If this is your optometric diagnosis, you need a monocle.
Ten is half of twenty - how many times has this happened in our modern dating system? Off hand I can think of years 63, 84, 105 etc. Last century? Half of 19...so did not happen, I guess. 1809 was the last, unless I'm mistaken.
SA and soccer fever - good luck, as I see everyone is climbing on the bandwagon of offering accomodation...
The end of a decade.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thursday 31 December 2009
Monday 28 December 2009
Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park
I just had to post this link. Johannesburg is my birthplace, and Sandton was my shopping area for many years. And guess what - Hyundai is there, upgrading waht used to be a fairly ratty open expanse into this....good? Bad? Until I see more than just photos, I won't judge, but for the saffers in Korea, we'll feel right at home in both countries now...LOL.
Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park
Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park
Baking bread
Turning the hard seeds of grains into edible food is surely one of the oldest, and in many ways, one of the most satisfying things to do in terms of nutrition. And, may I say it, the best meals I've ever had have been something simple along the lines of bread and cheese, bread fresh from an oven with a cup of coffee or tea, or simply bread and water.
And of course, there is such a variety of bread - sourdough, rye, milk, ciabatta, pumpernickel...
One of the things that has happened since coming to Korea is the change I've seen in the bakery, or have I? Have my tastes simply adapted to theirs? Sorry, let me start at the beginning of this story.
Coming from Cape Town, with its huge multi-cultural population, you are able to fill a basket, nay a bushel, with bread. Soft, hard, fried, baked - all shapes and sizes. And, dare I say it, some of the tastiest options available in the wheat to bread range. Cape Seed Loaf, white dinner rolls, ciabatta, naan, rye - both dark and light, vetkoek (deep fried rolls) and the good old traditional standby, the sandwich loaf. In Korea, at least at first, my complaint and that of many of my feloow expats, was the lack of bread! See, in Korea you have the word 'pang' - and this covers bread, cake and any other thing made in a bakery!
Problem was, it tasted like that as well. The bread was fluffy and too sweet for bread, the cake was fluffy and not sweet enough to be cake. Moreover, if you bought a baguette (if you found a place that made them like the ubiquitously named Paris Baguette chain of bakeries), you got given a tub of the same sweetened cream that got spread on the cakes to have with it.
However, as I say, things seem to have changed. These days the bread is more like bread, and the cakes - well, they look really good but are still just whipped air and cream. In Seoul, especially, there are a lot of places these days where you can actually get some sourdough bread, and in Iteawon is a little pizza place that does proper ciabatta.
As you have gathered by now, I love bread! I also like baking. And if you head over to my other blog, South Korean Experiences, you'll see I recently made some apple jelly. Which called for some really good bread. Without me heading into Seoul.
I decided to try my hand, once again, at baking. Now don't get me wrong, I have baked many loaves of bread and they always satisfy me in some way, even if only in taste, but I usually rush the process and so I never end up with perfectly risen bread, something I'd share with someone else. They taste good, they just don't look very good.
I decided that what I was lacking was patience, so this time I tried it. I dissolved the dried yeast in warm water with a little sugar and salt, and set it close to the heater and waited - yes, waited - until I saw bubbles and foam. About an hour or so? Then I mixed this with my flour (I did half and half rye and white), some more sugar and salt and some olive oil. This got kneaded, then set aside for 10 hours - the time it took me to get to work and get back home again. The risen dough got punched down, shaped into the loaf tin, then set aside for another 3 hours, by which time it had doubled in volume (yay!) and it finally went into the oven for an hour.
The warm end crust was eaten fresh out of the oven with some butter and jelly, and this morning the first slice was eaten with coffee...and it was everything I had hoped for. It not only tasted good, but actually looked like bread.
So, in future, my bread recipe will call for a generous helping of patience, as well as all the other stuff I'll be putting into it.
And of course, there is such a variety of bread - sourdough, rye, milk, ciabatta, pumpernickel...
One of the things that has happened since coming to Korea is the change I've seen in the bakery, or have I? Have my tastes simply adapted to theirs? Sorry, let me start at the beginning of this story.
Coming from Cape Town, with its huge multi-cultural population, you are able to fill a basket, nay a bushel, with bread. Soft, hard, fried, baked - all shapes and sizes. And, dare I say it, some of the tastiest options available in the wheat to bread range. Cape Seed Loaf, white dinner rolls, ciabatta, naan, rye - both dark and light, vetkoek (deep fried rolls) and the good old traditional standby, the sandwich loaf. In Korea, at least at first, my complaint and that of many of my feloow expats, was the lack of bread! See, in Korea you have the word 'pang' - and this covers bread, cake and any other thing made in a bakery!
