Hot and Cold
The two cities perhaps nearest and dearest to my heart, DC and Seoul, are both subject to swelteringly hot summers and unforgivingly cold winters. This largely has to do with location; both metropolises share roughly the same longitude which means there's going to be similarities in terms of placement on the planetary axis which affects air mass currents with the Korean peninsula catching cold air fronts from Siberia and DC catching the gulf stream.
But I'm assuming you didn't come here for the geography lesson so let's just get down to it.
Both of my hometown and mother country are places where you get to experience the magic of having all four seasons as opposed to, say, Los Angeles where you get a dry season and wet season or any of the tropical places I would visit or study in where you get a wet season and a wetter season. With DC literally built on a swamp, it gets so damn humid you can virtually cut through the air with a knife; when people joke about the outside feeling like a sauna, that's the first thing I always think of. I spent a lot of time at the neighborhood pool in the summer to escape from all that while back at home my mom would regularly make fruit salads as a healthy alternative to ice cream mainly using fruits that weren't really common or prohibitively expensive back in Korea. That meant largely blueberries, watermelon, pineapple; my mom could never quite get used to how tangy strawberries here in the States are and if you ever get the chance to have some strawberry in Korea, it is noticeably sweeter.
Over in Korea, the heat was most noticeable at night. I would remember trying to sleep with the bedroll off (Like most of East Asia, sleeping in Seoul usually entails sleeping on bedrolls on the floor) bare-chested but still hot and perspiring even with the sun long down to the point where my impossibly messy hair would start to get matted. At that point, I would furtively sneak out on to the giwa roof, maybe stopping to grab a couple rice cakes from the kitchen, and watch the way the Han River catches the neon off the Seoul skyline while hoping for that cool breeze from the water that would never come. It was a hell of a view though.
If DC represents home, Seoul represents this city on the hill, a life unlived; there was a very real possibility in my infancy of moving to Seoul and growing up there. It’s this weird mix of familiarity and distance: Being exposed to Korean culture, cuisine, language feels like coming home but I know I will never be part of it. It’s a very amazing place to visit (which I admittedly haven’t done in a VERY long time) and I’ve been meaning to go back for some time; been thinking about it more and more lately. A city of 25 million that go about their day and being one of the most vibrant cities in the world despite having over fifteen thousand cannons and missiles pointed at them at all times and not giving a fuck? Those are my people.
Most cities would just collapse under the weight of that constant awareness of its mortality but not Seoul. New York’s urban anxiety stems from space: The tiny living arrangements, crammed mass transit, the shuffling congestion on the sidewalks. DC’s anxiety is occupationally based: What line of work you’re in, your professional standing, whether you’re living up to your own potential. Los Angeles is based on commute: It was never the high rent or intimidation of a transcontinental move that kept me from picking up sticks and settling in LA (though it doesn’t help) it’s the fucking traffic and laughable lack of mass transit. In Seoul, the collective anxiety stems from appearance: Academically, professionally, physically; there’s an unspoken sense of deep competition and it’s no surprise to me that it’s the cosmetic surgery capital of the world.
Got lost on a tangent again. Sorry, I tend to do that. A lot.
The other side of the climate coin, of course, is where we're at right now: when it all grows cold. The biggest snowstorm we had while I was growing up was in early 1996 which got us out of school for a couple weeks; classes until late June to make up for all the snow days. We lived on a pretty steep hill growing up so my backyard was prime time in the neighborhood for sledding. We would do that really until it started to get real dark and then we would come in and drink hot chocolate by the gram. We lived in a cul-de-sac so the plows would take the entire street's worth of snow and shove it all off to one corner. With this particular blizzard, we were able to transform that snowdrift into an arctic fort complete with its own miniature tunnel system and parapets. I would sometimes doze off in that fort; if it had happened to collapse while I was doing that, I would've been fucked.
Never did go to Korea in the winter but my parents would tell me how frigid it would get, especially for my dad whenever he was assigned to the DMZ as a newly minted officer. I remember seeing pictures of my mom from back home where she would be tightly bundled up with that expression in her eyes that she wanted that picture taken as quickly as possible, she was ready to move to somewhere with some heat. I remember during that blizzard in 1996, it got so bad that a solid layer of ice from hours of freezing rain formed under the thick snow which would similarly get frozen; made it all a real pain the ass to shovel, chiseling through the top layer to get to the snow but you couldn't make it down to the driveway completely because of ice underneath. My mom would take a couple pots of water she warmed while we were shoveling and pour them directly on the uncovered ice and then spread out the rock salt before it all froze over again. We got inventive and definitely used to each other's company with all those snow days and everywhere shut down. That’s really been the driving force when it comes to winter: Just keeping your head down and getting through it at a season when I start to move slower, the joints stiffen, and all that scar tissue gets a lot more sensitive.
