Korvia Autumn Party 2015

Basically, I'm so bad at blogging that I decided to combine two draft posts into one thing.
I'm also so bad at remembering to document these things, that I've just stolen all the nice photos of me from Korvia's facebook page. Why bother taking photos when you've got paparazzi documenting everything? ;D

Also, I blog so infrequently that I wrote half a blog post about the summer AND autumn parties, before realising I'd already written about the summer party half a year ago. Oops.

SO. Here is is, the Korvia Autumn Party.

I retract my former statement, hahaha.
Nick and I decided to combine our trip to Hongdae for the party with one of our Once in a Blue Moon trips to the hairdresser, so naturally we looked awesome. I re-installed my full fringe out of nostalgia for the good ol' days when hair was thick and plentiful.

However, nostalgia is one of the worst inventions ever and rose-tints everything, cutting out all the bad stuff. My greasy forehead and lots of running around excitedly nattering to people at 100 miles an hour in the hopes they'll not notice I'm secretly bricking it means I ended up with a clumpy, hairy mess stuck to my forehead before it was even dark.

Turns out, that's exactly the reason I grew out my last full fringe. Sigh.

Anyway, we needed to arrive early since Nick had signed up to help take photos. I hadn't signed up to do anything, because I'm a poor excuse for a citizen, so I tried to take the edge off of my guilt by pretending to be staff. To be fair, I usually help out at the parties and all my friends were there as volunteers, so it felt weird to just sit around like some kind of dictator while everyone else works.

Vadering

I decided my skills as an anxious, introverted human shell would be most well-suited to meeting and greeting hundreds of strangers and helping them make their way to the party. Hence the sweaty face.

I mean, that mostly involved just standing at a table with some of my friends, saying "hello" to anyone that walked up to us or looked lost and not-Korean, and providing them with pens and stickers for making a name tag.

Also, since we were outside and upstairs (the party was at Mike's Cabin in Hongdae, which is a roomy, comfy bar in a building's basement. It's nicer than I've made it sound.) we decided to bring the party to us, by messing around with the photo wall next to us.

Once the stream of arrivals had died down, we called it a day and went in to grab food (pizza and crisps, courtesy of Korvia, thank you!) and find everyone else. There were some funny games, some presentations, some dancing, standard party fare.

I'm not very good at talking about parties, and I've talked enough about how great I think Korvia are at every stage of the application and transition process to Korea, so there's not really much else I can say other than it's always a lot of fun and I'm glad these parties exist. I'd never have met a lot of my friends here without them. </cheese>

This is the best photo because it looks like I broke my leg or something.

The COEX Aquarium

I love aquariums.

I mean, they terrify me, especially in any part with enormous tanks or underwater tunnels. I've seen one too many "mild peril" scenes in films where the glass cracks and all the fish escape to reclaim their domain from the tyrannical grip of humans.

But I also love them, in the way that I can just see thousands of different fish, going about their business being all colourful and...swishy. Fish are also disgusting and sometimes I freak myself out if I look too closely at them. Scales are weird, fins are weird...have you ever looked inside a fish's mouth or eye? Those are weird too.

I'm not really selling the idea that I love aquariums, am I?

I do. In the same way I love bugs but also simultaneously want them all to die. I find bugs and fish fascinating and could watch them all day, but at the same time I never want one less than 5 inches away from me without there being some kind of protective barrier between us. If I could exist in a bubble where nothing would ever touch me, that'd be ideal, yeah.

And no, I can't walk in the sea or on grass barefoot, thanks for asking.

Anyway, before we get any further into my weird, contradictory likes and dislikes I'm going to tell you about the time I went to the aquarium with my friend Kiegan.

Seoul Land

Terrible selfie brought to you by Budget Power Rangers

So, we've been to Everland and rated it, so this time we went to Seoul Land for Nick and Justin's joint birthday party, even despite the forecast for rain, because what could possibly be more dismally fun than a slightly creepy off-brand theme park in the pouring rain?

But first, I want to turn your attention to this:

This is human ingenuity at its finest.

I'm totally blown away by this. I'm not even kidding. I was so amazed. This, my friends, is basically the best snack invention ever. Why fumble around with a box of popcorn chicken in one hand and a paper cup of cola in the other? Why not combine them?

