It was a blog about my life and adventures as an expat in Seoul, South Korea. I've been back in the USA for over ten years. However, I still get alerts. I'll respond to comments and deep-six spam comments as needed.
Ha! Over a year later, 2 Girls 1 Cup has come back to haunt me. This time, there is nothing gross and no gagging. There is only friendly banter in a FB thread. But that thread gave me this link. (thanks Jeff.)
It's a parody of a very popular video on the Internet right now. The video he and his buddy Sherrod Small are making fun of is incredibly gross. I'm NOT posting the link. If you really must see it, email me and I'll give you the direct link. The website everyone says go to is buggy to say the least.
However, I will post the challenge and me, being an idiot, doing the challenge just out of sheer morbid curiousity and guilt from laughing at all the other reaction videos I'd watched.
The challenge:
Me meeting and suffering through the challenge:
And, funny me, okay? ;-)
Just to be clear, this is not be reacting to John and Sherrod's parody. This is me reacting to the 2 girls 1 cup video. Two guys eating frozen yogurt from the same cup...strange, maybe, but that's the point of the parody. However, gag reflex inducing, not.
John and Sherrod, see you in February, and I'm going to kick your asses.
Update 1 (Nov. 10, 2007 @11:57am) Oh, update! Yes, I usually put updates first, but this one I think you have to see only after you're well versed in what this crazy 2 Girls 1 Cup thing is all about.
These two posted a response to John and Sherrod's parody. It's hilarious:
This is the second post in a row which has been inspired by The Marmot's Hole. What I'm discovering is there is a mad symbiotic relationship here in the blogosphere. You write something and somehow someone else sees it either by following a link or tripping over it in some way. They like it, or they hate it. They comment or leave a link to what they’ve created. They tell their friends how cool or crazy you are. You go and take a look and, likewise, you like it or hate it, and you link to it. You tell your friends how cool or crazy they are. It pretty much keeps evolving from there. That's a really interesting part of blogging I didn’t really know about until I started doing it.
Anyway, today’s lift from the guys over at The Marmot’s Hole is about Youtube’s most dedicated uploader: Didn’t know this about Youtube
What is interesting is the most dedicated uploader is one who wants to focus the eyes of the world on South Korea pop culture. I have to admit that’s damn cool because that's similar to my primary aim which is to tune more folks into the international issues going on here that impact the world. I'm just much more of a talker than a linker.
The most devoted uploader is Christy Leigh Stewart, a 21-year-old college student who lives near Modesto, Calif., and who has so far uploaded nearly 2,000 videos. Nearly all involve Korean pop music, a passion of Ms. Stewart. Indeed, she says the main reason she spends too much time with YouTube is to drive traffic to hwaiting.net, a Korean-oriented Web site she runs with her friend Megan Hansen.
Here is the link to Hwaiting.net which Ive also put in my Korea link list. Go check it out. It's cool.
P.S. Go to The Marmot’s Hole and read the post and the comments to learn what “hwaiting” means and why that’s such a damn good website domain. (The link is above).
Okay, I've been updating and my latest John Mayer post constantly just because new stuff and new gossip keeps coming up. The new gossip is, nightmare inducing, but nonetheless hilarious.
However, it's taken my focus off of South Korea which is unfortunate because Westerners, the bulk of my audience it seems, really need to learn more about the rest of the world. Since I'm here, I'll try to help you out with South Korea and northeast Asia. While I can't promise that I won't update that John Mayer post any further, I will share a bit of information on a Korean musician who is making waves onYoutube.com.
I found this post on The Marmot's Hole: The Real Korean Wave Hits the Internet. For you who don't know what the "Korean Wave" or, 한류, hallyu. 한류 is a cultural phenomena that has swept through Asia. Due to the popularity of certain Korean movies and television shows there has been a huge increase in the interest in Korean pop culture in other Asian countries. That, of course, is good for Korea in many ways as it drives people to purchase Korean made merchandise, makes people want to visit the country and learn the language.
I've experienced the impact of 한류 first hand when I took a Korean language course at my university which was mostly made up of Japanese students. We lunched together frequently and on the last day they all HAD to go to a restaurant nearby that was featured in a Korean movie called 엽기적인 그녀(warning, the link has a spoiler) which although it literally means "My Bizarre Girl" I guess they figured "My Sassy Girl" would generate more interest in the English-speaking market.
