Viewing:

Commercial break

we interrupt our regular programming with a commercial from my regular old life in singapore. 

just when i swore off shopping (and spending) for the foreseeable future, i get an email from my flamenco teacher. she’s ordering for flamenco shoes from spain in june and is opening the order to all her students so she/we can get a bulk discount. the shoes are about $200 each, so my first thought was “no thanks”. i have a second-hand pair that’s serving me quite well and no two hundred bucks to spare. 
but then i had to go to the shoemaker’s website… and damn! these shoes are cute! click on the link to check them out (i don’t know how to take screenshots with a mac).
okay, that’s it, just presented the dilemma. now back to regular programming.
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Posted on May 30, 2008
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: ,

Taking a breather

help, i have shopping fatigue. this to me is very strange, because a) i have actually done very little shopping myself, and b) i never thought i could get sick of shopping!

the culprit seems to be my latest writing assignment and one that i’ve dedicated this seoul trip to: a shopping guide for an inflight magazine. without the impetus of an article to write (and the payment that naturally follows), i probably would not have spent the past three days trooping to seoul’s shopping districts with such diligence. 
i stumbled through myeong-dong on monday, hit itaewon and the most popular 24-hour mall in dongdaemun on tuesday and traipsed around two school zones, hongdae and ewha women’s university, yesterday (with a second trip to itaewon). as you can guess, i came home dead tired each evening.
this morning i woke up and found myself close to puking at the thought of doing more shopping. i would have blogged about the stuff i scored and shops i saw, but right now i would rather jump out my window than see more clothes and shops, even if i was ecstatic about them yesterday.
i did a quick check on how much material i have for the article and found that i only have to hit one or two more shopping districts. yay! this leaves me time for blessed rest till about after lunch, after which i plan to check out the up-up-upscale shopping district, apjugeong. this will be window shopping lite — it’s very near my hotel and far beyond my budget. i’ve reserved insa-dong, the arts and crafts area, for saturday with marlon, my favorite art attack partner. 
more shopping pics, mishaps and musings later. for now, i’m crawling back into bed. 
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Posted on May 29, 2008
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels: ,

Springtime palace

haha, doesn’t that sound just like a koreanovela title? well, it is springtime and i did go to a palace for my first sightseeing jaunt. 

ironically, though i used to work for a television network that imported all the best korean soaps, i know nothing about them except for a handful of titles. never even watched a single episode! the ones i remember are my name is kim sam soon, emperor of the sea, jumong, coffee prince, spring waltz, winter sonata and of course, the biggest rater of them all, jewel in the palace.

it was jewel that came to mind when i visited gyeongbok-gung, reportedly the grandest palace in seoul and a shooting location for historical soaps (i don’t know which ones). the morning gray had cleared considerably, and i really got how spring can be so lovely. it was nearly closing time when i arrived, and i was with what seemed to be an entire school of the most chic (without being TH) 12 to 14 year-old students i’ve ever seen.  


spotted: two ladies in hanboks (korean national dress) hurrying out of the palace grounds. i fought the urge to shout “jang geum! jang geum!” after them. check out the teenager with the visor — just goes to show you can never start your skincare regimen too early.

this is my pathetic attempt to have at least one photo of myself in the palace.


i found the palace to be a mix of chinese epic-scale grandiosity and japanese serenity. it really was quite tranquil. the mountains behind the palace make you feel like you’ve gone back in time, until you turn to face the entrance and see all the skyscrapers just outside the main gate.


kick-ass pagoda-type building is the national folk museum, which was closed by the time i got there. fortunately there was lots to see (and snap) on the museum grounds. like the cutest stick-your-head-in-for-a-photo standee ever! and i mean ever!

squee! isn’t it adorable? i was dying to have my photo taken, but there was nobody around to do it for me. bah.


one of the signs on the mini exhibits outside the museum. i thought it looked totally out of this century with the misty mountains and trees in the backdrop. this sign could say “toilet” or “atm” for all i know.


a small section of the grounds in front of the museum held a collection of these old stone totems used to ward off evil. they look to me almost like modern cartoons, or very graphic depictions of grumpy neighbors and evil aunties.

upon exiting the palace grounds, i promptly got lost. i spent an hour walking the palace’s perimeter walls in search of the metro station i had come from, which is equivalent to the amount of time i spent inside the palace. bummerrrr.

interesting walk, though. the most bizarre thing about it was the troops and troops of police in full riot gear at every street corner. and i mean every street corner. i was too whacked out by the sight of all those policemen to even take a picture. a lot of them seemed really young, which puzzled me till i found out korean men are required to do army service in their youth. upon comparing notes with marlon, the mystery of the myriad policemen was solved: a military exercise was scheduled in the city for 2-230pm the next day, during which hotel guests were advised to stay indoors. scary.

