My goodness, Trivia? Toilet manners? and dirty socks? This place is indeed the source of very interesting discussions.

@157 samsooki

They didn't have slippers for house guests? As suggested by someone above, what about bringing your own when visiting them?

As I'm writing this, I realize I don't have any for my guests, either. my dear friend actually brought his own pairs on his last visit. LOL.

@181 hjkomo

I'm finding all about what's going on inside Korean or partially Korean household.
And yes, I agree, it's so time consuming typing on tiny tiny iphone panel.

@177 gailT

my votes is for : Dramabeans Open Thread: Better Than Facebook.

It sure is, in terms of all the amusement/camaraderie/moral support/ practical advices, nothing can come close to this place.

I do love facebook as well, but the thing there is suddenly, you end up with over 100 friends and some you know them very well, some are friend's friends or something and you don't even know them and it gets harder to keep track... Well, I did get re-connected with friends from college days. That was nice.

@201 samsooki holy crap, korean dogs say "mung mung"? all the things i get to tell my daughter today after school.

thanks to you and @198 Kender for the keke. (keke)

On the subject of toilet manners: in my house, it's my mother who's really open about using the bathroom. It's probably because she grew up as the youngest of three in a house with one bathroom, or because my brother and I used to bother her all the time, including when she was on the toilet, so she just got used to having people open the door on her. To this day, I'll stand in the doorway and talk to her while she's on the toilet, and she frequently comes in to bother me when I'm on it as well.

My father, on the other hand, is a total prude, and it's rubbed off on my brother. Both of them are super paranoid about locking the bathroom door, and neither of them like walking in on my mom and I.

Then again, none of us like having company while brushing our teeth, even though we all have separate sinks. My brother and I go out of our way to avoid brushing our teeth at the same time. It's a weird quirk of ours, I think.

And J-dogs go Wan Wan!

@ samsookie and celestialorigin

still on the floor.. dying.. of laughter... thank you very much.

so what do cats say?

[b]Trivia Question #14 - [/b]
In What's Up Fox? - what did Chul Soo bring back from his travels?
(1 point for item, 1 point specific type/origin of item, 1 point for Proper Name of item)

@ langdon813
haven't watched the pilot of Caprica :(
can't wait to see Spike :D

@ Samsooki

Did you ever see that investigative report that most people's kitchen sinks are dirtier than their toilets?

@ Sunshine

yeah, OJH skinning the live snake was gross, but at least he didn't have to eat it. What he ate was eel.

um. we just got hail. in orange county. little rocks of ice pelted my car. wtf.

in about 2 minutes we'll see blue skies though.

Does anyone know what a Korean rooster says? I was trying to think of it for my anthropology class the other day, but all I could think of was the word for elephant. XD

@210 hjkomo

Chulsoo brought back wine from Africa! (2 bottles, I believe.) I don't remember the label, though. :(

@ 213 twin

hail??? did you get ur car in the garage before it started??? hopefully no damage from the hailstorm.

everyone in CA, BE SAFE!!!!

i'm off to go "bathrooming" or "toileting". whichever is preferred :D

@ twin - nope. my car was out in the open cuz i'm at work. see how work ruins EVERYTHING?? at least it was only like 5 minutes and they weren't giant pieces of hail. but still...hail in the OC... and that's on top of the tornado earlier this week (bypassed my immediate area at least!). as much as i love rain, i prefer it when i'm at home, cuddled up in bed with a hot chocolate and a good book or drama.

@ moans

Korean cats say "yiao or yeeow" (not sure how romanize it)
and keke is more like hehe rather than haha. There's a bit of snark to it.

@ paula253

hubby usually closes the door when he in there (most of the way but not fully, most of the time). Sometimes, I don't even know he's in there, so it's not my fault if ijust walk in. ;)

@ Samsooki

so, if I have a massive headache and need to get the Tylenol/Advil from the medicine cabinet...I'm just supposed to wait until he's done? o_O
or if one of us is in the shower, we're just supposed to hold it?

