lao_ocean

You made it...
Well, she was a Laotian-American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn't help thinkin' that there
Was a little more to life
Somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to

Email me:
lao.ocean @ gmail.com

My Website My Photoblog
December Photos
My Videos
Now Playing:
Sorak-san
The Windmill
Salmon Festival
Soccer Goal

Where do visitors come from?
(Since 20-Dec-04)

Fave flowesr: Plumeria and Jasmine

Birthday: DEC 31^st
Location: Kangneung, South Korea
Homestate: Oregon. UofO alum
Job: Teaching English in Korea
Super Powers: Super delayed reaction time, perceiving the obvious, & hyper-indifference
Watching: CSI, Gilmore Girls, Cold Case, Lost, Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, Joan of Arcadia, Simpsons, The Daily Show
Fixated on: downloading TV shows, organizing my photos
Want to touch: Old people skin. Oooohh, so soft!
Currently annoyed with: not taking over the world due to my laziness
Looking forward to: Travelling after leaving Korea

Sing like no one can hear
Dance like no one can see
Love like you've never been hurt
Live like it's heaven on earth

Let's set it straight - Is the country Laos or Lao?
Here's the answer

This week...
Things that make me happy

Flying out to Panama on Monday, Jan 31st!
not working all week
sleeping in
discovering the world of webcams w/ audio

Movies I've seen this month

13 Going On 30
21 Grams
Garden State
Meet The Fockers
The Forgotten
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
The Aviator
Hotel Rwanda
The Notebook
The Village

What they're saying about me

"She's a nut! Not too sure how else to describe an "at-first-glance" seemingly quiet girl who dances like a chicken when she thinks no one else is looking, who likes to pass off her "made up" answer for fact, until you look at her and see her hopelessly trying not to crack a smile, who WITHOUT FAIL remembers to put a line of dental floss in her purse before she goes out (and isn't afraid to use it after dinner, thankfully NOT at the table!!). I can always count on her to know the hottest hollywood gossip, and to dance till all hours of the morning with me."

"My co-worker just told me that there was a premiere for Bridget Jones 2 last night, just blocks from my work, and we missed it! Hugh Grant, my beloved and the framework upon which my future husband is based, was just blocks away, breathing the same oxygen, and I missed it! If I had a friend here who was as savvy with E-news as you are, this catastrophe would never have occurred!"

Guess what I heard...

Oh my god!! This donut is so good! - Ras about a Krispy Kreme donut

Just because I've been drinking doesn't mean I can't start shit. - Tom B.

You know what they say, if your burps smell like shit? You've been eating shit. - Melvin

"I want to do! But what is paintball? There is no such word in dictionary." - Suwa, Japanese teacher

"I am now skipping church to see if I am going to win my bids!!!" "YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA.....I won the felt tip pens!!!!!!!! Yippeee...."who let the dogs out...arf, arf, arf, arf"...."let me hear you say Y..M..C..A"....oh yah, who's your daddy!!!" - Renee

"I was sitting in my office the other day and I suddenly got this horrible wrenching pain in my ankle. It really felt like I got a type two sprain just from sitting there. The strangest thing. Too bad cause I saw that Richard Gere movie and I got some Swayzerific moves." - I asked Tom R. if he was going to dance this weekend.

Other favorite quotes:

A gift is an offering. A selfless act that adds something to someone's life. Something that they need.

Have you ever walked by something and you just had this feeling that someone you knew would absolutely love it?

Faith is believing when there is no rational reason to believe.

Homer: "We Americans are England's children... I know we don't call as much as we should, or aren't as well behaved as our goody two shoes brother, Canada... who I should mention has never had a girlfriend... I'm just sayin'..."

Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life, and love should not be one of them.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

When your heart speaks, take good notes.

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

Sometimes to see the light, you have to risk the dark.

