Lee's Korea Blog

Moving House in Korea

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:44:00 +0000

One heartwarming general rule of thumb is that most kids will someday grow old enough to look after themselves. In the meantime, sleepless nights endured and food throwing events inflicted ensure that all parents pay the price for daring to persevere. But cutting through the relentless barrages of baby bombardment exists an arcane instinct continuing to power the minimal energy requirements needed for a civilised amount of patience.

Hence the continuation of the human race.

Every once in a while, Baengy learns a new trick. Some are taught, while others seem to materialise from thin air overnight. Not more than a few moons ago, we discovered her feeding herself.

We watched, astounded. While she just gave us a look that said "Yes?"

The intellectual development of human babies is driven by endless short-lived curiousity in all things forbidden. Then again, I guess it's easy to see why a champagne bottle might be more enticing than her regular barley water. Holding Baengy in this photo is Jinkang, who is also expecting.

The word expecting is rather nice. Although if indeed the Korean Farrands find it pertinent to produce further offspring, we will dispense with the word 'expecting' and instead focus on 'physically and mentally preparing'.

But babies do have their rewards. Mostly it's to do with wearing hats.

Baengy's favourite book is called Pizza Tiger.

Synopsis: An anthropomorphised child tiger extends warm invitations to his compatriots Eudyptes chrysocome (penguin), Ursus arctos (bear) and Giraffa camelopardalis (giraffe) to eat pizza. Much to their dismay, household ingredients are insufficient. Together with mother tiger, the four animals (who would normally not be in such friendly association in the wild) go shopping for ingredients. Due to differences in opinion as to what deliciousness entails, they choose strawberries, fish and the inexplicable Korean guk-soo (noodle soup) as ingredients. The story ends with mother tiger executing a culinary improbability by producing a pizza that all animals enjoy.

When I read it to Baengy, I enjoy pointing out the inaccuracies.

Earlier this year, we were offered accommodation in the Seoul National University family apartments. It's much cheaper and closer to the lab, but not quite as nice as our old place and not big enough for three adults. We had to part ways with Jang-Ho, Heather's brother, with whom we had been living. He now has a new place not far from us, and word on the street is that he has a new girlfriend.

The tabloids are going nuts.

For every itch that arises in Korea, there are numerous companies who specialise in scratching. Most can be found online, and these days for companies like removalists there's a peculiar reverse-auction method available. As a customer, you can post online what your needs are (expected moving date, address, amount of furniture etc), and different companies will ring you and offer their lowest bid. A few removalist company reps visited us in the days before the big move. One of them was a 60 year old guy who told us that he had been moving furniture in our area for over 30 years.

Then along came a younger representative from a different company who told us that he moves furniture faster and cheaper than the old guy we had just met.

In the end, the company we chose sent three men and a lady to our house. The price was W700,000, but we didn't have to pack up anything. All the clothes were still in our wardrobes, blankets on the beds and utensils in the kitchen cupboards. You can pay a cheaper price and do all the packing yourself, but we wanted to take it easy. Two of the men set to work piling our stuff into large blue boxes, while the lady went to our kitchen and started recording how everything was stored.

I think the third guy's job was to stand outside, smoke cigarettes and make sure nothing went wrong.

Because most Koreans live in apartments and because most apartments have small doors, nearly all furniture extraction on the peninsula occurs by means of skycrane.

The move went fairly smoothly, with the removalists even making our beds and hanging our pictures on the walls. They had drawn plans of where everything was stored in our old place and unpacked it all as accurately as they could.

Meanwhile, Baengy played some tunes on her baby piano to help us settle in.

Our friends from Adelaide, Damien and Susan, left for Australia around the same time we moved house. Whenever longtime expats head home, it's a great opportunity for a virtual garage sale. We picked up quite a few things, including their car, which runs on pure enthusiasm rather than gasoline.

We've named her Sunny the Sonata.

Prior to moving, we were a bit concerned about how our little offspring would fit into a change of abode. Babies will cry when they're bored and cry when they're overstimulated. Baengy just spent the night sitting quietly and staring at the new surroundings.

But early in the morning, she was up and happily chewing on her favourite gangnaengy rice puffs like nothing had happened. She's either a very flexible character, or somewhat forgetful. We like to think it's the former.

For those moving house in Korea, we recommend saving yourself the hassle of packing and unpacking. Pay a little more and all you have to do is stand around and watch. You can find the removalist auction services by searching on Naver for the term 이사경매.

Happy moving!

Product Review: Boba Carrier 3G

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:56:00 +0000

"Give me a place to stand and I will sling the Earth"

- Archimedes, perhaps.

It's not often that the Product Review Bell tolls ominously down the hallowed hallways and into the sprawling offices of LeesKoreaBlog.

*Donnnng!* *Donnnng!* *Donnnng!*

But indeed it does, from time to time. At which point some kind of product review usually occurs.

This story starts in the early spring of 2012. Outside, bouncy Korean sparrows chirp cheerfully in the warmer air. Sunlight twinkles through dewdrops on newly budding leaves awakening from winter slumber.

And long after morning nappies have been changed, a solitary baby sits in quiet contemplation.

We shall call her Big Baengy.

"Hello, what's this?"

As if by some miracle of postal express, a strange device Designed in California appears by her side.

Upon touching the plastic buckles and closely woven fabric, it expands gracefully to reveal its true Function.

It is a harness that can be used to ride Mother.

Much like how one can ride a Banshee, if harbouring appropriate courage.

Courageous banshee pilot, with appropriate safety headgear. Note the facial expression of confident exhilaration.

A sling is a device for carrying that which would normally be carried by arm and hand. This frees them for other important activities, like resting or administering gentle reassuring pats to a baby's bottom.

But our newest device is no ordinary sling. It's the Boba Carrier 3G.

The G's, I assume, stand for Gentle Gentrification (of the) Gwanak (area).

The Carrier is a comfortable and customisable carrier of cids (kids). We previously owned a sling whose brand shall remain nameless. Suffice to say, this one is better.

The Norwegians have a saying: Bad is called good when worse happens. And so in the case of slings encountered by the Korean Farrands, I guess we could say: Acceptable becomes undesirable when super-duperness appears.

Why so much fuss over a simple sling, you inquire?

For those happily unacquainted with Baby-Related Backpain, Newborn-Associated Nausea or Infant-Induced Insomnia, anything that eases the predicaments of parenthood is worth its weight in gold.

The Boba Carrier is thoughtfully designed and surprisingly comfortable. It's kind of like a Ferrari, I imagine, except affordable. The padding is in the right places and it fits the wearer snugly like a good shoe. And the clips all clip like clips should clip. That is, with smooth and easy action, yet reassuring sturdiness.

And the design is good. There are other styles available from the same company, but the main strap on ours can be flipped over to hold newborns. That means only one sling is needed per unit offspring.

If you've seen a sling or two before, well the Boba has two hidden pockets in the front, a handbag clip on the side, the dangly bits all tidy up nicely and the secondary clip on the upper back slides far enough to be opened and closed without dislocation of a shoulder.

If James Bond needed a sling, I'm pretty sure he'd use one of these.

Most importantly, this sling distributes more weight to the hips and less to the shoulders.

Which means that happy parents and gleeful babies can venture further on foot to more exciting destinations.

The other day we went slinging out in good old Nakseongdae Park. I couldn't help but wonder about the extra victories possible if General Gang Gamchan's horse had worn a Boba Carrier instead of a regular saddle.

Einstein once postulated that a chair, a table, a bowl of fruit and a violin was all that one needed to be happy. My recommendation would be: a lovely wife, a lovely baby, a lovely sling and a lovely park.

If you have a baby or know someone with a baby, have thought of having a baby or know someone who is thinking of having a baby, then buy a Boba. They ship fast and have excellent customer service.

The best place to get them is via their website: http://www.bobafamily.com/

Happy slinging!

Motile Forces

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Do you remember the day they reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet? I guess the consortium of star-gazing scientists responsible had good reason to do so. But for those in the general public, it was almost as if our feathers of general knowledge had been abruptly ruffled.

As well as wreaking havoc on our cosy relationship with the solar system, it also muddled up a few other things. There used to be a handy meme by which we could recall the names of our solar system neighbours: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto - which was: My Very Excellent Martian Just Showed Us Nine Planets.

But now it just stops at 'Nine'.

Real planets are now regarded as only those bodies that orbit a star and are massive enough to clear their neighbourhood of other circulating bits and pieces. In other words, they are planet-like, but not quite big enough to be planets just yet.

So if the International Astronomical Union can reclassify something according to those rigourous standards, perhaps we can too.

My proposal is that we reclassify human babies as dwarf people. Babies are similar to people in many aspects, but are not quite big enough to understand the bits and pieces that circulate in their immediate neighbourhood. And sometimes not even aware. During the cold winter months, we've been applying these muffs to the ears of our very own household Dwarf Person.

And by reading her body language, it often appears that she's completely oblivious to their presence.

Baengy will often sit, as snug as a bug in a sling, while we cart her around shopping centres and markets. At the time the photo above was taken, she was uncharacteristically quiet, although the later bulge in her nappy indicated that a Category 4 poop was in the mix.

Dwarf people, it seems, have well-mastered the art of stealthy pooping.

Due to various commitments, I've had to cut back on doing some things I used to enjoy, including Toastmasters. In the photo above, Gilles was predicting a future conversation that will occur between our daughter and another Toastmaster baby, Sejong Cahoon.

Baengy is developing well in every aspect, except that her hair is coming out in much the same style as my PhD. Kind of slowly.

Nevertheless we're encouraging it as 'good progress'.

Heather takes her to special daycare classes these days, in a room filled with a noisy abundance of Korean progeny. The conglomerated clutter of infantile exploration and prudent motherly oversight combines into a bubbly scene of choreographed pandemonium.

Like all mammals, Baengy feels most at home when grazing on coloured balls in the company of her own kind. In such circumstances it can be easy to lose track of her in the colourful mileu.

After all, she's got a round head, is kind of bald and wears cute baby clothes...

When a baby enters your life, a number of noticeable changes occur in quick succession. One of the first is that you become less able to visit bars and drink with friends. You instead find yourself hanging out more with other new families. At these coveted events, mothers will exchange information on baby food recipes, feeding habits and pooping schedules.

Fathers, in lower tones, will mostly share advice on domestic survival.

We've named Baengy's favourite item of clothing The Mongol Vest. We're thinking of embroidering the name Ghenghis Bhaeng on the back.

Then all she'll need is a motortricycle.

I tend to wake up in a similar position to how I fall asleep, while Heather and Baengy apparently share a gene that sees them wake up in all sorts of amusing contortions. Sometimes Baengy wakes up on the opposite end of the bed, and sometimes on the floor. The photo above is how I found her during one of her daytime naps, which usually last for around 45 minutes.

At the time, she may have been dreaming about a certain platform hero.

Baengy developed limited motility a couple of months ago. The first movements were fairly reptillian in aesthetic terms, mainly consisting of her swatting the floor with her palms and pulling herself around on her stomach.

Within a few days, it progressed into something reminiscent of a wounded soldier, still awkward but appreciably more human.

Strangely enough, her first movements occurred when we weren't watching. At first we wondered how she was flipping herself over on her stomach. With baby limbs, this can be more difficult than it sounds.

We discovered that she was employing the principle of angular momentum.

Then there were a few false starts. It was as if she knew what she wanted to do, but was yet to figure out the coordination necessary.

After that, we had a short period where she was crawling around, but only if we weren't watching. Whenever she started crawling, we would sit and stare, causing her to just sit and stare back at us. Eventually we found that she could be coaxed into moving with a dried blueberry.

One of our most useful items has been this babywalker, which has served as a handy place to put her when dishes need to be washed. The table keeps most things out of grabbing distance, which is important because that which can be grabbed can also be chewed.

It has also taught her a lot about basic movement, including the idea that walls generally cannot be traveled through.

She has since picked up a fair bit of speed and now responds to her name, or any name for that matter, if spoken in a tone that is sufficiently enticing. Her new skills and heightening awareness ensure that she's an attention magnet, pretty much anywhere we bring her. And that's good news for us.

All in all, I would have to say that dwarf people are fairly high maintenance, but well worth the effort.

Meeting the Mayor of Seoul: Courtesy of TNM Media

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

A good way to get in the firing line of serendipity is to seek out groups of people with whom one enjoyably chills. For me, those groups have been Toastmasters (a public speaking club) and Nanoomi, a conglomeration of independent yet mutually supportive bloggers. Nanoomi's parent is TNM Media, a company based in Seoul with an online media focus.

Last Friday some of our members were invited to have a Q&A session with the mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon.

While on my wonderful way to meet the merry mayor, I soon realised that my meagre understanding of Korean politics left a little to be desired.

Waves of insecurity ensued. Would I fit in with the politically-knowledgeable? Was I under-dressed? Was I indeed meeting the Seoul Mayor, or perhaps going to an equine farm to meet the Sole Mare?

Not to be swayed, I clutched my hastily translated question and decided I would employ that sage advice, to take things as they come and see what happens.

The very fact that we, as bloggers, were invited to have a chat with him was notable in itself. The mayors of Korea's largest city are very big fish, not least for their propensity to later win presidential elections.

Being a 'blogger' is a fairly broad description, and although some bloggers are thoughtful opinion leaders, you also have guys like me who just sit around and post photos of Big Baengy. So even before arrival, I was grateful for the opportunity to take part.

Arriving late for a meeting with the mayor will surely earn you a negative score on the Awesome scale. And while definitely not a habit of mine, I managed to rack up some overtime on the scenic journey to City Hall. In our unwritten rulebook, that is very unbecoming of a Nanoomite.

