True love - South Korea style: Part 8. Love match goes on a double date

The lengths that I will go to to photograph a love match couple obviously have no boundaries. Here is a picture of my scraped knee from falling off my bike while chasing a couple wearing matching sneakers on matching skateboards along the Han River.

Here is the picture. Totally worth it. 

(The quality is a disaster here. Slight issue with computer to computer sharing going on in my house)

I have sent an email to this couple requesting an interview. 

They run a website called Ggumddakji (best website ever). It sells all the love match clothes you could ever want in your life: Winter, Summer, Fall, honeymoon, social occasions - you name it and they sell it. They also make, as part of their marketing campaign I assume or just because they are awesome, the best videos ever about their love matching exploits. Check this out!

I want to be their friends but as yet they have not responded to my email requests for an interview so I have not got very far. I am not giving up. (Let me know if  you have any burning questions of them that you want me to ask).  

At least I know they are alive though, unlike this couple whose heads are unfortunately missing. 

And this couple, with heads, who live in the New Balance window in Hongdae and are mysteriously able to change outfits every few weeks.  

I expect this couple is alive somewhere but I cannot confirm if they really are a couple or what the pink arrow means).

One might think that, with the sore knee, the quite possible and most probable rejection from the love match couple and the fact that I am now stalking life like models with no heads that it might be time to move on. For starters, perhaps I could focus my energies on finding a job, child rearing and/or exchanging my collection of colourful sneakers for a slow cooker or something equally practical. The younger me would never have imagined the older me doing any of these three things (the younger me was clearly a little delusional as not entirely sure why younger me thought I would not need to search for a job). The younger me also had some very firm views on my future life and swore, at around 18, that the older me would never do the following:

• have kids or get married
• if I did have kids never be an over protective parent, never make my kids wear what I said they should wear and never force them to brush their hair.

But times change. And you change. Before you know it, you are married, with three children and you are channeling your mother in the morning when you yell for the umpteenth time, in the evening when you worry about why they are two and a half minutes later than usual, when you force them to put on a singlet and to wear the pink and red striped jacket that you love even though they want to wear the brown, ripped jacket with avocado and pumpkin mash stains all over it, and when you ignore their screams as you rip that comb through their hair and pin up that loose hair from around their face.  

But the biggie, the one that I swore no matter what I would never go along with, is double dating while in love matching clothes  (ok, I may have never sworn not to do this because I never knew it existed before moving to Korea but if I had of known about it then I would have certainly sworn off it). Would you, could you imagine double dating wearing same clothes? Generally, I don't even like single dates (just ask my husband) so I usually struggle with the concept of double dates which means that you would be right to assume that it would be inconceivable that I would willingly go along on a double date with another couple who had also decided to experiment with love matching. You can guess where this is going can't you? I have no doubt that my 18 year old self would be mortified if she met me now. 

Husband and I have friends that you could call couple friends - as in friends that we made as a couple that are also a couple so they are therefore couple friends. We all like each other, have similar parenting styles, similar interest in Shaun T, American exercise guru (although their interest is a little more committed) and all really like thai food. A reasonable base for a couple friendship. I take credit for their fascination with love matching. But they have run with it, much to my delight. This is not them but is a family shot that they snapped for me when in Thailand. 

One night we had all arranged baby sitters and had decided to head to Hongdae for some dumplings. Without any suggestion from us, nor any convincing (in fact absolutely no encouragement was needed) the couple decided that the night would be much, much better if love match made an appearance for all of us (having witnessed our efforts only a few weeks before). So they went shopping.

Apparently (I am believing them here as I was not stalking them in the aisles of H & M and because their relationship is clearly more advanced (substitute that word for mature if you want to be completely honest) than the one I have with husband, largely thanks to my subjugation issues with the whole concept of marriage) their shopping experience was fun. This couple calmly made all decisions together, in a loving couple way.  

They turned up at our house wearing dark blue adidas trainers, light khaki coloured pants (he was in shorts and she was in long pants) and a blue t-shirt with what looked like a concert t-shirt like print on the front.

