World News: Paris is Out. Oh...and so's Tony Blair.

TONY BLAIR IS OUT!



Although, in the Daily Mail, my personal newspaper (if you can call it that) of choice, the story was overshadowed by Paris Hilton's release from jail.



I was really shocked that Blair actually left. Blair's been saying he's leaving ever since I got here, and that was 10 months ago. I didn't think he'd actually do it. But he did! Now if only we could get rid of Bush...

In other news, Ahnuld paid a visit to the island yesterday. The Daily Mail wrote about it, writing out everything that Ahnuld said in his accent:

"'Prime Minister Blear,' he said, 'tank you for makin' me gain five pounds with dis delicious Bridish breakfas'. Ve had a round table discussion. It was grade.'"

British breakfast...great? It's not even "grade."

Catch the full article at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=464613&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=228&in_check=N

Sunday

So Sunday started with Agnes and Zosia knocking on my door to wake me up at noon. Magda's known me long enough to know I'm a bitch when you wake me up so she sent her little sister. Agnes was acting all cute so I'd feel bad if I yelled at her.

There was a Korean festival at Trafalgar Square and I wanted to go since you know...KP 4 LYFE!!! ;D It's some Korean holiday called Dano or something, I guess. Anyhow, we went down there, but it wasn't very fun. Not at all like K-fests back at home.

We were waiting for the bus at the bus stop and Magda caught the attention of some guys driving by in an Audi and they picked us up and gave us a ride. They had the same car my Dad got.


Korean festival in Trafalgar Square.


There was a stage set up where they had traditional Korean performances and tents set up by local Korean restaurants selling food, but that was about it. It wasn't very fun at all. The Mayor of London hosts all these cultural celebrations throughout the year to expose London to different cultures. Like my sister would say, "Damn white man trying to steal our color!" But really, I don't really like the festivals here because they try to be "traditional." It's cool how they involve people of all races to attend, but I think these festivals lack the element of representing the hybrid culture. K-fests back in L.A. and Garden Grove are different in that they were more about Korean-AMERICAN culture rather than Korean culture. It was a way for us to celebrate our community's assimilation rather than showcasing where we come from. The festivals in London, on the other hand, kind of exoticize and emphasize the foreignness of different groups of people. London K-fest had fan dances and traditional Korean music, whereas L.A. K-fest is hip-hop dance and local businesses. I prefer the latter.


Agnes with the Korean mask guy.


After about 30 minutes at the Dano festival and realizing it was boring, we walked down the Mall to Hyde Park. There was a parade set up along the Mall to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War (stupid little war fought to keep little islands off the coast of Argentina part of the British Empire). Camilla and Prince Charles were to make an appearance, but we didn't stick around for the parade. Not a big deal though. I've seen horses before. ;D


Then walking past the Wellington Arch, we saw it was open for visitors. Something about celebrating the Battle of Waterloo. So we went up there. Crap view though...just Buckingham Palace on one side and Hyde Park on the other. Here's me with a guy in British costume inside.


At Hyde Park, we met up with Carmen, a classmate of mine from King's, and her friends. One great part about living in London is all the parks and gardens here. There's so many green spaces in London to just lay around and hang out.


Me and Agnes and Zosia. It's been since having Agnes around. She's absolutely adorable although she treats me like a puppy. It makes me miss my sister and brother so much though. :( I miss you, Elaine and Jason!


Me doing my Hiro Nakamura face. I can bend time and space. Yes, I've been watching Heroes.


Her Majesty's air force planes overhead as part of the celebration for the Falklands War.


We call this "London style."


Then Magda and Agnes went over and made friends with some Spanish guys who were playing Frisbee. Eventually we were all playing a game of "Frisbee Football." Except I really sucked so I sneaked off after awhile. It took them a few minutes to realize I was gone.


Magda trampled her sister at one point and they rolled.


The pretty pretty gardens.


I chased a squirrel with some little boy and got this picture. I love Hyde Park.


Agnes.


After Hyde Park, we went to Zosia's sister's boyfriend's house for a barbeque. Here are the boys being boys.


This is just a random picture I took of some guys messing around while waiting for the Piccadilly line. "Oh shit, I have internal bleeding. And I just wanted to go to Cockfosters." I LOVE COCKFOSTERS!

