Heart and Seoul

Have been in Seoul for 48 hours now, and it feels like I've arrived while the whole city is hibernating. I know it a cliche to complain about the weather, but here goes. Today is scheduled to rise to a warm, sultry -2 in the afternoon, and then after this heady peak it will sink to -13 overnight. The cold is stultifying - when you walk out the door, you get two seconds of warmth before the wave of cold air hits and all feeling drains out of your exposed flesh. Those who have been here a while have developed some resistance to the cold, and have also developed very clever ways to minimise the amount of exposed skin to just the upper part of the face. For me, it's gloves and the thermals my grandfather gave me. I'm debating the merits of wearing my ragged Collingwood beanie around town., but I think I might get the same response as if I wore my "I Love Kim Jong-il" t-shirt.

Speaking of which, apparently the big new TV comedy coming out of NK is "Kim and Kim", the story of a working class father-and-son from the suburbs who constantly do and say stupid things as they try to run the country. It's like "Kath and Kim", except the haircuts are more ridiculous.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ari, Stay warm. We don't want you catching any nasties.
Wear your beanie, who cares. Nobody will know how dreadful old woodies have been fairing.
J is dc. Must have seen or even part of the inaugauration. CM and family in NY.
Be safe,
aunty
21 January 2005 at 12:39
Anonymous said…
Come on.

You think that is cold? Today in NYC we had a high of -6 and the wind that would cut right through you. The most that i could walk was four bloks before i thought that my fingers were going to fall off along with my legs.

Still have not heard from your name sake but that is not your fault.

Keeping having a good time with you are and i gave your regards to W.

J
28 January 2005 at 13:25
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to...
Read more

A place to rest my head

Image
I dream one day of visiting Pyongyang and staying in the wonderfully pyramidic Ryugyong Hotel. The outer shell of this hotel which dominates the Pyongyang skyline was built in the 1980s, and the interior was, well, never built. It seems possible that the project was commenced in a pique of optimism as North Korea put in a claim to share the 1988 Olympic Games with its southern brothers, but just as the offer was rejected - just like the bid to share the 2002 Soccer World Cup failed on the basis of North Korea's request to host the Opening Ceremony, Semi Finals and Final - the hotel was never completed. Nowadays, in stands pointing to the sky much the way that Kim Il Sung's statue does, both perhaps as a symbol of the excesses of North Korean enthusiasm. Instead of the Ryugyong, like most foriegn visitors to Pyongyang I found myself staying at the Yanggakdo Hotel. The Yanggakdo Hotel is a slice of Cold War Bondesque paranoia writ large. The hotel is located on an isla...
Read more