Korean food

The very first mouthful was enough to change my personal food landscape forever. The savoury-ness from the chickeny, spicy broth was both intense and soothing. The chilli rapidly creeps up on your unsuspecting tongue but it is the perfect accompaniment to a glass of cold beer and a dish of white rice. The blast of heat quickly tapers into a low, background hum of residual warmth that lingers in the background. The clean, steamed white rice, dotted with several other grains cools the mouth further before the process is repeated.

Every third or fourth mouthful of the appropriately named ‘tang’ is replaced with mouthwatering and meltingly delicious pieces of chicken, cooked and served on the bone (is there any other way?). The chicken pieces are cooked in the surprisingly simple but magical combination of water and ‘gochu jang’, or chilli paste, until they fall apart at the merest touch of a chopstick and therefore provide no resistance to my formidable and well practised jaws. Sometimes you get a large chunk of breast with a sliver of bone or cartilage and a small coat of skin and sometimes you get a piece of the bottom of the carcass with all the hidden treasures such pieces have, the oysters being my absolute favourite part of any chicken. They are all there, the thighs, legs and neck. If you are lucky you will have a dining companion that isn’t fussy what part they have, or better still a companion that actually desires the breast and breast alone. This leaves the greedy to mop up the rest of the chicken, to suck, nibble and prise all the tender little morsels from their boney prisons.

This first, life changing experience has been repeated many, many times since and has, every time, elevated me into a kind of Korean, culinary Nirvana, a trance like state of blissfulness that I have not found through any other food.

After living in Korea and indulging in many things that the culture had to offer, not least of all the food, with its inventive use of usually snubbed vegetables like the radish and the cabbage, I was ready to leave and travel elsewhere not knowing if I would ever return.

All throughout my time in Korea, in spite of the delicacies at my disposal, I would often find myself slipping into day dreams about food from home. The home cooked food of my youth, roasted joints of meat, fresh from the oven, sizzling, as I sliced off a piece of the crispiest and at the same time moistest meat, all the while avoiding my mother’s hand as it tried, futilely, to stop me. The corned beef hash, the stews made with the carcass of the previous days roast dinner, the cheese and potato pie with pickled beetroot and my mothers own take on Spaghetti Bolognese and curry.

I travelled around Japan and China after twelve months in Korea and ended up taking the trans-Mongolian train from Beijing to Moscow, which is a long and, at times, arduous journey. Most people stop off several times along the way in places like Ulaanbaatar, Ulan-Ude and various other places with funny names. We had been away from home for around fifteen months and this was the final leg of the longest adventure of my life and both my girlfriend and I were looking forward to going home and so we did the five and a half days straight through, from Beijing to Moscow. This mammoth journey provided us with a challenge. We had to entertain ourselves, in very close quarters, and not fall out before we triumphantly arrived home. We had bought a chess set but as Christina had never really played before the first game lasted all of five minutes and the second game never happened at all. Card games were soon exhausted too which left reading, but as the only pastime left we were weary of using up all our reading material and being left to have to, gulp, talk for the remaining few days.

Our conversations have always centered on food yet in such an environment and with twelve months of home cooked eating to catch up on we earnestly started compiling a list of what we would devour, like ravenous wolves, the second we got home. It started innocently enough at first, each of us naming something delicious and the other licking their lips and agreeing with exaggerated head bobbing but it soon turned into a game where we would try to trump each other with an even more delicious, or forgotten delicacy.

As the train got closer and closer to the west and further away from the east everything became increasingly comfortable. The formerly indecipherable characters of the Japanese and Chinese languages made way for the almost comforting Cyrillic alphabet, so much so that when we finally stepped off the train at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky rail terminal and saw ‘Москва́' on the station front I felt practically at home.

The list of food conjured by our starved minds was extensive and consisted of all kinds of British fare, both traditional and pseudo-British. The most missed by us was probably pies and pasties. I grant that they aren’t the healthiest of snacks and I rarely eat them at home but there were times when a pasty would have been perfect, corned beef, a Cornish pasty or even one of the newer varieties like chicken tikka would all have gone down very well. As mentioned, the roast dinner (chicken, lamb, beef or pork) with roasted potatoes, vegetables and gravy, was sorely missed as were newer additions to the staple British diet, the curry and the surprisingly missed Kebab. Homely soups and stews were there too in all their forms as well as simple baked potatoes, various cold meats, crumpets with butter, hummus and pitta, real British chips and of course cheese.

We eventually arrived home after a short stay in Moscow and a day and a night in Stuttgart, where we sampled fantastic (or should that be fantastisch?)German sausages and beer.

