This is the English translation:

Oh lovely Art, in how many grey hours,
When life's fierce orbit ensnared me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
Carried me away into a better world!

How often has a sigh escaping from your harp,
A sweet, sacred chord of yours
Opened up for me the heaven of better times,
Oh lovely Art, for that I thank you!

And this is how I remember singing it in English, though I can only remember the first verse:

Thou lovely art in every troubled hour
When I have bowed before the storms of life
hast though revived my heart with glowing power
in higher realms unknown to earthly strife
in realms unknown to earthly strife

Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm_AKMV0ME0

sigh

My little family hols started with as little an incident as would be expected with my mom around-- which is to say that she had a completely unwarranted response to NAIA security personnel; she misunderstood what was said by the hapless man and infliicted on him quite an earful.

Our beloved metropolis, right after taking off, was a picture of... uncontrolled particulate pollution. Lovely, nonetheless.

This reminded me of my favorite football player, i.e.; skies and sole star (squint and there's one smack dab in the top center) and splendor and all that.

>

And then Incheon International Airport, which is an accomplishment in megalomania and airport planning for dummies. I have no, absolutely no head for directions but I skipped from drop-off point to a walkalator and down flights of escalators, waltzed through immigration, boarded a train to the exit, and hopped on a bus to the hotel. The airport awards are smashingly deserved.

Coat and scarf (and flip flops) weather,

A warm welcome from my home away from home,

And midnight dinner, although the acronym for the resto, Fried Chicken Baengi, called to mind a football club which drubbed (in convincing fashion, yes) Arsenal FC in the Champions League...

Starters were popcorn and pickled radish, which is a blinkingly odd combination, if ever there was one...

Instead, FCB came up with two... One of the chicken platters was as head-scratching... kimchi (surprisingly amazing), a blob of boiled noodles (cold, unseasoned, made me ask "why?"), canned peaches (fancily called "Imperial Peach"), and fried chicken. In the odd pairings charts, that's a combo that can't be beat.

It's hard to go wrong with chicken, almost impossible to go wrong when the same is fried; but FCB got everything right.

We wanted a steaming soup bowl to counter the cold, so the most exotic one on the menu, the gigglingly intriguing "A Fish A Cake" it was. It had sea cucumber, fishcake and rice cake (aaahh, that's why), and shrimp.

The blur of hands only prove the hunger.

Seeing as I get carried away with pretty much everything I write, I have decided to narrow this post down to my Fave Five in Seoul (I was striving for alliteration but unless I change the name of the city...)

Inspiration: Chef John in You Don't Have to Be a Cheese Whiz to Make Your Own Fromage Blanc; Manjula of Manjula's Kitchen; this guy making labaneh; and

It has maps inside!! I love maps!!
Somebody please give me a globe.

Since I was very hungry and nearly passing out¹ (but still wanted to make cheese??), I stayed away on the first day from the ones that required cooking, so as not to set my house on fire.

Ingredients: Yoghurt and salt (1 quart yoghurt to 1 tsp of salt)

Tools: Strainer, cheesecloth (but since I couldn't find any, I used 2 layers of strips of gauze)

How I made it: 1. Mix yoghurt and salt. 2. Strain (then wait 24 hours).

Notes: Somehow I always end up mixing parts of one recipe with another. And not following the right portions of ingredients. So I hung this one a-la Chef John. And put too much salt. So while it looked luscious and quite creamy, it was uneatably salty.

Somebody please give me a Nikon.

Verdict: Except for the salt part, I'd do this one again.

p.s. A commenter said on the video, hey, that's just strained yoghurt!! Well, yes. It's lovely strained yoghurt, though.

Ingredients: Milk, lemon juice (supposedly 1 quart to 1/4 cup), buttermilk (1 cup, if following Chef John, straight-faced funny as heck), 1/2 cup water (to mix with lemon juice, if following Manjula), 3/4 tsp salt

Tools: Same as #1

How I made it: 1. Heat milk (about 10 minutes, said Manjula). 2. Pour lemon juice in. Curd should separate from whey. 3. Turn off heat. 4. Strain. 5. Wait 30 minutes (if following Chef John). 6. Remove from gauze. 7. Mix in salt. 8. Cover with cling wrap. 9. Keep in fridge overnight "for flavor to develop".

Notes: I may have overheated the milk (but Manjula didn't turn it off until it finished curdling!!), or used too much lemon juice (I used juice from 2 small ones. Did I measure it? Mmm, no...). Or maybe it was because I did not use buttermilk (but, Manjula!?!). I ended up with a rather dry "cheese". Not creamy, nor was it white like in the demos. I wonder why? Film kept forming on top too. It turns out you're supposed to stir once in a while to prevent that happening.

