Heart and Seoul

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I'm aware it's been about 4 months since I posted. 

I haven't died.

I haven't been banned from the internet (not yet, anyway).

I've simply moved.

I'm not in Korea anymore, and a lot of exciting things have happened over the past 4 months.  So I thought it fitting to move my blog to a more appropriate address and subject matter.  This little blog was a welcome outlet while I studied in Seoul, and I hope someone besides myself and my mother got a kick out of it, but I'm moving on.

My new web-space is fancy but empty (not unlike my actual living space at the moment, but that's a matter for a future entry).  Though it's empty for now, I promise it won't be for long.

I know, I know, it's blatant piracy.  But it's slightly more clever than my original rip-off -- "Timpire State of Mind." 

So if you find yourself interested, navigate your way over to the other site.  I make no promises (implied or otherwise) that you'll enjoy it, but I certainly will. . . at least as much as a law student can.

February 14th is (of course) Valentine's Day, and according to Korean custom that's the day when girls give candy and gifts to their significant male other.




March 14th is White Day, a chance for men to take the reins and shower flowers and presents on their lady loves.







April 14th, though, is Black Day, and custom dictates that one this day those poor unfortunate souls who neither gave nor received anything on the previous two holidays collectively mourn their singleness over a bowl of black noodles.






The dish itself is delicious, but, well, it's a holiday called Black Day reminding single people that they went another spring without love.

"Happy Black Day!" probably isn't appropriate. 


Instead, I'll take a cue from Dwight Schrute of the Office:

"It is Black Day."

It comes from a scene in which Dwight and Jim are trying to plan a birthday party for Kelly and Dwight is in charge of the decorations. 

Here's the soundbite (since I couldn't find a video clip):

It isn't terribly common to wake up in the morning, look out your window, and wonder in earnest (even if it's fleeting):

Is this the apocalypse?

But this past Saturday was one of those days.  As I peered through the glass beside my bed and saw what may as well have been doomsday hovering low in the sky, I admit that my gut reaction was a quick personal inventory to make sure I had things in order if this happened to be the end of days.

The sky was a deep yellow-orange, visibility was low, and there was an eerie and unsettling calm.  I quickly realized that it all added up not to Armageddon, but rather to Hwangsa, otherwise known as "the yellow dust," courtesy of China and its Gobi Desert.

What happens is that dust and sand in the Gobi gets stirred up by winds as they start to shift in the spring.  The dust then combines with both ground and air pollution and is carried by the prevailing winds eastward, often through metropoles like Beijing and Seoul, and even to places like Seattle, L.A., and other U.S. cities. 
These photos give you an idea (both from above and below)


 

Believe it or not, the first I ever heard of Hwangsa was actually as a high school student in Salt Lake City, 6,000 miles away on the other side of the world.  The air was abnormally hazy, and the local weatherman reported that a large reason for the gritty air was "yellow dust" blowing across the ocean (plus several U.S. states) from Chinese deserts.  If it's strong enough make it a significant phenomenon on the opposite end of the globe, you can imagine what it's like when you're just a (relative) stone's throw from the source.

Seoul typically endures Hwangsa 6-10 times per year through the early spring months, making the dust storms a regular, if not welcome, occurrence.  This past Saturday's episode, however, was one of the worst on record.  Chalk it up to a drought in the Gobi, but also to pretty extreme environmental damage and industrial pollution on the part of China that turns moderate storms into severe ones. 

Thankfully, the Hwangsa season will pass quickly, and then the absolutely beautiful spring weather of April and early May will be here with its blossoming trees, refreshing breezes, warm temperatures, and clear skies.  After what has been an abnormally long winter (it has snowed in Seoul at least once a week over the first three weeks of March), the spring will be especially welcome.

I feel compelled to wax a bit philosophical for this entry. The fun stories and interesting tidbits can wait their turn.

An acquaintance of mine left Korea today after a year of teaching English. While waiting at the airport, he decided to leave this epitaph on his time spent here (via his Facebook):

I don't really take offense to things. I learned a long time ago that taking offense when it wasn't intended is stupid, and taking offense when it IS intended is usually stupid. But I'll be honest, this last bitter shot at Korea came pretty darn close.

