My Name Is Kim Sam Soon (kdrama, 2005; 1-7 so far of 16 eps): Kim Sam Soon wishes her name were Kim Hee Jin because she’s tired of being called “third daughter.” (”Sam” = Sino-Korean “three,” as distinct from Korean “three,” “set”; I can’t vouch for the “daughter” part, a word I know only as “ttal.”) She’s a thirtysomething pastry chef, she had a messily public breakup with a scumbag after a long-term relationship, and her culinary abilities save Hyun Jin Heon’s Parisian restaurant from dying. Meanwhile, Jin Heon argues her into pretending to be his girlfriend because his mother insists he date to dislodge him from the apathy resulting from his painful not-quite breakup. I think you can see where this goes.
What makes MNKSS work is the dialogue and the characters’ emergence from types. At least, I’d count the dialogue despite my accessing it in translation—not only the lines but their timing and the concomitant body language.
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Here’s the one-week mark of no daytime internet and day three of having been unable to do anything in the office, with spillover diminishment of productivity on other fronts. Squeaking like a sad wheel is not my favorite activity, but it’s the one totally licit thing I can do here, which grates.
Paul Park, The White Tyger (2007): third in sequence following A Princess of Roumania and The Tourmaline. I read it amidst door-monitoring and cart-glancing on Monday, which may’ve been a mistake; there were “Wait, I should keep track of this!” moments without the attention sufficient to hook them together properly.
The variable in the subject line is a surname you would recognize but is, you know, crucially spoilery. It sneaks into being an orienting feature; the narrative’s dreamlike are-we-or-aren’t-we quality persists from books one and two, yet the blurring now causes some Stuff to Happen. There is a significant conversation that inverts several significant things. That’s not useful to know, is it? Maybe it is good to register that elements are in motion—on the prowl—whereas book two’s seem a bit stuck in crystalline contemplation.
Screw this business of posting spoiler-avoidantly about complex books, anyway.
And hurray, the local library has book four, The Hidden World! Can’t wait.
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ION I am researching hotels in/at Walt Disney World. Growing up near Disneyland, I always thought Disney stuff was a little creepy (liking Jiminy Cricket doesn’t mean I didn’t find him creepy), but here is a security loophole that gave me pause:
With Disney’s Magical Express Transportation, bypass the hustle and bustle of baggage claim, and avoid the hassle of having to find transportation and drive [. . . .] [I]f you’re flying domestically on a designated airline, take advantage of our special Resort Airline Check-In Service, which allows you to receive your return boarding pass and check your luggage from your Disney Resort hotel directly, bypassing airport check-in completely.
That’s especially awesome when combined with the fact that checked luggage can no longer be locked.
How one knows one has had enough this week from the office: one notices the “get $100 off Kindle” offer on amazon.com and is tempted for, like, two seconds, on grounds of retail therapy, despite having resolved long ago not to bother with a DRM-bound, reader-only device, given that one’s smartphone serves as a perfectly fine reader and one prefers carrying small bags, not large ones stuffed with rattly electronics.
Anyway, I am contemplating the replacement of my Treo circa end of 2008, and whether or not I could afford to buy two things, I don’t want a Kindle. What I want is for Sprint phone service to be able to talk to the replacement device I’d like most to have because AT&T charges way the fuck too much. No, I do not want an iPhone.
I recognize the lameness of whining about options that many people would like to be able to contemplate at all. Actually, I think I’m not allowed to post again about me (write-ups are okay) for a while. Maybe I will have the internet at work in a few hours and can start clearing away the week’s backlog, for which a meeting has been canceled because I couldn’t look at what I’m supposed to comment upon, and perhaps my colleagues will arrive redolent of sunshine and ponies instead of bile. We’ve had more than enough backbiting. Happy Friday.
