The Grand Narrative

Bit of a free-ranging post today. Indeed a narrative, you could say. And considering where it starts and where it ends up, it may even qualify as grand? We shall see; in length, its not so much a narritive as an epic. I’ve had to split it into 5 parts! But don’t be put off by all the pictures of all the apartment buildings: those in the second half of the post have much more interesting subjects

Part 1 

To start then, these shots were taken on Tuesday the 2oth of June:

All you can see are fluffy clouds? Sorry, but those are indeed the reason why I took the pictures, although observant readers will notice the hospital that Alice was born in too. But seeing as I see that every time I leave the house, I don’t usually go out of my way to try and photograph it.

Taking pictures of clouds and putting them on your blog may seem the epitome of all that is useless about blogging, for it can surely be the virtual equivalent of navel-gazing. But, however tenous they can seem, I do have points to everything I put in the blog. For example, typing that last sentance helped to maintain my knowledge of ‘high-level’ English, one of the my aims of starting this blog, as not getting the opportunity to say “epitome” to dozy Korean teenagers very often meant I had written “epitoment” instead before I realised that that didn’t sound quite right. I see no reason to mention that I still had to get my dictionary to check that it was wrong though, so I won’t.

But that was an indirect benefit. I took the pictures of the clouds because I noticed them on the way home from Korean class. Normally I wouldn’t give them a second glance, but for some reason that day I looked longer, and realised that I haven’t paid attention to fluffy clouds in a looong time. Big yawn from hardcore Lee Hyori and/or Korean sociology fans; the only thing marginally more boring might be for me to discuss my dreams. Don’t worry, I’ll get onto that too. But before I do, remember I’m in Korea. If you’re not, then you probably haven’t laid back somewhere outside on a weekend and stared dreamily at the clouds for something like six months or so, you poor poor soul. I haven’t in seven whole years!

Sure, its not technically impossible to look at clouds in Korea. And I dare say I may have on my trip to Malaysia in 2002, and when I lived in Jinju (Wikipedia intro here) I had plently of opportunities to from the courtyards of temples 10 minutes from my house, or from the local castle, very serene on weekdays when no-one was there (see here). And its not like every adult in the world doesn’t have too much daily life to worry about to waste time like that. But like I said, I live in Korea, and once I left Jinju and realised the value of the open but quiet spaces that I’d foolishly failed to take advantage of, it became much more difficult.

Primarily because over 50% of Koreans live in apartment buildings of 5+ floors, including me. While to someone coming from New Zealand, which I’d say is 80% bungalows, these can be very futuristic and techno-looking, at least from a distance…

…the reality of living in one is less glamorous. While I do really love my view of the horizon from my desk as I type this, the noise of the 6 lane-highway below me doesn’t exactly allow me to drift off to another place, no matter how many Black Russians I drink. And the verandah doesn’t really compensate for not having a garden; when my then girlfriend and I first moved in, we naively bought a small glass table and chairs for us to relax and drink coffee and contemplate the view with. It was our first ever apartment after all. Little did we know that mosquitos have no problem flying up 14 floors (although actually they usually take the elevator), preventing going out there in the evenings, and verandahs so rapidly fill up with washing machines, drying laundry, air conditioners, bags of rice from parents-in-law, friends’ suitcases, bikes, and and other assorted junk that in the end we had to throw the table out.

I could take a picture to show you, but I think you get the point, and I don’t think my wife would appreciate her bras and panties being displayed to all the world. Or mine either come to think of it; back when I was young and innocent, my favourite pair got stolen by the crazy gay guy next door (not that that freak was representative). Ooops, I mean my underwear, not my bras or panties (although in my defense, the word ‘panties’ is gender-neutral in Korean).

So, I have no garden, and my verandah is out. There’s the communal areas in front of the apartments, but the benches stuck between the basketball courts and apartment complex roads don’t really cut it either. Seriously, no matter how many trees apartment complexes have, sometimes they can be very sterile places.

We could live in a house of course, or in a ‘mansion’ or ‘villa’-style apartment building, which are normal apartment buildings but only 3 or 4 floors high. But the latter have all the same defects as my 15-floor one with few of the advantages, although considering the rate at which my daughter is figuring out how to climb up things we may well have to move to one soon. As for the former, I’ve never seen one with an actual garden; instead, they seem to have lots of potted plants on concrete, all surrounded by walls. True, that would provide a bit of seclusion, but after living 14 floors up with the breeze blowing in, the thought of sitting in the fetid, dank, humid air at ground level, surrounded by mosquitos, doesn’t really appeal to me. While some lucky house and mansion/villa apartment owners can sit on their roofs too, it’s still not high enough for me.

