Saturday, January 28, 2012

pets, pets, vets... and school!!

My life continues revolving mostly around my pets. I'm not going to write about the airline pet-transport nightmare until it all get resolved - but suffice it to say that I have been feeling frustrated to no end, and have broken down into tears over it several times. Also, Delta is incompetent. The wonderful Maya from http://www.petairline.co.kr has been helping me, and I truly hope that we will get everything straightened out by early next week.

Mochi is still a little under the weather. Despite the fact that I have a vet just around the corner from my house, I loaded the little fella into a taxi and rode over to Itaewon to take advantage of the English speaking vets at the  Chung Wha Animal Hospital. They, too, were wonderful. It was very reassuring to be able to explain his symptoms in detail, and to receive explanations from the vet in detail. (The vet by my house is friendly and conveniently located, but he speaks less English than I speak Korean.) Courtesy of the Chung Wha Animal Hospital, Mochi now has a dog-sized transport crate, antibiotics, and deer antler extract to boost his immune system. (Anyone who thought my honey-citron was strange... take that!) Also, Chung Wha is open Monday through Saturday, and they're open until 8pm, meaning I was able to go after work. Woohoo!

The following photos were all taken with my cell-phone, so they're not the best, but they'll do :-)

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Mochi and his new travel crate. I've got the door off so he can get used to it.

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Of course, Charlie's the only one who goes into the crate.

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Mochi and Charlie

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Trying to get a picture of myself and the two critters.

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Mochi posing.

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Charlie looking superior

And... I have superawesomefantastic news!! When I applied to grad schools (time to get my Master's in TESOL), I applied to schools that had good programs, were in places I'd be willing to live, and for which I could fulfill all application requirements from overseas. I would have been willing to go to any of them, although if forced to choose, I would've preferred the two located in the southeastern US, as they're located close to home. Still, I figured I would go to whichever school offered me the most funding. This morning I awoke to the news that the school located closest to home has not only accepted me, but is offering me full tuition, health insurance, an assistantship, and a kickass stipend!!! This is such a relief, and such a weight lifted off my chest. (Now the dog needs to fully recover and Delta needs to get their act together - then life will be perfect.) Six more weeks until my 5 month vacation begins, then grad school in the fall :-)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Hammin' it up for the holidays

If you've spent time in Korea before, this will be old news. If this was your first Korean holiday (or if you're reading as someone who has never spent any time in Korea), well, it may come as a surprise to you, but.... SPAM is a big holiday gift item here. Really big. Before the major holidays of Chuseok and Seolnal, you can find SPAM gift sets everywhere from your corner convenience store to the big department stores to COSTCO. I took this photo in Lotte Mart on Friday:

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Get your $40 SPAM set here!

I've never been able to figure the SPAM thing out, myself. Anyway, about two weeks ago, my office gave everybody a choice of Seolnal gift (employers typically give Seolnal and Chuseok gifts to their employees). Our choices were a ham set, or something like 35kg of rice. Now, as I'd bought a small bag of rice back in September and have yet to make a dent in it, I chose the ham. I had expected that by 'ham' they meant 'SPAM' - but apparently there are some perks to working in posh Yeouido after all:

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A nice variety of pretty good ham.
(And the beasties are pretty pleased by its arrival, too!)

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And speaking of the beasties - this is day 4 of my 5 day holiday, and I've spent most of it lounging about with these two critters :-)

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Seolnal, a coughing dog, and natural vetting

Today is the first day of Seolnal, the three-day Korean lunar new year celebration, ushering in the Year of the Black Dragon. Now, in Korea, people don't get much (if any) time off other than national holidays - and pretty much everything shuts down for the two big holidays of the year - Chuseok (in the fall) and Seolnal. Almost everything closes or operates on a super limited schedule. It also means that I had a 5 day weekend - thank the gods.

