A Trend

Should it worry me that the most clicked search term linking to this site is “Difference between scallops and mussels” ?

You know who you are, mollusk man.

Dixie

I went to Disneyworld when I was ten, and I’ve avoided it ever since. I wasn’t tragically abused by Minnie Mouse or anything; really, I think it was the closest thing to magic I’d seen. I remember the Epcot globe perched above its huge dark lake, firework smoke lingering in the air, and all these little countries strewn across the water’s edge waiting to be explored, each with its own special rides and restaurants and passport stamps to collect. I couldn’t wait to go to every one. I remember sitting on a train – I don’t think it was even a ride, it was the monorail between the resorts -  and just sitting there for hours because I wanted to see all the dreamt up worlds: Pirates, The Wild West, Pixie, Futuristic – and in retrospect there was even one that looked suspiciously like a pirated Mandarin Oriental.

But I didn’t think of that then. I’m grateful for that. Truth is, I’ve avoided Disneyworld because I’m afraid that when I retrace my steps I’ll realise that the whole thing’s a sham. That these memories aren’t fluttering in the glow of real sunlight but around some shady, flickering artificial tube. That, like in a Stephen Chow film, the beautiful silhouette of a girl will turn around to reveal an awful old man digging his nose.

That horrible image has caught up with me. I came across this song the other day, Dixie, only to realise that it was the tune I’d been humming in my head all these years. I never knew the lyrics, but it was the theme music of the Disney resort I stayed in so long ago, Dixie Landings, and to me it’s stood for everything wonderful and sacrosanct about childhood marvel.

I know now that also it’s the Confederate battle song. It’s probably what the Klan sings before breakfast  – it’s performed by a blackface actor, comically exaggerates black slang, and talks  about a guy pining for his fantastic life as a cotton slave. Look away, look away, dixieland is about right – and Huck Finn says it better, so I won’t.

I guess all this matters to me because I think I’m starting to turn into an asian Eeyore.  It’s strange, but I can’t remember anything this year that has, to borrow an image from a much better writer, “summoned that magic ‘wow’ out of a bottomless top hat of skepticism and irony”. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a cynic, or a stoic, or anything else that requires time living in a barrel. I still like clean laundry. But I’m honest enough with myself to know that I’m probably staring in the face of about forty years of writing futile things, poring over numbing spreadsheets, and enduring ridiculous corporate diagram after corporate diagram. Most of us are. And that is why, dear real-life, if I cannot further pimp out my purple A380, if I cannot have my ideals, then I would at least like to keep my sense of wonder.

If this is what turning twenty means, then I’m off to see the wizard!

Perth

I returned from Perth more than a week ago. It was my first attempt at a free and easy holiday, and consequently, it felt more rewarding and substantial than previous tour package holidays, because I actually went to places that interested me. Spending 5 days in the same city also allowed me to get a more complete picture of how Perth lived and breathed. It was not merely a gloss over an exotic locale, but an attempt to pierce beyond the veil of a different culture to experience its idiosyncracies and aspects.

I left on saturday morning, just after midnight. T3 for those of you who may not have seen it before.

Skipping the flight, which proceeded entirely in darkness. we come to the scene outside the hotel.

Before checking in, a sojourn into Perth’s famed King’s Park.

More macro shots of the diverse array of flowers there.

Path winding down to exit on freeway. So steep that climbing up evoked bad memories of the latter 4 kilometres of a 16 km fast march.

More macro flowers.

The Swan Bells at the harbour. Didn’t go in; expensive tourist trap. Its architectural definitiveness can be best appreciated from the exterior.

Generic evening view of skyline on the first day.

So we come to the second day, where we went on an expedition to the city’s port town, Freemantle, a wonderful tourist destination in its own right. Freemantle train station.

Lunch was served here, at Cicerello’s, a famous seafood restaurant.

Battered dory fillet, french fries, side serving of fried scallop and mussel, squid rings.

After-lunch walk around town:

View from high of the Freemantle beach:

Freemantle Maritime Museum. A curvaceous architectural curiosity.

This is me doing a Quantum of Solace thing.

We went back to Perth, eventually…

Artsy shot of the Palace Hotel against the BankWest Tower.

Home in Perth. Surprisingly comfortable, and excellent service.

The next day sees us taking a tour of the Swan Valley.

