A.R.T.

I was walking back to Sinchon yesterday when I came across a group of people huddled in a circle around two guys tinkering with spray paint. (the fun part about Sinchon is that you'll never know what delightful surprises to expect every weekend) There were these amazing artworks displayed around them and by the looks of it (they had a table-plastic-shield contraption), they were about to perform and recreate those artworks on the spot! I wanted to stay and watch the performance so badly but unfortunately, I was already running late for a dinner appointment so I had to give it a miss. But not before taking a few snaps of the fantastic artworks and more importantly, their introduction board.

I'm glad I did.

These are the people behind the street performance and if I've piqued your interest enough, you can watch their performance here (start from 3:30 till 8:30). You won't regret it.

There are so many crazily talented people out there in the world who are just doing their own thing (and excelling at it) - that it makes me wonder.. Will I ever be able to join the ranks of these inspiring artists? To do what I love and to do it remarkably as well?

On a side-note, some artists who have caught my attention this week:
Chalk Art - this is new to  me but I'm not sure how legit it is, considering the source of it, but regardless of its medium, still mind-blowing!
Shadow Art - Takes a great deal of planning and creative imagination and although I've always been fascinated by the end products, this art form has never really appealed to me.

I've been procrastinating like crazy since this morning - I totally don't feel like doing any work and the current reading is so ridiculously boring (I think). But let's see how it goes. I'll go get a snack from the kitchen and decide what to do after that. Gahhhh. Boring. Lonely. Don't wanna do work. Need a longer weekend. Gimme a break. More breaks. Long weekend again please.#ranting #monologue HAHA

Do I?

I miss you.

Jeonju Day Trip (20.04.2014)

I don't have the energy to blog about the Jeonju day trip (much less the Daegu/Gyeongju one) right now so.. make do with pictures please!

Company for the day (:

 3 hours bus ride.. much of which was spent in dreamland (I woke at 5.30 am)

Jeonju Hanok Village - what the locals call the only tourist attraction in Jeonju (psst, it was quite boring and the entire place felt so commercialized)

**DA FAMOUS JEONJU BIBIMBAP**

Beansprout Rice in Soup (hangover soup)

  Popular Black Sesame Patbingsu (trainee pastor's treat!)

 Jeonju Gyeonggijeon

(Built to preserve the portrait of King Taejo)

Our marvelous guides for the day: Trainee pastor (extreme left) and friend (extreme right)

He bought the admission tickets (to the place above) for us and when I tried to pass him the money, his reply astounded me. He gently declined my money and remarked that it was his treat - it was an act that in his words, mirrored "the depth of (God's) love". The amazing thing is that before this trip, he didn't even know any of us and yet, he could find in himself, the capacity and ability to welcome us with all his heart and treat us like we've known each other for years. He's from the same church (but different branch in Korea) as the girl in blue and having heard from fellow church members that she was visiting Jeonju and was interested in Easter church service, he just drove down to the Hanok village to meet us and bring us around (even if there was no service that day). It's surprising frankly, to see how friendly and genuine these people are, even to strangers. Religion certainly unites (people's hearts) but to extend this warmness unreservedly to even her friends - that takes a great deal of character. Though the time spent together was short, they've earned my admiration and.. I guess it's through encounters like these which make us want to become better people ourselves.. To be willing to give without expecting anything in return, to share one's joy with others and perhaps, colour the world with a few more happy smiles.

 Guard on the left was dozing off while (not) standing at attention..

 Fan museum that I didn't get to visit because no one seemed interested >< 

Jeonju's known for its production of traditional paper (eg. used in fans).

 On our way to Omokdae, we came across this mural painting residential area! Prettayyyyy!

 The picture on the right used to be one of our "guide's" grandfather's house

Trainee Pastor kindly invited us for tea at his church - what a lovely coincidence to get the Winnie Pooh mug ^^

Us with the lovely Church girls (:

 Trainee pastor and his fellow church members brought us to their Jeonju Metropolitan Museum of Art, despite their busy schedules.. I felt incredibly amazed and yet, humbled by their unassuming friendliness and warm hospitality.

 Visit to Makgeolli village where I had my first sip of Makgeolli!