Speaking of Cockfosters. Funny Cockfosters joke Magda told us:
Two men are smushed together because of traffic on the Piccadilly line tube. Man 1 says to Man 2: "Is that Cockfosters?" Man 2 replies: "No, it's mine."

In a few hours, I'm off to Copenhagen and Stockholm, so more when I get back!

Brighton Beach

Sorry I don't blog as much lately. I'm getting lazy, but I continue since this has become my primary contact with family and friends in the U.S. and abroad. I promise to be better.

So this entry is about this past weekend when I went on a trip to Brighton, a city on the southern coast of England. My friend Magda's sister, Agnes, and her friend, Zosia, are in town from Poland checking out colleges. So we took them with us. Brighton is 2 hours from London by bus. We did sudoku the whole way there.


SUDOKU MASTERS! The theme of our trip became "sudoku." So I'm a long-time sudoku addict and I've gotten Magda addicted. And so we introduced Agnes to it on the bus ride, and she's now OBSESSED. We sat around doing sudoku all over Brighton.


Brighton Pier.


Brighton Ben


It was FREEZING on the pier at first because of wind. The weather was very English that day. It was cold and cloudy, then sunny and bright, then rainy.


Magda's my hero.


But her butt smells!


Magda does photography as a hobby. Here's her with her fancy camera.


The pier had all these rides and stuff. Agnes is tall enough for the rides!


Even Jenpa is! I told Magda about how in Korean, my name becomes "Jen-Ni-Puh" because there's no "F" in the Korean alphabet. So Magda's taken to calling me "Jenpa." Her sister started doing it too. So my Polish name is "Jenpa" now.


Us on the Crazy Mouse or something like that.


This shit was scary.


The whole ride has these crazy edges where you feel like you're falling off and I mean, these roller coasters never seem that safe. It cost a grip though. £4 ($8) a person! England is so expensive!


AHHHHHHH!!!!!!


Agnes and Zosia loungin'


Me on the beach.


The sun came out for a bit so we lounged around on the beach. Thing is, Brighton's a rocky beach, meaning it has little rocks along the coast instead of sand. Freakin' HURTS walking on it since I was wearing sandals and laying on it isn't that great either.


Since there's no sand, I made a rock castle.


And then I got the idea to do a message in a bottle. I wrote a message in English, Korean, Polish (Agnes), and French (Zosia) and then put it in my Evian bottle. Agnes and I went on the coast and tried to throw it into the sea, but the waves kept washing it back at us. After I got drenched by a big wave, we ended up just leaving it on the coast. DAMMIT! I was hoping it would wash up on the French coast and some hot French guy would get it and contact me.


While me and Agnes were busy trying to launch our message in a bottle, Magda was sleeping on the beach scratching her ass.


Seagull meeting.


Me and my bestest Magda.


Sudoku time at Starbucks!


Brighton's a small city, but it has a little cultural sector. This is the Pavillion. It's exterior is in Indian style.


And gorgeous gardens.


Inside the Brighton Museum.


Then we walked around the town of Brighton along all the little streets. There were some great little shops. Magda kept slowing us down though with her photography. She was taking photos of all the houses on this little street.

It was really fun taking a day trip within England. Shelly and I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon while she was here, and this was my second trip outside of London. The small cities are so much nicer because there's more space and fewer queues and it's just more relaxed. Living in a big city like London is really exhausting sometimes, but I absolutely adored Brighton.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

So the swing song goes...

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

AND HERE I AM!

Constantinople is the only thing I remember from 7th Grade Social Studies with Sprague (ugh, remember Sprague?!) So I've always wanted to go to Istanbul and see what it's all about. The exact history has gotten fuzzy over the years. I really wanted to drag Isis with me so that I'd have my own personal history buff, but she couldn't make it, so I had to make do.