We were rather out of place; the remainder of the patronage consisted of middle aged American and Australian couples.

Anyway, Swan Valley is home to WA’s best vineyards and winemakers.

I knew the whole affair was overhyped!

Fruit.

Suffice to say the imbibing of alcohol took place, in extreme moderation, whereupon we returned to Perth to have dinner at some Korean joint. Ironic.

The next day, breakfast was had at a quaint cafe called Tiger, Tiger in some hidden alleyway. Its an open air concept, except sandwiched in an alleyway. Nice ambient lighting and atmosphere.

Today’s expedition was made to Rockingham, at the receptionist’s recommendation. Rockingham is a small seaside town not unlike Freemantle, except smaller and more villagey.

Another flower.

At this point some clarification is in order. We decided that it was necessary to visit Rockingham’s main tourist destination, the aptly named Penguin Island. We then proceeded to trek through the length and breadth of the entire town to get to the jetty, whereupon we missed the boat. But hey, there’s always another boat.

The beach:

The suburbs:

The lake:

Ducks:

Penguin Island (at last) with Penguins.

After walking through to the other side of the island, we have reached the end of the world. This is the Indian Ocean.

At this point my camera battery ran out, so here’s tomorrow. Its our last day. Notice the abrupt change in weather.

We went to a factory outlet and did random grocery shopping at Woolworth’s at Subiaco, but that isn’t too interesting.

Finally, airport:

And plane. Here’s me.

And that is the end of it.

Well, not precisely…

Some thoughts. First, WA seems an incongruously cosmopolitian place; half the residents are naturalized Australians with brown, yellow or blue skin. I saw Singaporeans, Chinese nationals, Indonesians, Japanese, Koreans (even a shop selling Korean DVDs and Korean instant noodles run by Koreans) at every corner, manning stores, walking to office, taking their white girlfriends out on a trainride, etc. Its a refreshing feeling to know that for once, you might not be immediately construed as a foreigner in a foreign land. A good feeling if you want to try blending in.

Second of all, the effusive, natural and spontaneous friendliness. Shopkeepers teaching us the basics of didgeridoo, non-intrusive attendants smiling at us when we enter the stores, helpful (if odd) passersby, and general indicators of a more open and friendly society than ours. Its kind of addictive, in a way. Its just a Western cultural foible.

I think I’ll post the entire album (400+ pix) up somewhere in the next few days.

***

Hooplah

Imagine, say, the Oval Office, with functionaries, aides, public service officials and other assorted personalities. Imagine the President of the USA, standing in the midst of all those people. Or perhaps more prosaically, based on the situation, imagine the Parliament House overlooking the dense, modernist skyscrapers of Singapore. How does your mind process such a scene? Mine is incapable of doing so without adding at least a sheen of cinematic graininess. The scene is literally like a movie. Actions, words are caught in the crystalline, fragile web of otherness, of fictive reality a few degrees removed from my own. A kind of solipsism of the mundane. When I think of President Bush, for example, I think of an actor who has so effectively inhabited his role that he has become Bush. He is Bush, and always has been, from childhood. This I can accept, viscerally, but only when it is concomitant to the idea that Bush is nothing more than a fictive portrait, that once my attention wanders away from my mind’s portrait of the scene, the President Bush will disappear, to be replaced with an idea and a person who inhabits that idea, the actor-Bush who is capable of being mundane and prosaic in a way that Bush-the-idea, the President of the United States, cannot. More directly put, I find it somehow difficult to accept, on a gut level, the idea that President Bush reads the paper in the toilet, or chokes on pretzels while watching a football game, or flashed le fingre at the cameras before a press conference. The events that lie outside of my immediate perception, especially those events with great import on the state of Humanity as a whole, are concealed underneath a veil of other-reality. The mind’s cinematic grain, so to speak. I suppose it is this very effect that restricts people from true communion with each other, across space and time. One has to experience something to fully appreciate it, on the gut level.

