Next I am gonna make a short stop in South Korea. I got to visit Seoul last fall on business and spent almost a week over there. While it was quite a hetic week I made sure I had a day for myself to do sightseeing and overdosed on temples and palaces. It was quite fascinating to see people dropping by a Buddhist temple after work, putting their designer bag right next to them on the floor and then kneeling and praying on a pillow. The temples were very nice and one of them had guards in colorful costumes and with scary weapons.
Korean Guard
The city was nice despite being a bit too big for my taste and the people were extremely friendly. What however blew my mind was the food! Who would have thought there was a whole cuisine of goodies that I had never discovered.
That being said, it might not be for all. It was very spicy and extremely garlicky. I literally felt like a giant garlic walking around during that week. It seems that the Koreans are aware of this and even keep their toothbrushes in public bathrooms at work to be able to freshen up after lunch. How they trust each other enough to leave their toothbrush there is a mystery to me… If anyone goes to South Korea I recommend delcious dishes such as Dak Galbi and Bulgogi. In a decent restaurant. I didn’t dare to visit the dodgy back alley restaurant I walked past during my day of sightseeing.
Dodgy Back Alley Food
Oh and a small friendly advice. When you are on the plane back home don’t think it is a good idea to save that small plastic container of Kimchi (very popular side dish) that you get with your meal to give someone at home a taste. You know, the one that seems carefully vacuum packaged and airtight. Because Kimchi is fermented and heavily garliced and just in case it starts to smell right after the stewardess has taken away the trash after the meal and gone on that long after-the-meal break. And just in case you might happen to have a window seat with two people between you and the hallway that might have just happened to take an after meal nap. Who knows, it might just start smelling through that thick, sealed plastic container. Worse and worse as it gets warmer. And you might just be too polite to wake up those soundly asleep Korean girls. And you might just sit there and feel more and more embarrassed about the stink that is probably killing every single passenger in a radius of ten seats…. You know, just in case you might think to do something that stupid…
Anyways back to the books…
The Opera office is above an underground shopping mall which made it easy to sneak out for visits to the bookstore. The bookstore people there thought I was a bit weird. First I spent a lot of time trying to find some translated South-Korean books and then I even asked for a poetry book in Korean to give to my dad that likes to have poetry books in different languages (even if he doesn’t understand it). Trying to explain to them that it didn’t really matter what the poetry is about just that it was poetry really confused them. I guess I can’t blame them.
I picked up two books for myself (in English) and it is the second one that I am gonna read now. A really short book with two stories in it called Hong Gildong by Hajin Seo.
Reading The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa made me realize what I want to become when I grow up! Someone the creates and sells new pasts for people. Like the main character of the story Félix Ventura. He is an Angolan albino that generates his income by creating the right background and lineage for his clients. In between he converses with the narrator of the story a gecko living on his wall. Some reviews says the gecko is a reincarnation of Jorge Luis Borges which I didn’t quite get since I have never read anything by Borges. Maybe about time I do.
The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
The book is quite well written and enjoyable. It tells the story of Félix, his latest sweetheart, and one of his clients. I assumed for the longest time that I was reading one of those books that didn’t really have a proper plot but rather just told the story of the character’s lives. I was therefore quite surprised when in the end it all came together in a plot. The best part about the book however was that it was different and original.
The title is quite odd at first and you might think it is a confusion as the story just features a gecko. My theory is however that the chameleon reference is to the people that come to Félix to disguise their pasts.
I give the book a strong 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.
And here is the exercise for the day, try rewriting your past and family history. What would you change? I am thinking I would spice mine up with some world travelers, hidden relatives, and questionable characters…
Learning about Angola has been a particularly depressing experience. Angola is the country that could potentially be the richest African country due to its oil, diamond, and mineral sources (according to Redd Barna). It is however one of the countries with the most problems. Corruption seems to be a big problems and approximately 40% of the government money simply disappears. The country has had a long civil warn ending in 2002 and this has really left the country in ruins. As an example, much of the country’s farmland is ruined due to landmines. This has forced most farmers into poverty and made the country dependent on expensive food import.
People generally live in poverty and according to UNICEF, Angola is the country in the world where kids under 18 years old face most problems. The country has one of the highest infant mortality rates and one of the lowest life expectancies rate in the world (37).
