Yangjae Flower Market

We found this nice flower market near our neighborhood, the largest in the city! There were buildings upon buildings of flowers and trees and plants.... a nice escape from the concrete jungle in which we live. We couldn't help but grab a lot of plants ourselves, which made for a silly and cumbersome taxi ride home, but we managed, and now our house is to closer to the jungle status that I love!

Inspiration for the name of our blog

In the theme of music, another great site is symphonyofscience.com. Above is the first song we discovered on this website which transforms scientists and philosophers voices into music. There are many songs made, as it is an ongoing project, this one is very catchy.

Some music love for all you music lovers!!

I spend my idle time online "surfing the web" for new and interesting music. Often I am led astray or I spend way too much time searching for that one song I can't remember the title or artist of, yet there are times I find these gems, and I would like to share them with you. So please enjoy my favorite music websites and blogs!

I love KBOO! Lucky for me they are available streaming online, or I would be having kboo withdrawals. The local, grass roots, liberal, free speech, volunteer run kick-ass radio station from good ol' SE Portland, this radio station has so much great stuff, music and otherwise. Support your local KBOO!

Some music blogs that I love are listed below.

Aurgasm: most of the music reviewed and highlighted on this site is listen worthy, and furthermore, all of it is available for free down load, right from the site, so check out their archives and genre list.  The main writers periodically make sweet mixes as well. 

ZZK Records: I discovered this label last summer by going on a whim to a show at Rotture and being overwhelmed by the goodness of the sound and energy. I think they had been described in some concert fliers as "cumbia dubstep", and that indeed they were, and so much more, these guys work together to create a huge world beat sound, very heavy on the bass. 

Furl Tracks: I have to give this shout out to my friend, the furl #1, Noah Mock for creating and maintaining a sweet blog that highlights obscure gems from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. From Afrobeat to Garage, and Psyche to Soul to Metal, Furl tracks is a good stop for learning about something you should already know. 

Abstract Earth Project: For my Portland poeple... this is essential for finding the best electronic/DJ shows in Portland. I can't even look at this website without instantly feeling jealous and wishing for the Portland music scene to be instantly transported to Seoul. So my lucky friends, just about every show on here is worth going to, and they have a nifty free music section!


Pelski: I just recently discovered this blog, and found it to be highlighting loads of music that I already love, while mentioning quite a lot that I didn't know. Based out of the UK. There is a long list of all the artists reviewed on the left side of the page, pretty sweet. 

In addition to the myriad of cool music blogs to be perused, there are some great music resources. Here are some that I frequent regularly:

Soundcloud is a place where artist of any genre and level of popularity can drop their tracks and see them visualized, search for a song, or explore the genre list. Most songs are available for free download, just look for the link that says "download" right on the track player. 

8 tracks I love this site, I don't know how long it has been around, but I'm sorry that I didn't know about it years ago! I have been selecting random mixes from here for about a year, and am hoping to start adding some of my own very soon. One of my favorite mixes right now is: Afrocentric give it a listen if you have time! 

As always, youtube.com has a wealth of cool videos, you just have to weed through the vast sea of lame or poorly done videos. Be diligent! Here's a cool one that caught my eye last year from the amazing poet, writer, and musician Gil Scott-Heron, back on the scene after a 16 year hiatus.

"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music."  ~ George Eliot (1819-1880)

Weekend in Busan

What a nice break from Seoul to head south to the beautiful city of Busan, still a big city, but with a more relaxed beach life attitude, and amazing seafood! The weather was breezy, sunny and 60 degrees. The company was wonderful, and again I say.... the food! It was so great. Busan has a population of three and half million people, and is known for it's long sandy beaches and an incredible bridge that lights up at night.

 It was nice to breathe the sea air and smell fresh fruit from vendors along the streets, while encountering some odd sights along the way.

the street our hotel is on

a strange amusement park just outside our hotel

We stayed just a few steps off the beach, at a dumpy but cheap hotel in the fish market neighborhood. The streets were lined with huge tanks of crab and eel and flounder and so many species of fish and seafood that I could not even name them. Trucks came and unloaded at all hours of the day with the freshest catch and restaurant workers came and picked up, a constant flow of fish. It's amazing how many people the sea feeds.... Including us! We had a FEAST of crab one afternoon. It was really amazing. We selected our crabs, live and crawling around, and the man took them away while we were seated on the heated floor and served scores of small dishes of food and lots of beer while we waited for the main dish.

we selected our crabs here- so many to choose from!

the table at the beginning of the meal

peanuts, quail eggs, and a touch of salt

How quickly it seemed that it went from this:

to this:

to this:

and finally this:

After feasting on the succulent crab meat they took the empty shells, with the remains of the brains and guts (mmm...) and stir fried it up with some rice and veggies and served it back to us. It was actually quite good! The perfect amount of saltiness and sea taste.

The aftermath of any Korean meal thus far has been a very messy table with lots and lots of little plates with traces of the food that once filled them. The way food is done here is so wonderful. I feel a little sad when I make myself dinner and it's just one or two dishes of something, I have become so accustomed to the Banchan that accompanies every meal! And of course, it is perfectly accepted to lie down on the heated floor after indulging so....

After the incredible lunch we made dinner plans with our friends and set off to explore some more of Busan, encountering nice markets and busy city streets and a cool bar on the beach, a perfect place to watch the day turn into night.

Gwanganli beach

Lunch was topped only by our interesting dinner experience. We traveled slightly out of town to eat dinner in a tent! Little did we know that dinner would turn out to be 5 hour affair involving somewhere close to 20 bottles of soju and an dessert of live octopus. We had a private tent for the 9 of us, with open fires and grills at each of our two tables, gravel below us and some Balkan Beat Box on the ipod. Large trays of shellfish came our way and we grilled them in the shell and ate as we pleased, throwing the leftovers all into a pot and making a stew of mushrooms, seafood juice from the shells, chopped scallops clams, oysters, onions, kimchi, fresh rosemary, potatoes and anything else we could find on our tables. It was so good and spicy as usual and we successfully washed it all down with our ample soju and beer and laughed until the night was black and chilly, and after a walk on the rocky seaside we made our way home for a good night sleep. 

the food on this plate was still moving when we ate it! The tentacles stuck to our tongues and cheeks

What a good trip it was, and also so good to be back in Seoul at the end of the weekend.

More photos are available on Nicole's Flickr site.