What Is Up With This Week

First off, I hate snow. It snowed again just in time for my flight. Four hour delay and an hour wasted flying circles in the air. What nonsense.

Second, I think my project is about to completely shut down any day now.

Third, my brother thinks... well, he knows what he did. Or didn't do. (That's right, little bro. Where was your damn phone call?)

Fourth, I miss two days of NBA news, and Chris Webber is a Sixer??? Gary Payton is a Hawk??? WHAT??!

I need to just sleep.

Lee Eun Joo Is Gone

I started following Korean entertainment (i.e., Korean popular music, TV, and movies) around 3 years ago in order to improve my language skills. Two summers in Korea and several CDs, downloaded TV shows, and DVDs have since then also made me a fan. This afternoon, my favorite Korean movie actress, Lee Eun Joo (이은주), was found dead in her apartment as a result of suicide.

To most people, this may simply be a sad event, but to me, this is the equivalent of Aishwarya Rai or Natalie Portman killing herself. At 24, Lee Eun Joo was at the height of her career, having recently starred in both a very successful TV drama and the biggest Korean movie of all time, Brotherhood <태극기휘날리며>. I have seen every movie of hers, including her most recent, The Scarlet Letter <주홍글씨>, the filming of which is said to have caused or exacerbated her depression, leading to insomnia and now, death.

Lee left a 3-page suicide note plus a note scrawled in blood reading “Mom… I’m sorry… I love you.” The 3-page note, as far as I can figure out with my less-than-stellar understanding of Korean, touched on several different issues that she was apparently going through. She says she wanted to earn money, but hated money at the same time. She also says she wished she could make her mother and brother happy and that she could go back to 1 year ago, before her confidence hit rock-bottom. Since a year ago is just before she started working on the movie, I am thinking that that was indeed the major cause of all her angst.

The Scarlet Letter is among a genre of Korean movies that can only be described as intense. These films are made to deliver blow after emotional blow with bizarre plot twists and shocking imagery. (The best example is Oldboy, which was runner-up at Cannes last year.) Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. The Scarlet Letter (not a remake of the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic, by the way) didn't really deliver in this regard; although it was very well acted, the plot was a little far-fetched and forced, in my opinion. It also turned out to be a flop at the Korean box office. Combine this failure with the backlash Lee faced for her explicit (at least by Korean standards) love scenes, the emotional toll of simply filming such a charged-up movie, and her supposed tendency to get very deep into her roles, and one can perhaps begin to see how she could have been so adversely affected. (You really have to see the movie to understand how intense it is and appreciate the emotional wreck that was her character.)

It’s hard to point a finger at any one person here. The movie producers, the Korean public and movie industry, the media, and even Lee herself all have a hand in this mess to some degree. Rather than celebrating her superb acting performance and her courage as an A-list actress in signing on for such a controversial role, they all chose to focus instead on the negatives. But what’s really sad, what really gets to me in a way that no other famous person’s passing has so far, is that nobody was there for her. At least, not in any way that could have saved her life. Korea is known for having a poor mental health system, but her suicide letter clearly implies that neither her friends nor family, including her own mother, offered enough support and instead, may perhaps have taken part in the negative backlash themselves.

Lee Eun Joo was one of the brightest stars in Korean cinema. She had amazing talent, brilliant charisma, and a level of sincerity in her roles rare for someone so young. And she still had the potential to be so much better.

She will be sorely missed.

Back in Bobcats Country

Mondays for consultants can be horrible, horrible days.

For example, you wake up at 5am to catch a 7:30am flight to Charlotte on a morning when NYC is predicted to receive 5-7 inches of snow. Knowing that your flight will either be massively delayed or cancelled altogether, you still make it to the airport on time because the airline refuses to declare any change in the scheduled departure until the last minute, and just in case the flight isn't cancelled and only delayed (massively), you have to get to the gate at the planned boarding time on the chance that the delay is announced after the plane has pushed off the terminal and rolled onto the tarmac, in which case having arrived late would have meant effectively missing the plane (even though it's just sitting there on the tarmac for over 2 hours, de-ice-creaming) and you having no adequate excuse for your supervisors as to why you missed your flight.

Oh, and then you get to the office and work for 8 hours.

Today's saving grace was the elixir of life known as Sweet Tea. Oh, and my king size bed. I would post a picture if it weren't so pathetic that I have nothing better to show this week but the inside of a hotel room.

People Read This?

So, I've actually had a couple of different people commenting here. Granted they're all referred from Anju. How you all stay connected to the blogging world is beyond me. I have a hard time writing in this even twice a week, let alone reading other people's blogs.

What is your secret?

Bensalem, PA

For those who think that being a consultant is classy, check out my office this week:

Oooo, it has wheels!!


Toothless females not included.

Big Red

Sustained anger is an uncommon emotion for me, so bear with me.

Courtesy.

Courtesy, if you ask me, has practically only one threshold: a lower threshold. There is no higher threshold because there is no such thing as being too courteous. At least practically speaking. There is, however, clearly a lower limit below which one's behavior violates the norms of courtesy. This limit is different for everyone, and although I like to think my limit is more tolerant than most people's, tonight, I discovered some things, when occurring in sequential order, that cannot be contained within my relatively generous level of acceptance:

1. Making someone wait outside in the cold for over an hour without notice.
2. Quickly apologizing without an explanation for said delay.
3. Subsequently stranding the person alone outside.
4. And finally, the coup de grace, essentially telling the person the night is now over.

And now, Newton's 3rd Law:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Last Dinosaur

I've been holding off on posting this week because I wanted to get a nice picture of the Rockies, but it's no use. This is the best I could do from the office parking lot:

Stupid lightpost.

My camera's zoom maxes out at 5x digital, unfortunately, but the mountains are not that close to Denver, anyway. They're only visible because Colorado is completely flat all over except for the Rockies, which seem to stick up from out of nowhere. It's all pretty, of course, but it could be warmer, and Mountain Time is throwing me off. Not surprisingly, I didn't get to see much of the city, but it looks like there's a lot of development going on. Oh well, in the words of Ahnold, I'll be back.

Poor McNabb

This may be a recurring theme in my posts, but New York is way cool. This weekend, I discovered that not only is there a Loews cinema inside the Times Square Virgin Megastore, but said movie theater (at least this week) is showing two Indian movies among its total of 4 screens. This means that half the movies being shown at the Times Square (TIMES SQUARE!) Virgin Megastore Loews are Indian movies.

Ridiculous.
-ly cool.

On the topic of movies, I would also like to make a recommendation:

In Good Company

Yes, yes, I know, how could Dennis Quaid possibly be in a good movie? This was my foremost doubt, too, but he does not disappoint. I would classify it as a light comedy. Same writer/director as "About A Boy", which I might have to check out now.

Home Sweet New York!

Aaaah, it is good to be home. Almost kissed the ground when I landed. NYC, I love you.

Milford, MA

Let's add the suburbs of Boston to the list of places I could never live. Too much snow, too cold, too quiet in the winter. I thought Boston was bad with everything in the city closing and the streets emptying soon after midnight, but this town is asleep before the work day even ends. Surprising on both accounts, because Boston is filled with college students and Massachusetts isn't lightly populated.

I found this on another blog. For those who can't read Korean, the packaging reads "Dog Meat Ramen." Supposedly, it's manufactured by ethnic Koreans in China and sold there as a Korean product.


Mmmm... a real Scooby snack!