To wit, coming back to the metaphor of the cinematic grain, what do movies like the upcoming W (President Bush’s biopic) or perhaps Tropic Thunder, or Saving Private Ryan, with its graphic, no-holds-barred depiction of the gore and death of warfare, mean to us? To me, it is precisely such fictive portraits that reinforce the intangible veil between my reality and the reality of the other. It’s called the fourth wall, which is never to be spoken of by the actors themselves, but nevertheless exists in the mind of the viewer, who abandons his sense of incredulity in favour of the fictive experience but enthuses, ironically, of the fourth wall’s very intangibility after the said experience, thus acknowledging its reality even more. Movies, in other words, reinforce the sense of dislocation between the viewer and the fictive subject matter. By watching a movie like W, for example, the viewer obtains an intellectual and artistic understanding of the reality behind the fictive portrait. Nevertheless, the impression of the cinematic grain, of the fourth wall’s sequestering of the viewer and the viewee, becomes even stronger. Viscerally, the viewer begins to see the events of the world outside his own as being like movies. Being fictive portraits, idealized portraits that somehow proscribe the very prosaic and mundane facts of life. For life cannot be captured wholly without losing some of its experiential integrity. The very fact that life is staged in movies leads to the creation of that fourth wall, which, in any case, exists because of the artificiality of the scene. That the scene is not spontaneous in any meaningful way (barring the adlibs that have gone on to become great quotes from movies: cf Heere’s Johnny!). Meaninglessness, or chaos, is either excised from the portrait or made to carry extraneous significance. Thus is the meaningless mundane transformed to significance in a movie, and by that very token, loses its mundane aspect, thereby creating, once again, the impression of the ever-important cinematic grain.

In conclusion, I have droned on about two things: one, the dislocation between a viewer’s reality and the reality of things he does not see, called the cinematic grain effect; as well as the propensity of an artistic format, of a fictive representation of reality, to reinforce that dislocation by adapting the world into a format that the viewer can accept viscerally, in turn informing the viewer (falsely) of the very artificiality of the reality that the fictive format was based on, giving him the impression of otherworldliness. The former is already a fixture of most human imagination, movies only reinforce it; but I am in no way dissing art. There is nothing wrong with viewing life as a movie, because, despite everything, it is one. It is a format in which the roles of the actor and the character are reversed. And insofar as the human imagination lacks the capacity to achieve a visceral understanding of the things it does not see, it can partially make up for that lack by informing itself intellectually, on a conscious level. Why else does one read the news, if all the world is not a stage in which the farthest end lies so far beyond the horizon that the viewer cannot see it?

***

In other news, Spore!!!!!!111One

Libretto of a Tragedy

Something oddballsy that I came up with during a night’s onset of delirium. It was originally going to be longer, but I decided against it, lest you all think I am insane.

Libretto of a Tragedy

Pvt. Lee Hirebus walks down the stairs.

But at least it will be fun
Marchin’ under the sun
Livin’ large with the bud and the gun
The life of a ladies’s dream…

It’s like livin’ on a silver screen…
It’s like nothing I ever seen…

The chorus:

Like a silver screen, a silver screen he says…
Don’t know a mule’s bleat from a horse’s bray…
You think the military
Will be all fun and games
You think that fighting furious
Is like kissing a dame
Well son I gotta tell you
It ain’t flowers and fame
Wearing that goshdarned green beret!

Another Meme

Upon Mr Tan’s request I’m participating in and propagating an admittedly interesting meme. Now we shall see how many hits this gets, or, perhaps more realistically, how few.

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don’t speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want — good or bad. When you’re finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you.

August

August, a month of many squandered possibilities.

1. Olympics. However bad China’s human rights record may be, and whether or not the countries of the world pour sanctimonious umbrage upon it, shouldn’t matter. The Olympics are an idea, a vision of shared humanity fruitfully expressed through friendly sport and competition. It doesn’t matter how many doses of steriods are consumed this summer, or how many pointed memos sent to foreign service officials; I honestly think that the Olympics should be celebrated if only for what it can represent – the ability of our species to collect together for the sake of accomplishment and fraternity.

2. National Day. The Parade may seem a farce compared to the lavish and spectacular Openings of the yesternight, but once again, we should just sit back and allow our pride to overcome our cynicism. Once again, Singapore is a concept, and NDP celebrates that concept.

3. Crysis. A game that’s given me alot of entertainment, and alot of grief. Buggiest thing in existence, surpassed only by NWN2.