Problem was, it tasted like that as well. The bread was fluffy and too sweet for bread, the cake was fluffy and not sweet enough to be cake. Moreover, if you bought a baguette (if you found a place that made them like the ubiquitously named Paris Baguette chain of bakeries), you got given a tub of the same sweetened cream that got spread on the cakes to have with it.
However, as I say, things seem to have changed. These days the bread is more like bread, and the cakes - well, they look really good but are still just whipped air and cream. In Seoul, especially, there are a lot of places these days where you can actually get some sourdough bread, and in Iteawon is a little pizza place that does proper ciabatta.
As you have gathered by now, I love bread! I also like baking. And if you head over to my other blog, South Korean Experiences, you'll see I recently made some apple jelly. Which called for some really good bread. Without me heading into Seoul.
I decided to try my hand, once again, at baking. Now don't get me wrong, I have baked many loaves of bread and they always satisfy me in some way, even if only in taste, but I usually rush the process and so I never end up with perfectly risen bread, something I'd share with someone else. They taste good, they just don't look very good.
I decided that what I was lacking was patience, so this time I tried it. I dissolved the dried yeast in warm water with a little sugar and salt, and set it close to the heater and waited - yes, waited - until I saw bubbles and foam. About an hour or so? Then I mixed this with my flour (I did half and half rye and white), some more sugar and salt and some olive oil. This got kneaded, then set aside for 10 hours - the time it took me to get to work and get back home again. The risen dough got punched down, shaped into the loaf tin, then set aside for another 3 hours, by which time it had doubled in volume (yay!) and it finally went into the oven for an hour.
The warm end crust was eaten fresh out of the oven with some butter and jelly, and this morning the first slice was eaten with coffee...and it was everything I had hoped for. It not only tasted good, but actually looked like bread.
So, in future, my bread recipe will call for a generous helping of patience, as well as all the other stuff I'll be putting into it.
Friday 25 December 2009
"tis the season...."
We are, in some way, still in the the season of holly and jolly and as, Terry Pratchett says via Susan Death, other things ending in 'olly'.
I suppose at the back of our minds the spectre that lurks at all feasts lingers, but for many it really is not a merry time, or even a time at all that they want to remember - family dying, hunger, poverty, oppression - and yet they are forced to confront these memories again and again as each year rolls by. What do they do on these days? When all around cheer and they are exhorted in the media to celebrate, what do they feel? Where do they go to escape the incessant commercial pressure of the day and the season?
Even though many have blogged and commented about how, in Korea, Christmas and Easter are not really celebrated to the same extent as in America etc., there is still a lot of it all around - in stores, on TV - enough at least to cause pangs in those who live with loss and grief.
I wish them the waters of the Lethe at this time!
I suppose at the back of our minds the spectre that lurks at all feasts lingers, but for many it really is not a merry time, or even a time at all that they want to remember - family dying, hunger, poverty, oppression - and yet they are forced to confront these memories again and again as each year rolls by. What do they do on these days? When all around cheer and they are exhorted in the media to celebrate, what do they feel? Where do they go to escape the incessant commercial pressure of the day and the season?
Even though many have blogged and commented about how, in Korea, Christmas and Easter are not really celebrated to the same extent as in America etc., there is still a lot of it all around - in stores, on TV - enough at least to cause pangs in those who live with loss and grief.
I wish them the waters of the Lethe at this time!
Wednesday 16 December 2009
...and selection.
One of the major cornerstones of the faith I was raised in but do not profess anymore is the idea of free choice. We can choose good or evil, etc.
One of the reasons why I no longer profess that faith, or indeed consider any religion to have a claim on what they call my soul, is that while they tell me I have this free choice, they also told me that I had, simply be being born, chosen evil, and in fact, could never, of my own volition, choose good.
OK - so if I'm bound to choose evil, and have already done so, why should I even try to be good? As in a good girl, a good daughter, a good citizen...well, you get the idea that I thought their logic faulty and irrational.
However, enough of the religious implications of free choice, let me rather talk about the exercising of this in the marketplace.
More than any other era in history, we live in the consumer society. We no longer produce simply what we need to keep us warm, well fed and safe, no, the majority of goods out there have the sole purpose of entertaining us.
And here choice really does enter the equation in a big way - rejection of models, books, movies etc. are so much part and parcel of everyday life we are not even aware of the fact that our decisions, our choices, are impacting on someone's life.
The JK Rowling story is well known - truly rags to riches, but how many other struggling writers are there, whose books are also on the remainder piles, and who never get chosen by someone who starts the ball rolling by raving about how fantastic the book is? Similarly, how many movies that are every bit as great as Gone with the Wind end up straight to DVD? And take their director and cast with them into obscurity?
How ready would we be to make a choice if we knew that by rejecting an item, any item, we are perhaps ruining a life?
