Taxi Splits in Two

This happened just outside my apartment complex.

These shots were taken at 2AM on May 19th as I was arriving home from a rehearsal.

 

This picture was taken right beside the back half of the car

A close up of the back half of the car

A better angle on the back end of the car taken in the middle of the street

Both halves in full view

The pics above and below are from a Naver article with a subtitle 3 People dead “Hanti Station Mystery ranking number six on this weeks top ten articles in society, which a friend of mine linked to via Korea Beat. All I can really make out is that 3 people died and the reason for the accident is not understood.

The taxi was going down the wrong side of the street, blew a red light and crashed at 100km/hour (62mph).

Essay of the Month

My friend’s house

 

I’m going to my intimate friend’s house. Her house is very Big.

My intimate friend is kind.

Who’s name is sunjin.

Me and my friend’s read the english book.

She’s read a english book is very good!

enviable.

I like my intimate friend’s.

Exfeel-S

Spotted this new beer in the convenience store last night. Cracked me up good.

The Stylish Beer with Fiber

Haha. Beer that keeps you ‘regular’.

Smooth & light premium beer exclusively designed

for well-being of young generation

Judging by the website, it seems this beer is marketed toward women seeking the ever-elusive ‘S-line’. Why not get wasted in the process? A bottle of beer can substitute for a serving of vegetables.

From newlywed TV personality to outcast widow in ten months

At the beginning of the year, Sunny Jung 정선희 was a successful TV host who had just gotten married, and set up her own line of cosmetics, which was selling quite well. I remember seeing her on three TV stations at a time, doing a live televised radio show on one channel, an interview on another and being gossiped about on a third.

 

 

However, in Spring, she questioned the actions of people protesting against the resumption of US Beef Imports, saying that perhaps it was a bit too much. The backlash was severe from netizens, who posted scathing remarks on popular websites, calling her an unpatriotic sellout whore, etc. In a matter of days, she lost her job and all corresponding endorsements. Her cosmetic line stopped selling and people actually demanded their money back, claiming they were offended by her comments and didn’t want to be associated with her in any way. All this in response to a simple call for reason.

Alas, it seems some startup money for the cosmetic line was borrowed from the mob, a questionable call by her husband, and the couple wound up being about $4 million in debt. Sometime last month her husband disappeared and just yesterday his body was discovered inside his car after an apparent suicide by some means of self-suffocation.

It turns out that, even though they were married in the public eye and saw all the fruits that come with such ceremonies, i.e. large sums of money, they never filed the marriage documents with city hall. So perhaps her not-quite-husband saw that as a loop hole and knocked himself whilst sparing her any corresponding negative consequences pertaining to the loan collection. 

I give up.

Sitting in an office, after two days looking at the same pages again and again, I can’t help but think that there’s no point. It’s all just a waste of paper. Three printouts of the same pages in the same day with the same mistakes repeated each time. Three times I saw “pateintscare” written in the subheading of an article. It’s frustrating to say the least, and I bitched at the boss a bit, but all she could do was acknoledge that there is in fact a problem. I can imagine this magazine going to print with the sentence “Please shorten this paragraph for me.” still hidden in the center of a page.

To my left are large piles of year old magazines that are already out of date in this time-sensitive industry. Oh yea I’m in the midst of this third revision, waiting for page 42. It’s been more than ten minutes. Regardless of the corrections, there are sure to be a series of mistakes and awkward grammatical structures that make it to print. One structural correction that I made was shelved because the company for which the article was written had already approved of the bad grammar. Utter shite.

Kinda makes me sympathize with this guy

  

McPeace in the McMiddle East

While waiting on my bike at a crosswalk, I was approached by a man, who, after exchanging pleasantries, asked me if I knew the way to the nearest McDonald’s. Being neither familiar with the area, nor an expert on the placement of Micky D’s in the city, I noticed that there was a giant Burger King straight ahead and pointed at it, thinking that there wouldn’t be much of a difference.

He quickly threw that idea by the wayside, stating his devotion to McDonald’s food as well as that of KFC and explicitly stating that he wished only to dine at one of their fine establishments.

As an American on a bike in the city, it is clearly my responsibility to know the whereabouts of such places, and I regret not doing so up to this point and vow to better myself by garnering such knowledge.

When i asked him where he was from, he smiled shyly/slyly  and said Pakistan! which prompted me to shake his hand. Turned out to be an exporter of construction materials in Korea on a short business trip.

Guess I shouldn’t be so surprised by his love for the fast food juggernaut because meat plays a dominant role in Pakistani food, compared to other South Asian cuisines. According to a 2003 report, an average Pakistani consumed three times more meat than an average Indian. Of all the meats, the most popular are: beef, goat, and chicken.

I wonder if they make a goat burger.

Free advertising for McDonald’s Pakistan!

As of late

I’ve been working from home, trying to write a lot of music, learning kanji and building up my Korean vocabulary, the latter two relating to this flashcard freeware called anki, which you can check out here.

Three funny things I saw this week that I lack photographic evidence of.

An ajumma wearing a t-shirt stating NIGGAS LOVE BLONDES

An ajossi pretending to use his umbrella as an automatic weapon, a la The Penguin

An ajumma wearing a t-shirt that read SMILE MORE SMOKE

Skinflint

Caught this yesterday, though it’s nigh impossible to read, and it’s not Konglish. The English is perfect, but… what it says is amazing

MY GRANNY WENT

TO LONDON AND

ALL SHE GOT ME WAS

THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT

THE FUCKING SKINFLINT

I CAN’T STAND HER

I’VE NEVER LIKED HER

SINCE SHE POURED

BOILING WATER ON ME

WHEN I WAS A BABY

Man Boobs

Man boobs are an ever growing problem (hehe) here in Korea, enough to warrant a disturbing subway ad

여유증 = female breast symptom

Men no longer have to suffer with enlarged milk secreting breasts.

I’m suddenly remdinded of that scene in Meet the Parents where Focker blurts out that he could milk anything with nipples and Jack replies “I have nipples. Can you milk me?”

Perhaps he can Jack… perhaps he can…

The ad contains a link to http://cafe.naver.com/foxps

The red text on the site says that they’ll be performing the procedure from July to September every Friday from 7 to 9PM and the blue text says that it’s only for men.  Guess there’s not a high enough demand to sustain a whole business.  I imagine that the rest of the article contains information similar to this wikipedia article on gynecomastia, but currently can’t be bothered to attempt a full and likely poor translation.

Here are some better pre- and post-surgery shots

My first second thought (after wtf!?!?!) was that those man boobs are not even that big and could likely easily be reduced in size if the guys worked out for a few weeks. An image search on any engine will quickly show cases much worse than those pictured above.

Also, why stop at the boobs? Excluding the thirth guy, they could use a little bit of lipo as well.

While discussing the topic with my grrrlfriend, she naturally shifted it all to start poking fun by telling me I had man boobs, that it could be serious! (a sign of chronic liver disease, etc.) and I should think about getting the procedure, thus trying to ruin my fun.

Anyway, the whole thing further illustrates to me both the wide acceptance of plastic surgery here and the fact that, however irrelevant, I’d much rather see Hyori, or another nubile, shirtless in this ad a la

Thirth is the one with the treasure chest

or hairy chest, depending on your interpretation