The meeting had already started when I arrived and Cynthia, our fearless leader, was waiting just inside the door, whereupon she signified her discontent with a tiny look of silent Doom. It was then time for me to go into damage control mode, and after calming the slight panic in my neurons with a mental clap, I sat on a chair and focused solely on maintaining an attentive facial expression.

My first impressions are only correct about 50% of the time, but my first impression of Park Won Soon was that he seemed nice. My Korean vocabulary is on par with that of a kindergarten kid, but my accompanying grammar skills are more around the monkey level. So although I couldn't understand a lot of what the good mayor was saying, his body language did speak well and it wasn't long before elements of charisma began to emanate. He listened patiently, took notes when necessary and answered thoughtfully.

We, the people, were soon allowed a free for all, better known in Starcraft circles as an FFA. Or, to be more precise a Q&A FFA.

Thus I had a dilemma. Do I raise my shaky hand and read my translated Korean question to the mayor, and risk the possibility of looking like a complete imbecile in the wrong classroom?

In vain hope that fortune may indeed favour the bold, my answer, was yes.

My question, which I read in Korean, was as follows:

"It can be difficult for potential mothers to choose between starting a family or keeping a stable job. Does the mayor have any plans to make it easier for new mothers to re-enter the workforce?"

"아직도 기혼 여성들이 아이를 가지는 것과 직장에 계속 다니는 것 중 둘 중 하나를 선택하는 것에 큰 어려움을 느끼고 있습니다 (일부 대기업이나 공무원이 아닌 경우) 시장님은 이러한 여성들이 다시 직장에 복귀할 수 있도록 하는 어떤 정책이 있나요?"

My pronunciation was off, clarity poor and delivery odd, but after some initial confusion about whether it was 'new mothers' or 'divorcees' that I was referring to, my question was answered a little something like this:

"보육의 사회적 부담이 중요하다고 생각한다. 출산율 높이기 위해서 많은 지자체가 돈을 주는데 돈을 준다고 아이를 낳겠습니까? ‘서울시 보육정책이 엉터리인 이유가 애를 키워보지 않은 4~50대 남자들이 정책을 만들어서 그런 거 아니냐’ 라는 칼럼을 본 적이 있다. 그래서 정말 여성들의 입장에서 와 닿는 보육 정책을 펴야 한다고 생각한다. 집에서 가까운 곳에 보육 시설을 확장하는 게 가장 좋은 방법이다. 보육은 개인의 문제가 아니라 사회가 책임져야 한다고 생각하고 중요한 정책으로 계속 해나가겠다."

For those who are interested, the video is here (1:14:30.)

Luckily, Cynthia provided translation, saving me the effort of pretending I understood everything. Basically the mayor's opinion is that child-raising is the collective responsibility of society as a whole.

I thought he gave a good answer.

Widhi also asked a question, as did QiRanger Steve via a newly met connoisseur of the Korean language, Andy from Kojects. In the photo above, our ever-pleasant Cynthia is whispering translations to QiRanger Steve, like a voice in the king's ear.

Either that or she was talking about her fabulous new haircut.

After the question session had ended, the mayor extended his hospitality and let us see his office. Bloggers like taking photos, and there we were, shamelessly snapping macro shots of his coffee cup, his favourite ballpoint pens and his functional food tablets (Propolis, to be exact). That was until one of his aides mentioned that the FFA had ended, and we were now documenting his personal space.

Sheepishly, the barrage of shutter clicks diminished to a dull roar, with the bloggers then shooting from more respectable distances.

Apparently a few of our fellow Seoulites have created a new genre of art called ParkWonSoonism. It consists of various manipulations of the mayor's appearance, and he has a few examples on his office walls.

Now I'm not sure what the correct procedure is when receiving pictures of yourself. I guess displaying pictures of yourself in your own office is a little funny. But then again, hiding pictures of yourself is even stranger.

It's one of those rare catch-22 situations in the world of mayors.

Displayed on his wall are Post-Its, from the citizens of Seoul. Some of them are suggestions, others expressions of support. Mayor Park is quite proud of this display, and I have no doubt that he's read them all. If I were to write one, it would go like this "시장님, 궁금합니다.... 혹시오세훈처럼아리수 (수돗물)를 좋아하십니까?"

It's a question related to my interest in Arisu.

Then it was time for a photo session. In the photo above, there are various Nanoomi folk and a TNM guy thrown in for good measure.

This particular photo is going straight to the pool room. The coolest thing about meeting the Mayor of Seoul is then being able to tell others that you have met the Mayor of Seoul. I have found that indirectly mentioning it is usually more fun.

"Yeah I missed that episode of 선덕여왕 last Friday... what was I doing... oh yeah, I was just hanging out with my new friend, the MAYOR OF SEOUL!!"

Upon arriving home with a buzz, my next dilemma was what to do when one is in possession of a mandarin from the Mayor of Seoul's fruitbowl.

I decided to hand it over to one of our household's most discerning of fruit critics, whose favourite fruit just happens to be mandarin.

Here Baengy Baengy! Oh look Baengy, it's a mandarin... your favourite!

It's 박원순시장님의 귤!*

*(Mayor Park's mandarin)

Baengy observed the fine details of the fruit, laying it out on her table, before deliberating on whether she should take a liberal or conservative approach to its consumption.

In the end, it was center-left and another victory for the moderates among us. The fruit of the mayor, it seemed, was delicious.

Overall it was a great evening with the mayor. I found him to be a friendly and sincere person, and someone seemingly capable of what must be a very complicated job.

Thanks go out to City Hall, TNM Media and Nanoomi, for inviting this young blogger out for an eye-opening experience.

Photo credits: TNM Media (mostly!)

Part-Time Work in Korea

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Long ago, a guy I once met told me that he liked baseball because it reminded him of life itself. For example, having a successful date would begin by first obtaining agreement from a second party that a date shall indeed take place. This, he said, could be thought of as making it to First Base. Hitting Second Base successfully would consist of a jolly night out where charm is served generously to a backdrop of a nice restaurant with dim lighting. Third Base would be the movies, or some such endeavour, while a home run was inexplicably symbolized by the flash of a grin, with a gold-capped molar thrown in for effect.

Upon later reflection, I've found that the Baseball-Life analogy can indeed be a useful way to describe a series of events. However, with the progress of time, the magnitude of significance becomes somewhat recalibrated.

To a man of the family persuasion, First Base would be a successful birth, free from medical complications or feuding between in-laws. Second Base would be decently raising a toddler in circumstances above the poverty line, while Third Base would be ensuring a wholesome education.

And I guess a home run would be when your kid moves out of home.

Heather and I are currently dashing for Second Base, with Baengy strapped on our collective back. One of the biggest difficulties that quickly becomes apparent upon departure from First Base, is that along with unwavering commitment and the warmth of parental care, babies also require a rather sustained ongoing financial contribution. Purchases of nappies, food, clothes, toys and books encroach considerably upon the territory of bank statements once dominated by visits to bars and nice restaurants.

I've been lucky to have had part-time work for around 15 years, beginning as a paperboy for the Messenger Newspaper back in Adelaide, to a restaurant cook in university and various jobs in Korea. While we could probably survive on my graduate student funding alone without the looming threat of scurvy, a little more to supplement the proverbial bread on the table is always helpful. Metaphorically speaking, we, of the Korean Farrand tribe, enjoy a little cheese with our bread.

And sometimes a Gorgonzola, which, incidentally, can be found at Costco.

Luckily, Korea is a busy place and opportunities can be found for those who are looking in the right places. A common way is to teach private English lessons on a part-time basis, but for those who have been around, you can get a job more focused on your particular interests if you have a good bunch of friends who are the right kinds of people. And the good news for me was that the right person happened to be an old housemate of mine, Anthony Nguyen, of surfing/ukelele fame.

Anthony's uncle is a heart surgeon in the US, and after a few meetings, introduced us to shiny new part-time jobs working for Dong-A University Hospital in Busan. We've been working for them since April 2011

We're consultants for the hospital's Clinical Trial Center, with Anthony drawing on his background in finance and me adding background elements of a medical/academic nature. Being a consultant can mean a lot of things, but for us it means doing a lot of English document editing, meeting a lot of industry representatives and networking with copious amounts of beverage.

Because I'm based in Seoul, most of my work is done online, editing manuscripts and preparing medical presentations on behalf of the center's doctors. Every once in a while, we're sent off to a conference or a meeting to represent the hospital and gain further insights. These past few photos are all from our trip to Jeju Island, for the Regional Clinical Trial Center forum.

I had been to Jeju a few times before, but coming as a student and coming as a consultant are two different things. For one, consultants have access to more extravagant cuts of meat.

About once a month we head to Busan for work and family-related purposes. We made it back for a trip that coincided with the fireworks festival some time ago.

Courtesy of Anthony's old apartment, Baengy experienced her first fireworks show. She stared long and hard at the pyrotechnic magic for about three minutes, before losing interest and deciding it was a good time for a nap.

As hospital representatives, we were also sent to Taiwan to attend the Clinical Trial Magnifier Conference. On the plane, I stumbled on some nostalgia - Street Fighter II, Champion Edition on the entertainment system. Back in middle school, we used to play this game religiously.

Unfortunately the difficulty level was locked at 8 stars, and the control pad was not very responsive. Much to the chagrin of the resident middle-school boy still inside me somewhere.

Taiwan is a nice place, and similarly in the midst of burgeoning economic explosion. The Taipei 101 looms above the neighbouring buildings, marking the skyline as some kind of monument to the legacy of affordable plastic toys we all received as kids in Australia.

Although we didn't have a lot of time to get out and about, we did make it to the night markets in the northern sector of Taipei. Here, live snakes were for sale, as medicine.

Markets are very similar in format throughout Asia. Wares are displayed and prices often haggled. As a general rule, they're also good places to buy freshly squeezed juice.

We tried some Taiwanese beer. It tasted a little like Korean beer with a mysterious aftertaste.

It was okay.

Anthony and I also thought it would be nice to visit a temple. Taiwanese Buddhist temples seem to have a lot of red and gold, while Korean temples have a lot more of the aqua-green colour.

The conference consisted of about 250 industry representatives. The man in the photo is Dr William Summerskill, a senior editor for The Lancet (a British medical journal) and a very pleasant man. That title slide in the background is one I made for our director.

Anthony and I delivered presentations on topics related to the Korean clinical trial industry. It seemed to go well.

The conference was fairly good overall, and we exchanged a small fortune in business cards.

Here are some members from our entourage. The man in the middle is Dr Kim, our director and a man of considerable generousity. On the far right is Dr Lee, a rather important individual currently entrusted with US$1 billion in Korean government funding. The pharmaceutical world operates on financial numbers a few orders higher than the normal world.

This dish is a speciality that even some Taiwanese locals have not tried. It's made with the reproductive glands of a male saltwater fish, which, due to their reproductive strategy, are much larger than one might expect. It's served with spring onions and hoisin sauce.

As fluent Konglish speakers would say, "It is believed to be good for the mans."

And this is a bottle of Taiwanese spirits, at 58% ethanol content. It tastes a little like the long lost cousin of soju, sent away for an exotic education in a tropical country.

These fried critters are another speciality called Dragonballs. They're the orbicular muscles of the mouth of squid, fried in batter. The mouths of squid are collected and the beaks discarded before cooking.

The taste was good, although very much like any other part of the squid.

It rained a lot in Taiwan when we were there. A kind of warm, sticky rain, not particularly unpleasant but better if absent. Our time there consisted of dashing into taxis between the hotel and the conference venue.

On the final night, we went to a nightclub near the Taipei 101 called Club Myst. Anthony was particularly fond of this place, although I found it to be a bit noisy and crowded.

And one of the other tasks we're entrusted with as representatives, is to welcome people from Seoul to the waters of Busan. To do this, we sometimes hire a yacht, complete with onboard booze and a Korean captain. Yachts like these can fit around 20 people, and a guided tour of the surrounding waters will cost around US$900 for two hours. Part of the deal is that Anthony and I are allowed to jump overboard when we're out at sea.

Here are some of the people we took boating last year, from Dr Kim's night classes.

The journeys are very enjoyable, at sunset, allowing us to go under the Gwangali Bridge.

This is the new Dongbaek Island residential development. I think those taller buildings are around 80 floors high.

By now, it may seem that we have a pretty sweet job with the hospital. We do have more than our fair share of fun, but there's also a lot of stress and hard work involved. This past week I edited medical manuscripts, around 100 pages in total. Manuscripts are articles written for academic journals, and tidying them up for submission can be somewhat daunting.

Nonetheless, I'm happy that Anthony's uncle hooked the job up for us. And although I enjoy incessantly annoying him with my sarcastic emailing skills, Anthony is proving to be a good working partner.

Finding good part-time work in Korea depends on a lot of things. It gets easier for those who have lived here longer, because it allows an understanding of the hierarchical nature of the social environment. There are also a few other quirks. Finding work in any of the big cities is best done through people you are close to.

After that, a bit of hard work and a resilience toward exasperatingly illogical situations can also be helpful.

Poop and Parenting

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:29:00 +0000

Life with a baby is a journey of discovery. It's mostly uphill, but every once in a while the view gets a little better. Childhood development is truly rewarding to observe, but a baby wailing at 3am can be merciless in every sense of the word. There is no resistance possible to such incessant crying, only unconditional surrender.