Basically, it's a specially designed cup that you fill with a drink of your choice, and then a tray of popcorn chicken slots in over the top, with just enough room for a straw to poke out. Bam. Problem solved. They even give you little sample sticks so you don't have to worry about getting your hands dirty (or your dirty hands on your food, whichever).

"Elephant Train" sounded a lot cuter and less ethical than it really was.

Seoul Land is in a huge area of Seoul Grand Park, along with a couple of zoos, a lake, an art museum and basically all kinds of cultural development and entertainment. Due to this, there's a little 'train' that drives around, similar to the ones you find at the beach (at home, anyway), to save you some time.

Quite possibly the most confusing sign if you can't read Korean. One is for the exit and one is for the entrance.

We bought tickets for the little train because, in addition to being lazy, it was also raining a lot and we didn't really want to be soaked before we even got there.

We also bought some cheapo ponchos from some entrepreneurial old ladies and ended up looking like some sort of superhero team. I'm not sure what we were fighting against. Soggy jeans?

Looks nothing like an elephant tbh

Seoul Food | Cheese Otaku

Been a while since I did a post like this, eh

Now this is a story all about how... we went and ate an absolutely enormous meal back in June. Hongdae is a great place for food of all kinds, so it's hard to get bored considering the amount of choice they've packed into one area.

We went to Cheese Otaku (치즈오타쿠), a Japanese-themed restaurant along the "barbecue street" where the star of the show is a gigantic platter (with different sizes starting at, I think, a 2 person serving) that sits in a custom slot in the table to keep the food warm, sauces at the right consistency, and to melt cheese. CHEESE!

I guess it should be obvious from the name that you get a lot of cheese.

Depending on the portion you buy, you also get a sizeable chunk of a whole chicken. Goodness me.

There's also fried rice, fried chicken, corn, and a million other things all on this sizzling platter. I can't remember if it came with fries or if we ordered extra. But they were there and they were rapidly consumed.

Weekday Clubbing

Everyone always seems quite surprised when they find out we haven't been clubbing in Korea yet. There's quite a simple explanation for it though. We hate clubbing.
I can't dance, I don't like dancing (unless it's a choreographed performance), and I don't like sweaty crowds of people with no concept of personal space. I don't like people in general. I've spent a long time crafting an online persona of being very outgoing and sociable, but this is the glass-shattering moment I reveal to you that I'm a massive introvert (and possible misanthropist) and anytime I meet up with people I'm in a constant effort to force myself out of my warm, soft, fluffy pokeball of safety and into a slightly more sociable world that doesn't involve cookies and snacks in bed at 7pm on a Saturday. Even if I really like you. Sorry about that.

ANYWAY. One of the things I really try to embrace while I'm here in Korea is meeting up with Korean friends and hanging out with them and generally making the most of the fact I'm in a super cool new country and I know plenty of people from said country that are happy and excited to share their culture with me. So we met up with our friend Nathan again, in one of our once-in-a-blue-moon meetups.

Except this time he also invited his girlfriend! ... and his girlfriend's friend. And his girlfriend's friend's boyfriend. And his girlfriend's friend's boyfriend's friend. I think. You get the picture, haha.

We met up and finally ate 족발 (pigs' feet) which was DELICIOUS, and drank a lot of beer and soju. We then went to look for a second round and happened to see what was labelled as a "British Makgeolli House", so we were ushered in by our friends to celebrate our home country.

Turns out, the establishment was British by name...and name only. Nothing on the menu was in any way British other than the potato pancake we ordered, that was tenuously similar to ham, egg and chips. It was hilarious and confusing. But we drank a lot of makgeolli.

One member of our party had clearly been hit with the alcohol stick a little harder than the rest of us, and she excitedly asked me a question. In English. I couldn't understand anything other than she was asking a question with two options (because it was quite slurred), so she said it again to Nick, who also couldn't understand. She turned in desperation to her boyfriend, repeated it in both English and Korean, at which point he announced he couldn't even understand her, so there was no hope. We ended up all just taking the nod and smile and she happily led us to another building.

It turned out she'd been asking where we want to go next. I don't know what the other option was, but the one we apparently chose was "go to a nightclub". On a Wednesday. At around 9pm. Not exactly peak service hours.