LOL at the elevator-ting. Never heard of it before.

@ mookie

OOOO! Pretty pictures! Please tell me he gets to be the lead? :)

Sorry, moana...that was an iPhone spell-check auto fix ;)

And Chinese dogs go "Don't Eat Me"

@ mookie

OMFG!!&*^*^&*^@! You are the sole source of all my heart-palpitations lately. Gah, SO HANDSOME! He wins hands-down the wearing facial hair in period customes award! Actually, he win every award in my book.

That last picture - soooo pwetty, too bad he's hugging Janine instead of his dongsaeng. Based on the caption, they reunite, but its probably after he drags her out of the wedding to her now-crippled loser BF. And you know she's gonna go back and marry the douche, but see how much I care, NOT. That only means Shishi gets to comfort his broken heart. 1,2,3, together now.....awwwwwww.

All those pictures are too much (I faints), but I love your added caption - I would be pawing him in that picture if I were that PD lady.

@ trixicopper

You better believe he's the lead! Though Clothing (the) World is a Dae Jang Geum-esque story, the life of a legendary folklore historic figure, the mother of Chinese weaving technique, so it's her story first and foremost, but our loverboy is the main male lead. And trust me, if he pulls off what he did in LoCH and Yang's Clan, we may get another Bidam-esque revision and have a story of the General.

More toilet habits from me..

I HAVE to have the fan on. It helps to cover the sound of whatever I'm doing, and also makes it harder for me to hear anyone else in the house, giving me the illusion that I'm alone. Plus, if there're any fumes from my business, by the time I get out the fan's already been running for awhile, so they disappear pretty quickly.

There's no fan in the bathroom of the house I'm renting, which makes me sad. :( I make due with telling myself that it's all the way in the back of the house, so no one can hear me unless they're right outside my door anyway.

----

Time to finish cleaning my room and go get my fellow drama-obsessed buddy.. She just got back from a semester in Korea, so we're going to make kimchi jjigae and watch a movie or something. :D

@218 samsooki @221 samsooki

Of course. Very polite and considerate of you.

Oh, you'd be happy in Japan. Pretty much every public bathrooms are equipped with the thingy called Oto(音） hime(姫) I guess it can be translated as (flushing)Sound/noise princess,? something like that. Very euphemistic. As soon as you sit down, it automatically start.s I guess some ladies over there are incapable of getting their business done unless it's on. they prefer to hold whatever because it's too embarrassing to be heard if it's not available... LOL. To me, it's a bit too much. Imagine my surprise, as soon as l was seated, off started the loud water flushing noise without me flushing. ??? Now, I'm used to it.

Anyway, J- rooster? Koke koh koh. I'd imagine that's how it's spelled? Very similar to K roosters! They must be related:D

@ mookie and trixicopper

This one needs to be appreciated as well - for once they are *not* in period costumes, but a total couples photo-shoot! Totally reminds me of the couples shoots they do for Korean clothing companies (which I LOVE, LOVE, because those photo shoots are like mini-fan service for us).

http://yule.sohu.com/20091126/n268490935.shtml

@ 227 celestialorigin

oh! i totally got tripped out by the toilets in japan. i mean, i vaguely remembered them from my trip 3 years back, but this time they were EVERYWHERE! one day i was in one of the stalls and there was this motion-sensor thing with a picture of a hand next to it, and i thought, "oh, is this how you flush?" (cuz i swear, every toilet had a different flushing mechanism!!! there were sensored ones, levers, buttons on toilet, buttons on a side panel, buttons for #1, buttons for #2... very confusing, especially since i don't read japanese!).. so i wave my hand over it and this recorded flushing sound comes on and i'm sitting there in awe. it was amazing. we need those in the US....

@229 lovenyc52 - Jan 22, 2010 at 3:46 pm

cuz i swear, every toilet had a different flushing mechanism!!! there were sensored ones, levers, buttons on toilet, buttons on a side panel, buttons for #1, buttons for #2… very confusing, especially since i don’t read japanese!

