Happy Birthday to Morgan

We're in Malaysia now. So far, it's not as nice as Thailand. But maybe we've just been doing the wrong activities?? If so, it's probably Johan's fault. Did you know it was my birthday yesterday, and he didn't even get me a present?! So rude! & so far I've paid for this whole trip!
The hotel we're staying at is not very nice. It's allegedly a 4-star hotel, but I think somebody bribed the guy handing out the stars.
Look at this primitive toilet-seat-of-the-future:

It's called the "backwasher," but why you'd want to wash your back while sitting on the toilet I couldn't tell you. They also have a very sketchy buffet breakfast, and an empty pool. Bastards.
We did have very delicious Indian food yesterday for lunch.

That, however, is not it. This was an alter at a Chinese temple with offerings.
There are a lot of churches, mosques, and Chinese temples here. Johan and I were so inspired by their beauty and the faith of the people that he decided to become a Muslim, and I am going to become Chinese.

Free your Seoul

Paul + Tamago

Sushi! We went to Raw again last night. We got free deep-fried ice cream like usual, but we also got free Philadelphia rolls and free udon noodles. Yay, free!

The other day these four ladies knocked on the door. I got that they wanted me to come to their church, although I think we established that it wasn't in English, so I was a little hesitant. &, also, I'm pretty much an atheist, too. But then they gave me this:

The nicest free plastic tablecloth I've ever received!! So I'm totally a Christian now!! Or whatever religion they were! Score!

Then, just now, ANOTHER lady knocked on my door & gave me a yoghurt drink!


I'm not sure what she wanted, but I'm totally down with it!

Also, inspired by Mirabelle's luxury-housewife posts, I attempted to make a chocolate pudding cake today.
It turned out like this:

The watery part is chocolate water, which isn't as gross as it sounds. It's like a thin cake raft, floating on the chocolate sea. But quite yummy. Thank goodness. Because Johan & I have to eat the WHOLE THING tonight, since we're going on vacation to MALAYSIA tomorrow! Wooooooooooo!

Pickles Galore

Soldiers from the Light Infantry, unit 546, Pickle Navy

May 12th, 2006
Dear Diary,
I've been in Korea a week now, and it is just so fun! With every meal, they serve you pickles! At restaurants, you get bowls of pickles, and when you have take out food, they give you plastic packages of pickles. They aren't very tasty.

July 29th, 2006
Dear Diary,
Man! So many pickles! Korean people eat them all the time! Pickles and kimchi! HAHA!

August 2nd, 2006
Dear Diary,
Freaking pickles. I'm so sick of them.

December 5th, 2007.
Dear Diary,
The free pickles are building up in the apartment. They just keep coming and coming... The whole guest room is filled with plastic packages of pickles, and we've started keeping them in the office. I was buried in a pickle avalanche yesterday for four hours before Johan came home and dug me out after hearing my cries. I don't know how many more pickles I can take...

January 12th, 2007
Dear Diary,
More pickles. I heard murmers amongst the pickles in the hall closet earlier. The words "revolt" and "overthrow" were definitely used. The pickles are getting restless, and I'm getting scared...

Pickluary 1st, Year 1 PP (Post-Pickle)
WE HAVE TAKEN OVER!!!!! NOW KOREA, NEXT THE WORLLLLLLLDDDD!!!! PICKLE POWER!!!! DEATH TO PICKLE EATERS AND PICKLE HATERS!!!!


Innocent-looking pickles that come with every meal in Korea. NEVER turn your back on them.

Welcome to the Future

Last night, I saw the future. & it was a beer pitcher.

It was wicked (I'm trying to sound more Brittish. What do you think, chaps?). It had smoke coming out of a little spout (because who likes smokey beer??), red lights illuminating the beer, and bubbles continually pumping into the beer, keeping it... fresh? I don't know what the bubbles did... besides look totally rad. Duh.

Plus it provides a crazy illusion that you're pouring a whole different liquid out of it, since it's a different color in the glass, without the red lights! Woooo!
It goes with out saying that we ordered another. & then went to sing Norebang, of course.
Kalle assured us many times before we got there that he wouldn't sing, that he didn't like singing, and that he was no good. So imagine my surprise when, as soon as we got in the room, he grabbed the microphone and didn't let go the entire time. He sang his heart out! Although he does look in severe pain in most of my pictures...