Back to Seoul - a long, tiring 3.5 hours ride back. (snoozes)

Selfies! XD

 Dressed up for once (难得穿裙子) so selfies were a must! :D

I think this was the first time in 2 months that I... wore a dress. Ahahahahahha

Me and my Do Manager <3

Breakfast Woes

I mentioned in a previous post that the meal I enjoy most everyday is breakfast. I still do - breakfast remains the most comforting time of the day to me - but this week, I find myself making an effort to wake up early just for breakfast and that reduces the joy factor significantly. I could have slept in longer this morning but I rolled myself off the bed. Why..? Just so that the loaf of bread I bought the day before will not go to waste. A single loaf consists of 10 slices of bread but it expires within 3 days. Apart from the fact that it's not really possible to eat 3.3 slices of bread for 3 consecutive days (plus I don't always have the time to sit down and make 3 Nutella /peanut butter sandwiches), if I happen to even skip breakfast for a day, that would immediately result in wastage of 3 slices of bread. So no, I can't waste food like this. T^T Why is breakfast turning into a chore whenever I buy a loaf of bread... Orz

Tomorrow, I'll have to wake up early (say, 9am?) to do my laundry (pesky chore gah) and have an early breakfast.. because in order to not waste my ingredients, I have to cook lunch. In other words, I need to have both breakfast and lunch. Since lunch time should be before 3pm and it takes about 45 minutes for preparation and cooking, I'll have to start by 1pm. And in order for my tummy to be ready for lunch, breakfast cannot end any later than 10.30 am. So that leaves me with a really early breakfast - early because Friday is my free day. If not, it would be awful indeed if I had to stuff myself with food just so to reduce wastage. Then again, it's tedious (mentally) to have an early breakfast because my roomie usually sleeps till late, hence I have to be so very careful and conscious of the plastic packaging's loud rustling noises. Let me tell you from weeks of personal experience - having to minimize the sounds and make breakfast in silence (whilst checking every few minutes on the sleeping roomie - every toss and turn unsettles me) is a h.o.r.r.i.b.l.e thing. The same applies to using the toilet in the morning, brushing my teeth (interesting observation: the sound of the running tap is 100,000,000 times more effective than her 10 alarms - did I mention, I HATE her alarms), washing my hands, taking a shower and even eating my breakfast (am I chewing too loudly? or just nice?) - if not, I'm practically tip-toeing around the tiny room and trying not to make any noise. To do this first thing in the morning when one wakes up? On an almost daily basis? 살려 주세요.

Meanwhile, can anyone come and help eat my bread and broccoli (and perhaps eat with me)? *puppy dog eyes*

Speaking of cooking ingredients, I find it quite amusing how I always start off worrying, "how in the world am I going to finish like, 15 florets of broccoli?" only to end up with a reasonably-sized portion of food. This is because by some stroke of luck or owing to the work of some external force (let-your-food-soar force?), some of my ingredients always end up flying (off the table, onto the floor), leaving me with just the right amount of food. For instance, once I was thinking to myself, "how am I going to finish this part of the carrot by today?" and wheeee, 1/4 of the carrot conveniently rocketed off the chopping board whilst I was cutting it up. Another time, I was wondering about how to finish the capsicum when my hand slipped and poing, quite a few slices decided to go bungee jumping (down the sink). It happens every now and then - my groceries escaping, much to my delight - it's almost as if they knew that too much of them would overwhelm me. :P

Anyway, gotta go back to my work.

On an unrelated note, I've been buying so many pens and markers recently D: hahaha I now have 2 black pens, 4 coloured markers and 4 highlighters (not including the stationery I brought from Singapore)! They're wonderful for drawing purposes - I did some drawing practice today (see below) - and boy, I think I'm gonna buy the entire set of 10 colours before I go back to Singapore heh :D Fun FUn FUN!

Check out the funny looking monk in the second picture (top left) ahahha XD

I need to practice more! Skills got a bit rusty ever since uni started..

Spring

Part I.
A generous brush of green,
A pearl river running between.


Part II.
The leaves are back,
The flowers no longer shy,
The earth brims with life.

The hill transforms,
The trees orchestrating,
It's a colourful canvas -
Of noise, of colours, of smells,

The wind spreads the rainbow across the land,
The rain, it nourishes and cleanses,
The sun smiles brightly upon all,
Its warmth spreading throughout them.
Those that chirp,
          that buzz,
          that hop,
          that crawl,
          that fly,
          that walk,
They sense the awakening in the air,
Now, it's time for them to be out.
Out they are, in comes the season,
Spring is finally here.





On a side note, sigh. A few weeks back, I researched on must-visit places, came up with a long list of things and places to do/eat/visit in Korea and wrote it all down on a piece of paper (complete with directions and all).. but I think it's gone now. I can't find it anywhere in my bag or table. There goes my research and list of places to visit. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.. How upsetting.