Forty minutes after a parent is pounded into complete submission through an unstoppable bout of endless crying, the baby often stops spontaneously (sometimes with a cheeky grin), leaving the parent in a confused state of mental disarray. And then as if plunged into a cloud of ether, the parent hits the pillow in narcotic slumber, before the next scheduled barrage three hours later.

The three major challenges for parents are sleepless nights, an extended state of vigilance needed throughout the day and diverse encounters with Baby Poop™.

Of these three challenges, a fascination with the gastrointestinal process often lands me in a dazed fixation on the topic of poop. Though I find baby droppings to be not entirely repulsive, I'll keep such photos off this blog, lest Baengy rediscover them many years in the distant future.

Basically, it's a mushy yellow substance dispensed in unpredictable bursts with an aroma that can best be described as humanised natural yoghurt.

To manage appropriate household responses, I've devised the Farrand Level Alert for Poop (or FLAP, for short). It's a code to quickly categorise the magnitude of a detected nappy event, with severity scale as follows:

Category 1: False alarm, flatulence.

Category 2: Mild peppering of the loins.

Category 3: Medium intensity deposit. Weighted browning evident.

Category 4: Potentially damaging situation. Notify Mother-at-arms.

Monumental Poop: Deposit has oozed beyond containment barriers. Automatic response for all household members to DEFCON 2 level.

Mother Of All Poops (MOAP): Catastrophic devastation. Expect weeks of clean-up and counselling for survivors.

Fortunately, we at the Farrand household have only been subjected to a Monumental Poop on two historical occasions. Both events were preceded by excess milk consumption, had tummy rumblings as an immediate forewarning and were followed with aftershocks of flatulence.

While Baengy will occasionally take interest in other household fluids, such as beer, her ingrained lactophilia means inevitable rejection from her Bumbo table.

Very rarely will anything remain on her Bumbo table for long, before being thrown on the floor.

Her interest can be aroused by stirring, as we've found when mum scrambles eggs.

And also when mum stirs jjajjangmyeon.

Babies have excellent intuition when it comes to knowing what is important to adults. Trying to entertain a baby with jingling keys will rarely last 30 seconds, whereas clipping your own fingernails will evoke intense fascination and a futile attempt to grab the clippers.

Similarly, a plethora of colourful toys on the ground will not nearly be as fascinating as two bowls of hot soup on a table. And no matter how many times her inquisitive paw from below is swatted away, it just comes creeping back.

In a failed attempt at reverse psychology, I have indeed pretended to clip my nails with keys, and engaged in mock dining of colourful toys on a table. But babies are wily creatures.

They'll just give you a stare that says "What on Earth are you doing?"

One thing that rings true for both first-aid training sessions and babies, is that dummies and slings can work wonders.

I guess the prehistoric sling was the monkey mother's arms, while the prehistoric dummy was the monkey mother's nipple. From this, all I can conclude is that our prehistoric ancestors were incredible parents.

I don't know if a thousand-yard-stare is a sign of enjoyment, but Baengy sure is quiet when slung.

It also magnifies her comedic appearance when wearing hats.

This is a ParentCam shot, taken from a natural perspective when slinging. Baengy will often stare at me like this, for minutes on end.

I have no idea what she's looking at, and I've found that staring back just prolongs the engagement.

And walking around in a sling will magically put her to sleep in around 5 minutes flat. Maybe it's the warmth of the human body, or the close sound of a heartbeat. The result is always the same.

Knocked out like a butterfly in chloroform.

Autumn passed some time ago, taking with it the maple colours around Jahayeon, the campus pond.

We managed to squeeze in a picnic with homemade kimbap and boiled eggs. When I was young, I always wondered why parents liked tupperware so much. Now I know.

As a person who likes pointing out firsts, having a baby is a great thing. Baengy's first picnic was met with approval, but she was completely fixated on us and not the nice surroundings.

Next time we could just have a picnic in the living room.

Those who agree to babysit for the Farrands receive an automatic Order of Merit. Heather's mother has done it on more than one occasion, resulting in her status rising to Hero of the Farrand Family.

But in a puzzling turn of events, sometimes when babysitting has been organised, we squander the precious time by running in charity marathons.

Heather's father may have something to do with that. Just like my old man, Heather's old man likes to run around.

But we did our ten kilometres in rather nice weather and felt pretty good about it. Father-in-law's time was one hour and six minutes, which is great for a man of his age.

Oh look, he's eating natural yoghurt.

There's a little playground near our house that Baengy isn't quite tall enough to romp around in. So we just carry Baengy from place to place and she seems to enjoy it enough. These days she's eating a lot and growing fast.

Our developing morning ritual is to exclaim how much she grew overnight.

Our day at the park ended in tiny smiles, those frequent yet immeasurable rewards for tireless parenting. We're looking forward to a lot more of them over the months to come.

The Farrand Family Korea hopes you had a merry Givmas/Festivus/Christmas, and wishes you an exciting new year.

Baengy Bathtime!

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:19:00 +0000

It could be said that babies are like an industrial processing system for milk, from which useful nutrients are extracted for growth and development.
Liquid output is then excreted from every orifice in the repertoire of their miniature human anatomy.

In biological terms, we could think of them as compact milk bioreactors.

Baengy spends much of the day crying, drooling or otherwise liquefying a normally dry environment. To avoid the yuck factor, I simply remind myself that drool is just a dollop of orally hydrated glycoproteins, while boogie is much the same but of a nasal origin.

While being somewhat hypersensitive to household cleanliness (spotting a hair on the floor from a distance of eight metres), Heather suffers from no such aversion to baby fluids, including poop. Baby poop smudged on surfaces normally unassociated with baby poop are nonchalantly dismissed as 'Just Poop™.'

For this young blogger, the wonders of nature continue to amaze.

Cute as Baengy's face is, it often needs a wash. We experienced three phases of bathhood behaviour from our daughter, as follows:

First 2 months: Oblivion

2 to 3 months: Rebellion

3 months until present: Acceptance

As with many Koreans, Heather is of strong conviction that there exists a build-up of dead skin (때) on everyone, that must be removed daily for one to remain of good standing in the community. For Baengy, this means that mother ensures a thorough cleaning of every bodily sanctuary where 때 might possibly exist.

The (hidden) neck is an area of particular focus.

Unfortunately Baengy has developed a taste for soapy bathwater, and much as we try to discourage it, she'll often sample her surrounds by giving her hands a dip.

"Today's hors d'œuvre: a succulent baby thumb dipped in warm bathwater."

May Thor strike me down for doing so, but I've been roughly estimating Baengy's developing intelligence levels in comparison to familiar animals. As a keen biologist and animal enthusiast, it's an irresistible temptation. At the time this photo was taken, I estimated that her quiet blank stare was indicative of the IQ of a turtle. Nowadays, she's closer to a domestic cat.

We're expecting a baboon within the next few months.

Baengy enjoys a good scrub, along with the accompanying baby-talk happily provided by Mrs Farrand. Seeing her in the tub like this reminds me of that old rhyme:

Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub,

And how do you think they got there?

The butcher, the baker,

The candlestick-maker,

They all jumped out of a rotten potato,

'Twas enough to make a man stare

As a parent, I'm experiencing the pleasure of reuniting with past songs and children's stories, the entertaining poignancy of which I had long since forgotten. Dr Seuss books are providing exceptionally good material.

I recommend The Foot Book.

And with a bit of soap and water, every baby is looking their best. Baengy's bathtime ritual has been repeated almost every day for the past six months, to which we must credit the Lady of the House. This despite the not-so-infrequent semi-submerged kicketty kicks that send arcs of soapy water in her general (and now unflinching) direction.

Decidedly less bemusing after so many recurrences.

When I'm home in time to witness these events, I often receive Baengy straight after the wash, with a freshly cleaned body reminiscent of a samgyetang chicken. I then proceed to pat her dry with towels, before dressing her for bed. Babies, in general, seem to prefer nakedness over cloth and when especially alert will often resist being clothed with admirable yet futile protest.

This coming Christmas will be the first such event with our daughter. I guess that means we'll be making some extra special festive food, like Santa's Rice Porridge and Rudolph's Formula Milk.

Now there's something to look forward to.

Ken Wong Comes to Korea

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:20:00 +0000

"We're all passengers on the ship of life... and my ship is heading to the realm of old people."

- in a recent letter to a friend

Around 10 years B.B (before Baengy), one of my closest friends was a chap named Ken Wong at the Norwood-Morialta Middle School. He and I would discuss the important things in life, like the theoretical speed limit for a Mechwarrior or the presence of AT-STs in the Battle of Hoth. Our destinies diverged, and I became more interested in social rebellion while he became fixated on graphic art. For years we lived parallel lives with little knowledge of each other, until I tracked him down on the other side of the Yellow Sea. Before long, in a much vaster homage to our reciprocal house visits between Dernancourt and Magill, he flew to Seoul from Shanghai by means of aluminium plane.

They say that fundamentally, our personalities are irreversibly defined during the first 12 years of life. After that, only minor changes will occur. Say for example, my personality was defined as mint at the age of 12. By the age of 29, my flavour would still be mint, but perhaps mint-choco-chip, or spearmint. It is not possible to change from mint at 12 years old to lemon sorbet at 29.

In the bemusing-yet-understandable situation above, after arriving in Seoul, Ken found himself tying helium balloons to some rungs on the side of a wall. Somehow this told me that he was pretty much the same guy I knew, all those years ago.

Ken and Baengy got along like a cat and a treadmill. Baengy, in general, doesn't mind being picked up and taken for mini-tours of the immediate surrounds, provided mum is within eyeshot.

Over-enthusiastic baby handlers who hold Baengy for longer than 5 minutes, outside of mum-viewing distance, soon find themselves a recipient of baby squeals, frantic struggling and kicketty-kicks.

Ken's sister Emily also came along for her first visit to the land of writhing seafood. And with all visitors who come to Seoul, I felt the need to show them some pylons.

As we used to say in the middle school days:
"Some day in the distant future, we shall view pylons together."

Ken is a formidable art nerd, and I'm a less formidable science nerd. We both appreciate the biology of octopuses, movies by the Coen brothers and the fact that someone beat Sim City.

If temples have been seen, folk villages undesirable and Seoul N Tower unremarkable, what else can one do in Seoul? We ended up going to Insadong, Gangnam, the Han River and Times Square.

Out the front of Times Square Seoul is a wrought iron monument, the meaning of which eludes me.

Being the inescapable artist that he is, Ken is drawn to surrounding examples of art like a bug toward a windshield.

An arcane motherly instinct present in the vast majority of human females creates a broad smile whenever a baby is slung to them. Baengy is a whopping 7.8 kilos these days, and we're only too happy to have someone else carry her around a shopping mall.

Down the rabbit hole we went, stumbling upon this imprisoned giant teddy bear, whose job delighting kids appeared nothing to envy. Whenever I picture myself being climbed upon like this by my kid(s) of the future, I imagine a feeling of overwhelming tiredness laced with necessary patience.

Baengy is an attention magnet, whose tentacles of distraction reach out and subdue innocent bystanders.

Fortunately she isn't carnivorous (only a devout lactivore).

There's even less Mexican food in Australia than there is Korean food. During celebratory occasions these days, I often feel like eating something other than pickled vegetables, gochujang and self-cooked meat.

On The Border is a Mexican restaurant doing the rounds at the moment. Our verdict is that they're conclusively superior to Dos Tacos in every aspect except pricing.

Wanna hear some geek humour?

"The number of particles in a guaca-mole is equal to Avocado's Constant."

Haha. Hilarious.

Surf and turf, Mexican style. Yum.

On The Border wrapped up our long overdue reunion with Ken quite nicely. To where he is going next, I know not, but hope to see him again in the not-too-distant future.

That little Panda was Ken's gift to Baengy. These days if you enter a room unannounced, stand outside her field of view and call her name, she'll start looking around for you. She hasn't yet mastered the usage of peripheral vision, but is rapidly getting better.

Previously she used to look around the room and if she saw my legs or body, she'd scan right past in the continuing search for the Origin of The Voice. But nowadays when she sees my legs, her eyes will slowly follow the trail of human body upwards to find the location of the Face from Whence the Voice Cometh. The process takes around 10 seconds.

And to reward her for such success, I always have an expression of feigned amazement, which invariably invokes a giggle or two.

Heather calls Baengy 'chim-jaengy' which means something like "drool person". Throughout most of the day, she's slobbering over items of inspection like a hairless St Bernard.

When I think about it, it's kinda funny how she has only ever consumed milk since birth. She was born at 3.6 kilos and is now more than double that weight. So more than half her body mass is just converted lactation.

Yet another fascinating idea courtesy of Human Babies:

Composed of and powered by milk.

Strange Encounters of the Infant Kind

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:08:00 +0000

The other day at work, I was looking at photos of my daughter when my phone rang. The caller ID indicated it was my wife. I picked up the call but it cut off, so I rang back.

"Baengy dialled your number, she was sitting on the phone."

While that little moment was the first definitive attempt at First Contact, there have been other occasions where I felt communication was attempted. Unfortunately the language of babies is cryptographically advanced and nobody I know has the cipher key.

From what I can tell, babies communicate through a combination of hypnotism and semaphore. They'll stare straight into your eyes, intensely but blankly, conjuring some kind of abyss that penetrates the mind. At the same time, they'll wave their arms around mechanically in simple morse code. When the receiver fails to decipher the message repeatedly, tears and wailing break out, which subside only when the baby is picked up and comforted.

The other day when this happened, I realised what the original message was: "It's time to hold me!"

One of the advantages of the Bumbo is that it allows the preparation of food.

