Easter 2012

Sunday was Easter of course, and seeing how even Jesus thought it a fine day to get out for a stroll, I figured the least I could do was go to Myeong-dong Cathedral to snap some shots.

Myeong-dong Cathedral

I’m not going to go into the history and architecture of the mother church of Korea’s Catholic community here—for that, see this post from 2009.

Conducting the noon Easter mass was Cardinal Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk, meaning it was jam-packed with no chance of me getting in with a camera.

Lots of time to walk around the place, though, and come up with goofy shots like this.

The place emptied out pretty quickly after the mass. Myeong-dong Cathedral has that wonderful vaulted ceiling which really draws your attention upwards. I tried to capture it as best as I could with the wide-angle and used Hugin to straighten the verticle lines. The upper sections, however, seem blurry and distorted, so there’s got to be a better way to go about doing this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The cathedral brought in an orchestra for the Easter Mass; as I didn’t attend the actual mass, I missed most of their performance, but they continued to play a bit after the mass, too, which I captured a bit of with Ye Olde iPhone. You’ve got to love the acoustics of this place—would have been even nicer without the samulnori group playing outside.

Glorious stuff.

A bit windy as you can see. The diocese was out selling Easter eggs and other crafts to raise money for various projects.

Everest

Mrs. Koehler was in the mood for Indian food, so for lunch we went to Everest, an Indian/Nepali place hidden in alley in one of Dongdaemun’s grittier sections.

The wife and I have been coming here for a while, and I still think this is the best Indian joint in Seoul, both in terms of food quality and value for your money. It did seem they changed the recipe to their chicken tikka, though—I loved it, mind you, but it was spicy enough to burn you a new bodily orifice.

Takeout Drawing

The Gyeongnidan neighborhood continues its transformation into an increasingly interesting area. The latest addition is Takeout Drawing, a fascinating cafe/art space occupying an entire three-story building on the road the Namsan Third Tunnel from Noksapyeong.

I love my 50mm.

From its website:

Project Space TOD (Takeout Drawing)is an organic, multifunctional cultural space.

Using the café as its vehicle, TOD stages sustainable culture. It is a space for self-improvement, and fosters artistled, independent art activities, made possible by means of profits from sales of café products.

Apparently there’s a branch in Hannam-dong, too. It looks like they’re still putting the finishing touches on the Itaewon-dong branch, but I like what they’re doing here—it really does feel like a cultural space, which it in fact is, with its own artist in residence.

On the menu is a range of unique, artistically presented cafe products, including this, “Paul’s Meringue Factory,” an espresso shot topped with a roof of meringue. The teas and coffees are organic and, if such matters are of importance to you, obtained through fair trade.

My wife hates when I do this.

WordPress vs. Tumblr

One of this blog’s readers recently suggested I utilize Tumblr a bit more. So far, I haven’t used Tumblr much except to post iPhone shots, but I love a lot of the stuff it does, and I’m contemplating moving my photoblog over entirely to Tumblr. Any ideas/suggestions/advice on this would be most welcome.