Charles does the best death-metal version of "Creep" I've ever heard.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry.

Last night I finally found a Korean food that I really like! Chicken galbi! I've been wanting to try it forEVER, and I finally found a place that served it in Youngsan last night, so Kalle, Johan, & I had it for dinner.

It was delectable. Bean sprouts, chicken, and onions, and you grill it at your table.
Afterwards, we had chocolate fondue at Baskin Robbins, which I've also been wanting to try for many a moon.

Also delicious. But wait- what are those red things in the corner?!

Oh right. Tomatoes. Duh.

Window to my Seoul

This is the view outside the window in the living room. Uh... except less wonky in real life. The buildings are a bit straighter. But you get the basic idea.

Funk Seoul Brother

Saturday night I went out in Hongdae with Bethlyn. We went to this place called the Spot (you should totally read that review. It gives insightful commentary like, "The Spot is a small basement bar that's rectangular in shape.")
I left the red eyes in the pictures to make them more punk rock.

The first band that played was my favorite. I don't know the name, but I would totally buy their album (& by "buy" I mean "download for free," of course). They were all quite short.


Look at this guy's ashy elbows!
(okay, they don't show up well on my monitor either, but I swear they were ashy)

I hate armpits.


This one band only played for like 10 minutes, behind a screen the whole time. It was weird. I thought they were just warming up, but then they left.
Anyhoo, it was super fun. We danced a bit, talked to some people, some guys got in a fight over Beth and Adrienne, and Beth obsessed over it the whole night & the next day, Beth tried to make out with me, and then we slept together (see mom?! I always told you I was gay!). Unfortunately, only in a snuggly, fully-clothed way, not a hot-lesbian-sex way (never mind, mom!).
The morning after.


I was a bit hungover the next morning, but I met up with another friend, we ate Mr. Pizza (Motto: Made for Women) and KrispyKreme- a sure hangover cure, and explored the new Lotte Department store (motto: "Always with You" With a Light Heart) in Miasamgeori. According to Wired, Lotte is supposed to build the tallest building in the world in Seoul by 2012. By 2012, Korea will have the #1, #3, #6, #9, and #14 tallest buildings in the world. My my. Now I guess we just have #74. What a loser town.
Then I came home, where Johan had a lovely dinner waiting for me of stale tortilla chips and salsa (except I don't eat salsa). Awww, isn't he cute?!

Cookie catastrophe

The other night, there was a knock on our door. It was nice Korean lady who gave us free milk! She just knocked, gave us a small carton of milk, and left. Johan got a lot of pleasure from the free milk.

I like free milk, too! Today at the grocery store, I bought a liter of milk, and I got 3 free small milks!

Banana, cappacino, and milk flavored! Totally gross, but they were free!
I also decided to make chocolate chip cookies today. I figured out how to use the oven function of our oven/microwave, found a recipe, and got down to business. I was quite excited, because the recipe called for milk, so I used the free milk! & that, my friends, was my downfall. Which was suprising, because I was pretty sure my downfall would be the white powder that I suspected was either baking soda or baking powder, but I couldn't be sure which. No, the milk was the culprit. Because you don't really need milk in cookies. The other recipes I looked at didn't call for milk. I've never made cookies with milk before. should have suspected something was up.

It turns out, I forgot to write down a key ingredient- 3 cups of oats! That's why it called for milk. It's pretty major, since oats should have made up like half the batter. So the cookies turned out not-so-fabulous. Plus, the edges were burnt, but the insides were rawish, giving me a clue as to why I've never heard of a oven/microwave before. I added some more ingredients to the second batch, but no dice. My cookies are a failure. I wasted the free milk. Could life get any worse??

Selling my Seoul

We're going to Raw tonight!! Wooooooo!

A disturbing (yet strangely titillating...) sign in Hongdae.


When I first came to Korea, I was like, "What's UP with all the swastikas???" Now I'm like, "Swastikas... eh."

