one of the best days/nights here: pt. I

to be in a country where everything is new and unusual it would be pretty special to have a day/night combo that would stand out. this is especially the case for me, a chronic optimist stuck in 5th gear because everything new seems to be, to quote a very special mexican friend, "really amazing. really, really amazing." jump for more...


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nom.

so let's start with the andong mask festival. angela and i met up with good friends ann, ryan and kristan to take the 100km bus ride from here in daegu to andong. we started successfully enough by walking 15 minutes south to the subway, heading east for 20 minutes on the red line and then finally taking a 20 minute taxi ride north and west, effectively making a really nice looking circle around the busy part of the city. we found these directions and took them as read without doing any sort of research thus were led to spend 950won on the subway and 9000won for the cab. we ended up at the bukbu (literally "north area". buk: north. bu: area) terminal, a place only 10 minutes, and 3000won, north of my apartment by taxi.

the bus stations here seem to be easy to deal with. after being ruthlessly queue barged and cut-off a few times by citizens of dynamic korea i was able to walk up to the ticket counter and get two tickets to andong with relative ease. there are a lot of places in korea that look like they should not accept bank cards that do, the bukbu terminal being one of them. the tickets there were 6900won with buses leaving every 40 minutes. on a sidenote, there is something to be noted here about the architecture in south korea: while the city centers develop and become notably glassier, suburbs and outskirts become more and more derelict. many buildings here are eerily reminiscent of a time when this area, daegu specifically, sat on the precipice of the PROK war line. daegu was within the pusan perimeter so was never actually breeched by the communist forces in the korean war but was definitely under threat of siege or bombardment. the older buildings of the region reflect military architecture. most are grey tiled or concrete slab constructions, squat and void of any character.


angela enjoying some of the more edible snackyfairefoodz. can't go wrong with fried dough and sugar.

it seems the mask festival itself serves as a massive boon to the area's local market economy. as we approached the festival's center we had to walk through a huge row of vendors that were slinging wares and goods not often associated with traditional cultural events and celebrations. next to the fried dough/elephant ear/churro vendor was a booth selling tools and household hardware. a few booths down from them was a sale on cheaply constructed leather shoes. strings, electric wires and tattered canopies were strung every which way. pungent smells of wildly differing levels of appeal wafted in and out like listening to seven different versions of puccini's nessun dorma by a norwegian death metal band, sigur ros, 2PM, et. al: some were good, some were very, very bad. beware the fool that keeps walking while taking in a brainful of sweet dough smell because the boiling silkworms will sneak up on your blissfully unsuspecting olfactory receptors. it's like getting hit in the face by a 2x4. on fire. with a nail on one end. the end that his you, to be more exact.




a vendor selling bibimbap, a classic korean rice dish.



but there was a mask festival behind the thick curtain of strange korea fair food. a traditional mask festival that had a free beer wagon and a massive stage and a pop music concert replete with pyros and smoke. the grounds the festival was being held at appears to be a permanent installation. the shape of a stadium but about 10 times the size and without the bleacher seating, the andong mask festival was massive. there was a mask dance stage, vendors and mask making booths. the latter was probably the best part about the whole day for me. ann, ryan, kristan, ang and i bought a blank paper mache/cardstock mask for 3000won. with this we got a 5-color pack of floam, that stuff you had as a kid and always wanted to eat but if you had you would've died because the shit's probably more toxic than the columbia river near hanford.


raw materials.

the five of us were crowded around a small little workbench under an awning. the day was plesant and we spent an hour and a half on mask making and talking. i can't say i would have had a better time doing something else.


finished product.


playing in the bubbles area.



perhaps one of the strangest things we bore witness to over the course of the fantastic day was on the stage. the barbecued squid, the strange fair food, the green spiders the size of my palm, all of this was more or less expected. the day took a turn for the surreal, however, when we were in the main plaza area with our backs to the stage. i was procuring a cup of disgusting coffee while the other four stood in a circle contemplating our next move when we heard something, to understate the point, unexpected. not traditional korean chanting or pansori...



...but something totally different and, dare i say, perhaps not exactly the most true expression of the rich culture the land of choson has to offer. no, what we turned to see were korean elementary schoolers yodeling. i can't really offer any more explanation or vitriolic remarks to make that clever or, at a long shot, humorous. there was an oompa band consisting of a tuba, stand up bass and guitar, all played by the kids the same age.


stunned, i wandered away nursing my cup of wretched coffee.

more to come.

