TMI

Im so hungover right now. It’s hard to differentiate this feeling inside… do I have to throw up or is it just diarrhea brewing inside? Probably both. Nevertheless, I’m less than thrilled to be at work this morning. I must have yelled a lot last night while I was pounding one too many gin tonics because I completely lost my voice. At least this gives me a really good excuse to not participate today. Working on Saturdays should be a sin.  

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Update: it was both. im not even kidding, im so sick right now. i went to the bathroom and went #3 in one stall, then threw up in the next stall over. Tmi? Tmi. 

psycho-girly entry

technically im still at work, so i guess i'll update. it's friday night, we had a workshop til 10 tonight. sigh. we resume at 8 30 am for more mtgs. dahhh. thank god we get monday off!

 the marketing manager (my ex boss) asked my coworker and i to have a few beers with him afterward and we  declined.... because we already have other plans to party elsewhere.

not hunting tonight because im a bit smitten by laser boy. i swear, if he plays me or if it ends before 10 days, im going to become a full on lesbo stallion.

sad to say its been almost two years... but i stilllll have a never-ending crush on a guy that i once knew. he doesnt know it yet, but we're getting married one day. i cant help but feel like im cheating on him by liking a new guy.

crazy? maybe.
pathetic? yes.

at this point im pretty sure that i just like the idea of him. sometimes it's better that way.

anyone remember this line?

Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago. 


happy hunting, 
Alice

hello from home

it's 3:50 pm and i am getting started on my day. i took nyquil last night and couldnt get out of bed this morning and ended up waking up at 3pm. i'm still sick and feel like crap. anyway, im working from home now and nothing exciting has happened within the past 50 minutes. im pretty sure i'll be alright by tomorrow... for the 2 day work shop. wonderful

my bff and i used to do this thing during college where we would collectively (either in a group or just the two of us) would make parameters for what we should draw. we would each draw the picture and have them judged.

the pictures can be pretty crazy. once i told jenn to draw a panda getting money from an ATM while a squirrel wearing a v for vendetta mask was hiding behind a tree pointing a gun at the panda. she drew it really well! maybe later i'll post some of our old stuff.

last week we drew "a twisted fairy tale" here's mine. i'm still waiting for hers.

my mom is so cute

Gchatting with my mom... 

myong:  빠이빠이    안녕    have a nice day. good buy  이젠 진짜 good by.

HAHAHAH she spelled "bye" wrong twice. 

Weekend Update

Friday night, as I’m packing up and getting ready to leave work for the weekend…

Ceo: so what time is the meeting tomorrow?

Me: what meeting?

Ceo: the website brainstorm meeting

Me: …

Ceo: 9 oclock? Okay.

Me: *in my head* grumble grumble grumble.

Unfortunately I didn’t end up going out on Friday night and on Saturday morning I slept in until 11… woops. I swear im not usually that irresponsible.  

In the afternoon I went ice skating with a group and as I was trying to show off my twirling non-skills, I lost my balance and flew up really high into the air, both legs up and landed on my shoulder. And then I rolled around in pain while moaning like a beached whale.  

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Last night I went to seven luck casino (to entertain our Chinese employees who flew in yesterday) and I was way up for a bit and then I lost it all. Fyi, in korea, only foreigners are allowed in Seoul casinos. I think I can find better ways to blow my money.

Housing

Life is so strange. A year ago I couldn’t motherfucking wait to get out of Korea… dying to go back to the states… and now I don’t know when I’m going to go back. Korea does this strange thing where one either instantly loves it, or slowly infuses in until you starts to love it. I believe Korea is a good place to live during part of your twenties, before all the marriage nonsense gets in the way.

Daisy and I are looking for a two bedroom apt, and that means I’ll be tied down to Korea for at least another year… we’ll def have a lot of funny times.

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Here’s a quick Korean culture lesson: The Korean housing system: junsae

Korea has a very unique, somewhat unfair and overall interesting housing system. Basically if you cant afford to buy an apt/house completely, you “rent” one for two years. For those two years you put down a $100,000+ deposit and you live there rent free- this is what many people do. After those two years you can either renew your contract or move out and get your deposit back. Koreans also tend to move out of their apts with it looking like a complete dump with dust, trash and broken things left in the apt, so basically nothing is taken out of the deposit

For many Americans their house is their largest asset that they own. For many Koreans… im not sure what their largest asset is… maybe their car?

This is why most Koreans live with their parents until theyre married or 30+. And apartments are often given to newlyweds by parents.

I live my by myself and it is awesomeeee. Most of my relatives and coworkers think its crazy to live alone because it’s "expensive." After living in LA I have pretty high standards for “expensive” I thought my studio was a good deal though it came attached to a pretty hefty deposit nonetheless it’s pretty spacious and is pretty much two rooms because of a partition in the middle. I know of people living in places for $200/month here in korea, but whatever. its my life. A huge factor to living where I live is that it is walking distance to my work. Living very close to work changes the quality of ones life. Totally. Agree with me.

