Cozmopolitan Sunkyoung

One of the weekend amusements I had in Brussels was reading “Le Monde 2″ and New York Times, both weekend supplements to the French daily newspaper, which my landlord bought everyday. To be frank, with the former, I can’t really I say I ‘read’ it but, at least, I tried to read it. Of articles or sections in the magazine, the ones that retained my attention, despite a shallow attempt, for longer than others were mostly articles about photography, articles featuring eye-catching photographs, sudoku and book section. For the last two, I think I spend quite some time with any kind of journalistic products.

Of all those ordinary weekends when I pursued the pleasure of reading, I remember, if I’m not wrong, a picture of a dark-haired guy standing or sitting on the stairs against the red-brick wall — a typical architecture scene in New York City, based on my very limited sources. He was introduced as the author of several books and one of the book titles immediately widened my eyes — Netherlands. Indeed, the article revealed that the author was raised primarily in the Netherlands. But another fact made the book irresistible: he was born in Ireland. What could be the better combination of an author’s geographical background to spark my interest than this? I had to read this book.

Although in the book itself there was no Irish setting at all — except short mentioning of the narrator’s dentist’s ‘salmon-catching vacations in Ireland’, I had tremendous joy of recalling my fond memories of the Netherlands as Hans van den Broek, the novel’s first-person narrator as well as one of the protagonists, looked back on the fragmented memories of his childhood in Den Haag, the Netherlands: typical Dutch names like the main character’s, street names ending with ‘-straat’ and ‘-laan’, and some other Dutch words and phrases. Among them, one particular word led me to recall my very personal experience: ijssalon (ice cream shop). In a small town in Limburg, the most southern province of the Netherlands, which is one of my Dutch friends’ hometown, there was a small ijssalon just out of the central market plaza. I think I was taken there only once (or twice, at most), favourably offered by my friend’s mother, together with my friend and her partner. I don’t remember which flavour I had — probably, either strawberry or mango, but do remember that I was as much excited and pleased as the little children at the shop, sticking themselves to the glass storage, and that it was one of the happy memories of that summer in the Netherlands. Thinking that perhaps I will never again have a chance (or reason) to go to that ice cream shop, I felt sad. However, even if I do revisit the shop, it will never be the same — I will never feel the same excitement and happiness I had five years ago. A piece of memory completely cropped from certain time and space, and certain circumstances and relationships cannot reproduce the same experience. Hence, there is no point of remaining sorrowful about the only-once-happened-and-will-never-happen-again thing: the more important thing is that you have that memory.

Some other parts of the book that I found amusing or would like to keep here is as follows (pages as marked in a US version of hardcover published by Pantheon Books):

p. 108. [...] and while I changed, Danielle wandered around my apartment, as was her privilege: people in New York are authorized by convention to snoop around and mentally measure and pass comment on any real estate they’re invited to step into.

p. 109. Like an old door, every man past a certain age comes with historical warps and creaks of one kind or another, and a woman who wishes to put him to serious further use must expect to do a certain amount of sanding and planing. But of course not every woman is interested in this sort of refurbishment project, just as not every man has only one thing on this mind.

p. 118. For my comings and goings were frightening mysteries to my three-year-old son. My arrival, however closely anticipated, startled him; and from our first moment together he would be filled with a dread of my departure, which he could not comprehend or situate in time. He feared that any minute I might be gone; and always the thing he most feared would come to pass.

The two quotes below are not directly related to my own amusement found in the book but more to the items of an interesting list elaborated by Christian Lander in his blog, Stuff White People Like, as well as in his same-titled book. I’m thinking of sending him these quotes as cultural references.

p. 178. [...] of the Manhattanish importance lately attached to coffee and sushi and farmers’ markets, [...]

p. 188. I brushed Jake’s teeth with his dinosaur-themed toothbrush. I read him a story—at his insistence, Where the Wild Things Are, even though it frightened him a little, this story of a boy whose bedroom is overtaken by a forest—and calibrated his bedroom’s dimmer switch according to his instructions.

p.192. He nattered about his salmon-catching vacations in Ireland, which by coincidence had been precisely the pastime of my Dutch former dentist and led me to wonder if there was a connection between angling and tinkering with teeth. Certainly he seemed as happy as a fisher, this New York practitioner, and why not? One of the great consolation of work must be its abbreviation of the world’s area, and it follows that it must be especially consoling to have one’s field of vision reduced to the space of a mouth.