(yes, yes, they aren't REALLY swastikas. They're Buddhist swastikas! Who knew the Buddhists were such nazis??)

+ Best tattoo ever!

The Life of the Party

The other night, we had a party. Just for people from Johan's company, if you're wondering why you didn't get invited... Or if you're from Johan's company and wondering why you didn't get invited... uh... ask Johan.
It was fun. We chitchatted, ate some pizza and Korean cakes Natasha and Soyoung brought, AND I got to show off that I know the word "stethoscope" in Korean!! 5 stars for our party!!
When we (er, Johan) cleaned up the next day, we discovered that like over two-thirds of the beer cans had beer in them still. & many of them were almost totally full! So it seems Johan works with squares who like to appear "hip" and "with it" by drinking. Interesting. From my photos, it also seems that he works with the most red-eye-prone bunch since... nobody! They're has never been a group more prone to red eye in pictures! Ever! I worked for literally minutes trying to fix all their red eyes, but some were impossible to fix (without exerting more than the minimal effort I was willing to put forth, anyway). My Korean friend Maria told me that, "All you Swedish people are so handsome!! Isn't anybody ugly over there??" I told her I'm sure we could find her some.

You think those beer cans on the table are empty, even though I just told you most of them weren't, don't you? Do you think I make these things up??

Yesterday, Sharon and I went for a jaunt around the Euljiro area. She's leaving Korea in a few days. *sob* We went shopping, ate lunch and ice cream, AND found all kinds of wacky art projects.
A giant hybrid fruit/vegetable tree. From my washer/drier and microwave/oven and now this, I can only conlude that Koreans are master combiners. It's weird I've never seen Combos here, then.

Some kind of crime scene, involving a psycho Snow White (see how her eyes are rolled back in her head??) restrained by police tape.

And here's me with my favorite fungus. No, not foot fungus! Mushrooms! (although I totally like foot fungus a lot, too):


I also sampled squash-flavored gelato (tasted EXACTLY like cold squash!) and black sesame flavored (tasted weird... but better than the squash). Oh, and in unrelated news, the other day I put dishwashing detergent in the washer! HAHA! Alas, I realized before I started it, so I didn't find out what would happen. Sorry.

On Safari in Morgan & Johan's Apartment!

I've already written about the toilet-seat-of-the-future, so I thought I'd write about some other interesting things in the new apartment.

First, here's a look at the outside of the apartment*:

Here's the sink, with the pedal you use to turn the water on and off. You have to use it, it's not an option to turn the water on with the normal handle.

See it down there? It's very small in this apartment, compared to our old apartment. It's very handy, so when you're washing dishes, you just push the pedal to turn off the water when your hands are full. Smart, smart.
The kimchi fridge:

We don't eat kimchi at home (I don't eat it anywhere, in fact), so it's filled with beer & soju from our party on Saturday. The point of the kimchi refridgerator is so the kimchi doesn't make the fridge smell, to hold large amounts of kimchi, and to keep other veggies fresh, although why it would be better than a crisper drawer in the regular fridge is unclear. It's pretty handy, though.
In the regular fridge, we have a little door that we open to get drinks out, so we don't have to open the whole door:

We also have a drying rack in the laundry room that you can automatically raise and lower from the ceiling, an intercom-type thing in the bathroom to talk to people who are buzzing our apartment from outside (& it also has an alarm function, as we've experienced twice already!), an oven that doubles as a microwave, a washer that doubles as a drier, jets in our shower that will spray water all over you (in theory... our water pressure leaves something to be desired. It's like the shower's going pee.), and.... that's it. Isn't that enough for your people?!


*Okay, this isn't actually a look at the outside of OUR apartment. But all apartments look more or less the same (although ours is less green & newer), and this one has a nice big tree in front of it! It's too cold to go outside and take a picture of our actual apartment. This is one near ours.

Fooooooooooooood: The Christmas Edition

Because it's my thing to write in non-chronilogical order, and apparently it's also my thing to write about food constantly, here's what we ate at Christmas. It's a traditional Swedish julbord. First you start with the cold food, which is fish, meats, cheese, bread, and sallads.