Though there are some downsides of living alone

1. When I go out I cant get super trashed bc I have to be coherent enough to talk to a taxi driver, make sure he’s not kidnapping me, and walk into my apt building in one piece.

2. There are few moments when I get scared, like that one time when two men were beating up a woman from 3 30 am – 5 am on a work night and nobody did anything about it.. I didn’t do anything because I don’t know my apt address.

3. Studios are known to double as sex rooms/whore houses. Where I live the streets are cluttered with whore advertisements. Once when my parents slept over at my place there was banging from all corners of the apt… maybe it was just a lucky Friday night or a good business night. who knows.

4. Bills. I never pay em on time. I wouldn’t be surprised if my electricity was turned off and wouldn’t care if my gas was turned off bc I never cook and never need anything heated.

sap homer

As an avid belcher I have a lot of experience belching phrases, getting up to “j” in the alphabet, and just making loud noises. Through the years I’ve practiced enough to almost throw up in my mouth, to know how to brew a baby burp into a huge belch and to throw the sound of my belch over to the guy next to me so people don’t suspect me in public.

One important thing belchers need to keep in mind is to throw your belch in a direction I usually blow straight up or behind me and almost always make sure its AWAY FROM PEOPLE. this is particularly important after eating stinky foods or meat. One day I want to make a montage of myself belching and have it go on for 5 minutes, but until then I’ll train some more..

As much as I like Mr china lee, he straight up burps homer simpson style and lets the aroma go out of his mouth to disperse in all directions. It was really cool at first bc I was like YAYYY I A BELCHER TOO!!! But now its just distracting esp when im doing work and suddenly I smell the bbq katsu pork he had for lunch. P-U

Breakfast drinks

American FOB moment - another reminder that my korean isnt very good...


Yesterday I passed by Dennis’ empty desk and noticed he received a package. Being the nosy and curious person that I am I opened it and inside were his two breakfast drinks. One was in a plastic bottle and the other was in a plastic pack (like those herbal han-yak drinks). Since he wasn’t in the office that day I took the drinks, kept one for myself and gave the other to german (my german-korean coworker).

Dialogue:

Me: here, Have this breakfast drink. Dennis isn’t here today!

German: oh thanks. what is this?

Me: oh, it's just hankak, it's good for you.

*stares at the drink and reads the Korean text slowly in his german accent*

German: do.. not… eat…. Icepack.

__

As with most things in life, it was much better in person.

and i thought the last date was bad..... the worst date ever

The worst 45 minute date ever. 

1. Red flag #1: I met this guy at the subway station. He approached me, I wasn’t physically attracted to him. I couldn’t help but notice that he was holding “The Game” in his hand and I decided to cut him some slack. Bad choice.
   
2. We previously made dinner plans for last Friday. 1 hr before we were to meet, he canceled… for work obligations, understandable. We made plans to meet up on Monday (today) at 7 pm. He didn’t call me to confirm until 6:20. At that point I was hoping we wouldn’t have to meet up cuz I was pretty pooped (I start work at 7 am on Mondays) A. I guess #2 is kind of petty
3. It was awk from the beginning. He takes me to a sit down bar that serves Korean drinking dishes. Who the fuck takes a girl to a bar on a date? I just got off a long day at work, and youre not even gonna take me out to a restaurant?
   
4. He tells me he’s a certified chiropractor. He asks me if I am ever sore. I said no, which is a lie, but I’d rather eat cat food than let him massage my shoulders. He massages my hands instead
   a.       I can still feel the warmth of his clammy hands on mine. … must wash my hand for the 5^th time.
   b.      Speaking of the 5^th time… he used the restroom 5x during our aprox 1 hr “dinner”
5. He starts complimenting my eyes, though for the first 20 seconds I thought he was trying to explain that he noticed my slight lazy eye… after giving him a blank stare he repeated, “sometimes when the light hits your eye the right way, your eyes look really beautiful.” I scoffed and wanted to roll my eyes.
   
6. He asks me if I have ever been to a DVD room (a room where you rent a dvd and then watch it/watch with a girl and boobie boobie) I say no.
   a.       Creep.
7. He tells me he went to germany once and went to a dvd room there, only to find out that it was a porno+jack off place
   a.       What the fuck? Creep
8. I tell him that I’m aware there are many whore houses here. He says, “REALLY? Where?” and gives me this really creepy look.
   a.       Im unsure of what he was implying but I wanted to run away
9. He asks if I wanted to watch a movie. I don’t know if he implied a DVD place, or a theatre. I said I was tired.
   
