I've seen my fair share of flight safety videos and demonstrations, most of them unmemorable (is that a word?), but on my recent flights to and from South Korea, I flew on Delta airlines, a carrier that I don't often use.
And their in-flight safety video scared the hell out of me. Both times I had to see it.
A few seconds in, after the innocuous "Delta/Sky Team - Safety First" graphic and the goofy obligatory "Pilot's Welcome" segment, I was met with one of the most terrifying examples of plastic surgery abuse I think I have ever seen. The main "character" in the video is a woman flight attendant of an unknown age, given the fact that her face is stretched tighter than an artist's canvas, and it's impossible to tell which portions of her face are original or not. She probably told me how to buckle my seat belt and where the oxygen masks were, but I couldn't focus, given how disarming I found her appearance to be. I suppose I should give her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she just naturally looks like that, but I would bet up to . . . oh, the price of a round-trip domestic airline ticket, that she has had some kind of cosmetic procedure done. See the video below, and tell me, does that look normal? And furthermore, why on EARTH did Delta choose to have her in their safety video? I felt more scared than safe after being forced to watch this little piece on the plane, because then plastic surgery in general freaks me out.
Also, in a completely unrelated housekeeping note, I have now added "Reactions" buttons to my posts. Feel free to click away to let me know what you think, and also drop me a line if you think there's a reaction button label that would be useful to add.
So, if any of you follow me on Facebook, you most likely have already seen the various postings I have about K-pop songs that I really like. This post will be a repeat of some of those songs, but with plenty of new ones I haven't mentioned before, so that those of you not on Facebook can share in the fun, and/or so that I can have an easily accesible archive of these songs and bands.
First up is the Wonder Girls song "Nobody." I didn't realize it until after I got home, but there is both a Korean and English version of this song, and the Korean one is INFINITELY better. I don't know if this is really possibly, but I feel like the girls' singing ability is far better in Korean, plus is just flows better and doesn't seem so "dubbed." On my Facebook profile I accidentally posted the English version, but I will attempt to post the Korean one here, because a) it's better, and b) it's the one my room and I danced to for the talent show that was a part of my study abroad program, so it has more memories for me (even if those memories involve a possible act of sacrilege, of trying to practice a goofy choreographed dance in a meditation room with a giant cross).
After this we have the song "Marshmallow" by IU. I don't actually know anything about this song, but we saw the music video for it in one of the breaks between lectures (in between each half of the lectures, a different artist would be featured and we would watch two of their music videos, it got to the point where you had to make a conscious decision between going to the bathroom and staying to watch the videos because they were so interesting), and it intrigued me with its weirdness. I don't know what's going on or what she's singing about, the best I can make out is that her live-in boyfriend is actually a marshmallow, or she wishes he was a marshmallow, and she enjoys knitting. Or something like that. I suppose I could look up the lyrics for the song or the Wikipedia explanation for the video, but that would take all the fun out of it, as I think it's more exciting when it makes no sense.
Getting into the more clubby side of things, there's the song "Hands Up" by 2PM. I can't remember where I heard this first, but it definitely sounds like it could be a hit on the USA Top-40 Charts. It actually took a few listenings before I could easily differentiate between this song and . . . another which at the moment I can't remember. Perhaps this means that I can't actually differentiate between them like I thought I could. I guess I'll have to get back to you on that one.
While we're going with the boybands, let's see something from Super Junior. I kept hearing this song "Sorry Sorry" while I was in Korea, so it must be pretty popular, and the video isn't bad, if you're into black and white filming with funky lighting effects.
While I and some of the other girls from Cedar Crest were out for a walk around Olympic Park, we heard a terrific amount of noise coming from one of the old Olympic buildings, and it turns out that the band Girls' Generation was playing there that day as part of their tour, and, in addition to having enough members to supply about 2.5 American girl bands, Girls' Generation is crazy popular in Korea. Their song "Gee Gee" apparently broke a ton of radio records, like being number 1 for the longest amount of time ever. The first time you hear the song, you're like "What on earth is this?" but then you'll find that the chorus is stuck in your head and keeps going on repeat, which may explain why it was so popular, people kept trying to listen to it all the way through in order to get it out of their heads.
