DEFIANT KOREAN BIKER CHICK
We just got back from our favorite Korean restaurant, Seoul Garden. It's about three minutes from our house (two if you drop a leaf of kim chee in the gas tank).
That and the Korean mart here are my favorite two places actually (I'll talk about the Korean-mart another time).
Our previous favorite K-restaurant used to be across the street from this one.
It was a small one-waiter/waitress place, run by a family who always brought their little girl with them to work. She was adorable like my nieces. Sometimes the little girl would be sleeping in one of the back booths and peek around the edge at us. Other times she would be riding her tricycle with her pink Barbie boom box on the tasseled handlebars around the customer's tables. Her chin held high as if in defiance of the local restaurant tricycle traffic safety laws.
"Only in a Korean restaurant," Amy would laugh when the girl rode by like the princess in a parade.
One time Amy bought some stickers from the Korean store next door (run by a Korean grandma and her large Native-American husband) and gave a couple to the little girl. She shyly accepted them and then ran away in glee to show her mom. Come on, they were just stickers. From next door even.
Other times, the girl would peek at Amy from around the corner and Amy would joke, "She must think I'm one of her relatives." Then she'd look at me, with a curious perplexed expression, probably wondering why the guy with the funny nose is smiling at her so much.
Anyway, one day we went there and the little girl was noticeably absent. Only the mother, their single goofy waiter, and we were there. I ordered the bi bim bop, basically an easy-to-make bowl of rice, veggies, meat scraps, with an egg. Amy ordered something that required more preparation. The goofy waiter told Amy in Korean that they couldn't make that today; the father (the cook) had to leave for a family emergency. Amy had the bi bim bop instead.
"Good thing we're the only ones here if all they can make is bi bim bop today," Amy said.
"Maybe the little girl's sick?" I wondered.
"She's probably in school where she belongs," Amy said.
A week later, the restaurant was closed. The tables were gone. The sign was already removed. Word is, it was bought already and will be remodeled into something else.
So now we eat at the larger Korean restaurant across the street. Where there's always more than one waiter and more than one party dining. Nicer tables and chairs. There's a little sushi bar, lots of colorful decorations (both Japanese and Korean), Hispanic busboys (a staple at Korean restaurants like rice and kim chee, I don't know why), and often an Asian-White couple or two there as well.
Sure, sometimes the waitresses seem occasionally rude the first couple of times (another staple of Korean restaurants), but after they start recognizing you (whether you're Asian or not), they do warm up. Leaving a decent tip (20%) probably helps too.
[I leave a good 20% tip at any restaurant I plan on coming back to. To me, its an incentive to get better service next time, once the wait staff recognizes that you are NOT a lousy tipper, which they probably assume of most people most times. Which is probably why they are rude in the first place.]
The first couple times we went to the nicer K-restaurant, I told Amy I missed the homier atmosphere of the other place. And the little girl riding on the tricycle with her chin in the air.
Then we heard some familiar K-pop songs blaring on the speaker system above us. Amy's eyes widened in surprise and my arms went up in straight male upper body dancing mode (it's a reflex with my favorite K-pop songs now).
"It feels like we're in your room!" Amy said laughing.
"This place is awesome! They're playing 'Dash' by Baek Ji Young! Woo!!" I said, not overly concerned about the looks from the table next to us.
We spent the rest of dinner playing name that k-pop song, at least until they switched to Shania Twain. (Actually, I was doing all the naming, but Amy recognized the songs too. Even if they were so summer 2000 - practically RETRO in the k-pop scene.)
Playing music by a singer who's ex-manager released tapes of them having sex and who's most popular video stars her hunting down a double-crossing lover and shooting him and herself in the head can't really replace a darling little girl on a tricycle in a Korean restaurant, but it helps.
I may start carrying little stickers around, just in case though.
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EVERYONE IS WELCOME
If I had a Korean restaurant, there would be tons of TVs in the corners, playing K-pop music videos constantly.
There'd be another room playing Korean movies while you eat (subtitled too, for people like me).
The waitstaff would dress as F.O.B.-ishly hip or as traditionally as they wanted. One or the other though.
Real Japanese cooks would be making the sushi (because they do make sushi better than any Korean does).
Little kids would be encouraged to run around.
I suppose there would have to be karaoke too. And a dance floor area. Maybe a mah jongg room?
Oh, and a video game room. Consoles like PlayStation2 and Xbox, and real games like DanceDanceRevolution, and Tekken 4 (maybe a Street Fighter game too ... maybe).
No booking though (a Korean club dating hook-up service thing) ... unless we reversed the system so the hot girls could pick out the good-looking guys as well.
And no f***ing OriEntAL massage parlor either, like every other American-made Asian-themed movie would have you believe.
The sign in front would say,
"Everyone is welcome.
Please leave shoes outside."
(I remember Maria's site used to say that too.)
I better run all of this by Amy first.
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WHY KOREANS HAVE THICK QUADS AND CALVES
I neglected to mention last time that my mom came over for Thanksgiving and made us turkey dinner.
She was very pleasant too. To me and to Amy. But Amy still feels a bit cool toward her, understandably. I do wish they could get along better.
I don't know if my mom ever congratulated her on being pregnant or not either. She came to our house before I got home from work.
My mom laughed when we sat on the ground to eat, while she sat on our couch.
"You're more Korean than your momma now. You eat on the floor like traditional Korean people! Your momma likes sitting in a chair."
(She talks in third person like that sometimes.)
Sure that's part of it.
But the real reason we eat on the floor is that we are too lazy to go out and buy furniture.
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THE RECTALIZER
This Japanese ass-poking video game just keeps rearing it's ugly head it seems.
This link from Steve tells more about it and the game's mysterious existence. Those freaky Japanese game makers ... but then I read on that page the game is actually MADE IN KOREA!!!
My freaky Korean brothers are at it again!
Heck, I'd give it a try though. I do it at work all the time anyways. We call it "rectalizing."
No kidding.
If you come into the hospital anemic, or vomiting/crapping blood, you may as well just bend over. But don't worry, I have skinny fingers.
(And it's really not something we like to do either, actually.)