But it also inspired me to tackle a topic I'm pretty passionate about, especially here in Seoul because I see so sharply the effect that it has on people's quality of life and their perception of the world and the people around them.



I'm talking about the miring power of Negativity and the potentially overwhelming drag it can be when indulged or entertained.



Life is made up of two things: people and choices. When it all boils down to it, life is simply ourselves and the people around us making our own decisions and dealing along the way with the decisions of others and the consequences of our own. Sometimes things happen that fall outside of the realm of individual cause/effect, and sometimes those things are inconvenient, tragic, or painful. But even in the face of those things that can't be controlled, all we can do is choose how to react and move forward.

Negativity is one of those choices. Negativity is generally born from small things. Something unfortunate happens, somebody disappoints us, our desires fail to materialize. . . It is natural to respond to these things negatively. We mourn the bad things in life. And this response is healthy.

But when Negativity begins to be destructive are the times when we fail to choose to get over it. We indulge those dark feelings of self-pity, judgment, malaise, indignance, and disdain. We allow them to tint our perspective on the people and the world around us. We begin to believe that the shades of Negativity we cultivate are an intrinsic part of our reality, failing to realize that we put those shades up in the first place. Worst of all, as we recede deeper into the darkness that Negativity provides, we lose touch with all the light and promise that life can offer and prevent ourselves from throwing open the shutters and taking in the vibrancy of the world around us.

Where my acquaintance went wrong was allowing himself, in the face of the occasional difficulty, to decide that his world was that difficulty, forgetting that in actuality the difficulty was merely a small part of a world that is literally teeming with goodness and warmth and wonder. As hard as that goodness can be to see sometimes, the important thing is to always remember that it's there and that if we can't see it then we have our own work to do to get to a positive vantage point.

My acquaintance claims that his negativity stems from problems he has had living and working here in Korea.

I don't buy it.

He may have had his challenges and difficulties, and his share of them may even have been greater than most, but his negativity stems entirely from himself and the way that he responds to and interprets the events of life, primarily in indulging the negative and ignoring (or even preventing) the positive.

That's the danger we face when we sink into a pit of unhappiness. All the good things around us melt away out of our sight because we're no longer capable of recognizing them for what they are. They no longer fit into the narrative of negativity that we have written for ourselves, and thus we summarily dismiss them or marginalize them as the exception rather than the rule.

My acquaintance's disdain of Korea breaks my heart. The image he built for himself of Korea and the people here will be shared with others, and their view will be clouded by the same negative fog that he has been receding into for so long here. He will never understand the warmth of Korean people, their willingness to help and to sacrifice, the depth and pain of their recent history, the cultural treasures of this peninsula, and the limitless opportunities here to learn, be inspired, and gain a deeper appreciation for life and all its facets.

To my acquaintance, I sympathize with his challenges here in Korea. But I emphatically disagree with his judgment and hope that he can gain some perspective by shedding the chains of negativity he has so willingly embraced, and by doing so recognize all of the positive things that he experienced (and could have experienced) during his time here.



My hope is simply that we can all of us choose to accept the bad and move past it when it stands in our way, not allowing ourselves to become judgmental, rash, short-sighted, self-centered, and bitter. If we can do that, then an entire world of possibility, hope, inspiration, and appreciation is opened to us. The power of positivity and an eye ever searching for good things is a transformative thing, and my wish is that we all can consciously cultivate that power more fully in our lives.

What a difference it will make.

As you've probably put together from the heading pic, this post has nothing to do with an itch for riches. Sadly, the topic is much more unsettling than that.

My hatred of creeping things is well-documented. From the menace of Methusalian mosquitoes to the pure, unfiltered evil of spiders of all types (recorded here and here), I've established pretty soundly that I don't like things that could potentially crawl into my brain while I sleep. That said, aside from spiders (which haunt my dreams and test my bladder control), creepy-crawlies don't really scare me, per se, I just hate the thought of them getting all up in my business.

