Thursday, August 20, 2009

Soap on a Stick


I wonder how you say "slightly unsanitary" in Korean..





Monday, August 17, 2009

The Great Beer Experiment™

One night a couple of weeks ago, my friend Ben and I were lost. Not lost in the physical sense, but in the mental/emotional sense. We needed a purpose. We needed a challenge. We needed to drink more beer.


These three things came together in what I will call The Great Beer Experiment™. This was a test of wits and endurance to categorize the wide range of Korean beer.


Some of you may scoff that we considered ourselves qualified to spearhead such an important study. Please allow me shed some light on our qualifications. 


Evan - 


1) Graduated in only five years with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance 
2) Was once a judge for Bozeman Idol
3) Cannot really smell anything unless it is very strong


Ben - 
1) Is Korean-American. He probably has genes that can detect the nuances put in place by the Korean Brewmasters
2) Claims to have consumed lots of beer
3) Often looks like this:
and anyone who gets a shirt, tie, pocket protector and Harry Potter glasses painted onto his body must be smart.

Our experiment consisted of the following:

Ritz-like crackers -  to cleanse the palate - saltines were unavailable
Water - also to cleanse the palate
Imitation Crab - to be consumed post-experiment, for nothing more than the elation that is experienced when one eats imitation crab

And the beer, followed by its catch phrase





Hite - "Cool & Fresh"
Cass - "Fresh" or "Sound of Vitality"
OB Blue - "The Original Quality Beer"
Max - "Delicious Idea"

We started out by tasting each beer and writing down our description. We didn't look at the other's description so as to not be swayed. No editing was done, all descriptions taken directly from the experiment's notes.




Hite - "Cool & Fresh"

Ben - Strong, but not overwhelming alcohol taste. With a "flowery" taste
Evan - Goes down smooth, very little aftertaste. Doesn't necessarily taste "Fresh" though, and "Cool" is based on your own refrigeration techniques. Taste = Old.

Cass - "Fresh" or "Sound of Vitality"

Ben - Mild tasting compared to Hite, on its own, it has a slight stale taste.
Evan - I will describe Cass as having a "heavier" taste. It lingers a little longer, but not in a negative way. Like a friend more than an acquaintance. 

OB Blue - "The Original Quality Beer"

Ben - Stronger aftertaste that takes a moment to be sharp. Has milder "flowery" taste than hite.
Evan - Hello St. Peter! My tongue just died and went to heaven! I would call OB Blue "Full" and "Robust" slightly "Sweet" but still tastes like "Beer."

Max - "Delicious Idea"

Ben - Maltier taste than the first three. Not so much crisp as a taste that sits on the palate. Okay on flavor overall.
Evan - Max Beer: Specially brewed in your grandma's basement. It could be good if they marketed it as such, but with a name like "Max" it is like your Driver's Ed teacher telling you how "...Everclear (the band) totally rocks!!!" in an effort to look cool amongst 14 year olds. 

We did two separate taste tests where one member poured the beer into numbered cups while the other played games on my iPhone. 



So what were our results? Ben correctly identified half of the beers. Four out of eight tastes he got correct. I identified one. Just one out of eight. I had such high opinions of the beer, also. I hated Max.. but it turns out that I really don't know what I hate. Well, Max is the one I got right, so I guess I can pick that one out. But I really liked OB Blue and I couldn't differentiate that from the other two. Despite our obvious lack of skill in identifying the individual tastes, we both decided that OB Blue is the best. And Max is the worst. 

I also felt the individual tastes of the beer became muddled once they got warm. We didn't plan ahead and have the beer on ice and the tasting took a good hour and a half. And Hite's claim of being "Fresh & Cool" certainly didn't stand up.

Most foreigners here have their own names for the beer: Shite, Ass, BO.. and Max.. I guess.. nothing really funny can be derived from Max.

Maxasshite - My attempt at logo humor

The bright side of the story is that a couple nights ago I found a brewery that imports beer from Canada. Real beer. Real delicious beer. For when Max, Cass, Hite, OB and soju just can't cut it.

And the imitation crab was delicious. 
As it always is.



에반



에반


Insadong is a touristy, traditional section of the Seoul. It is a nice artsy section of town where you can get fans, incense, candles and brushes that will help you remember Korea. I chose to get a stamp.

I am normally not too big on buying souvenirs. I usually end up losing them or forgetting why I considered them important in the first place. I figured a stamp would be different. It would last forever as long as I don't lose it.. And I can use it when I get home. To stamp checks or parking tickets. Or friends who fall asleep.

The booth I went to had a couple guys taking orders and then scratching out the requests into pre-cut stone. I got a little assistance from a woman standing next to me with spelling my name in Hangul (though I was 95% correct) and handed them 30,000 won.


에 - Eh
ㅂ - B
ㅏ- Ah
ㄴ - N


This is as close as it gets, since there isn't a "v" sound. Ehbahn. I think it was money well spent. And now I have a way to sign my posts that isn't cheesy... I hope...


Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Sports Night in Korea

I watched my first soccer match last month. A friendly between FC Seoul and Manchester United. It was pretty big deal because Park Ji-Sung is the first Korean (and Asian) to captain Man U. The stadium erupted every time he was on the big screen.  Lots of fun and lots of people.