there were other, less paranoia-inducing sights, however. the area around the palace has interesting little artsy cafes and galleries. i actually found i didn’t mind getting lost, because i never would have caught the sneaky surprises tucked into quiet alleyways like this.


the walls held a small collection of gorgeous stenciled graffiti, like this protest-themed piece of art…

…and, tadaaaah! a classic miss universe coronation moment! i truly fell in love. the person who can identify which beauty queen is being crowned gets a prize from me! i wonder what underlying theme led to this graffiti. let me guess: “world peace!”


you know you’re in an artsy neighborhood when you peek around a corner and see a giant spotted pear. or is it a pumpkin?


a man with an earpiece and wearing a dark suit stopped me in front of a building where there seemed to be an abnormally high concentration of policemen. i turned his suspicion to my advantage and asked for directions to the nearest metro station; he obliged and gently shooed me away (what was in that building, i wonder?). just as well, i thought — miss universe graffiti and giant pears are fun, but my feet were really starting to hurt.

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Posted on May 29, 2008
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , , ,

Metro mishaps

my first engagement with seoul was learning how to take the metro. i stepped out of the hotel monday afternoon after finishing some writing work armed with nothing but a copy of an expat magazine with a map of the seoul metro… and this icon filed away in my short-term memory from the morning we arrived.


the hotel i’m staying at, the renaissance seoul, is located in gangnam, the business district south of the river. all the streets look like ayala avenue, but extremely wide and festooned with coffee shops. the first thing i learned about my street is that the nearest metro station, yeoksam, was a convenient five-minute walk from the hotel. what i learned when i started walking was that it was majorly uphill.

okay, it doesn’t look all that challenging from this photo, but by the time i got to the metro station i felt as if i had been sufficiently punished for the box of guylian bonbons (and maybe the ice cream and famous amos cookies i had last saturday).

i got on line 3 and crossed the han-gang river to go downtown, into the city center where all the shopping areas and a few major sights are.

considering that the korean signs were a little disorienting at first, figuring out how to get where i wanted to go was quite easy. english words seemed to leap out at me from the jumble of korean characters, ensuring that i had enough information to propel me forward. the disembodied voice on the train not only provides an english translation, but even tells you which side of the train to exit from at a particular stop. nice.

while on the train, i played paparazzi and shot proof of my first impressions. this is what i’m talking about with the suits and sun visors.

i had no trouble getting on the train, but getting off it was a major production. for some reason, the turnstile kept spitting out my single-use ticket (just like those in paris) and wouldn’t allow me to go through. i tried each and every one of the eight turnstiles to no avail. finally, a passerby pointed to a large red button that said “help”, on a wider turnstile for the handicapped. so i pushed, and wondered what kind of deus ex machina would come to release me from the bowels of the metro.
the trumpet of the gods was tinny and electronic, and it played that annoying tune that garbage trucks in manila blast. i’m sorry, i know it’s originally a classical piano piece, but i really don’t know what else to call it. it goes tininininininininiiii…. tinini… tinini… (repeat). i apologize for the jologs reference!
so, how helpful, right? i tried it again. and again, the tinny garbage truck ditty. i paused, waiting for something more instructive. then, a voice from a speaker below the help button crackled to life. “push it! push it!” it barked impatiently.
i actually bent down to the speaker to talk back back, a response undoubtedly caused by years of ordering from mcdonald’s drive-through. “push what?” i shouted.
silence. so i pushed the only thing in front of me, which was the handicapped turnstile. it gave way — and i was through! sigh of relief. i actually had a split-second nightmarish vision of me being stuck in the metro station for hours. 
the man at the ticket counter, a cheery middle-aged korean man, looked almost as relieved as i felt. he took my ticket, grinning, and gave me a hearty wave goodbye as i skipped up the steps.
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Posted on May 28, 2008
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , , ,

First glimpses

“the temperature is 13 degrees celsius…”

it wasn’t the touchdown at incheon international airport, but the purser’s announcement that woke me up with a jolt. thirteen degrees?!?!?! i was totally not prepared! marlon and i stared at each other — we both wore cotton tops and jeans. good luck to us!
as we lined up at passport clearance, i surveyed the outfits of arriving koreans to see how we would fare with the weather. girl in sandals, long t-shirt, leggings and cardigan: okay, i think we’ll be fine. girl in floaty, sheer slip dress: hell, more than fine. woman in jogging pants, ski cap and puffy hooded parka: we’re f*cked. talked about mixed signals!
this is my guerrilla shot of the airport. marlon grumbled: “the more i travel, the more i see that the philippines is the only country that doesn’t have an airport that looks like this.”

