Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
I share a bittersweet moment with you all… the preparation and consumption of my last bowl of instant ttuk guk. It was a precious moment, and good things are always even better when shared. This is the object of my obsession, Ottogi’s instant rice cake soup, or Ssal Ttuk Guk. Ottogi is the maker of many fine instant foods, but this has to be their best. The have lofty goals to make delicious, healthy and easy to make food. One of their mottos is “Ottogi fills ALIVE TASTE and Nutrition of nature to all products”. They create classic instant food products that try to recreate Korean comfort food, like burnt rice crusts, and ttukbokki (spicy rice cake) flavored ramen. They make weird trendy food too. Pizza flavored rice cakes? No thank you. I don’t care about any of that though, I just want this. Every day. All day long. In an unlimited supply. I found these on the cup noodle shelf at the Apollo Market – the neighborhood market just across the parking lot from my first apartment here in Darkhan. It’s a popular market because they stock a good variety of products, everything is clearly priced, the staff if friendly, and with the Russian embassy across the street, they try to stock “international” foods. Korean food is popular in Mongolia. Korean restaurants are everywhere, and you can find Korean products on even the tiniest country mini-market’s shelves. This though… this precious food, I had never seen before, and on instinct, I bought 4 of them that day. I spent the better part of my young/ not-so-young adult life as a strict vegan. Mongolia makes that a daily challenge. If I lived in Ulaanbaatar, I’d have access to all kinds of food in grocery stores, and vegan friendly cuisine at dozens of restaurants around the city, but I live in Darkhan. That means everything available here is what grows (or grazes) around here, and what comes in from distributors in Ulaanbaatar. In the winter, much of the produce selection disappears, and you want to eat seasonally to avoid Chinese produce that is over priced and chock full of chemical preservatives. I try to eliminate as much meat and dairy as possible from my daily diet, but as soon as I settled here I caved on Korean comfort foods. These are foods that I would make vegan versions of at home, and rarely ever found vegan versions of outside of veggie/vegan Korean restaurants in Seoul. Ttuk guk is a childhood favorite. With fresh rice cakes, it’s melt in your mouth delicious. Totally filling. It makes you feel like you’re being hugged by a polar bear wearing an electric blanket, and that polar bear just wants you and your tummy to be happy and full for forever.The soup usually comes with some ground or sliced beef in it, and the soup is a beef based broth, so this is one of those comforts I gave up over 17 years ago. The beauty...
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UPDATE: A Bay Area journalist’s accusation that a Japanese American Black Panther Party co-founder was a paid FBI informant sent shock waves through the Asian/Pacific Island American communities last month and triggered angry denials from former activists, academics and those who knew the accused personally. But author-journalist Seth Rosenfeld, who originally accused Richard Aoki of being a government snitch in his book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power, says newly released documents “confirm” that Aoki, who committed suicide in March 2009, was an informant from 1961 to 1977. Following Rosenfeld’s accusations, Aoki’s biographer, Diane Fujino, chairwoman of UC Santa Barbara’s Asian American Studies Department and the author of Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance and a Paradoxical Life, shadowed Rosenfeld on the promotional media blitz for his book, challenging the lack of hard evidence provided by the award-winning former San Francisco newspaper reporter and Center for Investigative Reporting contributor. Democracy Now! ~ ‘Was Bay Area Radical, Black Panther Arms Supplier Richard Aoki An FBI Informant?’ Part 1 of 2 [youtube]NE9HRp0RIV8[/youtube] Part 2 ~ ‘Was Bay Area Radical Richard Aoki an FBI Informant?’ According to Rosenfeld’s Sept. 7 California Watch article: Aoki’s friends, as well as his biographer and the producers of the film about him, expressed shock at the disclosure that he had been an informant, and some of them angrily disputed it. Some suggested the story was an attempt to place a “snitch jacket” on Aoki – an FBI tactic of falsely claiming radicals were informants, causing suspicion and mistrust among fellow activists Rosenfeld’s apparent response to the criticism of his “outing” of Aoki as an informant came in Friday’s California Watch, CIR’s monthly online news magazine, in the form of a self-bylined, 2200-word summary of the FBI’s heavily redacted 221-page file on Aoki, in which agents describe information supplied on Bay Area activist groups by Aoki “voluminous information” in “current, concise and complete reports, usually typewritten by him.” An FBI memo from 1971 when Aoki was an Asian Studies instructor at UC Berkeley and a counselor at Peralta Junior College reads: “Coverage furnished by this informant is unique and not available from any other source,” it says. “Many activist individuals seek informant’s advice and counseling since informant is considered as a militant who has succeeded within the establishment without surrending (sic) to it.” According to the California Watch article: FBI officials even reminded Aoki to report his pay as an informant on his tax return, according to a handwritten notation on a Dec. 29, 1972, report. The records do not say how much he was paid, but according to a congressional study, security informants in the 1960s typically received about $100 per month, with more valuable informants receiving up to $400 per month, the equivalent of about $2,900 today. Read “FBI files reveal new details about informant who armed Black Panthers” by Seth Rosenfeld in California Watch. Download a copy of what is apparently a raw, footnoted version of Rosenfeld’s article...