Immobilisation of a baby is a marvellous thing, and is situationally more advantageous than having half your DNA rolling around on the living room floor.

It's rare these days for Heather and me to be able to enjoy a nice sit down meal at home. We're either exhausted or out of groceries. Luckily, this crafty chef knows that chopping a lot of veges and a bit of boiling can be passed off as cooking to an unsuspecting clientele.

I'm convinced beyond reasonable doubt of a supernatural link between babies and grandmothers. In some parallel world where babies are rockstars, grandmothers could be their hordes of adulating fans. This revelation struck me when I realised that rockstars often greet delighted fans with an air of nonchalance, while being generally dismissive of other rockstars.

Rockstars and fans also wear very different kinds of hats.

Hmm, yes.

Definitely some kind of rockstar.

We went for a walk in Geumjeong Park not so long ago, where I was witness to an historic event. Three generations of women from the Jung family, engaged in the ritual of babyslinging, Korean style.

Baengy enjoys being slung. She'll keep an eager watch from her new vantage point, like some kind of autonomous periscope scanning from left to right.

And I've noticed that she doesn't seem to stare for any specific purpose. It's just staring for the sake of staring, especially at passers-by. It has reaffirmed my belief that all humans, if stripped of social entrainment, bias and knowledge, would probably spend most of the day staring at other people's faces.

Baengy's head recently surpassed average Korean Pear size. That was a big milestone in our books.

We hope it stops somewhere between grapefruit and watermelon.

The first thing that a baby probably learns about themselves and other youngsters is that they're less adept at motor control than adults.

Luckily Baengy has learned to blink. Cousin Yujin will often launch an affectionate assault with very little warning.

And to round out this little post is a short task for our dear readers (and leaders?)

Match the emotive descriptions to the facial expressions above:

a) Delight

b) Accomplishment

c) Disgust/Horror

Good luck and see you soon.

Hey Cockalorum!

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:31:00 +0000

Aye¹(also ay)

noun.

An affirmative vote or voter.

Ex. The ayes outnumber the nays on this issue.

Hey

interjection.

An expression indicating surprise, dismay, discovery, etc, or calling for another's attention.

Ex. Hey cockalorum! (To view the definition of Hey cockalorum, activate your Merriam-Webster unabridged FREE TRIAL now!) ...

Let us pause for a moment to marvel at the emerging business strategies of free online dictionaries.

Okay I'm done.

Not long ago, 'Aye' and 'Hey' went down in history as the first identifiable words to emerge from Baengy's mouth. Audibly, they were more like "aaaaya" and "aaheey", but the author of Lee's Korea Blog is not one to deny credit where credit is due. One could endlessly debate the age old enigma "If a word is used unknowingly and completely out of context by an infant with no concept of words, is it still a word?"
To which I would say "Definitely. Please."

After all, if someone mumbles some meaningless nonsense in their bed while dreaming unaware, it's certainly enough to get them arrested by the Thought Police.

And I like to think that Baengy is actually expressing an early desire to participate in democratic process, while expressing her surprise and/or dismay at the general state of today's political landscape.

We pseudoinherited this babywalker from Heather's second sister. Pseudoinheritance is when a hand-me-down must eventually be returned to the giver, because the giver is pregnant with another baby on the way.

In the photo above, Baengy is greeting the walker with her customary gesture. For suckling reasons, the mouth is the most developed tactile organ of the human infant. As such, babies often investigate new objects by placing them within the mouth cavity, or for larger objects, by sucking on them. And I've observed that it's not always done in the most elegant way.

More like the early days of Soviet spacedocking, a bit of a hit-and-miss affair.

The woollen hat Baengy's wearing in this photo was knitted by Heather's mum. I prefer to call it a Brain Cosy.

Also note the emblem on her jumpsuit. I couldn't help but notice that it seems like the baby version of Amnesty's logo.

Along with attempting to revive words deserving of more attention, this young blog author also indulges in the forgotten art of frivolous nicknaming.

The blue patch on our daughter's left foot is a birthmark. Somewhat comically, I happen to have a similar one on my right hand. Baengy Bluefoot is my newest nickname currently doing the rounds. Earlier, her common household name was Milkytongue - due to her habit of finishing milk sessions, but somehow neglecting to perform the final swallowing action. This results in her tongue remaining visibly milky.

Here's Baengy Bluefoot, passed out on her mother's lap. We've long since learned the folly of waking her too soon, and her entire body is littered with motion sensors.

The indentation at the top of her forehead is called a fontanelle. It's a membranous part of a baby's skull that allows the bony plates to flex during birth. It also pulses with her heartbeat. Eventually it closes up and becomes bone (ossification), which coincidentally renders her entire brain impenetrable to ultrasound imaging. In other words, her skull becomes an acoustic fortress... which I'm only saying because it's fun to say.

Fontanelles are the reason why Heather's mother calls Baengy daechu-mori, which means Jujube¹ head.

¹Ziziphus zizyphus, a dried Korean date.

Fontanelle means fountain in French. These ones near the Hoam Faculty house caught Baengy's eye for a good five minutes. One could imagine that sparkly, stimulating objects would hold her attention the longest. But that isn't always the case. I've observed her to be fixated longest on the most unlikely objects, namely bits of discarded fruit peelings and the wrinkles on my forehead.

Baengy likes looking at things, and I like showing things to others. That's why I have this blog. We're a good match. I try to narrate my showing sessions to Baengy in an NPR-documentary style.

"And this is a device for aiding sausage consumption, colloquially referred to as a barbecue plate..."

I often have to work on the weekends, and sometimes wife and baby come along for a visit. To my knowledge, Baengy has successfully stared at every piece of furniture.

They'll often wait around and watch me like this until I'm finished.

Here's the new chairman of the board, sitting in my spot. The politically correct term would be chairperson, or a word I have recently coined myself:

Chairbaby

noun.

A baby who presides over meetings and ensures business is conducted in an orderly fashion.

Ex. "This meeting's chairbaby is none other than the amazing Ashley Farrand, with a full one hundred days of life experience. The meeting shall begin when she says the word 'Aye'."

When not chairing meetings of dubious outcome, Baengy can often be found slung to her mother in prominent Seoul locations. Wikipedia just told me that in this particular situation, we can say that the mother is wearing her daughter. How interesting.

She's like a little hot water bottle during these cooler autumn nights.

Baengy is a fine little baby, and Heather is a fine mother. I do what I can to clean poopies and make funny faces, but Heather is the real star. Credit where credit is due. I've recently decided to strive to be a more helpful nuisance around the house.

And so, Hey cockalorum! I guess that's the end of this blog post.

*For those wondering what cockalorum means, it's a noun. A little man with an unduly high opinion of himself

100 Days After The Big Bang

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:48:00 +0000

The feeling of grogginess experienced by someone who has just awoken, but whose body and mind is in need of further sleep, is called sleep inertia. At the Farrand residence, sleepless nights precede sleepy mornings on every day of the week ending in the letter Y.

Perhaps as some kind of ethereal compensation I have yet to understand, it could be said that the rocky road of early life is paved with abundant milestones. Ashley recently reached 100 days of age, giving us time to pause and reflect on the road we've covered.

Here are some videos from along the way.

This is the family that Baengy was born into. When this video was taken, Heather was only a few months pregnant, with Baengy just a suspended morsel of fragile life. Three female toddler cousins and numerous uncles and aunts ensured a consistent dull roar in the background, for Baengy's developing neurons to ponder.

The first thing that surprised me about Ashley was that she her little gums were a single line of upright flesh. I guess I should have known, but I previously imagined gums to be rather flat in the absence of teeth.

And like all babies born à la Homo sapiens, she came into this world blind as a bat. Although it often seemed that she could see us in the early days, what was really happening was that her eyes were looking in the general direction of where sound was coming from.

Crying is the first word in an infant's vocabulary. The younger they are, the cuter the pitch. So far we've translated the following definitions of crying:

"Waaaah, waaaaah" - I am hungry and/or sleepy

"Waaaah *hic* waaaaah *hic*" - I have hiccups

"uuu-waaa, uuu-waaa" - I dislike train rides to Busan

"A-a-a aaaa, a-a-aaaa" - I cannot see any adults and would like a cheek rub

"AAH! AAAAAH AYAAAHH!" - My prior requests have been ignored

Heather's voice at this stage must have sounded like garbled nonsense, although one would imagine somehow familiar and reassuring. She's saying "Are you hungry? Ooooh yes, you're hungry. You want some milk..."

These are the kicketty kicks that Baengy does when she's upset. When she first started doing them, it was with her right leg only. I therefore surmised that she was right-handed. When she's angry nowadays, she can cycle her legs like she's riding a bicycle.

Balance is something we adults take for granted.

A Bumbo is a device for immobilising a baby in an upright position. Baengy cannot yet locomote in any appreciable way, but the Bumbo is handy in that she is often happier when she's upright. That's because Baengy's newest hobby since she received the gift of sight, is looking.

Looking is another one of those free things in life that most of us take for granted.

These days she's getting more responsive and displaying primitive forms of curiousity. Items that have held her interest are often left with a complimentary smear of drool.

Baengy can touch her face with her hands, but has yet to figure out the dubious link between having one's eyes covered, and the diminished ability to see.

This is Baengy's newest trick. Evidently aware of the dangers of being smothered, she has developed her own close-in weapons system, which is a kind of primitive short range acoustic device. Good for repelling pirates and boisterous mothers.

All things considered, we're having a grand old time with our daughter, and the irritability of sleep deprivation is at least somewhat alleviated by the odd giggle or a brand new facial expression. The next milestone we're both looking forward to, and simultaneously dreading, is when Baengy receives the gift of self propulsion. We'll be sure to inform you when and how it happens.

Rain in Seoul

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:26:00 +0000

"Après moi le déluge"

(After me, the flood)

A person to whom I was listening was once talking about time management. The emerging point being that everyone tends to focus on time management, when really they should be thinking about priority management. When you get your priorities clear, time will take care of itself.

That was nice, I thought.

But what to do if one has too many priorities?

"People say 'I'm taking it one day at a time'. You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works."

- Hannibal Buress

If it weren't for a daily breakfast and a splash of humour when needed, I think I'd go a bit nutty. Not to say that going nuts isn't a good thing, it just makes it more difficult to accomplish tasks that require a degree of focus.

A baby and a parent can be thought of as two celestial objects orbiting each other in space. During pregnancy, the baby is a growing moon in fast orbit, inflicting a noticeably enlargening wobble on the lifestyle of the parent. Only by sheer weight of inertia, can the parent maintain accomplishment of daily tasks like doing the laundry or going shopping.

However, the gravity of the baby eventually increases to such a size that the parent's life stops and then in an unusual cosmic event, begins to revolve around the baby. At 3 months of age, the baby is sufficiently massive that once commonplace tasks like, say, eating or sleeping, often times become an unwinnable battle.

Most days at the Farrand household begin at 3am. At this unholy hour, Big Baengy will often make a sound, which I will call a snickle. It's a kind of snorting sound that she makes when she's about to wake up.

One snickle soon follows another, and ten or so snickles later, Baengy is awake and needing attention.

If such attention is not acceptably forthcoming, Baengy activates her personal siren, which can penetrate the deepest of adult dreams like some giant serpentine claw that yanks one from the depths of serenity and into a world of cacophonous din.

If the laws of physics are being policed by some kind of deity, I would like to promptly bring it to their attention that many of the laws are being broken every night at around 3am.

There would be no other way to explain how a body so small can create a sound so loud, for such an extended period of time.

But life hasn't all been about bawling babies. Arthur came over to our department a while ago and gave us a presentation on statistical analysis. One of my hobbies at university is to figure out new ways to educate ourselves.

Nisha also gave a summary of life in Korea. Her time here finished and she left for the greener pastures of the London School of Tropical Medicine.

Did you know that malaria comes from the words mal = bad and aria = air?

Baengy tends to emit her fair share of malaria in the mornings, to the tune of a tiny trumpet.

Jina and Franco's Trattoria serves cuisine that tastes even better when paid for by the lab credit card.

One thing I've noticed in Korea is that there's no medium quality pasta. Sorrentos and Mr Pizza serve synthetic overpriced nonsense not worthy of sale, while places like Trattoria and Tombola dispense immaculately flavoured, but small, lumps of heavenly spaghetti.

In Australia you can get good cheap pasta at quite a few places. But then again, it's difficult to find good cheap kimchi. I guess it all balances out.

I also had the pleasure of drinking wine while Superman played the piano. This was a Hollywood themed night for the Area 30 Toastmasters clubs. I was supposed to be Neo and/or Morpheus.

Art Michalak coined the nickname Neopheus.

And in the immortal words of Impatient Chicken, we were serenaded by a co-worker again.

Actually, there were a few good performances that night.

My favourite ongoing wine joke is from Jef Robison. Whenever someone complains about something incessantly, he will quip

"Would you like some cheese with that whine?"

Cassie Sung also took off for greener pastures. For her, those were the hallowed fields of Vancouver. She's studying environmental management, a field to which I wholeheartedly tip my symbolic hat.

She might be interested in Upcycling and Mossariums.

Mount Gwanak towers over my lab like a watchful guardian. I like to think that it feels a certain amount of displeasure whenever I procrastinate.

I spotted this humourously long name for a workshop at the law school entitled 'International Seminar and Workshop on the Development of Multi-Disciplinary Program on Sustainability and Environmental Management.'

They felt it wise to leave out the ubiquitous -in the Asia Pacific Region suffix.