After the usual round of going to see friends and family I sat and contemplated what I had just experienced, the things I had seen, the people I had met and the food I had eaten. As happy as I was to be home and to have at my disposal a supermarket that had almost everything that was on my mental list to eat there was something missing. Now, all the things I had dreamed of eating were at my fingertips but I didn’t really want them, not in any serious way. What I did want was the one thing I couldn’t have, the one thing I thought I wanted to escape. Like a victim of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted, once again to stimulate my tastes buds with the spicy, the sour and the salty tones of unpretentious, home cooked Korean food.

Korean food is notorious for its liberal use of chilli, indeed the vast majority of Korean food is swamped in chilli paste. But don’t let that put you off, the use of chilli may be generous but it is sensibly used in conjunction with other flavours and produces mouth watering and thoroughly palatable food. I have my favourites from the mouthwatering array of dishes available and I have also been brave and tried many things that may have made less enthusiastic eaters wince, but in all my culinary experiments I have come across one thing that I found thoroughly unpalatable and downright disgusting and, coincidentally, it doesn’t have any chilli.

The abhorrent bondeggi, the larvae of the silkworm, is stewed for what smells like an age and then dished up to locals and unsuspecting foreigners alike. At its very best it smells and tastes rancid, nauseating and utterly unwholesome. The single one I put into my mouth burst upon impact with my teeth, even though I tentatively bit into it, and spewed its bitter tasting liquid into my mouth. The liquid coats your mouth for what seems like days and no amount of soju, beer or paint thinner will move it. The musty, rancid old insect carcass would benefit from a healthy dose of chilli paste, then, and only then would I even consider breaking my one hundred meter exclusion zone.

Korean food is also incredibly healthy (even the bondeggi I gather) but as I find it all so irresistible weight gain is a real possibility as most dishes come with rice. Lots of dishes in Korean cuisine are served in a semi-raw state and so retain a lot of their natural benefits and seeing as every dish comes with some kind of pickled vegetable side dish, every meal has its health benefits.

I lived in Jeonju, which is a centre of Korean food excellence and home to the nationally (and soon to be UK wide if I get my way) famed ‘Bibimbap’. Jeonju bibimbap, as it is known around the country, as well as in Japan and parts of America, is one of the healthiest dishes in Korean cuisine. The genius of this dish is in its simplicity. It consists of a bowl of cooked rice topped with up to thirty ingredients including nuts, seeds, seaweed, various pastes, meat, some salad leaves, and chilli paste, topped off with a raw egg. The ingredients are hurriedly mixed together until uniformity in colour and texture has been achieved. It is then eaten as quickly as you can move spoon to mouth (or is that just me?). Personally I prefer the ‘dolsot’ version, this comes in a heated stone bowl and so scorches the bottom layer of rice and sticks it to the bowl, which is to be scraped off and eaten with relish.

Korea is perhaps most famously known around the world for its barbeque, although the word rarely features in Korea. The restaurants have a network of pipes, suspended from the ceiling, that weave around the room and drop down to hover above a table looking like an alien from a poorly funded fifties Hollywood ‘B’ movie. This network of extractor fans are essential to the wellbeing of the patrons as the smoke from the inbuilt BBQ pits can threaten to get out of control. Pots of hot coals are placed in the well in the centre of the table, a grill placed over them and meat grilled to your liking. You are in complete control (unless the owner takes it upon him or herself to help the useless foreigner) to grill away.

Kalbi and samgyeopsal are the two most famous BBQ’d meats but moaksal (pig neck) is my personal favourite which has the perfect fat to meat ratio and tastes fantastic. The pieces of meat are cut up on the grill with a pair of scissors into bite size pieces, dipped in one of several sauces and then wrapped in a lettuce leaf. In these restaurants, sometimes known as ‘gogi jips’ or meat houses, marinated chicken feet are served as well as ‘dak dong jip’, which translates as ‘chicken poo house’, but for the weaker stomached among you it can be called marinated chicken gizzard. All these barbequed meats, as well as most things in Korea come with some kind of chilli accompaniment, whether it is as a pure paste or as a chilli soaked vegetable.

Korea is equally famous for its liberal use of chilli as it is infamous for its use of a certain, unmentionable meat. If you aren’t too fond of having a thin layer of skin scorched from the roof of your mouth and tongue, there some dishes that don’t utilise the heat infusing properties of this capsicum. Contrary to what I said earlier, not every dish in Korea has chilli as a major component but the ratio of dishes with chilli to dishes without fall heavily in favour of the former. Samgyetang (a soup made with a whole, stuffed, small chicken) and poshintang (the infamous dog soup), both come without chilli but are also both seasonal and so not at their best all year round.

Far and away the most popular and famous food, both in Korea and out of it, is Kimchi. The dish of spicy picked vegetables (most commonly Chinese cabbage) is now so famous that it recently made its maiden voyage into outer space with Korea’s first astronaut, Yi So Hyun. It is used widely as a major ingredient in some of Korea’s most popular dishes including various soups (tangs/guks) and stews (jjigaes) as well as being the driving force in the delicious Kimchi chon (a pancake often dubbed ‘Korean pizza’) and the first side dish served with every meal.

