The views of an American from sunny California who is a confirmed sapiosexual and now an expatriate in Seoul, South Korea.
There is social and political commentary, music and entertainment that I love or loathe, and general silliness.
A theme? There is no theme...just the randomness of an expat life in a completely different culture.
After spending the night out with very little sleep (a good friend left Korea today and is heading back to the States), I got home and checked my email. The first thing I saw was a CNN update that the Phoenix lander has sent a signal that it has landed on Mars and that images were soon to follow!
Geeks rejoice!
I'm exhausted. I'm going to get a quick nap before I have to run errands and get to appointments this Monday, but I had to get to the NASA website.
The Phoenix Mars Lander, which launched in August 2007, is the first project in NASA's Mars Scout missions. The mission's plan is to land in icy soils near the north polar permanent ice cap of Mars and explore the history of the water in these soils and any associated rocks, while monitoring polar climate.
The second of many Korean designer interviews to come.
On day two of the last Seoul Fashion week I had a chance to ask men's wear designer Choi Bum Suk some questions. I got a chance to get backstage after his runway show, so there is some noise in the background because they were breaking things down and setting up for the next show. My apologies.
There is much buzz surrounding Steve Aoki, aka, Kid Millionaire, his companies, and his celebrity lifestyle. Was I going to meet someone who is caught up in the glitz of it all -- or was I going to meet someone who is successful in his own right, but is also a nice person to talk to?
He turned out to be a nice guy.
I spoke to Aoki just a couple of hours before he was scheduled to DJ at Gayagum Hall at the Sheraton Grande Hotel in Walkerhill. He had flown in from Osaka, Japan where he had a DJ gig the evening before.
"I feel like I'm in the Grateful Dead. I just never stop touring. Like, last year I flew over 300 flights. This year it's ... five or six days of the week I'm flying," Aoki said. It showed. He was clearly exhausted when we spoke. At that point in the short interview, I had the feeling that he was a genuinely nice guy.
I suggested interviewing him the next day if he was going to stay in Seoul. It was a gamble, but I had done my research and knew his next appearance was not until May 16th in Bangkok. He took me up on my offer. He seemed to appreciate the gesture because I got a message the next day asking me if I had time to interview him.
"I've been so excited to come to Korea ... almost more than any city. I don't know why. Honestly, I don't know what it is but I was so excited to come here. I think it was because I never thought I'd come here. But then I get these messages on MySpace from kids in Korea who are super excited. I didn't think anyone here knew who I was," he said.
Apparently, that is definitely not true. I was just excited as was the young Korean crowd. He started his set with tracks from his debut CD, "Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles" and zigzagged through high-intensity pop, hip-hop and rock. The next day when we resumed the interview, my first question was his impression of the crowd in Seoul. "They were raging," Aoki said with no hesitation. When I pressed him more, he explained how excited he was to see the crowd having so much fun dancing. He went on to say that "the crowd, especially the girls, had so much energy."
Aoki is a music lover and began throwing parties where he would DJ and host bands when he was a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He realized he was on to something and has made his love of music his career.
When asked about both the love and the hate he gets from people, Aoki said he lets the criticism roll off his back. I told him that a young man pulled me aside and told me that Aoki was not a "real" DJ.
Aoki summed it up nicely when he said "you can't please everyone. There are things I like and things I hate too. Why would someone who doesn't think I'm a real DJ pay 55,000 won to come and see me?"
He added, "I only care if criticism is coming from someone close to me like family or friends."
We then moved on to the adoration and love he gets from his fans. Again, Aoki summed it up nicely: "It's easy to accept love. The music is the way I connect to the crowd. The music drives the feeling. Even if it's just for a few seconds, I feel a connection with the crowd every show I do."
I also had a chance to ask him about his multifaceted company, Dim Mak, which means "death touch." Dim Mak has a record company which has signed hot bands like The Bloody Beetroots and over 50 other music acts. Dim Mak is also a management company that manages the appearances for DJs including Aoki, the legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff, other celebrity DJs like Joel Madden and special appearances for his sister, Devon Aoki, who is a model and actress.