In this photo, you may notice that Baengy has a rather large cranium. I noticed it too. She has evidently concluded that her future hyperintelligence necessitates an expansionist policy in gray matter real estate.

She is also somewhat neckless. To explain this, I've come up with the Neckless Baby Hypothesis. In summary it states that babies have shortened necks to reduce the chance of whiplash, much like how a car-crash neckbrace is designed to immobilise the head. One comical outcome of this is that it's very easy to sneak up on a baby from a peripheral origin.

Then again, the most common outcome of sneaking up on a baby and surprising them is akin to the facial expression of a bug staring at a wall.

Domestic life is fairly good, especially when Baengy endows our household with one of her non-crying excerpts from the Book of Early Life.

But undeniable cuteness compensates for all inconveniences to that point experienced.

Goo-goo-goo, ga ga. I'm pretty sure that babyspeak is a natural instinct of parents. However, it's different in different countries.

For example, Heather uses the Korean form "ah-ja-ja-ja jaaa! ah ja-ja!"

It's worthy of further study by an infantile linguist.

And just as I enjoy a good gorgonzola, Baengy enjoys a good cheek rub.

A cheek rub for the cheeky, that's what it is.

The hanging mobile is a mysterious device with arcane powers.

The witchcraft it weaves, I ponder not.

Like some kind of primordial hallucinogen operating as suspended semaphore, it holds Baengy's undivided attention for minutes on end. And yes, minutes on end could just as well be a short eternity, in which a depraved parent is free to prepare a meal or visit the latrines.

The current mobile is black and white, designed to catch the attention of babies up to three months (who are unable to distinguish colours). Each of the toys makes a rattling or squeaking sound when agitated, and one of them plays a battery-operated "It's a Small World After All." Baengy will gaze at each artifact intensely, as if it is somehow communicating to the observer some hidden truth.

Overall, a splendidly conceived device worthy of praise.

An Auspicious Photoshoot

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Incontiguous thoughts swirled, like milk in hot coffee.

A lab meeting tomorrow. An experiment to reschedule. Some emails to send. I should really start learning Korean again. And start running too. What's the weather going to be tomorrow? Probably too hot for running. I haven't blogged for a while. Maybe I should fire off a post before sunrise.

Who said insomnia couldn't be productive?

Well, I don't know if it's insomnia per se if it's primarily due to a tiny member of the human race with a disproportionately loud voice, wailing to the lyrics of a song that goes "waaaa, wa-wa.... waaaaaaaa"

But look at her! How can anyone be upset at such an adorable 3am wake-up call? Certainly not this stalwart young... slightly tired.... zzzz ...bloggerrr zzz

....

Surf Lifesaver Ashley! Hooray.

This photoshoot occurred when she had just turned 50 days old. She looks pretty much the same these days, but right after she was born, her face changed a lot each day.

I think it had something to do with being suspended in amniotic fluid for nine months.

This photo is on our desktop and gets a lot of chuckle-mileage. I used to be rather ambivalent towards the old Anne Geddes calendars in my youth.
But recently I've detected a stirring in the neurons of my brain responsible for the appreciation of baby-studio photography.

The studio photographers must know a thing or two, because I've long since tried to get Ashley to put her arms that way and keep them there. Even after carefully explaining to her that I'd like to replicate the cuteness seen in the studio photographs, she only holds the pose for a nanosecond before her spring-loaded arms pop out, upwards and into the air, like some kind of victorious jelly.

I suspect some kind of 3M adhesive patches were used.

Our little one really is an angel. Although definitely not the angel of sleep.

Cheonsa-Ashley. Bringer of cute insomnia.

Ashley has progressed in leaps and bounds. While before she was incapable of lifting her head or controlling her legs appreciably, she can now turn her head autonomously and kick in a sensible manner. Sometimes she'll kick us when we change her nappy.
Well, it's not really a kick, but a cuter version of a kick.

A kicketty-kick.

Baby skin is quite possibly the softest known material in the universe. I'd gladly use Ashley as a pillow, if not for the weight of my head. Come to think of it, babies are pretty well-designed in general. They smell quite nice and can usually be found in the same place you left them last.

Heather is a star-mother. She sleeps with Ashley in the spare bedroom and sings her back to sleep during her nightly outbursts of baby-song that penetrate every crevice of our humble abode. Ashley soon falls back to sleep, dreaming of whatever it is that babies dream of. I like to entertain the idea that they're about milk, mother, blurry images and muffled voices.

In the mornings when I go in to greet her, she gives me a toothless pseudo-smile, like some old ajosshi. -"Keep you up at night? Who... me?" - And sometimes she gurgles softly as if she's trying to tell me something. I always gurgle back.

So even though good sleep is a good thing, a multitude of other good things are making up for the loss.

And that brings us to 4:30am. Time to get back to sleep.

Life feat. Lil Ashley

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Last week I finally located my old middle school friend, Kenneth Wong on Facebook. Both he and I spent many an afternoon class at the Morialta campus producing various flickbook animations in our maths textbooks, in the vain hope that we would someday become famous animators. Only one of us succeeded. Ken is now an accomplished artist living in Shanghai. In the eyes of an uncultured scientist, an artist becomes accomplished when they no longer need to worry about employment.

You can see some of his handiwork here.

Ken and I spent some time catching up online, although how he circumvents the Great Firewall of China is beyond my understanding. When we were young and extremely geeky, some of our favourite topics of conversation were console gaming, science fiction and inanely hypothetical situations. I often claimed (on paper) that my quarks were bigger than his.

It's funny how some things change and some things don't, while time moves on regardless. In some of my more recent studies of the human experience, I've observed that time is indeed influenced by the gravity of any situation.

The birth of our daughter has proven sufficiently situationally dense that it has distorted perception of time. In some ways it feels that things have slowed down to single frames of motion. They say that time compensates for this temporal anomaly by later accelerating and allowing children to grow up so fast.

Hoping not to let these events slip past the archives of memory, this young blogger will try to be more diligent in affixing them firmly to the walls of his little blog.

Sometimes we call her Ashley and sometimes 은서 (Eunseo), but overwhelmingly it's still variations of her fetal name of Big Baengy. It just seems more appropriate. Even Korean Grandmother prefers it.

Recent conversation in heavily accented Busan dialect:

Heather's mother: "Baengy is growing up very fast"

Heather's aunt: "What's a Baengy?"

Heather's mother: "My granddaughter."

These days, Baengy spends much of her waking hours trying out new facial expressions, oblivious to the situational context. For example, twenty minutes after absolutely nothing has happened, her face will suddenly light up in sheer astonishment.

Those in the neuroscience community should really try to identify the neurons responsible.

Babies, in general, are heavy. Now I know why the arms of Heather's mother are so stocky - she had five kids. In order to alleviate the eternal conflict between a baby continuously wanting to be held and a parent having sore arms, the mothers of generations past have invented the hot sling.

Baengy doesn't mind being hot slung too much, and generally powers down into passive mode when confined in such a way. It's kind of like how a kitten freezes when you hold it by the scruff of the neck.

Babies generally cry for 4 main reasons:

1) Baby is hungry

2) Baby is tired

3) Baby has pooped, nappy is soiled

4) Reason indeterminable

Mothers have a special ear for distinguishing between the different cries of babies and can remedy an outburst with lightning efficiency. My insensitive man-brain on the other hand has a difficult time even trying to distinguish which baby is mine.

I kid.

Nonetheless, when Baengy cries and mother is busy, I tend to assume it's reason number one. Often times, I am correct.

After milk time, it's always sleepy time. Heather tells me that good parenting is all about routine.

Heather, like many of her Venusian compatriots, is an excellent multitasker. Why nature did not afford the female race an extra set of arms is beyond me.

See that little sticker on Baengy's left thigh? That's from her vaccination shot. One consistent truth we've identified is that Baengy is vehemontly opposed to all things vaccine-related.

I propose that it's because she has yet to understand the science behind it.

Yujin is Ashley's boisterous one year old cousin, who has evidently figured out how to open doors.

This is comical for the first dozen times, but thereafter its comedic edge declines. Yujin cannot yet talk, but engages in baby proto-talk, which is basically composed of a whole lot of babbling. Sometimes she'll finish a babble sentence by pausing with an expectant facial expression, as if waiting for a reply.

I always attempt a reply in her own language.

When I think of myself as a baby, I assume that being held all the time would be annoying. That just goes to show how inept I am at thinking of myself as a baby.

One thing I find fascinating is Baengy's patience while being repositioned. If you want to switch arms while holding her, or place her in a hot sling, all manner of extended clumsiness of a father-in-training can occur during the transition. She usually just waits it out and will occasionally flash you a sidelong glance, as if to say "Whatever it is that you're trying to do, you're probably getting better at it."

Evolutionarily speaking, having big eyes is good for seeing in the dark and spotting predators. Why a baby would need to do either of those things is still confusing to me.

Baengy has a love-hate relationship with baths.

It's kind of like me and chicken feet.

Sometimes she'll do what we call a Monumental Poop. These considerable excretions often surpass the operational capacities of a wet towel/nappy change combo, and necessitate a bottom-washing session in the bathroom sink.

Baby poop is actually not so bad, by poop standards. If there were a scale for excremental disgustingness from one to ten, baby poop would be a one.

I guess ten would be the festering deposit of a carnivorous abomination with indigestion.

There are three amazing inventions in the baby world, each of which are worthy of a Nobel Prize. They are:

1) The pacifier

2) The new velcro on nappies

3) The hanging mobile

We'll address the latter two in a forthcoming blog post. We first introduced a pacifier to Baengy a few weeks ago, although we've heard that babies can get addicted to them. She and her pacifier are inseparable by a negative air pressure of about 60 psi.

I cut her toenails for the first time in her life on the 31st of July, 2011. Perhaps she'll like to know such things, when she's older.

And perhaps not.

Raising a baby is no easy task, but is made considerably easier with family members around and the wonders of modern absorbant technology. Heather and Ashley have since moved to Seoul with me, after spending a month in Busan with Korean grandmother. Things are going well.

With a baby around the place, long term plans become considerably curtailed. On the horizon for us is a rocking chair, and perhaps a larger size of nappy.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Korea Toastmasters Conference 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:01:00 +0000

The readers who occasion this blog from time to time are funny, smart, handsome and/or pretty. Or so I assume. They're also a forgiving bunch who digest awkward opening paragraphs with formidable skills of intellectual gastronomy. Thus I feel quite comfortable beginning this post with a tangential thought that I had, upon awakening at 4:30am this morning. You see, I didn't buy an air-conditioner for our Seoul residence because I tend to leave important purchases until they become painfully necessary. Heather and Ashley have various forms of temperature control at mother-in-law's house in Busan. But I'm not so lucky here. So I awoke, rather warmly, a little early. I think I'm a sensitive sleeper.

Anyway, that tangential thought.

If you're familiar with the blogging world, you'd probably know what a tag cloud is. It's a bunch of words, usually in the sidebar that have varying font sizes showing which words are used most frequently by the blog author. Do I have one? Wait. No I don't. Anyway, in molecular biology, we have a machine called a microarray. What a microarray can tell you is which of your genes are at different expression levels when compared to somebody else's. For example, one of your hair genes could be expressed at a higher activity level than your friend's, while your sweat gland gene could be lower. A microarray tells you what biological differences there are between you. If I was a blog and you were a blog, and genes were words, then a blog microarray would tell us how different our tagclouds appear.

Does that make sense? I hope so.

So here's my tangential idea: Imagine all the spoken vocabulary that Koreans use in a day and translate it into English. We'll call that the Korean vocal tagcloud. Also imagine an Australian vocal tagcloud (already in English). Now compare the two using a microarray. What we'd see in the results would be the words that are more frequently used in one culture than the other. My guess is that some conspicuously overexpressed words in Korea would be ones like 'burden,' 'endure,' and 'delicious,' while Australians would overexpress 'G'day,' 'mate,' and 'relax.'

We'd probably use the word 'barbecue' equally.

So the main point here is that the words 'burden' and 'endure' are a curiously frequent part of the Korean lexicon. During my time in the Korean tertiary education system, I've often felt that some of my fellow students are enduring some kind of burden. This causes them to pick subjects they're not particularly interested in, and study harder than they'd like to. Perhaps a more preferable alternative is to navigate life through intrinsic motivation.

So this all leads to the Toastmasters National Conference, that I attended a little while ago. You see, Toastmasters is an education system built purely on intrinsic motivation. It's a whole bunch of volunteers helping each other improve public speaking in their spare time. Amazing? Well, not everybody thinks so.

In the photo above is Kiminari Azuma, a public speaking champion and our special guest from Japan. Kiminari told us a few useful things that day, one of which was his habit of always accepting speaking challenges by default.

Everything gets better with practice. I remember my first day giving a speech. I had a tail between my legs and waffled on about something that was of no interest to anyone.

We held the event at BEXCO in Busan and it was attended by a few hundred members from around Korea.

Here's our club, the South River Toastmasters. Quite possibly the finest club in the universe. I've just finished six months as president, which has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

The winner of the national speech competition was Frank Lev, from Sincheon Toastmasters. Members reach their zenith at the nationals, and it's an inspiring show.

The other half of my education comes from the lab. In the photo above are the boys of the Tsang Lab: Professor Tsang, Akechai and Dr Vahlberg. Our professor just finished his annual 3 months in Korea and is now back in Ottawa. Actually, I have to video conference with him in approximately one hour (8am every Tuesday).

The only thing I dislike more than 8am Skyping, is 7am Skyping.

But we still manage to have our fair share of fun. Nothing says fun more than green bottles and shot glasses.