Brunei

I am in Brunei presently, for reasons best left unsaid; that being said, it’s a moderately interesting place, filled with pirated DVD stores, a single, well stocked mall (that I would rate as being on par with, say, Jurong Point) some nice cybercafes, and not much else. Nice place, really. The city we are near, Bandar Seri Begawan, is relatively modern and polished, a kind of suburban-ish Singapore with Malaysian styles and modes of dress. The outskirts, though, may be a tad more conservative. But we won’t be going there so it makes little difference.

***

Let it be said that when in Brunei, there is little to be done but watch movies. Within these three days, I’ve probably watched more movies (and TV shows) than I have for the past three months. I’ve watched (and will watch) movies like The Fountain, Hellboy II (in a cinema, mind you), The Last King of Scotland, The Pursuit of Happyness, Be Kind Rewind and others. I was also introduced to a very funny (but unfortunately cancelled series, Arrested Development. That, and trawling aimlessly around Gadong, a district in the capital, has been the summary of my slovenly pursuits.

More soon. Or not.

***

Fear

Recently I satisfied a long craving for subtle horror and played F.E.A.R, a self-described John Woo style action shooter mixed with elements of Asian horror. It’s interesting how the human mind can trick itself into believing in perceptions that are so self-evidently synthetic, especially given the bias of it being aware of this artificiality in the first place. To wit, I know F.E.A.R is a game, and I know the creepy little girl in it is a product of some game designer’s imagination, but tell me to play it alone at night with the lights off, and I will refuse. The same is demonstrably true for other genres – but I do not begrudge our ability to fool our own brains into a paradoxical state of knowing credulity. Our ability to respond to fictive untruth in a way that both entertains and educates us is one of the great assets of humankind.

Also, my latest literary conquest is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is a strange, unconventionally plotted book. It is almost entirely focused on the recollections of the protagonist, and brings the reader into his psychological interior in a way that doesn’t give away the whole story. The protagonist narrates his thoughts and perceptions seemingly without being aware of the fallacy that his past mistakes present to the readers, a true display of craftsmanship by the way of the unseen storyteller – especially when we see that the book is essentially a long, involved attempt at storytelling – it is presented in the form of a diary. It is compact, to the point and rarely meanders, even if the protagonist does, physically traveling through the English countryside.

***

House and Wind

If I were an interior decorator, my trademark would be unrestrained minimalism. I would deal in shades of white and pastel set off by strategically placed shafts of natural light. There would be no ornamentation in my rooms – only clean lines and curves and the subtle interplay of colours, serving as a backdrop, a complementary scene, to the functional components of the environment. At most, a vase here, a bouquet there, to serve as an offset, a juxtaposition of non-functional form with functional formlessness. Windows would serve as the portals, the gateways, to riotous, verdant variety outside, whether it be the tops of trees, an urban landscape, or the serene vistas of ocean or mountain.

I was inspired by a visit to Lim’s in Holland Village, a shop dedicated to selling all kinds of odd antiques, geegaws and keepsakes, ranging from jewel boxes to huge, life-size statues of indeterminate origin. Not that I don’t appreciate their aesthetic value to someone appropriately inclined, but I would never stand for such gaudy ornamentation in any abode of mine. I abhor clutter. I like the feeling of being in an aerie, of being high up. Such will be my future abode. No clutter, no geegaws. An Apple-product like homogeneity, made individual by the unique touch of my minimalist aesthetic sense and the functional amenities that I will of course fill the house with.

One thing in that shop did catch my attention, though. Wind chimes hold a kind of appeal for me. The pleasing, musical chimes they produce signal wind, and connote peace, serenity, and a feeling of being on high. They may offer one a sense of excitement, as forerunners of the storm, being the sense of calm that precedes it. For no storm comes without the period of almost eerie serenity that is characterized by the stately billowing of the clouds assembling for their final dance through the skies, and the cool wind that sends them along on this majestic journey. It is the wind, and its evocative, musical power, that I like, and wind chimes merely crystallize and focus that sense of serenity into something tangible to be experienced and appreciated.

***

Resuscitation

After a long time of online silence, here I am again. Like my fellow compatriots, I have decided that the maintenance of my blog is necessary for my continued mental well-being. The process of blog-death is a vicious cycle, at least where I’m concerned. The process is simple and no doubt well-known to those of you who blog. When blogs are not updated, readership drops. As readership drops, the impulse to blog becomes weaker. Rinse and repeat, until the critical threshold is passed and the author decides that the blog is unsalvageable. No one likes lecturing to an absent audience, or relating a story to an empty hallway. Or, at least, I don’t. Then again, the paradox of writing is that the Muse is often unpredictable. Ideas for entries emerge in the most inconvenient of times. And when one finally finds the time to write, that fragment, that essence of an idea becomes ludicrous, forgotten, tired, spent.