Dim Mak also has a clothing line -- the Dim Mak Collection. When asked where he gets his energy from to keep up such a hectic touring schedule and being a CEO, Aoki explained, "I'm always working even when I'm on vacation. I like being able to have a Blackberry and be plugged in wherever I go.
"I just stress out when I'm away." He also emphasized that he does not do it alone. "I surround myself with people that I trust. I want people who are loyal and who are committed to the Dim Mak brand."
He went on to explain that "you can learn new skills," but emphasized he gets most of his employees from interns that he has gotten to know and trusts.
In addition to coming to Seoul to DJ, Aoki does have other things going. He only had a day to spend in Seoul and he said he would like to spend time "eating Korean barbeque and checking out stores."
However, he said he also wanted to find a store to sell his line of clothing. He describes the Dim Mak Collection as a line that "people buy because they want to be part of Dim Mak."
He added that he's already designing the 2009 line and that his sister, Devon, has been working on pieces for the collection too. I'll let you in on a secret. He did manage to find a suitable store here in Seoul, for more information on that go to the FeetManSeoul.com website.
To find out more about Steve Aoki, go to steveaoki.com and to find out more about Dim Mak go to dimmak.com
Regina can be reached through her blog at expatjane.blogspot.com - Ed.
I was doing some research on black American history last night when a Google search revealed this:
How has photography shaped our ideas of race? That's the question posed in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis (Abrams, $40), the catalog for a national touring exhibit prepared by the International Center of Photography (in New York through February 29, with stops in cities like Seattle, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio). ... Roz Payne's 1968 "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power," in which Asian men hold protest signs in support of black activist Huey Newton, the book captures the visual ironies of race in America.
After I read that I HAD to find the photo. It took a couple of searches, but I managed to find it on a web page for an Asian American Pacific Islander Studies course here:
I just think it's a great photo.
Here is the Wiki link explaining the history behind the term "yellow peril".
This is another interesting news article about Korea. It seems that the preference for boys is quickly diminishing.
I've not thought about the issue much, so I don't have much to say. However, it is an interesting article. It was published back in December, but I missed it then.
When Park He-ran was a young mother, other women would approach her to ask what her secret was. She had given birth to three boys in a row at a time when South Korean women considered it their paramount duty to bear a son.
Ms. Park, a 61-year-old newspaper executive, gets a different reaction today. “When I tell people I have three sons and no daughter, they say they are sorry for my misfortune,” she said. “Within a generation, I have turned from the luckiest woman possible to a pitiful mother.”
In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys is fast receding. And that has led to what seems to be a decrease in the number of abortions performed after ultrasounds that reveal the sex of a fetus.
According to a study released by the World Bank in October, South Korea is the first of several Asian countries with large sex imbalances at birth to reverse the trend, moving toward greater parity between the sexes. Last year, the ratio was 107.4 boys born for every 100 girls, still above what is considered normal, but down from a peak of 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990.
The most important factor in changing attitudes toward girls was the radical shift in the country’s economy that opened the doors to women in the work force as never before and dismantled long-held traditions, which so devalued daughters that mothers would often apologize for giving birth to a girl.
The government also played a small role starting in the 1970s. After growing alarmed by the rise in sex-preference abortions, leaders mounted campaigns to change people’s attitudes, including one that featured the popular slogan “One daughter raised well is worth 10 sons!”
In 1987, the government banned doctors from revealing the sex of a fetus before birth. But experts say enforcement was lax because officials feared too many doctors would be caught.
Demographers say the rapid change in South Koreans’ feelings about female babies gives them hope that sex imbalances will begin to shrink in other rapidly developing Asian countries — notably China and India — where the same combination of a preference for boys and new technology has led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses.
“China and India are closely studying South Korea as a trendsetter in Asia,” said Chung Woo-jin, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They are curious whether the same social and economic changes can occur in their countries as fast as they did in South Korea’s relatively small and densely populated society.”
In China in 2005, the ratio was 120 boys born for every 100 girls, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Vietnam reported a ratio of 110 boys to 100 girls last year. And although India recorded about 108 boys for every 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was taken, experts say the gap is sure to have widened by now.
The Population Fund warned in an October report that the rampant tinkering with nature’s probabilities in Asia could eventually lead to increased sexual violence and trafficking of women as a generation of boys finds marriage prospects severely limited.