10. He told me next time we meet we’ll eat dak kalbi, and then he’ll teach me martial arts moves. I am not kidding.
    
11. He told me he liked the book “The Game” so much he read it twice. Looked up everything on the website and watched the tv series online.
    
12. God, did I do something wrong?
    
13. so in conclusion, i wont be going out with him ever again. 
14. no more dating for me.  im disgusted.

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First posted June 2009

the golden years of kpop - 1994 - 1998

Last night, after stalking a crush from college for an inappropriately long time on facebook, Daisy and I had an intense 2 hour old school youtube sesh. In my opinion 1993 – 1998 were the golden years of kpop – this is based off of my own biased opinion bc that was the only time frame I truly listened to Korean music.

Back in the day, everyday afterschool, my sister, her friend and I used to make music videos. It was the highlight of my day! Then one time I took the camcorder (and all of the videos) to a camp and LOST the vids. Worst thing ever. I’m still paranoid that someone will release our MV’s along with all the other embarrassing things we taped… esp that one prank my sister pulled on me while I was naked in the bathtub.  

Back to the music. We dug deep. If you know and love all of the listed songs, you are awesome. Here are some of the few we listened to/danced to til 2am:

Bijou – I love you more than anyone else (?)

Roora – 3! 4!

Turbo – December

Young turks club – Ta In

Jo Sung Mo – To Heaven

RE.F – Chanharang Sarang

Kim Hyung Jung – Separation From Her

Park Ji Yoon – Sung In Shik

drags

It is so freezing today. After 20 minutes of walking around outside without wearing a long coat, my face was frozen. Even my vag was frozen.

Anyway, I just found out I have to spend next weekend at another overnight workshop. Hopefully it wont be “lap-topless” like the last workshop… that was a drag.  

go yuna! boo ohno

Everyone in korea loves:

Yuna Kim. She has so much pressure on her shoulders. Basically korea is depending on her… she is on at least 10 different commercials on TV and her face is plastered on ever other billboard. Go Yuna!

Everyone in korea hates:

Apolo Anton Ohno. After 12 years of Olympic fame why does he still have that dumb soul patch on his face?

?

tutoring - day 1

Today I am going to have my first Korean hagwon (tutoring center) lesson. As fun as it is to do language exchanges and teach fobs bad words and pronunciation differentiations between “beach” and “bitch”… I ultimately need professional help - a teacher that will scare me, give me homework and slap me around a little.

Im excited because maybe by the end of this year I’ll be awesome at Korean. At the same time I’m scared because I clearly remember my Saturday Korean school days when I would get every word on my spelling test wrong… including my own name. no joke!

There are two different types of people in the world – those who can grasp languages well and those who are just weetarded (me). After trying to learn 4 different languages, including English, I just never got things straight. I was in ESL for two years even though I was born in America!

Jumble of tings

10 random side notes:

1.     NOBODY is at work today. I’m saving up my vacation days for something more spectacular (plus I’m already -3 on my vacation days)

2.     Malcomn Gladwell’s “what the dog saw” BORES ME TO TEARS. When will I EVER FINISH THIS BOOK????

3.     SuperFreakanomics – just as entertaining as the first book. Read it!  

4.     Today I woke up already 5 minutes late for work. As I’m fighting off my drowsiness and brushing my teeth I started feeling very annoyed. When new employees join the company we claim that the company is a 9-5. But really most people show up at 8 and nobody would dare leave as early at 5pm every day. The company should call it the 8-8 or the 8- “whenever your boss allows you to leave” because pretending that it’s a 9-5 is just straight up lying. Getting off work at 5 pm sounds like a dream.

5.     Speaking of dreams I had the same reoccurring dream last night about watching my friend vchatting with her boyfriend. I’ve never met her bf! Why cant I dream about less creepy things

6.     On Sunday Daisy and I planned on meeting some friends at club naked and after looking it up online I was CONVINCED that it was the club down the street from my house. We walk over to the club and NO SURPRISE HERE… turns out I was wrong. We were standing in front of club heaven. In an incredible twist of fate, claude von stroke (one of d’s fave djs) was spinning that night. We recruited our friends to come to heaven and have an awesome night. Fist pump! haha

7.     Around 3 am im feeling tired at the club and sit at the table closest to the dance floor. Turns out the table belonged to Brazilian soccer players. They were nice but very aggressive. not really my steeze

8.     I haven’t paid any of my bills since the end of November. Every morning I pray that my lights will turn on and that my boiler is still running. Dude, I don’t know whats wrong with me and paying bills.

9.     On Friday I got three of my moles removed. I haven’t washed half of my face in days.. and I am a victim to more Korean-ness. I got my face whitened. Ahhh I swear it was because they claimed it would pump extra vitamins into my dry skin!