Moving to new places is always a crap shoot on the bug front. I feel like I fared quite well at my last residence, disaster though it was in many respects. A handful of spiders and relatively few mosquitoes combined to register low on the Raid-ar (pun absolutely intended). But when I left the Single Mini-tel behind, I opened up the possibility of something less favorable.
My new apartment in south-central Seoul is palatial compared to my old room, complete with all the necessary furniture and appliances I need, and there is plenty of space for guests. Unfortunately, I am learning that there are more guests than I first realized when I moved in.

I am talking specifically about centipedes.

House centipedes.

Or, as Koreans call them, "Money Bugs."

Here's a picture that should give you an idea of what they're like:


The first encounter came as quite a shock, actually. I was composing an email one evening when I saw a darting shape out of the corner of my eye. I looked up on the wall behind my screen only to find a 3-inch centipede scrambling up towards the ceiling. I yelped in surprise and a battle ensued, which consisted of me stabbing with my umbrella, knocking off its legs, having it fall from the ceiling onto my body, flailing my arms madly, and finally succeeding in crushing the poor brute as he fled gamely for his dark corners.

Once the deed was done, I looked frantically around my room. Until that point, centipedes had never entered my consciousness, and so I had never bothered to keep an eye out for them. But as I started to look around with them in mind, I glanced up at my light fixture and realized there were three more camped out inside it. This worried me for a few reasons. For all I knew, those centipedes were still alive, and removing the cover on the light fixture would rain down multi-legged terror on my head. There was also the possibility that, if they WERE dead, the centipedes had been busy making babies before they expired and said-terror would be smaller but far more numerous, ready to emerge at any time. I still haven't mustered the courage to explore the light fixture, so in the meantime I hope I don't have little baby-pedes crawl out and take up residence. I might just lose it if they do.

It turns out that these types of centipedes are actually quite common here (though I confess in my almost 3 years of experience living in Korea, this is the first I've seen of them). I was also surprised to discover that they're quite common all over the world, including the United States. But common though they may be, that doesn't decrease the disgusting-ness factor.

I am nevertheless torn over their presence, and I'll tell you why.

Wikipedia tells me a lot of unnerving things about these little crawlies. They can live in your house for the entirety of their 7 year lives, they like closets, they're nocturnal, and they get it on like rabbits.

BUT, Wikipedia also tells me that they eat spiders.

Given my history, that's huge.

And thus I'm torn.

Because the fact of the matter is that I would prefer these 30-legged beasties to their vile 8-legged cousins. If they can munch the spideys (and do it while staying completely out of sight and out of my clothes/bed), then they're probably worth keeping around. But the centipedes also have to realize that if they show their disgusting little faces it's not going to end well for them.

(to transition completely suddenly)
You're probably wondering, "Why do Koreans call them 'Money Bugs'?"

Money Bugs are a relatively new inhabitant of Korea. They hail originally from the Mediterranean, but explorers and traders took them all over the world after the 16th century. In the spring and fall, the Money Bugs were lured by warmth, and most of the warmth they found came from the houses of well-off people. The poor generally couldn't afford to heat their homes much (if at all), particularly if it wasn't winter. Thus it was generally only the wealthy that had to deal with the bugs inside their homes. So having a Money Bug come strutting into your bed room meant that you were probably well-enough-to-do, and its presence became a good omen for wealth and success, particularly if you were a little down-trodden yourself.



What am I supposed to make of them, then? On the one hand, they eat spiders and portend financial comfort. But on the other, they are huge and gross and invasive and fast and I hate them. What do I do?

For now, I've decided to let them be (meaning I won't be fumigating any time soon). But it's a "don't be seen or heard" relationship. The second I spot one of these bugs, good omen or not, it's game time.

Watch out, Money Bugs.

But while you avoid certain death at my hands, make sure to take a few spiders out in the meantime.

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I wore a black turtleneck on Wednesday with jeans and sneakers, which was odd because I never wear turtlenecks.

I got home from school and looked in the mirror, and realized what I had become for the day:





That's right. I was Steve Jobs.


That would explain why I felt like a cash-whore all day.

It would also explain my then-inexplicable urge to start wrapping things in aluminum only to sell them for double what they're worth and convince people that they were going to need a new one in 6 months when I release the same thing all over again (only slightly larger/smaller/more colorful).



I am joking of course.

But only kind of ;)