My To Blog list leftover from Pohang
is as follows:
ttok: ttok I think is generally referred to as "rice cake" but is completely unlike the dry wafers which are called rice cakes in the west. It's kind of gooey stuff. Sometimes filled with something. SH was a big ttok enthusiast. He was in particular a fan of ttok mandu soup which is soup with bits of ttok and dumplings which are called mandu in it. I was also a fan of this soup and of ttok. SH was very pleased to see I liked ttok and kept giving me more of it. I wanted to be polite and would sometimes have to eat myself sick. But it's good stuff. That said, I do wonder whether I was eating raw dough which I was supposed to cook. At one point SH had some special ttok made by his girlfriend's mother and gave me that. I said "no no no your girlfriend's mother made it you can't give it to me" and he said "it is for you." Which I hope meant "no, you don't understand: i mentioned to my girlfriend's mother that i have a foreigner friend who likes ttok and she wanted me to give you this" as opposed to merely "i insist" (which is possible: keep in mind one can't do to careful a reading of the exact words used in this context...).
mother's hand "omma son": (sounds rather a lot like "Amazon".) this is a restaurant I went to twice in the last couple of weeks in Pohang, once with SH and once with all three of the guys. "omma son" is the name of the restaurant (roughly) and "mother's hand" is the literal translation. the food there was pretty good. the first time we were there the TV was on to something a bit like American Idol except that the performances by competitors were mixed in with performances by famous singers. I discussed with SH which of the pompadoured crooners was most reminiscent Elvis, which Tom Jones, which Sinatra, etc. But maybe they were all Tom Jones. This was also the first setting in which I saw someone make a heart shape by putting their arms over their head with both sets of fingertips on the crown of their head. This seems to be sort of standard gesture in Korea. I even saw Hines Ward (Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver, superbowl MVP, born in Korea, all the rage) in a TV ad or maybe on a billboard. Actually, in the American Idol-esque show it was being done with only one arm because the other was holding the mic so it was indecipherable unless one was already familiar with the complete version.
the second time we went to omma son there was a big barrel with cabbage in it nearly blocking the door. i guess the owner was making kimchi.
returning to the first one, after we were done eating, SH and i stopped by a stall in the street nearby and had fresh made pastries. the style of making was similar to donuts, but the construction was more similar to cinnamon rolls. they were very good.
eating in the bar: this was the one night that i decided i would try to eat out on my own. it was not very successful. i tried a jumping restaurant on the corner of the small business district near campus (which everyone called the "local market") but it was a little too jumping: there wasn't a seat to be had. so i wandered around a bit and picked another place which turned out to be more of a bar with food than a restaurant that served beer. what i got was a big plate of chunks of pan-fried chicken which seemed like it was meant to be shared among four friends over beer, or maybe soju. the guys at the next table were having plenty of both. they took their shots of soju as J had: with a noisy slurp. i might have been tipped off by the decor if I'd looked more carefully through the window. it was pretending to be an outdoor yard, with fake trees and little fake roofs over some of the tables. on the tops of the roofs were piles of clay jars. one sees this sometimes on actual roofs of drinking establishment. i will guess that in the old days the booze came in the jars...
dormitory for our globalization: many times, while i was at POSTECH i would see that this or that event, usually a party, was organized by D.O.G. I kind of assumed it was some sort of hip-hop crew (since when parties were organized by someone other than a string of initials it was "DJ So and So). Turns out it's the Dormitory for Our Globalization. Which is a dorm in which the students are supposed to speak to one another exclusively in English. I found this out because the Party for Foreigner at which I won my POSTECH coffee mug was organized by D.O.G. and Festival (Chinese Character Which I Think Means Committee).
troubles with Wooribank: a lot of time was spent in the last couple of days fretting over money. for example, i had to go somewhere and apply for my Korean government pension. That I get a Korean government pension for working there for three months strikes me as a little absurd, and I can't imagine the dollar value was worth the trouble for anyone, but various people would not have fulfilled their duties if I didn't get it so I didn't try to fuss. then, there was the matter of how to get the money from Wooribank, which is my Korean bank, to PNC Bank, my US bank. In retrospect, it's not at all clear to me why I bothered: PNC Bank has almost no branches outside of Pennsylvania and I don't live in Pennsylvania anymore. Still, from the trouble I had had getting money into Wooribank at the beginning of my sojourn in Korea, I figured it was probably not going to be a picnic to get money out of Wooribank if I was not in Pohang anymore. That seems to have been confirmed. Anyway, in the end I got a check. Maybe there was no story there. On the morning that I was set to leave, I had to go to Wooribank and open a second account, this time as a Korean resident, so that my government pension could be deposited into it. So I ended up leaving not one, but two Wooribank accounts open as I left Korea. I will almost certainly have to go back at some point to complete some work that Prof C and I have going so I can deal with it then.
coffee: i'm not sure what this is doing on the list. perhaps it's just that at the time that i was making the list i was looking forward to getting back to the US and having a good cup of coffee for the first time in 3 months. but if there's one thing which is a good story about coffee which maybe i didn't mention, it's that when the weather got cold, the vending machine on the first floor of our building started providing cans of coffee which were hot, rather than iced. same coffee, same cans; now heated instead of refrigerated. probably not hot enough to literally burn your hand, but pretty uncomfortable to hold. nice, though.
and that's the list. next, i'll pick up with seoul.