I tried to look at the country from a less serious angle. Like food. Found couple of recipes but all seemed to include to palm oil which I learned was quite unhealthy (and ugly looking). Not that this has anything to do with Angola but this also taught me that many food producers in Norway use this in ready made food. I guess I shouldn’t complain, at least I have food on my table.
I also tried to find some funny stories about the president (which generally seems to be easy with African leaders) but he seems amazingly clean of scandals and there were no traces of questionable past time activities like curing of AIDS. There is of course the whole corruption scandal concerning the government but I couldn’t find much information if he is directly involved or not.
In the end I simply tried to google “Positive things about Angola” as a last resort. One of the first site I found was one that talked about the Miss Landmine competition held in Angola in 2008. What a heartbreaking competition.
The only positive fact so far is actually the book. Just finished it and it was an interesting and entertaining read. More on that soon!
Where in the world would you find a gecko telling the story of an albino on whose wall he is living on?
I am going somewhere exotic and very unknown this time. Into Africa, the continent most of us know little about. I am gonna read a book called “The Book of Chameleons” by Jose Eduardo Agualusa. Agualusa is Angolan born in Huambo though his parents were Portuguese.
The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Angola used to be an Portuguese settlement up until 1975, hence Portuguese is their official language. The country struggles with poverty, low life expectancy and unemployment even if they are the second largest oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa. It will be interesting to learn a bit more about it. And to read about the gecko…
My journey to Iran has come to an end this time. At least until book club when I get to discuss the book and get new insights. Here is however my first impression.
The book I read was My Father’s Notebook by Kader Abdolah. The book was about an deaf-mute carpet mender and his son. The story starts recounting Aga Akbar difficult life as a young deaf mute and how he came to invent his own form of cuneiform scripture to record his thoughts. Later when Aga Akbar has a family, his son Ishmael gets put in the role of being his communicator with the external world until he goes away to school and joins the underground movement against the shah. The story is told through Ishmael which is trying to write a book about his father by deciphering his cuneiform scriptures while living in exile in the Netherlands.
My Father’s Notebook by Kader Abdolah
The story and the writing felt very uneven and flawed at times. The most irritating was that Aga Akbar was a deaf-mute that supposedly only knew a simple sign language, yet he was often able to communicate all his inner thoughts quite clearly despite it being stressed in other places that they didn’t know what he was thinking. The story jumped back and forth and things were often built up to then half disappear later (eg. the cuneiform scriptures). You often felt like the book was trying to build itself up to being more than what it then managed. Not sure if this was my English translation of the book or the fact that the author wasn’t writing in his mother tongue when he wrote the original (original languages is Dutch).
What was positive about the story was the descriptions of life in Iran and the story Ishmael told about his life during the Iranian Revolution in an underground movement. The ending was also quite good. The book made you think a bit about what a difficult life people had and have in Iran but it didn’t manage to evoke the same enthusiasm in me as Persepolis did.
I give the book a three out of five stars. A plus for the story and a minus for its writing.
Now off to look for a new country to visit. Think I will go somewhere even more exotic this time…
My copy of Persepolis arrived and I finally got to watch it. It was a very interesting and thought-provoking movie about a young girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution. It is based on Marjane Satrapi autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis.
Persepolis
The story was interesting and the storytelling was excellent. The entire movie was quite serious but spiced up with little funny life moments which made it very real. It really got you to think about what the life of people living under these controlling and oppressing governments is like and how easy we have it in the Western world. Or at least most of us. The Norwegian news has been reporting that in certain parts of Oslo people are being harassed for not dressing correctly or eating during certain religious holidays. Much like in the movie where people are told what to wear and how to behave by the moral police. Even this movie was not really appreciated by the Iranian government and mostly banned.
These are all just small things compared to the treatment people that openly oppose the government and are imprisoned or killed. It baffles me that we live in a world where there are still regimes where people are not allowed to freely oppose the government. How can anyone justify for themselves that their beliefs and powers are so important that it gives them right to oppress and kill people? How can they claim there is harm in words that they claim are not true and not feeling evil…? Enough ranting…
The graphics of the movie were very well done. The only negative thing I can say that it was maybe a bit on the longer side despite only being a little over 90 minutes. It didn’t really feel stretched but the constant jumping between scenes felt a bit exhausting.
