Quick Update…and Soy Ice-Cream in Busan!
Unlike what I said yesterday, it took a little while longer than the time spent on my morning cup of coffee, and a hell of a lot more than a “few clicks here and there” of the mouse, but my first post on ZR5 Asian News is finally up. Please go now and check it out and make it the most popular post on ZR5!
In the meantime, this post you’re reading isn’t the first new and improved ”better quality post” for this blog that I promised yesterday sorry, like I said I have to think before I write it and am too lazy to do it today genuinely have a little research to do for it first. I just thought that in addition to the above, today I’d let Seoul readers of the blog know that my family and I will be coming up from this Sunday the 25th to Wednesday the 28th. I’ve already been fortunate enough to make some new friends in Gimhae last weekend via the blog (thanks again for your hospitality by the way, and please come over to Daeyeon-dong anytime!), so it would be great to meet people in Seoul too. We’ll be staying at a Korean friend’s house while they’re there, and of course I’ll want to hang out with her and her baby, but I hear that Seoul is pretty cold right now, so I’m pretty certain that I won’t be able to drag my wife out of the warm house to bookstores in Jongno. I’ll have a lot of free time while I’m there then, so give me a buzz if you’d like to meet (if you scroll down the page, you can find my email address on the right).
Finally, let me give a big note of appreciation to “busanlulu” for letting Busanites know here about a soy-milk ice-cream store in Seomyeon in Busan, which my wife and I went to yesterday. Now, a lot of people have said that they read my blog because its not like normal whiny expat blogs where people complain about Korean customs and the difficulty of finding good Western foods, but I think I can be forgiven for this lapse. After all, I’m allergic to milk, and as regular readers will know, I haven’t been back to a Western country in a long time. So, regardless of what some of you think of soy-milk ice-cream, that does indeed mean that I haven’t had icecream of any kind in 6 years!!! Can you imagine? Hell, considering how much I enjoyed that icecream, you’re lucky that this paragraph is all that I’ll devote to it in the end: in fact, I wanted to make a song and dance about it and post a video of the results to youtube, but unfortunately getting our camera fixed was the reason we were in Seomyeon in the first place. This one will have to do in the meantime:
Yep, I know it’s kinda ironic that after 6 years without it I find a soy-milk icecream store in Korea a whole 3 weeks before I’ll be going to Australia and New Zealand which has loads of it, but what can you do? Ah yes, warn others, so the same thing doesn’t happen to them.
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It is a big advantage to be descendant of northern Europe. Food is not that important there. So what? Do I miss something? No, and there is something addictable with korean cuisine.
You may feel a little differently after a few years here!
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m addicted to any Korean food, but I like I said when we met, I love how cheap, healthy and readily available it is, and I do definately often crave certain dishes (especially this 돌솟비빔빕), and will probably be missing them towards the end of my four week vacation.
Having said all that, I find Korean foods very samey, and often turn up to a restaurant only to be too bored with any of the 50 dishes or so there to want to eat them. I also find that Koreans have no concept of ‘light’ food, and still cook like it’s in the dark days just after the Korean War, when any rice, meat and vegetables that could be found were thrown together, with a big dollop of pepper paste being all that was needed to flavor them. 54 years later(!), it’s about time Koreans started learning how to use subtle flavors in cooking.
Want to have lunch?