What I'm trying to say here is that a week into 2018 and I'm already ready for the summer.
But I'm assuming you didn't come here for the geography lesson so let's just get down to it.
Both of my hometown and mother country are places where you get to experience the magic of having all four seasons as opposed to, say, Los Angeles where you get a dry season and wet season or any of the tropical places I would visit or study in where you get a wet season and a wetter season. With DC literally built on a swamp, it gets so damn humid you can virtually cut through the air with a knife; when people joke about the outside feeling like a sauna, that's the first thing I always think of. I spent a lot of time at the neighborhood pool in the summer to escape from all that while back at home my mom would regularly make fruit salads as a healthy alternative to ice cream mainly using fruits that weren't really common or prohibitively expensive back in Korea. That meant largely blueberries, watermelon, pineapple; my mom could never quite get used to how tangy strawberries here in the States are and if you ever get the chance to have some strawberry in Korea, it is noticeably sweeter.
Over in Korea, the heat was most noticeable at night. I would remember trying to sleep with the bedroll off (Like most of East Asia, sleeping in Seoul usually entails sleeping on bedrolls on the floor) bare-chested but still hot and perspiring even with the sun long down to the point where my impossibly messy hair would start to get matted. At that point, I would furtively sneak out on to the giwa roof, maybe stopping to grab a couple rice cakes from the kitchen, and watch the way the Han River catches the neon off the Seoul skyline while hoping for that cool breeze from the water that would never come. It was a hell of a view though.
If DC represents home, Seoul represents this city on the hill, a life unlived; there was a very real possibility in my infancy of moving to Seoul and growing up there. It’s this weird mix of familiarity and distance: Being exposed to Korean culture, cuisine, language feels like coming home but I know I will never be part of it. It’s a very amazing place to visit (which I admittedly haven’t done in a VERY long time) and I’ve been meaning to go back for some time; been thinking about it more and more lately. A city of 25 million that go about their day and being one of the most vibrant cities in the world despite having over fifteen thousand cannons and missiles pointed at them at all times and not giving a fuck? Those are my people.
Most cities would just collapse under the weight of that constant awareness of its mortality but not Seoul. New York’s urban anxiety stems from space: The tiny living arrangements, crammed mass transit, the shuffling congestion on the sidewalks. DC’s anxiety is occupationally based: What line of work you’re in, your professional standing, whether you’re living up to your own potential. Los Angeles is based on commute: It was never the high rent or intimidation of a transcontinental move that kept me from picking up sticks and settling in LA (though it doesn’t help) it’s the fucking traffic and laughable lack of mass transit. In Seoul, the collective anxiety stems from appearance: Academically, professionally, physically; there’s an unspoken sense of deep competition and it’s no surprise to me that it’s the cosmetic surgery capital of the world.
Got lost on a tangent again. Sorry, I tend to do that. A lot.
The other side of the climate coin, of course, is where we're at right now: when it all grows cold. The biggest snowstorm we had while I was growing up was in early 1996 which got us out of school for a couple weeks; classes until late June to make up for all the snow days. We lived on a pretty steep hill growing up so my backyard was prime time in the neighborhood for sledding. We would do that really until it started to get real dark and then we would come in and drink hot chocolate by the gram. We lived in a cul-de-sac so the plows would take the entire street's worth of snow and shove it all off to one corner. With this particular blizzard, we were able to transform that snowdrift into an arctic fort complete with its own miniature tunnel system and parapets. I would sometimes doze off in that fort; if it had happened to collapse while I was doing that, I would've been fucked.
Never did go to Korea in the winter but my parents would tell me how frigid it would get, especially for my dad whenever he was assigned to the DMZ as a newly minted officer. I remember seeing pictures of my mom from back home where she would be tightly bundled up with that expression in her eyes that she wanted that picture taken as quickly as possible, she was ready to move to somewhere with some heat. I remember during that blizzard in 1996, it got so bad that a solid layer of ice from hours of freezing rain formed under the thick snow which would similarly get frozen; made it all a real pain the ass to shovel, chiseling through the top layer to get to the snow but you couldn't make it down to the driveway completely because of ice underneath. My mom would take a couple pots of water she warmed while we were shoveling and pour them directly on the uncovered ice and then spread out the rock salt before it all froze over again. We got inventive and definitely used to each other's company with all those snow days and everywhere shut down. That’s really been the driving force when it comes to winter: Just keeping your head down and getting through it at a season when I start to move slower, the joints stiffen, and all that scar tissue gets a lot more sensitive.
What I'm trying to say here is that a week into 2018 and I'm already ready for the summer.
