Home At Last, Jet Lag's a Bitch

China cut me off of Facebook, Blogger, Twitter and everything which allows me to connect and interface with the relevant people of my life. The policies of the country acts like a big-time cock-blocker, impinging on people's internet usage freedom. The government basically hates and kills everything that may leave room for free expression and communication. 

Overall, the trip was good. I saw my family and stuffed myself with all of my childhood favourite foods and did the most quintessentially Asian things such as Karaoke and shopping at various markets for bargain fashion.

The experience this time was rich however I'm currently running on 3 hours of sleep and am barely able to type so consider this a "to be continued" post...

Gravity Always Wins

So I totally lied, I am going to be able to blog on this trip. I was thinking that there wouldn't be reliable internet sources here but WiFi is everywhere and so I'm not off the grid after all. However, the jetlag has rendered me simultaneous restless and exhausted all the time. So far the experience in Korea has been that everybody really does eat kimchi three times a day just as the stereotype predicted and that plastic surgery is more common than getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Speaking of that, let's talk about that for a bit.

I don't mean to be preachy or want to come across as being morally superior but there's something fundamentally wrong with Asian women wanting to get plastic surgery. I've been here for about a week now and if I were to ball park, I say about 70% of women here have undergone some sort of cosmetic procedure. How do I know that? BECAUSE THEY DON'T LOOK ASIAN!!! Of course, there is always assumptions about these things. Perhaps some Korean women are born with large, round, perfectly limpid eyes. Sure, but I know for a fact that the "double eye-lid" surgery is also one of the most popular and common surgeries here. 

The thing is that people are obsessed with looking Westernized here for some reason. I saw a Korean women yesterday standing in line for the flume ride (yes, I went to Everland, an amusement park in Korea) and her face was painted so ghostly white that it didn't match any other part of her natural skin. Meanwhile the only thing I can think of is, "man, I must look so ugly to them. I've gotten a bit of a tan over the summer. I have very typical Asian eyes and my nose is definitely not as well defined as the fake ones." But you want to know what the irony of it all is? The only reason why I'm Korea is because my mom is here to fix her botched nose job from ten years ago so I'm right in the thicket of it all. Everyday, I'm in and out plastic surgeon's offices waiting for her to get stem cells injected into her nasal tissue (standard post operative procedure). While I'm sitting in these offices, I get sadder and sadder with each woman that comes in, looking perfectly attractive I might add, waiting to book her appointment with a specialist to water down whatever Asian characteristic they deem undesirable within the beauty culture.