The hilarious thing is that it was a club that only played K-Pop hits, sort of like a Now That's What I Call Music nightclub. (I've just found out that these albums also sell in South Korea under the title "Now That's What I Call K-Pop!", which should totally be the name of the club)

The second, possibly MORE hilarious thing, is that, understandably, it was totally empty. Other than the staff members (including one girl that I assumed was a uni student, who knew the dance routine to EVERY. SINGLE. SONG.) we were the only people in there, which was great because we had the dance floor to ourselves, but also terrible...because we had the dance floor to ourselves.

In the end, they did manage to get me to dance a little (only a little) and we did, admittedly, have fun, until we realised we all had work the next day and should probably head home.

망원한강공원 | Mangwon Han River Park

This is a story of how location scouting often just turns into an excuse for a daytrip (or what feels like it, anyway). We were looking for some open, pretty spaces, that also showed off Seoul's beauty spots.

Our friend Jaceon suggested some places in and around Hapjeong, on the edge of the sprawling University district/s of Seoul (a huge area where something like 3 or 4 of the main universities collide and blur. It's a great place.)

We met up at his place for pizza first and it was enormous.

I think the fatal flaw in our plan was bringing the skateboard.

Anyone want to make a superhero movie about a guy on a skateboard?

It was quite a nice day for a walk, since this was back before summer fully hit. It was warm, but not sticky, and although these grey clouds threatened us all day, we never had more than a tiny drizzle towards the end of the day.

Korvia Summer Barbecue

Hello from your friendly neighbourhood BBQ assistants~

Another incredibly late pre-summer catchup, this time it's the Korvia BBQ!

For anyone that doesn't know, the wonderful Korvia is the company that helped myself, Nick, and hundreds of other people from around the world make the move to South Korea.

The barbecues and parties that Korvia throw for their recruits are there to let people meet the people that helped them share the bureaucratic deadweight that is trying to get work abroad, as well as other native English speakers that might also be in or near your placement area. It's a great idea to help you feel a little bit less of a tiny fish in a huge ocean, and is actually one of the things that really drew me to Korvia over other recruitment agencies when I first started my research.

I actually met a lot of my really good friends over here via last year's (and our first) barbecue. My idea was that if I volunteered to man the grill, I'd HAVE to crawl out of my comfort zone and actually talk to new people. And hey, it worked! Since then, it's always been fun to help out with setting up the venues, because it's basically an easy excuse to doss about with my friends before everyone else arrives. ;p

One of our main tasks was to set up the photo wall in the picture at the top, which was surprisingly difficult considering there were so many people trying to set it up. (And it all ended in disaster, RIP photo wall. I say that, I think we fixed it, but it DID fall on me, and I valiantly tried to leap out of the way like an action hero. Expectations vs Reality, I probably looked more like a kid faceplanting than Indy with the giant rock, but don't crush my dreams, okay?)

Ignore my sweaty mess and focus on Kiegan's dazzlingly adorable smile.

Our other task was to set up the food tables ready for the masses, and get the coals burning and ready for meat, glorious meat. Also: ASPARAGUS!!

Danny Elfman's Music From the Films of Tim Burton

Hello, hello, long time no see etc etc I'm bad at blogging, as usual.
A long time ago (maybe July?), in a city far, far away (from England) Nick and I went to a concert in Seoul.

It was a celebration of Danny Elfman's music from all of Tim Burton's films, played live by an orchestra! A little bit different from our usual musical fare.

As far as I can remember, I'd never been to an orchestral concert, so this was quite exciting. We weren't sat particularly close to the stage, so although the usual ban on photos didn't seem to be present, there wasn't really anything to photograph, so excuse the lack of images. But I suppose you don't go to something like this to take pictures, so what were we expecting?

I'm not totally sure if there was any particular order to the movies that they played, but each section would begin with the movie title displayed on the projector screens. The orchestra would begin playing, and the screens would play some appropriate footage, occasionally broken up with concept art images.

It was really great to see and hear all of the music live, and in particular Danny Elfman himself came out for The Nightmare Before Christmas to perform some of Jack's songs.

I'm a little confused as to why it wasn't in one of Seoul's actual concert halls, as the sound wasn't as great as I was expecting. The orchestra were obviously performing very well, you could hear that. But I wanted to feel the musical vibrations in my chest and have the sound really all around me, rather than just amplified through speakers somewhere in front of me.

