-October 5

Philip and I flew into Incheon airport at 5 a.m. and took a bus to the Seoul Plaza Hotel, located in the downtown neighborhood known as City Hall. After checking in, we attended an orientation for performers taking part in the Korean Cultural Festival. Remarkably, many of them were white. Sitting at my table were American musicians Kite Operations (a New York band that I booked as part of my Asians In Rock tour in the spring of 2004) and Bora Yoon (a digital musician who I’ve known since high school).

In the events program, I was surprised to see my bio stating I was the voice of the Korean woman in angst. Yikes, really? I felt self-conscious, wondering if the women in the room were sizing me up.

After sitting through a number of speeches primarily delivered in Korean and half-translated into English to a sea of primarily white faces who oddly clapped after every sentence as though we were on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and receiving our honorarium, Philip and I left to explore. At first we went out to buy a few drumsticks, but then we ended up revisiting Insadong, Itaewon, Namdaemun and Myeongdong — neighborhoods we remembered liking on our last trip. I particularly liked Insadong because it had a lot of very cool, old-school side alleys featuring restaurants that seemed not as Westernized. Insadong also features a lot of unique, artsy and eclectic shops, including a comic book/toy museum. The store had the most bizarre collection of odds and ends, including a real live parrot that spoke in Korean phrases!

After we arrived back at the hotel, I then received a call from an unidentified mysterious woman, who asked, “Jenny Choi? Were you at Namdaemun earlier today? Did you eat lunch there? Did you lose any money? Please check right now!” Who was this woman and how did she know my whereabouts and that I had a check?!

It turned out I had lost the honorarium. SHITE!! The woman on the phone was Ms. Koo, a festival organizer, who marched me over to the restaurant where the owner had found my check on the ground. AHHHH! I profusely apologized, saying that if my mother knew she’d kill me. I nervously thanked the owner in English, until Ms. Koo elbowed me in the ribs and reminded me to speak in Korean.

I then became paranoid that everyone was forever going to know me as the crazy lost check girl who made everyone sh-t their pants as well as the woman who gives voice to angst!

Later I met up with Hiro, a Japanese friend I met in the States, who excitedly took photos of pretty much anything and everything (including dishes of food before we ate, and then after we ate) while repeatedly exclaiming “Mashisseoyo!” (“delicious” in Korean) because it was the only phrase he could remember.

I wanted to erase my embarrassment of the day with soju and a meet-up with our concert organizers from last year, Homey (HyungJoon Shin) and Changhun, his assistant. We had killer daeji galbi and walked around Hongdae, a hip neighborhood where many of Seoul’s most prestigious neighborhoods are housed. Hongdae’s streets were teeming with crowded nightclubs, restaurants, street vendors and shops even as late as 3 a.m.