Instant reaction: ding dong, the Kim Jong Il is dead?

First reaction: suspicion.  It's not like North Korean media is a reliable source.  But I don't seen why they'd fake his death.  If anything, they'd be apt to put out propoganda that he's immortal.  After all, he was purported to not use the bathroom because he was superhuman and produced no waste.  Also he supposedly made like eleven holes-in-one in the first time he ever played golf because he's a supreme being.

Second reaction: what does this change? Reminds me of the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death. Dang, a lot happened this year in this world, amiright? Seal team 6 seals the deal, they capture Whitey, and now the ruler of the hermit kingdom is no more. Dang.  But anyway, I'm disinclined to celebrate; he took over ruling North Korea from his father, and now his son looks like the most likely candidate to fill in the small but powerful shoes left behind.

Third reaction: be the one to tell my parents, who have actual opinions on this matter, having been born and raised in South Korea.

Fourth reaction: embarassing, but I'll admit it-- I wonder if this'll seep into the sixth season of 30 Rock.  The fifth season of this NBC comedy ended with (spoiler alert!) Avery Jessup (played by Elizabeth Banks, who'll be busy for the next few years with a big role in the Hunger Games movies) taken hostage by North Korea, forced to be a "journalist" there, and maybe married to an officer.  The sixth season is currently in production, and I wonder if/how the writers will incorporate this news into her plotline.  But more importantly, I wonder if they're bring Margaret Cho back to give another devastating impersonation of le deceased

Briefly: Thoughts on the Korean language

As I'm sure I've written  before, Korean was probably the first language I learned growing up.  I was born and raised here in the States, in Massachusetts, and watched a lot of PBS as a baby, but I also watched some Korean children's shows and my parents spoke to me in a pretty even combination of Korean and English.  When someone asked what my name was I'd reply that I was 지원 (G1), which is actually my legal middle name; I didn't consistently identify myself with my first name until I started going to school.  My mastery of Korean has stayed at about that level, so I sound like an Americanized five-year-old when I speak it.

The Korean language is mostly foreign to me, but at the same time it's comforting to hear it, to listen to it.  It's music to my ears.  I don't always know what is being said when it is spoken but I can identify the tone.  To me its the prettiest sounding Asian language, but of course I'm completely biased.  Then again, it can also be the scariest, because it's the language that's used on me and my siblings when we get in trouble...and Ken Jeong seems to agree at the intensity of the Korean language:


Still, I can't get out of my head this memory from childhood, of waking up on Sunday morning and just lying in bed, listening to my parents talk to each other in Korean, speaking very lovingly toward each other, undisturbed (for the time being) by us kids.  I hope to have that kind of facility with the Korean language, but I'm closer to being fluent in Spanish; it'd be awesome to be able to say that I'm trilingual but for now I'm aiming to be bilingual in English and Spanish.

A bit of tae kwon doe

I laugh at this not just because it's cute but because if I ever were made to fight I'd probably behave similarly.



Needless to say, I've never been in a physical fight with anyone, or physically bullied, thanks to the fact that I am a girl, a female, someone who took ballet lessons as a child.  If I were a boy I'd probably have been in the same position as one of these boys-- the red one, if I could get away with it, because it would've been my favorite color at the time.

Of course, the point of tae kwon doe isn't to fight but to instill physical and mental discipline through the use of this Korean martial art style.  I'm sure there's a philosophy to tae kwon doe but the educational mantra of kung fu and karate (from China and Japan, respectively) seem more glamourous and filmable to Hollywood execs, I guess.

My grandmothers

Both my grandmothers are widows, and have those kind of unnerving grave plots with their names and their birth year with a dash and a space to be filled in when they are put to rest.  My mother's mother's birthday was yesterday, which took a little calculating.  We know her birthday according to the lunar calender, which is what Korea went by back in the day.  My mom figured out that the birthday was six days after the September full moon; I guess in Korea the first of the month is marked by the full moon, whereas here in America we start the lunar cycle with the new moon.

In other news, my other grandmother, my father's mother, just got a Facebook. I know-- an octogenarian on a popular social networking site!  And she has a cell phone, too.  And plays online poker.  We're both the same animal in the zodiac, and I hope that when I'm her age-- assuming I live that long and don't die a tragic early death-- I'm something like her.

Numbers

Today is September 11th, 2011.

