Saunas

This is actually quite depressing. I like Korean saunas. I like the relaxing atmosphere and the dry saunas. I especially like the hot and cold tubs - inspite of the fact that my female colleagues tell me that the water is the tubs is not safe and they wouldn't be caught dead in them. However...after reading this report in the Joonang Ilbo, I'm going to have second thoughts about even the dry sauna. (emphasis in the article is mine)

Sauna clothing ‘unsanitary'

July 22, 2006 ㅡ The clothing lent to customers at saunas and steam rooms is often unsanitary, the Korea Consumer Protection Board said yesterday.
The board said it looked into how saunas launder and store their clothing ― usually cotton tops and shorts for customers to wear in sweat rooms. It said that it found bacteria in the clothing at 17 of the 20 businesses it tested in Seoul; in some cases, the amount bacteria was "extremely high."
The board said it would send a recommendation to the Welfare Ministry to make sanitary guidelines for steam rooms more strict. "Current laws only state that clothing lent to customers must have been laundered," a board member said. It also issued a statement to an association of steam room operators, asking them to create their own sanitary guidelines and better educate their employees about sanitation management.
The board also warned customers that the clothing most likely has more bacteria than regular clothing, due to the sweat and heat, and carries high risks of transmitting skin diseases.

Lost in space

I haven't had much positive to say about Korea lately, so I haven't been saying anything. I really need to get away for awhile. My vacation starts Saturday and I'll be leaving for 4 weeks in Canada on Monday. The drive from Vancouver to Pincher Creek, Alberta is always awe inpiring and I expect that it will be quite refreshing. I will try out my new camera and will probably add a Flickr sidebar to my blog. A week with my parents in Pincher Creek and a couple of week in Kamloops with my older brother should make me feel a lot better. Then a week on the westcoast with perhaps a little hiking and kayaking should top things off nicely. Finally back to the heat and humidity of Korea in August - why does reality always have to intrude?

Typhoon

I recently bought the DVD, Typhoon, and watched it twice to see why Dreamworks is planning to release this film in North America. It was the most expensive movie ever made in Korea, so I thought it might be something special.

I hadn't realized at first that the director, Kwak Kyung-taek, had also directed Friend, a huge hit in Korea but which I thought was a piece of crap.

I'm usually impressed by the cinematography and acting in Korean movies. I'm often disappointed by little things in the movie which seem to be the fault of the directors. Oasis, which I thought had an interesting theme and was really well acted, had an ending that was so incomprehensible that it spoiled what was, to that point, a really good movie. Chihwasan, which has the most stunning cinematography that I've ever seen, was spoiled by the make-up used to age Ahn Sung-ki near the end of the film. And, Friend was laughable when a group of grown men dressed in school uniforms and pretended to be in high school. These are all things that a good director should control.

At any rate, Typhoon was interesting and worth watching - once. It would make a good made for TV movie, perhaps battling it out with Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal. I can't imagine why it would have a large enough audience in North America to make it worth putting any money into it. It slams the Americans, the North Koreans, and the South Koreans (the governments), but it does nothing to help North Americans understand Korea or the Korean situation. It won't shed any light on the North Korean/American nuclear issue. It's not really an action movie. It doesn't really delve into the characters and issues enough to make it an art house movie.

I don't know where the $15 million dollars went to make this movie. Perhaps it was used in setting up the cast and crew in luxurious surrounding in Thailand and Russia.

Sick? Depraved?

For most of my life, the one activity that has given me the greatest pleasure (No, get your minds out of the gutter!) has been reading. Last week, I sat in a coffee shop and read for a couple of hours, and, when I stopped, I felt really relaxed and calm (an unusual state of mind for me recently). I love - perhaps loved - reading. In the last few years, unfortunately, I seem to have lost the reading habit. I'm not really sure why.

Last night, I realized how far I had fallen when I stopped my channel surfing to watch professional wrestling, realized that I had seen that "match," and still continued watching anyway. When you start to care whether ECW is better than WWE or whether Triple H will get another shot at the title, you really need help of the psychiatric kind. When you wish that the Spirit Squad would get pounded to a pulp and squished flat, you really need to get your life's priorities back in sync. I can't believe that I even know who these wrestling "actors" are or that I'm looking at Rey Mysterio's back tat and thinking, "That's cool.".