You could sense their excitement as we opened the door when they arrived. He, your quintessential enthusiastic American, was really feeling the love. Standing side by side with us, the seasoned love match couple, I think all four of us did feel a little weirded out, but we went with it anyway. We wanted to know what the Hongdae crowds would say. 

you all know what I look like but the others were a bit more camera shy...

Conversation at first was slightly strained and only focused on our clothes and who was desperately trying to hide under an umbrella (it was raining - I was not using it as camouflage) and a jacket (that could have been me) but, as we got closer to Hongdae, the weirdness of our dress sense (or lack thereof) went away. We were just four people out on a Sunday night for dinner (which was still weird for me anyway as I generally never get to escape my house and/or my children at nighttime). But then we got dumplings. And then we got ice-cream. And no-one looked twice at us. No-one cared. No-one thought we were strange. No-one. 

In the end, the only reactions came from our kids. Their 12 year old daughter, although still thinking her parents were funny, albeit it in a very odd way, said she would not go out in public with them. My kids, a lot younger and clearly not quite cool yet (with a mum like me their chances of ever attaining that status are rather slim) thought it was awesome and that we were all looking good and they cried (not an usual occurrence in our house) because they desperately wanted to join in! My much younger self would have probably thought the same thing. But this would have been my 7 year old self and not my 18 year old self who had sworn that she would not do most of the things that I have since done and who, if she knew then what would have become of us now may have started arranging emancipation proceedings from her older self (if such a thing could be possible).  

It appears that, in-spite of my growing collection of colourful sneakers and my non-existent purchase of a slow cooker, I am clearly not at all what I thought I would be like when I was 18: the getting married part along with three children - two of whom I (forcefully) brush their hair and chose their clothes (I have had to admit defeat with the third) really let the 18 year old down. And I cannot give up on my fascination with love match, now taking it to new levels with couple love match dressing. But, based on my kids' reactions, I have a feeling that my 7 year old self would have been deliriously happy with the way things have so far turned out. So, instead of fixating on what my 18 year old self would have thought, I am returning to the 7 year old - who I think I would be great friends with if I met her today. She liked to read a lot, she made up really funny stories, she loved sausages and she had great fashion sense that I now chose to channel - as I put on my hot pink leg warmers, my Miffy tights and my red knitted jumper with white snowflakes (Christmas is coming). And she would have really, really loved to love match with her mum, dad, sister, brother and, most definitely, her dog. Bring it on. 

Blog post spoiler alert: If you are predicting a Christmas family love match blog post and accompanying photo shoot you may just be on the money. 

Releasing the inner artist one small fluffy white dog at a time

I have been attempting to draw lately. Which has been a little depressing as it has reinforced something I have long known about by myself. I have no talent. My first sentence should really be rewritten to, more accurately, state that I have been attempting to improve my scribbles lately. Here are two pictures. One is mine and one is from my five year old. The one at the top is way better, yes? It is not mine. 

Despite my incredibly obvious lack of ability, I am continuing to persevere because: it serves as a life lesson for my kids (if at first you don't succeed); it provides an excuse for me to continually avoid all housework; I can't afford any real art so have to make my own; and I dream to one day illustrate my own book. But I have to say that it is a little dispiriting attempting to draw here in Seoul: as if my own awareness of my limitations regarding artistic talent was not enough, I am attempting to conquer the coloured pencil in a city that just seems to be exploding and oozing prodigious talent. 

Art can be found on every corner here in Seoul, ranging from the usual pictures on paper to cleverly designed flower pots, green gardens, prettily designed corners, meticulously thought out shop fronts and stationery galore in an organised world. Even Daiso - the 1,000 won shop is a pleasure to be in with its ridiculous number of coloured plastic baskets (I challenge you to leave Daiso without purchasing another hot pink basket). Because art is everywhere, it got me thinking about a possible escape cause. Maybe I am being unfairly harsh on myself and I really do have artistic talent - I have just not expressed myself in the right medium to date. So, in an attempt to redeem some hope I decided to expand my artistic pursuits from the coloured pencil and embarked upon a week of art experimentation to find my inner artist.

First, I decided to design an iPhone case or some sort of stationary item. Koreans, in general, take immense pride in the little things. Like stationary, pencil cases and phone covers. The choices are endless here. Here is my attempt. I call it: "Taking your bag to the shops." No phone company liked it.