Yesterday was the 10th, or, as Americans also write it, 9/10/11.  It doesn't entirely make sense as to why we in America put the date as month/day/year; I'm sure there's some fascinating (to me, anyway) story about why we do it this way but it's still not logical.  I think that in Europe they go from smallest to largest (day/month/year) and I can't speak for Asia as a whole but in Korea the date is listed by the year first, then the month, and finally with the day.

Nine, ten, eleven.  Most of the world uses base 10 in counting, and makes a big deal about anniversary years that are multiples of 5 and 10.  But we all start with one.

1: the beginning.  Everyone wants to be number 1.  Number one also refers to urination (why?)

2: can refer to defecation (again, why?).  Silver medalist, not bad at all.

3: good things come in threes?  Bronze medalist, just made it to the podium.

4: in Chinese this number is bad luck because it sounds like the word for "death". 4-1-1 refers to info.

5: halfway to ten! Number of fingers on a hand, toes on a foot (usually).

6: Sixth is "sexto" in Spanish.  From Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, the toughest tongue twister: the sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick"

7: Lucky number in American/Western lore.

8: Homophone of "ate".

9: Almost at ten.  Why do the digits 9-1-1 refer to emergencies?  Why these three digits?  I wonder what the number for emergencies is in other countries. Which reminds me of this silly little clip from another one of my beloved BBC/Channel 4 sitcoms...

10: Back to seriousness.  The big one-zero, the first of the double digits if we go by Arabic numerals.  A decathalon is ten events, a decade is ten years, December is the...twelfth month.  Again, things don't always make sense. 

Again, it's hard to make sense of this world.  But there's still hope...

Musings on language, redux

Last week I read Robert B. Moore's Racism in the English Language, which can be found here.  One section of it goes over many uses of the words "black" and "white" to refer to negative and positive things, respectively.  It's no coincidence, the use of those words in relation to race, at least in my opinion.  It got me thinking about a few things about the Korean language and how certain words have two means:

- 말 can mean "horse" or "words/language/what is spoken".  But there are other words for "word" and "language" and "what is spoken", depending on the situation.  I wonder why these two share the same sound, the way "right" can mean "opposite of left" or "correct"

- the word for a pepper (hot pepper) is the same as the (slang?) word for a man's genitalia; presumably because...they look similar? I've looked the word up in my Korean-English dictionary and it gives a different word, but I've only ever heard it referred to the word that is a homophone for "pepper", so that's why I'm just assuming it's slang and not the official proper name

-  배 can mean belly/stomach, boat/ship, or pear.  Again, I wonder why three words share the same word-sound, and I can't find it as a triple homophone in my dictionary, so I'll assume that the first two words have other technical/authentic words that are used in typical language and depending on the situation

English, for all its words and rules and loopholes, is a very lax language and not very specific compared to other languages.

My "Where's Waldo?"

I'm one of those people who likes to sit and watch the entire movie credits at the end of a film.  My reason for this is probably different than many other peoples. 

Why would people want to stay for the credits?

1.  To watch the bloopers
Examples include: many Jackie Chan movies (Supercop, the Rush Hour movies), some Pixar films (the first two Toy Story films, A Bug's Life as well, I think).  I'm sure there are more movies that fit in all the categories I list here but they don't readily come to my mind

2.  To look out for a bonus/epilogue scene that may tie into a sequel
The Pirates of the Caribbean series and any film connected to the behemoth Avengers film has done this.  Captain America: The First Avenger hasn't come out yet, and I haven't seen the entirety of either Iron Man film but I know that all these films have a tag/tie-in scene after the main plot of the film has officially ended. 

Mellow yellow

I think my skin is naturally a bit dark, as far as Koreans go.  My skin does tan but I never intentionally tan, as I'm happy with the color of my skin as it is.  I wear sunblock but I'm not very attentive with it; if I get tan lines I get tan lines, and I've only ever gotten sunburn twice in my life.

I have very yellow skin.  Sometimes I feel that I don't tan so much as I get a deeper brown-yellow tone.  Generally I don't mind my yellowness in the literal sense.  I like that I have a warm skin tone.  I don't like pastels (spring tones) and look terribly jaundice and sickly when I wear any soft, creamy color.  I only started to notice this in high school; funny that it was then that I began to be more attentive to color in the literal and figurative sense.

