SUBURBAN LIFE

'S Happenin blog,

I got news from over Californie way that the Grammys happened the other day; and in accordance with Arcade Fire's win for best album I thought I'd do a lil blog about living in the The Suburbs.

When I first moved here I was aware that there would be some distance from where I live to the center of the world's 8th largest city. The school I work for advertises the distance as around 30 minutes by subway, but to be real it's an hour+ travel at least to get anywhere cool.

In this photo I live half way between that red dot that says Goyang, and the river directly below it. So I live in the suburbs. Where I live is literally younger than most of the people who live in it. From what I've read (on wikipedia FTW) the area was mostly built after 1980 on farm land to house overflow.





When I first got here I was sort of bummed that if I did indeed want to go to Seoul the travel would be 2 hours round trip and the subway closes from 12am to 5am. Manageable because I bring a book on the subway or my iPhone (thanks Devon&John!) that has games on it, but sort of a drag still.

Also there are not of a whole lot of foreigners around here either. As a consequence though there are also no 'foreigner friendly' bars anywhere close. That means that one has to go to restaurants only and you have to order great portions (and costs) worth of food (because they assume you are with 2+ friends) to stay and hang out. If you only order drinks they ask you to leave. Trust me. Only a minor drag when someone (I) wants to just hang out and kick it for the night on the weekends, but still a negative. Also as one would assume there isn't as much vibrancy, events, art and culture out here in the suburbs as there always is in a city like Seoul.

So for a while there I was thinking 'Man I should have waited until I could get a gig inside the city'. Close to a street like this one at Myeong Dong:

(I took this picture on a weekday early morning so usually the streets are packed and there is shopping on all the streets around it as well. From what i hear it's all hustle and bustle usually but hopefully you get the idea.)

HOWEVER. The more time passes, the more I realize my situation is LEGIT!

First of all, too many foreigners is a bad thing. All offense, Americans, you can sort of be atrocious when in big groups. Second of all my apartment is pretty nice: it's spacious enough, tall ceilings, nice floors, working heat and AC (I assume), modern shower and bathroom, safe location, built in fridge. All of those are because it, like all the ones around it, was built only one or two decades ago. My friends' apartments in Seoul seriously lack one, but mostly 3,4 or all of those qualities.

 
Thirdly, I live IN a commercial district (pictured).

I am less than one song (on my iPhone, thanks Devon&John!) away from one of each of the two major grocery/department store chains in this country, a major subway line stop, two dozen varried Korean, Indian, Chinese, American restaurants/coffee/doughnut shops and for good measure there is an arcade and a batting cage too. Where as some of my friends in the city need walk a good distance to get to the cultural district, and in most cases they need to take a couple subway stops and back to go to a store bigger than a convenience store for groceries.

I feel like suburban life is sort of flipped from in the states. The burbs in the states there are clusters of homes, and then central shopping and eating districts and then in the cities everything is all bunched together. In Seoul, it feels like there are MASSIVE sections of apartments skewed together in no particular order or lay out, and then there are randomly designated central blocks or streets for night life, shopping, eating etc etc.

Out here in the burbs there is more (which is to say any) concise and contemporary city planning that went into making the area more mobile-friendly and convenient while still maintaining benefit/necessity of having everything be close together.

Time to cook dinner. I don't get off work until 8 Tues and Thurs so by the time I get home and unwind it's already pretty late. On tonight's single option menu we have Australian imported beef with garlic and onion spaghetti (fancyspeak for: strips of un-seasoned meat n'sum pasta with cheaply flavored store-bought pasta sauce).

2/16! JACK ATTACK!!!!!!


BYE