In the Land of Invisible Women by Quanta Ahmed.
Kindle Version
Once I started this book, everything else went on hold until it was finished. I didn’t even glance longingly at another title, or consider another subway companion until I had read the entire story of this American-trained Muslim doctor’s foray into the Saudi Kingdom. Although Quanta is a Pakastani women, born and raised Muslim, and considers herself to be a follower, her previous trips to other parts of the middle east did nothing to prepare her for two years of living as “an invisible woman.” In “The Kingdom” women are required to wear full head to toe coverings, including a face veil (not quite a burqa, but not far off), are not allowed to drive, and are frequently dismissed by their male co-workers no matter what their level of education. Quanta describes a rage of frustration that I can only imagine.
Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok
This is a South African novel that I never would have come across if not for bookobsessed. I thought it was great. Part landscape, part family dynamics, and a surprising suspenseful mystery ending. Told from the point of view of a young girl living in a remote farm whose family starts to fall apart after her dad leaves for work one Monday and never comes back.
by Rick Riordan
Kindle Version
Book three in the Percy Jackson series.
by Sandra Welchel
Kindle Version
A British novel told from a retired woman’s point of view after her husband leaves to have his “Walden Pond” year in a remote cabin in the states. What she discovers is that all the time she’s been blaming him for not being able to finish her book has really been her own lack of discipline and way of letting life get in the way.
by Kenchen Pal Sherab
Read on the bus on the way to the temple stay. One of those books I carry around with me. It’s a good, basic introduction to Buddhist thought on the body and meditation. Kenchen Palden is one of the monks who is the teacher of the Buddhist temple I attend when I’m in Nashville. This is him doing a “lama dance” outside Nashville at the retreat center.
by Barbara Gowdy
(Hey Bybee, it’s a Canadian author). Travel tale told from the point of view of elephants. Although it wasn’t an outstanding book, it was a great companion to the last book I finished in Feb.:
by Rick Ridgeway.
This was less of a travel narrative, and more of a history of the anti-elephant-poaching effort in the Tsavo, and a lesson on some of the political dynamics of the long-standing tribes in the area. Solid writing, and interesting stuff.
Here are more pics from my temple stay last weekend at Geumsansa Temple, South Korea. I have long neglected the Thursday Thirteen folks. Hope you enjoy.
The ancient Buddhist symbol for the wheel of life.
Filed under: Buddhism, Korea, Travel | Tags: Geumsansa Temple, Temple stay Korea
After nine months, I finally did one of the first things I intended to do in Korea – go on a temple stay. I wasn’t the only one in this boat, several of the folks I talked to on the trip (of 33 people, I think), were doing the same thing. Some were on their way out within the next couple of weeks, and were finally getting around to doing the stay. It is less of a meditation retreat, and more of an introduction to Buddhist temple life turned craft camp. Overall it left me feeling better about being in Korea, was relaxing, and was a great chance to hang out with like-minded foreigners and some cool Korean folks.
For me, the highlight of going to temples is the art. Besides finding it inspiring, it is a relaxing dose of color compared to the concrete jungle with neon signs that is the rest of Korea.
Gemsansa is made up of many buildings holding a different main Bodhisattva, but this one is particularly spectacular. It is three stories high, and on the inside holds a statue that takes up every bit of that three stories. We were allowed to take pictures, which is very rare inside temples.
Temple Housing Maitreya Buddha.
Close up of the artwork on the building.
Our monk host and translator describing how it is unique to Korean temples to use the natural shape of the tree as pillars to the the buildings. He was a wonderful host, extremely open, friendly, and excited to share. He said the first time he was given the temple stay for foreigners as an assignment, but ever since 2004 he’s volunteered to be the person to be in charge of leading them.
The warriors: mean, scary-looking, but ultimately fighting for compassion against the evils of greed, hatred, and ignorance.
Inside. I think it’s hard to tell from the pictures, but keep in mind that these statues are three stories tall.
At the base rubbing the wishing rock and looking up.
After a meditation session, and lengthy Q&A with the monk we settled in for the arts and crafts part of our sleep-over. Some grandmas came in to show us how to make tissue paper lotus lanterns. It was great to see that out of all the people, no two were exactly the same. People came up with some pretty clever designs.
At first the grandmas seemed a little unsettled by our creative license, but they warmed up to it after a while.
I asked the same question that I asked a monk in Yeosu a while back to our monk here and got a completely different answer. “What do you think about the turn in your own culture away from Buddhist principles to completely embracing capitolism to the point of extreme materialism, and a huge focus of physical appearnce and material success?”
