FAQ on food

I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something.
-Mitch Hedberg

A brief list of answers to potentially common questions about Korean food:

1. Do Koreans eat kim chi with every meal?
Yep. And white rice. Even for breakfast. And when they're 35 they look 25. (Yes that's a possible Post hoc ergo propter hoc but it seems more plausible than, "God unfairly made Koreans decay 10 years slower than the rest of the world.")

2. Um... What's kim chi?
It's cabbage, ginger, garlic, peppers, green onions and fermented seafood (oysters or anchovies or shrimp). They mix it all up and then bury it in pots for a few months. When it comes out it's nutrient rich and calorie low.

3. Have you eaten octopus?
My school serves it for lunch at least once a week. And I've eaten whole squids, a squishy-still-moving-slug-ish thing (it looks like digestion), fresh shrimp (cooked in the most torturous way the locals could conceive), abalone, chestnuts, the best pears in the world, etc. I like the food here a lot. But I'll be honest: I'm pretty sick of octopus, if you want to know the truth.

3a. What's the most torturous way the locals could conceive?
They put a quarter inch of salt in the bottom of a pan, heat it up, and toss in live shrimp. When they put the lid on the shrimp bounce around like popcorn, trying to flee the searing heat. After two or three minutes, some shrimp are still jumping. The first (and only) time I saw it, I lost my appetite. Why they don't kill them instantly via beheading or boiling, I hope has more to do with efficiency and less with deep-rooted sadism.

4. Oooook... something happier perhaps? What's octopus taste like?
Octopus tastes unique. It's really rich, like Top Ramen condensed into 8 tentacles. And sometimes it's entirely blah. I think it depends on how it's cooked. Sometimes it chews like thick noodles. Other times it's like masticating surgical tubing.

5. Is there anything Koreans eat that you refuse to try?
One thing: dog. They eat dog here. I have yet to see it for sale or in a restaurant, but seeing as I don't even like meat, I'm not about to eat Otis.

Another teacher and I remarked on the strange scarcity of shorebirds, pigeons and ravens. I've never been to a city and not seen pigeons and black birds. Nor have I ever been within 50 miles of a body of salt water and not seen seagulls. I mean, there's more seagulls in Spokane, 300 miles from a sea, than there are in Tongyeong, which rests in the middle of a bay, spread across multiple harbors and surrounded by hundreds of islands.

And, in Tongyeong, Chicken & Beer shops abound.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Meanwhile, no "chicken" for me.

6. How is the beer?
Budweiser's better. Thankfully the exchange rate ensures a bottle of Stella at a bar only costs US$5.75. You'd think that'd mean I'd drink less.

7. What do Koreans drink then?
In lieu of beer, the national drink is Soju. It's basically sweet vodka with a tequila kick. I won't touch the stuff. My co-workers and principals do, frequently. It's considered a marketable skill to be able to drink your boss under the table so people here practice a lot. Not kidding.

8. What's your favorite food?
I like most of it. The ingredients are fresh, cheap and the fish and rice are ecologically friendly. A lot of foods have labels telling you how close to organic it is. Also they eat food that's in season for the most part. So we've got great fruits right now and certain types of fish. I'm guessing in the next season we'll be eating different types of fish. The fast majority of fish we eat is caught the same day and live up until a couple of minutes before we eat it. Restaurants have tanks of fish out in front so you can preview dinner. In the fish markets, little old ladies sitting on stools point at the live fish they have in shallow bowls, which then protest by splashing water everywhere.

But the soups win overall. They're spicy, hearty, and healthy. Sometimes they have tofu, or muscles or shrimp. Other time they have fish in them. Like whole fish, chopped into three pieces and plopped into your soup.

8. How spicy?
Let me give you an example: a couple weeks ago I for dinner I ate fire. Of course I don't mean crackling in your fireplace fire. Oh no. I mean burned at the stake in the inquisition fire. Midway through my meal the pain reached a sufficient level, so I doused my mouth with just about a litre of water, which I hope simultaneously protected my stomach lining from vaporizing. It was quite the exercise in suffering. Like a good Korean Buddhist I strove to accept my circumstances as inescapable, and by the end of my meal I'd achieved complete detachment, albeit through ambivalence towards survival and a blunt numbness in my mouth.

