A random view of a gamelan-playing, food-loving linguist from sunny Southern California.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

The SB film festival opened a couple of days ago...

Today I went to see two movies at the festival today - little did I realize that some of the festival participants had already seen a handful of movies up to this point. I don't think I could do that, sitting in a dark theater for most of the day. I mean, it was a great day to be out. Then again, that's the supposed norm for SoCal...

Anyhow, I saw a (or should we say "another") Stephen Chow kung-fu flick called "Kung-fu Hustle". Why the "hustle"? Methinks the quasi-40's period clothing had something to do with it. It was really good, but Chow's role itself seemed a bit too superfluous in this film. On the other hand, I really liked "The God of Cookery". If you haven't seen it yet, it's hilarious. (For one thing, it's an obvious spoof of the "Iron Chef".)

The second film I saw was "Kontroll" from Hungary. The film's setting is the Budapest subway system - it was funny to see a "disclamer" in the beginning from someone who apparently works for the subway system, telling the audience that the film's characters are highly "symbolic" and do not reflect the nature of the system's actual employee base. Hmmm... I liked it, but I think that many people were a bit perplexed by it - perhaps a bit too disturbed by the raw, grimy intensity that is the Budapest subway system. There are some curiously amusing parts in this dark film, namely those involving a narcoleptic worker.

Tomorrow night I'm going to see "Oldboy" - I've been really waiting to see this one. The other films I have in mind - "Cutie Honey" and "Surprise Style 5+", both from Japan. The former has been described as the Power Rangers on acid, while the other one is probably a Japanese hitman comedy on - you guessed it - acid. Should be an extremely interesting week in the world of international film.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

The SB Film Festival is a few days away...

And I'm getting psyched. There's a whole section dedicated to Asian cult films this year - I'm going to see a couple of them. I'm also planning to see last year's Cannes Film Festival winner, a revenge thriller from South Korea called "Oldboy". (What's the Korean name, anyway?) I've heard it's rather violent, but that's okay, as long as it's not framed as a horror movie. I just can't handle a lot of horror movies - my imagination is just too active and vivid for such things. But I've gotta see this one. There's also a rather bizarre film from Japan with an equally bizarre title: "Survive Style 5+".

Tickets are rather expensive - $10 a pop - but at least these are movies that I would gladly pay such a sum to see. I might get a four-ticket pass - I think it would save me some money in the long run. Generally, I just can't believe that most films nowadays are $9 during prime movie showings... And for such crap! Call me a movie snob, but I just dislike around 95% of the stuff that comes out from Hollywood - I'll go for a foreign film each time, especially those from Asia.

Steamed spareribs - My way

I decided to cook up some Chinese-style steamed spareribs tonight. "Steamed spareribs?" Yes, steamed spareribs! They aren't bland at all, especially if you try the way that I make them.

1 1/2 lb. of Chinese-cut pork sparerib (I really don't know what this cut is called in regular supermarkets - I got mine from a 99 Ranch Market, that amazing Taiwan-based Oriental grocery supermarket. The cut itself is located above the region where we get Western-style spareribs.)

Cut the sparerib into 3/4" x 2" pieces.

Marinade (remember - these are rough estimates. I almost never use measuring spoons when I cook - that's a mark of a seasoned cook, no pun intended ;)

2 T preserved black beans (dao si), soaked in 3 T Shaoxing wine
1 T dark soy sauce
1 1/2 T good-quality oyster sauce
1 T Chinkiang black vinegar (basalmic vinegar could do in a pinch - if using, reduce to 1/2 T)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped finely
1 T chopped fresh ginger
1 t sesame oil
1 T sugar
Salt and pepper

Mix ribs into the marinade mixture well and let sit for at least 30 minutes.


The marinating ribs.

After the ribs have sufficiently marinated, coat them liberally with cornstarch. Put ribs on a heatproof plate in a single layer (you may do this in batches if you do not have a large steamer, like I had to) and steam in a steamer for at least 10 minutes. Serve hot.


The steamed ribs. They look delicious - and really, they were delicious. Posted by Hello

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Mozart: the really smart alecky genius

Today I just shocked my colleague and friend, Carlos, by showing him a series of vocal pieces composed by Mozart titled "Leck mich im Arsch", or for those of you who don't speak Deutschland-speak (such as myself) "Lick my ass"! For those of you who are suspicious of what looks like a blatant travesty, the catalog number for one of these pieces is the following: KV 231(382c). It's apparently a canon in B-flat for six male voices. Interesting...

The goodies have arrived...