LOL! Which reminded me of my recent trip there. I was at a wedding reception at a rather fancy bistro( they rented the place out for 3-4 hours). Off I went to the ladies room. finished my deed and was ready to flush. Flush? I was suddenly in panic. there's nothing remotely looking like a lever nor button. All I saw was some sort of control panel on a wall with all the fancy graphic symbols which were not exactly comprehensible to me: one dot, two dots, dots in pyramid shape some short lines??? This can't be the thing to get this toilet flushed was what I was thinking... Eventually, I figure that since there was nothing else in this space to induce any sort of motions within the bowl, I just pushed everything and Voila! a mission accomplished! So, it doesn't exactly matter whether you can read Japanese or not over there...

lol and we're still on toilets?! hahaha

o celestialorigin, I was in China couple years ago and at a train terminal's kinda fancy 'looking' lavatory... and in the loo...after I'm done... there's NTH remotely related to flushing mechanisms. It's like one of those velvet room or whatever game that u r trapped and need to find a way out by 'feeling' everything out... *ewwww*
panicking I saw a doorbell thing with the symbol of the 'bell' literally on the button, so I was like... geez this looks like some emergency panic distress button... but other than that there's nth even to 'fidget' with... so I 'press' the 'bell' and *cringe*... then couple sec later, there's a flush!!!
I then relayed the incident to hubby... and he quipped, ' I still think that's a bell, it'll ringringring in that backroom of that lavatory and there's a granny there pouring bucketful of water out = flush' ...and then he goes into the whole tangent of how it's not feasible to expect an electrical blablabla and water blehblehbleh...
but till this day....I still can't prove he's totally bsing.

o in regard to sink vs wc:

first off pee fr a healthy individual should be sterile. but food matters + airborne molds + cushy dampness... do brew the meanest bugs. so I'm with hjkomo on sink... yeah samsooki u do need to scrub it down every time it got wet.....lol

@twin, lolz talk about fanservice... there's a baidu bar for the loverboy/shishi couple and lots of silly fangirly stuff there. there's no limit to rabid chinese netizens
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?ct=&tn=&rn=&pn=&lm=&cm=0&kw=%D4%AC%C1%F5&rs2=0&sc=&un=&rs1=&rs5=&sn=&rs6=&myselectvalue=0&word=%D4%AC%C1%F5&submit=%B0%D9%B6%C8%D2%BB%CF%C2&tb=on

@ hjkomo, can i answer these? ^^

"@ Samsooki

so, if I have a massive headache and need to get the Tylenol/Advil from the medicine cabinet…I’m just supposed to wait until he’s done? o_O
or if one of us is in the shower, we’re just supposed to hold it?"

IMO 2 separate situations ... need meds from cabinet? yes, wait. your hubby will appreciate that you have respected his privacy. he's in the shower? in our house, it's ok to go #1 while the other person is in the shower but NOT to flush! aigu. the person showering will flush for you afterwards. #2, wait unless you absolutely can't wait.

has anyone mentioned that in korean, #1 and #2 is little and big? ^^ we have a Toto dual-flush toilet (which btw i recommend to everyone) -- makes that ying-yangish flush button pretty intuitive for koreans hehe.

@ mookie

Well, you've just given me about 10 hours of backreading material this weekend. I love you, but, hubby will start to get suspicious soon if you keep giving me the goodies.

I read this in an article, and you don't need me to translate, but it's so completely aligned with what we were talking about, I merely chuckle, and start praying to the drama gods. Make it happen, Shangai Tangren production company, you hear me! (*waves my hands in threatening but really just cheering you on ways*). Though, loverboy's choice is brainless and pretty much 95% of all guys choose that, but any girl who likes who Shishi likes is highly suspect in my book - however, just the pure karma of the choices makes me forgive Shishi's lack of judgment.