-e
pics n' things!

fall city with the rude boyz

here are a couple snaps i took with my new g11 while riding with spencer, will, goudi and big ike at fall city.


spencer's kitchen/workshop


beers at the pump track


big ike


ill will.

-e pics n' things!

inspiration, university, skis

it requires a great deal of inspiration to continue through a prolonged 5th year of undergraduate studies. by this time in your college career you have either completely blown past the required 180 credits to graduate or you have swapped majors seven or eight times. the people in the registrar's office eventually tire of your questions and accusations and the career counseling center begins offering career counseling to their employees who have seen you countless times.


tired in big sky

one spends most of their 5th year in college swearing and drinking, two habits that have formed with vicious efficiency over the past four years. papers and studies get lost under dinner plates and friends and onlookers eventually begin to wonder why their friend (who is still in school) hangs out at the library: they never talk about schoolwork. they never talk about class. are they just creeping on the freshers? no, they are not. they are still in school, suffering through and hoping that this quarter or the next will be their last. either this or that the world will come to some fiery end.


spencer, crashed on his bespoke mattress system in byron's shed

inspiration alone can combat swearing and drinking for so long. eventually the white blood cells of everyday life breakdown and the virus begins to take over. once this process has begun it is nearly impossible to reverse. antibacterials such as nights out at the bar don't work anymore. this is, after all, a virus that we're talking about. a virus that has sat dormant and patient for the past four years is never keen on being dispatched by trifling distractions. you become lazy, angry with school and academia. work slows. there may even come a point where you don't care if all there is to sleep on is a box spring cot sans mattress so long as you're afforded peace and quiet.


line prophet 90s

ah, but there is hope. don't you remember how good it felt to go purge the system? to bootpack for 20 minutes up a run where you're rewarded with maybe four or five sweet turns? remember how good deep snow feels under the p-tex?


bootpacking up bone crusher

yeah, yeah you do. school? no problem, all i need to do is make sure that my credits from study abroad come through and i'm all set. work? that's alright, at least i have a job that pays for my active habits. drinking? if it's an occasion but otherwise i just can't be bothered. sleeping? it is rather necessary but there's nothing wrong with early mornings.


ben & spencer at the lodge

aye, so cheers! gather your mates. work hard. burn yourself out. see if you can make the last tram of the day. try that steep line. get haggard and bask in the lactic acid buildup and remember what it feels like to crash and come out on the other side unscathed and giggling. this is the antiviral. this is the purge. this is the proverbial leech for letting the bad blood.

anybody heading to mt. baker on sunday?

-e pics n' things!

big sky, (un)employment and cupcakes

tomorrow night i'll head down to seattle. spencer and i will fill ourselves and souls with dank sushi and warm sake before catching a noon flight on the 19th to big sky, montana. here we will meet up with estranged professional long-distance best friend ben. good enough to let us crowd the floor of his apartment, byron will supply the means for not sleeping in the snow. five days. skis, friends, snow. i really need to get my planks waxed, though, as it has been at least two years.

angela and i are kicking around the idea of a move to seattle/portland/hood river. i'm comforted because even if things go completely pear shaped we will still manage to stay in the pacific northwest, not far from the I-5 and I-84 corridors. it remains worrying, however. these are some sort of scary times but it certainly helps to have somebody to go through them with. everyday i think about how glad i am to be home: despite the current climate i have somebody to get through them with. there have been some pretty startling work-related developments over the past five days and ang and i just spent a weekend back home in (surprisingly) snowy trout lake discussing how to handle it all.

the only solution we were able to reasonably conclude on was "meet up with jill and her friend molly for cupcakes at cupcake jones in portland". here are two pictures of the cutest solution in the world:


cupcake, out of control


molly, jill, ang and cupcakes of varying species

the sun was even out! evidenced by my shadow:



-e pics n' things!

home (usa)

i have been back in bellingham for three days now. my room is starting to take shape and the apartment is lovely. joel, i must say, has done a fabulous job with the little place. we have a great view of south bellingham and the bay. the weather has been classic pacific northwest with rain and clouds today. i can hear the train down by the bay that is so familiar to town.

