伐草 or 禁草: Cutting Weeds Around Graves

1.
Since a heavy rainshower was expected in the last weekend, I'd thought the planned Beolcho(伐草: to mow grasses/weeds around ancestors' graves) would be delayed. But the expectation was totally wrong and I had to work in the rain. Fortunately the rain was not pouring so much during the work and I think it was far better than to work under the hot sun.

2.
Once the well-cared graves or tombs were the missions of offsprings in Korea. Especially before Chuseok(秋夕, Korean Thanksgiving Day), all the graves should be kept clean and clear for the upcoming memorial services or rites, Charey, 茶禮. Really hard labors were the gardening works for graves in the middle or higher place in hills, I think.

3.
The recently built family graveyard had saved great amounts of workloads. (Refer to the previous posting if interested) Even though I don't have any grave to care about officially, I'd used to join in the hard daily labor two or three times in every hot summer till the last year with the name of the family business. Really strong reason of family businesses in this 21st century! That meant anyway I had to spend two or three weekends and it had been really annoying thing.. Of course some of relatives(old gentlemen) looked to be very happy and be willing to join in..

This year, however, thanks to the graveyard, the number of graves for Beolcho was definitely reduced, definitely. It was possible since we had made a big grave for more than 18 graves' souls. In addition, the graveyard was so new, and not so much to do there. Much more people were gathered for a less job! The work had been finished in the morning, which I'd never imagined before. Such an early mission completion!

(The picture is the one I tried to post in May! One of the stone is for my wife and me...)


4.
I couldn't avoid some extra job for close relatives after lunch. That was fine. Only two I had to work for. That was really fine. While working, we had talked about the reducing number of families, and the increasing age gap between generations.


5.
I was late in that morning, and forgot to bring my camera, so I couldn't take pictures for the above works as well as for another reaping in mommy's field. Grapes and pears were the products of the last week.

( I took this after back to home)

met a friend on a train, by chance

I was sipping at the platform the hot coffee bought just few minutes ago at Dunkin Donuts while waiting for KTX train for Daejon departing at 8 o'clock in the morning, when I found a man who was looking at me, holding a cup of DD coffee like me.

Hmm, a stange gentleman, I thought taking another sip.

But soon, I felt he was still looking at me as if he had some business on me, and I had to look at him like he did wondering if I had taken any mistakes in the place in that morning.

Oh, man. I see.

I could recognize what the serious eye-sight was, which had been quite familiar in the very old past.. It was Y.

He was one of college alumni who had been quite close each other even though in different majors and was thought to be in NYC right now as a prosperous professor. I didn't know why but we didn't meet or keep in touch each other about more than 10 years so far. The last news about him I heard of was from the newspapers several years ago, appraising his successful carrier in his field. I met him on an early-morning train by chance yesterday. Almost impossible probability!


We studied each other in short after rearranging seats, which were in different compartments, and began to talk about some past memories and about what we were doing at the moment. What I learned was:

Oh, yes, he is still the prosperous professor in the state, researching the light/color-emmitting materials.

The most exciting fact was that it's his sabbatical year and he dropped here before visiting to Singapore for 6 months in Sept.( I really envy his sabbatical!! ) The funniest thing was the fact I talked too much explaining the IT industry trends and market stuffs even though it was he that gave always lessons/classes/speeches to public as a professor. Any of explanation, prospects of something should be his role, I thought. But it was because of his simple question :

You wanna listen to Chemistry things ?

It tooks only 50 minutes to Daejon and it's too short to talk about everything in the past 10 years or more, but anyway I was really happy to meet him and to chat with. Since his destination was similar to me, we got off together and said goodbye after exchanging e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Last episode. I felt he was almost a foreigner now in that he was keeping the city map in his bag, and throwing away his Dunkin paper cup into a trash can without thinkning about its refund ( as much as 50 won) if returned to any Dunkin's store instead of the trash can.

(Actually no related with the story.

