Feeding My Passion

Tuesday night, about 11:45p, Byeongjeom, South, Korea, a restaurant poetically named General Pee’s (yes, that’s Pee as in pee-pee) – The place is hopping, totally packed. Adam P. (no relation to General Pee), and I are looking around and we have the same thought, why on earth is a restaurant so busy so late on a weeknight? I haven’t spent any time in Spain, but I’ve heard that it’s similar to this, that the Spaniards also start eating (and drinking, and I’m not talking about soda) quite late, at least compared to the US. But during the week?

Matthew, our best Korean friend and the guy who’s treating us to this table-top grill meat-fest, says many of the people in the restaurant (and I’m assuming at the many, many nearby joints as well), don’t have to work tomorrow. I’d have to hear it from them to truly believe it, but I’ll take his word for it. Still, it’s amazing, the amount of food being eaten and beer and soju being consumed for a Tuesday night. We’re leaving at 11:45p and we’re leaving early, nobody else seems to be really ready to go.

It’s Matt’s first payday at his new job, and he’s treating us. I pour his soju, he pours our beer. He shovels another dozen slices of super thinly-sliced lean beef onto the blazingly-hot table-top grill (too many hyphens? probably). The three of us eat lustily. The beef is incredibly thin, in long, bacon-like strips. It must have been literally shaved off with a meat planer from a big block while it was very cold, the curls of meat are quite lovely. Once cooked, it’s melts in our mouths. Matthew calls it paper beef, though this isn’t a translation, just his poetic interpretation. Dipping the caramelized strips in the toasted sesame oil, salt, and pepper mixture we each get makes it that much better, so much better. The side dishes are good and fresh: cooked cabbage kimchi, green onion salad, green lettuce salad, macaroni salad (not kidding, and not bad), raw garlic slices, raw hot chili pepper slices, plain tofu, spicy bean paste sauce…have I left anything out? Oh, the ubiquitous soybean sprout soup, some sort of egg dish that comes to the table so insanely hot that it bubbles away for a few minutes after the server brings it to the table. Matthew knows I like doenjang jigae (soybean paste stew), so he buys a bowl of it for me and some rice as well. Groan…hope I can make it home without popping.

I’m so happy Korean food is generally very healthy, all except for the fried foods, and there’s none of that here. Oh I forgot a couple more side dishes: a very thinly sliced raw cabbage salad with a Chinese hot mustard dressing, and of course, fresh green leaf lettuce, to which we add a little grilled garlic, or maybe some green onion salad, or kimchi, and the grilled meat, before creating a little leafy, green bundle, and dipping it in the spicy bean paste sauce and popping it into our mouths. Like Vietnamese food, it’s a wonderful combination of flavors, textures, and temperatures, which is why I like Vietnamese, and now Korean food, so much.

We waddle outside and open our umbrellas which give us very little protection against the heavy summer rain. We’re full and fully satisfied, our happy glow a result of sharing a great meal with friends, knowing we have fully tasted everything offered and made the most of it.

Time for bed and to dream sweetly of my ever-present love, Kamila. If I’m really lucky, maybe I’ll catch her on Skype before I drift off.

Anne and Ryan mentioned, on several occasions, that oisobagi (aka oi kimchi, oi = cucumber) was probably their favorite kimchi when they got back from Asia. Since it’s a Summer kimchi because cucumbers are only in season during the Summer (the produce here is very seasonal, love that, at least it’s easy to love it because it’s Summer), I thought I’ve give it a try before the cucumbers became either 1) scarce or 2) expensive.

Rob T, another foreign English teacher who lives in Byeongjeom not too far away and I picked up 20 cukes and a few more ingredients since I already had most of them in my growing pantry. Oh, but first I had to find a good recipe for it. Not having a cookbook yet (I have 2 good ones on the way from What The Book out of Itaewon.), I did some research online and found one that struck me as the best one for me to do, lots of flavor, not too difficult, and scaling it (doubling in this case) was very easy.

So we shopped and sliced and brined, grated and chopped, measured and mixed, drained and rinsed, until everything was ready for the stuffing. As you can see, we did all the prep in my bedroom, on my bed and the floor since my kitchen really is very small and I don’t have a desk yet. Hopefully I’ll get one this week. But until then, improvisation has been key, and never more so than when making kimchi in my little place with my tiny little kitchen.