I'm not complaining though. I'm convinced the spicy food best explains why I haven't been sick in Korea. Since so many illnesses enter the body through the nose and since my sinuses are regularly drained by lunch or dinner, germs have little time to colonize my body.

9. Sooo... that's your favorite food?
Not actually. One food in particular stands out as remarkable though. It's called 실비 and pronounced Shill-bee. It's entirely antithetical to profitable restauranteering. Say you go out for fish in the United States. You want a bit of seafood too. So you buy some fish, some muscles, oysters, clams on the half shell, then move on to some squid, a bit of abalone, and then a couple of crabs. You decide you want some beer. So you order a few of those. The meal runs you a hundred bucks or so. The food, if you're lucky was caught within the past week, and only on ice for a couple of days total.

Ok, now shillbe. You do things in reverse. You buy five or six beers. At 5,000 won each they run you around $30. That's some expensive beer. But here comes the finger food. It starts with some raw squid, octopus, muscles, some steamed oysters, abalone, and other seafoods. There's kimchi of course, and some potato pancakes. There's plenty of other sides as well (bean sprouts, seaweed, etc). You drink and eat to your fill. Then the server returns. This time she deposits four fried fish, some cooked squid, some new shellfish, some seaslugg-ish thing, some rice, etc. You're full again, but oh, here she comes with more fish, more seafood, more sides. Ad infinitum. She came back with at least 4 courses, but I really can't remember. I was rolling around on my back, futilely flailing my hands.

Oh and this fish and these seafoods were harvested that morning. Thirty bucks for more seafood than you can eat and 5 large beers to share amongst your friends. Perfect.

10. Do you ever miss food from home?
Yes! Lauren and I agree that its the small things we miss most about home. And most of those small things are food.

I miss flavor. Korean food has three flavors: spicy, fishy and umami. When we eat spaghetti, Korean people sometimes express surprise at the intensity of flavors. When I eat the same spaghetti I think, "Well, it's not that spicy."

I miss the diversity of tastes and spices in food from home. I miss that on Monday I can eat Mediterranean or Teriyaki, on Tuesday French or Chinese, on Wednesday Ukranian or Italian, on Thursday Thai or Indian, on Friday Ethiopian or Mexican, on Saturday fish-and-chips or Sushi, on Sunday oatmeal and all the leftovers. Every day here I eat Korean food. There's diversity in Korean foods, but it's still bit monotonous, and you know how much I abhor monotony.

I miss my Mom's soups on the first crisp days of fall. I miss Rachel's fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. I miss my dad's barbecue and chocolate milk. I miss sub sandwiches. I miss the choice and the paradox that comes with it.

Appreciate what you have: if you're not living in Poland or small-town Korea, you have plenty of options at dinner time.

If you have more questions, contact me. I love the food here, so I'm happy to talk about it.

A Korean Opinion on Obama

This is long. Really long. My main point ends in the paragraph after the story of Sai. Feel free to stop there. :)

So Mr. Obama's the President-Elect.

I'm sure some of you are elated. And some of you are hiding your face in your hands, convinced you've witnessed the end of an age.

The reaction among the people I interact with in Korea is favorable to Mr. Obama. My fellow teachers like him, though one mentioned worries about Mr. Obama's negative stance towards Free Trade Agreements (in the end we both agreed Fair Trade is better for everyone).

My students love him. They don't really know much about issues, but they have an interesting insight: When I asked them why they prefer Mr. Obama to Mr. McCain, they universally replied, "Because he's kind."

Hm. Kindness. It is an attractive trait. Unkindness is exactly what dissuaded me from respecting Ms. Palin (and now that McCain's aides are talking, it turns out the unkindness is one among many disagreeable symptoms). Kindness seems a great platform to run on, and a great reason to elect a human as president. Mr. Obama did run the gentler campaign, although Mr. McCain and Lieberman both generally showed themselves to be gentlemen. Ms. Palin was the pitbull chewing on the childs arm, a strong contrast to Mr. Obama who showed himself respectful, even-tempered and, well, kind.

My students and co-teachers have wanted to know what I think. I've told them the same thing every time, and it's not a short answer.

The pundits' extreme approval or abhorrence of the President-Elect reminds me of an old story about hasty conclusions (and it turns out the story has it's own name in Korean, which I can't spell). There are many versions, but here's one:

---------------

An old man named Sai lived near the border of China. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

"Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"We'll see," Sai replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.
"How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.
"We'll see," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"We'll see," answered Sai.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated Sai on how well things had turned out.

