That Phone Will Kill You

An old friend from Canada and her Spanish boyfriend visited me this month. We were travelling all over Seoul, Osaka, and Kyoto for the past couple of weeks so I didn’t have much time to update my site. I would like to talk more about my vacation, but I feel like a more significant incident happened while we were waiting for the subway train in Seoul Station.

There was an unusually wide gap between the train and the platform we were in. A sign on the platform doors warned about this fact. But a woman ahead of us, much too focused on her phone, fell in between the gap as she was getting in. The lower half of her body was under the platform.

For a few seconds, everyone around her was in shock. Nobody, including me, was moving. These things just don’t happen, and it was unbelievable that it was happening at that moment. A woman was about to get horribly mutilated on a Friday afternoon.

Then I snapped out of it, grabbed the woman by her right arm pit and pulled her out of the gap. Then, my companions and I entered the train right before the door closed. She didn’t acknowledge what happened and just limped way and took the only free seat. I asked her if she’s okay in Korean, and she finally said “thank you” in English, and that was that.

All that time, her phone never left her hand.

My wife said that perhaps she was in shock, that’s why the woman just went to her seat and buried her face into her phone. I’m guessing it’s a mixture of shock and embarrassment. Now, while I’m glad that my guests from out of town were spared from an impromptu subway guillotine, and I kinda forgive the woman for acting rather nonchalant about the horrible fate that she just avoided, but I’m more annoyed about the precursor of the whole incident. People are not paying attention to their surroundings because of their phones!

It’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves. Sometimes you’re not looking, a passerby will knock it off your hand. It will fall and break, and ruin your day. But that’s one of the better outcomes. That phone will get you killed. It will get you in car accidents. It will get you falling off platforms. So please, STOP IT ALREADY! The modern day cellular phone has already killed table manners, polite conversation, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the need to actually remember things and be competent in basic arithmetic. It will actually kill human beings as well. And last Friday, it nearly killed one in front of us.

I just hope that woman learned a lesson that day.

Musing on Japan, culture, and everything else later.

Perils of French Realism

After years of holding on to my old iPhone 4, I finally upgraded to an iPhone 6. I had the option to get the iPhone 6S but found it a little too big to be called a phone. It seemed more like a tablet and I feel like the bigger a phone gets, the more unwieldy it is, and the likelier I am to drop it.

I’m quite happy with the upgrade. It’s big enough to be able to read pdfs of magazines and comic books. I was quite an avid comic reader when I was younger, and this might get me back to reading graphic novels again. The screen is gorgeous, and pictures and artwork look great on it.

Unfortunately, last Friday, I was admiring the phone and testing it out on the bus. I happen to be looking at some historic paintings to set as my wallpaper, browsing through masterpieces with heavy contrasts, works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, then BOOM!… Gustave Courbet. For the uninitiated, Courbet was a French realist, most known for a particularly unorthodox and intimate portrait of Joanna Hifferman entitled, L’Origine du Monde. I will let you find that painting yourself.

Now stumbling on the masterpiece wouldn’t be so bad in itself. Unfortunately, a lady standing next to me saw the image as quickly as it appeared on my phone. Our eyes met for a moment by the reflection on the window. And as innocent an accident as it was, I felt as if I was caught committing a crime. She looked away, and I quickly put the phone in my coat pocket. That’s enough art browsing for now. What am I to do? I can’t explain myself to a stranger. That would make me appear more guilty. Of course, quickly hiding my phone makes me look guilty as well.

Two stops later, she gets off. I just gave that woman a story to tell her friends.

 

Flowers Phone Alcohol… baba booey baba booey

I kinda missed out on the whole beer home-brewing thing. I feel like living in a small apartment, I’m not really equipped for it. Also, I’ll probably end up drinking a whole lot of bad beer. There’s already enough bad beer I could buy locally. I don’t need to make them myself. The same goes with wine. I don’t drink enough wine to start making my own. And though I know enough to know what bad wine tastes like, I don’t know about making my own bad wine.

I make an exception with Korean makkeoli however. Makkeoli is a traditional Korean alcoholic drink made from rice. It’s often referred to as rice wine, but it’s not really wine. It has its own unique taste and is quite easy to drink. The downside is that some brands of makkeoli leave drinkers quite gassy. Now, I don’t drink makkeoli often, but it is something that I enjoy with my father-in-law (a better alternative to soju).

I’m planning to try making makkeoli this month with my mother-in-law. She still knows how to make makkeoli, although the last time she made a batch was decades ago. Her daughters are taught how to make kimchee, and I often help out in their annual kimchee making tradition. But I noticed that none of her daughters were taught how to make makkeoli. My wife’s not interested, and I doubt if her niece or nephew would even bother learning about it. It’s just not very high on their traditions compared to kimchee. Alas, their family recipe (I assume there is one) is about to die off.

So I’m going to learn how to make makkeoli. My in-laws have a lot of space so it’s perfect for brewing. Also, this gives me another activity whenever we visit. Hopefully, I’ll end up with something worth drinking.

…

My phone is dying on me. I’ve had my phone for four years now. I’m not really too keen on upgrading since I only use my phone for calls, podcasts, Howard Stern, texting, Twitter, and the occasional net surfing. I don’t really need something too high end, and honestly, nothing out there has really been that exciting, in my opinion. I’ve had an iPhone all of these years, and I’m really considering switching to Android just for the sake of divorcing myself from iTunes. I like the phone, but I’m really not a big fan of the software.

That’s an understatement. I hate iTunes. I hate how it limits what the customer can do with their products.

The new iPhone is a tad too big. I’ve heard too many horror stories regarding Samsung phones. Also, their latest designs are kinda lame and gimmicky, in my opinion. The Sony phones are kinds intriguing, especially since I own quite a few Sony products that I can integrate into a whole ecosystem. But I’m just not sure yet. Anyway, we’ll see until my phone finally dies.