Having said that, I still had a great time and it was very cute seeing people leaving afterwards, humming their favourite songs. I'd definitely go to see another concert like this...but maybe not at this venue.

Seoul Food | Cooking Mate

This is a super-old post from last year that I totally forgot I'd started. Oops! I remember it was from somewhere around last Christmas, because the restaurant was playing some very dubious Korean covers of classic Christmas pop hits.

I'll keep it short and sweet, mainly because I can't remember anything except that I enjoyed the food. Heh.

Passionfruit Lemonade

Cooking Mate is a little restaurant in Hongdae, right on the corner of  the road leading from Parking Street up to Artbox (addresses? What is addresses?), next to where the man with the huge, adorable dog usually sets up camp.

There's usually a person stationed outside to let you in or sort out something if there's a wait. Since it's upstairs, I guess it saves you some time rather than going all the way up to find out there's a 2hr wait.

They also have little walkie-talkies, so when we went in we were announced FBI-style to someone upstairs. By the time our unhealthy selves had carried us up, they were all prepared and ushered us over to a specific table. It was fairly quiet when we went, because it was late, but I can imagine this place is pretty organised when it comes to seating customers.

Seoul Food | Abiko 아비꼬

One of our Korean friends had told us about this restaurant and sent us pictures, and it looked great. When I realised it was the curry house we'd walked past a couple of times and commented on the mouth watering smell coming from inside, it was settled, we had to go.

They sell all kinds of Japanese-style curry with rice or noodles with a few choices of different meat and spiciness. I love the little spice scale on the menu that lets you know what to expect, with descriptions that compare to other famous spicy foods in Korea like "Shin Ramyeon level spiciness", "spicy jjamppong", and "buldak" (super spicy chicken, literally "fire chicken" famous for being delicious but murderous). Seeing as Shin Ramyeon gets gasps from me, and the only time I've fought through buldak was with copious amounts of cheese and alcohol, we usually go for the "mild" option which is described as being "not spicy at all" but definitely still has a faint kick. Which says a lot about Korean spice tolerance I suppose, haha.

Cute decorations!

We went to the one in Hongdae but we've since found out that it's a chain and there's one really close to us, so that's dangerous ;) The food is really great and the service has always been very sweet. I'm fairly sure the menu is in English, Korean and Japanese, so that's pretty fun, but even if I've remembered wrongly and there's no English it's yet another case of it being 90% 'Konglish' so as long as you can read hangeul it's fine ;p

We got a set menu each, which gets you a curry rice or curry udon

Since we were in Hongdae we took the opportunity to get our hair cut at our usual, so here are some unnecessary selfies celebrating how great the people at Hair and Joy always manage to make us feel :p

I also bought the cutest lipstick that smells and feels like it's made from Ponds Cold Cream Cleanser. Also very adorably, it's called "Dear My Wish" which makes no sense at all. Unusual for Etude House, which usually has pretty sensible names for its products in my experience? Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

TVXQ Encore Show (aka TREAT YO SELF)

We were super excited for this weekend for a long time because meeting up with friends that are tricky and rare to see is always a special occasion, and via "planning" on Kakao it rapidly spiralled into a Treat Yo Self weekend (that's a reference to Parks and Rec) starting with burgers and cider at our fav: Grabab 

 Import drinks? Treat yo self. AVOCADO? TREAT YO SELF.

Anyway, the next day was the actual concert and naturally we passed the time with selfies, because the road to the Olympic Park is a long and boring one.

#sorrynotsorry #pangit

SM Town COEX Artium

I've heard the name COEX (COnvention centres and EXhibition halls) a lot in tourist things about Seoul as well as from people who generally seem to sing its praises, so I've always been intrigued by it but never enough to make my way to its rather out-of-the-way location (in relation to our home)

But the SM Town exhibit is still there and something we both really wanted to see, having given SM Entertainment a fair amount of our time and money in the past year alone, haha.

It wasn't too hard to find, considering the gigantic signs everywhere and the crowds of teenage girls coming and going from the direction of the entrance, laden with bags saying 'SMTOWN' on them. It's very pretty and elaborate for something that I've been told is just a temporary fixture.

Inside, the exhibition covers several floors, each with a different function. The walls are covered in photos of SM's various successes as well as display cases full of costumes and memorabilia from different artists. The first floor you come to is the pop-up shop, where you can buy all kinds of SM merch for almost all of their artists.