Update!

I am here in Vancouver, meaning that I have been lucky enough to experience this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (unless I move to Sochi by 2014) that is also known as: Hello, The winter Olympics is coming to your city! It’s incredible to be here, and I am a HUGE fan of the Olympics, especially the Winter ones—I really do like the fact that it brings people together. And it’s just oodles of fun to watch most of the time.

Growing up in Korea, where the rest of the world believes that it is a small country somewhere in Asia between China and Japan, that is (probably) tropical with its people never having the chance to experience things like “snow” or “ski” or “mountain sports,” (all of the rumors are wrong by the way) the winter Olympics has always kept my patriotism in its most basic form as Korean athletes skaters bring home gold medals. When you are a kid, any excuse to stay up late is a winner, so naturally I have very fond memories of building a fort of blankets with my brother in front of the TV in our living room as we watch Korean skaters (favourite being the short track relays) at obscure hours. Since then I suppose I’ve moved to Canada, and have sort of stuck between which country I should choose, should there be any matches that concern both Korea and Canada (ie: short track), but then there’s a fond memory of watching the 2002 final with a bunch of friends in McDonald’s and how appropriate was that location for an Olympic hockey final!

If you are a Vancouverite who was born in Calgary or moved there before ‘88, you probably were lucky enough to be the person to experience two winter Olympics in your lifetime, though you may or may not recall anything. I, also, was lucky enough to be in Seoul in 1988, where the summer Olympics took place. I clearly have no recollection of it, and it will be quite strange if I did because I would’ve been only 1.5 years old. So this year I have given the chance to be capable of remembering being in Vancouver during the 2010 winter Olympics and I feel pretty darn lucky. I had no idea it was so much more than just providing the facilities for the athletes to compete. And I am glad to have learned that it is more than that!

On the other sports related news, I just registered for tennis lessons starting in 2 weeks, and the inner athlete in me is quite excited.

St. Valentine’s day is coming up! Why don’t you send your loved one a secret note.

I’ve never been a huge Valentine’s day person but it gives me a perfect reason to make cards so I’ve always made little notes to give to friends and families every year. One year I gave friends a sweet comic strip from The Peanuts, another year the card from The Simpsons, “I choo-choo-choose you!.”

I’ve initially made these for friends then I decided to stock a few on my Etsy shop! I will be actually sending this card to your lover/friend/family for you, completed with your oh-so-secretive message! I like the idea of being the messenger, sending the love note on behalf of someone. It’s always nice to spread the goodness around.

Another lovely but FREEZING day in a lovely city of London here!

Today’s my brother’s last day of his first ever semester at Royal College of Art where he’s studying Design Engineering Innovation, and he and his peers presented their projects (a chair) today. He kindly invited me to sit in and I had an amazing opportunity to do so.

I actually kind of woke up late so I had to wait until the next tea break as not to disturb the crit and I thought I’d make a nice lunch for him and a few of his close friends who all have been working non-stop. I decided to make Italian meatball hero sandwiches and went to Tesco to get the ingredients. However, I had such a hard time finding Sweet Italian sausages, actually any sausages that aren’t English. I had to settle with Pork with sweet chili sausages, which sort of went with my plan to make the meatballs kind of spicy. The sandwiches had pretty positive responses in general, (who doesn’t like mozzarella melted on top of meatballs?) but it was a bit too sweet for my taste—when Tesco says sweet chili, it apparently means sweet chili, not sweet chili. I do commend English supermarkets for stocking a decent selection of mozzarella and bufala though! Also, English apple juices are the BEST. I am talking about the cloudy, murky and residues at the bottom of the bottle kind of apple juice. Mmm.

A few notes on the crit: It was pretty looooong, I’ve only attended it from 2pm to 6:30pm with 2 short breaks in between. I thought everyone did such a great job overall. What was particularly interesting was how much the class seemed to value and encourage experiments and innovations. It is particularly interesting knowing everyone has a certain area of expertise coming into the program. Some are more like a mechanical engineer, some are more an industrial designer, some like a carpenter and some like a sculptor. Seemed like the students were given a chance to really try something they had never tried before, like mechanical engineers dipping their hands in upholstery and so on. I was reminded to push myself out of my comfort zone—which was seriously a priceless lesson for a young designer—and also how great being in school can be.

Now my brother, his flatmates are frying up some Sam-gyeop-sal to celebrate their successful first term and really, surviving and thriving in a big city that can be quite intimidating. My hat’s off to them, and I’m joining them, because I am hungry.

