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Sunday, 27 April 2014

PANCAKE ORIGINAL STORY - Mokdong



Last night we had a great come back with the Samsung Smurfs, 11-1 in a perfect weather, with Kang Jeongho going homerun-crazy twice in a row, and Rotino being awesome as usual. I got to see Son Seung Lak, our closer pitcher, we hadn't had him in a while, because he does not come out in losing games, or unless it's very tight. The HisaYong (my cheering crew) had a special gift for us too, they gave us signed balls, and I got Sun Seung Lak :))) such a luck!

Anyways, I don't know why I start with the end of the day: I did other things than just going to the game. I met up with DM for a late breakfast in a Pancake Restaurant I had found a few weeks ago and wanted to try again. Last time I had gotten pancakes, because you know, Pancake place, you want to try the pancakes. But I had seen that they had Benedicts on their menu and wanted to try them.




The weather was super nice so I put on a summer dress with a summer sweater. I wanted to try the straw hat look, but I was afraid I'd look too summery and didn't want it to look weird. Oh what pride prevents you of doing. Anyways. I did take pictures, even if I did not actually go out like this (see pic below for actual hairstyle).


PANCAKES ORIGINAL STORY:
Very tiny restaurant in the corner of nowhere. It's a store situated in Mokdong's Paragon building, in the small areas between buildings where they put rooftops, probably to protect people from the crazy summer sun rays, right in front of the big SBS building. They have a pretty varied menu with brunch sets and open pretty early for a Korean restaurant (usually nothing is open before 10-11am in Korea, which was part of my cultural shock when I got here, and expected the Japanese let's get up at 6am culture).


They seem to be the second store to open in Seoul (the other one being in Hannam-Dong). The waitress I have had both times I've been was not really good. She's a bit slow on seeing who needs to be served, even though the store is tiny as a shoebox. She does not seem to be all there. You want to order a coffee while waiting for someone and she'll go get her pad to write it down - either she got a trauma forgetting an important order in the past, is just extremely insecure, or just has the memory of a goldfish. Regardless, if either of those is true, it makes no sense that she would not carry the pad with her (took a long time after I sat down before she came to see me, and when she did I asked to get a cappuccino as I waited, and she went to get her pad to get my order). Maybe she's just a little all over the place as a rule. Anyways, she seemed to have a bright sweet personality so I hold no grudge. Who goes to a pancake restaurant on a Saturday in a hurry, expecting the best treatment given in seconds anyways. 

Thing is, in Korea there is a lot of things that are amazing, especially for food. The food is usually served within minutes, fresh and yummy, they have all kinds of Korean foods, and if you go in any beer/food restaurants on the street, people eat fast and leave fast so the service is quick and sharp. Koreans are the masters of bar hopping, as if they can't really sit and enjoy only one good place, and need to try another one. 

When you go to a slow pace restaurant though, waiters SUCK. Like, really. Having waited on people for 6 months in a bar, and 2 years in a high class restaurant, I am in a position I can criticize service, because I know I can do better. Do not mistake me here, I am not bragging, just speaking service/common/sense here. In such a small place, it's a waiter's paradise, everything is close and easy to manage, it's easy to take a quick look to get an overview of your clients and see if anyone is in need of anything. Yet, she was completely clueless anytime I tried to get her attention. I blame the Korean habit of yelling very loud when you want to order in bars. People don't think it's rude to yell to get service in a restaurant so even slow-paced waiters don't feel like it's their job to serve people, they feel like they just need to wait to be called on.


They had a funny section in their menus. English is funny, but not that much. We might just get it a weird way to talk about smaller portions. But the Korean translation is much more explicit: For those poor things that could not get married. And the Benedict eggs are in that menu. I felt like I should never eat that when I go alone, question of pride. 



 The first time I went I got the cinnamon apple banana pancake. It was a bliss. Served in literally 3 minutes, the apple and banana pieces were warm and covered in sweet cinnamon and there was a little piece of butter on top, to melt over the pancackes. It was sweet enough on it's own, but I got a hot chocolate with the set, as I had already gotten a coffee that day. The hot chocolate was really good, prepared old style with whipped cream, that I just put on my pancake to eat with the fruits. Everything melted in my mouth.