p. 206. Now Chuck was driving us through Brooklyn. I heard myself tell him, “My wife is seeing another guy.”
He showed no surprise, even though it was the first time I’d raised directly the subject of my marriage. After a moment, he said, “what do you want to do about it?”
“What can I do?” I said hopelessly.
He gave his head a categorical shake. “Not can do: first figure out what you want to do. It’s Project Management 101: establish objectives, then establish means of achieving objectives.” He glanced at me. “Do you want her back?”
I said, “Let’s say I do.”
“OK,” he said. “Then you should go back to London. Right away. It’s a no-brainer.”
I thought, No-brainer? What would happen in London? A seduction with flowers? A ravishment? Then what?
“Otherwise,” Chuck, growing emphatic, said, “you’re in danger of having regrets. My bottom line is, no regrets.”

몇 주 전에 트랜스포머 2를 보면서 몇 가지 생각이 들어 정리해 보고자 한다.
I would like to collect my random thoughts of Transformers 2 that I watched a couple of weeks ago.

트랜스포머 1을 보지 않고 2탄을 먼저 보았는데 거리에 붙은 포스터나 예고편을 봤을 때에는 모든 로보트가 ‘그들’ – 즉, 나쁜편이라 생각했다. 그런데 몇몇 로보트들은 군공무원이더만.
I didn’t have a chance to see Transformers 1 while it was on screen, and from posters and a trailer of TF2, I had thought all the robots were ‘them’ – that is, evils. However, some robots were even military civil servants.

헐리우드에서 만든 거의 모든 외계 세력/생물체/현상의 지구 박살내기 영화에서는 무조건 미국이 사태를 다 처리한다.  이 영화에서도 상해와 빠리가 쑥대밭이 되는데도 결국 머리 싸매고 고민하는 곳은 미군 사령실이나 펜타곤이다. 중국이나 프랑스도 왠만한 군사강국 아닌가? 미국영화니까 미군 나오는 게 당연할 수도 있지만 연합군도 못 꾸린단 말인가? 오히려 그게 더 자연스러운 것 아닌가?
In most of the Hollywood movies where the external forces/lives/phenomena strike the Earth, it is always the USA who mainly deals with them. In TF2, Shanghai and Paris were blown up, but it was the US military commander’s room and Pentago where people gathered to solve the situation. Aren’t China and France also such military powers? One could argue it’s fair to show these core decision-making bodies in the US as TF2 is an American film. But, I can’t help but ask, even in that case, why the US military doesn’t arrange the coalition forces with China and France. Isn’t this more realistic?

마이클 베이 감독의 작품에는 군대 및 그들의 장비를 근사하게 그리는 장면이 자주 등장한다. 한 친구의 retweet을 통해 보게 된 Transformers FAQs라는 웹페이지에서는 이 감독이 원래 제트기, 탱크, 항공모함에 환장해서(Because Michael Bay has a huge erection for jets and tanks and aircraft carriers [...]) 그렇다고도 하는데, 이걸 읽고 떠오른 사람이 있었다.
In many of Michael Bay’s films, he has often made scenes where the military forces and their arms are nicely picturised. At a web page, Transformers FAQs, which I came to read through a friend of mine’s retweet, it is explained that he ‘has a huge erection for jets and tanks and aircraft carriers [...]‘ Reading this phrase, I recalled one person.

그는 바로 2003년에 ‘비상‘이라는 책의 서평이 신문에 나서 알게 된 ‘이원익’이라는 사람이다. 이 책은, 그가 2001년 빠리국제에어쇼에 참가하여 항공선진국들의 첨단 기술 및 그들의 영향력에 자극을 받은 후 세계적 한공산업의 에이전트가 되기 위해 하버드 케네디 행정대학에 입학하기 직전에 낸 자서전이다.
It is Wonik Lee, whom I came to know through a newspaper’s book review of his autobiography in 2003. The book was published right before he went to John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (hereafter, HKS: Harvard Kennedy School). He applied for this school to build his career as an agent in the aerospace industry after he was stimulated by what he saw at Paris Airshow 2001 – high technologies of advanced countries in the industry and their power.

