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.

Gone For Now

This is my last post for the next three and a half weeks. I'll be stirring shit up in Korea then China until the 20th. Thus I thought it was appropriate to bombard you with four times the amount of outfit photos than I usually post.

Before I leave, I want to share some exciting information with you all. I'm opening an etsy shop selling melty bead necklaces. Most of the designs are fruits as pictured above (so far I've got a grape bunch, strawberry, watermelon slice and a banana pedant) but if when I decide that I want to be daring, I might attempt to make some animals ones as well as weird, innocuous object series (bandaid, razor blades, paper clips and such). 

Head Case

I don't have cable, so I don't watch T.V.. This isn't a decision that I made out of the sheer necessity to be "anti mainstream media" or anything. It's just that I'm extremely poor. I actually don't mind T.V., I learn a great deal from it. Some of the best shows are on T.V. (Frasier being one of them) and I think a few hours a week doesn't undermine one's creativity or ability to think critically as much as your professor says.

What I don't like about T.V. is that most of the shows, especially the ones that air during the day time are complete shit. Sure, game shows are sometimes fun to watch if it's somewhat engaging like "Jeopardy" or "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" because it's fun to measure your intelligence against those participating on the show. However, what's horrible about these shows is how fucking excited people are about the prospect of winning any sum of money. Seriously, the next time you watch any of these game shows where money is the incentive (which it often is), everybody seems to shit oneself when the contestant passes a question and is that much closer towards the grand prize.

Fundamentally, there's nothing seemingly wrong with this behaviour. In fact, it's perfectly normal, natural even. Being rich is desirable. However, my discomfort lies within the fact that "richness" seems to imply "happiness". The contestants on these game show project  what seem like genuine joy at the thought of receiving a large fortune. It really plays up the importance of money and how it seems to imply that it'll make your life better.  That to me is just so fucking..."bourgeois"

Tie Dye Madness

I apologize for the lack of postings lately. You see, I've been busy with band business. I've been in the studio this past couple of days, pulling 8 hour recordings and have never gotten so sick of playing the same shit over and over again. The end results however, is well worth it. Stay tuned for our first three-song EP. It should be done fairly soon.

After our successful show last Saturday, I got to thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, if all this music stuff work out eventually, I can actually see myself living out the rest of my live as a musician. I'm sure this isn't something too difficult to imagine as we all dream about becoming "rock stars". What I mean here really is that I truly love creating music and wouldn't mind doing it even if I was paid peanuts.  Maybe I won't be saying that when I'm dirt broke on tour and have to sleep in a van for a months straight and live on a bag of chips, shared among three people. All these things are possibilities, I think I'm just excited that I'm more involved with playing music than I've ever been and I'm happy.