not true, i countered: thank god for india.
we arrived at 7:30 a.m., and got to seoul just in time for the morning gridlock.
korea is known as the land of the morning calm. i have a sneaking suspicion that “calm” may have been a diplomatic euphemism for “gray”. check out the view from our hotel room.

thank goodness, it’s not smog — it really is just early morning mist. the air is extremely clear, and after the sauna that singapore has been the past couple of weeks, beautifully refreshing. the 13-degree temperature hasn’t turned out to be so bad and is really great to walk around in, although i have a bit of a morning cold.
looking at these pictures, i realize the first glimpses i had of seoul were not too inspiring — kinda drab, actually. fortunately, they were replaced pretty quickly, and i think i’m beginning to like this city.
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Posted on May 27, 2008
Category: Wanderlust · Labels:

First impressions

koreans are blessed — high cheekbones, glowing skin, good strong physiques. kainez. ang daming guwapo at maganda. i actually literally stepped back in surprise when i saw the skin of the guy who delivered my room service lunch; he must have migrated to seoul from lothlorien.

the density of coffee shops per square mile is astounding.
i saw more goyard bags go by in fifteen minutes in myeong-dong than i ever have in my lifetime. maganda pala sila sa personal. gusto ko na sila.
old ladies are majorly turned out, just like old ladies in paris. their favorite accessory: visors. this completely puzzled me until marlon returned from his skincare field work and provided the missing piece. the visors are for skincare purposes — that’s how they keep that phenomenal skin glowing well into old age. that’s what i call dedication.
people are extremely helpful.
men wear actual suits to work. really well-cut suits to boot. again, just like paris.
kukur seems to be the metropolitan fashion statement — as in kukurtinahin. the shops are hung full of lacy, sheer, shapeless dresses and very large shirts in muted colors. i think i’ll stick to shoes and bags on this trip.
the city is great for walking.
traffic is bad, and rush hour is worst at about 10:30 p.m. that means people go home from work at roughly 9 p.m. 
there are very few tourists, which is nice.
that’s it for now. good night, i’m exhausted.
4 Comments
Posted on May 26, 2008
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , ,

Terminal tales

quite a few firsts last night. first time in the shiny new changi terminal three. and i mean shiny. 

the outside reminds me of frankfurt, the entrance to the toilet reminds me of paris-cdg, and the eating area reminds me of dubai, where pia fell off her chair randomly at mcdonald’s.
terminal three had those odd wormhole-ish airconditioning vents that must have been leftovers from the giant noses/penises that hold up the roof over clarke quay. yes, i said giant noses/penises. you must see to believe.

it was my first time to present travel documents other than my passport — in this case, my singapore identification card, or IC.

terminal three is quite the mammoth. marlon and i were all set to caper happily around the airport like a bunch of tourists, and maybe catch a free movie, until we saw a sign that told us we would need at least 14 minutes to get to our gate. i wonder if they tested the walk with people of varying slowness.

the terminal also had a surfeit of really cute chairs, like these swan chair-esque thingies.

these remind me of my melissa sapatilha flats.

they had a ferrari store… yeah i know, me taking a picture of a ferrari store is totally out of character. i blame it on the late hour.
but most importantly, they had a guylian belgian chocolate cafe!

whoopee!
i bought a box to eat on the plane. 

these two lovely seashells came free of charge, courtesy of the pinay counter girls at the cafe. go pinoy! 

it brought back great memories of all the pinoy employees at the duty free shops in the dubai international airport, who practically thrust free chocolates at some of us in the glee club. 
ah, touring memories. there were a lot of them at the airport last night — seeing a gaggle of teenagers dressed alike in sports shirts and jeans. travel attire, anyone? and while changing singapore dollars to korean won, i remembered gerard, who being a math teacher would come up with quick and easy conversion formulas for every country we stopped in on tour. it would always be something totally brainless, like multiply by five and drop three zeroes or something. in the pre-euro days, he did it for everything from slovenian tolar to belgian francs to italian lire! fun fun fun. 
and now after six hours, four belgian chocolates, two meals, a one-hour cab ride and 155,200 korean won, i’m in my hotel room in seoul.
3 Comments
Posted on May 26, 2008
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , , ,