I wonder if my tv has the ability to block inane television shows. If people can sue McDonalds for selling food that is bad for them, can we sue the producers of programs that rot our brains or turn us into couch potatoes?

Even the better shows may be problematic. There're like sugar. Too much of it is not good for me. I know more about forensic science than I ever I could have imagined ten years ago. I love CSI (New York, Miami, Las Vegas), NCIS, Bones, SVU New York... If I don't get out of the house and to the gym in the evening before one of those shows comes on, I generally don't move at all. And all for what purpose?

I need someone - like my mother - to say, "You can only watch two hours of tv each night. You decide what you want to watch and then go do you work," or perhaps, "Go outside and play."

Korean Pottery

I used to have a fairly good collection of Korean tea bowls; unfortunately, some were broken in my last move. After my visit to the Leeum Museum last week, my interest in tea bowls (and tea) was reignited, so I went to Insadong today to see if I might be able to find a few pieces to replace what was broken. Prices were a tad high although one shop that I have bought things from before would probably be amenable to lowering the prices.

I remembered that there was a tea shop near the Chogye Temple that had a fairly extensive collection of bowls and paraphenalia, so I went looking for it. It, unfortunately, had closed, but I found another one on the main street about 100 meters south of the temple, Kkik Da Geo (끽다거), which had quite a good selection of bowls and all of the other little knick knacks that you don't really need but always add to the tea experience. When I was there, there were half a dozen Buddhist nuns shopping and a steady stream of wealthy looking middle-aged women popping in to buy bowls and tea.

The nice thing about this kind of tea shop is that they always offer you tea, so, after poking around the shop and fondling all of their bowls for an hour or so, I sat, relaxed, and quietly sipped a lovely Korean green tea.

I will definitely go back again, and probably end up buying a couple of tea bowls and a few other implements.

I have two Korean tea sets like the one at the top (a 3-cup set and a 5-cup set). I enjoy drinking leaf green tea more than powdered green tea, but I like the bowls that are used with powdered tea much more.














This is a Bunchong style bowl. The design is stamped into the clay rather than carved. The color is softer and more natural than the distinctive green of celadon.














The celadon is nice, but a little too refined for me, and the color of the tea does not contrast well with the celadon green.



















I really like the look and feel of this bowl.











This style of pottery is my all time favorite. It's a style that Japanese and western potters call it 'raku'.

Leeum Museum

Last week, I visited the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art as part of my Year 2006 resolution to visit a museum or gallery or watch a performance of some kind every month.

The Leeum Museum requires a reservation every day except Thursday when any Tom, Dick, and Harry can drop in (which is, of course, why I went on Thursday).

The Leeum is quite impressive from the outside although it is an odd collection of three very different style buildings - each designed by a different famous architect. Museum 1 houses traditional Korean art; Museum 2 houses a contemporary collection of Korean and non-Korean art, and a third building has a children's education center. There are also two temporary exhibits: Mark Rothko and Nam June Paik.

I only managed to see one of the museums (traditional art). That took two hours. I'll go back next week to see a little more.

The collection of traditional art is very well presented. It's definitely worth shelling out W2000 for a Digital Guide that explains each piece as you approach it. The descriptions are quite informative if you can ignore the somewhat over-the-top descriptions (i.e. "The Chinese acknowledge this as the greatest form of pottery in the world" or "This fantastic piece shows the superior skills of Korean potters."). I've always loved Korean pottery, so I really enjoyed Museum 1. The pottery collection isn't as extensive or varied as the National Museum, but they have some really exquisite celedon, including a number of pieces that are designated as national treasures.

I've always liked the rougher Korean pottery most and the Bunchong is usually more interesting to me. Unfortunately, this is the weakest part of the Leeum collection. They had some good pieces, but the National Museum is much better.

The only real complaint that I had with the museum is that it took at least 2 hours to wander through Museum 1 and listen to all of the descriptions on the Digital Guide; however, the Digital Guide batteries only last an hour and a half. It was mildly irritating to have to walk down to the 1st floor and get a new Digital Guide and then go back to the 2nd floor to continue the tour. One would think that the batteries would last as long as it would take most people to go through the museum. Not surprisingly, the Digital Guides are made by Samsung.