Backtracking - June

"June is bustin' out all over~ all over the meadow and the hill~!" Isn't it eerie how you never forget the lyrics to songs that you've learned as a kid? I can sing the whole repertoire from the 'Sound of Music', for example. (Although the opening lyrics are from the musical 'Carousel'.)
Nowadays with noraebangs ("song rooms") and karaoke you hardly need to memorize lyrics anymore. But I digress.

June was strange. May was strange. Especially in Korea, with the former president committing suicide - a truly baffling wtf? incident that shook everyone to the core - and all the unrest that followed; June just seemed to pick up where May left off, carrying the emotional turmoil and turning it into an entity of its own. Bustin' out all over, indeed.

June was really strange. The country was still trying to recover from that unexpected death, North Korea was acting all weird (although it's not that much of an oddity), it was the 59th memorial anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War and then you hear that the King of Pop has died.

It was like your sense of reality was being tested. Verification of mortality thrown suddenly in your face, your brain, your being; you truly had to stop and think. Rethink. Rethink again.
I couldn't afford to think too much, though. Not only was I feverishly studying (*cough* cramming *cough*) for a WSET certification and already had too much on my plate, I was also having people problems that couldn't be ignored.

June was brutal.

Life is never lopsided, though. It is us who interpret it as we see it and sometimes we fall into the trap of viewing it completely askew. I consider myself lucky that I have an entourage who know how to knock sense into me (and I mean hardcore wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee-and-stop-being-a-moody-beeyotch slapping) so I can avoid such dilemma.

Eh. Too long emo prelude, there. I'll stop.

So, good stuff in June.
Good friend Doma opened a cooking studio. A professionally trained chef (Japanese and French cuisine) and fellow oenophile, he and his girlfriend basically organize our wine group gatherings. His studio is a great place to hang out after the "official" gathering has dispersed. A handful of us usually wind up eating and drinking and talking all night, regret it the day after, and then do it all over again the next time.

Doma's blog : http://blog.naver.com/tabledoma
(Korean only. If you have enquiries about his cooking lessons contact me and I'll relay the query.)

I took photos one night. Yes, I know, astonishing. I really need to get used to this new camera.

Specialty: plain rice onigiri.

Potato salad as midnight snack. We really did eat at midnight.

We had a simplified carbonara pasta beforehand.

Along with tenderloin steak and garlic chips.

It was cooked a perfect medium rare.

Simple chicken salad, too.

Other happy June events: went to see European Jazz Trio with tickets I got from a radio show (thanks, RJ). It was great for a drizzling evening. Not too hard, not too soft.

Backtracking posts aren't that fun, to be quite honest. The usefulness is null. Not that I intend this blog to be a spring of information, but still. You know.