Panama and Costa Rica

3/3/2005

I'm travelling in Panama and Costa Rica. Check out what I'm doing at my other blog:

www.lao-ocean.blogs.com

Posted at: 12:13:42 am

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A new place to call home

1/28/2005

In order to procrastinate from packing for my trip, I somehow got sidetracked to updating my blog. I've been meaning to do that for a couple of months now, because the blog isn't streamlined enough for me. The HTML was starting to get time consuming, and I wanted to fix some bugs in the system. During the course of the last two days, I've realized that most people come to my website go directly to my blog. Therefore, I've decided to re-organize everything and make my blog the main page. It's a little rushed, but I wanted to announce that I'm changing the location of my blog. Please update your bookmarks and links. After I finish traveling and return home to the States, I'll transfer my old entries from blogdrive.com to this new site. In addition, I'll do some domain mapping, so that when visitors type www.lao-ocean.com, it will go directly to the website below. For now, that's what the new site will look like until I get home to update it. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think.

www.lao-ocean.blogs.com

Posted at: 2:27:32 am

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The Secret War in Laos

1/27/2005

I was online tonight, looking for some examples of good travel blogs, to get me in the mood of doing my own when I'm in Panama. I endedup on Vagabonding.com and a travelogue entry concerning Laos caught my eye. I thought of Glyn and Kiran, who were meeting up again in Thailand for a day or so. Glyn had already visited Laos, and Kiran is heading there now. Most of the information in this entry was already know to me, but I thought people would be interested to know the following facts during the Vietnam War.

The Secret War
The war in Laos was so secret that the country's name was never included in any of the original US records; it was referred to as "the other theater".

Neutral Laos was off limits according to the Geneva agreement. As a workaround, the US sent CIA agents and soldiers in under the guise of civilians; the air raid missions were fought by men in cutoff shorts and cowboy hats.

The Vietnamese didn't bother to disguise their soldiers.

Staggering Statistics
The USA conducted over 10,000 missions during the nine-year war and dropped over 1,000,000 bombs. This equated to one ton of explosives dropped for every man, woman, and child living in Laos at the time.

Costly Devastation
The secret war in Laos remains the most costly operation ever conducted by the USA. US taxpayers funded the nine-year war at a cost of $2 million per day!

Posted at: 2:19:45 am

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Jun Ji-hun VS Sandy Bullock

1/26/2005

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, are teaming up again for a romance movie. Il Mare is the remake of a Korean movie which has been said to be a cross between "You've Got Mail" and "Frequency". What I'd really like to see is a movie that's a cross between Gladiator, Chicago, and Dogdeball. Now THAT would be a movie!

Posted at: 1:51:45 pm

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What have I been up to lately?

1/26/2005

Well, it's been 2� days of just hanging out. I haven't accoplished too much, but here's what I have done.

Slept in every day.
Watched movies on... (gasp!) TV! I've see Gattaca and The Caveman's Valentine, coincidentally both produced by Danny DeVito.
Downloaded The Motorcycle Diaries, but can't watch that because I don't have the subtitles. Doh!
I'll watch Finding Neverland and Million Dollar Baby tonight.
Trying to eat only the food in my cupboard. Therefore, my diet has consisted of pickles, ramen, pasta with 4 cheese sauce, Jelly Bellys, eggs, crackers and hot chocolate.
Did laundry and packed away my clothes. I need to pick up my dry cleaning today, too.

Went and got a new international bank card from Chohung Bank. As you can see, I got it personalized.

Sold my cell phone to Reardon. Hahaha, sucka! Little does he know that he has to hold down the number 7 key to be able to hear people when they talk.

Bought my mom some metal shopsticks, per her request. 1000 won for a pair, NICE-UUH!

Saw this downtown...

"I'd like a large, double shot vanilla latte, with a... muffin? No. A cookie? Nah. Oh, I got it. I'd like some boiled fish paste on a stick, please!"

Posted at: 1:32:00 pm

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Taking pictures of my food

1/24/2005

[Engadget] The Olympus wants you to take pictures of your food with the Stylus 500

The new five megapixel Olympus Stylus 500 digital camera has all sorts of different picture modes, you know like portrait, landscape, sports, but it also has one other setting, �Cuisine,� that�s designed to cash in on what is supposed to be the big new trend in Tokyo right now: taking a picture of your restaurant meal before you get down to business.

Who know I was part of the Tokyo trend? This is what I ate today, dol sot bibimbap.

A couple days ago, I had coffee and this cheesecake dish with a Korean friend.

Posted at: 7:39:19 pm

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Things To Do

1/22/2005

My last day working was on Thursday, but I'm still here in Kangneung for another week. Ras will finish teaching at his English camp at the end of this month. I'll meet him in Seoul next Saturday, and then we fly out Monday morning, January 31st. The ticket is from Seoul --> Tokyo --> Dallas --> Miami --> Panama City, Panama... phew! This coming next week, I've got a lot of things to do.