I’m looking forward to my next paycheck as well, which I’ll get on the 8th, so I can start doing some real cooking again. I mean, I love rice and tofu as much as the next person, of course, not if that person is Korean, in which case, I love it about half as much as they do. The subject of food comes up in class for a couple of reasons, one of them is our lessons at school often include something food-related. And I don’t exactly discourage any conversation about food. I’m curious what their favorite foods are, if they like to cook, if their parents (overwhelmingly their mother) are good cooks and what they cook. So I asked them what their favorite foods were. About half the class said rice was one of their top two. Rice! I don’t think I can imagine American kids telling me that bread or potatoes was in the top 5, or 10, or 20 even! The love for rice here is deep and strong.

Anyway, I do really like kimchi, tofu, and rice, but not quite like most Koreans do. Though I do like it a lot more than most non-Asian Americans.

To get my E-2 (work) visa, I flew to Guam last Wednesday since Guam is the nearest US territory, and got my work visa from the Korean consulate there. The immigration thing is kind of complicated, especially since the rules are always changing. Normally people go to Fukuoka, Japan, and that would have been my preference as well, since I’m planning on going to Japan at some point during the year. But the paperwork from the University of Missouri wasn’t perfectly in order, so I had to go to a Korean consulate in the nearest US territory. Fortunately I didn’t have to go back to the US!

Guam was interesting, and much more expensive than Korea. Because the Korean consulate closes at 5p, and I got off the plane Wednesday at 3:30, I jumped in a taxi to get over there quickly. The 10 minute ride was US$20. Visa: US$45. I called my resort from the consulate and asked when I could catch the next airport shuttle. The one I was supposed to be on (they knew when I was coming in) was the last one of the day. Great. Taxi to the resort: US$40 (the guy at the Korean consulate took pity on me, called another Korean he knows on Guam, and asked him to drive me for $40, otherwise a taxi to the resort would have been $50+. I Only came with $170, and I was going to be there for 4 days, so I started to think about what I was going to eat, and I don’t mean about the delicious variety that Guam has to offer, I was thinking about the most high-energy foods I could consume for the lowest price. Gotta say, cheese Spam is a little too salty for me, but washed down with one of the two free beers in my minibar (unfortunately both of them were Budwiser), it wasn’t too bad. So for the next few days I took the free resort shuttle to the big shopping areas and walked around a little, and ate some real food, Japanese ramen (not Korean ramyeon) on Thursday and Vietnamese lemongrass chicken on Friday. After a little shopping for Kamila, and a couple postcards, I was down to approximately $4, just enough for some more crappy food to get me through the next 24 hours before my plane left on Saturday afternoon. So I didn’t have anything to eat from Friday night until they served food on the airplane at about 5:30p on Saturday. I lost some weight.

Enough of that sad story, and it is sad, because there are a tremendous number of cuisines on the island, and it’s a beautiful place, so it would have been nice to do some interesting (not necessarily expensive) eating, see the beaches north and south of Tamuning, and do some exploring outside of the places where the transportation was free. I’ve got a lot of other places I want to see in Asia, but if I ever find myself back in Guam, I’ll bring a lot more money or a lot of reduced-sodium Spam.

It was funny, even though everyone on Guam spoke English very, very well, I couldn’t wait to get back to Korea, I feel much more at home here in Korea. It was a relief to make myself understood on Guam just by speaking complete sentences and not breaking out the English/Korean dictionary, but Korea is much more convenient and interesting to me. And plus, the jjimjilbangs. There’s a nice one a few blocks away from my apartment, and I’ve gone to it every week for the past month. Happiness.

Plus cooking for myself rocks! I usually wouldn’t cook for myself, but since I’m in a testing/experimental phase with the cuisine, I want to try cooking a couple new dishes every week. I haven’t perfected my vegetable pajeon yet, but I’m working on it. My dukbokki is pretty good, happy with that one. I made spicy myeulchi bokkem (stir-fried sardines) last week that turned out really well, and my sigeumchi namul (spinach with garlic, soy, and sesame oil) was pretty good too. I’m going to make some grilled mackerel this week. Once I get my first paycheck, I’m going to make some oisobaggi (cucumber kimchi) before I lose the season. And then some mul (water) kimchi. After a few batches of those, I’ll be happy to help someone make some of their Winter kimchi. Oh, there’s the big Namdo food festival in Jeollanam-do in October. Can’t miss that! My school’s Korean owner and the Korean teacher are just about ready to teach my classes for me and set up a kitchen at the school so I can cook for them. They find it quite funny that I’m so enthusiastic about cooking.