Further notes: I had this idea that to make mozzarella, you just need to put the curds in hot water and pull. So I thought I'd use some of the curds to do just that for this batch (ambitious, aren't we). Then, just prior to starting, while reviewing the instructions, I saw another video called "Make mozzarella cheese in less than an hour!" so I said, "Excellent..." (a-la Mr. Burns). But of course I did not have citric acid, nor the other curdling thingies. Equals curd begriming the hot water.

Real stretchy.

Verdict: In the morning, I found out that the "cheese" did not magically get creamy overnight (Yes, I was kinda hoping...). It did taste like dry, crumbly cheddar, though.

Upped with the addition of cream. Let's make double? cream cheese why don't we.

Ingredients: Same as #2, except the buttermilk, add 1 cup cream, use vinegar instead of lemon juice (in God-knows-how-much-amount. My milk wouldn't curdle so I kept adding and adding and it still wouldn't curdle until I said oh that's it I'm not putting up with you anymore. And I just strained what has become of my milk [a paper-recycling vat full of muddish torn wet paper]), no more need for water.

Tools: Same as #2

How I made it: 1. Stir, stir, stir until bubbles form at the sides. 2. Turn off heat. 3. Add maybe that was 1 tsp vinegar (I used only half the milk, by the way, so I'd have some left for Honey Flakes the next day). It curdled a bit, but not quite. 4. Add more. 5. Nope. 6. More. 7. Nope. 8. Turn heat on again. 9. Is that whey separating from my curds? 10. Nope. 11. Turn heat off again. 12. Add more vinegar. 13. Probably added 1/3 cup total. 14. Before I gave up. 15. Strain. 16. Hang. 17. Wait. 18. Hey that looks LESS dry. 19. Mix in salt (in the corresponding amount). 20. Cling wrap. 21. Fridge. 22. No attempt at mozzarella this time.

Notes: Hey! That kinda looks...better! Fluffier. And hey--it's creamy in my mouth, too. And it tastes like...cheese. Cheddar. Crumbly, creamy Cheddar. Sure I was supposed to make spreadable, soft, white, fresh, ricotta, but I'll take this just fine, because, hey, it's Cheddar-like! I made Cheddar-Like! And made everyone taste it. Unaged Cheddar. I'm so great. My mother liked it. My sister said it was good...mild.

Patience is a virtue.

Verdict: I can do anything, you know.

1. Juicing lemon is hard. Squeezing lemon with your hand is hard. Squeezing lemon with 2 hands is hard. And with a cereal box cut on your finger it's painful, too.

Somebody please give me a squeezer.

2. Making cheese is an exact science and a craft. It takes precise measurements, and skills, to do it. Maybe making cheese is not something I could wing. Nah I could wing this. With some practice.

3. You can substitute gauze for cheesecloth (Yay! I contributed to cheese knowledge! Nobody burst my bubble).

4. Many a people gave up their (naval engineering, hotel managing, insurance brokering, archaelogy) careers to focus on making cheese. Hm.

5. When one attempt fails, and two attempts fail, you set on a third one, more ambitious than the first two. And so on.

6. Of course draining time matters, too.

*Araw ng Kagitingan weekend.

They say a blink banishes a ghost, but a dozen blinks after, forty winks later, a hundred years it felt like, the spectre of the third draw above continued to haunt me. What to do but grit my teeth and bear it? The game between Barcelona and Arsenal, the two primary advocates of playing the Beautiful Game beautifully, was hyped to such heights that it could only have disappointed. It didn't.

How could it, when the story was limned with subplots of the Prodigal Sons: Thierry Henry returning to Arsenal in Barcelona colors and Cesc Fabregas captaining The Arsenal against the Catalan club where he learned his craft and cunning; Barcelona golden boy, Lionel Messi, the world's best footballer at present; Arsene Wenger who has won all coaching accolades except the elusive Champions League; Pep Guardiola, former Barca captain, who on his maiden coaching year won all the competitions to be won with his stunning Barca squad; oh and the little matter of the 2006 CL Finals, which Barca nicked (just!) from under Arsenal's nose? (This loss is on equal tragic footing with the World Cup 06 debacle.)

This was a game played atop a gunpowder keg. And were there ever explosions!

