My favorite korean dish

Korean food is really tasty!! My only complain is that it's a bit too meaty for my taste. However, i found the perfect one: vegetarian bibimbap (even the name sounds sooo cute, doesn't it??). I love this dish! I swear i could live on it.



Wikipedia says: The word literally means "mixed meal." Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating. For visual appeal, the vegetables are often placed so that adjacent colors complement each other.


The convenient part is that even if i can't explain to the waiter that i want it vegetarian (language barrier :P), I can simply remove the meat at the beginning, before mixing everything together. Yummy!!

Why do bad things happen to good people?

At the beginning of the week I got very bad news about a dear friend of mine... The thought deeply shocked me, just couldn't think of anything else! What seems amazing to me is how, despite something tremendously wrong happening, everything else stays just the way it is, people continue with their usual lives, eating, sleeping, laughing, fighting, getting upset for small reasons, the earth keeps on spinning. It's just like one life alone does not make any difference in this whole gear. I have this sudden feeling of guilt whenever I say a joke or I laugh, whenever I smile to a friend, or feel happy for no reason. I feel we should all be sad cause the world is not the same as before, something went wrong and we simply can't forget.

In this whole story, i did have a pleasant and totally unexpected surprise. After getting the horrible news, i was so shocked that i couldn't go out for lunch. Just stayed in the office, pretending to be working, while actually starring blankly at the screen. Guess i made it quite obvious for everybody that something was wrong. That's when some colleague that had packed food with him, came and asked me whether i want to share some of his lunch. I was so surprised.. I couldn't even remember his name, and he wanted to share his lunch with me. It truly moved me...

Don't wanna be a tourist anymore...

Some days back, while grocery shopping, I decided that it's time to leave the supermarket behind and adventure into the outdoor market. As there is one close to my place, seemed like a good idea to see how far i can get with my english and miming abilities (have to say that miming was far more useful).



Overall, I was pretty impressed. Everyone I met made the effort to understand me and even gave me discounts ;). The funniest was one seller speaking a bit of english who, after finding out my nationality, got out from behind the counter, shook my hand and told me that i am the first romanian he meets :). Even more, I got freebies from three different stores. Below is the accounting:
- bought one pot -> received one ladle
- bought shower gel + hair mask -> received body lotion
- bought one sandwich -> received one bottle of milk

Isn't Korea just great?!

Waterless clothes washing

As i'm running out of clean clothes, i decided it's time to do laundry. Hence, I used for the first time my korean washing machine. I prepared long and hard for this moment, took photos of the menu, showed them to my colleagues and asked them to translate it for me. So, i really thought there will be no problems. But again, life is full of surprises. After setting all the options, i pressed the start button, and the washing process started. Everything seemed ok at the beginning, but after about 5 minutes the absence of any kind of water inside the washing machine became suspicious. Everything else was there, the rolling back and forth, the noise.. everything except for water. So, unless the koreans invented a revolutionary washing technology which they did not share with the rest of the human kind, i would say there is something going wrong! I looked around the washing machine and found some water switch controlling the water flow going into the washing machine (or at least that's what i think is doing - understanding the label would again be useful...) and turned it on. However, it did not change anything :(. Still no water! Ideas??!

The best way to start the weekend

Today i decided to buy some more things i'll need during my stay here: some towels, slippers, hangers etc. After being all happy with my shopping, i realized that i have almost no cash left and need to withdraw money so i went to an atm. And that's when my memory started acting funny. It got as inputs both my card pin and my phone number, combined them together, and output to me the wrong pin combination. Hence, I entered what i thought was my pin the first time and got the reply "pin incorrect". Thought i must have pressed some wrong key and entered the same number the second time. Same result: "pin incorrect". So, what do u think i did?? I thought nicely about the atm on the lines of "@#$%%$%^%^ ATM @##$%%!!!!!" and entered the pin the third time. Only when i got the message: "You've exceeded the number of tries" I understood the drama: alone in Seoul, with no cash and my bank card blocked.

Fortunately, they did not physically retained my card. I think they only do that if the atm pertaines to the bank that issued the card, which was not the case.
So, here comes the part where I explain how much i love singapore. I rushed back to my place, called the bank in singapore and got my card fully functional in 5 minutes. Isn't this great?? Now i can relax and make weekend plans. No need to diet :).

Karma

Today I've acknowledged the existence of two universal laws:
1. The world is a small place! Besides me, there is another foreigner visiting the same research group at SNU. I heard quite a lot about him since I arrived, but i only met him this morning cause he was away for the past few days. Well, the surprise was that we know each other! Couldn't believe it! What were the odds??!!

2. There is such thing as karma! Before telling this story, I should give some background on yoga in Korea. I'm referring to yoga taught by local instructors, for the locals. I attended one such class two days ago and thought I'll die of frustration. They do not have any of the traditional poses that I'm used to. None! Really, the only resemblance to the yoga classes i've attended til now is the yoga mat. I got so frustrated during my first class here, it's like they are trying to reinvent the wheel. I don't understand why they don't go for the traditional poses whose benefits have been studied for a long time instead of inventing new ones. It's absurd!! After coming back from the class, I wrote a post screaming all my irritation, but decided not to post it cause it was way too aggressive...

However, coming back to today's story, I decided that this so called yoga is actually the best thing i'll find while in South Korea, so I should just take it as another form of exercising. After all, it's better than nothing. Hence, this evening I joined one of the fitness clubs on campus, which is also offering yoga classes. Joining the club wasn't without adventures as the guy there didn't speak english and I had to fill in a form which was in korean. Eventually, i kinda guessed what some of the fields were about so i did my best to provide all the information. Apparently, one of the mistakes I did (as pointed out by a more english knowledgeable guy who was peeking over my shoulder at the form) was a less fortunate choice of gender.. Anyways, I managed to register.. male or female.. who cares?! :D

I went to the yoga studio half an hour before class and started warming up. The other students were also in the studio, setting up the mats. And next thing i know the little devil on my shoulder started acting up and, when asked by another person there how is yoga in singapore, I kinda showed off all the inversions and arm balancings I know. And actually, i never managed to hold the handstand for this long, or to bend this much in scorpion, or to link together the arm balancing poses like this.. See, all i need is the right motivation. Definitely, I changed people's view on yoga.. these guys are never going to try it in singapore :)).

But, as what goes up must come down, after the class i got totally lost in the campus, out of any cab's reach and without knowing any contact number of a cab agency. And of course that exactly when i needed directions, nobody could speak english.. it took me 1 hour to exit the campus! Peace to u all!

Morning walk!

This morning I decided to walk all the way from my place to the university. I was told it should take about 40 minutes. The estimation is correct. However, the only detail missing is that i need to walk up hill.. and trust me, though from the bus it seemed perfectly doable, the story changes completely when you are actually walking. This experience made me remember the times when I was jogging with Claudia around the NUS campus. Actually, she was the one doing the jogging part and looking all professional, whereas I was concentrating more on staying alive :D. Yeah, I did make her look good!

Coming back to my current expedition, when I eventually reached the university I was feeling like reaching heaven. I should also add that on the way I resisted the temptation of stopping and taking the bus. That was the hard part. Damn bus stops. To conclude, my today's resolution is that, as long as the weather is nice, I'm going to walk to the university each morning! [Aaa... guess my only hope now is that the cold weather will set in soon]