I haven’t been elbowed by any ajumans anywhere yet, although I took a pretty good bump on the bus from someone who I normally would have asked for an apology, but I understand it’s just probably par for the course here. No problem. I can understand some jostling in the stores though, those jujubes are big and beautiful! There are 3 supermarkets within about 6 blocks of my apartment, so I’m all good for food supplies.

Getting a netbook (I’m going to Yongsan electronics market the first weekend after I get my first paycheck) will let me play the yoga DVDs I brought, and that will be very nice. I’ll also be able to do some real blogging as well, which I’m really looking forward too. And since every laptop and netbook has a webcam, I’ll be able to Skype from my apartment, which will be wonderful. Right now, there’s a PC-bang that has webcams that I can use, and I’ve been using it everyday to talk with Kamila, which has been a true blessing, but it’s one of the few PC-bangs I’ve found that does have webcams. Fortunately it’s close and inexpensive.

There’s a nice park just a couple blocks away from my apartment that I had no idea was there until one of the other foreign teachers showed me last weekend. I was very excited and have been there a couple of times since. The funny workout equipment in the parks is quite…uh, funny, and of very limited benefit for me, but it’s nice to see large swaths of grass and sit by the fountain.

I’m getting my medical exam next week so I can get my alien registration card, which will lead to my medical insurance, pension, and bank account. All is well!

So I flew out of San Francisco for Incheon, South Korea on 27 June. This was earlier than I expected to leave, I had expected to leave sometime right after my parents and I got back from taking a trip up to Waldron, Wash., in the San Juan Islands to see Madeline, her husband Don, and their daughter Amirah. We were also going to see a few of my parent’s friends from college and former colleagues, and go camping along the Oregon coast in the very cool yurts they have in the state parks. It’s so cushy that it’s hard to call it camping, but it is fun and easy. All you need to bring is bedding since they have at least a futon and a heater. Margaret (my ex-wife) and I had stayed in one for a couple of days up at Cape Disappointment, Wash., (what a name, huh?) when we lived in Hillsboro, Ore., back in 2000.

Besides not spending more time with Kamila, leaving before the trip up to Waldron was the other major bummer about leaving early. But my great recuiter, Issa Cohen, from Korea Recruitng, told me about a position in Dongtan New City (literally a new city, more on that later), and I figured if I could leave right away, why not? Why prolong the inevitable, especially when it would be more and more difficult to leave Kamila in the US.

As of June 18^th, I still needed to get my criminal background check and my degree certification apostilled and sent to S. Korea so my future employers could start to process my work visa. So I jumped in my little car and spent the day in Sacramento (where it’s always a pleasure to see my sisters who live there) getting a jurat for my certificate of degree (ugh, more on that damn certificate later), and getting both documents apostilled, and then sending all my paperwork – medical statement, criminal background check, certificate of degree, official college transcripts, 2 passport photos, photocopy of the info page on my passport (which came out too dark for S. Korean immigration, so I took a photo of my the info page and then emailed it to my recruiter who forwarded it onto the school who then sent it to immigration). Then I sent all of that paperwork via DHL (FedEx would have been fine as well) to the school here in Dongtan.

I gave Issa a call once I got it in the mail and he asked whether I could leave on Wednesday. Oh, by the way, I did all my paperwork stuff on Monday. So I politely begged off Wednesday since my mother is busy on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and asked to leave on Friday. No problem. Except he booked a flight that was already overbooked. The next available flight on Asiana Airlines (which won airline of the year last year, and they deserve it) was Sunday, so I packed very carefully (which I didn’t need to do, since I thought I had a weight limit of 22kg for my checked bag and 10kg for my carry on, but I had a limit of 2 checked bags at 22kg each, so I could have brought my Manduka mat. I has a sad.) My parents took me to the airport, I got there in plenty of time, and I left at 1:45p, non-stop for Incheon, S. Korea.

Twelve hours and fourteen minutes later, I touched down 16 time zones away, in the land of the morning calm.

It’s been juuuuuust over a month since I last posted, a month and 2 days since I finished my degree. I had a glorious 2 1/2 weeks with Kamila in LA. I got to see the city like I’d never seen it before in the dozens and dozens of times I’ve been down there, mostly with my family, mostly visiting family (or Disneyland).

Kamila lives in a sweet, quiet house in W Hollywood, in a neighborhood that veers from tarnished (or burnished, take your pick) apartment buildings down one street and incredibly tidy and gorgeous examples of single-family residential architecture down the next. And since it’s between Santa Monica Blvd. and Melrose, it feels like the epicenter of American pop culture, from Chaplin to Beach Boys to the Jonas Brothers (Who the hell are they by the way? Do they make music with more than 2 chords?).