I moved onto the idea of designing the interior of a cafe. There are no shortage of artistically designed cafes, with carefully considered shop fronts, an abundance of greenery and just that little dash of cuteness, not kitchness, that Koreans do so very well to make their spaces so inviting. Examples. 

 

even the plumbing store looks artistic...

Having bought duvet covers for three girls and put up pictures in their rooms, feeling house proud of my personally designed pink striped cushions and having taken lessons in patterned dressing from adjumas (one should never be afraid to mix leopard with zebra) surely this was going to be my calling. No. It was not to be. Apparently, it is a good idea to own a cafe, or perhaps even work there, before you start rearranging its furniture and accentuating with your own soft furnishings and and cat paraphernalia (apparently every good cafe needs a cat statute. I hate cats).

So I moved on to the more overt: performance art. Over in Seongbuk-dong, I have occasionally walked past run some fancy looking young men who chose to stand still on a street corner for a while. It looks like a magazine shot from the 1920s. Surely I could do this. 

Turns out that I can't. Well, I did for around 5 minutes on a street corner down the road by the park. But it kind of got weird. For starters, standing still is really hard for me. As is keeping my face motionless. But when people started offering me money, food, drinks, pointed to a seat, motioned the policeman nearby and then the adjumas conferring in front of me decided to call an ambulance followed by the US Embassy I thought I had better stop. Maybe I should have aimed a little lower to begin with and joined in with these guys. 

Or these. They were singing. 

I thought about sculptures next. Seoul already has a lot of these (Seoul sculptures blog post) but, surely, you can always have some more. My three favourites so far are:

1. The big dog (I am partial to anything that is made out of recycled materials). 

2. The coloured cubes. 

3. And the man and dog walking out to greet the towers of Seoul.

This is what I came up with. 

I hung it up just down the road. But it got taken down by the local cardboard collector as I walked away.

Knitting was my next idea. I used to be totally into knitting when I was in primary school. We had a gang of knitters that would meet before school started and sing songs like "Kumbaya" as we knitted (these were my rebel years). I came across this in Jung-no recently.

But then I couldn't find any knitting needles. When I eventually located some I discovered that knitting without my Grade 5 gang just felt wrong (that, and I have actually forgotten how to do it). So I abandoned the idea.

Graffiti. Hello! Surely a winner. I grew up in an area where there was quite a bit of tagging (the writing of one's name or code name in a special script) -  as in you can't see the train carriage for all of the tagging - so surely this put me in an advantageous position for this particular art form. But, here in Seoul, even (or especially) the graffiti is beyond brilliant. 

My bear does not compare.

Just when I was beginning to lose all hope, I stumbled upon the "Annyeongdeulhashimnika?" poster art movement, started by a university student last winter (it has since died down). Annyeongdeulhashimnika translates as "How are you, guys?" (I think the literal translation from Korean to English is "Are you tranquil?") The posters  mostly handwritten, were put up at universities mostly but also around train and bus stations and recorded people's concerns, worries and un-happinesss.

I particularly loved the fact that people consciously considered their thoughts, put pen to paper and then stuck up their reflections in prominent positions for others to know what their worries were. Surely this has to be an astronomical cathartic experience. 

So with that in mind, here is my own poster.

I taped it to the green charity clothes bin just near our apartment yesterday. It had gone by the afternoon. I made another copy and took it up to school this morning. But the Principal caught me, said it was a bit strange and thought it best that I take it home again. Sigh. 

So where does all of this leave me? While it could be true that in this great city, art, in any form, would be best left in to the ones who live here and that I should just be happy with the fact that at least I get to experience it and, in some small way, feel connected to a world that is not my own, I feel that it would be remiss of me to not at least try to master some form of public expression. Korea has a lot of dogs that get carried around in handbags. I like dogs. I found a really friendly dog the other day when walking back home from a disappointing graffiti attempt. I think the dog's owner was inside yet another cute Seoul cafe and had, conveniently, left the dog outside. I may have found my creative muse in this dog. Either that or I just went crazy with the cans of spray paint I had in my handbag. The owner was speechless. I told him no thanks was required and went on my way, with a spring in my step:  graffiti dog artist extraordinaire. Who would have thought?