The health benefits of Korean food, particularly Kimchi (which is said to have cancer prevention properties), are often quoted by Koreans, as much out of national pride as any irrefutable evidence that they do indeed prevent any illnesses. There is no doubt in my mind that Korean food is good for the body, the semi raw vegetables served as banchan (반 찬) with every meal convinced me of that and I know it is undoubtedly good for the soul. The endorphins released into my bloodstream the second the first spicy, tangy, sweet or sour mouthful is delivered will, under oath, testify to that.

My personal favourite food is, I suppose a controversial one in many ways but it is my standout food from Korea and it is the reason I sat in my bedroom, after being away from home for fifteen months, not longing for bacon sandwiches or crumpets with salty, melting butter. It is the indisputable (for me at least) king of Korean food, the hotter than hot, the tastiest of them all, all hail and bow down to the magnificence that is dak dori tang. 

As you can probably tell I like this dish. A lot. It’s spicy and savoury taste is, for me at least, unrivalled anywhere in the world yet its authenticity, and therefore its status as a Korean food, is sometimes challenged by Koreans. The name may suggest to you the origin of the dispute and that is that ‘dori’ is a Japanese word, or more accurately a koreanisation of ‘tori’, the Japanese word for chicken (‘tang’ is really the Chinese word meaning soup as Koreans tend to use ‘guk’ but seeing as Koreans don’t really look to favourably on Japan the ‘dori’ part seems to the main point of contention). It should, I suppose be labeled a fusion food because of its nomenclature but that would put it in the same league as sweet potato pizza and tofu doughnuts (which are surprisingly nice!) and I’m just not prepared to do that.

The dish, in English, would really translate as chicken chicken soup and does exactly what you might expect from a Korean chicken soup. Chicken, potatoes and chilli paste, all cooked together with water until the magic happens, and boy does it happen. The juices run from the chicken pieces (and the bones and skin) and mix with the water and chilli paste to form the most delicious dish imaginable, the sweet and spicy nectar can be drunk by the spoonful or mixed with rice to make a delicious, spicy and savoury kind of rice pudding. If a dish was ever to be said to be greater than the sum of its parts then this is undoubtedly it. The bowl of bubbling soup arrives at the table (it is sometimes put onto a small gas burner at your table) and is sometimes topped with a few large slices of raw onion. The hit of pure and simple satisfaction that I get from the first mouthful of steaming, spicy, maroon broth is a sensation that I have not experienced with any other food (in fact there aren’t many other things in my life that give me this kind of pleasure). Digging around the bowl you unearth big chunks of potato that have been nestled amongst the chopped up pieces of chicken and are soaked in the cooking liquid and are quite simply irresistible. I imagine Nigel Slater would like it, earthy and simple home cooked food that is as cheap as it is delicious.

The debate will rage over the dish’s status as authentic Korean food or not, but even the most ardent nationalists cannot resist its spicy charms. 

Korean food is often overlooked in the western world by the more fashionable Japanese or the better established Chinese cuisines; much like the country itself but such a secret cannot be kept hidden forever. I will endeavour to speak up in defence of this small peninsula’s mouth watering, gut burning but soul satisfying food and will promote it at every opportunity. I will, for evermore, bore people with my tales of out of body eating experiences and culinary nirvana in Korea. 

 

Big bother - and that's not a typo.

Well well, another series of Big Brother is upon us. George Orwell must be turning, nay spinning in his grave. 

What? You've never heard of George Orwell?  You must have come here by accident. Go back and sit in front of the TV with your big bag of crisps, you slack jawed idiot. 

The whores at channel 4 continue to abuse Orwell's prophetic work in order to make themselves, Davina 'one string' McCall and some talentless member of the public rich, and for the latter 'famous'.

This year, 'Big Brother 9'  (is that all it is,? It feels like it has been numbing minds for a lot longer than that. They will surely keep flogging this decaying horse corpse for another 50 or so years) has one contestant that caught my eye, or I should say that a sentence in a news article caught my eye. The 'actress' from Torfaen will remain nameless during this rant as I in no way want to contribute to giving these talentless, ambition-less, ego centric fucks any publicity. 

She, who shall remain nameless, calls herself an actress and, as Davina McCall proudly pointed out, has been in twenty two, wait for it, commercials. Actress? Hello? She has as much right to call herself an actress as the background artistes in all of the UK's most loved soap operas do. But wait, she has been in a film, with Hugh Grant no less. Remember that smash hit 'Night train to Venice'? Maybe you know it by its American reissue title 'Night train to hell'? No, doesn't ring a bell? Maybe it's because it was made in 1993, before Hugh Grant had his big break a year later, and has since been confined to bargain bins all over the country ever since. Maybe you know her from the Italian smash hit 'Mr Dog', a film in which she plays second fiddle to a dog. 

