Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
Displaying 4,141 To 4,170 Of 4,403 Comments
I’m guessing that’s “fermez la bouche.”
American TV doesn’t have the balls to transcend its own sexual prudery.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/August/2014 @ 4:54 pm
Ah… sunny, beautiful, happy Pyongyang! There’s an ironically dehumanizing quality to that video, which portrays Pyongyang’s citizens as scurrying and insectile. Like insects, the people bustle about, waiting to be crushed, zapped, or otherwise dispatched.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/August/2014 @ 10:28 pm
There’s always that moment when you’re looking at your plate, at the amount of food on it, and mentally matching up the quantity of food with the price, then wondering whether the whole affair is worth your while. The food looks good, if nothing else. Worth $100 a person? Not so sure about that. Maybe you all were paying for the ambiance.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/August/2014 @ 1:20 pm
Here’s a visual reference.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/August/2014 @ 10:39 am
Yes: by showing the back of your hand while raising two fingers, you’re doing the English “fuck you” sign– their analogue to the middle finger.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/August/2014 @ 9:59 am
Eh wot? You didn’t muscle in and break things up?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 29/July/2014 @ 4:26 pm
Thirsty sounds like a stand-up gent. We’ll all have to meet up sometime.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/July/2014 @ 5:35 pm
I wonder, at this point, which is more dangerous: Vietnam or Ohio.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/July/2014 @ 8:18 pm
Beer leads to obnoxiousness, man.
That said, I think your assessment of the night’s events is fair-minded: there’s enough blame to go around on both sides. True: you probably weren’t being any louder than the loudest of the Koreans. Also true: English does stand out in a sea of ambient Korean, and vice versa when Koreans jabber in a crowd of Americans.
Would’ve been nice to fire a garden hose at those two shouting ajummas—the way we separate two mating dogs in the States. Failing that… water balloons?
Sorry to hear about the keyboard. Why not let the keyboard sit for an hour in a warm saline bath to dissolve the Diet Coke? Heh.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 19/July/2014 @ 3:59 pm
If you build it they will come
Ah, yes… NALC. My mother used to work there, at First and C Streets, close to the Capitol. DC is an odd mishmash of often-clashing architecture, sitting atop poorly laid-out streets designed by a demented Frenchman. You can find a small measure of sanity in the rigid gridwork of the Georgetown University/Foxhall neighborhoods, but that’s about it. DC was designed for carriages, not cars. And plenty of its neighborhoods are fugly.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 19/July/2014 @ 12:27 am
That’s an amazingly clean grill. Either that’s your first time ever using it, or you police your cooking equipment with the standards of a drill sergeant.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/July/2014 @ 6:06 pm
Congrats on the old/new phone. May it never know the taste of toilet water.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/July/2014 @ 1:01 pm
Happy Birthday to the birthday girl!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/July/2014 @ 11:24 am
Have yourself a merry little birthday
Wait, so your wife is Tom Cruise?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/July/2014 @ 11:19 am
Nah, not Buddhist at all. More folkloric than anything. But modern Buddhists and Christians (and atheists) alike will visit fortune-tellers, even if they might not admit to doing so.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/July/2014 @ 11:33 pm
Was a fortune-teller used with the previous beau? And how did that turn out?
A few good vocab words to know:
점쟁이 (jeom-jaengi) = fortune-teller
평생 (pyeong-saeng) = your entire lifetime
사 (sa) = four (4)
주 (ju) = pillar(s)
평생사주 (pyeong-saeng sa-ju) = the 4 pillars of your lifeThe “four pillars of your life” are your time of birth, your date of birth, your month of birth, and your year of birth. These are used by the jeom-jaengi to determine your destiny (saju, along with meaning “four pillars,” also refers to fate/destiny).
Well… good luck to Sohee and her new guy. Here’s hoping there no new new guy in a few months! May her fortune be a good one.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/July/2014 @ 8:03 pm
Something on your mind?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 30/June/2014 @ 5:15 pm
Sorry for double-posting, but there was an error in the first comment: I’d forgotten an “in” at a crucial moment in a sentence. If you can delete that first comment, I’ll be much obliged.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/June/2014 @ 3:25 pm
Sorry the night ended the way it did, and that you ended up with a net W6000 in winnings, post-taxi. Enjoy a nice Korean meal with that money!