The second, perhaps more mundane reason, is that I am obliged to open a new post after every blog-absence with some tired rant about blogography and lame excuses of an ever-absent muse. Well, let this be my last such entry. Henceforth let it be known that I will make no excuses for lack of updates. But hopefully, I will be fortified enough that updates will follow.

***

After three years, I have finally watched Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell. First introduced by Shivana, I delayed the watching of this seminal film for various and sundry reasons. Well, I have watched this firer of the imaginations of cyberpunk movie-makers. The influences are obvious, the artistry sound, the plot and messages streamlined and focused to a degree rarely seen in animation. Pretty good.

***

Stoppard

Thomasina: (To Septimus) How is a ruined child different from a ruined castle?
Septimus: On such questions I defer to Mr Noakes.
Noakes: (Out of his depth) A ruined castle is picturesque, certainly.
Septimus: That is the main difference.

Ha. ha.

Protected: Sense and Sensibility

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Advertising

Prose is ponderous so I’ll list significant goings-on for the last month below.

1. Posted to Armour HQ

2. Got into Cornell (but unsure as to whether to go). Waitlisted for Stanford and Williams.

3. Got a new PC. But it’s giving me speaker static problems. Anyone with any idea why?

4. Playing games like BioShock and Half Life 2 in my free time.

5. Chronologically inverted, but I passed out of BMT a happy private.

6. Began collecting Hayao Miyazaki films on Code 1 DVDs.

7. Watched the most awful parody in cinematic history (refer to previous post)

8. Noted the most pathetic advertising slogan on the market today: “Simply Indescribable” for McDonald’s McGriddles breakfast. If you can’t describe it, why bother advertising it?

9. Finished, at long last, the thick, erudite and at times darkly funny synoptic account of the 1930s era leading up to the Second World War, The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon.

10. Updated this blog at long last.

Speaking of advertising, I really should get some for this foundering morass of a blog. It’s been so long since I touched WordPress, the new dashboard is a surprise to me way behind time.

Obligations

Okay, I’m out again (week after week of this makes the process increasingly mundane. Time was when the mere mention of book-out would send me into raving fits of longing for mainland air coupled with futile expectation. But adaptability is infinite.).

I’m imagining a Texas-Sized Showdown for Hillary and Obama. Imagine the both of them bedecked in Indiana Jones garb stalking away from each other in stilettos, guns at the ready, sweat running down their faces. Anyway, I hope Obama wins. He’s like the Luke Skywalker to Clinton’s Grand Moff Tarkin, the idealistic changeist to the weathered commander-in-chief visage of Clinton encapsulated in Geena Davis gone horribly wrong. Then again I think Clinton and McCain have a point. Spirited rhetoric cannot compare to the actual deliverance of competency. Then again, there is no guarantee that Clinton and McCain themselves have what it takes to helm the greatship of the world’s current (slowly waning) superpower.

There is a Red Alert 3 coming out. This is far greater news than when I heard that Tiberium Wars was being developed two years ago, on account of the fact that I actually played Red Alert 2 and have fond memories of apocalypse tanks crushing hapless GIs. The time travel card is unfortunately overplayed in my opinion, and now there’s an ehvul Asian side to play, headed by un-Americanized (and therefore barbarian) Japanese. We’ll see. Red Alert has always been about camp and Cold War era satire so there is little doubt of the fact that as usual the image of the bow-legged Asiatic barbarian (like the image of the portly and senile communist leader) is what is being parodied here, and not Japan’s shameful historical baggage (or that of the Soviet Union’s, for that matter). It can wait until I have a better computer, though.

***

Elves and Such

Some of you might wonder why I’m out of camp on a beautiful Tuesday morning. Well, I ran a 39.1 degree fever yesterday so they sent me home to recuperate. Anyway, I have just finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings for old time’s sake, and what strikes me the most from this reading is how Tolkien handled the portrayal of the elves.