Still don't remember?

Maybe that's why channel 4 decided to list her as a trainee teacher and not an actress on her profile. Her biggest achievement seems to be have been completed when she was nine years old, talk of former glories, maybe she needs to do something to kick start her career and to make her famous. Hmm, I wonder what she could do that would make her an instant star in the eyes of the sycophantic and fickle British public?

Enter Big Brother.

Maybe I'm cynical (Ok I am definitely cynical) but these publicity hungry, self obsessed cretins make me sick to my fucking stomach. Maybe she will do the same for Cwmbran, Torfaen and Wales as that other fucking Idiot who went on Big Brother, Helen 'I love blinking, I do' Adams.

All I can hope for, for the sake of people who do watch this mindless drivel, is that a meteor strikes the house and the public don't have to be subjected to this absolute nonsense anymore.

And to anyone who is reading this and thinking 'But I like Big Brother?', fuck off and go and play with your kids, visit your parents, answer that email you've been putting off, read a book, clean the oven, re-grout the bathroom tiles, do something for someone, do something meaningful or just do something that will at least keep your tiny brain active and don't allow this mind rotting TV to slowly kill both of your remaining brain cells. 

Finally this is a post about her, from one of  her English students, on the channel 4 website, note the fantastic use of English.

"This is my form Teacher. and she is a English Teacher but she is pritty and she Keped it to her self that she was going on big brother"

Rant over...for now.

Taekwondo in Korea

The alarm woke me into a panic but I couldn’t move to stop it. My mind was racing, unsure of what was happening but my limbs were unresponsive. The alarm clock was making the kind of unbearable noise a baby makes when it cries, the kind of noise that demands attention. But I couldn’t move. My limbs wouldn’t budge. They felt heavy, like the seized up cogs of a long abandoned machine. I creaked and groaned with even the smallest movement toward the now screaming alarm. The pain from my muscles and joints was as unbearable as the din being produced by the alarm clock and I knew if I didn’t get up and stop it now it wouldn’t stop. Every six or nine minutes the racket would begin anew but now I knew it would be coming.

I managed to reach out and grab the clock with the kind of effort that is usually reserved for life or death situations, but the exertion was too much for my battered and bruised body and I collapsed back into the warm indent in the bed where my body had been recovering for the last nine hours. Now I had to get up and go through the ordeal again with my rusted cog like limbs and the solid masses that were my formerly supple but underused muscles.

I have lived in Korea, the land of the morning calm (which seems to be a touch ironic when you first start practicing taekwondo), for just over 13 months and have been studying taekwondo for six of those months. My muscles and joints are slowly learning that, along with the rest of my body and mind, they have to adapt to a new way of life.  They have to unlearn a lifetime of walking, running and jumping in favour of kicking, twisting and stretching and it’s hard work.

The seized up cogs are getting oiled but time and taekwondo wait for no man and so I have been forced to slip in extra stretching on the roof of my apartment (in full view of hundreds of Koreans who live in the towering blocks of apartments that surround my place) in order to not embarrass myself, my teacher or the way of life that taekwondo is for so many Koreans and non-Koreans around the world. 

Taekwondo truly is a way of life in Korea. There seems to be a dojang in every building, kids in their doboks run everywhere and at certain times of the day the roads are jammed with minibuses from taekwondo schools picking up and dropping off students all over the country.

I don’t wear my dobok in public, not for my own self conscious reasons you understand but for the safety of the Korean people. Some are so fascinated with my white face that the merest glimpse of me in a dobok would surely be too much for some of them to process and I fear there would be children and adults alike lying motionless in the road after their brains had just short circuited.

My teacher is an eighth dan master and lives for taekwondo. He is also a devout Christian. He recently asked me and the three other foreigners in our morning class, if we would put on a taekwondo demonstration at his church, to which we said yes. There are regular taekwondo demonstrations and events all over the country and they can often be found in churches as well as the more traditional sports centres. The Korean army and the police force are both trained to 1^st and 2^nd dan levels respectively and Korean universities have taekwondo departments and professors of taekwondo. 

Taekwondo has proved vital for me, as a way to keep fit and defend myself and as a sport, but most importantly as a window into Korea and its people and culture. Immersion is often touted as being the key to enjoying, appreciating and understanding a new and different culture and immersion can come in many guises. For some it’s the food, eating new things or taking part in strange ceremonies, for some it’s the language and for others it’s participating in some kind of traditional activity. For me it has been all three but taekwondo in particular seems to have grabbed me around the lapels and after the first hour it demanded I go back for more limb bending and muscle stretching. Taekwondo is much more than just stretching, kicking and punching however. It is more than just the physical; it’s the social, the spiritual and the communal. When you put on a dobok, you enter into a martial arts family and in my experience the family welcomes you with open arms.