We've been going out a fair bit recently. Saving money via cheaper alcohol tends to cause an increase in the amount spent on Tylenol. But if I buy cheap Tylenol, then it kind of balances out.

Oh look, it's Ashley. Me and Ashley are already best friends. She's busy developing a personality and is now nearly two months old.

Some people have pointed out that my legs are hairy in this photo.

Hey, man. Stay focused on the cute baby, not the hairy legs.

She gets very excited by milk. When she's about to be fed, she opens her mouth and starts hyperventilating. And sometimes she smiles when she dreams.

I assume it's because she's dreaming about milk.

This photo is from when we were still in the maternity ward. Heather and I are proud parents. Having a kid is definitely no easy task, but a good thing to do. Hat tips go out to all the other parents and those who appreciate them.

And now it's time for me to start the day.

Have a good one, everyone.

Our Daughter's Birth

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 07:15:00 +0000

Our little one is just over a month old now. She's with her mother in Busan, and I'm heading down there every second weekend to visit. The past month has been a rainstorm of activity with KTX bookings, diaper changes and all manner of things in between.

Things are going fine now, with a lot of support received from friends and family. Heather is seeming comfortable and is an excellent mother. The birth itself though, was a stressful event.

This is the story of how it all happened.

We entered the Areum Women's Hospital on Monday the 23rd of May at 10pm. The ETA was actually May 20th, but we wanted to wait for a natural birth if possible. By that time our little one was already a menacing 3.6kg, a big baby for a small mother. Taller mothers tend to have easier births, so say the midwives. The head of our daughter was 10cm wide, considered a large lump to pass. Bigger is not always better, in the world of births.

After some deliberating, we decided to choose labour induction via intravenous drip. The baby could be out in a matter of hours, they said. But every ward-wisened midwife knows only too well that every pregnancy is different.

Monday night passed with contractions a few times per hour. All I could do was attempt the act of sleep on a chair next to the lady of the day, as she lay uncomfortably on a hospital bed. Tuesday morning arrived, with the advice to walk around. Heather and I trolleyed her various drips (shown in the photo above) out into the corridor, and we shuffled slowly up and down the hallway. By this time she was feeling a fair amount of pain, and receiving what I could only imagine to be a very bad stomach cramp every 15 minutes.

Tuesday morning passed excruciatingly slowly into Tuesday night, with mother-in-law ferrying food from home. Heather was not allowed to eat, and I was feeling very uneasy. The feeling could be described as riding a rollercoaster for the first time, backwards, while blindfolded. Deep down you're pretty sure that things will turn out okay, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

At 6pm, the nurses told us that the baby wasn't coming anytime soon and to retire to a hospital bedroom and return if there were further developments. Heather and I went to another floor and I fell asleep at 8:30pm. Heather rang my cell phone at 10pm, telling me she had gone back to the birthing room again.

If there ever were an understated euphemism in the world of medical nomenclature, 'labour' would be it. Heather was in an extremely uncomfortable state, twisted in an unnatural posture of pain on a delivery bed. Her toes bundled up and shuddered every 5 minutes, as labour reared a nasty dose of all-consuming pain. Attempting what reassuring conversation I could, along with hand-holding, it became clear that the pain experienced was not a regular knife-in-the-gut kind of jab, but some kind of blunt-edged sword inserted into the stomach and twisted slowly for 90 seconds at a time. At the end of each extended contraction, all she could do was gasp for breath and wait for the next one.

Heather had been in labour since late Monday (although her water wasn't breaking), but the nurses on night duty weren't particularly alarmed. They gave me a blanket and put on some piano music on a CD player. There, in that overwarmed maternity ward, holding the hand of a wife in pain and utterly unable to do anything but wait, I listened to a recording of a single person playing a piano. I have no idea what the meaning of it all was, but that's exactly what happened. The nurses told us to wait until 8:30am, when the doctor would be back. That was around 4am. For Heather, it was turning into a matter of whether she could survive the intensity while remaining psychologically stable. We kept conversation going, but anytime I asked her a question before a contraction started, she was physically incapable of replying for two minutes. At the end of the contraction, she had usually forgotten the question. We both did what we could to reassure each other. From time to time she would bang her wrists on the bed rails, repeatedly and hard, to try and distract herself from the pain.

Babies get born every hour in the Areum Women's Hospital during the daytime, but almost none at night. The longest hours that I've ever experienced passed, before the doctor came in, performed a cervical check and pulled back with a concerned expression. The cervix was dilated but the head of our baby was not where it was supposed to be. We then had two options: keep waiting or choose surgery.

There are a few things that are useful to discuss beforehand between a mother-to-be and her closest ones. Those would be: whether to induce labour, whether to use an epidural, and in what scenarios a Caesarean will be chosen.

In general, natural births are a good thing, in a scientific sense. Passage through the birth canal can clear the airways of the child, and although damage occurs, it is not as bad as getting surgically eviscerated. I maintained my previous opinion, which was that the choice of surgery would always be up to Heather. Mother-in-law wasn't particularly keen on anything but a natural birth, but developments had left us little choice. Heather had been for 2 days without food, endured 36 hours of pain and there was no guarantee that further labour would orientate our daughter in the womb properly. Labour is also an extremely stressful experience for the baby. Heather chose to go under the knife.

I concurred, and resigned myself to the skill of the doctors on duty.

Her mother was still under general anaesthetic when this photo of our daughter was taken, exactly 12 minutes old. She was placed slightly upside-down in a baby bed, to drain the mucus from her airways. Shortly after this, I was allowed to hold her with carefully washed hands. She was clearly awake, and for a brief moment she stopped crying, but was shivering from the temperature drop.

How did it feel?

Well, I was expecting some strong waves of emotion, but mostly I felt relieved, tired, happy and still a little worried all at the same time. It was definitely a good feeling, but in every sense of the word, I was exhausted.

Heather was out of action for a few hours, but mother-in-law and I were allowed to stare at our baby through the large windows of the intensive care unit. Baengy was awake and yawning every few minutes.

She was looking peaceful, but also as if she'd had a bit of a rough time. The first things I noticed were that her ears and mouth were exactly like her mother's.

After writing down the birth details, the first thing that the nurses of the Areum Women's Hospital do is to record a tiny ink footprint and handprint of the baby. It's a good way to avoid baby mix-ups in the intensive care unit.

Heather couldn't walk for a day or so, but was eventually back on her feet. My professor gave me some time off and I was allowed to stay at the hospital for a few days. One major difference between Korea and most western countries is that births in Korea occur at special birthing clinics, which also have accommodation options. Most mothers will choose to have an extended stay at the clinic for a couple of weeks before going home. This provides the benefit of being looked after with meals cooked, and the babies are taken care of by nurses while the mother recuperates.

Breastfeeding occurs whenever the baby awakens, with the nurses ringing each mother's bedroom. It's an interesting system, and one that I've come to appreciate.

The food is designed to be very mild and bland. It also serves a secondary purpose of getting everyone looking forward to going back home.

We soon named our daughter Ashley Farrand. Her Korean name is 이은서 (Eun-Seo Lee), suggested by her Korean grandmother. So her registered name is Ashley Eun-Seo Farrand, a delightful ethnographic mix of names.

Ashley means Ash tree meadow, and Eun-Seo is from the Chinese characters which mean rising to, or achieving, dreams or aspirations.

Each day immediately after her birth it was clear to see her becoming visibly healthier and awake for longer. Very satisfying. Viewing times were in the afternoon, which were always the highlight of the day.

In Korea, they wrap up infants in these little sausage roll type affairs. Besides making the babies look hilariously cute, it also prevents them from injuring their fragile bones.

This video is of Ashley on her third day of life outside the womb. She's looking around because she can sense the movement of her bed, but newborns are actually blind for quite some time. They start seeing simple shades of black and white after a few days, but it takes longer for their brain to figure out what all the information means.

Heather took this photo of Ashley on her phone camera.

I distributed it accordingly.

Here's one of the responses that made me chuckle. Rebecca is also pregnant, and due to give birth in early December. I wish both her and her husband loads of good luck.

Ashley is feeding and growing normally. All the medical tests were passed with flying colours and she's received her first vaccination shots already.

She doesn't like needles - that's one thing she has in common with her parents.

There are a lot of things I like about this video, from the slow yawn to the expression of annoyance that subsides after the nurse repositions her head.

Diaper changing, breastfeeding and crying during the night are the main activities going on these days. Newborns are a 24 hour liability, and Heather is performing marvellously. I'm doing what I can to participate, but the real action starts when they both move back to Seoul, which will probably be in a month.

In the end, I can only describe the process of birth as an ordeal, to which males can only ever participate at the periphery. It's a worthwhile ordeal to go through together; stressful, but of epic value. Some fathers tend to wait outside the maternity room or at home, but I imagine many women would appreciate their partners close by and staying, or pretending to stay as positive-minded as possible.

Our Little One

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:33:00 +0000

Our 3.62kg baby daughter entered our world at 9:12am on Wednesday, May 25th. She's healthy, beautiful and doing well. Heather also.

Isn't she lovely? We're going to name her very soon.

More details when time permits. I'm currently traveling between Seoul and Busan frequently to visit mother and child. Recent events have been tiring, but I'm happy and looking forward to this new chapter in life with a wonderful family.

Thanks go out to all who have been wishing us well.

Becoming a Father

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:37:00 +0000

It's taking a while to upload, but I'm managing to stay online through a single bar of free wireless reception from someone downstairs. Whoever you are 'bon3F,' I salute you for your radiowaves of generousity, allowing this young blogger to publish his updates.

Let's pick up where we left off...

A couple of Thursdays ago, it was Teacher's Day at our university. This year we provided mandatory gifts for our professors, which most of us would probably have bought anyway, given a choice. Nevertheless, the end result was that gifts were given to professors that truly deserved them.

As for the Teacher's Day ceremony, it was a rather nice affair, with the ever-present bottles of Minute Maid orange juice that tend to accompany such events (with paper cups).

Unfortunately we ran out of space around the perimeter of the desks, so some students had to sit in the middle during the announcements.

Awkward...

And then we held another student education session. We're popping these events out frequently to make the most of the international faculty's time here, which is due to end in June. The theme of the day was "How to create and defend a scientific poster," in time with the annual poster competition coming later this week.

During this particular session, there was acting involved for the edutainment of the students. Professor Fuller Bazer, on the left, is a rock of a man and holds legendary status in the field of livestock reproductive biology. He was roleplaying as an exemplary student with exemplary responses to questions from a professor.

And then we had Professor Tsang roleplaying a 'what not to do during a poster session' scenario. Note his definition of inappropriate attire for such an event, including his unmatching socks, which are sure to get a squint of criticism from an eagle-eyed professor.

Professor Tsang is an excellent professor, but he played the role of an aggressive, boisterous and generally obnoxious student very well.

Extraordinarily well, in fact.

Playing the role of the inquisitive professor on the right was Nisha Hazra, a Canadian exchange student who is joining our lab for the summer. She's bright, socially ept* and quite unbotherable by the complexities of Korean culture, a necessary requirement for survival at SNU.

*What I assume to be the antonym of the word 'inept.'

From time to time, there's also time for a drink at our timeless campus hof. A while ago, we launched the SNUGHATS (Seoul National University Global House Alcohol and Talking Society) drinking club, which we recently revived from winter hibernation.

Joining us that night was Glenn Danielson, a jazz musician and former Korean language school classmate of mine. He and his friend belted out a few extraordinary notes on the bar piano, and before long attracted the curiousity of two Korean kids who were too young to be in a bar at that time of night.

Or any time of night, for that matter.

And we also had our SRTM Spring Picnic on a dazzlingly fine day in May. Stealing the attention in the middle of this photo is Sungil's little kid, performing admirably, as kids do, by simply sitting down and staring at things in an unknowingly adorable way.

We plan on getting ourselves one of these soon too.

Thanks to our hard working Spring Picnic Taskforce, the event was a sunny success. We played some games and managed to get ourselves lightly sunburned, which I thought was a small price to pay for victory in the Word Game.

Here's Art Michalak, an intellectual marvel and physics pedagogist. While most people may justly assume that Art would be admiring the prettiness of the bubbles in this situation, I would alternatively surmise that he is staring as any physicist would stare at soap bubbles.

Analytically.

Kites were flown that day. I'm a big fan of kites, and whenever I see one I remind myself of the world's inevitable victory over people who don't like kites.

The Spring Picnic's second round grew spores and proliferated into a sixth round. The details of which are fairly guessable by anyone who has lived in Korea for more than two weekends.

Eat. Drink. Laugh. Repeat.

This bat-dog is Anthony's little pup, called Ocean. He's a Boston Terrier, a breed well admired for their irresistibly good looks.

And they say pets look just like their owners...

As soon as we hit the beachy sands of Busan, Anthony called us over to try some of his homemade pho. There are not many surfing Vietnamese Hawaiians living in Korea who can make good pho, but Anthony is one of them.

Anthony also bought himself a ukelele, as one does when one has such a busy schedule. What I think the world needs is a new word to describe the joy of eating pho while listening to a ukelele played by an intermediate beginner.

It should be either Phokelele or Ukephopho.

I don't know if dogs can be diagnosed with ADHD, but Ocean would be an interesting case study. When he's not biting my pant legs, he's either jumping on furniture or putting his sandy paws on my wife's pregnant belly.

This is one of Ocean's tricks. Very useful during an armed robbery.

And here's Ocean playing fetch with the Lady of the Hour.

Anthony is snipping his pho.