They also had Canadian maple sirup, which I felt was kind of cool, taken that I hadn't had it in a year. It was not, however, my favourite maple syrup flavour, a bit too sweet. 
I've always been pretty picky with maple syrup, because my mother always got us maple syrup from a specific place in Quebec, where her family always got theirs from, and it was this quality taste that you don't get everywhere. But eh? We can't always be picky? It was good syrup still.


 Yesterday I got the Benedict, with my "morning" brunch coffee. Was great. It was not too big (even if I did leave some, I can't eat crazy quantity of food lately) for a person - so here with the "single" menu - and it had lots of sautéed vegetables in it which made up for the usual lack of veggies in Korean brunches (that tend to be the typical let's-just-put-lotta-bread-and-meat English style brunches) and was yummy enough. 
If you are looking for the typical sort of salty butter Benedict sauce then it's not the right place for you to go to. The sauce is good but pretty "tasteless" so the taste of the veggies feel stronger than the Benedict taste. 


What does the Fox Say?

Fortis's kindies are just plain adorable. They love singing and have a singing class every Wednesday after lunch for an hour. For this time-period they learn English songs and on Fridays, same time, they put dance moves on the songs. 

They are just stinking cute. Last time I heard them singing "What does the Fox say". How is it that songs that are so not meant to be sang by kids, are sang by kids, they are amazingly cute? Anyways, I was late for this one. The whole class had been singing it all morning and I didn't film, and when I decided to pull out my camera, only Ellie was singing it and it was not the best part, but she's still adorable. 



Don't you love Yvonne at the back, who thinks I'm taking pictures, and waits for the trigger sound forever? They were singing while preparing for lunch time, packing stuff for after school.

Friday, 25 April 2014

Gopchang Iyagi - Beef Intestines Story



Yesterday, Nexen... hmmmm.........how to be politically correct and avoid "rape" culture in this situation... was put down and made into a baseball-stadium-cleaning-rag by Samsung's ugly smurf team. A painful 14-2, of which I only watched the end. I feel lucky to have been late (I never catch the beginning of the games even if I like close, because I get off work passed 7h30 and games start at 6h30) because I only saw the soft part of the massacre: the beginning of the game was what destroyed the team. 

You know, with baseball, we generally can't tell who wins and who loses right away, because  (especially lately with Nexen's weird way of coming back strong at the end of games lately) there's always a possibility to just make some crazy home runs or the messing up of either team's pitchers. Last night though, there was just no feeling of home. They just went on with 4 runs then 5 runs in the first two innings. And we really played like blindass weird chicken with heads chopped off (going to the wrong direction and chasing the wind)... strong picture? Ask Nexen fans yesterday. Almost everyone was gone at the end of the game. 

We are still 1st of the league as of now, because the current rival team lost to Doosan badly, and Samsung is at the end of the queue...

I still jumped around all the game (maybe except the last inning and half, when I realized that it was ridiculous and almost sad to cheer at that point) and now my legs are super duper sore. I feel though, that the fans were bad. Leaving the game before is just plain mean. Real love is not love only when you are happily hanging out, it's also be there when things go bad. And they were bad. 

Whatever.

Last night I had an amazing evening. 



I went Karaoke with DM and I felt like paradise. I don't know if you go karaoke, but there's this thing, when you go, when people sing songs you love, but screw them. And you wish so dearly that they could sing it well, because they're such nice songs. Well, I got the paradise set yesterday. Every single song  he sang was just as it should have been. You know the feeling you have when people sing a difficult song, and they come to the bridge and you clench your fists, hoping they won't screw up? I did not even get to have that stress. The kind of singing I just wanted to close my eyes and listen.

I always say that when I am a very old and crazy rich lady, I'll get a vintage Steinway - white - in my huge living room, and pay a handsome young pianist to just play piano all day. CD and mp3s will always lack this quality live music has. And when you listen to live music, you usually pay for it and listen to it in an environment already set for people to listen to, and have lo actively listen to it. I've had this selfish desire to have the quality of live concert as a soothing background music, that I can listen to as I do my things, without having to actually sit and stay still, only listening. 

I did sit and only listen last night though. But it was like a private show.



We went for food after and I had wanted to eat raw beef, but we were not into buying that expensive delicacy so we went for delicious Gopchang. And what was not our surprise when they brought a small plate with sides: raw beef and raw liver. Man it was delicious. Just the right amount to melt in the mouth and make you hungrier for food as it cooked. 