When the iron fist of my teacher, Jeon Jeong Sul, Kwang Jang Nim, opened up it invited me into a world seen by few travellers or even lifelong taekwondo practitioners. I was invited to see and participate in the very essence of Korea. The ritualistic and communal eating habits of Koreans may be well documented but they were well and truly transcended when the two guests at an annual meeting of regional taekwondo masters were myself and another young, white, western taekwondo beginner. We were invited to see behind the curtain, to see the internal workings of the machine and to be able to interact with the masters that keep this taekwondo machine moving. 

These meetings are frequently held at restaurants (or at the very least include a sizable lunch break) and that day was a beautiful summer day. The restaurant was next to a flowing river on the out skirts of a city called Jinan. We drove through the countryside and around mountains, past small farms and even smaller dwellings. We turned off a small road onto another road which was more of a track than a road. There was a large house in front of us as we crossed the bridge over the river, which turned out to be a guest house. Next to the house was, what looked like a tennis court; there were men playing a game called ‘cheok-ku’ on it. Cheok-ku literally translates to foot-ball and is like doubles tennis but with feet instead of rackets and a football instead of a tennis ball. The mini bus parked up and the assembled masters disembarked. The seating area was a raised platform under a kind of awning, the river on one side and a wall of trees on the other. The ambience was a combination of Korean chatter, the river swishing by in the background and the main course yapping in an annex.

The steaming bowls of poshintang arrived after a debate amongst the masters, presumably some were saying we shouldn’t have it and others were saying we didn’t understand what we were getting ourselves into; the repetition of ”kwen-channa? (OK?)” was testament to this. As the bowls were laid down, all eyes turned to us, there were jokes made and laughs exchanged but it was all done with the kindness of parents joking with their children. Along with the world famous kimchi, poshintang is said to be very good for your health and is eaten more during hot weather as it is said to have qualities that can help to keep you cool during Korea’s exceptionally hot summers.

Not everyone likes poshintang (the often vilified dog meat soup) and so at lunch a chopped up chicken was offered too. The lure of a cultural experience and the addition of some brownie points from the assembled Kwan Jang Nims was too great an opportunity to pass up. The meat, minus the soup, was also served up with a kind of dipping sauce. I added to my taekwondo street cred again by drinking the obligatory two shots of soju that were offered to me.

As I went to bed that night thinking about how lucky I have been so far during my stay in Korea and how many amazing things I have experienced as a direct result of my practicing taekwondo I could only imagine the amazing things that were in store.  The creaking limbs and aching muscles haven’t gone away yet but as I inch toward my 1^st dan the pain becomes more bearable.  I have realised that the path to taekwondo ‘enlightenment’ is a long one and getting from white to black only represents walking to the garden gate from the front door. The real journey can only begin when you’re at the gate but it’s a journey I look forward to.  I have realised that I am participating in a pilgrimage to the land where taekwondo was born and where it is at it’s purest and I can only hope that taekwondo practitioners around the world have found as much kindness and friendship through taekwondo as I all ready have. A journey to the land of the morning calm to see the art practiced in full, glorious technicolour should be on the wish list of every taekwondo practitioner.

The year of eating dangerously

Tom Parker-Bowles is the son of Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall. His royal highness the Prince of Wales is both his father in Law and godfather and Princes William and Harry are his step Brothers. Tom Parker Bowles spent 10 years in the private education system and so I think it is fair to say he has had a rather privileged upbringing. Tom Parker Bowles happens to be quite a good writer too and it is no surprise that his book ‘The year of eating dangerously’ is a very nice read. But why the family history, why the biography you ask? Surely I am painting him as a spoilt, young cad who has only reached the dizzy heights of literally fame by means of nepotism, aren’t I? Well no actually, I’m making a point about misconceptions and the dangers of playing with stereotypes. The impromptu genealogy lesson was intended to draw away from his skills as a writer and focus on less important things, the kind of things that tabloid hacks might be interested in. This is meant to parallel the chapter on Korea in his book as I think he has done Korea a disservice in his book and didn’t really mean to.

The book is, as the title suggests, about eating dangerously and to this end he travels around the world looking for all kinds of cuisines and events to get his greedy (another admission by the author) jaws around. He travels from Asia to the USA and to Europe, eating all the while and having the kind of gastronomic adventure that many people would relish. The chapter on Korea however, is a little predictable.

The search in Korea focuses on, yes you’ve guessed it, his search for dog meat. The often vilified, yet misunderstood practice of eating man’s best friend is a little predictable a subject. However, his account and research are nothing if not impartial and he delves deep into historical accounts of all sorts of civilizations that considered dog meat to be good eating, among them the Hawaiians and the Aztecs!