Since I’ve come to Korea, I’ve had this question in my mind. Although the people here have every right to develop their culture and society however they want, it has been a personal disappointment to me that a country that used to be Buddhist has become so extremely consumerist. This question had been burning in my mind even more the last couple weeks after a great project I did with some of the students at school. They were asked to create a new superhero, and had to list the three top qualities a hero should have. Almost all the groups put being handsome/beautiful as the top quality because, “No one can trust someone who isn’t beautiful.” This was hugely disheartening to me, especially in light of the western concept of heroes where they are often the underdog and end up having an inner quality that puts them above the rest.
The monk in Yeosu basically said that people are going to do what they are going to do, and that monks live in a realm above that. It almost seemed like he didn’t care. It was an unusual temple were it appeared, to me, that the monk had completely surrounded himself with quite expensive looking material comforts, and although he was kind and informative, he seemed to be the ruler of his domain.
The response I got at Geumsansa was much different. This monk went into a lengthy description of Korean history, and how the materialism we see today is born of a desire to fight their way out of extreme poverty and the devastation left by Japanese occupation and the war. He kind of described it as the natural projection of that success, but that he sincerely hopes that Korea is going to enter a new cultural age. He ended by saying that Korea is going to need a lot of encouragement from foreigners who are interested in actual culture. There are some of us interested in more than just the new cell phone technology.
The next morning we were up at 3am to observe the monks’ daily morning prayers in the main temple hall. It is a gorgeous temple with statues representing several of the main Buddhas – medicine, shakyamuni. I wish I had written down the list when they were doing the tour because I can’t remember them all, and some are specific to Korean Buddhism. One thing I’ve noticed in almost all the Korean temples I’ve visited is a lack of the Taras – the 24 female Buddhas.
Later in the day, our second craft project entailed making our own set of prayer beads. I have several sets from various travels, and the set I use the most was a gift from a guitar player friend in Nashville, but these ones are particularly special, in that I really had to work to earn them. Instead of just stringing the beads, we had to pick a temple to go into (I have to admit to being selfish here – I picked the main hall because it had heaters and it was freezing outside), and then between stringing each bead we had to do a full prostration. The classic 108. I made it, and feel all the better, if sore, for it.
I would highly recommend this temple stay. I’ve heard some of the other’s described as “being a straight jacket for the weekend” or “we were like slave labor for the temple for the weekend.” This temple stay was beautiful, informative, and busy – but with enough time to collect yourself. Everyone on the trip was a good sport as well, which made for a much smoother weekend. I went with Adventure Korea, which is doing the same tour again the end of March.
I’m not into that many memes online, but I haven’t been participating lately in the few that I did use. A day late, but not a quote short.
Hosted by Should Be Reading
Here is my random two sentence quote from page 31:
In the Land of Invisible Women by Quanta Ahmed
“As I spent time in the Kingdom, I was to see just how far removed the state-enforced theocracy was from the truth which is Islam and also how conflicted the Saudis around me, both men and women, had themselves become. Their state no longer represented their personal beliefs.”
A heavy military town for both Korean and American troops about a half hour north of Seoul on the Subway, this town was the base of MASH 4077 for folks who watched the show.
Now, it’s a new, active city with both modern shopping and a traditional Korean market surrounded by gorgeous mountains.
The central street has been closed down and turned into a kind of European style shopping street with public art and a nice little “nature” walk complete with mushroom seats.
The street is called Rodeo street, but with this guy holding down the fort at the front, I don’t know if rodeo is the connotation they were really looking for.
Filed under: Korea
I wasn’t going to write about this for privacy reasons, but in light of the insanity and completely unfounded, fabricated gossip, rumors, and bullshit going around on various Korean blogs and places like Dave’s ESL, I feel that I have to make a statement of some sort.
The person being accused of rape and held in Busan is someone that I’ve been good friends with for four years. We knew each other back home from musical ventures and attending Buddhist meditation retreats together. People seem to think they have clear image of who or what this person is, and from the brief, nauseating time I spent reading some of the posts, I can tell you: you don’t.
First of all, he’s not a typical American in any way shape or form. He is someone who spent most of his life being shuffled to different countries under refugee status, and just recently became an American citizen. He’s a little over five feet tall, ninety pounds, and makes a point of finding something genuine to compliment about every new person he meets. The week before he headed to Busan, he spent at my house, and although he was an annoying houseguest at times, I by no means ever felt threatened by him.
He may be guilty, he may deserve to spend time in jail. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, and neither were any of you. That is for an investigation to figure out. I’m not going to recount what he told me on the phone, but I was the one he called when he was arrested, just because I’m the only person he knows in Korea who might have had a lead to a lawyer. I have no idea how accurate his version is, although from a personal character standpoint, I don’t find this person to be even remotely violent, but to me it sounded like a severe breakdown in communication between two people who were really drunk resulting in a “he said/she said” scenario that is every coed’s worst nightmare.
