Wednesday, June 19, 2013

With Eyes Wide Open

As I navigate myself through Seoul's populated streets, I find myself continuously wrongly recognizing Koreans as someone I know, or worse, seeing someone I know and not recognizing them. I am sure this does not come as a surprise, as the 'they all look the same' effect is a well known joke made about people from different races. Thankfully, I don't have to fully blame myself for this blatant racism, but I can actually blame this mistake on my brain. What is called the Other Race Effect is a well documented effect that proves that our brains, which have extremely efficient biological skill in recognizing faces, actually does a much poorer job of recognizing faces of another race, or at least of a race that, through experience, we have not learned to distinguish as well.

The outcome of this effect on its own makes living in Seoul, with a population of over 11 million people, confusing. The features I rely on to distinguish one face from another is different then what I am used to, and I often find myself lost in a big giant sea of my own racism. But this confusion is burrowed deeper than just the basis of my experiences. Seoul has the highest population of facial reconstruction surgery in the world: where one in five woman has had surgery. Most commonly among women is the double eyelid surgery, a surgery to make woman's eyes larger and more circular. This surgery is so popular, that I assume most of the woman I meet here have had it done. It is often bought as a gift for high school graduates and some parents even force their children into it, knowing their chances of success will be higher if they are more beautiful.

Like Westerners, nose jobs are another popular surgery amongst Koreans, but, unlike the Western craze to have your nose made smaller, Koreans actually aspire to have a bigger, longer nose to make their features more distinctive. Lasly, Koreans aspire to have smaller, more V-shaped faces, and recently, an even more extreme surgery has been growing in popularity. Both men and woman have been going under the knife to get what is called a double jaw surgery: a surgery that chizzles away your jaw bone and leaves with a long and painful recovery, and ultimately, a beautifully small face.

Smartphones apps have even kept up with this plastic surgery craze. You can download apps where you enter a picture of yourself, see how much better you can look with just a few snips and cuts, find out how much it will cost, and book it. It's that easy, right?!




Monday, June 10, 2013

Veni, Vidi, Vici

For the first time in weeks, my alarm clock's snooze button remained undisturbed as I bounced out of bed and hopped into the shower. It was time to start my one week journey through Italy, and I was excited! My easy 1 hour route to the airport left a lasting impression, reminding me how fantastic Seoul's subway system is, and had me dreading my future experiences back on the TTC. Costing only $3 and offering almost door to door service, it was a delight.

On our first day in Italy myself and my bestie delighted ourselves just as much with our 'Rome in morning' tour, as we sailed through the extremely limited time we had to explore Rome's ancient streets and wondrous ruins. Being fairly well travelled ladies, we deemed ourselves the perfect travel pair: a pair who cares, just, not that much. And this, my friends, was the attitude we brought along with us in the meagre 5 hours we had to tour Rome.

Don't judge us, we were here for the pizza and wine.The Colosseum is simply an added bonus.

Here goes our itinerary. Fellow non-history buffs, this is for you:

-9:00 am: Wake up
-9:30 am: Out the hostel doors, enroute the 20 minute walk to the Colosseum
-10:00am: Arrive at the Colosseum. It's already swarming with tourists and tour groups. Thank the emperor we didn't come any later.
-10:05am: Decide to trail behind some of the tour groups to see if we can learn anything
-10:10am: Remind ourselves how smart we were for not signing up for one of those things. Wikipedia is all the tour guide these ladies need.
-10:15am: Snap the typical Colosseum photos.
-10:30am: Head north west towards the Fontana Di Trevi, walking along the Roman Forum.
-10:35am: Grab a cafe latte and a classic Italian pastry. Yummy! Not only will this walk be rich with history, it will also be rich with flavour!
-10:40am: Gaze at our surroundings. As the coffee hits, the realizations kick in. The Roman civilization was pretty cool. If only those columns were still standing. *sigh*
-10:45am: Pass Il Vittoriano. This massive structure is a monument built in honor of King Victor Emmanuel, the King who unified Italy. Although finished being built in 1925, it's adorned architecture fits in well with the rest of the cities beauty.
-10:55am: Arrive at the Fontana Di Trevi. sit down and take a rest. We deserve it. This is amazing spot to get some gelato and people watch as lovers and honeymooners flock the fountain to take the photo they travelled all this way for.
-11:05am: Make a wish on a penny! (Hey, my wish even came true!)
-11:10am: Keep on trekking. We are now on our way to the Pantheon.
-11:13: Walk past the Colonna Marcus Aurelio. This thing is absolutely stunning and I've never even heard of it! It's spiral  design tells the story of the Marcomannic wars from around the year 166. So you don't say...
-11:17 am: Arrive at the Pantheon: standing Columns! Woohoo! So that's what they once looked like. Pretty impressive Romans, pretty impressive.
-11:23am: Take necessary Pantheon photos.
-11:30am: My travel partner and I consult our time limits. Do we have time to make it to the Vatican? Let's see if we can! Speed walking it is....
-11:54am: We made it it the Vatican, and wow was it worth it. It's breathtakingly beautiful. But why oh why are they're so many people around? There must be something exciting happening...?!
-11:56am: Investigate with some fellow Vatican visitors: "Hey, do you know what is going on here? Why is it so busy?" Answer "Uhhh, it's Sunday mass and the pope comes out at 12...."
Okay, Okay we should have done a little bit of research. That was maybe really dumb of us to not know. But hey, we are Jews. That is a good excuse, right?
-12:00pm: See the pope.
-12:10pm: Hurry back to the hostel to pick up our belongings and catch our train!

And that, boys and girls, is how we saw Rome in a day and still had time to eat pizza. It's not for everyone, but it was good enough for me*!



*Okay, okay, I went back to Rome and did enjoy having some extra time to actually tour a bit more, and I'll get more into that in another post. But on budgeted time, you can't say we didn't do well!