And so then I came down to Busan on Thursday to be with my wife. It has been an interesting time. We were originally expecting the birth to occur on Friday, and arranged our schedule as such. But nature has more important priorities than so-called human timetables, and although Big Baengy is stirring, she didn't seem to want to come out and see us just yet.

As a result, we sat around the living room with Heather's mother and niece for most of the day, and went for some walks. Light exercise is good for pregnancy, they say. Even more so when a cute little niece is running around and picking up leaves.

Little Ji-Woo is quieter than her older sister, but equally as playful. She doesn't say a whole lot, but makes a lot of gurgling sounds when she wants to eat something that she can see.

Why waste time with pesky word pronunciation, when you can just gurgle?

Here's one thing that Ji-Woo gurgles at, guksoo made by her halmoni.

I never realised that for some smaller members of the human race, eating is a task that requires considerable concentration.

Nor did I realise that a mere kitchen table could have so many sources of distraction.

But the considerable attention and ceaseless mouth wiping (with a spoon!) needed to feed a toddler all pays off with the brief flash of a miniature smile.

This was the last photo I took of us at home, with Heather packing up her mother's banchan. Note the size of her belly, representative of a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy.

And here I am now in the maternity ward. Time passes very, very... very slowly here. Sometimes it seems like the seconds on the clock are pausing to have a think before clicking onto the next second. We decided to induce labour via oxytocin drip last night, as the doctors said the baby may become too large. However, strong contractions are not arriving yet, so it's looking like the birth may not come until tomorrow.

In terms of starting a family and becoming a father, I'm managing to remain fairly calm, but am certainly not in my comfort zone. How does one prepare their mind for such an event? My thoughts are wandering fairly aimlessly, and I'm having a few odd ones. As an adoptee, our daughter will be the first biological relative of mine that I've ever met. I'm a little worried and a little excited, with a bit of fatigue on the side.
One of the shortcomings of atheism is that there's little to turn to when things seem out of your own control. Instead I place a level of agreed trust in the laws of nature and an appreciative confidence in modern medical science. Stoic philosophy recommends contemplating possible negative outcomes in such situations, and I must admit I've thought a fair bit about what might happen if things go wrong. As our friend John Ngo would say, 'an optimist at heart but a realist by nature.' If something does go wrong, I guess it was bound to go wrong regardless. Best to hope not so.

What really shines through is the support bestowed upon us by family and friends. There are so many people wishing us well through various channels of communication, and no time to thank them all. I guess we'll just have to have their back when they need it in future. And Heather is doing extremely well. She isn't enjoying having her cervix painfully probed by the nurses every other hour (they're poking it to check how much it has dilated). But she is putting up with the discomfort and remaining cool.

If you are planning on getting married anytime, make sure you marry someone who you respect. It's worth the wait.

This is the final post until the birth, which is likely to occur sometime in the next 24 hours. I hope to follow up soon after, when mum and baby are resting well.

See you after the jump.

A Little Calm Before the Storm

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Tue, 24 May 2011 00:38:00 +0000

For some reason my Firefox browser is not on communicative terms with our hospital wireless connection, so I've resorted to blogging with Internet Explorer. It's mildly disconcerting, although not quite as newsworthy as the fact that we're currently sitting in a birthing ward at a maternity clinic in Busan.
We came in at 10pm last night and in between a flurry of medical staff, broadcasted sounds of fetal heartrate and various kinds of saline drip, we've gotten a couple of winks of sleep despite an environment unbecoming of a bedroom.

Time passes slowly in this place, like we're trapped in some kind of wormhole vortex at the gateway to a new dimension of parenthood. Positive and negative thoughts come and go, generally lingering around before being contemplated with a grin or dismissed with a mental flyswat.

So I thought, what better way to pass the time than to catch up with the blog while my wife dozes in and out of sleep. I've neglected this old thing a little lately, and as the peppering rainstorm of unusual thoughts circulating my brain appear to be unhelpful, perhaps a little productive output will help put them at ease.

A week before Heather arrived in Busan, we went to the Han River to enjoy the breeze. There are many rivers nicer than the Han, although none quite so suited to the character of Seoul.

Hey look, it's my pregnant wife. Heather is lying in a hospital bed next to me right now, eyes closed and breathing slowly. But she's awake, occasionally opening her eyes to inspect the drip tubes running into her arm or to lightly complain of the labour-inducing harness around her belly.

Heather is a star. She's only 155cm in stature, and the doctors say that it's easier for tall people to give birth. But she ignores such notions with characteristically pleasant passiveness.

On the Han, you can hire boats with buffets on board for weddings or indulgent corporate gatherings.

That day we had a pleasant walk and had a paddle on the 'duckboats', a misnomer since they're clearly representing some kind of goose. I'm constantly bewildered by how my wife responds to me pointing out such trivial matters with a smile.

The duckboats are on the north side of the Han, and will cost you W13,000 for an hour. They're surprisingly easy to paddle, and even have room for two in the back. We'll come back someday when we have two kids, I guess.

Last night we saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the title of which comes to mind when I see this photo.

In this case it would be Escalators Near The Han: On Tides of Strangers.

Our good man James Lim got married to his lovely partner Jinkang recently too. They went for an exotic honeymoon in Spain, of which they both deserved.

They make a great couple and have an abundance of people wishing them a happy marriage. James just bought a new apartment for his newlywed, making him much more of a man than myself.

The most I can come up with is a mossarium.

Once nice thing about starting a family is that people send gifts for the baby. In the photo above, I'm demonstrating how not to hang a mobile. 90% of the time, gifts are baby clothes. My personal theory is that people enjoy purchasing baby clothes because they're comically small.

Well, we've reached the end of this group of photos, but there's more to come. I'll see if I can squeeze them out before Heather wakes up and squeezes out our baby girl. She was actually due last Friday, but is biding her time in the cosy confines of Heather's womb. She'll enter the busy world of the 21st century soon enough.

As Pooh would say, what's the rush?

TAF Cafe, Sincheon

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sun, 22 May 2011 03:02:00 +0000

This blog has become a funny thing. Originally constructed as a diary for friends and family, it has now evolved into a kind of public way to talk to myself. As thoughts get tapped via netbook into Blogspot's familiar little editing window, wallowing in the back of my mind is the knowledge that pretty much anyone in the world can see what's going on in my life. Then I remind myself not to be so vain.

And also that the stereotypical psychotic internet stalker is statistically unlikely to select me at random from the multitude of other blogs available to the common reader.

Another funny thing about this blog is that Heather has been granted veto power over any photos of herself that appear in it. I had originally put a different image of her as the opening photo, but she just came into the room right now and vetoed my choice. Rule Number One of living with a pregnant lady is "Avoid upsetting pregnant ladies."

As such, I have replaced it with this one which was taken sometime after the other events in this post. I like to adhere to chronological order as much as possible, but some things in life are more important, like Rule Number Two of living with a pregnant lady: "A happy pregnant lady is a good thing."

Here are some members of the SNU Tsang Lab, where I work. We've recently been busy engulfing new members and increasing in size, like some kind of metastatic amoeba. Our daily work consists primarily of mixing small amounts of liquids with various reagents and scrutinizing X-ray film for miniscule changes in the intensity of a single band.

Our faculty has unwavering enthusiasm for graduate student extracurricular activities. These are arranged by the students and usually involve one or more presentations. Last month's topic was the International Dispatch, that sent me to Ottawa and two other students to the US.

Free money to travel? Yes please.

I quite like talking, especially when someone is listening. When I was young, they say that I used to talk to myself a lot. Now I have the blog to take care of that instinct.

Pizza is ingested after such sessions. Pizza chains and graduate students share a mutualistic relationship in most parts of the world.

Graphically speaking, pizzas are interesting because the exact fraction remaining in the box is represented as a pie graph.

Another thing our faculty like to do is hold bi-annual hiking events. These always begin with a somewhat awkward meetup of different lab members, blinking in the unfamiliarity of sunlight. We then shuffle to the beginning of a walking trail located within the Seoul metropolitan area and locomote upwards in bipedal fashion.

Group photos like this one are always taken. Their main purpose is to prove to everyone how much fun we had.

Professor Tsang is in Seoul for a few months of the year and one thing he goes nuts about is Korean noraebang. He's a much better singer than I am, although that really isn't saying a lot because I sing so badly that Heather's niece will block her ears.

Dori Lee is one of the co-founders of the TAF Cafe and Bar in Sincheon. She recently held a launch party there, with the theme of the venue directed at the indie art scene. Her venue caters for special events and she is especially keen on hearing proposals for art promotion. If you mention this blog when booking an event, you may even get a special deal. The venue is located here.

I myself have been known to be artistic at times. For example when I hang up washing on the line, I like to colour-coordinate my socks in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Blue, grey, blue, grey.

The Toastmasters were out in force that day. One thing I like about Toastmasters is that they're not afraid of sitting in the front row.

I try to refrain from Tequila as much as humanly possible, but sometimes it sneaks into my lexicon during the course of a night out. A wayward suggestion then becomes an impulse gathering momentum, and before long I find myself holding a tiny glass pot of foul-tasting spirits. A chronologically indeterminable period of time after that, I occasionally then find myself in confusing surroundings, dancing above a crowd of people.

Note to self: Going home early keeps pregnant ladies happy.

There will be more Heather and baby related news coming soon. Stay tuned!

Funny English #5

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Things have been a little active in the Farrand household of late. Heather's pregnant stomach has expanded to new horizons of enormity that I previously thought only possible in cartoons. She's feeling fine and dutifully performing her stretching exercises each night. As our finest hour approaches with quickened pace, various aspects of normal life are quietening before what I can only imagine to be some kind of storm.

One of the more recent routines to stop was Heather's pregnant ballet classes. That's her in the white skirt. I woe my own immaturity, but nevertheless indulge in continuously seeing something comical about pregnant ladies doing ballet. Hopefully this kind of childishness will all clear up when I become a father.

For the meantime though, let's indulge in some funny English. For those of you new to this phenomena, Funny English is a recurring feature of this blog, attempting to catalogue examples of English in Korea that this young author finds amusing in some way.

This is a tin that you keep tissues in, for sale at our local D/C Mart.

I had at first thought the name 'Goog Frinds' to be an attempt to circumvent another company's trademark.

But on closer investigation found that they managed to get the title of their brand correct on the side. The little blurb manages to delve into new depths of linguistic absurdity.

Seems that trash is not the only thing that needs checking.

"It's so wonderful to be able to maintain your dreams."

Humble lessons from a basic pail.

This gift wrapping paper seems intended for animals with multiple hearts. That would include our cephalopod friends like the squid and octopus, as well as the hagfish (which has 5 hearts).

Who said seafood couldn't be romantic?

Blogged by Australia.

My name is Advertising.

Bad Advertising.

For those still opposed to GM Food, you may have been misled by the real meaning of the acronym.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the last vestiges of headhunting disappeared in remote archipelagos of the Pacific decades ago. But it's alive and well in the Gyodae area of Seoul.

A timely observation indeed. I have plans to buy this clock, after I save enough money to buy a HotSling.

And what is a HotSling, I hear you ask? Why, a HotSling is a handsfree device for holding babies, strapped to your chest. You can see a whole bunch of them right here. They seem handy for all the rockclimbing I intend to do.

For past episodes of Funny English that you may have missed, they're here: #1, #2, #3, #4.

Enjoy!

Hopefully I'll be able to post again soon.

Nanoomi Running and Cafe Monsieur

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:21:00 +0000

Running gear in backpack... check

Refillable bottle of Arisu*... check

Supportive wife cheersquad... check

*Delicious and safe Seoul city tap water

To run or not to run? That was the question eventually answered yes by a small slice of the Nanoomi blogging community half a moon ago.

How far did we run? Ten kilometres.

Where was the event? World Cup Stadium.

Why were we running? For a free* pair of socks and an excuse to wake up early.

*Free upon payment of the mandatory fee

I myself don't mind too much paying money to someone to do what can always be done alone for free. Was that an awkward sentence? I hope not. My grammar tends to funny up a bit when blogging in evening late. But let's not digress. What you're paying for when you pay for a run is the luxury of running with others along a predetermined track guaranteed to be free of bicycles approaching in the opposite direction.

Which you can only do by leaving Seoul, or simply wiring $30 to some guy somewhere who knows how to get permission from the city council to cordon off a portion of public space for a limited period of time.

Here's the World's Most Underappreciated Running Team, minus Keira who arrived shortly thereafter. This snap was photo'ed by my lovely wife, who hauled 2.6kg of baby all the way to World Cup Stadium just to show support. On the left is Hannah, then me, then Alice and on the right is Ed.

I like to think that we were all smiling in anticipation of this particular sentence.

Without so much as a starter's pistol, off we ran into the sunny unknown. I'd been jogging around campus as well as running various errands for Professor Tsang in the weeks leading up to the event, so was in fairly good shape.

Helium filled balloons are nice, although they're all destined to land as a potential traffic hazard or a miniscule component of the Pacific Trash Vortex.
What the world needs is some kind of alternative biodegradable balloon. Something that stretches, is natural, would normally be discarded, is opaque and can be filled with helium.

How about lamb stomachs?

If you leave a camera with your pregnant wife, it's possible to determine what she was up to in your absence by inspecting the photos left behind.

Using special powers of deductive reasoning, I can surmise a few things from this photo. At some point in time she was obviously inspecting the lens of my camera while holding it up in the air, and accidentally pressed the shutter button. She also looks a bit like a bug when wearing those sunglasses.

And from this photo I can see that she enjoyed a Vegemil A while sitting at a park bench.
Apparently she also knows how to read Korean.