Regardless of whether he is guilty or not, I do believe he deserves to have fair representation and trial, which as a foreigner, it doesn’t look like he is going to get. They scheduled a court date within hours of arresting him for the next morning, with no intention of providing representation or a translator. Luckily, one of the people I contacted had the foresight to contact the embassy who sent a translator to the courthouse. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had anything. As far as I’ve heard from him and another close mutual friend, for the initial court hearing, he didn’t have any professional representation, and wasn’t given time to find any. Since then, I think he’s found someone, at a cost of several thousand dollars. I haven’t been in contact with him for the last week, and don’t know what his status is.
I’m not opening my blog up for public debate. I’m not going to visit, read, or comment on any of the sites discussing this. I will disable comments to my blog if I have to. I wanted to make a statement on behalf of my friend, but I am not interested in having a firestorm on here. I will delete posts that I don’t care for.
Seoul has some great mountains in the distance, and some you can even find to climb. But it doesn’t seem most of my current companions are of the nature adventuring sort.
There is a subway stop that has been curious to me lately. It is in on a peninsula on the edge of a mountain, then the subway goes through the mountain and drops you off on the other side. Because of my crazy work schedule, I didn’t get going early enough to really climb a mountain, but I did wander around what was labeled as an “eco-city.” I’m guessing in the summertime it is a busy, green, place for gardening demonstrations.
I didn’t spend that much time exploring this little village as the sun was going down, but the subway ride to this area was an interesting look at how the edges of Seoul just keep expanding. At the edge of the city there are all these major apartment complexes being built that aren’t quite finished. Entire neighborhoods being built with nothing in them yet. There essentially is no break heading west to Incheon, and I wonder how far East all this development will get. It was nice to be out in an area that was largely agricultural. I had a refreshing, if brief walk around.
On my way back to Seoul I needed to find some food, which is not something I’m particularly good at. I decided to forgo the trusty foreign foods in Itaewon (even though I was craving empanadas), and went to Myeong-dong instead. I wasn’t very successful, but there is a nice ice sculpture outside of Shinsege. On a whim, I texted my one and only true Korean friend regarding a suggestion for where to eat. Joey, who gave himself his English name because he loves the show Friends, and his girlfriend picked me up and treated me for sushi at a new place they like. It was the perfect ending to a rambling day.
Oh yea, and over dinner, I learned that the expression “I can cook a man” means you know how to handle your men. Which came about when they asked me if I cooked any Korean food at home, to which I replied, “I can’t cook.” They thought that was pretty hilarious.
December was a highly discontent month. Holidays celebrated in drunken Korean fashion, and a stunted, disappointing selection of reading.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Interview with Mary Roach on Fora TV.
Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales
Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium
My year in reading:
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November
I was going back over the months because I’m trying to pick the best book I read in the past year for a game I play on bookobsessed. The year definitely started out fantastic when I was unemployed, reading constantly, and waiting to ship out to Korea, since being here my reading time has dwindled, as has my selection. But overall, not so bad.
Filed under: economics, Korea, Travel | Tags: artificial islands, Incheon, Incheon free economic zone, Korea, New Songdo City, Songdo City, urban geography
I woke up too late today to venture out on my original plan which would have included a two hour subway ride each way. By the time I had gotten to my destination to take the pictures, I’m sure the sun would be on its way out. So I decided to take my local subway line, the Incheon line to the end. I knew the area was under heavy construction, and has been for several years, but I was not aware of the fact that it literally doesn’t really exist yet.
I was the only person to get off the last stop. There wasn’t a soul in the terminal, except for a young sleeping security guard. My shoes even squeaked on the floor it was so new, shiny, and unused. When I got to the top of the stairs of the subway terminal this is what I saw.
No sidewalk. No ubiquitous Paris Baguettes. Actually not a store, or, for that matter, a fully constructed building in site. It was a wondrous construction zone that lasts for miles. The only place I’ve been in Korea where I was the only one around. A few construction trucks flew by, and although I know I shouldn’t have been there, I couldn’t help wondering around and trying to get a few good shots. The Free Economic Zone of Incheon is going to be the world’s largest constructed community. A 10 year, estimated $40 Billion dollar project, it is a completely planned, completely wired, and eventually the hopeful center of some serious international commerce. I’ve heard that starting prices for apartments, that haven’t even been built yet, is $500,000. Even if I never come back to Korea to teach, seeing what happens to this area in ten years would be worth taking a trip.
This part of Incheon, as in literally the piles of dirt under my feet, didn’t exist a few years ago. Well, actually it existed as a landfill. Korea has been undergoing massive artificial island projects to expand. It is quite plain on the subway maps which parts of the city are artificial, and where the natural coast line is. The faint dotted lines are where future development is planned. Although Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Dubai and other places have been using this as a form of land reclamation for years, it still makes me wonder at the stability of it all, if say a major earthquake or tsunami were to hit the area. I’m also curious as to why artificial islands fall under the geographic term of reclamation, how can you REclaim something that never existed?