In South Korea, the gap in the ratio of boys to girls born began to widen in the 1970s, but experts say it became especially pronounced in the mid-1980s as ultrasound technology became more widespread and increasing wages allowed more families to pay for the tests. The imbalance was widest from 1990 through 1995, when it remained above 112 to 100.
The imbalance has been closing steadily only since 2002. Last year’s ratio of 107.4 boys for every 100 girls was closer to the ratio of 105 to 100 that demographers consider normal and, according to The World Factbook, published by the Central Intelligence Agency, just above the global average of 107 boys born for every 100 girls. The preference for boys here is centuries old and was rooted in part in an agrarian society that relied on sons to do the hard work on family farms. But in Asia’s Confucian societies, men were also accorded special status because they were considered the carriers of the family’s all-important bloodline.
That elevated status came with certain perquisites — men received their families’ inheritance — but also responsibilities. Once the eldest son married, he and his wife went to live with his family; he was expected to support his parents financially while his wife was expected to care for them in their old age.
The wife’s lowly role in her new family was constantly reinforced by customs that included requiring a daughter-in-law to serve her father-in-law food while on her knees.
“In the old days, when there was no adequate social safety net, Korean parents regarded having a son as kind of making an investment for old age security,” Professor Chung said. It was common for married Korean men to feel ashamed if they had no sons. Some went so far as to divorce wives who did not bear boys.
Then in the 1970s and ’80s, the country threw itself into an industrial revolution that would remake society in ways few South Koreans could have imagined.
Sons drifted away to higher-paying jobs in the cities, leaving their parents behind. And older Koreans found their own incomes rising, allowing them to save money for retirement rather than relying on their sons for support.
Married daughters, no longer shackled to their husbands’ families, returned to provide emotional or financial support for their own elderly parents.
“Daughters are much better at emotional contact with their parents, visiting them more often, while Korean sons tend to be distant,” said Kim Seung-kwon, a demographer at the government’s Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.
Ms. Park, the newspaper executive, said such changes forced people to rethink their old biases. “In restaurants and parks, when you see a large family out for a dinner or picnic, 9 out of 10, it’s the wife who brings the family together with her parents, not the husband with his parents,” she said. “To be practical, for an old Korean parent, having a daughter sometimes is much better than having a son.”
The economic changes also unleashed a revolution of a different sort. With the economy heating up, men could no longer afford to keep women out of the workforce, and women began slowly to gain confidence, and grudging respect.
Although change is coming slowly and deep prejudices remain — in some businesses, women are pressured to leave their jobs when pregnant — women are more accepted now in the workplace and at the best universities that send graduates to the top corporations.
Six of 10 South Korean women entered college last year; fewer than one out of 10 did so in 1981. And in the National Assembly, once one of the nation’s most male-dominated institutions, women now hold about 13 percent of the seats, about double the percentage they held just four years ago.
Shin Hye-sun, 39, says she has witnessed many of the changes in women’s status during her 13 years at the TBC television station in Taegu, in central South Korea. “When I first joined the company in 1995, a woman was expected to quit her job once she got married; we called it a ‘resignation on a company suggestion,’” she said. Now, she said, many women stay after marriage and take a three-month break after giving birth before returning to work.
“If someone suggests that a woman should quit after marriage, female workers in my company will take it as an insult and say so,” Ms. Shin said.
According to the World Bank study, one of the surprises in South Korea was that it took as long as it did for the effects of a booming economy to translate into changes in people’s attitudes toward the birth of daughters.
The study suggests that the country’s former authoritarian rulers helped slow the transition by upholding laws and devising policies that supported a continuation of Confucian hierarchy, which encourages fealty not only to family patriarchs, but also to the nation’s leaders.
With the move toward democracy in the late 1980s, the concept of equal rights for men and women began to creep into Koreans’ thinking. In 1990, the law guaranteeing men their family’s inheritance — a cornerstone of the Confucian system — was the first of the so-called family laws to fall; the rest would be dismantled over the next 15 years.
After 2002, the narrowing of the gender gap signaled that attitudes about the value of women — and ultimately of daughters — had begun to catch up to the seismic changes in the economy and the law.