One of the reasons why I no longer profess that faith, or indeed consider any religion to have a claim on what they call my soul, is that while they tell me I have this free choice, they also told me that I had, simply be being born, chosen evil, and in fact, could never, of my own volition, choose good.
OK - so if I'm bound to choose evil, and have already done so, why should I even try to be good? As in a good girl, a good daughter, a good citizen...well, you get the idea that I thought their logic faulty and irrational.
However, enough of the religious implications of free choice, let me rather talk about the exercising of this in the marketplace.
More than any other era in history, we live in the consumer society. We no longer produce simply what we need to keep us warm, well fed and safe, no, the majority of goods out there have the sole purpose of entertaining us.
And here choice really does enter the equation in a big way - rejection of models, books, movies etc. are so much part and parcel of everyday life we are not even aware of the fact that our decisions, our choices, are impacting on someone's life.
The JK Rowling story is well known - truly rags to riches, but how many other struggling writers are there, whose books are also on the remainder piles, and who never get chosen by someone who starts the ball rolling by raving about how fantastic the book is? Similarly, how many movies that are every bit as great as Gone with the Wind end up straight to DVD? And take their director and cast with them into obscurity?
How ready would we be to make a choice if we knew that by rejecting an item, any item, we are perhaps ruining a life?
Sunday 13 December 2009
Interviews...
Any situation in which a group of people or one person has to choose between another group for a winner, a leader, an employee, is fraught with problems.
The first of these is personal prejudice. Even though the criteria might be a set of skills, and that it may be very clear that a certain person among the selectees meets those criteria better than any of the others, prejudice may kick in and, if the person among the selectors is powerful enough, their prejudice may decide the selection.
Another is the criteria used to select - are people really aware of the skills needed? Do they know how to measure those skills?
The final problem I see is that random factors may influence the process - a person may be well qulified, personable and ideally suited, but arrives late due to a subway drivers strike, or reports to the wrong office, or has received outdated information about what to bring to the interview.
These musings follow on the treatment my daughter received at a university she applied to. She was approached by a professor from the university, and invited to attend an interview. She then received instructions about what to prepare, that were superseded a mere 24 hours before the interview, and which she ignored since she had been given the instructions at the university offices and thought these new instructions to be unrealistic (they involved getting hold of a textbook!). She was also told she would have 15 minutes to teach a demo lesson, which was cut to 5 minutes, during which she was interrupted a number of times.
Needless to say, she did not get the job. This, even though, based on the skill set required according to the advert, she was the best for the job!
The first of these is personal prejudice. Even though the criteria might be a set of skills, and that it may be very clear that a certain person among the selectees meets those criteria better than any of the others, prejudice may kick in and, if the person among the selectors is powerful enough, their prejudice may decide the selection.
Another is the criteria used to select - are people really aware of the skills needed? Do they know how to measure those skills?
The final problem I see is that random factors may influence the process - a person may be well qulified, personable and ideally suited, but arrives late due to a subway drivers strike, or reports to the wrong office, or has received outdated information about what to bring to the interview.
These musings follow on the treatment my daughter received at a university she applied to. She was approached by a professor from the university, and invited to attend an interview. She then received instructions about what to prepare, that were superseded a mere 24 hours before the interview, and which she ignored since she had been given the instructions at the university offices and thought these new instructions to be unrealistic (they involved getting hold of a textbook!). She was also told she would have 15 minutes to teach a demo lesson, which was cut to 5 minutes, during which she was interrupted a number of times.
Needless to say, she did not get the job. This, even though, based on the skill set required according to the advert, she was the best for the job!
Tuesday 1 December 2009
Etiquette
...but there's some special time to forget etiquette! Never smile at a crocodile...
These lines from a famous Rolf Harris song (apparently it was due to be in the movie Peter Pan but got cut), seemed to apply recently.
The situation I found myself in was this - having taken pains to make sure that my two co-teachers and their husbands would be able to attend the end-of-year Sakornet party, I duly proceeded to book the tickets at 75000 won per person. Only to be told a day before the party that they would no longer be able to come! And could I cancel the tickets.
No, I couldn't! The whole idea is that the pre-booking is to ensure that there is food prepared and tables laid etc. and hotels generally don't allow cancellations on stuff like that!
OK, so given the salary I earn, 150000 won is not that much. However, to have wasted it in this way really drove me nuts. If I had that money to waste, I would be sending it to my family in SA, where it is worth over R1000 - think what they could have done with it! Or it could have gone towards paying for the room.
Coming from a culture where, if you accept an invitation like this, especially well ahead of time, you basically have made a firm commitment and other invitations have to be set aside, this kind of rudeness is, I suppose, what is meant by culture shock.
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