10.   My aunt is deaf in her left ear and her son thinks he is also going deaf in his left ear. For the past few days I haven’t been able to hear from my LEFT EAR!! I’m going to the doctor today to figure things out. PLEASE NOOOO

i am korean american.

http://iamkoreanamerican.com/2010/02/15/alice-oh/


As usual I got to work, turned on my computer and checked my email. I noticed that I got some random comments on my blog and things just clicked. I checked out www.iamkoreanamerican.com and lo and behold, im todays feature! Holy macaroni – I’m feeling bashful… & wow - total shameless blog plug lol. for the record when i submitted the profile many months ago my blog was way more psychotic...

Here are some reMarks (haha- im so clever) from esta’s older annoying brother:

 Mark:  you know.... children are reared, not raised 

you forgot to capitalize "states"

paragraph 3 starting "relocating..." should have a semicolon 

you have an awkward sentence ending paragraph 3... it's really long w/ lots of clauses

i think that last clause might be a separate sentence

you're missing a comma in the first sentence of paragraph 4 

 me: you are so annoying!!!!!!!!!!!

CMON, thats the beauty of my bloglings - I write this stuff at work, I don’t have time to hang around my blog all day while dodging coworkers. Knowing that most readers online are quietly critical, now im a bit self conscious. But fuck it.

Btw shout out to kyu, who was featured the other week and was the person who introduced the site to me!

Heppy lunar new years / vday

Got this off of this week's postsecret update. sad but true. happy valentines day!! haha

yesterday i watched the movie "valentines day" with a few gfs and before entering the movie i felt content and didnt have any negative thoughts or pangs of sadness (because i'm alone on vday again...) but i'm pretty sure i left the theater feeling much more cynical. how unnecessary. you would think with the strong star power the movie would be remotely good! the part with jessica biel dancing with the indian people??? wtf was that?!

no mo sno

It’s snowing today in Seoul. I was not expecting this at all. It’s been pretty pleasant here (and by pleasant I mean like 40 degrees). Hoping that this is the last major snow of the season, I’ll let this slide… but PLEASE stop snowing.

This morning it wasn’t cold enough to sustain the snow, so it was like a slurpee had thrown up slush all over the streets but now theres a good layer of snow all around.

As a group of coworkers and I were walking across the street for lunch I took a good look at the snow that was falling on me and I could actually see some snowflakes around 1/2 a cm long. ACTUAL snowflakes.. the kind that have 6 sides and is unique in its own way… the kind of snowflakes I used to make out of folded paper, the kind that you only dream about seeing,.. do you know what I mean?? They were such big, beautiful flakes. I wish I could have taken a picture. Until today I thought that those kind of flakes were only visible under a microscope. Wow that was exciting. The most exciting thing that happened today.  

OMG, WTF, STFU, PWN3D, UR A NOOB, IM A ....?

LOL
this is from a korean textbook

damn me

so my gran calls me on sat and asks if i could go over for dinner

i said no

i was at work ( i worked all weekend)

she said, "oh, theres going to be some family over for dinner, just thought i'd ask"

hung up and went back to work etc

on sunday  my mom calls me and tells me that it was my grandma's freaking birthday party! ughhhhhhhhh

my uncle calls me today and told me that my grandma knew i was busy and didnt want to bother me.

then he tells me that my grandpa was taken to the hospital today.

double wammy. damn me

so true

mug shots

How cool are these two mugs??

donkey fart

Flying short distance international flights are close to the most annoying thing ever. You waste half of your day going to the airport, waiting around for 2 hours, flying for 2 hours, baggage/customs, taxi for an hour, check into the hotel, complain to the hotel person for giving you a smoking room, freshen up and then finally get to the office. By the time you get to the office it’s almost time for dinner. Then you spend the rest of your free time responding to emails and making up for wasting your day.

On Saturday I was in a very horrible mood when I landed back in korea. This was mainly due to my lack of sleep, too many heavy carry on items, frustration from Chinese people scamming me and just because im a big fat baby.

I kept my cool until I dropped my bus ticket. I bend over to pick it up and all of my carry on items slide off my shoulders to my wrists. Out of pure anger I picked up the bus ticket and crumpled it in my fist (and probably looked like an angry donkey) and pulled myself together. The bus driver sees the whole thing and as I handed him my crumpled ticket he said in Korean “everything will be okay” and then things temporarily were.

mo computers mo problems

After using IE for the past week I have come to appreciate google chrome soo much. IE feel so slow and heavy. One function of chrome I have found to be the most important and useful for myself is merging the search bar and the address bar. So simpo but so important.

My computer was reformatted and the sony people reinstalled a Korean OS on my computer. Ugh… this again.

Doing any internet related work in china is so annoying. For one thing wifi is not readily available in most places, I find myself restless without facebook, and even the most random things like watching youtube or other videos are censored.. I was dying to watch the last few eps of the jersey shore.