However, to sum it up I will say that it was a beautiful, sad, thought-provoking movie that is definitely worth watching!
If Iran ever needs to reinvent itself as a tourist destination I suggest they drop the Iran name and just go with their old name Persia. Doesn’t Persia give you exotic mental images of belly dancers, Aladdin lamps, and flying carpets? It does to me! The Iran name gives me all the wrong associations about violated human rights and it is not getting better the more I read. Even today’s Norwegian news reported that Iran’s ambassador in Norway was seeking asylum here. Why? He had resigned in protest against human rights violations and election scandals. This apparently didn’t go down well with some powerful people.
In an attempt to find something positive about Iran I started looking at photos from Iran on Flickr. A lot of beautiful photos, especially of fascinating buildings and patterns. I guess there is a reason why Iran’s second largest export is carpets.
There was one photo in particular that stuck out and I desperately want to visit this place.
And from Flickr I learned that Iranian bodybuilder don’t only seem to want to look muscular but also something that reminds me of the Oscar statue…
I also started looking for movies to watch. I figured that the visually stunning 300 wasn’t an accurate portrayal of Persians (though I almost got blinded dumb by all the abs in that movie) so I ordered another Iranian movie called Persepolis. Now I am just waiting for it to arrive. In the meantime I will work on the second half of the book I picked. So far not a great book but decent and gives a good insight into Iran (or so I think at least).
Next country to explore has been picked! To my fellow bookclub members it is quite an obvious pick as it is the book we choose for next bookclub meeting. I am a member of the loveliest bookclub there is. Few wonderful girls that got together at work and formed a little bookclub five and a half years ago. Some members have started, left, and even some have come back. Right now there are seven active members. We meet approx every other month to catch up, talk about the book, gossip *blush*, eat, and drink wine.
The book we picked for our next meeting was My Father’s Notebook by Kader Abdolah (Arak, Iran). I have never, or not that I can remember, read a book by an Iranian author so this will be interesting!
My Father’s Notebook by Kader Abdolah
So what do I know about Iran? Not a whole lot to be honest. The first thing that comes to mind is that they have a quite a controversial president and then I am really just drawing blanks. Time to learn some more!
In other news: I have decided to combine my resolution with another reading challenge. The 2010 Global Reading Challenge. The only thing that it requires of me is that I make sure I read two books from every continent. Should be fairly straightforward if I manage my own resolution in the first place. If you are looking for a smaller challenge yourself I recommend taking a look at the one book from each continent challenge on that page.
To sum up: Oryx and Crake was a very good book. Definitely recommend it!
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Snowman is the only man in the world together with a race of optimized-for-survival humans created in a lab and called Crakers. The story recounts his childhood as Jimmy and the event leading up to the “end” of the world. Jimmy is an average boy that has a dysfunctional relationship with his parents that are scientists and involved in quite advanced genetic research. The world has changed and parts of it have become inhabitable. It is heavily controlled by large corporations running extensive and questionable research aimed at creating medical cures and efficient food. For example ChickieNobs that are rapidly grown chicken that is just the chicken breast… While Jimmy himself doesn’t amount up to much in life his childhood friend Crake ends up as powerful scientist giving him the freedom to create among other things the Crakers. The book details their relationship and their encounter with the woman Orxy. Her images has haunted them ever since they saw her on a child pornography site.
The story is written in a straightforward way interweaving the past and the present. Is is an easy read, yet very well written. The best part of the book was the excellent character building of Jimmy. A large part of the book is dedicated to him and his life and you learn to like him despite his weaknesses. Many of Atwood’s futuristic images are quite wild but you couldn’t help thinking that almost all of them could happen if we as a human race aren’t careful. Can’t you see the ChickieNobs happen if it was possible? It made you think about where you should draw the line for medical advances. Where to draw the line for profit etc. This is the first dystopian novel that I have read that is aimed at capitalism and is plausible. Not like the others I have read that seemed to be written by an envious socialist wanting everything to go to hell.
I give it a good solid four (out of 5). I am tempted to go higher but it is still too fresh in my mind. It was even better than my previous Atwood favorite The Handmaid’s Tale.
But enough about the book, don’t want to give it all away. I am off to pick the next book!
