How about this?

One-two-three, four, five, sick, se-ven, and yah and gong!

Fooled ya there...

What's the time measure for the following?

One-two-three, four, five, six, se-ven, and gong and yah!

Of course, to the uninitiated, this is just pure nonsense. However, for those currently studying Javanese dance here, this should sound familiar enough... I was just reminded of this in gamelan class today. Enjoy!

Anybody want a wu-gok?

A wu-gok, you know? Get those sick and crazy thoughts out of your head! Buduh, belog ci - jorok sih! As I told you earlier, these are dumplings with a pork filling wrapped with a taro dough which are later deep-fried. Here's how they turned out:


Well, the wugok didn't turn out as expected, but they were still good... A really good one has fried strands of taro sticking out the top, like a bird's nest (sort of). I think I know what to do next time - buy older taro that actually has those strands!


Tempura and stuffed peppers. I love tempura = 튀김= fritto misto a la giaponese (getting a bit too carried away there, huh?), whatever you call it -- a Japanese style fish and vegetable fry. No fish this time though. Too bad.


The rest of the food (clockwise from extreme left): my wu-gok, nori-arare (rice crackers), another plate of wu-gok, pressed spiced tofu (a Chinese specialty), and fried sweet rice cake (a Chinese New Year Specialty). All of this food was delicious - especially with a cup or two of soju (소주 한잔이나 두잔)! Bottoms up!

BTW, Happy Valentine's Day for those of you who actually have somebody ㅜㅜ... After Friday's class on Valentine's e-cards from Korea, I realized just then how sappy this day can get. Well, time to drink more soju!

Two new CDs

Well, not exactly "new" in most senses of the word - both were released about a couple years ago. These CDs have gamelan degung, a very soft gamelan ensemble from Sunda (west Java), and kacapi suling, a flute and zither ensemble from the same area as degung. One thing that's funny about gamelan degung is that people often think that it's Balinese gamelan music. Many, if not most, tourists hear this music being piped out from the storefronts in many of the tourist enclaves in Bali. Thus, the association is made between degung and Bali. But I and many other people know otherwise...

Tonight, 경애누나 is going to have a small dinner party at her place, and I'm thinking of making wu-gok, which are taro puff pastries made famous in various dim sum parlors. This'll be my first time making them, so hopefully they'll turn out.

Some weird jokes after a post-Chinese New Year's dinner

A lot of important things happened today: we had a talk by Peter Ladefoged (a given for all phonetics students, past and present - he wrote a major textbook on phonetics written more than 30 years ago that is still being used in many, if not most, phonetics courses today. He talked about why "My Fair Lady" has terrible phonetics, but is still a good movie. Why did he bring this up? Well, he was an on-site advisor for the part of Dr Higgins, the phonetician. And yet, for his part, his name didn't even appear in the credits. Heh, go figure...

After the talk, a bunch of us went to a local Chinese restaurant and had some good food. And as is traditional for Chinese New Year, we had a dish of noodles, chao fen (or "chow fun") to be exact. When everyone had his/her fill, the jokes began to flow... Like this one from childhood: "If half a chicken laid half an egg in half a day, how much does a pound of butter weigh"? Has anyone out there heard of this?

Another one, provided by Nancy C.: "If a millipede a pint and a centipede a quart, how much does a precipice? -- As much as a tomato can." You have to sound it out to fully appreciate it...

Aduh, cang suba kiyap - Tu dah, bin mani semengan patut bangun pagi-pagi. Bes pagi-pagi. Tingalin apa ci, nagih apa ci! Kewah! Patute gae ene bes keras!

And the rest of the festival...

Well, I only went to two films after "Oldboy", which is still my favorite from the small handful of movies I saw this festival.

On Friday night, I saw "Cutie Honey", a Japanese film based on a Go Nagai anime series from the 70's, with one of my buddies. Let me tell you: this was, as one film festival intern described it, the Power Rangers on acid!... It was that bizarre. The hero (or heroine, in this case) is an android whose superhuman (can you call it that?) powers are stored in a necklace - supposedly the product of nanotechnology. She goes against the "Panther Claw", a gang of weird, color-coded (that's right - color-coded) nanotech-enhanced miscreants who kidnapped her uncle. My favorite villain was "Black Claw", a Michael Jackson/harlequinn knockoff with pop-star as well as murderous tendencies. Let me explain - before he starts attacking, he goes into this karaoke number with the central part of his trident as a dettachable microphone. Tres bizarre!

As for today, I just came back from another Japanese film, "Survive Style 5+". Another bizarre film, this time with a wife who just won't stay dead and a salary worker who thinks he's a bird after a botched hypnotist show (the hypnotist was "whacked"). It was visually stunning, and some of the scenes were really funny. The end result, although delightful, was more odd than anything else. Although it was funny seeing the bird-guy freak out after his family presented him with a Christmas turkey.

More raves on 올드보이...

I can't say enough good things about this movie. You'll just have to see it for yourself - really, you'll have to. I've been telling about this movie to a lot of my friends - and I'll probably be talking about for a few days afterwards... Just my random thought of the day.

"Creative new uses for a hammer!"

I guess that could be an alternate title for "Oldboy", the revenge thriller from South Korea. Saw it last night over at the festival. It started a bit late (~20 min. behind schedule) but it was worth the wait. 참 좋고 재미있었어! (It was that good!) I really enjoy revenge thrillers. From what I remembered, when the LA Times first reported on the Cannes Grand Prix winner, the critics said that it was disturbingly violent. Well, that's true in a handful of scenes, but at least this movie gives you a chance to rest between each period of gore. And we're not only talking about human gore here - let's eat some 낙지회 (a "special type" of octopus), shall we?

Next movie on my list: "Cutie Honey", showing this Friday.