it is difficult to construct a summary of my experiences in england so i should probably not even attempt to. rather i can just say that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, i learned more there than i have in the last four years here. a little laundry list:
-i learned what type of people i want to surround myself with
-i learned that you can communicate with people and not speak the same language
-i learned the card game trumps
-i learned that the bigger the dinners the better
-i learned that staying up until 5am every night weeks before departing severely reduces jet lag
-i learned the underground to the best of my abilities
-i learned how to cope with travel hiccups, both small and large.

major discoveries:
-i discovered that truly amazing hospitality comes not with money but hugs and family
-i discovered i could live in london
-i discovered who i truly love (and i would not have been able to had i not gone)
-i discovered that nothing is permanent (doubly true with the unfortunate news regarding siggy)

it has stopped raining outside. the clouds are starting to burn off, i think.


lovely mrs. banerjee


la familia

-e

[edit] for those of you overseas here are some fotos of my new room:









pics n' things!

pulling up sticks, pt. ii

i now know what to do when you're getting ready to leave a country. a while ago i made a post asking the question of what a person is to do when they have to leave something they have only recently become accustomed to. in this case, what am i to do now that i'm leaving england in three weeks and i have just started to feel like i'm living here. i have a solution and it depends on the individual's denial-level. if you're, say, a novice and usually find yourself admitting defeat before you're given the chance to succeed at something, this may not be the route for you.

if you're like me and have become rather accustomed to pretending you'll never have to return to the real world then do i have the whet for your whistle. leave where you are and go home, just like you're supposed to. unpack your bags. take a hot shower. check your mail. doddle around the kitchen aimlessly for a day or two. pretend everything is normal.

and then pull up sticks and go on vacation.

in my case, plan a ski trip to bozeman with your chums and neglect to really think much farther beyond that. i know that, especially these days, we all need to be a little more careful and plan ahead. we don't know what's around the corner anymore so we have to choose our steps and be aware of over-zealous behavior. or not. or we deal with what may come with the awareness that we will be okay, even if things will get hard for a time. but there will always be something to be said about spurs of the moment. i.e. i can go without living what i think of as, oh, decently and respectfully for a few weeks if it means a couple days skiing with two of my favourite people in the world.

being overseas has taught me many things. don't get in a cab drunk and forget your address. don't tell a northerner he sounds like a southerner. don't miss your flights. but most importantly, don't pass it up. whatever it is. don't.

so, take a vacation. the economic crisis will still be here when you get back.

-e


ben, aubrey, bobby, than, myself pics n' things!

first snow

the sky, in hull, sparkles for the first time in months. snow frosts everything.


hwy 141

the first snow is an important marker during the year for me. there's never anything such as the first "nice day of spring" or the first "rainy day of fall". the first snow holds a special place atop the pantheon of memorable days. it's baffling to me how the cold fluff imprints itself on our imaginations as something worth assigning memory to, how it can shimmer on the coldest mornings or make people run around laughing and screaming with joy. what's the magic that it holds? how can it possibly mean so much to everybody across the world? what makes something so miserably cold, and in most cases completely impractical and inconvenient, worth anything?

for me it's trout lake, my hometown the size of a peanut to washington's football stadium. every winter i look forward to the first snow because no matter where i am and how charming the surroundings are they always take me home. i am always inclined to think about freezing toes and sled runs that would mom and dad nervous. the clearcut behind ben's house and ill-fated attempts to build forts. iced over ponds that break under the weight of skis and ski boots resulting in premature trips back to the warm confines of the paxson home.


ben & spencer, 2005

i don't believe that i default on these memories every time it snows because of some simple maudlin nostalgia. i think the trigger is something deeper, something in my upbringing, my blood. something to do with the fact that i've only experienced two "dry" christmas' in all my life and one was in california. something to do with the fact that we got so much snow in 1996 that the town flooded and the vending machine at the local gas station was torn up and carried down the raging rapids that was once an irrigation ditch. something to do with the fact that i've shoveled snow four or five deep.

i miss the winter in washington, i think. this is a beautiful season and even bellingham held onto a bit of that magic for me whereas north england seems content to wallow in a sort of grey sadness. there are christmas "decorations" on the street and i have lights up in my room but there is an element of shine that is missing here.

despite the obvious lack of snow to romp around in with mates, of course.

-e pics n' things!