Asia

I Survived Eating Pufferfish

I was extremely busy last night and crashed when I returned to my hotel.  It’s physically draining to be running around all day, hurrying up, stopping, waiting, springing into action.  Tomorrow night will be a very busy day for me as the most important dignitaries arrive here in Busan for the APEC Summit.  To read all about the APEC Summit and the goings-on here in Busan, visit http://www.apec.org/ or http://www.apec2005.org/.  The latter site goes into much more depth about what’s happening now here in Busan than what I could describe in a single blog entry.  It is quite an exciting time to be here in Busan.  I’m amazed to be on the front lines watching the action and advance preparations unfold.  I’m not a spectator, mind you, but I am watching while I work hard doing my small bit to make sure the show goes on smoothly.  The big show, the APEC Economic Leaders’ meeting, is yet to come on November 17, 18, and 19.  I will be here all the way through the Summit and will watch the last major plane fly away a few days later.
Yesterday I tried “bokguk,” or pufferfish soup.  The pufferfish, also known as the blow fish, is a spiny creature that blows itself up into a balloonish shape when it is frightened by potential predators.  The defense mechanism is one way for it to appear larger than life, scaring away the predator.  The pufferfish is also poisonous, secreting a poisonous toxin intended to kill its predator.  Many Americans know that Japanese enjoy eating pufferfish, better known in Japanese as “fugu.”  Stories occasionally come out of Japan claiming that someone died from eating “fugu,” typically caused by the improper preparation of the “fugu” dish.  In Japan, chefs receive extensive training on preparing “fugu” properly, removing the poison glands so that the puffin fish meat remains untainted.  It is considered a delicacy in Japan.

I did not realize that Koreans also eat pufferfish, although this fact makes perfect sense since Busan is just a few hours by boat off the coast of southern Japan.  In Korea, pufferfish is not generally considered a delicacy, and here in Busan, numerous shops serve the fish in a soup for about 5,000 Korean won (about $5.00).  The soup includes bean sprouts and chives and can be served either spicy or mild (depending on whether you want to eat it with red pepper paste.  It is typically served with rice and a variety of panchan, or side dishes.   The pufferfish meat is cut into large chunks and served in the soup.  One typically eats every part of the fish except the head, organs, and spine.  The meat is delicious.  Served fresh, the taste and texture do not taste like fish at all.  To use an overused cliche, the meat tastes more like chicken.  (Actually, it tastes more like frog leg.)  Perhaps best of all, the pufferfish has so few bones that it is very easy to eat. 
I’ve wanted to try “fugu” ever since I first read about it when I was a teenager.  Perhaps I’m crazy wanting to eat something that kills some people (I think the victims are typically children or the elderly).  I have no desire to eat live octopus, which here in Korea the cephalopod is occasionally known to kill an unwary diner if the struggling animal lodges itself in the diner’s throat and suffocates the diner, as happened to an unfortunate Korean man in the past year.  I personally think it’s cruel to eat live animals and would rather that my food not move on my plate while eating it.  I have the same apprehension whenever my wife’s family eats “drunken shrimp,” a Chinese delicacy featuring live shrimp soaked in alcohol.  I just cannot bear to eat an inebriated shrimp starting up at me with those big black eyes, as if to say, “Hey dude, surf’s up!”
According to Wikipedia, all species of pufferfish off the coast of Korea are considered poisonous.  It mentions a hilarious episode of “The Simpsons” in which Homer Simpson eats pufferfish and is mistakenly told he has just 24 hours to live.  Like Homer Simpson, I too ate pufferfish and lived to tell about it.  Perhaps more daringly, I ate pufferfish at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant I’m sure is run by a Korean family as a small business.  I’m positive the cook did not attend professional pufferfish culinary training.  Well, I survived anyway.  Will I try it again sometime?  Oh, I suppose I will, depending on the occasion, now that I know how delicious it is.  Hopefully next time I will try it at an upscale restaurant, where I would feel more comfortable about how my meal has been prepared.

Greetings from Busan!

I arrived in Busan this morning.  I will be here for 10 days working at the APEC Summit.  While it’s a great opportunity for me, I will be staying here solo, without my family.  That’s unfortunate–my son and I had a wonderful time yesterday, and I hate to be away from him for so long.  It’s never easy being apart from your spouse, either.  I will also work a lot of hours while I’m here.  I worked nine hours today and will work even more tomorrow, even though tomorrow is Sunday.  APEC gears up on Tuesday and winds down on Saturday.
 
