Happy White Day!

March 14th is White Day in Korea. February 14th was Valentine's, of course, only with a Sadie Hawkins twist - women give men chocolate. White Day is all about the ladies, who are supposed to receive candy from male admirers.

I'm holding out for April 14th - Black Day. Yep, that's reserved for all we singletons to get together and commiserate while eating 짜장면 - jjajangmyeon, noodles with black bean sauce. Hence the name of the day - nothing to do with one's mood thereon. And jjajangmyeon is quite tasty, so needs must, I suppose.

The show on Saturday was excellent. Think a cross between West Side Story and Run-DMC's video for "It's Like That", with some traditional Korean music tossed in. This article has a pretty good synopsis of what went on. Let me just add that "the quiet zither girl" was gorgeous. Probably the most beautiful girl I've seen since I arrived. The whole "b-boy" culture is really big over here - there are many different troupes performing all over the city (we nearly ended up at the wrong theatre - the one right across the street also had a b-boy show scheduled), and apparently Korean b-boy groups have won the international Battle of the Year in three of the last five years: 2002, 2004, and 2005. Hippity-hop.

Finished "20,000 Leagues". Poor old Captain Nemo. I blame the French.

Should be finishing Robert Graves' "I, Claudius" tonight and picked up the sequel, "Claudius the God" at Bandi & Luni's yesterday. I've never been able to find that in Canada - thought it was out of print. But lo and behold, there it was staring me in the face in the foreign section of the great bookstore at the COEX Mall.

Oops - saved this as a draft rather than publishing. So, Happy White Day +1.