This morning, I was awakened to Mochi coughing. A lot. It scared the shit out of me, let me tell you... and the fact that it's both Sunday AND the start of Seolnal meant that if he were sick, finding an open vet clinic was going to be next to impossible. When I got him, he was taking meds for a cough. He didn't cough at all while he was on them, but I've since finished the course of meds. This being Korea, the meds weren't labeled as to what they were; I'm guessing they were a cough suppressant. Having come from a shelter, I'm betting he picked up kennel cough.

He still has a good appetite, normal bowel movements, and nice pink gums - but waking up to the cough freaked me out. I spent a good bit of time researching natural/home remedies for kennel cough, and the two most commonly mentioned options were steam and honey. Vitamin C was also recommended.

Ever since the scary mold, I've been trying to keep this place as dry as possible... until today. I opened the bathroom door and ran the shower, getting the place nice and steamy (and earning a look or three of disgust from Charlie). I went to my corner store to look for honey. All I found was Korean honey/citron tea - basically a honey/orange marmalade that you mix with water. Super yummy, btw. Mochi wasn't too interested in a spoonful of the stuff, but he ate it with no problem when mixed with his food.

And whaddyaknow. He's coughed a little bit here and there since, but he seems to be doing ok. *Whew* - although we'll be going to the vet as soon as one opens.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

various pet related madness

[UPDATE] The ChipIn has been having problems loading. If it doesn't load, here's a PayPal option instead:



Things are usually pretty animal-centric around here, and the addition of a dog to my life has made it even more so. I took Mochi to the vet yesterday - not the vet where he was neutered and received his general health-check (as it's a ways from where I live) but at "my" vet right around the corner from my apartment. I got him his complete set of vaccinations, so he'll be ready to go come March. As I posted yesterday, I've created a ChipIn event to raise money to pay animal transport costs. Additionally, the lovely animal rescue folks who hooked me up with Mochi in the first place have created a facebook event to help raise money for Mochi's transport and his crate. If any of you would be interested in contributing to the pet travel cause, you can use either of the two options below, and the beasties and I would be incredibly grateful :-)


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Meanwhile, Mochi is terrified of the great outdoors. I've been taking him outside every day, but he just plants his feet and shakes. It's not even particularly cold out (although a return to winter will roll in tomorrow), so it seems he's shaking from fear. We spend a little bit of time outside every day, but as I haven't had him very long, that hasn't amounted to much overall, and thus far he is totally not into it. 
 
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Looking wistfully at the door.

Luckily he's pee-pad trained. I wish I knew how he ended up at the pound - it almost seems like he must have been an indoor dog at some point to be so completely pee-pad trained. And given his fear of the outside, this is really a relief. Of course, my tiny apartment is now half taken up by animal toilets. Joy. 

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They don't exactly cuddle, but they hang out near each other, and sometimes they even play. Whenever I come home, both are waiting for me at the door. Also, Charlie thinks that a wagging tail is an awesome thing to swat :-)

Thursday, January 19, 2012

International Dog Lady of Mystery?

I didn't mean to get a dog. I didn't plan to get a dog. But then I saw a rescue alert - a dog had been pulled from a high-kill shelter, where his time was up. The foster family that took him home already had a dog, and that dog attacked him. They couldn't keep him. If they returned him to the shelter he'd be euthanized; they needed to find another foster family ASAP.

A picture was posted. He was an absurdly funny looking dog with funky ears and an underbite and turned out feet. Totally different colors from Koala, but very similar features. And the dog was currently in Hongdae, my corner of the absurdly big city that is Seoul. I immediately messaged to say that as long as he was good with cats I'd foster him until an adoption could be arranged, or until my flight home in March - whichever came first. Foster. As in temporarily.

48 hours later and I was on the phone with Delta and Korean Air arranging doggy travel. (Don't even get me started on the nightmare that was...)

Mochi gets along with Charlie, although he's intimidated by her. Charlie, in contrast, was furious at first at the interloper in HER house. She's since gotten over that - the two of them were waiting for me at the door tonight when I came home from work.

Mochi's a timid little guy. He cringes when I pet him or if I make a sudden movement. He's shy. But super sweet. And super cute. And paper trained. He took to it like a cat takes to a litter box. This is good, considering that he is terrified of the outdoors. Definitely something we'll have to work on.