It seems to me that the Elves in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth display less of a brand of heroism than their younger counterparts; the race of Men. The Elves in almost all of Tolkien’s extensive works are curiously flat characters. Apart from a few exceptions, such as Galadriel, Feanor and others, the Elves are essentially boring as characters, the Gary- and Mary-Sues of Tolkien’s mythopoeia. Immortal, wise beyond the reckoning of Men, and immune to the afflictions of disease that torment them, they have no inner conflict. Legolas is a good example of this. He is one of the more unremarkable characters in the Lord of the Rings, precisely because he has a lack of stimuli for establishing internal conflict. Only at the end, when, hearing the sounds of the gulls on the shore, he is filled with a desire to go to the West, does his character begin to emerge. Even so, one gets the impression that such a thing is endemic to the Elvish race and is part of their natures. For the perfection of the Elves is part and parcel of their natures, and they do not naturally stray from that path.

Men, on the other hand, are, like us modern humans, riven with internal conflict, short lifespans, predilection to sickness, and an unfortunate tendency to stray from good into evil. It is from this that characters like Aragorn and Faramir truly shine as heroes who have overcome the afflictions that the Elves find easy to shrug off. In this sense, while the Elves may be perfect, such perfections lie within their natures; Men who strive for the same virtue as displayed by the average Elf are greater heroes for their efforts. The heroes of the First Age as seen in the Simarillion were all Men – Turin, Hurin, Earendil, Beren and others. While the Elves are powerful it was the Men who led the charge against the enemy, Men who were able to shrug off the evil influence of Morgoth to succeed. In any case, therefore, Men are the greater heroes, for they have to overcome far greater adversity than Elves to achieve almost the same brand of greatness and virtue that is displayed by the Quendi.

***

Returns

I’ve gone and done something terrible; I’ve actually not blogged for more than an entire month, or, if you desire a more qualitative equivalent, the course of my completed time in National Service. My archives weep at their missing brethren.

I have no idea whether anyone still comes here. Well, those with software like Bloglines might drop by wherever there are updates.

Why do I blog? A random impulse, I suppose, and a determination not to let this blog lie fallow too long.

National Service? Most of you male readers (I stress again, whomsoever still deign to visit) have either gone through at least two weeks of it. The female among you will doubtless have heard it via word of mouth from male counterparts. Every week I return from National Service I lament the time I have lost, and appreciate the returns. A return to things you have long taken for granted; returns from things you have learnt or have suffered through in the long, interminable weeks of recreation-less interregnums betwixt the aforesaid returns. I cannot talk about the training per se, however. There are security issues. Let’s just leave it at that.

I return today, and will emerge in about three days. I wish I had the time I used to have, if only to finish up the worryingly large stack of unread books I have managed to let accumulate on my various book-buying sprees when out of Tekong.

Farewell for now.

***

Not A Notice

Enlistment isn’t a big deal, so it doesn’t really require a notification.

This is not a notification. It is not the milestone of a momentous transition in life. It’s not a benchmark, not a reminder. It’s not a notice. It’s just a blog post.

I’ve made plenty acquisitions these past few days. To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis were excellent and moving examples of well-done time travel sf novels. I also bought two non-fiction books; Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Dark Valley by Piers Brandon. I’m particularly pleased about this last book because I’ve been looking for it for quite a long time. I found the last copy at Borders. I also bought the first two volumes of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, His Majesty’s Dragon and Throne of Jade, books about sapient dragons fighting in the Napoleonic Wars.

When I come back I shall make to buy Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, the rest of the Temeraire books, and System of the World by Neal Stephenson.

***

It’s not a big deal. Promise.

Korea (Part 2)

So we come to part 2 of the Korea thing. Day three involved us going to an enormous, sprawling theme park called Everland, which essentially is Disneyland wrapped under several meters of Korean cultural red tape.

Kitschy facsimile of St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice, repackaged for exotic European goodness.

Presumably the truncated entrance to St. Mark’s Basilica.

Karan and Clement grinning on the ski elevator to the lower part of Everland.

Lovecraftian horror covered with pink icing (Part of a Christmas parade).

Don’t get me wrong, we had great fun with the roller coaster and the flume. But the immersion rides were something else entirely. We had lunch at a American-esque burger joint, binging on the Korean interpretation of American cuisine. The irony was not lost on us. We even saw a American family tucking into good ol’ home food.