나와 비슷한 시기에 유학을 갔고 그의 앞으로의 행보가 기대가 되어 생각날 때마다 뉴스 검색을 하였는데 가장 최근에 찾은 뉴스는 그가 2년 간의 석사 과정을 마치고 한국항공우주산업(KAI)의 항공기수출본부에서 일하고 있다는 것이었다. 한 마디로 전투 훈련기 장사를 하고 있는 것이었다. (2007년 5월 14일자 조선일보 관련기사)
In addition to that he went to study abroad in the similar time as me, I was looking forward to his future path so I have searched some news whenever he called to mind. The latest news I’ve found is that, after he completed 2-year master course, he was working at aircraft export team of Korean Aerospace Industries, Ltd. In a word, he was selling training aircraft. (Related article in Chosun Ilbo on 14 May 2007: Korean only)

이원익은 전투기 조종사인 부친을 둔 덕에 일찌기 어려서부터 전투기에 관심이 많았고 스스로도 전투기 조종사가 되고자 하였다. 그러나 고등학교 때 시력저하로 인해 공군사관학교 진학을 포기해야 했다. 하지만 관심과 열정을 멈추지 않아 전문가 수준에 가까운 지식을 쌓았고 여러 사회 활동을 통해 다방면의 실력도 키웠다.
Thanks to his father, combat pilot, he got interested in jet fighters at his very early age and he wanted to become a fighter pilot himself. However, because of a decline in his eye sight during his high school time, he had to give up going to the national air-force academy. Despite this, his high interest and passion led him to acquire as much knowledge as the professional’s and he also built his capacity through experiences in various fields.

자신의 꿈을 이루기 위해 굉장한 노력을 기울였다는 점에서는 그에게 아낌없는 박수를 보낸다. 하지만 그의 꿈을 이루는 과정에서 얽혀진 여러 관계들은 그의 행보를 마냥 칭송하게 만은 만들지 않는다. 케네디 행정대학의 학비와 생활비의 대부분은 삼성 이건희장학재단에 선발되어 벌었고, 그가 역할모델로 삼은 홍정욱은 한나라당 소속으로 국회의원이 되었고, 유학 직전 결혼한 상대의 부친은 진대제 전 정보통신부 장관이다.
In view of that he has put enormous efforts to make his dreams come true, I give him applause. However, several relations he’s got connected to on his path towards his dreams, do not make me only applaud him. He earned most of his tuition fee and living expenses through the scholarship offered by Samsung Lee Kun Hee Scholarship Foundation. And his role model – Jungwook Hong became a member of National Assembly of Korea, affiliated with the Grand National (Hannara) Party, a conservative political party. The father of his spouse to whom he got married just before going to the States, is Deaje Chin, a former Minister of Information and Communication after his resignation as CEO of Samsung Semiconductors.

그가 개인적으로 일궈낸 성과 및 쌓은 인맥을 비판하고자 하는 것은 아니지만 그의 선택이 우연히, 혹은 의도적으로(!) 사회의 보수세력과 밀접히 연관을 맺게 된 것에 나는 주목을 하고 있다. 그리고 그가 케네디스쿨에서 공부한 뒤 하고 있는 일이 살인과 관련된 전쟁무기(당시에는 훈련기였다 할지라도) 수출이라는 점도.
I do not intend to criticise his personal achievements and human relationships, but I do pay attention to the fact that he has built those relations with a broad conservative segment of society by chance, or on purpose(!). My attention also goes to what he is doing after graduation from HKS is exporting arms – though they were training jets at that time -, that could cause civilian casualties.

내가 항공 및 군수 산업에는 문외한이라 그 안에 얽힌 국가 간, 지역 간 역학 관계를 무시한 것일 수도 있다. (사실 그 검은 세계를 알고 싶은 생각도 별로 없다.) 하지만 그가 케네디스쿨에서 배운 것에 그만의 영특함과 근면, 성실함을 더하여 인류를 위해 보다 인도적인 차원의 일을 했으면 좋았겠다는 안타까움이 크다. (어쩌면 내가 케네디스쿨에 대한 일면만 알고 있는지도…)
As an absolute outsider of aerospace and munitions industries, I may be ignorant about the politics entangled between countries and regions in these fields. (Actually I’m not really interested in this dark side of the world.) But what I regret is that he could have done a work of rather humanitarian dimension for mankind with his intelligence and diligence as well as things he learned at HKS. (Maybe I only know one aspect of the school…)

자, 결론이다. 글 제목에 대한 변이자 왜 트랜스포머 2 보고 나서 이 사람 생각이 났는지에 대한 답변. 부친의 직업의 영향 외에도 이원익의 진로에 결정적인 영향을 미친 영화가 ‘탑건’이었다.
Here is my conclusion. This explains a reason for the title of this post and why I recalled him after watching Transformers 2. Besides his father’s job, it was a movie, ‘Top Gun’ that had a decisive influence on his life.