And last year, a study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs showed that of 5,400 married South Korean women younger than 45 who were surveyed, only 10 percent said they felt that they must have a son. That was down from 40 percent in 1991.
“When my father took me to our ancestral graves for worshiping, my grandfather used to say, ‘Why did you bring a daughter here?’” said Park Su-mi, 29, a newlywed who calls the idea that only men carry on a family’s bloodline “unscientific and absurd.”
“My husband and I have no preference at all for boys,” she said. “We don’t care whether we have a boy or girl because we don’t see any difference between a boy and a girl in helping make our family happy.”
Again, Seoul is ranked high when it comes to consumer prices. What's funny is a lot of people think you can roll into Seoul and get things on the cheap.
Okay, low-quality knockoff DVDs? Sure. But, as the article notes, a cup of coffee from one of the international chains doesn't come cheap. That's the same for quite a few things here.
I've never expected, however, to get international goods here that weren't more expensive than back home. What's interesting is when the prices of things that you'd think would be less expensive like rice, a national staple, are more expensive. That's due to a lot of things from politics to nationalism and economics.
However, the issue is without other things to balance it out like the culture, ease of doing business, openness to foreigners, etc. it's hard to see what South Korea is seriously doing to increase its level of international competitiveness. This is particularly so when other countries in this region are also upping their game to attract foreigners and the investment and businesses that come with them.
The coffee at Starbucks in Seoul is more expensive than in 11 major cities around the world, relative to overall price levels. That's according to the Korea Consumer Agency, which on Tuesday released the results of a price comparison of seven items -- coffee, golf green fees, imported canned beer, snack cookies, cosmetics, books, and orange juice -- between Seoul and other cities in North America, Asia and Europe.
◆ Coffee, beer costlier in Seoul
A cup of Cafe Americano sells for W3,300 (US$1=W1,045) at Starbucks in Seoul, while the same drink sells for W2,280 in U.S. and Canadian cities -- meaning Koreans pay a full W1,000 more. "When compared arithmetically, Seoul turned out to have the highest prices except for European cities where prices have risen with the recent rally of the euro," the KCA said. Prices generally tend to be higher in countries that have strong currencies, but comparing by purchasing power parity (PPP) removes that factor. Based on PPP, Seoul had the highest coffee prices among the 12 surveyed cities.
By PPP, the price of a 355 ml can of imported Budweiser beer was also highest in Seoul. Compared arithmetically, the beer, which sells for W800 in China, costs nearly double in Korea at W1,500. In imported cosmetics, Korea ranks eighth in the price of lipstick based on the simple market exchange rate, but highest based on PPP. Korea ranks seventh in the price of snack cookies based on the simple exchange rate, but the relative price is higher than in other major Asian nations.
◆ Why are prices so high in Korea?
The price differences between Korea and other countries are determined by various factors, such as government policies, taxes, logistics expenses, labor productivity, and prices of raw materials. Jang Soo-tae, an official at the KCA, said, "High prices are determined by structural factors, including complicated distribution systems, high tax rates, and excessive government regulations, and natural factors, including economic causes of high costs and low efficiency, poor land conditions and lack of resources."
The high coffee prices, for example, are the result of a "high cost structure, including high shop rents and a 5 percent royalty, and the consumer trend for foreign-style coffee shops," Jang explained. As for imported beer, that product suffers a tax-price ratio of 53 percent in Korean, much higher than in the U.S. (14 percent), Germany (15 percent), and France (18 percent).
The KCA pledged to look out for unfair trade practices for surveyed items that cost much more in Korea, and it will also urge government agencies to overhaul the high tax system. But high prices are not limited to the items on the survey. "In addition to the seven items surveyed, there are many others whose prices are higher than in other countries," said Park Sang-yong, a professor of business administration at Yonsei University. "It's dangerous to make a hasty decision, but the government needs to take fundamental measures to address issues such as monopolies and oligopolies, and taxation."
◆ Taxes inflate wine prices
Wine is one such item that was not on the survey but is generally much pricier in Korea than elsewhere. For example, a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 2004, a special-grade French wine that was imported recently, sells for W970,000 on average at Korean wine shops. But the same wine costs 39,900 yen (about W400,000) at Enoteca, a wine shop in Tokyo -- nearly half the price.