After Everland it was on to Seoul. At this point the tone of the tour changed; it was no longer a romp through nature but a trudge through urbanity. Even the tour coach was forced to slow down to keep up with the traffic.

Seoul’s skyscrapers in the evening. Très beau!

See above.

After a night’s stay at a dreadfully overdecorated Victorian horror of a hotel room, it was off to the nearby Gyeongbokgung Palace. Good weather facilitated photo-taking.

Nice, expressionist shot of Huygen’s law of reflection.

Another shot of one of the Palace buildings.

Afterwards, we were swiftly taken to several tourist traps such as the Ginseng Center, the Amethyst Gems factory, and the Cordyceps warehouse. Naturally, the state of the finances did not place us in the appropriate position to procure any of these treasures. Nevertheless, the experience was fairly interesting.

Following which, we got a little leg-stretch time at Myeongdong Fashion Street, specializing in ladies’ apparel, and got a load of a Korean style demonstration:

Next we went on to Lotte World, another theme park (better than Everland, actually). Regretfully, no pictures were taken of the place, as I’d left my camera behind on the bus. Once again, deprived me found the rides the most entertaining. When it came to the gyro-drop, however, I couldn’t summon up sufficient courage to go up. The new hotel was luxurious, but of course we didn’t make use of the facilities.

The final day was bittersweet in a way. We spent the morning shopping at a duty-free hypermart, where I procured some Korean foodstuffs. Then, we flew home. And that, I guess, is that.

Korea (Part 1)

You know what? I’m feeling some Korea nostalgia right now. And this is probably as good a time as any other to have a Korea post a la Hoe’s.

South Korea is a unique place, especially if you’ve read anything about the Korean War. Once again, as in Italy, the weight of history clashes with the wave of modernity. Buddhist shrines reside on high hills, while Christian evangelists march the crowded byways of the city. Nature morphs into urbanity. The glass-clad skyscrapers of Seoul rub shoulders with hastily reconstituted buildings, leftovers from the Korean Conflict.

The first day was mostly spent in Singapore. I played KotOR for 4 hours. Then, in the evening, it was off to Changi where I visited the rather impressive Terminal 3. The flight was dreary, but sleep was in order.

The second day saw the start of a brilliant rampage through Korea’s considerable natural beauty and rich history. The climate, of course, was a welcome change from Singapore’s (at the time) stifling rain-threatening gloom. It was freezing cold. Which is always a plus.

Us outside Incheon. I blame poor lighting and Facebook’s image compression for the bad quality.

The ride to the DMZ was replete with natural wonders (which equates to anything that does not resemble a coconut tree to us tropical Singaporeans). Mountains, breath that mists, huge expanses of farmland, enormous blue sky, strange road signs, and driving on the right side of the road are some of the examples.

The DMZ itself was not without its own peculiar brand of resonance. Far from studying the Korean War in a classroom, the physical artifacts of the North-South split spoke powerfully of the reality of war. Korea, unlike Singapore, had a great sense of historical baggage. No matter how modern it may be, the truth of the DMZ is a constant reminder that Korea’s history still haunts it today, and is still a part of its cultural and national identity.

Case in point, une!

That’s North Korea. Yes, North Korea. Woo.

Us, braving cold and North Korean vistas.

Relic of the Korean War.

Nice picture of Korea’s natural splendour.

After DMZ, we went on to visit Nami Island, which is some kind of shrine to Winter Sonata, the Korean drama. Naturally, my interests lay primarily elsewhere: in the appreciation of natural beauty, throwing stones at frozen ponds, and obsessively taking pictures of colourful leaves.

Nice tree with leaves.

More natural beauty.

After which we returned to our place of residence, the Vivaldi Park Ski resort, the best hotel of the three we would be staying in in Korea. It’s got an entire shopping belt, a nearby water theme park, the ski facilities, and a nice bar, as well as heated floors and beauteous natural environs.

Having furtive sips of alcoholic beverages to celebrate Korea’s first snow.

Next morning’s snow layer. Gorgeous.

Winter is beautiful.

Unfortunately, no pictures of the skiing slopes were taken, and with good reason. Beginner’s skiing mandates that you fall over often.

Okay. Part two shall chronicle days 3 – 6.

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