So what did we do for 2 1/2 weeks? Well, she worked during the week, so I volunteered in the Shumei Natural Agriculture Garden three days a week and stayed home (yes, it felt like home – I seem to be supremely adaptable) the other 2 days, read, caught up on my email, recovered from the gardening, whatever.

And I enjoyed cooking for her: Breakfast, packing her lunch, and making dinner. Of course I love cooking already, no surprise there, but I rarely do it everyday, three meals a day. I didn’t have to be particularly creative, my own money ran out after the first week (LA is expensive, go loaded for bear), and I didn’t want to be extravagant, but I had a lot of fun being creative with what I had and what was inexpensive: brown rice, legumes, greens. I actually made mayonnaise from scratch –  raw yolk and everything – for the first time while I was there out of necessity. And it was awesomely delicious!

And without being indiscreet, Kamila is truly amazing and we had a magical time. I were but little happy if I could say how much…

Thank you everyone, you may never know how much your support has meant to me, but let this acknowledgement of your help in the completion of my 20-year journey in photojournalism be the beginning of my expression of sincere gratitude.

No dust or scratches, unless you want them.

p.s. If you’ve never physically spot-toned a print (omg) or used Photoshop to touch up a scan, please take my word for it: Total pain in the butt. Express gratitude for digital every day.

Ok, I’m getting a little nervous again. Welcome to the roller coaster that is my photoj class.

I haven’t heard back yet from either my big organic subject, who I thought was a done deal. And the head of ForageSF, who I’m sure is a very busy guy and just hasn’t seem my email yet, hasn’t contacted me since he told me to email him once I got the letter for the next dinner. Which I did. So I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen here.

What I do know is that it isn’t happening here, in Merced. I won’t be photographing either of my remaining two portions of the essay anywhere near here, so I’ve decided to pack up everything I need to finish the class, some clothes, my web cam (not see Kamila’s face for 2 weeks? I’m tough, but I’m not that tough), and stay in Sacramento with my sister Beth and Ryan at the Hurley Farm.

Sure would love to hear from my peeps.

Finally, after a long time with no movement on my photo essay, things are finally coming together!

I got an email yesterday from ForageSF, a group that serves a foraged meal (the menus are mouth-wateringly awesome) once a month to a small group of people who are fast enough to sign up. Which I just happen to be this month, on Friday 7 May. The founder of the group has already agreed to give me access to the foraging, preparation, and consuming of this meal. Access has been the most challenging part of this essay, as it often is with any in-depth, long-term photojournalism project. So except for the photos, the “foraging” portion of the essay is waiting for me in San Francisco next week.

This evening I made pictures of a family going out to grab a fast-food meal, take it home, and eat it. I’m feeling pretty good about how it turned out, so that part is done.

And I’m probably leaving tomorrow to stay at my youngest sister’s house in Sacramento so I can photograph the “big organic” portion of the story when a subject is ready for me. While I wait for a subject, I have plenty to do besides making photos to wrap up my class which include, but aren’t limited to: Book reports, putting a portfolio together, and going through my exit interview (via Skype or phone). On Wednesday. I’ll take Amtrak and then BART into San Francisco, and check into the youth hostel near the city center, which is the closest one to the Mission district, where the foraged dinner is being held.

Then on Saturday, I head back to Sacramento, and if I haven’t made the photos for the “big organic” section yet, I’ll stay there until I do, or until 14 May, when I give David’s fantastic Nikon D200 back to him (THANK YOU DAVID!!) and head back to Merced.

Then I begin my victory lap around the west coast. You think I’m kidding?

As a very good friend of mine just said about my lack of progress on my food-related photo essay since we were in Santa Cruz much earlier this month, “Your project is kind of stale.” I don’t think she was trying to be punny, but she’s got a very playful sense of humor, so I don’t know.

That was yesterday, today is a brand new day! I’ve got access and an appointment for the “fast food” section of my photo essay on Thursday evening, kind of a naturally perfect situation. It’s a family that I met soon after I moved here (Merced, Calif.) that is very physically active (the father coaches soccer, the mother is a yoga instructor, their sons all participate in one sport or another), and like many families, they are busy, so they often grab some fast food on Thursday evening, which is their busiest day of the week, after they all get done with their soccer practice/yoga class/whatever. And there I will be, bearing witness to their meal, from discussion about where to go, to going, pickup, and partaking.

Huge load off of my mind.

And I have access, at least verbally, to the other two sections of the essay: big organic and foraged. Just waiting for the other two shoes to drop from this 4-legged creature. Stay tuned!