I saw the movie and thought it was okay, but the Japanese and others in Asia loved it. That's probably because the cultures are similar in many ways. While I thought the female lead character was annoying, needed counseling and a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic, she was endearing to Korean and Asian audiences who aren't used to feisty female characters. Anyway, that's just to point out that Korean artists are making significant inroads to other cultures.
Which leads me to the linked video. It seems that Youtube has spawned a group of neoclassical musicians who upload their performances for the purpose of learning through feedback. There is one that was uploaded eight months ago which features a guitar virtuoso performing the complex Pachabel Canon. This quote from Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last published in the New York Times sums it up fairly well.
...the video drew hordes of seekers with diverse interests and attitudes. Guitar sites, MySpace pages and a Polish video site called Smog linked to it, and viewers thundered to YouTube to watch it. If individual viewings were shipped records, “guitar” would have gone gold almost instantly. Now, with nearly 7.35 million views — and a spot in the site’s 10 most-viewed videos of all time — funtwo’s performance would be platinum many times over. From the perch it’s occupied for months on YouTube's "most discussed" list, it generates a seemingly endless stream of praise (riveting, sick, better than Hendrix), exegesis, criticism, footnotes, skepticism, anger and awe.
The most basic comment is a question: Who is this guy?
Well, here he is: Mr. Jeong-hyun Lim What I thought was interesting about the New York Times article was this passage.
That educational imperative is a big part of the“Canon Rock” phenomenon. When guitarists upload their renditions, they often ask that viewers be blunt: What are they doing wrong? How can they improve? When I asked Mr. Lim the reason he didn't show his face on his video, he wrote, “Main purpose of my recording is to hear the other’s suggestions about my playing.” He added, “I think play is more significant than appearance. Therefore I want the others to focus on my fingering and sound. Furthermore I know I'm not that handsome.”
Online guitar performances seem to carry a modesty clause, in the same way that hip-hop comes with a boast. Many of the guitarists, like Mr. Chang and Mr. Lim, exhibit a kind of anti-showmanship that seems distinctly Asian. They often praise other musicians, denigrate their own skills and talk about how much more they have to practice. Sometimes an element of flat-out abjection even enters into this act, as though the chief reason to play guitar is to be excoriated by others. As Mr. Lim said, “I am always thinking that I'm not that good player and must improve more than now.”
What interests me about it is the contrast in attitude. I recently participated in a thread on a forum where someone asked about lessons African immigrants could teach African-Americans. I jumped into the thread with the best of intentions saying that was a great idea. I then went on to suggest that we could also stand to learn from other cultures, especially Korean immigrants as the histories are similar. I also added that maybe we ought to acknowledge that African-Americans could stand to maybe step back, be humble and learn from others.
Well, you could have sworn I stepped out and called someone a bitch. I got a reply saying that Koreans aren't humble, they believe they're this or that. I actually thought that was interesting as I've lived here for over half a decade, so unless the person replying has similar experiences I highly doubt that she knows the cultural characteristics of Koreans. I don't claim to have a handle on all the intricacies of Korean culture but I do know that boasting and arrogance isn't seen much here except in select situations. It was bullheaded bitterness on a level I just couldn't handle.
With that said, Mr. Lim awesome job, and I hope that you learned a lot from posting your performance on the web.
I'm an L.A. native who lived in the Land of the Morning Calm, South Korea, for a bit too long. I had a great time while I was there. I have a B.A. and law degree, but I earned a master's in international studies at Ewha Womans University. It was then I discovered that I love writing, thanks to this blog, and the things that grew out of writing it. For those who need to know where Korea is located. Korea is a peninsula that is split into two countries (North Korea and South Korea). It's located in NE Asia between Japan and Taiwan. It's below the eastern coast of China and Russia.
I moved back from NYC in 2011. It was exciting but definitely challenging. I "made" it in NYC and well, as the song says.
I'm back in the SF Bay area now. I have led the charge organizing SFTech4Good Meetup since 2011 and working in the tech industry specializing in community management and customer advocacy.
Leave a comment to contact me. Remember you have to include your email for a reply. (I screen my comments, so I won't publish it to the world, don't worry.)
Spotlight: Billy Joel's Charity Work
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[image: Billy Joel]
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