6pm: On a bus to downtown for a haircut after work. The #50 bus is full of tourists. Two Japanese ladies, one German guy and a crapload of other English speaking middle-age couples with worn out maps. Japanese ladies and the German guy boy started  talking. The German is from Cologne. The Japanese ladies go: “Ahhhhhhhh!” and the German boy blushes. Crossing the Granville Bridge, one of them points to the oceanic scenery and the two of them go: “Ahhhhhh!” again. I look, and it is indeed quite ahhh-inducing, white yachts on a blue ocean with the mountain backdrop. Seriously nice. I realize I should appreciate the city more often. Arigato ladies. Japanese ladies and the German boy continue talking, and I am watching an American lady watching them. Once the bus is on the other side of the bridge, all the tourists get antsy because they know they are in “downtown” but have no idea where the heck they are. The tourists all of the sudden start asking questions and everyone is helping them. Tourists smile, and I smile because us Vancouverites are so darn friendly.

7pm: Getting a haircut at a Japanese hair salon. There is a really really subtle communication problem between him and I and I am nervous because it concerns my hair, which I have to wear everyday. Going through a bunch of Japanese magazine, half the people in the magazines have blonde hair and huge doe eyes. It’s not a news to me, but I just don’t get it. The hairdresser puts so much effort blowdrying my hair, and it amazes me. After he’s all done, he plays with my hair for a bit and says, “Beautiful. Beautiful.” I will be coming back.

8pm: On the bus back home. A guy flicking his zippo lighter gets on and says to the bus driver: “Can I get a ride, buddy?” He gets a ride. I am annoyed. How can you say no to a guy flicking his lighter and a gigantic skull ring on his finger? I wouldn’t.

8:10pm: I hat the fact that I don’t have any notebook with me and how I have to write these memories on iPhone notes. Note to myself: Bring a notebook handy always. And a pen.

I have a communal laundry room in my building. Each suite is assigned a time slot, and luckily my time slot is Sunday evening/night. Other less lucky suites are assigned like, Wednesday morning. I am not sure how they manage to do their laundry on their time slots working full time, and probably they don’t manage to do it because almost every time I go down to the laundry room to get my laundry done, it’s already working on someone else’s stuff. Rage! Tonight was not an exception, and but the machine was to finish its cycle in 5 minutes, so I decided to wait.

I grabbed a year-old Vanity Fair that was lying around the room and just opened it up randomly. There were the usual Gap celebrity endorsement ads—black-and-white shot of celebrities, and on each page, each of them were asked to finish sentences like, Trust your _____, and Believe your _____, you get the picture. I was mostly interested in observing and over-analyzing their handwriting. For example, Scott Shuman, The Sartorialist, has a dashing shot. But I must say, his handwriting, is not as suave as his photo. Chanel Iman’s handwriting is rather… Sixteen. Clémence Poésy looks down to earth and pretty, and I think her writing (though I had to judge by only a three-letter word) reflects her charms. A lot of men writes all caps (interesting!), a lot of pretty women have just… not so pretty writing.

I’ve always been sort of obsessed with handwriting. My whole family has rather amazingly neat handwriting skills, both pen and brush, so there was a certain amount of expectation and pressure for me to write neatly, probably from the day I was born. Also as a youngster, you are taught that your writing reflects who you are very very much in elementary school. I remember everyone had to partake in a penmanship competition held in school every year. Basically, you have to try to write the national anthem in your neatest, nicest writing. It is not that fun. Even if you think it is, by the time you’ve written it half way through, it stops being fun. I think I had an advantage though, because the teachers used to be so amazed by my writing especially because I am a lefty. They used to act as if I could write really neatly with my foot! My brother was also born lefty, but he was “converted” by his 1st grade school teacher. I don’t think it is a pleasurable experience—being forced to write on your right when being lefthanded feels so much more natural to you—though now he is ambidextrous, thanks to the evil teacher. My 1st grade teacher was a bit more open minded, so she let me write with my left, and I carried on.
The way Korean alphabet is structured, it is quite hard not to lift your pen/pencil when writing (I must note that it IS possible, though). Whereas English alphabet, no one hardly ever prints and everyone scribbles. Interesting… to me.

Not sure how to go about closing this post, as it is quite late and all I can think about is sleeping in my freshly laundered sheet!!
Happy BC day everyone! (The best place on Earth!)