The problem in the chapter arises when his search for dangerous eating in Korea starts and ends in Seoul and with poshintang (the aforementioned canine stew). He gives fleeting mentions to other dishes but they are more polite nods rather than critical dissections, this is after he has mentioned his delightful anticipation at being able to sample Korea’s fiery cuisine.   

He talks of his understandable reluctance to try poshintang and even opens the chapter with an account of his childhood canine companions, therefore vindicating his nervousness, but this does little to make me, the reader, feel better about his account of this well trodden path.

Whilst I will agree that moaksal and samgyeopsal are hardly dangerous foods and therefore disqualify themselves from the book there are things in Korea that could, by his rationale, be called dangerous. BBQ’d chicken feet are not for the faint of heart and dak dong jip (chicken poo house – use you imagination) would see off a lot of self confessed gastronomes, as would bool dak, the intentionally mouth blistering chicken dish, created for those of us with less discerning palettes. Sannakji can be a particularly dangerous food at the best of times and is very dangerous when laced with soju. The raw octopus, very recently killed, can wrap its tentacles around your chopsticks and if you are very unlucky it can clamp itself onto your throat and throttle you from the inside, this should surely qualify it as a life threatening food!  These foods would hold their own on a list that includes baby eels (elvers), fugu from Japan and various chillis at a chilli convention in the USA. As for the harvesting of some of the food being dangerous (as is the case with the elvers and the goose neck barnacles), Korea has an entry in this category too. The haenyo are female divers around Korea who free dive for their supper. They dive to catch all sorts of sea creatures to sell as well as trying to avoid the dangers that lurk in the almost tropical waters around Jeju Island, where most of the haenyo now work.

This review is Korea centric for obvious reasons but the chapter on Korea was also the one that left me feeling a bit cheated, but don’t let that detract in anyway from the very descriptive talents of this self aware and self depreciating Englishman. The book is very neatly arranged so that each chapter covers a country and with a very thin narrative it can be picked up and put down at your leisure. The book has what all good food and travel writing needs to have in that it makes me want to go to these places, to eat what he eats and see what he sees, whether it be ribs and brisket in America’s south or bees in Laos (apparently they taste of honey). This book is a success and anyone even remotely interested in travel and/or food should give it a look. 

The return of the wannabe native

My triumphant return to Korea


I like Korea. In fact I would go so far as to say I love it. One of the biggest compliments I could, and have been paid is that I am like a Korean; most of the time this compliment is because of my evangelical love of Korean food and my constant preaching about it and not my extensive grasp of the language!

Unfortunately I’m a procrastinator (it’s a very serious condition I’ll have you know) and so my grasp of the language is not what it should be, but I survive. The Korean people themselves though really are the main benefit to living in this wonderful country, they are warm and generous and kind and even though most of the time we don’t share a common language there are few barriers than are insurmountable. The kindness and friendship I have been shown in the past, am being shown in the present and the kindness I will undoubtedly be shown in the future is enough to bring tears to your eyes when you consider some of the atrocities against humanity that occurs in all corners of the world on a daily basis.

These people, most of who lead very simple lives have offered me an insight into Korea more so than any book could ever do. Their simple gestures and kindnesses have opened up this county in a way that no tourist could ever hope to have opened for them. Panmunjeom and the DMZ, the beautiful mountains, Muju ski resort or Seoul itself are mere tourist trinkets when put into perspective next to the real attraction of the country, the people. They are the sole reason I came back. I have specific things I want to accomplish and specific people I came back to see once more but it was also the prospect of meeting more Koreans who show a kindness of spirit sadly lacking in other parts of the world.

When I left the UK for the second time to come to Korea there was a distinct lack of pain, a void of emotion and I feel bad that I didn’t really care. I miss my family and close friends but I feel nothing leaving them behind; maybe this is what religion feels like, going to a better place and knowing you will see them all again one day.

What I won’t miss however is the lack of opportunity, the lack of ambition and the lack of a zest for life that is a cancer on small towns like my own. I was glad to be leaving and I wish I could have left sooner. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and, yes, sometimes, with friends and family it does but no amount of absence will make me miss the small town attitude and the small minds of the people who make these towns what they are, or aren’t.

That’s not to say getting back to Korea was without its problems, indeed there were many problems least of all with visas but transit problems included, in descending order of level of maddeningness, a bus trip to and from Heathrow airport, a delayed flight from Manchester (we were pushed onto the flight before our scheduled flight and then it was delayed, just to add madness to furiousness), a 4 hour bus trip to Jeonju from Seoul and a 3 hour turnaround at Dubai international. The flights from London to Dubai and Dubai to Incheon were long but on time and comfortable. The entire journey from door to new apartment door took 23 hours not including delays. But it was worth every second at passport control, every frisk and every moment spent waiting with baited breath to see if our bags had made the flight with us.