But it has to be said, the combination of towering apartments, ever taller and more futuristic looking (40 floors on the left), rising out of hodge-podges of old and new 2-3 storey houses and the not much taller mansions and villas, certainly makes for some interesting photogenic landscapes, some examples of which I’ve given below (for an interesting blog, and much much better and larger panoramic photos of Busan, see here). The areas where the houses, markets, and apartment complexes meet are always full of life; in a way, they are social ecotones (with thanks to my amazing lecturer Greg Bankoff for teaching me things like that), and while they are always loud and the activity in them never seems to die down, no-one would ever say they are not very interesting places. And given that Korean planning laws are so lax, with so many combinations of buildings thrown together, its difficult to escape places like this. By extension then, Korea as a whole is a noisy but dynamic and interesting place. 

(No, the giraffes on the roof are not very common)

Interestingly, since Busan felt Fukuoka’s earthquake a few years ago, some now ex-students told me that the building codes for apartments have been considerably toughened, and given their lines of business they were quite happy with all the extra steel required (only 15% of buildings were up to scratch before the quake). And I’ve personally noticed that all the new ones seem to have helicopter pads on their roofs, but while the 40-floor buildings 3 photos up clearly have them, the 30-floor ones next to them are finished now but don’t, and come to think of it these are the first new apartment buildings I’ve seen that are so ’small’. This may be because people who can only afford to live on the 30th floor or lower are not worth the cost of helicopter fuel to save, but more likely there’s probably a Korean law which says that they’re not required for buildings of that size, strangely actually enforced. If this is the case, then the lack of logic in that would be pretty minor compared to a lot of other Korean laws I could mention.

This has been a roundabout way of saying that Korea lacks gardens, and you dont’ realise how important they are too you until you don’t have them. And its not like living in an apartment in downtown Auckland (late ‘99…sigh…that was a great summer…), where you are only a short walk to numerous parks. Not only does Korea as a whole lack public parks, and Busan in particular, the whole of Korea completely lacks grass (both kinds). Can you imagine every school in Korea lacking a field but having sand instead? It really does burn falling down on it, and after a few sliding tackles on it you suddenly understand a great deal about the state of Korean soccer.

True, there are technically green spaces: you saw hills in the background in almost all the photos. Indeed, Korea is so mountainous that its all but impossible to take a photo of an apartment building without showing a hill or mountain too. And in Busan they’re closer and much more accessible than in Seoul, which with the sea as well makes Busan win hands down climate-wise. But they’re still not accessible enough: the closest hill to me is part of 이기대공원, Igidae Park, which is big and pretty and I go often, but still a 20 minute walk through an industrial area away. And because its the only place like it for miles, the trails through it can be pretty packed with retirees. To get the solitude I need, I have to go at midnight or some crazy hour like that; not that that’s not exhilerating, even when you get used to it, but its not the best time for watching the clouds go by.

Part 2 

So back to the clouds. The photo of them was taken only 3 weeks ago, but weather-wise it may as well have been 3 months ago, for back then it was the long slow build-up to the rainy season, with increasingly more frequent showers but mostly simply sunnier and more more humid every day. The rainy season finally arrived on the 1st of July, but with less of a bang of thunder and more a very sad whimper; after hearing so much about it, BusanMike was disappointed. If you look at this first video of the rain I took, you can see why. It’s rain, its technically a thunderstorm, but he has it being his first rainy season in Korea as his excuse to blog about it; I’m not sure what mine is. His video is the second one, slightly more interesting than mine because it’s at street level.

Since then we’ve had the odd humid as hell bright sunny day, but its mostly been dull, like in this video I found on Youtube that was made down the road at Gwangli Beach:

But I’m even more disappointed than Mike, for I think the rainy season has changed a great deal in the South of South Korea since I came here, and I don’t think its just because I moved from Jinju to Busan. I’ve always loved thunderstorms, and based on my own personal experience I’d say Auckland has relatively few, so I was looking forward to the monsoons once I came to Korea. And I wasn’t disappointed: one of most vivid memories of my first years in Korea was standing one on side of the street in ‘downtown’ Jinju (it’s not very big) sheltering from the storm, and watching lightening hit the lightening conductors on the buildings across the street, not 15m away. Another was in September 2003, when Typhoon Maemi hit Korea.

While I acknowledge that 115 people died in that, I’ve been fortunate enough to not even know someone personally who has suffered in any way from a disaster of any kind, so I can be blase enough to say that I found Maemi incredibly exciting. Which is why you may be suprised to hear that I was in fact playing a computer game at the height of it. This is one of the most underrated games ever, voted by Gamespot as “The best game that no-one ever played,” so let me have my moment with it.