My package from the Korean online shop arrived two days ago - yes! Now I'm all equipped for the upcoming new year's festivities. Here's part of one of the hwatu (화투) card sets. These cards are made of plastic, and the cards from this set have 2 dimensions that are close to those of a regular box of stick matches. I'm still trying to figure out what the logo on the brand name is - is it a caveman with a horn on its head, a throwback to nuclear-age cartoon characters, or what? 아, 몰라! (Oh, I don't know - sing nawang!)



And here's the yut game (윷놀이), with the game pieces on the left side and the long dice above the paper game "board". The dice themselves look kinda cheesy, with their romanticized scenes of peasant Korean life, like the farmers performing nongak pangut [농악 판굿] all day. Nongak pangut is a genre of percussion and dance entertainment, one of the predecessors of samulnori (四物놀이), a kick-ass quartet of Korean percussion.


Posted by Hello

I'm definitely thinking of going down to LA Koreatown and getting more sets of these games - perhaps even a set of Korean chess. Perhaps when the traffic isn't as gnarly as it's been lately :p ...

Monday, January 17, 2005

A winter of extremes

First we have this major storm (or a series of them) and now it's this dry, warm northeasterly wind... What the hell is going on with our weather - argghhh! I can't figure it out...

Friday, January 14, 2005

Weird card decks and other gaming curiosities...

I've just ordered some unusual games. Here's the deal:

During the first week of the quarter in Korean class, our instructor (이 선생님, remember?) brought in some games that are traditionally played in Korea during the New Year season (which in Korea ends around the 15th of January, apparently - until the lunar new years comes about...). One of them was called "yut" (윷), which is sort of like a Korean version of parcheesi - you know, the game where each person has multiple tokens that have to go around the board toward a goal. In this version, however, there are only two teams with four tokens each. The dice are unusual as well - they are basically four sticks with one curved side with designs and the other flat side with no embellishment. Moves are dependent on how many sticks appear with the designed side up. The other quirky thing about this game is that multiple tokens from the same team can move as one, which makes it easier 1) to get all your tokens around the board and 2) for the opposing team to knock multiple tokens off the board at one time.

The other game 이 선생님 demonstrated for us is "hwatu" (화투), a card game originally from Japan (where it is a "karuta" game called hanafuda) that is not as innocent as "yut" - apparently it involves gambling. Also, the fact that it's originally from Japan indeed still ruffles some feathers in Korea, to put it lightly. Anyway, there are a handful of suits which are recognizable from the background design. The object here is to rack up points by matching suits - the one with the most points gets the money. Sounds easy, right? Well, some cards have some other designs on top of the background ones which 1) really confuse greenhorn players and 2) are worth more points than plain suited cards.

I'll post some pictures soon.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Damn cold...

I've been trying to get rid of it for two weeks - it's one persistent bugger - blah!

Anyway, in Korean class we had a constructed dialogue where we were planning a birthday party for one of the people in class, i.e. the one who has a birthday sometime in January. So, our illustrious instructor, 이 선생님, asked the following to each student:

이 선생님: 무슨 생일선물 줄 거예요? (What kind of birthday present are you going to give?)

At this point, people said things like 꽃 (flowers), 책 (book), and even some rather odd gift ideas like 연필 (pencil) and 필통 (pencil case). When my turn came up, I answered 소주 열 병 (ten bottles of Korean soju, a clear, distilled liquor, not unlike vodka)! That was fun. In reality, we're going to make kimbap (rice and seaweed rolls) later on in the quarter. Now that should be fun.

We've been having a lot of rain recently, enough to cause mudslides that have closed off the major southern arteries into and from the SB area, most importantly the 101. This is going to take awhile the clean up, doncha think? It's pretty bad.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Well, the winter quarter starts...

And what am I taking? Of course, I'm taking the second course in the series of Beginning Korean. Half of the folks from last quarter's class are there, plus a lot of new folks. A lot of new folks who can really speak Korean since they're heritage speakers. This is just like when I took advanced Indonesian at UC Berkeley, except for the fact that I was the only non-heritage speaker in that class. It made for some good language learning, however.

Anyway, we're reviewing the "past tense" forms (I really don't know yet whether Korean really has "tense") this week. We're also learning about "probability", which is interesting in Korean because the way one does it is given a verb root, you add the suffix -l and the definite verbal form "geo-i-da". This itself may not seem remarkable, but "geo-i-da" also signifies "it is a thing", with the specialized pronunciation [ggeo-i-da], the same as if one were saying "This is mine/my thing" (Igeon je ggeo-ye-yo). It's pronounced the same way in this case, so the forms are probably directly related. If that's the case, then "probability" of doing X would be expressed by stating an activity that is in the realm of X. It's a longshot, but it's worth a try.