GADGET LUST

Wow, it's been a while since we blogged. We've done so many things, I hope I remember them all.

Instead of hitting up some art goodness, we instead headed to a fucking castle, one known as Gyeongbokgung. I hadn't been there since I was a wee tyke of about... 8 or 10, but I remembered as being kind of dry so I wasn't expecting to be blown away by the majestic majesty of the place. It's just so goddamn big, for starters, with every part of the architecture resembling some sort of intricate hand-painted artisan bullshit that I love so dearly. We wandered around, in general wonder at the awesomeness of the buildings, whilst generally imagining living in that kind of splendour. Who needs electricity when you have a giant paved courtyard, or a house sitting on a lake? Or some claycarved mural thing? Truly cool.

We walked from there to Seouls tourist-trap/delicious food area known as Insadong. Its basically a street blocked off to cars on the weekend where they sell souveniers, traditional korean paper, sell traditional streetfood, have tons of authentic old-skool korean food and teahouses with birds flying around inside. One teahouse used to have a monkey (I'm not joking) but they got rid of it for some reason. We haven't gone to any, but I'm determined to find the one with a squirrel.

We browsed around, and checked out the local art gallery. It was pretty mediocre, looking amateurish at times, but it was a pleasant enough sort of place. We obviously ingested huge quantities of korean food (our money stocks are DWINDLING) and ended up having lunch at a dumpling specialty place which was ++ radcore. Since my grandmother doesn't cook anymore, I have to get my homemade awesome korean food fix elsewhere, and this place was just the ticket. We ended up at a DVD room, as always, and we watched a movie to ease our aching legs. This is becoming a recurring theme. We've gone through My Sassy Girl, Stranger than Fiction, Hot Fuzz and a couple of other great movies. I really do hope they become popular in Australia because they seem to fit my needs for a movie experience much more than a theatre these days.

After that was our first day at the after-school care/study room that we were supposed to be helping out with. The lady that runs the place worked for my dad when he was involved with the whole democracy thing in korea, and was uber nice to us from the get go. It's a non-profit place that is open to any kid who wants to attend. They provide a place where kids get forced to do a bit of study, and then they're free to run around, play with all the books and toys that are around as well as the computers, and are fed dinner at night. Our job is to basically give a shit about these kids, they are poor and disobedient but some of them come from rougher backgrounds and by teaching them a little english, maybe we can help them a little. The kids have a lot of energy, and they aren't exactly angels, but compared the the more formal dry existence at the high-school, it was really invigorating. It helps also that the woman taking care of us is the utmost in awesome. Buying us delicious things like smoked salmon, and generally treating us like her own children.

By the time we got back to the high-school, we were in high spirits, and maybe that's why the week went so quick. We stayed in two different houses over 4 nights, which was hell of annoying, but both houses were uber hospitable. The first house bought us delicious meats for dinner, and then a grandma made us awesome bul-go-gi, while the second had a tiring but cute child as well as cheesecake for breakfast. Eat Mia, EAT! *^___^*

We hit MoCA on the first day of the weekend. It's inside Seouls biggest park, aptly named, literally translating to roughly just that, and were pleased to see a really good selection of art. I was moved, challenged and pleased, often at the same time, and we just wandered around having a look at what Korean art was actually like. I was dissapointed that we didn't get to see one of Paik's major works, Dadaiksun(The More the Better), because some of the ONE BAJILLION monitors that make up the work were broken and the renovations wouldn't be finished till may. It was so impressive in its turned off state that I wonder how amazing it would have been on.

The real star of this weekend however, for me, has been the ALMIGHTY YONGSAN.

Yongsan is a huge electronics market. It basically takes up 20 buildings, maybe more with apparently over 5000 stores. There are pirated DVDs, programs, every mp3 player ever made, used computers, new computers, laptops, CCTV, karaoke machines, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's just ridiculous. You could walk around and assemble parts for a PC on the cheap and have it assembled in half an hour if you wanted. Or walk through an alley dedicated to vacuum cleaners, or mobilephones or console games. It's basically heaven to me. I ended up buying an iAudio 7, and I plan to go back to pick up a headphone amp on the cheap. Mia has her eyes set on some of those Etymotic 6is that will improve her listening experience, while I'm still tossing up whether to get some speakers and lug them around till I go home. Regardless, I'm looking forward to spending many a day there, just wondering around like an idiot. I mean, I could buy a PC faster than mine for about 3 or 400 dollars. Or buy speakers or headphones that I simply can't get over in australia. It's like a window shopping orgasm x 10 million.

The bargaining with the stalls can be fun too. There are no prices listed anywhere in the market, so if you're not on your guard, you can be ripped off here while feeling you got a great price. However, the few stalls I interacted with seem to be jovial enough, if a bit shitty that every customer is trying to squeeze every last penny of savings out of them. Good atmosphere really, all things considered.

Then we hit COEX, a giant underground shopping centre with a bookstore that has an english section bigger than borders. We walked around aimlessly, looking at shitty clothes stores and interesting stationery places until we came across the Totoro store. Attatched to a DS store. I am not even kidding. We both freaked out, yelling out TOTORO! every few seconds while crying due to how crazily overpriced everything was. Mia seems pretty set on getting a DS now, while my dreams of having a bed that is actually a giant Totoro Doll become more and more alluring. Damn you, money constraints. Afterward, we used a DVD room to soothe our legs, and then had some Samgyetang. I haven't had a good samgyetang in forever, and this place gave us the works. A whole ginseng, some jujube fruit (think a date), a whole roasted chestnut and rice were stuffed inside a whole chicken, that seemed to have been simmering since before I was born. The broth was perfect, not needing any salt, and the chicken fell of the bones. So rejuvenating, I felt like I could punch through walls. Instead, the two of us polished off a bottle of soju and lurched home.

Good times.

Would love to hear from you guys and what you've been up to. The blogosphere goes quiet as soon as we leave? What gives?