So how was Istanbul? Let's start with the moment I stepped out through the arrivals gate into the airport. I'm trying to get some Turkish lira out of the ATM and this guy comes up to me and asks, "Where are you from?" MY LEAST FAVORITE QUESTION by the way! (It's too complicated for me to answer...I came from London, but I'm American, and ethnically Korean. Way too much conversation for a simple question.) So he finds out I'm Korean, and he automatically goes into "DAE-HAN-MIN-GOOK!" WTF? Then I remembered that in the 2002 World Cup, Korea played against Turkey in the semifinals. (Remember when the Turkish guy gave out free tickets to the Staple Center?) So the guy tells me not to take a taxi because taxis will rip me off and takes me to some shuttle bus service place and bargains the price down for me. Not bad so far, but I'm sure they still ripped me off. So then I sit around and wait for the shuttle bus to come and one of the guys who works there says it's here so come with him. So I go into the parking lot and he pulls up in his own car and says the shuttle bus is running late so he'll just drive me into the city himself! He drives me into the city, HITTING ON ME the whole way and then asks me if I have any friends in America who want to marry his brother for $15,000. (BTW, I got offered $40,000 in China, so WTF?)

So after making up a fake boyfriend and the guy giving me like 5 business cards with his cellphone number and promising to call him the next day, I arrive at Orient Hostel where I thought I'd stay. I've stayed at private rooms in hostels before and usually, they aren't bad and it's a good way to meet people when traveling alone, but this one was not good. Drop off my stuff and try to make my way to the Blue Mosque.



The whole way there, men are following you around asking "Where are you from?," "What is your name?," and "How are you?" Most of them are carpet sellers. I accidentally made a wrong turn onto a bazaar street, and got hassled all along the road, and when I realized I had gone the wrong way, I didn't want to turn around and go back down the block of shops, so I just kind of stood in a corner for awhile about to cry. Finally, I pulled myself together and more or less ran down the row of shops trying to avoid the sellers. Finally, I find the Blue Mosque only now some guy has started following me and proceeds to give me directions. I keep telling him "Go away!" but he just keeps following so I run up to a group of Portuguese guys and just start talking to them so the guy would go away. Once in the mosque, I realized people don't bother you in here. So I sat there for about an hour or two just so I wouldn't have to go outside. After no sleep and night bus to Paddington station and Heathrow Express and 4 hour flight and being hit on by Mr. Turkish Shuttle Bus driver, Turkish carpet sellers were the last thing I needed.


Me in the Blue Mosque. Women have to cover their heads in the mosques and I used my black sweater. I love that sweater. Thanks Julie!

So another thing I learned while sitting in the mosque hiding from the outside is that Istanbul is a popular Korean tourist destination. There were lots of Korean tourists around, and I even saw three Korean restaurants on my way to the mosque. So I'm sitting in the back of the mosque, and this big group of Korean tourists just settle around me. Perhaps they thought I was one of them? And the tour guide starts giving his tour in Korean, so I listened in. During this trip, I learned to differentiate Korean and Japanese tourists. Koreans always wear wide-brim visors and Japanese wear the floppy hats.

Finally, I left the Mosque and went to the Hagia Sophia. It's amazing being in a structure that old.




Then I walked around and while eating a kebap wrapped like a burrito (I MISS BURRITOS!), I met a Dutch couple, Laura and Martin. They turned out to be great so we went to have a couple beers and smoke water-pipe or hooka at a little Turkish bar.


Me and my Dutch friends. (Friends reference: Dutch people come from the Netherlands.)


Martin with the hooka pipe. I hate hooka, but it's unavoidable here. Turks are big on apple tea and hooka. It's their healthy, non-mind-altering, Islam-friendly version of alcohol and cigarettes.

Then Laura and Martin had to catch their flight home, and I went back to the hostel, which had one saving grace despite the fact that my room was filthy. They have the most amazing rooftop terrace bar with an amazing view of the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Bosphorous. And that's where I met Aija, a fellow single female traveller from Canada.


Me and Aija!

I stayed at the hostel for two nights because I'd already booked it, but on the third day, I went out to look for somewhere else to stay. After some Tripadvisor research, I checked into a proper 3 or 4 star hotel. Yeah, I paid a lot more, but it was WORTH IT! While checking in, I met another Korean-American girl traveling alone in Istanbul! What are the odds?! Rang Hee works for an NGO who provides aid in former Soviet countries and she had a stop-over in Istanbul so figured she'd make it a little longer and see the city. She'd been followed around all day by Turkish carpet sellers, too, so she was as delighted to meet me as I was.