I have started frequenting the Seoul Sports Complex for baseball games, too. 12,000 Won ($10) Gets you a ticket anywhere in the outfield and two beers outside the stadium. That's right, you can bring ANYTHING YOU WANT into the stadium. People bring full traditional korean meals to the games and set up a picnic in the nosebleeds. Plus, the prices in the stadium for refreshments are barely more expensive than outside. No $8 beer here. 


By default I cheer for the LG Twins, who share a logo with the Twins of Minnesota. I may be bad luck though.. they get trounced whenever I am present.


Baseball is great to watch. The cheering is different (organized cheers lead by a guy with a whistle), they don't have ball boys (they have ball girls in tiny shorts and belly shirts), and people eat squid instead of peanuts (although you can order peanut-flavored squid which is surprisingly good), but there is something still so familiar about it. The rules haven't changed, the double plays and home runs are just as exciting... It's a piece of home that I can visit any night of the week. 






Except Monday. They don't have games on Mondays. 


A Retired Korean Shortstop and Me

I met him on the ferry from Gyeokpo to Wido. Actually I met him right after I bought my ticket for the ferry. He came over to me and said:

"NAME! PASSPORT!! NAME!! PASSPORT!!" while violently pointing to my ticket. 

Apparently I needed to write my name and passport number on the ticket. I guess in case the boat sank they could figure out who was on it.

I climbed on the ferry and sat towards the back. He sat next to me, one backpack with two fishing poles and a tackle box. He had been chatting up a cute woman on the dock and she joined us, also. Without my knowing, we had become friends after our first encounter. He impressed me with his english, pointing to his mosquito bites and saying, "Vampire! Ahhhh!!!" He asked if I was solo, and that he was solo, also, so we should stay together. We were best friends for two days.

김덕영 Kim Deok Yeong

We found a minbak (like a hotel, with no beds, just a floor and blankets) just past Wido Beach and headed out to the water to do some fishing. 

But it had rained all day. 

"Too Rainy! No pishy pishy."

There were no fish.

So we walked to a restaurant and feasted on fish we didn't catch. With my Korean-English dictionary on my iPhone I found out that he was a retired shortstop. He played 12 years for the Doosan Bears... I think... With my limited Korean I haven't been able to find career stats yet.

Looking back to our minbak across the bay.


After our delicious meal of fish we were treated with fresh clams when we returned to the minbak. Other guests joined us and we drank soju long into the night.

Our two day friendship ended as abruptly as it started. The next morning he stayed on the bay to fish and I walked about five miles to a beach. I thought we had and understanding that when he left "C" (minback) he would pass "B" (my beach) on route to "A" (the ferry) and we were going to go back to the mainland and head south to another island. But maybe I over estimated my ability to explain the plan. He called me once, I called him twice. Someone else answered his phone and explained they were on the ferry already. 

The strangeness of the relationship is hard to put into words. It is amazing how much was shared without being able to really speak to each other. 

Also, soju is a great translator. It almost seemed like I could understand him at times...


Sunday, August 2, 2009

Fooooood

This past week I had summer vacation, so I went south without much of a plan. I will break my adventures up into parts, and the first one will be about food. Only about food. I will explain the towns and people later, so if you feel lost, just know that feeling is OK.

This is the general path I took:
Seoul-->  Jeonju-->  Gyeokpo--> Wido Island--> Jeonju--> Seoul
I say general because there were off shoots to other small places, too.

김치찌개
This was the first meal I had in Gyeokpo, which is a little town on a spur of land out into the West Sea. The big bowl is kimchi jjigae, which is like a stew made of kimchi, tofu and pork. Jjigae means soup, so it is kimchi soup. It is very popular in Korea and is one of my favorites. I had it for supper, and it is often eaten for breakfast, also.  
All this food was for me, the kimchi jjigae, rice and eleven side dishes. I'll start in the back left corner:
The soup bowl is a vinegar/seaweed soup that is eaten in the summer because it is cool, to the right of that is a cooked seaweed, next is pickled garlic and last is squash. The second row on the left is regular kimchi, then a bunch of dried, salted fish which I do not like (but my students eat as snacks all the time), then some sort of other kimchi, and lastly a dried and warmed seaweed. The front row starts with a vegetable omelet, two whole, cooked fish, and finally sweet and sour clam strips. I paid 5,000 Won for the meal, about $4. It was wonderful.
The next morning I had almost the same thing I had for supper, except this was a seafood variety of jjigae with clam and fish. I had a few less side dishes this time because the waitress knew I wasn't going to eat the salted fish. This morning I also got lettuce, which is used to wrap rice and pepper paste and really anything else you choose to eat. 

It rained my first day on Wido, so Young and I spent the afternoon eating seafood and drinking Soju. It was great. I can't remember what it all was, or what specific fish we ate. The big plate in the middle on the left is all raw fish that we dipped in soy sauce, wasabi, and korean barbecue sauce. We had clam soup and krill, also. This meal was 50,000 Won, about $40 between the two of us, but was well worth it on a rainy, lazy afternoon.