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"You brought WHAT into my house?"

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"Is that a CAT?"

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Time for bed!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

This past week...

Last Sunday afternoon, I started to get sick. I'd been doing what is now my weekly de-molding, and had also discovered an inordinate amount of cat hair lurking under my suitcase (which hadn't been moved since I unpacked it way back when). As such, when I started sneezing, I figured it was just mold + too much cat hair. I took a claritin and expected things to clear up. They didn't. By the time I went to bed, it was a full blown, nasty head cold. And it stuck around all the way through Wednesday making me feel like utter hell. Thankfully it wasn't the flu - as sick days at my work place are frowned upon and unpaid. (All of my coworkers work when they're sick; half the office is coughing and sniffling at any given time.) It took until Thursday for me to feel human again.

But, in the interest of keeping this blog remotely interesting, here are some random photos shot with my cell phone over the past week:


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Charlie making me jealous that this is what she gets to do while I go to work.

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Everybody sing now.

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Between the colors and the cats, these cigarettes really make me want to take up smoking.

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Some of the best looking bibimbap in Yeouido. Not the tastiest, but definitely the most photogenic.

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I actually took this picture back in July 2010. There's a lot of  'let's promote the DMZ as a nature preserve' propaganda flitting about the south side of the 38th parallel. I post this to compare it with the bottle I bought this week:

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No idea when the change was made from the pretty bird to the barbed wire...

Thursday, January 12, 2012

not bad for under $35

I don't know if everyone has seen these ads on Facebook, or if its just those of us who have 'photography' listed as an interest who get to see them... I'm talking about the ads for Portrait Professional. I'd seen so many of them that the other day I gave in and checked it out. I downloaded the free trial version, and played with it a little bit. 

Portrait Professional is incredibly easy to use. Granted, I spend all day sitting in front of three monitors (yes, I'm up to three) working on some pretty complicated computer shit, so I may not be your average computer user, but still... trust me: easy. 

It's rather limited in what it does - it merely enhances what you have. If you're not wearing lipstick, it won't give you lipstick. It's not Photoshop. You can only enhance portraits, that's it. It's not Photoshop. That being said, Photoshop costs $700 and this costs under $35. For what it does, it's a pretty good deal.

I started off playing with two photos of myself that I liked - but in which I wasn't wearing makeup. (In the one with the dragonfly, I look pretty rough. I'd just woken up.) You can see that I wasn't able to fix my hair or give myself lipstick, although I definitely was able to make it look like I'd bothered to powder my nose before wandering in front of the camera.

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Before and after: Me and my mom's dog, Brin

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Before and after: Barely awake and playing with a dragonfly.
You can tell the program had some problems with my half-asleep squinty eyes.

Then I decided to see what it could do with a picture in which I already had on makeup. The picture below I took this morning before I left for work. (I dyed my hair last week...)

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Before and after: Not too big of a difference. I'd say the biggest difference is definitely the eyes. They look like robot eyes to me (which being an oddball, I actually love).

Anyway, it's pretty fun to play with, and if you're an amateur photographer like myself (totally lacking the $700 for Photoshop), it's a super-cheap, super-easy alternative. And no, I'm not getting paid to write this or anything; I just thought it was fun to play with. And when I found out how cheap it was, I bought it. I'm the official photographer at an event at my workplace on Monday, and I expect I'll have plenty of subjects who'll want to be touched up a tad :-)

[Okay. I'm so over that whole not showing my face on my blog thing. I was still pretty crazy paranoid about certain people finding this blog back when I first started it, that I went so far as to blur out my face in photos. I'm over it. Besides, this place doesn't bear my name, so chances are slim they'd magically stumble upon it... but if they did, they'd probably know damn quick whose site it was, face or no face.]

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Updates on the onion, the water eating hippo, Charlie, and the Korean Mr. Clean

My onion seems to be on a downward spiral. It did really well the first few days in its new tupperware home, but soon the bulb that was sticking out of the dirt started to turn brown and get moldy, and the leaves began to droop and turn yellow. I bought it a pot and some actual potting soil today, although it may very well be too late. What's the average lifespan of an onion anyway?

