Posts tagged as:

expat

Not ready for this belly

by Cat on March 30, 2007

I have to say it: Motherhood.com rocks. Rocks it like Metallica.

Just when I was down to only one pair of pants and one skirt that I could wedge myself into, my ship(ment) came in. Since Plan B was to ask my boss whether it would really be out of the question to wear my drawstring pajama pants to work, this is definitely a good thing.

I placed my order on Monday and chose to pay extra for two-day shipping in the hope that I’d get my clothes within a couple of weeks or so—hoping against hope that the above-mentioned clothing items could hold out that long. My past experience with ordering from the few U.S.-based online retailers who will ship to non-military addresses overseas is that—no matter what the website says—it will take at least three weeks and maybe up to a month for the package to get here.

Imagine my surprise when, exactly two days later, I got my order! Right to my door. Everything I ordered, looking exactly like I expected it to—and it fit!

What’s that you say? Don’t they have maternity clothes in Korea? Of course they do. Lots of them. Cute stuff. The only problem is that they are designed to fit the typical Korean female body type. Of which I am distinctly not. Not even close, apparently.

Clothes shopping here has been something of an exercise in humiliation even before I got pregnant. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed—me or the saleslady at the Levi Store—when the only pair of jeans that would fit me were found in the men’s section.

Full disclosure: I weighed 138 pounds at 5 feet 5 inches tall before I got pregnant. Certainly no one is going to want to put me on a runway any time soon, but I didn’t think I was exactly in “freak o’ nature” territory, either. I think the real issue is that, while I have a reasonably narrow waist and torso, my hips are definitely wider than most women here. So, even the “largee” size things don’t fit me correctly.

(Don’t even ask about the looks I’ve gotten when looking for shoes that might fit my monstrous U.S. size 9.5 feet.)

Thank God for Motherhood.com. Right now, I think if I could have its baby, I probably would.

Off the tour

by Cat on February 8, 2007

Update: So, yeah, I’m an idiot. It turns out Clapton did play Seoul. Still, no John Mayer. ‘Why John? Why?’ Or am I wrong about that, too?

Original post: So, this afternoon as I was listening to my iPod on the subway, thinking how great it’d be to go see John Legend live, it hit me. Why don’t major U.S. music acts come through Seoul? Eric Clapton plays Shanghai, and John Mayer does two shows in Tokyo, but neither hits the mega-metropolis a mere two-hour flight from both.

It’s not like we don’t have a sizeable expat population and fan-base. I would think there’d be more Clapton fans here than in Shanghai. (And, I do know of a few who flew over for the show.) And a lot of U.S. artists have Korean fans as well.

Maybe I’m just uninformed. I’ve never been someone who keeps up with tour schedules months in advance, and maybe I’m missing some well-known acts because of my sort of fogeyish taste in music. (Not that either of the Johns, nor Eric—well, maybe Eric—is a fogey, but Fall Out Boy they aren’t.)

I was really happy to hear about last year’s Busan International Rock Festival and the Pentaport festival. But it does seem like we’re missing something. Am I just out of the loop?

Cushy expat life?

by Cat on December 9, 2006

The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Paul on being chained to the Blackberry. The pitfalls of working for a western multi-national in Asia.

Saturday couch blogging

by Cat on December 9, 2006

Well, the kimchi finally failed me. I’ve enjoyed almost seven months here unbeset by colds or allergies—nothing but some pretty serious mosquito bites. This I do attribute, at least in part, to regular ingestion of the spicy, vitamin C laden cure-all/side dish. But this week, the germs, weather and crowded conditions finally got the better of me.
David and I are both holed up in the apartment, laid low with head colds. I don’t anticipate writing anything coherent in the near future, so let me use this post to point you toward more interesting scenes of Korean expat life:

Stay tuned . . . regularly scheduled blog updates will resume shortly.

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