Ramblings on age (part I, maybe)

I went to go see "Bridesmaids" recently and I got asked to present identification.  That's something that hasn't happened to me in a while; I don't see TONS of R-rated movies but that was only the second time I was asked to prove that I was of age.  Well, actually, I tried to buy a ticket for "Love, Actually" when it came out but bought a ticket for "Haunted Mansion" and sneaked into the theater next door just in time to hear Bill Nighy drop a string of f-bombs.

Chink?! (a work in progress)

It happened five years ago as I was walking home from school.  It was about this time of year; the sun was shining and it was a nice day out which was probably why I was walking in the first place.  My house is situated halfway up a hill, almost two miles from my high school and by the time the driveway was in sight I really worked up a sweat. I could feel a nice squashy V-shaped sweat impression on my back, and thought about how nice it would be to finally get inside, peel off my clothes and take a nice cool shower.  With my driveway about fifty feet away a pickup truck rumbled past me, carrying two white males sprawled out in the truck bed.  I made brief accidental eye contact with one of them as I pushed my glasses back up my nose, then I looked down to grab my keys.  One of them shouted something and as I brought my head back up the truck disappeared behind the curve.  I blinked, feeling confused.  My mind quickly processed what had just happened, and then I blinked a few more times to hold back tears as I caught up with my own thoughts and emotions.

Chink.  He had called me a chink.  For an instant I tried to deny it but (unlike the clip below) I knew deep down that there was no mistaking what he had said and that it had been aimed at me. He called me a chink.  I tried to reassure myself and thought to myself, “That’s stupid.  I’m not even Chinese!”  And then I immediately felt really stupid.  It’s not as if it would’ve made a difference if I really were Chinese.  Besides, even fellow Korean people have mistaken me for Chinese.  I don’t have anything against Chinese people but it’s annoying to be mistaken for something I’m not.

Still, it hurt to be called by that epithet.  I had been called slanty-eyed and made fun of for the way that “Asian languages” supposedly sound to non-Asian ears, been teased for my food, for my clothing, my height—but that was the first time I had been called by that word, and the first time one was directed at me so forcefully.  I’ve grown up in a pretty well off community, where I was rarely the only Asian student in my class and one of my best friends was the co-resident of the Asian Culture Club at my high school.  I didn’t have to go through what my grandfather or parents went through.  In today’s world, to be Asian is to be good at math; a generation ago someone would’ve said that we all knew kung-fu (or karate, because really what’s the difference?)  And certainly I don’t have to face the dilemma my grandfather did when he first came to America; he was in the south and had to decide between using the “white” bathroom or the one for “colored people”.  Mind you, my grandfather had pretty fair skin and wouldn’t have considered himself colored, but he still knew that there wasn’t something right about using the white people’s restrooms.  (I don’t know what he actually ended up doing; maybe he just held it in?)

image source

As I went in my house all I could hear in my head was that word, and kept asking myself “What? What?” and feeling hatred well up inside me.  I hated the man who randomly hurled such hate at me.  I hated myself for being so think skinned, and letting it get to me.  I hated that I was feeling sorry for myself, knowing that far worse words and actions had and have been inflicted on people, and that I was giving it so much thought.

What had that shouter to gain?  He already had the upper hand many ways: he was in a car going 30 miles an hour, I was walking; he was a man, I a teenage girl; he was white and I was, well, not.  He already had those things going for him.  We didn’t know each other.  Why had he chosen to shout at me? That was one of the big things that bothered me, too.  At least Alexandra Wallace (and I can’t believe I’m defending her) had specific grievances with the Asian people she knew and she directed her hate toward them in a very clearly delineated way.  But this person-- what had I ever done to him, aside from unintentionally look at him, or happen to be walking as he was driven by?  It sucks when people publicly and flagrantly act racist, but these little random personal attacks can be just as effective, just as damaging.  Institutional racism sucks but can be dealt with to a certain degree. But how am I to defend myself from such a random impersonal attack?  I can’t help but take it personally.

I haven’t thought about this incident since it happened.  I never told anyone about this until just recently, when thinking back on the fact that May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.  Even as I write this I get indignant and upset.  But I’m glad that it still makes me feel this way; it means that I haven’t become complacent and reminds me how to get legitimately angry.