I’ve had cabbies drive past me at night, too. Many cabbies who refuse to take you somewhere believe that you have to cross the street to take a cab in the opposite direction. I have no idea why so many cabbies are averse to making U-turns, but it’s a dickheaded aspect of the culture here: they just don’t wanna reverse direction, for whatever odd reason.
In general, though, once I’m in the cab, I’ve had mostly pleasant experiences—I’d say over 90% positive. Either I’ll get to talking with the cabbie, or we’ll ride along in relative silence (possibly with the radio blaring bad bbong-jjak music). I’m comfy either way. There may well be a racism angle, but from the Korean point of view, despite my half-Koreanness, I appear as white as you to most Koreans.
A few things I do when hailing a cab: first, I smile when hailing. Next, when the cab twitches toward me in traffic, I bow in thanks as it approaches. A little ass-kissing helps catch the cab. Next, when I open the door, the very first thing I say is “Thank you!” or “Thank you very much!” Then I settle myself into the back seat. The driver will either wait expectantly for me to tell him where I’m going, or he’ll ask, “Where are you going?” I tell him my destination, and 9 times out of 10, we’re off. On the rare occasions that the cabbie refuses my fare, after all that buttering-up, he’ll normally explain that he’s going in the opposite direction of travel, so I need to cross the street and catch a cab on the other side. As I said above, this is a dickheaded thing to do, and the main reason for it is probably sheer laziness, not racism.
I’ll admit there have been one or two occasions when the cabbie didn’t initially realize I wasn’t Korean. One guy in Daegu did a hilarious double-take toward the end of my ride; we’d been talking the entire time, and it was only at the very end of the route that he looked in the rear-view mirror at me and saw I was an extraterrestrial. I had to make a real effort to stop myself from laughing at his expression. Another time, after a few cabs had passed me by, one finally stopped, and I’m pretty sure it’s because my silhouette looked more Korean than Caucasian to him.
For what it’s worth, I wrote about my absolute worst cab ride, with a man who had to be the world’s stupidest cabbie, here.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/June/2014 @ 3:24 pm
Looks as though I’m a BC, too. The questions were so obviously worded that it was easy to see which meant “liberal” and which meant “conservative.” I also loved the questions on immigration (“newcomers”), both of which totally sidestepped the issue of legal versus illegal immigration, forcing you to say ALL immigrants are beneficial or harmful to society. I’m guessing that the person who drafted this quiz leans fairly significantly leftward.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/June/2014 @ 10:33 am
Yes, I’m slow on the uptake. I figured out, belatedly, how to click on the subtitles.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/June/2014 @ 8:00 pm
I didn’t see any subtitles, but they weren’t necessary. That was hilarious.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/June/2014 @ 4:28 pm
Glad it all went peachily. Now I can’t get the sexual slang “eat a peach” out of my head.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/June/2014 @ 4:38 pm
Hope you get the paperwork straightened out and have a safe trip to Nippon, the Land of the Rising Nipples.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/June/2014 @ 7:37 pm
Onions are my Kryptonite, but aside from that, your egg-a-burger looks gorgeous.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/June/2014 @ 4:26 pm
It’s my party and I’ll brag if I want to…
You know the Chinese story about the poor old man and the horse? If not, ask Jee-yeun about the Korean proverb “sae ong ji ma.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/June/2014 @ 4:38 pm
Thanks, Bill.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/June/2014 @ 5:34 pm
“Life is transient” is a truth worth coming back to, so I don’t mind your message.
On the other hand, the caption under your first pic confuses me because you refer to two women “on the right,” and I can’t figure out which is which. Maybe refer to clothing color…?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/June/2014 @ 2:24 pm
Observations regarding a parking lot
Ah, life and its little microcosms…
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/May/2014 @ 10:40 am
«« Back To Stats PageCongratulations!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/May/2014 @ 9:33 pm