Rang Hee unni on the boat tour of the Bosphorous.


Me on the boat.


I forgot what bridge this is, but it reminds me of San Francisco. :)


Me, Rang Hee, and a random security guard who jumped into our picture at the Grand Bazaar.

SOO...Grand Bazaar. So I was an idiot and bought 4 boxes of Turkish tobacco for 75 lira. Afterwards, I realized I'd been ripped off. I asked around at shops outside the bazaar and found out I should have only paid 20 lira. So I was ripped off 55 lira (approximately $40). I was about to just write it off since I couldn't do anything about it, but then I also found out that ripping off tourists is illegal here! They have these things called the "Tourism Police." It does make sense really, since when you rip off tourists, you discourage tourism, and tourism is a huge industry. So I went back to the bazaar the next day, found the guy who ripped me off and after threatening to turn them in to the police, they gave me back th 75 lira AND let me keep the merchandise! :)


DO NOT BUY FROM THIS MAN!


Rang Hee and I got rings from this guy. And they didn't turn our fingers green!

Tuesday night was the 544th anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople so Rang Hee and I headed down to the coast to see the celebrations. It was PACKED, but the show was amazing. First there were the speeches and whatever that we couldn't understand. And then they started singing...and they sang many, many songs we didn't understand. But then they went into this amazing waterworks/lazer/fireworks show to orchestrated music. It was just so well done! I grew up with a Disneyland fireworks view, so I've never really been one to be impressed by fireworks, but the Turks did a great job on this one. Here are some pictures, but they really don't do it justice. You just had to be there.











Rang Hee and I were saying how this totally kicks Indepedence Day's ass. She's from DC and even there, the fireworks they don't go this full out. The show made up for the carpet sellers.

Rang Hee left early the next morning or more like the middle of the night, but she gave me her little "eye" pin. That was really sweet!

The next day, after getting justice with the bazaar guys, I rode around on the sightseeing bus. It really didn't offer much, but I got to see what's left of the walls surrounding the city from the Byzantine Empire. Also stopped by at Taksim Square.


Horses waiting for the bus next to ancient walls. Just a funny picture, I thought.

At night, I met up with Aija again and we went to dinner at 360, which is recommended by all the guidebooks. It's a nice, rooftop restaurant in Taksim. I overheard the conversation at the table next to us and found out that he works at KPMG and he was on a business dinner with his client. We ended up talking about Big Four and all that good stuff. It was so weird talking "accounting" after taking such a long absence from it, but at the same time, it all comes very naturally to me after bitching and whining through 2 years at KPMG. I know it might sound strange to you that are still there, but it feels nostalgic now, and part of me misses it. The camraderie you develop with fellow accountants because it's you against the Man and of course, the expense accounts. :) Then I think about the bureaucracy and the long hours and I'm back to appreciating my current lifestyle.

The next day, my last, Aija and I met up to go to Asia. Istanbul is on two continents. Most of it, including where I was up until then, is on Europe, but another part of it, which is largely residential, is in Asia. We took the ferry boat across to the Asian side, just so we could say we were in Asia. We had some trouble proving we were in Asia, though, since it looks pretty much the same and unforunately, there was no sign saying "YOU'RE IN ASIA!" Here's what we came up with:


A sign for a bank that has "Asya" in the name. (That's how Asia's spelled in Turkish.)


Me pointing to the Asian part of Istanbul on a map of Istanbul next to the bus stop.

So overall, Istanbul was pretty cool. I don't think I ever will go back there. Once was enough, unless I ever get a house and want to decorate it with Turkish carpets. But I did enjoy traveling alone again. I made lots of great friends who I hope to keep in touch with.

I think the thing that I'll always think of first when I think about my trip to Istanbul is that damn question "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" I hate that question!!! Where am I from? It's such a stupid question because if you can answer that question without hesitation, I'm sorry but you're boring. Where am I from? I'm from London, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Orange County, Disneyland, Berkeley, San Francisco, Korea, Seoul, Fullerton, the O.C., etc. And a few days ago, I just got back from Istanbul. So "sik-tur-git!" (means "fuck off" in Turkish)