Recently in w/family Category

actually, i have no clue what these two are doing. i think this was paul's apartment before i dry vacuumed about two pounds of dirt from his dirty carpet... alas, he just moved three floors below into a new unit, so all that was in vain...

"i like this lamp.. it's my favorite lamp... do you wanna take a picture of my lamp?"

me, m-dawg (minae) and puppy-chow (paul) went to visit our old middle school, rocky run. we weren't allowed in, but we took some nell-like photos!

i am sooooo fine, i am sooOOOOooo fine...

... and i never knew my dad could play piano!

we're probably playing this weird korean "yay yay yay" song.

it's been a while since i've played violin, let alone violin-piano pieces with paul... what's up with the korean finger peace sign thingy, paul??

this was probably taken right before a bad rendition of "wind beneath my wings"

new year's eve was spent at my brother's place in new york city. we rounded up the finest ingredients from across the city to create a very italian (and not to mention heavy) new year's eve dinner. on the menu was a light and tangy risotto, potato gnocchi w/pesto sauce, and penne pasta with a sweet and savory cream of bell pepper sauce.

after lugging a 24" tv uptown to shove in paul's pad, we ended the night with resident evil: apocalypse :p

some photos (taken with a leica rangefinder, f1 lens -- that means lotsa blur, soojin!)

minae reads (that's paul in the background, with a nice f1 blur! it looks like he's eating potato chips, but that's actually his thinking pose).

minae writes - she's using one of paul's fountain pens that he bought to start his journal... paul: check to make sure she didn't take it ;)

a nice couply pic :) if you ever walk into paul's room, make sure to stay away from the bookshelf behind us. i think it hasn't been dusted since 2001...

hey, i don't look so fat in this one! ^^

happy minae!

oh, and... HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

this past weekend i went down to the min suk chon (민속촌), or the korean folk village. it's one of the obligatory things to do when you visit korea, where you can see the recreation of how life was in korea during the chosun period. it's a pretty cool place to visit; they have everything from live performances of the old martial arts to authentic tradition food they make within the village. i, of course, had a bottle of their soju (rice wine) ^^ called dong-dong-something (동동-모모? ). since i only brought my manual (analog) camera, i won't have those pictures until i return to the states and develop them. i'll probably visit min suk chon again when i take my friend who's visiting korea out there in the next couple weeks.

i also went to apgujung-dong (apgujung is the name, the -dong means district) to meet my girlfriend's brother for dinner. it's a pretty nice place, just south of the han river, where a lot of young adults go. they had a pretty large and trendy shopping mall there and of course a zillion places to eat. i keep meaning to take pictures of these places, but keep forgetting! i'll try to do better next time...

this past weekend i stayed at my cousin's house again in bundang. he showed me our chokbo (family tree) for the paik family, which at this point is ten volumes long, each about 300 pages or so thick. it's a bit awkward because my cousin is actually 47 years old, and my father (who's 57) is his uncle. that puts me on an equal level with him, so i actually call him "brother" rather than "uncle". i'll try to explain:

my father's father was the youngest of three boys. the eldest of those three had several sons. the eldest of those sons is my cousin's father's father. that means my cousin's father is on an equal level with my father, making me equal level with my cousin.

in korean tradition, it is the responsibility of the first son of every generation to take care of the chokbo (family tree). since my cousin is the first of three son, and his father also the first of three sons, and his father's father also the eldest, that makes my cousin responsibile for keeping all the names in our family up to date. me and my brother's names are already in them, as it was last updated in 1982.

i met up with my aunt and my cousins for the first time in about nine and seventeen years, respectively, this weekend. they all live in the northwest part of seoul, ilsan. it was kind of trippy to seen them after so long, and i'm sure it was especially weird for them to see me since the last time i met most of them was when i was seven. i was very happy to see them all in good health, and doing very well in their respective jobs. my cousin so-young's husband was especially interesting to meet since he grew up in england and now teaches poetry at yonsei university (with a specialty in milton). so, naturally, he's quite connected with most of the professors there, giving me an easy ticket into attending yonsei in the future for short-course language programs ^^ his brother also is a venture-capitalist type who does a lot of consulting work for the big guns here: lg, samsung, and hyundai... he has a particular interest in advanced biotechnology, and after discussing briefly with him the work that i'm involved in with our startup company, we're planning on meeting up for an informal session. it's all about the connections...

anyway, it's the start of another week of work. i'll post up photos as soon as i get a chance...