New Songdo city is not all that large. I managed to walk from the barely existent International Business subway stop to the Incheon University subway in probably a little over a half hour, and that was with meandering around construction zones and taking pictures. I was hoping there would be a little life around the University stop, but it was literally a subway stop poking out of a field of dirt. There was a shuttle bus to take students to the school, which I couldn’t see on the horizon and a student pointed vaguely in the distance to where it must be. I’m quite confused as to why the stop is named for the University, except that from the subway line, I guess it is the closest access point to the school. A shuttle stop and subway marker jutting up out of nothing.
In between is the Central Park subway stop. A completely planned, and what is clearly going to be quite lovely park in the middle of this constructed city. Complete with public art pieces already installed. The impression I get both from some brief research reading, and from walking around the area, is that this city is meant to be an entity in and of itself. It has plans for international schools (with tuitions of upwards of $25,000/year), tax incentives for international business, a banking industry with low interest loans (presumably to very large investors), and the makings of town that plans to exclude, and possibly outright dismiss the existence of people of lower economic class. It makes me wonder what kind of actual life or vibrancy this fabricated city is going to have. Can you plunk down a city where one never existed, move in a bunch of folks, and call it home? I guess I should ask someone from a gated community in Arizona. (jab.)
Here is a photo of a poster on a construction barrier that shows what the city is supposed to look like when it is finished. Very modern, very urban, and quite nice. Of course, this doesn’t show the trash, the cars, the exhaust, or an Ajashee clearing his throat and spitting it next to someone’s shoe.
On a whim I got off a couple stops later at Campus Town. Again, I was having faint dreams of college towns, but alas, I think it meant “campus of highrise apartments.” Again, although this area is much further along in development and people clearly live here, there was nothing in the way of restaurants, shops, or stores within close walking distance of the subway stop. Even the map inside the subway was barren except to show the location of three housing developments. It makes me wonder if with the popularity of the car, there isn’t a move toward separating residential and commercial space, which, in this city, would be an incredible shame.
A brief and interesting article.
An article on the “wired” aspect of New Songdo City.
Filed under: Korea, Travel | Tags: Contemporary art in Korea, Seoul Grand Park
I was supposed to go to Busan today, but the person I was going to meet said they were leaving early. So after a meal of Kimchi Jiggea with Japanese noodles, I decided to cancel my ticket, and just wonder within the subway system. I love that the light blue lines have pictures of places that might be of interest. I hopped on line 4, and went to Seoul Grand Park. Obviously somewhere that is meant to be enjoyed in the summer, as all the gardens were wrapped up, I found it hugely relaxing and calm though compared to the last couple of weeks. There were a few families milling around, and I headed up to the National Museum of Contemporary Art.
This guys jaw moves up and down and he is singing something rather somber and pleasant.
The special exhibit right now is called Peppermint Candy. Artists that grew up and were formed by the 1980s social and political change. The exhibit was taken to Chilie as part of a cross-cultural exchange, and was popular due to Chile going through similar changes at similar times. I got a lot more out of the exhibit because of the wonderful English-speaking docent who gave me a great and informative tour of the exhibit.
True to art everywhere, this exhibit featured artists that live on the fringe of Korean society. There were large collections done by two openly gay artists. One of my favorite pieces was a giant floor mat sculpted from incense with English and Korean words spelling out famous gay bars. It burns for two months, and then is created again.
Another one of the artists prominently featured is a Korean woman in her mid-thirties married to a German man. She took several photographs of Korean/foreign relationships where none of the couples looked particularly happy. Although looking at the viability of cross-national relationships, she said some of the couples argued that it wasn’t necessarily about culture, but the nature of marriage and their own inner problems that were keeping them disconnected.
This artist also had pictures of older, nude, Korean women in their houses. The docent told me that originally the director of the museum wasn’t going to let the pieces be shown, not because the women were naked, but because they weren’t showing women as classically beautiful. When the artist argued that that was preciously the point, I guess he relented. An interesting side note, is that when I said to the docent, “Oh, I see, she’s trying to show regular woman,” she got a distasteful look on her face and said, “No, not regular, old.” The difference in cultural norms about women glaring through once again.
The main, permanent exhibit of the museum is a wild, spiralling installation of thousands of tiny tiles surrounding a column of TVs. It was entertaining, and, luckily, they allowed pictures.
The best part of the day was riding the skylift back to the subway station. I’m not convinced that net below would do much if one were to fall of out the flimsy lap bar across the chair though.
Ruby Ramblings 