Wine in Korea costs nearly double than in Japan because Korean importers seek higher profit margins, but also because the two countries apply very different tax rates. Korean importers pay a 15 percent import tariff, a 30 percent liquor tax, a 10 percent education tax, and a 10 percent value-added tax on wine. That means the more expensive your wine, the more tax you pay. In contrast, Japan imposes a flat tax rate on all wines, whether they cost W1 million or W10,000 a bottle. Hong Kong, meanwhile, imposes almost no taxes on imported wine. Korea levies high taxes to protect local wines, typically the traditional Korean style. But many people are calling for an overhaul of the tax system since imported wine has become so popular.
Okay, I was spending time with some folks this weekend when the issue of registering to vote and the upcoming elections came up.
I was dismayed to learn that some didn't know they could vote or, if they did, weren't sure of how to go about it.
I figured they couldn't be the only ones a bit confused and in need of a primer.
First, just go to VoteFromAbroad.org. This site will walk you through the steps to register. Then you'll print out a form that you can mail to your state and you'll be registered.
Here is the FAQ section from USElections.com) which gives you more info:
For UOCAVA Citizens (UOCAVA citizens are U.S. citizens who are members of the U.S. Armed Forces(Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard), merchant marine, commissioned corps of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, their family members, and citizens outside the United States. >>A Voting Assistance Guide May Also Be Helpful
Q. How else can I obtain an absentee ballot? (not really relevant for folks living abroad, but you might be reading this in the States.)
A. You may request an absente ballot by contacting your local county or city election official. Depending on your State, this individual may be the County Clerk, County Auditor, County Registrar or Supervisor of Elections, or the Board of Elections. In most cases the phone number for these offices is listed in the blue government pages of you phone book.
Q. I'm a member of the armed forces stationed overseas. How can I vote by absentee ballot? (hopefully, if you're in the armed services and are stationed abroad, you've got someone on your back about registering and requesting an absentee ballot anyway, if not...DO IT.)
A. The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense is responsible for administering the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. This law provides that members of the U.S. Uniformed Services and merchant marine and their family members may vote absentee while away from their place of voting residence, wherever stationed, within or outside the United States. For detailed information on registering and obtaining an absentee ballot, please visit the FVAP web site at http://www.fvap.gov/ , or call 1-800-438-VOTE.
Q. I'm a U.S. citizen currently residing abroad. How can I vote by absentee ballot?
A. The FVAP also serves non-military U.S. citizens residing abroad by helping them to register and vote by absentee ballot.
Okay, you have no excuses now, so register and request your absentee ballot.
Since I don't live in the States, I only get to see clips from the show. However, I did post some of his skits a few months back when I blogged about the "average Asian" skit they do on MadTV. It's funny stuff...check it out if you haven't seen it.
It looks like he had a Secret Standup Show in Honolulu with MySpace. MySpace.com has shows from time to time in various places where you don't know who will be performing.
This is funny stuff. However, my question is at the end of the show his pants are missing. What happened?
This story came out late last year, but considering where I live, it's no surprise the K-bloggers didn't pick it up and I didn't find it until recently.
This is the reason why the skinny bitch has never and will never phase me ;)
Women with small waists and big hips also have big IQs, a new U.S. study has found.
A study of 16,000 women determined those with hourglass figures were more intelligent than their counterparts with round or straight bodies, The Sunday Times of London reported.
Curvier women also tended to have more intelligent children, possibly because omega3 fatty acids are stored in their hips, the British newspaper said. Skinny women, or those whose fat deposits are around their waists do not have such deposits.
The study, to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior this week, may explain earlier findings that men prefer women with smaller waists than hips even if they are compared to slimmer women, said the study's authors at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
It may also help break down the stereotype that attractive women are not intelligent, sexual and relationship psychologist Paula Hall told the newspaper.
I'm an L.A. native who has been overseas for a bit too long, but I'm still loving it. I'm on a quest to get more letters behind my name. So in addition to my B.A. and law degree, I've just finished my master's in international studies (diplomacy and security) at Ewha Womans University. After all that however, I think I've discovered I want to be a writer when I grow up ;)