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I'm sure you remember my apartment's disgusting mold problem and the possible solution of the water-eating hippo... Well, I checked my three hippos today. One was completely drowning already (and that's a mere week after deploying it), and the other two were getting rather soggy. I bought some larger sized ones today, which will (hopefully) last longer than one week.


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In case you can't tell what that is, that's the 'moisture absorbent' calcium chloride, smothered in a layer of water. 

Remember the toy that Charlie loves to play with? It's a bird on a string on a stick. She plays rough, and goes through at least one a month. I've been buying replacements for over a year now at Lotte Mart... but today, not only were there none available, but there was no empty spot showing that they were simply currently out of stock. There were also two new toys that had never been part of the far-too-slim-in-my-opinion Lotte Mart cat toy lineup. So I bought them. One is a fuzzy orange basketball on a string that rattles, the other is a brown, fuzzy thing on a bendy/bouncy metal rod that jingles. Charlie is wary of the basketball, and terrified of the brown thing.


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"If I don't look at it, it's not there."

And lastly in this total random mismash post, I give you Mr. Homestar, the Korean Mr. Clean. (You can't really see it in this picture, but he has the earring, although he lacks the bald pate.)
 
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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

questionable lobby art [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: These images were created by Korean artist Ji Hojun. His website is here, and you can get a good look at the penny/Obama image here, and the quarter/9-11 image here. They're part of a series of Ji's artwork that features coins from around the world. Still not sure why someone felt they belonged in a corporate lobby in Yeouido, though.]


My office is located in a large building in Yeouido. The lobby of the building (not of my company mind you, but of the building in which it's located) used to be decorated with two large National Geographic style prints of wildlife in the African savanna. As of this past Monday morning, they had been replaced by two very odd pieces of "art." From a distance, they appeared to be as follows: an image of a penny, surrounded by multi-colored bubbles, and an image of a quarter, likewise surrounded by multi-colored bubbles. I thought it was odd that American money would be on display in a corporate building in Korea (why not the Korean won instead?), but didn't give it much thought.

Yesterday I passed close by the penny image, and realized that the 'bubbles' featured distorted images from newspapers from 2008, featuring Obama just after his election. The penny was a 2008 penny... so I guess that makes sense? Maybe?


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Today I got a close look at the quarter image... and it's... odd. It features a damaged 1967 quarter, surrounded by bubbles featuring news coverage of 9/11. Specifically numerous images of the twin towers burning. Maybe the damaged quarter came from the wreckage of the towers? It's rather a morbid image to have in the lobby of a corporate building. Perhaps if it were in the lobby of a US government building, or a military contractor's office, or an office in New York? Here, where it's mere lobby decor it seems both tacky and offensive.

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Not the best shot - taken with my cell and at an odd angle, as this thing is located behind the building's security desk.

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Monday, January 2, 2012

The Water Eating Hippo

Wanna know how to gross your coworkers out? Threaten to show them pictures of the mold you found behind your bed right before your lunch arrives. Then remark "It kind of looked like 짜장면" just seconds before the waitress delivers a steaming plate of 짜장면 (noodles in a black bean sauce) to your table.

For dealing with the nasty mold problem, my friend G suggested 물먹는 하마 ("water eating hippo" - although the website's English version translates it as "thirsty hippo" which is nowhere near as amusing). The water eating hippo is a dehumidifier made of calcium chloride. Not sure if it really works, but I've got one in each corner and one behind the bookshelf. Additionally, my coworkers told me that I should either have the water eating hippo, or scrub my walls behind my furniture at least once a week. (!!!) They said this nonchalantly and with an attitude of, "Why don't you know this?" - seriously, I never had this problem in Daegu. Or anywhere else for that matter.

In addition to the water eating hippo, I bought his girlfriend, the smell eating hippo, which is a kickass air freshener. If I'd known about it earlier, I would've bought one to put atop Charlie's litter box. 


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Left - Water Eating Hippo
Right - Smell Eating Hippo