Whilst in Korea I will go and see more of the country and I will, without doubt, eat more and different foods and I will try to learn more of the language but as long as I can communicate on a basic level then I will leave this country in 12 months a happy person.

In the end I am glad to be back and what I have left behind, some things temporarily and some things permanently, were worth the price to get back to the land of the morning calm and the incredible people who live here.


The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page - Saint Augustine

Areverderci Milan - 11/03/08

With the greatest of respects to Inter Milan this Champion’s league tie was never in any danger.

The first leg score of 2-0 to the 5 time European champions was always going to hard to overcome,but,with the cauldron of the San Siro behind them, Milan would of thought they had at least a chance to level the tie up and put it into extra time. They didn’t. They whimpered toward what now seems the inevitable conclusion of Liverpool’s progression into the next round.

Had Milan scored before the 68th minute then things may have been different but with Ibrahimovich having a nightmare in front of goal Milan were always going to be facing an uphill struggle. Liverpool restricted Milan to a few clear chances with several more long range efforts, including a few free kicks, going over the bar, wide or straight at Pepe Reina. The 68th minute was the minute when the tie was won beyond the doubt of everyone but the most ardent Milan fans; the rest of them looked as if they had suddenly realised what the rest of us were all ready thinking. A pass from Babel set up Torres who controlled, swiveled and fired the ball into the net across the floor and beyond the sprawling keeper. The game was won and Milan looked as of they had lost the will to carry on, as if they knew they didn’t have what it took to turn around a 3-0 score line, which they didn’t. To be fair to them they were playing a team that has continually proved they are a force, if not the force, currently playing the champion's league and with 10 men as another Milan player, Burdisso, saw red for his second yellow card offence.

Liverpool played well enough over the 2 legs against a team unbeaten for 5 months in all competitions to show they are more than capable of winning the competition for a 6th time.
Even with all Liverpool’s domestic woes (and there are many) you would have to be blind, or a Man ure fan to deny that there is not a team on the entire continent that is more suited to the style of football that the Champion’s league demands and you would have to be a fool not to give Liverpool as good a chance, maybe better, as anyone else this year.

The only question now is who will be vanquished in the next round as the red army march on to Moscow.

Haiku

I have taken to writing haiku as I find it a very short and fulfilling way to rant about something in a curtailed and cultured way. Some things really annoy me but I feel if I were to try and write a blog article about them it would either be very short and pointless or be very long and rambling so I have decided to write haiku to fill the hole in my soul that is left by un-ranted subjects.

Haiku are Japanese ‘poems’ that have a total of 17 syllables that are arranged into 3 lines, the first of 5 syllables, the second of 7 and the third of 5. It is harder than it might seem and quite rewarding when you get it right. It is also a good way to increase your vocabulary as you sometimes have to look up new words to fill a gap.
I am going to post some of my haiku (Haiku sounds like it should be a plural but haikus is also acceptable as a plural) to the blog to lend it an air of culture although the subject matter might well counteract any culture.

One of my latest haiku is about an interview that Michael Portillo gave to the Guardian.

Portillo falls. Funny.
But from grace or from a wall?
Hoist by schadenfreude.

The taxman

Income tax in the UK is high. I have heard it said on a few international job forums that the UK tax authorities are the biggest pirates around. Relative to a lot of other nations it is very high and it is one of, if not the main issue come election time. But we do get value for money, don’t we? Despite what opposition ministers and Joe Public say some of the services we get in the UK are priceless. We have, in theory, the most wonderful health care system in the world and although it does have its flaws it is still far superior to most health care systems in the world’s other developed nations. The fire service provides a service that cannot and should not be measured in a monetary sense and there are a multitude of other services that are paid for using money gained from taxation.

Some countries have a pay as you go system when it comes to tax and things like healthcare and it may well seem preferable in the short term because of the reduced level of taxation and the increase in your weekly or monthly wage but when you are in a position where you cannot find health insurance and cannot afford to pay for an operation, our system is better, and more humane. Personally I would probably benefit from a system where you pay for what you use more than most as I am young, fit, healthy and rarely need to visit the doctor, dentist or hospital, I maintain my smoke alarms, have no dependants and have no involvement with the police, although I do concede that accidents can happen at anytime to anyone. I would however oppose any such system. I mean what sane person would rather take their chances with hospital bills or trying to get household insurance to cover the cost of the fire service bills for extinguishing the pile of burning embers that used to be their house?

The system in the UK needs tweaking but wholesale changes would be silly.

But even I, liberal, socialist, humanist would object to paying for these fantastic services if I couldn’t use them.

If you notice I said couldn’t not didn’t.

The general public would love a tax rebate every year based on the amount of times the police had to be called to their address or the number of times the fire brigade had to rescue your cat from a tree, I’m sure there would be plenty of false claims too! John Simpson mentions in one of his books that he did indeed get offered (and I’m sure accepted) a tax rebate from the Inland Revenue because he had not been in the UK for an extended period, he suggested that it was due to his not using public services such as hospitals etc.