This is me crossing the finishing line. I never realised my legs were so sinewy. They don't look like that when I'm sitting in a chair.

I just checked.

Post-race we were all feeling a little proud of ourselves, mostly for not bombing out halfway and dejectedly sauntering off to Dunkin' Donuts. Not that Nanoomites would consider such a thing. We all received a medallion for our efforts and the promise to one day partake in such an activity again.

It was a good time.

Now we're in the Gyodae area. The lady behind that counter is Taewon Seo's wife, busily making a green tea latte' for Heather and myself. Her coffees are among the best in the northern hemisphere. I'm also fond of the wine glasses on the shelf below, featuring sequential volumetric increments of coffee beans. It probably represents the shared linearity between consumption of mutually diuretic beverages.

This is how to get to Taewon's Cafe Monsieur. For some reason I have the Sesame Street song in my head now.

"Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?"

A few characters from Gyodae Toastmasters were also enjoying our favourite coffee retreat that day. In this photo you can see Trinity on the left, David Koch and good ol' Vronny Jentakis.

That's cream cheese in the middle there. I tend to avoid repeating myself on the blog wherever possible, but let me say once again with utmost conviction that while Taewon's wife's coffee is the best in the northern hemisphere, Taewon's bread is the most delicious bread south of the Han River.

And I'm not just saying that because Taewon is a nice guy.
His bread really is delicious.

Mmm, here's our green tea latte'. Needless to say, deliciousness rarely appears in such a light shade of green. I myself prefer drinks more traditionally befitting of a masculine character, like ox blood or dragon tears, but every once in a while depart from my usual ungrantable requests.

If you're in the Gyodae area, pop over to Cafe Monsieur and order yourself a coffee and a baguette. And if you're familiar with the ever-widening sphere of Nanoomi influence, consider coming along for a 10km run sometime.

See you soon.

Rebecca and Anthony's Wedding

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:12:00 +0000

We recently found out that Big Baengy is a girl, and is due for her grand entrée into the wider world next month. She spends most of the day in suspended animation, enjoying the cosy confines of Heather's Tummy Hotel and seems to wake up at night. When Heather lies down, Big Baengy will become more active and sometimes push a tiny foot or elbow out as a bulge in Heather's stomach. It's quite comical. Heather will often tap the new protrusions and ask "Baengy, ii ge mwo ya? (Baengy, what's this?)"

My theory is that there's more room in there when her mother is lying down, so Baengy reacts to the extra space by having a stretch.
Now all we need to do is think of a name for her.

Heather's not too keen on Big Baengette.

A sign of the times, perhaps? This one isn't ours, it's Heather's second sister's daughter, Yujin.

Yujin spends a lot of time staring at me knowingly, as if aware that my germ-free and toilet trained life is very soon going to be tsunami'ed by a representative from the baby realm.

It's not often that the Queen Ant and I can be drawn out from our familiar and optimised schedule in Seoul. However, the murmurings of Anthony Nguyen's activities in Busan were becoming more than a distant rumble, requiring a special journey by this small time blogger and his heavily pregnant better half.

Some of you may remember Anthony as the English-teaching, American football playing surfer that John Ngo and I used to live with. That period of time in the old Hansol Polaris building were among the most enjoyable of our Busan years. He is often referred to by the nicknames 'Anne-Sony,' 'Ants-on-me,' 'Tones,' 'Tony,' or 'Ants,' depending on the particular blood type of the person.

He summoned me down to Busan to help pitch a seminar to some medical doctors, the day before his wedding. Needless to say, we were both feeling a little pressure. Luckily, my black belt in Powerpoint proved useful, and we co-delivered a high impact presentation that I was still modifying on the train ride down.

No sweat, hey? One of the most useful things that weekly attendance at Toastmasters confers, is the ability to organise a fairly good presentation in a very short amount of time.

And then, in true Anthony style, less than a moment's notice passed before the next epic event. Anthony and Rebecca's wedding ceremony was held at 3pm the very next day. They had bestowed upon Heather and me, the monolithic task of MC'ing their wedding in replacement of a celebrant. Family members from across the pacific had arrived the week before, and Anthony had spent the week taking them around the city.

Photo: Anthony Nguyen

Somewhat experienced from our own wedding exactly 18 months to the day prior, Heather and I did what we could to lend an air of officiality to the proceedings. Rebecca was impressively calm throughout, and Anthony demonstrated the finest example of grace under pressure I've ever witnessed. A hectic week eliminated any possibility of a proper rehearsal, and the details of the ceremony were finalised in the 30 minutes before he came down the aisle. Dancing.

Photo: Anthony Nguyen

One of Anthony's relatives posted this video of the ceremony up on Youtube. It was a truly wonderful ceremony in every aspect, but if you're not up for watching all of it, just have a look at entrance of the wedding procession at 3:30.

How did we feel about our roles?

Well it was a tough thing to do, but also one of the greatest honours we've ever had.

Video: Christian Nguyen

When the ceremony had finished, we enjoyed a very relaxed reception overlooking the Gwangan Beach area. The food was great, the company was excellent and the atmosphere very much alive.

The band for the night was Pokolambro, an amazing duet who pulled all of the right strings. If you're getting married in Busan, these are the musicians you need to call.

Needless to say, I was a happy chap that day. Being useful makes me feel good, and helping long time friends even better.

Although of course, it wouldn't have been a success without the one to whom I'm married. Heather, in general, gets things done without much fuss.

Luckily, both Anthony and myself have managed to find ourselves a diamond in the rough.

Here's to their prosperous future together.

Photos: Charles Jeong

Times Square, Seoul

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:04:00 +0000

ice·break·er (sbrkr)

Nautical. A sturdy ship built for breaking a passage through icebound waters. Also called iceboat.
1. Something done or said to relax an unduly formal atmosphere or situation
2. A beginning; a start.

Here's SRTM's newest Polish American inductee, Art Michalak, giving his iceboat.

In general, the best first speeches involve a mix of personal insight and self-deprecating humour. Art used both of these elements well and had the audience in fits of amazement and laughter, respectively.

A couple of weeks ago, it was time for Toastmasters officer's training. We held the event at Taewon Seo's new venue near Gyodae station. Cafe Monsieur has excellent tea and coffee, and also serves the most delicious bread south of the Han river.

And I'm not just saying that because Taewon is a nice guy.
His bread really is delicious.

Our volunteer organisation runs on water, sunlight and enthusiasm. While I have plenty of all three, one thing that I don't have a lot of, is time. These days I have all sorts of odd jobs and mischievous extra tasks popping up during the week, much of it traceable to an anonymous source that we'll just refer to as Professor Tsang. So, with such a busy schedule, why do I attend Toastmasters so often?

Well, because I have to.

Let me show you around our new place. It's big and warm and has all sorts of hidden secrets, like an inexplicable glass door on the balcony that leads to nowhere and doesn't open.

We've gradually been filling it up with stuff from G-Market. You can buy pretty much anything in the world on G-Market, except for self confidence and personal growth. Back when I was an impoverished undergrad student, a large majority of my furniture resembled discarded-yet-sturdy plastic milk crates. But, as I always claimed, it was actually from IKEA and designed to look that way.

This is Jang-Ho's room, to which I rarely venture. A man's home is his castle, and so I guess a boy's room is his mini-boy-castle.

This is our pseudo-balcony, called MiG Alley. There are no jets here, but that's not to say that there won't be in the future.

And this is a small room, that Jang-Ho has insightfully named the computer-ot-bang (computer and clothes room).

My nickname for Jang-Ho is 'Jang-Ho the Genius,' and it's not for nothing.

That's our new fridge on the left. Heather's Dad bought it for us as a housewarming gift. It's much larger and sophisticated than we need and has a small computer, a pressure-activated drinks tray and a black belt in Taekwondo.

Heather does a lot of stretching for a variety of reasons. As pregnant women's bellies enlargen to Leviathanic dimensions, the body releases a hormone called Relaxin that gives flexibility to joints. A number of exercises are beneficial in such situations, including yoga, swimming and ballet.

Heather has found that one unexpected outcome of being heavily pregnant is that it's very difficult for her to cut her own toenails.

Fascinating.

Every self-respecting megacity in the world has a location called Times Square. Seoul's is located at Yeongdeungpo Station on subway line 1 and seems to have sprouted up overnight without so much as a pair of complimentary dancing girls to celebrate its opening.

If there's one thing that excites me slightly more than going shopping, it's Not Going Shopping. That's not to say that I don't like going shopping, it's actually more representative of the fact that I find not going shopping to be unusually exciting in and of itself.

Such considerable explanations are to no avail when trying to cover one's tracks when one has told one's wife that they are happy to go shopping on the weekends and thereafter appear less than excited to do so.

The frown of the Queen Ant induces all sorts of odd behavioural changes.

Times Square is a lot like Shinsegae at Centum City in Busan. The floors are shiny, the shops are many and the walls are an arbitrary shade of white.

Our newest favourite shop is called Franc Franc. Our old favourite shop was a Japanese store called Muji that sells a plethora of useful items, all in earthy shades of brown. Franc Franc sells nice stuff that you can put around your house, like towels and clocks.

So now, my favourite shops in the world are:

Franc Franc
Muji
Australian Geographic
Costco

I heard that this particular quote was from an 80 year old female Tibetan monk who broke forty years of silence to share these words of wisdom with us all.

Here's a self portrait taken in one of the high-fidelity mirrors of Franc Franc.

Heather doesn't seem to be too worried about her physical line.

And to cap off this post are some sleepy puppies seen through a pet shop window. They were small enough that you could put them both in a baseball cap and have room to spare. I guess you could put the baseball cap on and have a slightly wriggly head-warmer. In general, I like dogs a lot, though not so much in soup.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Change of Address

noreply@blogger.com (Lee Farrand) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:35:00 +0000

After an eventful and enlightening sojourn in the land of ice and maple, I hit the tarmac running upon return to Seoul. The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, punctuated by short bursts of sleep between part-time work, a full time PhD and a change of address with a pregnant wife.

Here's the Queen Ant, watching TV. To say the least, it was good to see her again after a month overseas.

My wonderful wife is having a fairly smooth pregnancy, with the baby due on May 20th. She gets a little itchy at times, but is generally walking around with her hands on her tummy and a big grin. The most common question that people ask is whether it's a boy or a girl (which we still don't know). And the second most common question is whether she has any cravings. As her master dietician, I haven't noticed her eating anything unusual, except for dried squid, dried fish and ice cream.

I'm dreaming up a recipe for a dried squid/fish pat-bing-soo.

Our unisex placeholder name for our baby is Big Baengy, a choice which often receives humourous appraise. Heather has taken up pregnant ballet classes, during which time she wears this tag. Can you imagine a large gathering of pregnant Korean women doing ballet?

That's what occurs every Tuesday and Thursday in a mirrored gym near our place.

Upon returning to the lab, I noticed that not much had changed. Except for the fact that El Cid the Weed had become rather unkempt and was sporting dreadlocks.

I gave the fellow a little crop. Now all he needs is a suit and tie.

The lady weeds are sure to be impressed.

Those particularly observant with regards to the title of this post may have understood it to mean a change of abode. Indeed, our lease at BK International House expired after the maximum two years and we ~~were forcibly relocated~~ had to move out. How a PhD student can afford to live off campus on scholarship income after two years is beyond me.

Luckily, the Queen Ant to whom I am married had been squirreling away monetary nuts in the time prior, and we had enough money for a reasonable apartment deposit.

Art Michalak, a stalwart friend of ours, showed up on the day of moving and contributed immensely to its success. He spent from morning until late afternoon lifting boxes, pushing carts and offering helpful opinions regarding placement de materiel.

Some people enjoy moving, while others harbour an immense disdain for it. I don't mind it too much myself. One golden rule that remains however, is that the act of helping someone else move house incurs a debt repayable in blood.

Or in Art's case, Mexican food.

One thing Heather goes nuts about, except for cockroaches, is mess around the house. Heather in general, is extremely mentally stable to the point where her cool and calculated response to every drama becomes somewhat soothing, although monotonously predictable.

Hypothetical situation

Lee: "Hey hun, the North has invaded and they're enslaving everyone."

Heather: "I see. What's for dinner then?"

But a dead cockroach on the other side of the road can cause her to jump out of her shoes, even while heavily pregnant. During times such as these, she'll transform miraculously into a bleating lamb, hiding behind me and ensuring the continual placement of my body between her and the dead cockroach. To a similar degree, mess around the house causes her to lose sleep at night.

By the careful stacking of boxes and the cunning placement of things unseeable to a pregnant lady, one can create the illusion of order in a messy house. Or so I found.

Stiff muscles and an aching back were rewarded with a pregnant wife sleeping soundly.

Damien Mugavin, an Australian professor at SNU, also lent us his car for the day, thereby saving us money and time. It was highly appreciated.

As a small recompense for car-borrowing, we took it through an automated car wash for Damien. Art had never seen such a thing before, although he grew up in the developed world. He is involved with the field of physics, enjoys the analysis of things and asks questions that often don't have convenient answers.

"How is the balance of soap and water achieved so that the car is optimally washed?"

As could reasonably be imagined, our new 3-bedroom dwellings have been a circus of activity in recent times. Heather's brother is now living with us, which is turning out excellently. And things are slowly finding their ordered places, in a case of unusual reverse entropy.

Moving house in Korea is generally less painful than in the west, provided that two criteria are met: a) someone fluent in Korean is helping and b) you have the help of friends, repayable in Mexican food.

Once things are tidied up, I'll have to show you around the place.
It's nice and spacious.