It was my second time eating this kind of food, and the first time to eat beef gopchang; the first time I'd gone we ate porc one. It was just plain marvelous, and they served it with seasoned rice cake sticks that got ready just a bit before the intestines, so we just had a non-stop flow of food to eat. I love Korea.





And.... just because I feel like it was such a perfect prediction... I'll add up my daily astrological randomness.....



Aquarius Horoscope
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Right now you live for someone else's opinion, and that person is thinking all the right thoughts. Once you have the approval you so desperately seek, anything is possible for the two of you. It seems that everything in the Universe is on your side, which certainly can't hurt your chances! You get the message loud and clear that the Stars have reserved this day and night for both of you. Sit quietly together and observe as your love lights up the sky for miles.

Sunday, 20 April 2014

은경언니 과 원교오빠 축하해요!!!


This Sunday Korea was blessed with amazing sunny weather! It was a gift for my friends' wedding in Ansan! I was so happy I got to attend a wedding in Korea! While they call it western style wedding, there it's pretty different than from the western weddings I went to back home. I've always loved to go to weddings, they are putting me in some sort of trance of happiness. Korean western weddings are a little bit more distant than the weddings I know of. Everything is a bit more mechanical and it's mostly all about the ceremony and less about an after party.


They are glamorous though and everything is pleasing for the eyes.

The bride was beautiful :)

Here we go, a bunch of pictures of the wedding, sadly, my pictures do not look half as good as the real thing was...




















Friday, 18 April 2014

Me Too, Pink Hair

Me in 2003
I asked my dad for old pictures this week and among the lot there were some very interesting ones... Among them was a picture I thought I had lost somewhere in the constant changing of computer and places since University. Here we are. That's what my hair looked like before I went to Japan for the first time. I suppose it could have been fun to keep, but it's hard to take care of hair this specific color, and I was never good at doing my hair. That picture was taken after my best friend did my hair. Much nicer than just leaving it straight down.

Black Day - Why Not?

After rambling on so many Korean commercial celebrations, I had to at least try to go by one. I didn't give chocolate to a loved one on Feb. 14, didn't get candy on March 14, I got to April 14 and I had to eat jjajangmyeon. Not I did not dress all in black. I was told that if a foreigner were to go get black noodles on Black Day all dressed in black and be all depressed, they'd probably make the news. While I did find the idea of making the NEWS for being pathetic and alone on the official pathetic-and-alone-day, I ended up deciding to get the food only. 


They were sooooooo good. I think those were my favourite black noodles so far. The restaurant was not my discovery so I have no merit, but I did enjoy my meal, and my black day. Usually, the idea is "you are alone and everyone in Korea is in couple, so you're lame, however, you only have a single day where you can be proud of being so pathetic so show it to the world by eating black noodles alone", but I found myself breaking the rules nonetheless. I went with a guy friend from the baseball cheering crew, that I had met by coincidence the day before at Coex (the coffee expo I wrote previously - sorry, in Korean). Since he lives right around the place I work at, I asked him if there were good jjajangmyeon places around and he took me to one.

That's why I have no merit for the deliciousness of the food. The restaurant was busy as a bee, with tons of people of different age groupe, mostly older people though. There was a table of 4 girls across from our table (single? most probably, otherwise... why?).



I doubt he'll help me for the next coming up useless celebration: May 14 - Kiss Day. loll Maybe I should just buy a bag of Kiss Hershey chocolate and stuff my face into it?



À suivre.....

코엑스 - 커피엑스포

지난달말 부터 쭈우우욱 아팠다. 이런 일 어딨어? 답답하고 또 답답하네.

한국이면 커피 마시는 분들 이 기계 잘 안다. 좋은 커피샵 갈때 마다 하나라도
어디서 두고있을거니까. 그런데 저 한국오기전에 보지 못 했던 물건이였다.
뜨거운물을 쓰지 않고 차가운물로 만드는 커피가 아직도 신기하다고 생각해.

혼자 있을 때나 기분 좋을 때 항상 노래 부르는 내가 너무 답답한다. 생각해보니까 세상에 좋은것들을 너무 간단히 쉽게, 당연한 것처럼 받아드린 것 같아. 



