Korea Life Blog - Rosanna Club



Here's a shot of one of those "red light rooms." I stealthily took out my camera and snapped it and trotted off before any thugs came out to smash me. It's not such an exciting picture as you can't actually see the girls, but you get the idea. Those doors are transparent so when you walk by you can see them all hanging out in there. There were at least ten behind each door. Usually you see these red light "clubs" clustered in certain areas, not just in a random location. This one is between a bar and a restaurant, something I found fairly amusing. Have some dinner, grab a few beers at the pub, then head on over to the Rosanna club. I just reread that sentence - sounds like some kind of lame country music lyric. Where's my banjo, Goober?


|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - Oh boy! They're Going to Cook Me! Oink Oink!


Here are some more restaurant signs featuring the "happy" animals served on the menu. I took all of these in Gumjeong. While the concept works in Korea, it would never go over back in the states or any western country for that matter.




A cow and a pig. First, why are they yellow? And second, why do they look so happy? I know! - they're excited about being able to make you happy while you eat them.




Here's a sign for an eel restaurant. There seems to be a lot of these restaurants around. Does that creature on the sign really look appetizing? Does it even look like an eel?




Great, you can eat the 3 little pigs in this restaurant. Are they actually wearing aprons? Are they going to cook themselves?




Those pigs look surprisingly happy to be cooking alive inside that pot. Seems a little peculiar, the design. I think that's a blue Chinese character on the pot, but it looks like the pigs have blue arms and legs and are hugging each other.


|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - Vote for Me


I don't know how credible or popular this site is, I came across it in my referrer log. I don't know how it got there, but my blog is listed on the site in a couple of categories, Korea and Asian photo blogs. Unfortunately it's not getting many votes. You can stop by and vote or check out many of the other cool blogs listed there for Korea and all of Asia. I spent a good hour checking some of the best ones. If you vote for me, I promise to lower taxes and create more jobs.




vote for best korea blog here

vote for best photo blog here



|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - I'm Angry!


I heard someone yelling outside my window tonight. My idiot neighbor was outside, smoking a cigarette, holding a bottle of beer, and obviously angry. What could he be doing? Well, guess! He was chasing away the kitten that sleeps everyday/night under our building. How could he be that angry at a kitten? And what the hell could he be yelling? "How dare you helpless kitten sleep under my home? I will make sure you suffer even more than you do now!" He even took the full cat food dish I use to feed the strays with and dumped it out. I really got pissed off at that. I came close to going outside. At times like this I hate being a foreigner. If I were to start a fight, I'd risk losing everything, probably end up in jail and then deported. I really wanted to kill that guy. The poor kitten ran away through the snow and into some cold bushes. It's utterly freezing outside here. Well, I didn't start a fight but as soon as my drunk neighbor retired, I went right outside, picked up the dish and filled it with more tuna. If he does it again, I'll find a way to get even...trust me.



|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - New Poll (5)


There's a new poll to take. Here are the results of the previous poll:


what should I change about KLB?

the picture on the top right 11 (10%)
the overall layout 2 (1%)
a better links section 1 (0%)
smaller pictures 1 (0%)
less pictures, more stories 0 (0%)
finish philippines section 9 (8%)
finish geoje-do story 48 (46%)
more frequent updates 9 (8%)
i don't like anything here 1 (0%)
i like it all the way it is 21 (20%)


Well, it seems most of you want me to finish the Geoje-do section. I started last night by adding my first update in quite awhile. I promise to work on it more frequently. Be sure to vote on the newest poll.



|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - TESall.com

Found this cool website in my referrer log.

TESall.com is the Web's first vertical search portal for ESL/EFL job seekers. Our spider crawls job boards across the Internet, indexing their postings and making them searchable. The result is a one-stop search that gives you access to thousands of vacancies posted on multiple job boards. Where do you want to teach today?

Not only that but they implemented a FARK.com type of headline system for interesting ESL related stories. Readers submit the links and can leave comments. I used to read Fark.com on a regular basis before so I was surprised and excited to see this. Someone sent in a link to a post from my blog. I hope the site gets more and more popular so they get a lot of good submissions. I love it already.



|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - Snow!


UPDATE:

Be sure to check here for a long awaited update to the Goeje-do story. It's a short update, but at least it's a (re)start. I need to rewrite the rest from my notebook. Look for more updates there on a somewhat irregular basis. Sorry for the aged delay. I'll finish it sooner or later.



I was shocked to look out my window late last night and see this. While I've been in Korea most of the past 3 years, I've only seen snow here twice before. Even though it get cold, damn cold, it doesn't snow often in the southern half of the country where I used to live. The time I saw it in Pusan, they were reporting it to be the first snowfall in 15 years. People were all over taking pictures, making snowmen, snow-angels, throwing snowballs at deokboki ajummas, etc. I guess it's nothing special in the north. Nobody even said anything about it today. Wasn't that just about the best feeling you ever had as a kid - hearing on the radio that your school district was closed for a snowday. A part of me hoped to see it scroll across the screen here in Nowhere-dong: All Hagwons Closed. Hah, yeah right. Even if they got snow like back home, I find it hard to conceive of them shutting down a school for the day, especially a hagwon. Even if only one kid showed up, there would be class.




I feel bad for the cats. It's damn cold. How can they live out there? You can see their dish is full of snow. Yum! (Later I went out, emptied it, and filled it with tuna, don't worry.)



Well, I got excited by the first snowfall, what can I say. I ran outside and took some pics. To my surprise my camera takes pretty nice pictures of falling snow. Had I known, I would have walked around and gotten better ones than these, but it was late and I was tired. Coming from NY this is nothing, but I still liked it. I also just saw on the news the entire North East in the US has gotten hit hard by a heavy snowstorm, so I'm sure these pictures look kind of pathetic.



Another shot out front. If I had stood a little more to the right and centered on that old-style roof and left out the vehicle, this would have been a nice picture. Damn. Oh well, next time.



One last exciting shot for you. The funny part is how the cars are all double parked. There's 3 in the row on the left. Must be fun in the morning or having to get out in the night. It's hard to tell from this shot, but the driveway is to the left and it's extremely narrow between the buildings. Most Koreans are accustomed to these situations however. I was surprised before to see how relatively easy it was for one of my friends to maneuver her car through here.


|

written by shawn matthews   -|link

Korea Life Blog - Sweet Buns




One thing I really miss about America is pulling into virtually any mini mart and buying a huge cup of fairly decent, piping hot coffee. I don't know what all this Starbucks phenomena is all about. I guess it's the comfortable and trendy atmosphere more than anything. I just don't like paying over $3.00 for a cup of coffee. This tiny cup of Cappuccino was 2,000 won here, but at least it tasted OK.




I'm not exactly sure why this place is called Sweet Buns. They only served coffee and ice cream. (The name Sweet Buns, reminds me of a girlfriend I used to have in college...)




Here's the ice-cream freezers. Not copying Baskin and Robins are they?




Sorry for the blurry picture but I wanted to show this. Starbucks must have one of the most copied logos of any franchise. So many knockoffs use the green circle. I don't know - the name of this place makes me imagine a bunch of hot girls lined up a bar drinking expresso. Unfortuantely we were the only customers here.


|

written by shawn matthews   -|link