The One and Only Mid-term Exam

So I had a very peculiar mid-term exam today that lasted 6 hours (10am to 4pm). I initially thought that I should treat it as a 3-hour exam (like those back in SMU) and leave by 1pm to get lunch but 1pm came and went. 2pm crawled by without pausing at all and before we knew it, it was already 3pm. As I've told some of my friends, I don't even sit at my desk/in front of my laptop for more than 4 hours at a time so today's experience was really.. hardcore. I didn't even leave for a toilet break hahaha lest I lose the comfortable sitting/typing position I was in (ah, inertia). The exam was clearly designed to be a 5/6-hour paper - the instructions page actually revealed that it was meant to be a take-home exam report - and although the professor had mentioned that we could leave for breaks at any time, hardly anyone left. I finished the paper around 3.10pm, spent the next half an hour reducing the word count and zoomed out of class (for high tea) by 3.40pm. You would imagine that most of the students would be done by then but surprisingly, when I left at 3.40pm, more than two-thirds of the class was still typing away at their laptops. There was this one caucasian guy who finished his paper around 2-ish pm though - thumbs up to him! (or is this just badass behavior haha)

This exam was also very intriguing for many other reasons, namely: we were expected to type our exam report on Microsoft Word (and then submitt it through an online portal), we could use the internet, we could access our notes in soft-copy, we could basically do anything we wanted to on our computers, the professor never showed up (teaching assistant was there instead), and we could leave for unlimited toilet/lunch/destress/pull-hair-out-in-frustration breaks. The only things we couldn't do were talk in the classroom or use our phones (collected by the teaching assistant before the start of the exam). I don't think the phones were confiscated to prevent communication between/among students/outsiders though since we could have done that through email or the desktop mobile apps - my guess is that the professor didn't want the exam questions to be leaked and hence, decided to confiscate the phones (I arrived at this conclusion because I really wanted to take a photo of the exam questions midway through the exam.. but couldn't do so). The no-speaking-in-class rule was pretty absurd though - there's no way to stop students from talking outside of the classroom during breaks so I don't get the logic behind restricting conversations in class. One could prolly leave for a 1-hour break and go discuss all 3 exam questions with one's exam kakis in detail - there's absolutely nuffing the teaching assistant can do. The best part today was the professor who was MIA throughout the 6 hours - I spotted a typo in the exam paper 5 minutes into the exam and asked the TA about it. The TA said he would message the professor but he never got back to me - cheat my feelings -.-! Around 2.30pm, more people started to alert the TA about the typo and it was only then, did the TA reveal that.. bravo! he couldn't get in touch with the professor to inquire about it. He then proceeded to read the sentence in question and asked us hesitantly, "do you think this is a typo?" I was just like... (=__________=)" You ask us, we ask who?!

If you're wondering whether the law exams here are difficult, I would answer in the affirmative. The questions were definitely not easy (why do you think we needed 6 hours to tackle them haha) and if one didn't prepare for it by studying the course materials, I think it would be quite difficult to even churn out a decent response. In fact, even though I did revise, I had problems answering one of the questions. D: I totally wasn't expecting this on exchange (why so exhausting?!) but pheww, very fortunately, I only had this one mid-term exam. AND IT'S OVER! GOOD RIDDANCE!

After the draining exam, I had to go rest my brain and feed my stomach so I ended up in Macdonalds for lunch/high-tea/early-dinner. I had their signature Bulgogi burger with a small pack of fries and mineral water (4000W in total; more worth it than a set) and as usual, it was yummy! My only grouse is that they don't serve chilli sauce at their fast-food outlets here.. much less stuff like curry or bbq sauce haha I haven't visited most of the fast-food restaurants here yet - just 2 visits to Macdonalds and I got a Bulgogi burger on both visits - but I think I should (despite the unhealthiness) because we won't get to try all these unique flavours back home. Perhaps one visit to a fast-food outlet every fortnight?

Then I trekked back to my dormitory, zoned out in the lobby for 20 minutes, rested (more like paced around my room listlessly and washed my face) in my room for 20 minutes before my doorbell rung. Time to go out (read: drag weary body, mind and soul) out again. It was my idea to go watch the Lantern festival today (came up with the idea like three days ago so I didn't expect this level of mental exhaustion) but it was pretty enjoyable overall to hang out with friends. I didn't get to watch the entire parade in the end because my friends were Christian and lost interest soon after.. but oh well, at least I got to watch at least 40 minutes of it! We lounged at Caffe Benne after dinner - I had a sweet potato latte (meh, once is enough) - and had a leisurely stroll back to dormitory.

Lotus Lantern Festival (연등회 연등축제)

The Lotus Lantern Festival is held every year on April 8th (lunar calendar) in honor of Buddha's Birth. The festival is preceded by hanging of lotus-shaped lanterns across Seoul for several weeks, and officially kicks off with lighting of the Jangeumdang, a large lantern that symbolizes Buddhism and Buddha's Birthday, at the Seoul Plaza. The celebration continues with a wide array of Buddhist programs and activities, before ending with an impressive lantern parade in the heart of Seoul.

                                                                                 

 

Anyway, I updated my Culinary Adventures (under "March" in Archives) post! Go check it out if you're interested in fooooood! :D