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Today is the last day of the Paralympics in London. They come and go so quietly compared to the big summer games. If you live in the UK, you had a chance to watch over 400 hours of Paralympics broadcasts on Channel 4. In contrast, in the United States NBC had four nights of an hour long highlight show to cover the 11 days of ceremony and games. In Mongolia we got a good 4-6 hours of daily coverage, even after all of the Mongolian athletes came back home without medals. It’s reported that 11 million people tuned in to the opening ceremonies, nearly three times the number of viewers of the 2008 games in Beijing. China can console itself through a massive stack of medals its athletes will be taking home this summer. They are up to 95 gold medals so far, kept company by 71 silvers, and 65 bronze. Not too shabby. Pictured here are the “Sook Sisters” (they all have “sook” in their name and aren’t actually related), Korea’s archery heroes who came away with one gold medal a piece, and an extra silver for Hwa Sook. South Korea had a lot invested in its athletes this year. Most of its athletes trained and lived at the newly built Korean Sports Training Center d’ground, a beautiful facility South East of Seoul designed just for Paralympians . Leading up to the games, Korean TV broadcast touching documentaries about the lives of some the athletes, and the coaches and family members who support them in their training. Back in June, GR blogged about Maya Nakanishi who was getting some flack for fund raising with a self-published calendar featuring some sexy shots with just her prosthetic. She did end up making it London this year, and she competed in three Athletic games, but didn’t get any medals. I hope she can make it again in 2016. (Calendars as Christmas gifts are a big seller, Maya…) Fundraising is just one of the challenges facing paralympic athletes. There was a record breaking number of participating athletes this year, 4,200 from 164 countries. In contrast, more than 10,000 from 204 countries competed in the Olympic games. Even if a paralympic athlete can overcome cultural stigma in their country, their personal physical challenges, and train hard enough to dominate in their categorized sport, they still have to find a way to pay for it all and make it to the games. It’s depressing to think of all the individuals who are held back by financial resources when they’ve been able to take on everything else. There’s a dark side to the Paralympics, just like there is for the Olympic games. Much has been written about the “supercrip” archetype that surfaces with the Paralympic games. It’s fascinating, provocative, and a conversation that should be continued to better understand the challenges faced by the differently-abled. North Korea can enter into the supercrip conversation now. They debuted their first ever Paralympic athlete in London. At the very...
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This is rising Mongolian sumo talent, Takanoiwa A. Baasandorj posing for a press junket with rising K-pop stars T-ARA earlier this summer. They have something in common – growing popularity in Japan. Takanoiwa came to Japan to train and compete in sumo, as a part of the Takanohana stable. Retired yokozuna, the highest rank in sumo, train young wrestlers to rise through the ranks. They learn more than just the sport, but how to adapt to to very regimented Japanese tradition. Some of them do better than others… at the adapting. The Asahi Shimbun reports on the changing face of sumo in Japan. As far as foreign wrestlers go, Mongolians are still the cream of the crop in sumo. They take on Japanese names, and Japanese lives. They can spend a lifetime trying to become yokozuna, and still never make it. Asashoryu (aka Dagvadorj Dolgorsuren) made it to the top at 29 and then fell, with some disgrace. His marriage to his Japanese wife crumbled as scandal grew. Mongolian “fighting spirit” is best saved for the basho. 2011 brought a huge match fixing scandal to light, and the sport is still recovering. Dwindling attendance is a problem as well. The younger generation hasn’t taken to the national sport the way the older generations did. How to sauce it up again? I’d go just to catch yakuza gambling action, but maybe that’s just me. The right-wing nationalists aren’t keen on the rising number for foreign sumo wrestlers, but it has brought in a larger international audience. One tactic in place to bring in a younger Japanese audience is the development of sumo character design for products and promotion. Collectible cards could do it, but maybe some more amazing smart phone apps (for edutainment rather than betting), or some updated video games! I would pay money for some meta video of sumo-sized gamers getting their virtual sumo on. I can already picture the Gangnam Style/sumo parody… Invisible Horse, meet Sumo Belly Slap!
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Ridiculous, but effective. (dailymailuk – quadruplets)
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