my ajumma notes

After  Hometown Cha-cha-cha , my friend recommended  Yeonmo / The King’s Affection , then still one of the top Netflix shows here.  I’m usually fine with Chinese historical drama, but I’m not a  sageuk  fan as I find them too long and slow-moving.  Not even  Dae Jang Geum , global hit that it was, could hold my attention.  20 episodes of  Yeonmo  should be okay, so there I went! Such photogenic actors, colours and composites of flowers, trees and pond/lake/river/sea for the setting.  Rather unschooled in  sageuk , it was only while watching  Yeonmo  that I realised how beautiful the traditional male  hanbok  looks.  The textures are lovely, as are the pinks, purples, greys, blues… well, every colour they wear!   Leads Park Eun-bin and Rowoon (she much more so than he), and Choi Myung-bin, the teenage sweetie playing the young version of Dam-yi (Eun-bin) and her twin brother...

la la la la la la la la la… romantic Sunday …   It still rings in my head sometimes!   Around this time last year, I finally watched a Netflix series (yes, yes, latecomer), and added to the more than 250 million hours that  Hometown Cha-cha-cha  had chalked up by then.  At that point, it was still a top ten Netflix show and I joined what must be millions who have written something about it.   One reviewer called it a ‘seaside vacation in drama form’.  Indeed, it is! The show is set in a dream seaside location, fictitiously named Gongjin (in real life Pohang, which has since become a  tourist destination ).  It is simply gorgeous in its: - sea and seaside scenes – morning, daytime, evening, night, sunny and rainy weather - clothes, bags and shoes – mainly, Hye-jin’s (Shin Min A), and also those of her friends - Shin Min A – beautiful even in pyjamas - Chief Hong’s (Kim Seon-ho) hair highlights - fresh seafood.   All fa...

  Lies.  Screams.  Fears.  Tears. After two years with  Code Name Verity , I would give the book a resounding cheer.   With “I AM A COWARD”, we burst into the prisoner-narrator’s “confessions”.  I think readers mostly start on the side of the narrator/main character(s) but her self-deprecating remarks make us wonder about this ‘heroine’.  Why is she giving secrets to the enemy in exchange for her clothes?!  Then, her story of sweet best friend Maddie unfolds and we wonder what it has to do with revealing codes, passwords, airfields and such.  When you realise that the prisoner is Queenie is Eva Seiler is Julie, she has grown on you.  Julie is such a colourful character who, in her six weeks of torture, terror and expectation of no improvement to her situation, weaves a story that gets you on her side.   This book plays around juxtapositions: truth-pretence, courage-fear, friend-foe, right...

9-year-old Hye-na (Heo Yool) shrinks back as her mother’s boyfriend Seol-ak leans towards her.  Just then, her mother Ja-young (Ko Sung-hee) returns and the terrified girl runs to her.  Instead of protecting her, Ja-young flings Hye-na to the floor, berating her for being “disgusting”.  Livid, she stuffs her into a bag of trash and throws her out in the cold night, then goes off with Seol-ak to watch a movie.   Hye-na’s teacher Soo-jin (Lee Boyoung) comes by to return the girl her notebook when she notices the odd trash bag.  Horrified to find Hye-na in it, she hatches a plan for the girl to run away with her.  Shortly after, Hye-na disappears and is assumed to have drowned.   This enthralling show tells the story of Soo-jin and Hye-na, now with a new identity as Yoon-bok, on the run, carving a new mother-daughter relationship and their story takes us back to Soo-jin’s adoptive family, then further back to her birth mother, who...

Ajumma is back here!   Shortly after deciding that this blog should retire for good, I decided to revive it.  The main reason is I want to write about K drama and books sometimes – not episode recaps and summaries but ‘thoughts about’ – and perhaps some thoughts on tennis too. All these don’t fit my other blog.  Here I am again, then.   My posts on K drama might seem outdated, though, as I don’t chase current shows.  It can be painful waiting a whole week for a new episode. I know I might be the only one watching and talking about these older shows.  Well, if anyone comes by with comments, great!  If not, this will just be a record of my ajumma notes.