아침에 일어날때 천천히 일어나고 오늘 뭐 할까, 오늘은 날씨 어떠냐 그런 간단한 중요하지도 않는 것들을 요즘은 생각할 여유도 없었다. 일어나서 기침만 해서 정신도없었기 때문이다. 답답하고 기침만 하니까 운동 안 해도 살 빠졌고 배 근육까지 생겼다.
이제 목소리 돌아 왔어. 그런데 아직 노래 부를 수 있을 정도 아니네.
답답해. ㅋㅋㅋㅋ



지난주에 전에 같이 일 했던 사람들이랑 삼성역의 코엑스 빌딩 가서 커피엑스포 갔다. 오랫만에 보지 모 했던 친구들이랑 같이 있어서 좋았어. 거기는 이쁜것들은 눈에 많이 들어왔다.

지난주 넥센 히사영 (넥센 보러갈때 같이 응원 하신 그룹 - 히어로즈사랑영원히)응원단이강 대전 가서 시합 보려고 했는데 감기 완벽하게 나아지 않아서 안 가기로 했다. 
안 가기는 결정 한후, 같이 일 했던 에리사가 코엑스 가자고 해서 거기로 가기로 했지. 가서 여러가지 마시고 먹고 그랬지.


 한국이면 소주. 당연하지. 그런데.... 커페에다가....소주? 난 먹어보지도 못 했다. 같이 돌아다난 친구가 마셔 봤는데 괜찮다고 했기는 했는데...

...아침 10시반에 소주는 좀 그랬음... ㅋㅋㅋㅋ



돌아다녀보니 깜짝 놀랄 일 있었다?

뒤에 누가 내 이름 불렀다.

이곳에 내가 아는 남자 있을일 없는데 내 이름까지 불러서 놀랐지. 돌아보니까 최근 알게된 히사영멤버 한명 (동민이오빠...한살 차인만 인데 ㅋㅋ) 이였다. 이번 주말에 대전 못 가는 죄책감 나오게 했네 ㅎㅎㅎ 그래도 나 처럼 못 나가는 사람 한명이라도 있었다 싶었지.


 그때 감기고 주말이니 화장 안 하고 나왔었는데 그때 아는 사람 보게 된걸 좀 그렇지만... 그래도 뭐. 내얼굴은 언제나 내 얼굴뿐이니까...


결국은 아는 사람 많있어 ㅋㅋㅋ

있잖아 나 커피샵 좋아하는 쏠로걸이잖아. 그래서 내 월급은 옷/구두/가방아니면 다 커피에 쓴다 ㅎㅎㅎ 그래서 제가 살던 동탄 커피샵 오너 많이 왔었다. 상상 도 안 했던건데 역시 자기 사업은 커피샵이면 커피 엑스포에 나오겠지. 어쨌든....

까망베르치즈 스무디 있었다? ㅋㅋㅋㅋ 나 월래 이런 치즈 되게 좋아하는데 여기서 맛있는 치즈 별로 안 팔아서 자주 안 먹는다. 좋아하는데 이치즈 특한 맛이 좀 쓰더라, 그래서 스무디랑 안 맞는것 같았다.

호기심 많으니까 먹어봤지 (소주커피보다는 합리적인 선택인것 같아서). 그런데 마셔보면 좀 실망 했어. 달다. 이 느낌만. 까망베르 맛말고 그냥 뉴욕치즈케익 인것 같았어. 마시지말걸 그랬어. 안 마시면 영원히 이상한 맛 상상하고 재밌었을텐데...


 커피 엑스포에서 줄 써서 기다리는게 별로 없었는데 커피 말고 먹는것을 공짜드릴 곳에 줄이 되게 길었다. 난 뭐, 공짜가서 쓰는거는 그냥 그래. 그래서 한번만 했다. 초코과커피 가게에서. 거기는 코코아차, 커피/초코콩 간식, 커피초콜릿파는 그곳에서 그랬다 ㅎㅎㅎ 맛 있었더라구.




잠깐 쉬고 밥 먹자!

 밥 먹고 다시 들어갔는데 오래 있지않았어. 있지, 이런데는 커피 여러가지 미실 수 있는데, 결국은 천천히 앉아서 마시는데 없어서 피곤하게 만든다. 마지막으로 본게 바리스타 콘테스트이였다. 재밌게 봤다 !