The reason I said couldn’t and not didn’t is that I fully expect to have to pay income tax even if I don’t use any of the services that are paid for by that tax. It is having these services at our beck and call that makes the tax payable. But if you were unable, as Mr. Simpson was, to use these services then surely you would object to paying for them, wouldn’t you?

My girlfriend is currently experiencing the strange phenomena of being charged for the privilege of not using the public services in the UK. After filling in a mountain of forms to announce her leaving and subsequent returning to the UK she was presented with a tax bill. We were both out of the UK for a period of around 15 months working and travelling but, according to the tax office she was resident in the UK. Why that sounds stupid you say. Well, yes it does and after getting repetitive strain injury from dialing the same number for the tax office to get an answer, we finally got one. Because we hadn’t been out of the UK for a full tax year (April to April) we, or rather she, as I haven’t had any letters from the tax office, was presented with a bill. Our firefighters are worth a lot more than they are paid but not so much that we should get a bill for services not rendered, or with no possibility of rendering.

I think the jobs-worth at the Inland Revenue didn’t fully understand the question or dismissed it because she deals with hundreds of these kinds of inquiries every day and I am just an ant in the colony and can be fobbed off, well not this ant. The ₤800 or more isn’t getting paid, at least if she listens to me and if I have to hand my passport in, strap myself to the under carriage of a lorry and illegally stow away into another country then that’s what I’ll do.

Why should she but handed a tax bill for not using services. A cynic might say "why does she have to pay for someone to have a boob job or a stomach stapling operation". People who lie and cheat and steal from the government seem to get rewarded with help for self inflicted conditions and big houses for their 13 children and honest people who fill in forms accurately get a bill fucking tax bill. Injustice isn’t nearly a strong enough word.

I hate the way the government makes me sound like a Daily Mail reader because that couldn’t be further from the truth. I will always champion the little man, the dissenter over the government and condemn the millionaire who resides abroad for tax reasons but when the little man gets stepped on, it really pisses me off.

Graffiti

A few days ago I was in a pub in the town I grew up in. I went to the toilet and whilst there I noticed there was graffiti on the walls. The usual stuff, someone had written MUFC and someone else had scratched out the M and written an L next to it. Someone else had written ‘Soul crew’ a few times - they are the hooligan element of Cardiff city and someone else had written Munich Cuntz (nice spelling), referring to Manchester United (The landlord is a fan, maybe that’s why). It made me wonder what kinds of people live here?

Now as I mentioned someone had taken the time to scratch the M from MUFC and replaced it with an L but they had not defaced, if that is the right word for graffiting graffiti , what was written right next to it. Someone had written ‘Gay love is happy love’, which may or may not be true but I wonder what kind of people would deface a football team's initials but not an open proclamation of homosexuality. The town is not known for being particularly tolerable when it comes to anything different let alone being gay so again I wonder what kind of people live here. I am thankful that whoever wrote it seems to have a sense of humour at least. Well, the answer to the question ‘What kinds of people live here?’ could be in the same toilet as this graffiti. The mirror above the sink had an anti rape sticker on it. I can’t even begin to tell you what is wrong with our society if we need to have stickers to tell us rape is wrong but to make matters worse someone had tried to remove it. As unbelievable as it sounds, a patron, whether it was a one time drinker or, more likely a regular had tried and failed to remove a sticker telling us that rape is wrong. He couldn’t even be bothered to finish the bloody job never mind the fact that this act would indicate that he was offended by such a sticker. I really despair when I think of the kind of people who live in close proximity to some of my closest friends and family members.

But graffiti isn’t only the territory of the bigoted or the rapist it can be used as a medium for funny people too. In a bar called ‘Deep in’ where I used to live in Korea the toilets were covered in graffiti but this time the graffiti was sanctioned and the walls of the whole place were covered in graffiti. The one example that really sticks in my mind is the quotation from a Simpson’s episode that someone had written in the male toilets. It comes from one of the greatest comedy creations of all time, Ralph Wiggum and it is:

"Me fail English, that’s un-possible"

Now if you’re going to graffiti somewhere make it worthwhile and entertain, educate or amuse.

Rant over.

The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain

Watched this film the other night for the first time, bloody good it was but thing is apparently there aren’t enough actors in Wales see, so they went and got a bloody Irishman, Colm Meany to play the lead role in the film! Now Colm has played some good parts in the past including the father of Jimmy in the commitments but he was playing an Irishman and so had a head start. He cannot do a Welsh accent to save his F*****G life and stood out like a sore thumb. What a stupid decision to cast him, very good film up until the 2nd minute when I saw him. Before he even spoke I knew he would be shite and he was.

Talk tidy. I don’t think so.