ttok: ttok I think is generally referred to as "rice cake" but is completely unlike the dry wafers which are called rice cakes in the west. It's kind of gooey stuff. Sometimes filled with something. SH was a big ttok enthusiast. He was in particular a fan of ttok mandu soup which is soup with bits of ttok and dumplings which are called mandu in it. I was also a fan of this soup and of ttok. SH was very pleased to see I liked ttok and kept giving me more of it. I wanted to be polite and would sometimes have to eat myself sick. But it's good stuff. That said, I do wonder whether I was eating raw dough which I was supposed to cook. At one point SH had some special ttok made by his girlfriend's mother and gave me that. I said "no no no your girlfriend's mother made it you can't give it to me" and he said "it is for you." Which I hope meant "no, you don't understand: i mentioned to my girlfriend's mother that i have a foreigner friend who likes ttok and she wanted me to give you this" as opposed to merely "i insist" (which is possible: keep in mind one can't do to careful a reading of the exact words used in this context...).
mother's hand "omma son": (sounds rather a lot like "Amazon".) this is a restaurant I went to twice in the last couple of weeks in Pohang, once with SH and once with all three of the guys. "omma son" is the name of the restaurant (roughly) and "mother's hand" is the literal translation. the food there was pretty good. the first time we were there the TV was on to something a bit like American Idol except that the performances by competitors were mixed in with performances by famous singers. I discussed with SH which of the pompadoured crooners was most reminiscent Elvis, which Tom Jones, which Sinatra, etc. But maybe they were all Tom Jones. This was also the first setting in which I saw someone make a heart shape by putting their arms over their head with both sets of fingertips on the crown of their head. This seems to be sort of standard gesture in Korea. I even saw Hines Ward (Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver, superbowl MVP, born in Korea, all the rage) in a TV ad or maybe on a billboard. Actually, in the American Idol-esque show it was being done with only one arm because the other was holding the mic so it was indecipherable unless one was already familiar with the complete version.
the second time we went to omma son there was a big barrel with cabbage in it nearly blocking the door. i guess the owner was making kimchi.
returning to the first one, after we were done eating, SH and i stopped by a stall in the street nearby and had fresh made pastries. the style of making was similar to donuts, but the construction was more similar to cinnamon rolls. they were very good.
eating in the bar: this was the one night that i decided i would try to eat out on my own. it was not very successful. i tried a jumping restaurant on the corner of the small business district near campus (which everyone called the "local market") but it was a little too jumping: there wasn't a seat to be had. so i wandered around a bit and picked another place which turned out to be more of a bar with food than a restaurant that served beer. what i got was a big plate of chunks of pan-fried chicken which seemed like it was meant to be shared among four friends over beer, or maybe soju. the guys at the next table were having plenty of both. they took their shots of soju as J had: with a noisy slurp. i might have been tipped off by the decor if I'd looked more carefully through the window. it was pretending to be an outdoor yard, with fake trees and little fake roofs over some of the tables. on the tops of the roofs were piles of clay jars. one sees this sometimes on actual roofs of drinking establishment. i will guess that in the old days the booze came in the jars...
dormitory for our globalization: many times, while i was at POSTECH i would see that this or that event, usually a party, was organized by D.O.G. I kind of assumed it was some sort of hip-hop crew (since when parties were organized by someone other than a string of initials it was "DJ So and So). Turns out it's the Dormitory for Our Globalization. Which is a dorm in which the students are supposed to speak to one another exclusively in English. I found this out because the Party for Foreigner at which I won my POSTECH coffee mug was organized by D.O.G. and Festival (Chinese Character Which I Think Means Committee).
troubles with Wooribank: a lot of time was spent in the last couple of days fretting over money. for example, i had to go somewhere and apply for my Korean government pension. That I get a Korean government pension for working there for three months strikes me as a little absurd, and I can't imagine the dollar value was worth the trouble for anyone, but various people would not have fulfilled their duties if I didn't get it so I didn't try to fuss. then, there was the matter of how to get the money from Wooribank, which is my Korean bank, to PNC Bank, my US bank. In retrospect, it's not at all clear to me why I bothered: PNC Bank has almost no branches outside of Pennsylvania and I don't live in Pennsylvania anymore. Still, from the trouble I had had getting money into Wooribank at the beginning of my sojourn in Korea, I figured it was probably not going to be a picnic to get money out of Wooribank if I was not in Pohang anymore. That seems to have been confirmed. Anyway, in the end I got a check. Maybe there was no story there. On the morning that I was set to leave, I had to go to Wooribank and open a second account, this time as a Korean resident, so that my government pension could be deposited into it. So I ended up leaving not one, but two Wooribank accounts open as I left Korea. I will almost certainly have to go back at some point to complete some work that Prof C and I have going so I can deal with it then.
coffee: i'm not sure what this is doing on the list. perhaps it's just that at the time that i was making the list i was looking forward to getting back to the US and having a good cup of coffee for the first time in 3 months. but if there's one thing which is a good story about coffee which maybe i didn't mention, it's that when the weather got cold, the vending machine on the first floor of our building started providing cans of coffee which were hot, rather than iced. same coffee, same cans; now heated instead of refrigerated. probably not hot enough to literally burn your hand, but pretty uncomfortable to hold. nice, though.
and that's the list. next, i'll pick up with seoul.
posted by GB at 3:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home