An Observation

In Spanish--and I’m guesing this goes for French and other European languages in which nouns are gendered--the sun is el sol (masculine article) and the moon is la luna (with the feminine article).  Son, the word for a male child, and sun are homophones.  There’s a song called “Mr. Sun”.  In Western cultures the calender is marked by the movements of the earth around the sun.

There’s a Korean folktale that I learned as a child.  It says that a brother and sister stole away into the night and were chased by a tiger; they ended up escaping it by going into the moon with the brother becoming the sun and the sister turning into the moon.  But the girl was scared of the dark, so the siblings switched places and the brother became the moon.  The moon is male. Many Eastern cultures follow the lunar calender, marked by the cycles of the moon around the earth.


I wonder if there's a culture out there which believes that feminine>masculine and reflects this in its calender.

Scar stories: Left foot toes

I always carry medical adhesive tape with me in my purse.  Whenever I wear heels or any other potentially problematic shoes I make sure to tape up my foot in places of frequent friction.  I learned this trick from having danced en pointe.

I don't like pine nuts

I'm not fond of the way they taste, but what really gets to me is that they look like teeth.  Like baby teeth, or rodent teeth.  I'm not particularly phobic when it comes to dentistry or teeth-- I've never liked going to see the dentist but I developed an appreciation for their work when I went to Nicaragua-- yet to me there's something inherently disturbing about thinking about eating teeth, of crunching teeth between your teeth.

Because every American subculture deserves a show!

I read about this tv show maybe about a year ago.  I'm slightly less ambivalent about it now than I was then.  I'm curious as to how it will change people's perception of Asians-- Koreans in particular.  Later-- maybe when the show is on air-- I'll include a more detailed account of my feelings toward the show, but right now I'm too tired to be more...articulate.  Without further ado:

Bling bling like LED

Another music video that makes me absurdly happy for its absurdity:



This features two groups: the girl group 2ne1 (prounounced "twenty-one") and the boy group Big Bang.  I only understand about 5% of the lyrics, since that's about the percentage that's written in/with English.  Besides, most of the words are hip, slang words, the way that modern Korean teenagers use.  Stuff that definitely was not taught when I went to Korean school as a grade schooler.  Still, I think I get the gist of the song.

I hate that I love to hate this video

Yesterday I ran across this viral video several of the sites I check on a daily basis. 



My contempt for the featured ranter has subsided somewhat since the first time I watched her video.  I'm amused at the turn-around time this video took, from when it was posted to the time it was removed, copied, and made into an auto-tuned remix.  The most entertaining of the lot:



This video exasperates me on many levels:
1.  The way that YouTube's tagline (Broadcast Yourself) has been interpreted as encouragement to post these kind of rants on such a visible platform.
2.  That (racist) people like this still exist in 21st-century America.
3.  The blatant hypocrisy of what the woman says.
4.  Lack of tact in regard to an increasingly devastating effects of the earthquake(s) and tsunami in Japan.

I could go on, but I'm all sorts of tired right now.

Angry Asian Man is much more articulate, and where I got both videos.

Re-Lent?

The Korean sausage that my mother served for lunch on Sunday isn't really a sausage, strictly speaking.  Its casing was not made of animal intestine and contained no meat but was stuffed with noodles and vegetables.  So, technically, as a vegetarian it would be okay for me to eat it, right? Well there's one thing ingredient I left out: 

EVEN more blathering about language!

Two Sundays ago I happened to be watching a Korean game show, and one of the questions asked was "What is the name of the website that Julian Assange created?" Although some of the contestants claimed that they followed the news and knew the answer they had a hard time articulating the right answer. Here are some of the answers they came up with:
- Weak Leaks
- Whisk List
- Wick Lisk
- Whiskey Licks (my favorite)

Often when words from the English language are put into Korean, extra syllables are added: "WikiLeaks" becomes "We-key-lee-kuh-suh". You can't make "ks" into one syllable in Korean, it's just not possible to write it like that. There's no "v" or "f" sound in Korean, so "p" is often used in place. I think Japanese shares the trait of mixing up "r" and "l"; my father told me of an instance when my grandmother misread a bus schedule and insisted that she "took a long bus" when she meant "wrong bus". I don't intend to mock the Korean language in any way, but find it curious how certain things can get lost in translation between these two languages.

Note: image above does not feature the game show I watched