Samsung VLUU WB500

So... does anyone know anything about this camera? It's Korean... Samsung. Probably only sold in Korea, because I can't find any reviews on the typical camera review sites. I did find this one blog entry about it on Naver: http://blog.naver.com/meancoco/130042068988

What do you think?

Camera buying opportunity

I've got the opportunity to buy a used Powershot s5 IS here in Seoul. The offer is 500,000 for the camera, all the included software and manuals, two memory cards plus a battery charger. The camera is about a year old. Is it worth it? Here are the specs: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons5is/. I'm going to check out the camera on Saturday.

Male Accessories....

I've been talking about buying a DSLR for a while now... like almost 4 months and I still haven't gotten one. That's not what this blog post is about, but that's where it starts. I was walking down the street in Kongdae (not Hongdae) with my Korean conversation partner. A young man passed by, and I stopped and stared. Not at him, but at the camera he had slung over his shoulder. He had a nice camera, just the sort of thing I've been dying to have. I turned to my conversation partner and said that I was jealous, that I wanted one like that. She laughed and said "Oh, I bet he doesn't even know how to use it. It's just an accessory...". What??? That's a pretty expensive accessory... Maybe they could just give it to me instead....

But men in Korea tend to have some interesting accessories in the eyes of a westerner. There is the ubiquitous "man bag" as we like to call it, though some are really more like "man purses". Leather bags are quite common, and these are fairly masculine, but sometimes you can see some really... pretty... bags. Then there is the mirror. I was told that all guys carry around a little mirror, just like some women do. I never saw this for myself until I went out for drinks with a male Korean friend of mine. We wanted to take some photos, but first he had to whip out his mirror out of his backpack! My American friend and I almost died laughing, but I'm not sure if he figured out what was so funny.

Men here are just as concerned with fashion as women are. It's definitely a cultural difference. Male fashion at home is so casual. Men don't like to let on that they care about their appearance... or maybe it's just that American guys obsess about different things... like their sneaker brands or something. Here, men dress like they are straight out of a fashion magazine. I hear it's 10 times more intense in Japan, but I haven't been there myself to know for certain. It's kind of nice to see well dressed men though. When they don't look like women that is.

One of the funniest blogs out there...

If you know anything about Korea, you will like this blog. It basically rags on Korean culture, but not in a negative way... just in an awesome way. So.. if you want a good laugh, check out this blog: Dokdo Is Ours. I also have a link to them in my sidebar menu here.

Interesting Sights of Vietnam

I found this post that I was going to post up when I came home from Vietnam, but never did. Here it is, from the vault.


Korean restaruant in Ho Chi Min City!

Snowflakes on a willow tree... it was also about 75 degrees.
Street vendors.
.... These are the telephone wires that run down the streets.... good lord, how does anything get fixed when it's broken? You'd never know which is which....

Propaganda.... can anyone translate for me? Most of them seemed to be about wearing your seat belt, but they were all drawn in the traditional propaganda-style.

everyone seems to have a little temple in thier house. This is a view from our hotel window in Ho Chi Minh City. This was almost close enough to touch... houses were pretty close together here...
Yummy yummy noodles... mmmmmm....
Making rice paper and drying it in the sun.
Mopeds, mopeds everywhere...
Rice paddy!
The making of all those laquered wood and mother of pearl artwork that you see everywhere... can't belive it's all done by hand......

Random Buddhist shrine that you see everywhere....

Random Street Conversations

Today as I was leaving work, I was approached by a woman asking me, in Korean, how to get to Wangsimni Station. It seemed a little strange to me that a Korean would walk up to a foreigner, and ask directions in Korean. Most Koreans automatically assume that you speak no Korean and know nothing about Seoul. Then when they realize that you know more than they do about directions (even if you can't perfectly articulate it in their language) they are incredibly impressed. As if I know everything about everywhere in Boston, my hometown.

Anyway, I tried my best in my broken Korean to explain to her where it was. She seemed to get the point from my saying straight and left. Then she asked me where I was from. I told her that I was an American. I started to get the feeling that she wasn't Korean either. She then explained to me that she was from Mongolia. Well, I assume that that's what 'mongol saram' would be. She was extremely short, even to me, who is extremely short, even in Korea. I was quite impressed by the fact that a: she was from Mongolia and b: by the fact that she spoke Korean so naturally. I've been trying to think, but I don't think I've ever met a Mongolian before. She explained to me that she lives in Seoul. She told me how long she had been living here, but I couldn't get that detail of our conversation.

Anyway, we walked with her for a little bit, since we were walking in the same direction. I was happy again with my Korean skills, but while I'm good at this sort of conversation (the typical... how long have you been here, where do you live, where do you work, what do you do.. etc) I can't really have much more of a conversation than that. But, hey, it's great for meeting people for the first time...

Anyway, just thought I'd share this little cross-cultural experience of speaking Korean as a common language with another foreigner. :-)

닭한마리

닭한마리 (dak-han-mari), literally translated means one chicken. It's actually a chicken soup with a whole chicken (don't worry, it's gutted and they took the head off) thrown in. Thursday night my friend took me to a place on one of those back alley labyrinths near Dongdaemun to find this restaurant that serves this. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you can get at just any old place. On the way there we passed a boshintang restaurant.... I need to try that someday before I leave this country. If you don't know what it is, I'll let you figure it out for yourself, I don't want to cause any gag reflex for any of my readers unnecessarily.

When we went in and sat down the first thing they brought us was a big pot of broth and put it on the burner (lots of restaurants in Korea have a gas burner on the table because there are so many meals that cook right in front of you... think Galbi, Bulgogi, Shabu Shabu...etc). Then they brought over a whole, raw chicken. The waitress took scissors and skillfully cut it long ways and crossways and cut off the the wings and legs and threw everything into the pot. I wish I had a photo of that part, because that was probably the most impressive part of the meal. She also threw in some sort of chicken innard... I'm not sure if it was liver or kidney or what, but I don't think that's that strange... people in the US eat liver sometimes too.


As that boiled, they brought over a huge bowl of chili sauce and another bowl of... greens. I have no idea what this vegetable is, it sort of looks like really nice grass, but it tastes good. My friend made a mix for me with the chili sauce, minced garlic, some mustard and some unidentified oil. Then I threw in my greens and gobbled it up while I waited for our chicken to cook.

When our chicken was ready to eat, I found that it was rather difficult to eat. Since it was coming out of a soup, I wasn't really inclined to eat it with my fingers, but how else do you get chicken off the bone? This was my first attempt:


This turned out to be rather messy and unfruitful. So, i finally switched to scraping the chicken off the bone with my spoon and chopsticks, mixing it in my chili/garlic/ greens mixture and scooping it up in my spoon. Whatever, it tasted awesome anyway.


Then, after we ate all the chicken we could, we then threw some noodles in the pot. This sort of reminded me of Shabu Shabu. Just like in Shabu Shabu, when you finish your meat and veggies, they throw in the noodles. On a side note, I learned this week that not all noodles are the same. The word for noodle is 면 (myon... think ra-myon). But these noodles, while they are 면, they are a special kind of myon (wider) and so they are called 국수 (gooksoo). Anyway When the noodles were done cooking, I threw those into my chili/garlic/ greens mixture and gobbled those up too.

Anyway, I had fun trying a new and different Korean food. I suggest you go and try it!