(By Ted Rall if you like it; After 20 minutes searching, I couldn’t find the more irreverant cartoon of his I was originally looking for)

Part 3

The game in question is called Undying (that was a basic intro; many more details here), with a great deal of input from my favorite fantasy (but originally mostly horror) writer Clive Barker. The reason I was playing it was because the monsoon came during Chusok, one of Korea’s two biggest holidays (the other is Seolnal, otherwise known to readers as Chinese New Years). Back then, my then girlfriend’s parents didn’t know (and still don’t know) that we were living together or even that I existed, so that meant that she went to her hometown for holidays and I got to do whatever I liked. I would have had crazed drug-fueled orgies, but for the lack of drugs and the fact that everyone else was either with their folks too, or out of the country. Computer game marathons were the 2nd best option. And I was playing Undying, which I just happened to buy at the only computer game store in town (even then, everything was done on the internet in Korea) because it was in English, but which is simply the scariest computer game ever made. Playing that in my room in the dark at night, the events on the screen a microcosm of the storm howling outside, was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had.

I am extremely good at and love games, and my given my 2100 rating I’d beat about 95% of chess players who know so much that they actually attend tournaments, but, contrary to popular belief, I do not own many computer games, and haven’t bought or even downloaded one since I persuaded my father to send me an English copy of Doom 3 a few years ago. I don’t have the time to give them the attention they require, and dislike being beaten by 19 year-olds who play 6 hours a day. But I’m quite the armchair strategist, and love reading up about them. And from personal experience I know that someone who’s never played any kind of FPS game runs screaming from a session of Doom 3. But I’ve gone through all the levels of Doom 3 two times (if only those 60 hours or so were spent on Korean!), and in fact while Doom 3 is still very good, and certainly has its scary moments and a great deal of gore, you get used to it very quickly. And ultimately, the premises used to create the scary atmosphere, such as the existence of guns with torches now but not in 2145, or the monsters that (presumably) stand in a closet for hours until you walk close to it before springing out, or (presumably) stay there forever if you don’t walk close enough, make it a littler funnier than scary.

In contrast, Undying is like a suberbly crafted horror movie, with little gore, and subtlety the key to creating suspence. Whereas Doom 3 is like Friday the 13th, Undying is more like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. This is very difficult to convey in these screen shots below, but I’ll do my best.

While the graphics of this 2001 game do not technically compare to those of the 2004 Doom 3, those vivid painted skies are simply amazing. Those of the realm of Oneiros below were so suberb I could have watched it for hours and actually tried, but for a pause function in the game which kicked in after 20 mins.

Then there are the graphics, which I’ll let Gamespot describe:

“Most of Undying takes place in a huge, haunted mansion on the coast of Ireland during the 1920s. It’s a rich, colorful, and often beautiful setting. The game uses the powerful Unreal 3D graphics engine to render its strikingly detailed locations and realistic-looking characters. The mansion itself is filled with flickering torchlight and ominous shadows, thick wooden doors, ornate decorations, spiraling stairways, and, of course, many hidden dangers. In particular, besides the architecture itself, the game’s lighting and shadow effects are what make Undying look so convincing. The colored lighting in the game is subtle and realistic, while the shadows cast by objects and characters are equally well done. As you explore the darker recesses of the mansion, you’ll be struck by just how effectively the game manages to portray these foreboding areas. And when you venture outside the confines of the mansion, you’ll be equally impressed. In general, the scenery in Undying looks so good that you’ll enjoy simply being in it and taking it in.”

And here’s some of the subtlety. The horse’s head picture below looks familiar, although I don’t know it’s title or who painted it. If anyone can tell me, I’d appreciate it. But regardless, while that picture on its own in your living room would be a good conversation point at cocktail parties, it wouldn’t be scary. But in this context, with the knowledge that a monster may appear at any moment, it’s terrifying. There’s such a variety of them that you don’t get used to them; rather, you want to stop and check them out before moving on.

And there’s the game’s paintings, innocent-looking but you have no alternative but to look at with your special ‘Scyre’ seeing spell in order to solve the puzzles in the game.

