Eat and Drink at Food Week Seoul

I know, I know. WHERE ARE THE TOKYO POSTS? They're coming, they're coming, probably next week when I have the bulk of my current editing gig done.

In the meantime, the Korea International Food & Food Tech Expo aka FoodWeek has started today at the COEX.

A lot of food and drink related companies have set up booths, which also means a lot of samples to be eaten and drunk (drank? drunken? whoa, I'm suddenly confused) so it's basically a foodie heaven. The Kitchen, Hotel & Restaurant, Food Packaging, Rice, Premium Agrostock fairs are showing at the same venue with other various events going on so it's definitely worth a visit.

I'm going this weekend, mostly to check out the Makgeolri Expo. (Also in the same venue.)

Makgeolri is a traditional alcoholic beverage made from rice (mistakenly translated as 'Korean rice wine'; there's nothing wine-y about it). Less famous than the potent soju, it is gaining a surge of popularity as the quality has been steadily rising the past few years. It has a milky and cloudy appearance and may resemble drinkable yoghurt to the untrained eye. It has a slightly sweet tinge to it and goes well with most Korean dishes. Soju might be described as Korean vodka, makgeolri is, well, there's nothing quite like it.

Like kimchi, there are many different versions and types according to region and many villages are starting to market their products to a larger audience. There are also the big brands from the larger companies that are being exported overseas. There is also confusion regarding the romanization of the name; it's being spelled differently a lot. (It's pronounced mahk-gull-lee.)

Will post about it after I manage to update a month and a half worth of belated posts. Hopefully before this month is over.

Food Week 2009 @ COEX from Nov 19 (Thurs) t0 Nov 22 (Sun)

(site in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese)

http://www.foodweek.co.kr/

A Night Bus Ride

Night Bus Ride in Seoul from suzyinseoul on Vimeo.

To break away from my "I'm up to my neck in the busy-as-heck swamp" mode, I've uploaded a video clip of a bus ride I took last month from the Seoul Arts Center to about Gangnam Station. It's from one of those mini maeul buses (village bus = neighborhood bus) that goes through mainly residential areas peppered with a bit of commercial zones.

It's a pretty long vid; it's in real time. Don't know why the camera (took the vid with my point-and-shoot) picked up so much static. Anyhow, check out how many coffee shops are passed in that short period of time, and also check out the cool light saber-esque streetlights that district has. It ends a bit abruptly as I had to hurry to not miss my stop.

Blame it on the Moon

...that kept on changing. Or something like that. Really. No, really. Really really really. (No?)

Still haven't edited photos yet, not those of Tokyo nor of those I took before heading off to Tokyo. (Moon photo was a quick snapshot that didn't need any editing at all.)

Why does everything happen all at once? Not that everything is bad (thank the mighty), just very very time consuming and very very exhausting.
Today my electric teapot decided to short-circuit on me at 10:30 pm and I was enveloped in complete darkness with all my appliances dead. Luckily there's always someone at the apartment management office so the maintenance ajeossi came over to help and promptly solved the problem while giving me a lecture about fire hazards. (My teapot had boiled over and the electric plug got all wet.)
That's just the tip of the iceberg called 'a whole lotta insignificant but impossible to ignore odd little incidents that keep on happening incessantly'.

So. Not only did I plan to have properly updated this blog by now, I had also planned to earnestly restart taking doll photos and also participate in NanoWrimo this month but whaddya know, au contraire, I had to go on hiatus on some of my online activities. (I'm barely holding on to this one.)

My life is annoying. It's never a steady flow. It's either a tsunami rushing and crashing in or a pool of water, calm and still.
See why I'm totally blaming it on the Moon? The perpetrator of my life's extreme ebbs and flows. I need to blame something.


P.S. Will stop complaining about not having enough time when I finally get some. Promise.