Events such as APEC are rare, as are the opportunities and requirements for an event of such magnitude.  Thousands will descend on Busan by early next week to attend a variety of APEC meetings.  Much has happened since I last wrote, as you can imagine.  I don’t usually miss two days of blogging in a row, but preparations for my trip to Busan and other circumstances drew me away.  I will try to keep writing as much as I can while I’m here.  I’m glad that I have an Internet connection in my hotel room, although the room itself isn’t very nice and it’s much too hot (they turned off the air conditioning).  It’s not nearly as nice as the room I stayed in when I was in nearby Haeundae for a couple days in late September.  It is closer to where I need to be during the APEC Summit.  I would prefer a better location over a better hotel.
 
Tonight I met up with a World Adventurers fan and some of her coworkers.  Monique has been reading my blog for awhile, and I’ve also been reading hers, Quemino’s World.  Her blog is great.  I’m lobbying for it to get a "Best of MSN Spaces" nod.  I call hers the "literary blog," because she posts far more literary references than I do.  If you haven’t checked out her MSN Spaces blog yet, have a look.  She is here in Busan now as part of the APEC delegation.  She is just as nice and congenial and thought provoking in person as she appears to be through her blog–what you read is what you get.  (She’s reading this, so I need to write nice things about her!  Seriously though, she is a great person.)  One of her coworkers asked about how to make a successful blog.  We told him that you need a "hook," something unique that sets your blog apart from other blogs and keeps people coming back for more.  Really, you can blog about just about anything, even something you know nothing about.  That can be even more fun, because then you can write an expository and be blissfully ignorant about the subject matter. 
 
Monique and her coworkers will spend the next week here too as APEC delegates.  I will work behind the scenes.  Tomorrow night I will backtrack and tell you all about the exciting things that happened while I was away.

The absence of graffiti

I had my first encounter with graffiti in Korea today when I noticed cryptic writing and macabre paintings sprayed in black spray paint on the walls of a murky, pedestrian underpass.  I saw them in Seoul near Itaewon, a district frequented by foreigners.  I have noticed since I arrived here last February that Korean infrastructure noticeably (and mercifully) lacks signs of graffiti scrawl.  I’ve heard that graffiti exists in Hongdae, an free-spirited, bohemian district in Seoul, but I have not seen it.  It’s my observation that Koreans generally do not deface public places by scrawling graffiti on buildings or infrastructure.  In Korea, graffiti is neither a widely accepted art form, nor is it typically used for decorative purposes.  Not far from where I encountered the graffiti, I saw a wall ornately painted with a mural of children flying kites in a grassy field.  The mural has been there for awhile, and it still has not been defaced by graffiti vandals.
 
This is a far cry from American culture, where graffiti is widely used, particularly in urban areas.  Recent news reports claim that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman advocated punishing those caught defacing freeways with graffiti by cutting off their thumbs on public television.  While I doubt that remedy will work and is a very harsh punishment, it underscores that graffiti has a much greater impact on American culture than it does in Korea.  While some consider graffiti an art form, many in the U.S. consider it a nuisance, even criminal.  However, graffiti is a non-issue in Korea because it is virtually nonexistent here.  I don’t think this is because the punishment for unauthorized graffiti is necesarily harsh in Korea.  More likely, it is because graffiti is not a manifestation of Korean culture.
 
I was curious about the origins of the English term "graffiti," which is derived an Italian word.  Graffiti.org explains:
The origins of graffiti go back to the beginnings of human, societal living. Graffiti has been found on uncovered, ancient, Egyptian monuments, and graffiti even was preserved on walls in Pompeii. Graffiti is the plural form of the Italian word grafficar. In plural, grafficar signifies drawings, markings, patterns, scribbles, or messages that are painted, written, or carved on a wall or surface. Grafficar also signifies "to scratch" in reference to different wall writings ranging from "cave paintings", bathroom scribbles, or any message that is scratched on walls. In reference to present day graffiti, the definition is qualified by adding that graffiti is also any unsolicited marking on a private or public property that is usually considered to be vandalism.
Murals, mozaics, and wall carvings are all technically considered graffiti.  Ancient cave paintings in France are technically graffiti, as are markings carved into lava formations by ancient Hawai’ians on the Big Island of Hawai’i.  It’s interesting that the term "graffiti" has taken on such a negative connotation in the English lexicon.  Someday what people consider a nuisance may someday become cultural artifacts.  Some of it, anyway.  Probably not in Korea, though.