Took this Mondrian-style cow in the last year at a hotel in Schipol/Amsterdam)

Another Banquet

I'm afraid guys who're reading my blog would think that I have always parties or short trips in weekends and I am a sort of lavish or prodigal... which is really not true..

Anyway on Sunday, Clockwiz invited all 4X4 members, and we all had a lot of delicious, luxurious dishes. My kids really loved Galbi-Jim(Boiled Ribs with sweet soy source) and Jabchae. Fantastic meals. Thanks to Ms. Clockwiz.. And I saw his cute fish and aquarium, and surprising woodworks.

(The Dishes Clockwiz's wife prepared for us)

It was 11 pm when we were back home , and I couldn't sleep well. I seemed to eat and drink too much, maybe. Lots of fun and full of delicious foods, the weekend was..

Scandinabian food ?

M, one of my high school friends had his daughter's first birthday party at Scamdinabian Club, Euljiro, Seoul. Since my only memory for the north's food was the reindeer steak, I was wondering what kind of foods would be serving there..

(The restaurant's signboard)

As expected, a lot of fish and sea food. Salmon salad, herring salad, somked salmon and eel , and pen shell alaking. Actually a lot of herring based dishes..

Liver paste was also special with red beets. Smoked bacon and ducks were nice, too.

I enjoyed a lot the food with old friends..

till night..(of course, other pubs, 4 rounds)

(My dish..)

Independence day - City Hall's Decoration

Someone had decorated Seoul City Hall building for celebrating Independence Day with koren traditional lamps-called it ChongsaChorong, while we were decorating our home..

(I took this at the front end of the Plaza, Aug 15)

(My wife took this in the front seat of the moving car)

Yes, the changes are these.

Basically, we are very satisfied with the results. Especially considering the costs for it.

My kids chose wallpapers with CARs' characters. How fast the market works ! We can find a lot of its characters' goods like toys and wallpapers already.


(My kids room before and after. He need to reduce his belongings..)



Big green flowers pattern for kitchen walls. It's quite modern and graceful, but we hesitated, worring about its tone and color if it would be too dark.

(The kitchen wall changes from ivory to green flowers patterns)

Another Holiday with works

I saw this morning zinco leaves which was beginning to change its leave's color to a little bit orange(not to yellow yet) at last at Namsan sowol-gil(road) while drivining to work after another 5-days holiday. Oh, the fall would be coming soon, exclaimed joyfully.

Since we had spent nice days in a nice resort in the previous holidays(it's just in the last weekend ! see the previous two posts: (1) and ( 2)), on this time, I'd like to do something that had been delayed so long by the lack of the time. Could you guess what it was?

Yes, repapering. My son had been longing for decorating his room with fashionable and new-style wallpapers quite a long time and I promised we would do it in his summer vacation. 5-days-holiday was quite a long one and I could make time for doing it. Moreover, we didn't have enough money to plan another trip. Yes, so repapering.

From previous surveys at shops in town, we'd learned it would be really expensive if inviting a couple of experts and repapering whole the house. No need to spend so much! So, made mind to minimize the work only to the boy's room, and two walls of the kitchen, and decided to do it by ourselves.

Guessed it would be hard and it's really so. For the repapering itself, only 12 hours by clumsy and unskilled guys were enough, but we had to spend in real 4 days for shopping, preparing, repapering, and cleaning- the whole things. There's some mistakes like pattern mismatch, but no problems. Rather, very satisfied with the works.

(Bangsan Market, Prints and Papers market)

One episode. We went to Bangsan market to choose wall papers, where we could buy every papers and interior stuffs in the world. After shopping with time-cosuming negotiations, we had naengmyun(Korean Cold Noodel) for dinner at the near-by famous restaurant(like MCCHAE and Clockwiz a couple of weeks ago), but we found later the little girl had some terrible alergy for it and has suffered still, in almost a week. Doctor said the buckwheat might be the reason and it would last more than a week.

