Netflix Korean Drama Recommendations

So many Korean dramas were watched during the COVID years, not all of them good. They have an interesting format: one season of 12-20 episodes (16 is typical). The single season format gives a different type of storytelling than multiple season media (even short British/cable seasons). 

My strong recommendation is for the science fiction series, Sisyphus. This a a tightly written, well acted show good to the last second. It involves time travel and they do not make any of the usual mistakes that lead to glaring inconsistencies: this plot fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. If I had three thumbs they would all be up for this show. 

Many of the dramas are romances, but often have an underlying social message or at least a socially relevant theme. I do not know whether they get government funding to do this, or whether the Korean public just expect this. Apparently, Korean TV does not include advertising, but there is some product placement written into the episodes. This is done anywhere from seamless to jarringly overt. One thing my daughter told me was that typically they are still filming when the first episodes come out and the plot may be altered based on viewer feedback (I would say this is not always a good thing). One other thing typical of the romance category is that near the end, a breakup is engineered between the main couple which is resolved in the last episode. This plot device can be done so clumsily that it ruins the whole plot for me. Some romance dramas I can recommend are:

• It's OK not to be OK, with social commentary on mental disability and illness. Some innovative filming in the first episodes (presumably before time and financial pressures forced them to be more conventional). Beautiful main couple. My only request would have been more Jae-soo. 
• Something in the Rain, with some pretty gritty social commentary on misogyny in the workplace. Lovely scenes at the end of episode three and beginning of episode four when the couple first gets together. The moral of the story is to not lie to protect your friends. 
• Search WWW, with social commentary on the role and responsibilities of social media. Strong friendship (and professional conflict) between a group of three women, as well as romance. 

If you are desperate for more romance, When the Camellia Blooms, Hometown Cha Cha, and Chocolate are "OK".  

In the light comedy class, I recommend Business Proposal, based on a webtoon. It is fluff, but I found it to be enjoyable fluff. 

The biggest disappointment was "The King: Eternal Monarch". It had parallel universes, a fantastic New Years speech, overall good first half, and fell completely flat in the second. 

Exciting East Lansing 2022

I just came back from a four week research trip to Michigan State University in East Lansing. If you know me or have read past posts of my blog, you know that I have visited there many times in the past. I have a long time collaborator and friend there, Keith Promislow. We have worked on a number of projects together. This year, we continued with our interest in sea ice modelling with two projects identified. One is the mathematical structure of macroscopic models of sea ice and their computational simulation. It turns out that even simplified models have complex mathematical structure. There is interesting behaviour where a moving boundary changes between implicit and explicit type. This work is a first step towards a more comprehensive, three dimensional computational model. The other sea ice project is a geometric one on the shape of brine inclusions. I brought a problem for Keith involving mathematical analysis of a structure from Machine Learning. 

I was in a long stay hotel as I have been for the last few visits. Also as usual, I rented a bicycle to get around. This time, I was able to try the scooters they have for rent on campus. I was keen to try these out, but they are not as fun as I thought they would be. You feel every little bump in the road with those small tires. 

The campus is quite beautiful and were some other interesting things to see this trip 

To keep myself out of trouble evenings and weekends there was the fancy movie theatre (Cinema C) at the local mall. As usual, the choice of movies of my taste was limited. I went for action movies: Thor (Love and Thunder) and Bullet Train. I cannot really recommend either, but the movie experience was enjoyable. I continued my paper mache hobby with some bowls and a jewelry holder. 

I reciprocated dinner invitations by hosting gin & tonic Monday happy hours. The group was very enjoyable, I wish they all lived in Vancouver. My only complaint about them was that at some point they refused to take more paper mache bowls... 

Good Albums

There is an art to making a good album. Historically, I would have meant a vinyl record with two sides with (standard format) content up to 27 minutes each.  Later I would have meant a one sided CD with up to 72 minutes of content. When I say album I mean either of these formats and also modern digital releases with 30-90 minutes of content -- with some caveats. A general criteria is that all the material  is from the same artist. What I mean by "good" is the following:

• All tracks are good. You don't feel like taking out a couple for other playlists and never playing the whole album.  
• The original order that the tracks are in is important. You never dream of playing the album on shuffle (shudder). 
• The album as a whole is better than the sum of its tracks. There is some synergy going on that you appreciate. 

I have a few albums I have in my collection I consider to be "good" and I list them below. Some of these are the few albums I collected as an early teenager (in vinyl). It is honestly hard to say whether the albums are really that good, or they were just imprinted on my teen brain (because when you only have six records as a teen, you listen to them a lot). A good album is not necessarily about good artists. My favorite band is arguably Yes (who I consider to be musically talented and innovative), but they have no good albums by my criteria. There is always at least one regrettable song on every Yes album. Old vinyl albums that have been re-issued on CD or digital formats suffer from a couple of issues. Firstly, there was pacing to the album that came from turning to the second side that is lost. I imagine that people that made good albums used this break consciously when they put the tracks together. Secondly, CD reissues often come with "bonus" content. These have to be deleted to have the good album experience that the creators intended.  

• Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill. 
• The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour. 
• The Beatles, Revolver. 
• The Beatles, Rubber Soul. 
• The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 
• The Cars, The Cars.
• Concrete Blond, Bloodletting. 
• David Bowie, Hunky Dory. 
• Evanescence, The Open Door. 
• Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. 
• Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand. 
• Franz Ferdinand, Tonight. 
• Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better. 
• Hoodoo Gurus, Mars Needs Guitars. 
• Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos. 
• Interpol, Our Love to Admire. 
• Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene. 
• Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene 7-13. 
• Jethro Tull, Aqualung. 
• The Killers, Hot Fuss. 
• Magma, Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh. 
• Marina and the Diamonds, The Family Jewels. 
• Metric, Fantasies. 
• Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon. 
• The Pretenders, Learning to Crawl. 
• The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith. 
• Rufus Wainwright, Want One. 
• Sigur Ros, Takk. 
• Soundgarden, Superunknown. 
• Tom Waits, The Heart of Saturday Night. 
• The Tragically Hip, Fully Completely. 
• The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan. 

A few last thoughts:

• I have always had a preference for artists that write their own music. I had not realized the preference was that strong until I looked back at the list I made. 
• I have to listen to all these again to check which ones make the cut and if I have missed any other good ones in my collection. 
• The soundtrack from the first Shrek movie is great to listen to as an album, but misses the single Artist criteria. Also the soundtrack for High Fidelity. 
• The EP "The Tain" by the Decemberists would have been on my list, but it is too short. Also "Nine Black Poppies" by the Mountain Goats. 
• Vinyl enthusiasts are hipster wankers. Get a good quality digital recording and add a vinyl noise post-processor if that is the sound you really want. Feel free to invite me over to your place with the fancy new record player (which you probably call something else), bring me a gin and tonic, and prove me wrong. 
• I am not a music expert so you can safely disagree with any of my choices and opinions.