The fluidity with which Barcelona demonstrated the passing game, the Tiki Taka, at Arsenal's home, The Emirates, in the first half, particularly, the first painful twenty minutes, and the dispiriting Arsenal response, whose Tippy-Tappy football was nowhere to be seen, would have been enough to send the faint-of-heart crawling back to bed with a bottle of vodka, a mat of sleeping pills, a hastily scribbled holographic will (remember to date it), and a tear-stained No more, Cruel World! No more! valediction...

But I am masochistic some ways, and I got through what was the most humbling forty-five minutes of many a game night reelingly delighted at how Beloved Team had weathered the Barca onslaught with the halftime scoreline at eggs. Yes, a most mystifying 0-0 when the Blaugrana had dominated the Gunners so completely, no one would have begrudged Barca had they led by five goals.

On the half hour mark, Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal midfielder, had to come off because of a strained calf muscle. By his self-diagnosis he classified said calf-muscle as torn, but Arsene Wenger quickly refuted our Russian tragedist's "I fear that I am out 'til the end of the season" claim by saying he should be good to play by the 24th. Smiles.

The gamble on the William Gallas' fitness seems to have backfired though. Everybody was surprised by his return to first team action-- against Barcelona, no less-- since he has not played for months. But Arsenal are desperately short on defenders, so he had to be called in. Unfortunately, he had to be stretchered off just before the first half ended. Arsene Wenger has since confirmed that Big Billy, unlike Arsha, would be out for the rest of Arsenal's games.

A fifteen-minute suspension of proceedings, a ciggie break, a phone call to Miko at 4 am-- hysterical, incoherent, dazed, a cup of hot chocolate, and a packet of cookies. Alien times and an alienated soul demand the comfort of the familiar.

Read...

A writer at third-gen illustrates the play as follows:

Read his article here.

By the by, it was Arsenal's 100th goal of the season in all competitions.

But Arsenal are not Arsenal, without any half-mishap/complete disaster and the game was level on the 28' when Hull's Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (he must have struggled writing that down as a kindergartener) set himself up to be fouled by Sol Campbell in the Arsenal box. He went down a little to softly for my liking, The Cheat!, but the referee, Andre Marriner, pointed to the spot, The Inept!, to think that Hassle-boy was offside by a mile anyway. Jimmy Bullard fresh from a strange but infinitely welcome fisticuffs with his own teammate, Nick Barmby, took the penalty and didn't miss. Arsenal goalie, Manuel Almunia, was a mess of flapping limbs.

It was a largely ill-tempered, push-pull, stop-start game, because Hull players aware of their limited talent, launched an astonishingly limitless weaponry of niggling little things: shirt tugs, body checks, overzealous shoulders, little kicks on ankles and shins and backs of legs. And as the ref and linesmen were doing their absolute best to be absolutely awful, the crowd was baying for blood. I mean myself, of course.

George Boateng, Hull captain and defensive midfielder, well done! It was at this point only five minutes to half time, but only a few hundred tick tocks after the ref brandished his little black book and raised two yellow cards for an off-the ball incident involving said Boateng and Bendtner, with the former wanting to gouge out one of the eyes of the latter; Boateng was sent off for a reckless, studs-up, knee-high tackle on Arsenal defender, Bacary Sagna.

The match commentator last night said that the ref "had no choice" but to give Boateng a yellow. Of course, he did! Last I remember, that sort of challenge is a proper red card offense. But Boateng walked the Walk of Shame, leaving Hull with ten men. Tackles are a particularly sore point with Arsenal right now-- Aaron Ramsey is why-- and I thought the Gunners did well to at least keep their tempers in check, since Hull had obviously gotten in their faces and under their skin.

When the two teams played the first of their fixtures in December, Samir Nasri stamped on a Hull player, and a twenty-two men free-for-all almost followed. Both teams were charged with, found guilty of, and fined for failing to control their players by the English FA. Arsenal won that game comfortably, 3-0, but this game was clearly not one that would allow Arsenal to mete out their preferred mode of execution: Opponents' Ugly Death By Arsenal's Pretty Passing.

Three weeks ago, Sol Campbell scored the critical away goal, but it was not to matter as Porto's run in London was goalless. At the time, Lukasz Fabianski, tending to the goal for the injured Manuel Almunia, cheaply yielded the scoreline, and Arsenal Captain, Cesc Fabregas bemoaned Fabianski's schoolboy errors. A good night's sleep was all it took for Dear Boy to backpedal. If I sound as though I am defending Cesc's blow-up, it is because I am.

But this week, ah, this week. Arsenal bounced back in spectacular style, and the absent Captain, could not possibly have found anything to complain about this time.