Pack
Send off my taxes
Finally read the manual on my Sony DSC-9 camera
Backpup my computer files on CD and send them separately back to the States
Write emails and clean up my hotmail "inbox" which has 7 pages!
Update my website (separate from the blog)
Update my photo album (which will inlcude all my pictures from last year)
Archive all my blog entries from last year (most likely won't be happening)

By the way, if anyone wants to teach English in Korea... specifically at my school, email me. My boss is still looking for a replacement to start in March. I have nothing but great things to say aboout my school, and would stay if I hadn't already been in Korea for 3 years. I'm getting my last paycheck, bonus, and airplane ticket with no problem. Anyway, email me with any questions.

Posted at: 10:36:46 am

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I'm officially unemployed

1/20/2005

Today was my last day of work. Has it really hit me yet? Not really, because I'm still here in Kangneung, still here in Korea. Whenever I get ready to travel, people will always ask, "Are you excited yet?" I think the answer they want to hear is "Yes, of course I am!" In reality, the excitement starts to build when I'm at the airport, holding my ticket. It's not until I'm physically there that I feel the anticipation of the airplane taking off. After boarding, I put my things away and head to the magazine rack. I get my pick, because nobody thinks to do that right away. Slowly the airplane positions itself on the runway, waiting for clearance to take off. The plane then jerks slightly and begins to gain speed. About 10 or 15 seconds into the takeoff, the airplane gains so much speed that it makes me wonder how mankind achieved the ability to move such a heavy object so fast from a standstill position. At that exact moment when I don't feel the ground underneath me... THAT'S WHEN I'M EXCITED!

My glamorous desk.	The view from my classroom. The sun starts to set on my last day.
After work, I went to dinner with my boss and the other 4 teachers. This is the BEFORE plate of "naeng myeon" (cold noodles).	The AFTER picture.... not so pretty.
We also ate "bosaam". A little fatty, but good.	Afterwards, we went for coffee at "The Antique Cafe" near Ojukheon.
There was a drama that was filmed there, so of course there are photos and autographs of the actors. Or, as I like to call them, "famous people I don't know."	These are two of the teachers at my school.
I had a mocha coffee, which was pretty good.	My boss had rosemary tea, and you can see the plant behind the table.

This is one of the reasons why I never moved to Seoul in the 3 years I've been here. Outside the cafe, the moon was so bright and you could see stars twinkling in the night sky.

Posted at: 11:19:16 pm

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Walking Home

1/17/2005

It's hard to believe, but this is my last week of work. I officially will finish two straight years in Korea, this Thursday, January 20th. People have been asking me if I'm excited to leave. I'm looking forward to leaving, but not because I don't like Korea. My time here has been profitable, relaxing, and fun. What I'm really excited about, is to see and be somewhere new... and warm.

By the time I walked home tonight, some of the snow from Saturday night had started to melt. Still, the majority of the heavy snowfall was still there. These are some pictures I snapped along my route home.

Some boys walking along the riverbank, in my neighborhood of Naegok-dong.

This is the river, looking down from the bridge.

What is THIS?!? A) A snowman with titties. Olive Oyl boobies must be hot this season. B) A snowman with stumpy arms. "Stumpy the Snowman, was a jolly happy...." Or C) The head of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. YOU be the judge!

Posted at: 11:16:13 pm

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Carbonara and Snow

1/16/2005

I haven't been out drinking for awhile, and went to Bumpin' last night. I met Hyun-ju there, who's a Korean friend of mine that wanted to see me before she left for vacation on Monday. I think she's the most well travelled Korean person I know, who really embraces other cultures. She met her current boyfriend in Vienna during her last trip, and I met him last night.

Hyun-ju and her boyfriend. He had just gotten a hair cut that day. Do you like it? She didn't.	Hyun-ju and I. The pose? I don't know where it's from, but all the kids are doing it!
I didn't realize they were offering pasta that night at Bumpin, but it was a nice surprise.	Around midnight, it started snowing. The flakes were HUGE!
Rory decideds to relieve himself amidst the beautiful snow.	"Oh yeah! This feels gooood!" He laughs as he finds out that I'm taking a picture of him peeing. The trenchcoat hid his one-eyed weasel well.. .I didn't see anything.