Before…

Scyre invoked…

But I’ll leave it to Gamespot again to explain what really sets this game apart:

“Though Undying looks excellent, its use of sound is what really makes the game seem to come alive. Simply put, the sound in Undying is phenomenal. It’s true that some of the voice acting can seem a bit forced, but, more importantly, the atmospheric and environmental sounds used throughout the game are varied, realistic, and extremely effective. As you explore the mansion, you might hear the dull roar of a thunderstorm outside of the building, and the effect will change depending on where you are. For instance, in the greenhouse, suddenly the sound of the rain becomes almost deafening as it hammers the glass canopy high overhead. Meanwhile, you’ll hear dangerous creatures lurking in the darkness. The various weapons in the game also sound great: You can hear each round quickly being loaded into your trusty revolver, which lets out a very loud bang each time it unloads a chamber. When you connect with a ferocious strike from the powerful melee weapon you find later on, you’ll actually hear the sickening sound of flesh being torn, followed by blood spilling to the ground. The sound really serves to enhance every aspect of the game; it’s so good that an actual soundtrack isn’t used throughout most of Undying, though at the key instances when that game’s symphonic music does cue in, it’s well suited to the particular scene.”

And bearing in mind with the graphics being so good “that you’ll enjoy simply being in it and taking it in,” you will. Playing it, I spent literally hours wandering around deserted monastries in Ireland, admiring the scenery and listening to the howling wind, but all the while tense because I knew that at any moment I would hear heavy, rasping breathing and the running footsteps of ‘howlers,’ which if I did meant I had to suddenly break from my reverie, turn, and arm myself with my spells in less than 2 seconds, or be slashed to death.

It is simply the most amazing game you will ever play on a computer, and I encourage you to buy or download it while you still can. But with one caveat: only play it alone, in a darkened room, and with headphones. If you don’t do any of these, you may as well watch a documentary about Ireland on TV instead.

Part 4

But this post was about clouds, yes?

Actually, the first thing they reminded me of was the movie Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. You’ve probably at least heard of it. While the movie was technically made with 12 year-old girls in mind, I was so entranced with the dreamy landscapes in it that I got the comic books for it (at the top left in the picture), enjoyed them, and so then got into all his comic books in a big way. It turns out his other works are much darker and more political, but very environmentalist, so right up my alley in that way too. And they’re all visually so good that I want to show Alice when she’s old enough to appreciate them, but am worried that she’ll rip them up and eat them, which is what she does to all paper she manages to get her hands on at the moment.

I’m not going to try and take close-up shots from the books to show you what I mean. Instead see this clip from the movie, especially from 2 minutes in. Actually, this youtube clip is the first time I’ve seen the movie in English, and I find the girl’s American accent annoying. Not because it’s American, but just because its so damn strong; it doesn’t really go with my image of the character.

Part 5

Finally, the clouds reminded of a phenomenon I noticed when I first came to Korea. After I got over all the hairstyles and coffee girls on scooters, which made me think of Grease on acid (and was witty enough to use as a title in my first emails home), coming in May I couldn’t help but notice how, well, yellow and sleepy Korea looked. No, not Koreans, Korea. Coming in May, it was caused by all the pollen in the air, and a great deal of dust from China; not for nothing is the sea East of Korea known as “The Yellow Sea”. And back then, all of a sudden I understood why Chinese landscape paintings were so consistently mellow, tranquil and idyllic: the yellowness of the atmosphere means that it actually looks like that here.

Not that yellow no, but then you can google “Chinese Landscape Painting” for yourself for better alternatives. Lots of luck.

I don’t think this is all just in my head. My first ever flat, back in NZ, was with a soon-to-be-graduating Graphic Design student 5 years my senior, and he told me about how he’d read of an British artist who’d moved to Australia and NZ as an adult, and, having an eye for those sort of things, noticed how consistently dull and grey England was, but how bright and ultimately harsh and almost bleached the Antipodean skies were. After holidays back to the UK, I think he’s onto something.

I think we can all visualise dull and grey, and I don’t think many Britons, no matter how much they’re sweltering inside their offices as I type this, would have problems with my characterization of the British atmosphere, even if they’ve never left England. But ‘bleached brightness’ is a bit difficult to convey. But then I had an inspiration: May I present the movie…Three Kings, a movie with that rare quality of having an incisive and devestating political message (about the First Gulf War) but being fricking hilarious at the same time.

There’s the link for an intro and the movie poster to refresh your memory. The picture under that is closer to the actual color effects in the film, but unfortunately the picture quality of it nor of the Youtube clips below is quite like that of the original film. But they’ll give you a taste of what I mean. The first clip is the original trailer. The second is my favorite scence in the movie, with music like that playing in the midst of a gun battle. Check it out 2:55 mins in for the highlight of it.

And on that note, I will finally put this one post that has taken me nearly a week, that should have been 5 posts over 2 weeks, to bed. No complaints about the rushed writing towards the end please (not that any of you are still reading by now)…have you seen the length of this post? I sure as hell didn’t plan that!

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