Fixin’ to go

this is what my sunday evening at home looks like:

me with my feet in a basin of hot water that marlon was kind enough to set out for me. i never knew the soles of your feet could hurt. it started with an ache on the bottom of my heels and spread out during the longest mass i’ve ever attended (almost 2 hours at novena church). after a little over two months of lessons, i’ve come to identify flamenco with hurts you never knew you could have — pain shooting down the insides of your forearms, the length and front of your thighs, the soles of your feet, the sides of your ribs. fortunately that’s not all i associate it with, which is what keeps me coming back for more. i associate it, surprisingly enough, with choral singing.
(that reminds me, i have yet to blog about flamenco. i promise, my beloved las otras, i will! bagbagabagbagabag! all i can say about it for now is that if i had a flamenco stage name, today it would have to be La Bloatana. damn this time of the month.)
marlon and i frantically trying to polish off the perishables in the ref before we catch our 11:50 pm flight to seoul. we don’t want to come back after a week to any nasty surprises. the leftovers this evening are great — cold couscous salad and chicken drumsticks with barbeque sauce made from scratch. this was the menu for yesterday’s lunch, when we had shrenik and shivaani over. the barbeque chicken is something of a showstopper and seems to be our default dish for guests; i made it when we had david and phyllis, our first-ever guests for dinner, a few months ago.
me with extra strength zit cream caked on the whopper that’s taken up residence on my cheek.
marlon putting toiletries into my pink suitcase.
utter peace and quiet.
it’s a nice way to leave home.
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Posted on May 25, 2008
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: ,

"…And world peace."

maybe i’ve been watching too much gossip girl, but i just feel like i came from an interview for the position of usher to the dartmouth representative. scratch that, i feel like i just came from a panel interview for yale cross-pollinated with a miss universe question-and-answer portion. and this is the mental equivalent of me wondering whether i should have said something about world peace.

there were times when i wondered whether i should be saying what i was saying, but then i told myself long ago that i’m through being a people-pleasing chameleon just to be hired — it’s all about finding the right fit. i may have shot myself in the foot with one of my answers, but i’m pretty confident i didn’t pull a janina san miguel. 
speaking of answers, it’s the first time i’ve heard an employer describe themselves as “task oriented” versus “results oriented.” iiiiinteresting. i wonder what the difference is. i kind of like “results oriented” more; people can just get so caught up in processes sometimes.
i became aware of two things about myself during this particular interview. one is, i have an internal smile barometer: i use people’s smiles during a conversation as a gauge of success. if i can make you smile, i’ve “got” you. (yeah i know — define “got”, right?) by this token, most people find me amiable and charming. however, i’ve discovered that not all battles are won by charm (as any girl who tries to twinkle, wheedle and pout at an mmda officer on the take will discover). 
the downside: getting people to smile or warm up to me is like missing the forest for the trees. i can be seen as being flip or fluffy, which more often than not leads to tanking with people who are slow to warm up, painfully serious or just naturally poker-faced. lately i’ve gotten quicker at catching myself reverting to this barometer, which makes it easier to ignore. does anyone else have any going-well “indicators” like this?
second is, i’ve seen just how much i’ve come to see my extensive freelance experience as an asset. so i was rather surprised — and a little thrown off, i’ll admit — when one of my panel interviewers seemed to regard my having held down a freelance job for over a year concurrent to my day job with suspicion. maybe i’m reading too much into a tone or expression or a simple “why?” or maybe they’ve just never encountered anyone like me before. who knows? but that’s how views (and people are). one of my strengths might be someone else’s red flag. c’est la vie.
okay, no more agonizing! because you know, that only leads to agony! and no more thinking, too — because it only leads to more thoughts. from now on, any thoughts i’m going to have about this employer shall be related to how i can cook up some kick-ass story ideas for them by wednesday… or earlier. 

*cue megalomanic laughter* lulunurin ko sila! it’s time for some good old pakitang-gilas!
oh, and world peace.
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Posted on May 23, 2008
Category: The Singapore Years · Labels:

When little boys grow up…

… they become husbands. 

this afternoon, i finally saw why little boys are hard-wired to do all the gross stuff they do in childhood: dig up worms from the soil, catch and fondle bugs and beetles, torture creepy crawlies, play in the mud, and make mommy eat their “mud pies”. 
it’s so they can grow up into men who will clean out the refrigerator when you find a hideously barf-inducing compost pit, potato plantation and onion garden growing in the chiller. while we girls do what we’ve had a lifetime of practice doing: shudder, hold our noses, and say ”eeew.” 
little girly shriek optional.  
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Posted on May 19, 2008
Category: House & Spouse, The Singapore Years · Labels: ,