Cesc did not play because of his recurring hamstring trouble, but Samir Nasri (we have quite a player on our hands in this one) and Andrei Arshavin (whose injury layoff seems to have done him a world of good) bossed the midfield, and were more than happy to fill his sizeable boots. Arshavin provided three assists; Samir Nasri netted one (a shoo-in for one of the top five goals of the year); and Eboue scored another and even won a penalty (without theatrically going to ground).

What about Nik Bendtner you ask? Nik, proved yet again, that he can only ever do things in excesses, and made up for the four? five? six? chances he spurned last Saturday, by scoring his first senior hat-trick. Sweet. Striker and a half, I tells ya.

Here is what was said about Bendtner by Almunia, Wenger, and Arshavin before the Porto fixture:

The Arsenal striker is self-assured and has a thick skin – which is probably just as well.

Ask anyone on the inside at Arsenal to talk about Nicklas Bendtner’s best qualities and their features invariably soften. “Nick is a special guy,” said the goalkeeper Manuel Almunia, with a smile, yesterday. “You cannot fault him on confidence,” added the manager, Arsène Wenger. Bendtner has what all of the world’s leading strikers are supposed to have; that streak of arrogance. Actually, he has it by the bucket-load. In short, he is a cocky so-and-so. Yet his is a likeable brand of self-assurance.

xxx

The 22-year-old’s team-mate Andrey Arshavin joked that he was saving up his goals for Porto and it is to be hoped that if similar chances present themselves, especially from point-blank range, Bendtner can stick them away.

xxx

“Bendtner can take critical remarks and analyse them without being offended. People take a lot the negative side of his self-confidence but it has as well a positive side. He can face his problems, analyse them and change his behaviour. I don’t know what he said to his team-mates after Saturday but he has not fooled himself. He knows that he could have scored.”

Wenger admitted he had spoken in private with Bendtner about Saturday’s events in order to ensure that the Danish international drew strength from them. The player, though, knows of nothing that can derail him. His thoughts now are fixed purely on scoring the winning goal against Porto and becoming Arsenal’s latest cult hero.

Here is what Wenger said about Bendtner post-Porto match:

"I told you how football can change for a player in three days. It goes quickly up and quickly down. And it shows you as well that he has not lost the confidence that he came back tonight with good focus and with the same belief. It is one of his strengths. His confidence level remains relatively stable."

On Bendtner playing after last weekend…

"He is of a size and a presence and that is what you need. We are usually a very short team so one or two players of size is important, offensively and defensively as well on set-pieces."

On whether Bendtner was the designated penalty taker…

"He was No 3. The No 1 was Nasri, the No 2 was Arshavin. And he was No 3. He was lucky. Arshavin was out and Nasri as well when the penalty happened."

And here is what I, sayer, have to say to the Little Big Boy: Don't let the world change you, Nik.

The Sweet

It was a game which, if Arsenal had won by a four-goal cushion, would have sent them to the top of the table, level with Chelsea on 61 points, but ahead on goal difference, albeit having played a game more.

As it is, the Gunners scored three and Burnley nicked one, but Arsenal did enjoy a two-hour spell in second place. I got teary-eyed over the tributes to Aaron Ramsey.

From the players....

and from the fans, who chipped in for this

The Sour and The Bitter Pill

Man Utd. played the late kick-off v. the Wolves and left it late, Paul Scholes finding the back of the net for his century only 18 minutes from time. In the fairest of opinions by one who cannot be more biased in favor of Red London, I submit that the Wolves deserved to have at least drawn. The Mancs are distinctly average without Wayne Rooney, and struggled throughout 90 minutes to carve out clear-cut chances. But credit where credit is due, and it was a top quality goal for Scholes. Their win means Arsenal are back on third.

Chelsea have a game in hand since their FA Cup engagement occupies them this weekend. I reserve judgment on them, but note, with a great level of satisfaction that without the powerhouse midfielder, Michael Essien, the Chavs are clearly laboring. Essien is the one Chelsea player I would be happy to see kitted out in Arsenal colors. I think their dip in form owes as much to their injuries as it does to the off-the-field brouhahaha surrounding John Terry and Ashley Cole and their missuses and mistresses.

On such sordid business, I haven't much to add. But I shall summarize: both players are lower than the low-lifes feeding on pond scum, and deserve much less than what they have. If football performance paralleled real life behavior, Chelsea would be in danger of relegation. I swore to concentrate on the fantastic in Arsenal instead of the ignoble and base in Chelsea, and while successful with Essien, Terry and Cole (and Lampard and Drogba) will always mean that I cannot help but throw venomous barbs.