Another episode. Fitting and pasting papers(silky papers) were not easy job and at least two adults should co-work for them. My mom and nephew came to us for taking care of the little girl during the work in the evening and thanks to them we could do it whole night. We went to Everland with them in the next morning and enjoyed the park's Summer Splash party. Really cool and funny. We all were totally wet.

Going to the cinema for the first time.

It was our first trial of going to the movie altogether, and we did it.
-

So far the kids are too little to go the public cinema, we couldn't go to a movie.

But SJ wanted to watch pixar's new animation CAR with dubbed in Korean, like one of his friend did with her father.

Well, I was on a vacation, the temperature was too high to stay at home, and thus, we went to CGV cinema in the worldcup stadium. Even though we had already watched its english version with korean subtitles several times on my desk top at home..

The attempt was successful and right now I make sure we can go to the cinema altogether from now on..

(They were concentrating on the ADs before the movie began)

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By the way, I found one funny picture from the SONY Korea Homepage.

My wife and the little girl who were about to buy SONY A-100 at SONY Myoungdong shop, are explained as a sort of frantic fans of their new product..

OMG.

click here and check the report no.397 for the article..

Escape from the hot.

I'd ran away from the hot to Hongcheon, Kangwon Province for three days. Yup, it's summer vacation I was longing for. The place was cool, at least cooler than in Seoul, and we could forget the blazing hot and the sticky sweats for a while in the forest and the water.

(Vivald Park, HongCheon, Kangwon)

(A trail in the resort)

(On the swan boat in the lake at the late afternoon.

I lost the skyblue..)

The resort, actually we had visitied last summer, has opened a new big water park this year, and we could enjoy another fun this time. All the facilities were new and exellent. We had spent more than 10 hours with various swimmig pools, spa and sauna till exhausted.

I was satisfied as well as tired with the long-hour fun, thinking about the expensive admission fee we'd paid for the artificial waves, the artificial beach and the artificial rivers. It's funny that the real one doesn't require for expensive money or long waiting in a line for entrance..

(Ocean World, indoor pools.

I lost half of the reduced size while spraying black on the faces)

(Ocean World, at the outdoor pools and spa)

One special thing was that we invited the parents-in-law to this trip, and they seemed to enjoy the trip well fortunately.

The last two photos show the difference of my family in a year.

(2005 Summer)

(2006 Summer)

My new photo archive

I'm thinking about a photo archives for weeks and right now I have my account on IGLOO.

I'm not sure how long I'll keep this IGLOOS site, because I'm comparing the site with Yahoo and the IGLOO is operated by SK.. Anyway at a first glance, it looked very simple and convenient.

For the test purpose, I made two photo albums from the posting This week's harvest(2006/07/28).

You can see them here
"the second harvest".
"the rest of the day, another fun".

The Burning Hot

The rain was stopped. The terribly heavy torrential rains had stopped really.
Two Typhoons had passed by through the peninsular with hurts.
Usually more typhoons in the late August may visit to us, but no signs yet.
Yes. The Monsoon was over. This unusual 40-day-long rainy season was at last over.
-
NOW, THE HOT's TIME. Its turn after a long wait.. Tropical nights everyday..
-
My brother and brother-in-law suggested to join in their short weekend trip to the beach on somewhere in the west coast in the last week. At that time, their schedule was not fixed, their destination was not fixed, nobody couldn't make sure about the weather, and I felt tired too much those days, and then I had to make some execuses. I heard later they had set their destination to some place near YeongjongDo.
-
Instead, we went a walk to Worldcup Park on Sunday afternoon. Well, stopping at there after shopping at Carrefour truely. I suggested to ride inline-skating to my son and he refused in a word. Too hot. Actually he needed to practice it harder I thought, but yes, it's too hot.
-
Right now, I'm longing for my summer vacation, and trip to Kangwon province in this weekend..

(Sangam Worldcup Stadium with Thick Clouds)

(The Worldcup Park-Peace's Park Entrance)

(A Small Lake in the Park)

(The Chang Seung- The Traditional Wooden Gaurdian for Village)

(Yes, it's too hot)

(Looked really tired of the heat..)