"We'll see" said Sai.

----------------

Some of you are mourning Mr. Obama's election. Some of you are cheering. I say, wait -- we will see.

He's inherited the toughest set of issues since and perhaps even surpassing FDR's: two wars; a volatile economy; a country with no remaining diplomatic or international political capital; a nation divided into two camps which don't understand each other and won't, because they shun each other; an abused earth full of abused people -- often at the hands of United State's interests; the weight of an immediate 46% disapproval rating.

Mr. Obama can't fix everything. He's not a messiah or anything the conspiracy theorists have accused him of. He's a human who just got hired to the most stressful job available. And just like the rest of us humans, he needs needs people showing up at the game, needs rest and kindness and applause. He faces every emotional need the rest of us do, but he has to do it with 46% of the voting populace telling him they don't like him for various reasons, most of which have nothing to do with him as a person.

The guy's under a lot of pressure, and the problems seem to be growing, at the moment.

Which is where you and everyone you know come in.

This is our country (well, if you live here or can claim citizenship), and it's our responsibility to fix it.

Your opinion of Mr. Obama, or of any of his policies, is irrelevant, completely. Any crumbling of the United States during his administration will be your fault, not his. The president of the United States is not responsible for the health of the United States. The president is the chief diplomat and signatory. The legislature is responsible for the health of the nation. They represent you, the people. The president represents the states. That's why they're chosen through the electoral college, a group of electors chosen by the states. You choose the legislature, and they, not the president, speak for you. You and the States balance the power of the nation, both limited by the courts.

Mr. Obama has been placed in a role that can't legislate. He has executive orders, but most presidents avoid using them (except at the very beginning or end of their terms, to fortify their party's positions or to start with a clean slate). His administration will pass policy ideas to the house and senate, and sometimes even write the laws, but you, via your representatives, pass the laws.

Yes, you. You can influence your congresspeople to vote against policies you don't like, or to vote for policies you do like. If you live in a district controlled by the party you don't belong to, you still have a say in what gets passed.

Voting is not democracy. (Most dictatorships vote too.) Democracy is direct decision making by the people with no intermediary government. Of course, we have representatives, because we're not a democracy. We're a republic. A federation of states. But we hold to democratic ideals, and our congresspeople want to get reelected, so they do what we want them to. Or I should say, they do the will of those who talk the most and loudest.

Your responsibility for your country goes beyond November 4th. You also are in charge of what laws pass, what taxes are levied, what wars are fought. What happens in this country is up to you.

Beyond your responsibility to country, and to yourself, you are responsible to your fellow humans. We are all members of a social contract: wishing to avoid a lonely, exposed and miserable existence, we group with other people and each give up a little freedom so that we can all have a bit of security. Government is one means to that security. Another means to that security, perhaps the one most dependent on you, is altruism.

Our kind actions towards each other will benefit our country more than legislation, for two reasons: first, we're divided on the proper type of legislation, but likely agree on kindness. Second, legislation is general. It's vague imparticularity prevents it from precisely treating the needs of individuals. Your altruism, on the other hand, can directly address pertinent immediate and perpetual needs. Enough small changes can have huge, exponential effects.

Altruism is a more important democratic action than voting. By doing good you positively alter the course of our country and society. Perhaps you cannot specifically dictate whether or not Mexican immigrants will be offered citizenship, but that likely will be because other people influenced their legislators, or were altruistic enough to eliminate the problem in another manner (for example, ending Free Trade Agreements that devestate Mexican farmers, thus reducing the necesity of their emigration).

But you can make the United States more inhabitable by making it a safer place, a place where people trust each other, support each other and like each other, all by being kind to other people. By improving the environment we live in, we will improve our lives and our country.

What Mr. Obama can do is remind us citizens and sojourners who we are and what principles we agree to live by in our social contract. Principles in which I agree that another human may have liberty to non-violently act however they wish in exchange for my liberty to do the same. In which I agree no one is guilty until they're proved thus univocally. In which I agree we're in this together, and not in this seperately. We rise and fall as one; we are E pluribus unum.

We are the change we need, not Mr. Obama. He's just there to point the way and to tell other countries where we're going and how much they're going to like the way we remodeled and how they're welcome here, all of them, anyone, so long as they're willing to work for the common good.

Love to all of you, and peace, hopefully.