As I twitted, from today onward, Koreans can travel to the USA without visas for up to 90 days. On this historical day, I would like to talk about my link with the USA.

Since my first living abroad was in the Netherlands, I have become pro-Europe but I’m quite certain that if it was in the States, I’d have been at the forefront of promoting its culture like I’ve been with the Irish one. Interestingly, however, before I went to the Netherlands in 2003, my view on the Western world had been formed heavily based on how the US was projected in me from my childhood.

My parents, who were very keen about education, bought me a set of English books and cassette tapes directly licensed by the American publishing company when, if I could remember, I was three years old. Through a family of anthropomorphised rabbits in the books, I could observe the different settings of the Americans’ daily lives: two-storied house with a garden and a garage, big shopping mall where people carries carts, school bus, Christmas and so on. And as lovers of pop music, my parents also had a big collection of 60′s to 80′s pop music and I think I listened to these songs more than to children’s songs.

When I grew up to be a teenager, I recall it was a booming period of absorbing American culture and most of the channels were through media. You could easily imagine how I understood the Western world - which practically meant the US only at that time – with the names I list as following:

• New Kids On The Block - These five boys from Boston had a significant influence on my interest in English language because what I did during my spare time in junior high school was mostly singing along their songs and trying to understand what the lyrics meant. I actually thank them for this and next February in Amsterdam, I’ll finally see these now-men after nearly two-decade since I became their fan. Not only their songs but their music videos – yeah, we are the generation of MTV – stimulated my curiosity about the Western life with the sights and incidents filmed in the videos.

• Toy Soldiers- As an adolescent girl who reached the stage of valuing friendship most in life, this movie fired my fantasy of the perfect friendship, trouble-making at school, dormitory life, and teenage hero. I liked the film so much that I bought the video tape from the video rental shop, which was very rare for anyone of my age at that time, and that I even rewrote the story by adding myself as a troublemaking girl who was sent by her parents to the boarding school, where there are only boys, as a very exceptional case. I named her (or myself) Kevin to defeminise her original name, Catherine, with a thought at the time that the first sounds of these two names were the same. Anyway, this is not the end of the story. I even wrote my first-ever fan mail to Sean Astin to the Tri Star in Hollywood, which produced ‘Toy Soldiers’ and which was listed by a Korean film magazine to send a fan letter to. (The mail was returned to me a couple of months later, though, with a stamp of wrong address.) Now you can imagine how sad I was when I saw Sean Astin in the first piece of the Lord of the Rings. I was really shocked at how much a person can change over a decade.

• TV Series - The Wonder Years, Doogie Howser, M.D., Beverly Hills 90210 up to my teenage and Ally McBeal and Sex and the City in my adulthood: No more words needed, right?

With this visa waver programme, I now can directly experience the American culture without the heavy burden of application with the various documents and a lot of money. As much as the gap between fantasy and reality, my future experience in this vast territory of Northern America will be different from what I had learned and saw from all those pieces of American pop culture. However, I’m excited to be able to see and feel them in their own country, recalling the fanatical curiosity about the world outside from my childhood.

On Thursday the Stage Committee sent an additional notice to their daily news for the ‘US Election Party’ organised by American Chamber of Commerce in Brussels. They got the 20 tickets but later announced more than 80 stagiaires applied for.

Last night at one of the bars I went to with my friends, there was a leaflet of ‘OBAMA NIGHT’. ‘Belgium for Obama’ hosts this event and I guess they’d decided to make it Obama Night whatever the real outcome would be that night.

I also found a music video for Obama, featuring a lot of American entertainers including my favourite male singer John Legend. (He also sang on the stage for Obama campaign.) Thank you, Elisabeth!

 The reason why I think some of the outside the US support Obama is their expectation that the relationship with the US could be changed from a phase of confrontation to cooperation. Of course, because of each state’s own interests, it won’t be possible to make one voice over the issues at stake all the time. If the government’s mind-set is already based on sharing, however, wouldn’t it be a little easier to go towards cooperation?