now.
I’ve had times like these before—the downtimes and the in-between stages. I’ve learned to appreciate them because they are the spots when new ideas come and poke you and they sound crazy but you’re unstructured enough to do them anyway and realize that you do want to keep them and they become a part of you. But still, there are acute moments of suckiness and despair and isolation and un-belongingness.
I’m glad I’m on the tail end of this stage, and I’m so excited for the next step. (Eee!)
So in these last few months, few things can perk me up such as another human being reaching out to me (or at least a community I’ve built). Especially from one who is probably away from loved ones (although hey, I can only guess since we’ve never met). Whatever low points I feel, here in the city that I at least know, is nothing compared to what soldiers go through. Looking back, I’m happy that, stickler as I am for context, I asked people not just to draw, but to describe the moment of drawing. It makes me imagine the situations they are in, and realize that insightful and creative reflection can come out of any moment, be it favorable or not.
Like most creative people will tell you, the best projects they do are the ones they do for themselves. Whether they touch others or not, the first thing that happens is that the project sustains the creator herself. While this remains a side project, it’s probably the one that will throw me curve balls and surprises for years to come.
I love that the Internet can just cheer you up with a bluebird and give you perspective, just like that.
Thanks, Jesse.
P.S. And to you who are reading this, go draw what makes you happy! Visit the site here.
Catherine Sarah Young 