Finally, I must mention 2NE1, the band with the super-confusing name! You can pronounce it "To Anyone" or "Twenty One," though those pronunciations have nothing to do with what the letters and numbers actually stand for, which is "New Evolution of the 21st Century." Oh, and if you're a fan of the group, you're called a "Blackjack" because of the reference to the number 21. Got that? I'm not a huge fan of the music put out by this group, though I do think that parts of this song "Fire" sound kind of like the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow." But maybe that's just me.
So, it's now been almost two weeks since I'm back home from South Korea. Strange how quickly time passes when you're not paying attention.
The first few days back were, not surprisingly, the hardest. After being in the South Korean and Seoul culture for close to a month, living in a communal setting, and being busy every day, it was quite a culture shock to come back to my quiet house with just my parents and I, in small-town Pennsylvania, with not a whole lot to do. It was very much a reminder to me why I'd like to move to a large city out of school, because I like being in a environment filled with life and things to do, and I do not find my present location to fit that bill. I also realized that there were certain parts of domestic life that I had been removed from for awhile, such as having a kitchen and food to use whenever I wanted, and having a choice between a shower and a bath. But after only a day or so, my old living-at-home habits kicked back in, and things didn't seem nearly so foreign as they did when I first got back home.
I've also been going through my typical back-home-cleanout process over the past few days. After I come back from a trip that's longer than a week or so and I've been living comfortably out of a suitcase, I feel strange when I come home to my room and house filled with tons and tons of things I obviously can live without, and missing some things that I realized while I was gone would really be useful. What usually happens is that I get home, start doing wash and putting things away, and then the next morning (or whatever reasonable time fits in with my jet lag), I go out to some stores to pick up the things I think I need. Usually these items are on a list that was compiled while I was gone, and have included items such as face wash, t-shirts, and extra underwear. Then, I come back home, and for the next few days, go CRAZY with getting rid of other things. Clothes, shoes, towels, books, you name it, it gets passed over to see if it really needs to stay. It must have to do with the semi-nomadic nature of travel that gives me the motivation to do this, the less I have in the first place, the less I have to consider when the time to travel arrives. I love the idea of just being able to dump all my stuff into a suitcase or two, and that being everything I ever need to worry about. I highly doubt that I will ever actually achieve this level of minimalism, but every bag of stuff that I get out of my room makes me feel that much closer to that lofty goal.
As far as other "reverse culture shock" goes, I think the majority of my discomfort with being home comes more from the fact that I've gone from being in a big city to a nonexistent one, rather than going from South Korea to the USA. People that I've seen around aren't as well put-together as they were in Seoul, and just generally have less of a "cultured" air to them. However, I think if I had been staying in the Orefield-equivalent in South Korea, this would not be so noticeable, or if I came home to the Seoul-equivalent in the USA. However, I think that the fact that technology here at home is somewhat behind South Korea's is a national phenomenon, and not one I'm noticing just because I'm not in a big city. Also, oddly enough, I'm noticing how strict America's (and Pennsylvania's in particular) drinking laws are. In Korea, you could just wander into a convenience store and find beer in the cooler right next to the soda, buy it, and drink it out in public, while here in the US alcohol is regulated as if it were a prescription drug. Being underage in the US, I never thought much about buying alcohol, but after being able to in Korea, now coming back home and realizing I can't (and even if I could, it would be very very regulated) is a bit strange.
In other news, I am planning on registering for another class for this semester. Every semester that I have been in college so far, I have taken 5 classes, which is the typical course load. A few months ago when I planned out my fall, I registered for 5 classes as usual. However, given the structure of my major and minors, if I follow that 5-a-semester track for the rest of my college career, I won't get done "on time." So I'm considering taking 6 classes this semester to pick up some of the slack. My concern is that I'll either a) drive myself crazy or b) hurt my GPA. But given how I've done in previous years, I think I should be okay.