You should also know that there were only six of us eating all this. It lasted for 3 meals while we were there, and there were no signs of it running out any time soon. & this was smaller than it has been in the past!
Let's take a closer look at some of the main points, shall we? Come on!
The Fish

Oooooh, the fish. Two of us didn't eat fish at all, and one more person only ate salmon. So almost all the fish was for 3 people. To the left is smoked eel, smoked salmon, amd pickled salmon. In the small containers there is herring. Herring in mustard sauce, fried herring, herring in dill sauce, and... three other types of herring that I'm not sure what they are. This was a major reduction in the usual amount of fish Johan's family has. When I ate Christmas dinner at their house two years ago, there were like five different types of salmon, including garlic salmon, which I actually tasted.
The green cheese

It's oh-so-green! I love it! It was cheese with basil! It tasted like pesto, which is one of my favorite things! I love strangely colored food!

After the cold food, you eat the hot food!

There was a quiche-like pie with broccoli, feta, sundried tomatoes, these onion-potato roll things, prince sausages, meatballs, brown cabbage (which smells really funky, and I actually forgot to taste it, but I think it tastes a lot better than it smells), and boiled potatoes (not pictured, but I'm pretty sure you can imagine what they looked like).
We drank beer, Christmas cola, schnapps, and Fanta with dinner. They have Christmas beer in Sweden, but we drank normal, cheap, German beer instead.

After you've eaten like four plates full, it's time for dessert! We had a roll cake, which is my favorite. It's like chocolate cake with a butter-cream filling. & there was ris a la malta, which is like rice pudding mixed with cream and topped with cherry preserves. & there were almond mussles, which are these shell cookies that you put whipped cream and cherry preserves in (although I skipped the cream, because Swedish whipped cream isn't sweet, so I don't like it) (I could have also skipped the cookies, because I just love the cherry preserves). & we had chocolate candy & chips (cheesy puffs!).
And by then it was like 1am, and it was time for bed. & when we woke up the next morning, we did it all again.
Okay, next time I'll try not to post about food. Maybe. Unless I eat something fascinating in the next few days. Or if nothing else post-worthy happens to me. Or if I feel like posting about food.

Seoul-la-lay-hee-hooooooooo!

The other day, Johan & I went to Yongsan and wandered into the red light district. It was strange. I didn't know what it was at first. There were these women, sitting in really small rooms with glass doors so you could see in, and there was just a chair and a watercooler in the room. We got there just as it was getting dark, so there weren't many ladies around, and no men that we saw. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take a picture. Soon after, we saw a group of break dancers! It's one of my goals in life to learn to break! But alas, no picture there, either.
Here's what I did get a picture of:

It's in the bathroom at a department store. You push the button and it makes the sound of a toilet flushing! Without actually flushing the toilet! Because that's just good etiquette. These are fairly common in public bathrooms.

In other news, Johan & I finished moving everything to our new apartment yesterday. It's beeeeyootiful! I'm in love with it. & since we're talking toilets, here is our toilet-seat-of-the-future:

It sprays water on your bum or your... vaginal-urethral area (what's a cute word for your vaginal-urethral area??). Then it will gently blow warm puffs of air to dry you off. Which doesn't work very well. In any case, it is quite refreshing. AND there are still like eigh other mysterious buttons that I haven't dared to try yet!!! Who knows what they'll do?? Oh, one or two of them might be for heating up the toilet seat. Still 6 buttons left!!! I've been dreaming of a toilet seat like this since I moved to Korea, and now, finally, I've got everything I ever wanted (except a break dancing career, of course).
We still have to finish unpacking everything, of course. Last night, the only toothpaste I could find was a small tube of "fresh citrus breeze" flavor. First, orange-flavored toothpaste should be outlawed, and second, if you're going to defy the laws of nature and make the stuff, it definitely shouldn't taste like slightly-orange bubblegum, and third, putting glitter in it doesn't make it any more appetizing.

I should point out that this is American toothpaste, not Korean. For those people who think everything is so wild and wacky in Korea. It's not. They have normal mint toothpaste. It IS a civilized country, for goodness sakes.