袁弘最喜欢的金书男主角是杨过，而刘诗诗最喜欢的金书女主角是小龙女

Btw, just randomness - but I was rewatching parts of RoCH 1983 with Andy Lau, and then I saw Kent Tong as Mongolian (douche) Prince Huo Du (and I totally forgot Kent was in RoCH). How did that happen? How did Kent go from lead in Demi-Gods in 1980 to lame-ass second rate villain in RoCH a few years later? The mysteries of TVB casting.

^ o gosh I rem that actually... but Kent was not doing that well image wise with his breakups with Barbara so TVB stuck him in baddie/minor roles ever since. to this day I'm still not totally understanding y Tony didnt get the same treatment because he had many breakups with his then gf and later hooked up with Carina which is his ex's bud.

I'm not sure if u've seen this drama http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A6%99%E5%9F%8E%E6%B5%AA%E5%AD%90 .. but this is actually my fav character of Felix Wong , and gosh Kent played a MAJOR scumbag there... I vaguely rem him hitting girls, raping.... Tony was Kent's little bro, and stephen chow a totally random nobody.

samsooki,

urine is normally sterile, so urine itself splashing around shouldn't be an issue of 'cleanliness.' the only source of contamination is the toilet water, which can contain microorganisms from our bowel movements.

so how about throwing in one of those chlorine things into the toilet and calling it a day?

What?!
It's only 5:20 p.m., and there are 239 postings already!!

@samsooki
hehe the kitchen sink should be your priority. think of it this way bathrooming is external while the kitchen sink (place) is to prepare food for intake internally. So yes while I only clean the bathroom every 3 to 4 days, the kitchen sink is every night or more each time i do the dishes. hehe
yep guess it's one more job for you buddy. maybe

edit: this week have been tons of fun. really this is blog is an addiction. Thank You JB

@kb and mookie -

Really? I have no idea! This is why Open Thread is so awesome. NO OTHER PLACE on the internet has this kind of knowledge. Who would know whether urine is germy or sterile?

That's pretty awesome to know. That means pee is not grody, just smelly.

I can deal with that.

***

But what if my dish soap is anti-bacterial? Aside from concerns that I am brewing super-staph bugs in my drain... won't dish soap that is anti-bacterial actually keep my sink from being germy too?

Why is everybody talking about . . . poo poo? O_o

@belleza,

it's an outgrowth of the bear taking a dump in the woods from last week.

actually I'm a bit iffy with HOW effectively antibacterial antibacterial soaps are....
because the bulk of the 'disinfecting' property of soap is because it's a surfactant.... it aids you in physically rubbing off the germs and debris... so even if u r using antibacterial soaps...IF after the washing, some minute food matters r left on the surface of your sink... it's still there to brew....so yup back to plain old scrubbing and rubbing...and bleach. (though I know it's so not environmentally friendly)

I personally ban it in my house because I just do not like the runoff of 'antibacterials'

http://www.physorg.com/news106418144.html

Considering all the sharing of bathroom habits, I propose the following motto Dramabeans Open Thread: What happens in Open Thread Stays in Open Thread

I remember watching MNIKSS and feeling scandalous about hyunbin and KSA sitting on toilet seats and having their contentious toilet exchange.That was so weird for my american sensibility but I've gotten used to Korean bathroom humor since then.

@192 ockoala
"I almost forgot, you asked me whether I know what a ginny-tee is. I think I do – is it a Guido-ism that is a synonym for a certain gender’s modern-day version of drawers?"

hmm not quite. Its a white tank top. Otherwise known as a "wifebeater". They called it a "ginny tee" because the white tank top was considered the teeshirt of choice worn by Italian men and a "ginny" is a pejorative word for Italian like "Chink", "Gook" or "Jap". Everytime I hear people on the east coast use that term without even knowing how the word historically evolved, I wince.

Oh my. Just got another message from my former-nerd-turned-commando FB friend. OK, getting kinda weirded out now...yikes! :-(

@ mookie

You know, another awesome bonus goodie of re-watching 1980s TVB dramas is how often we see current superstars playing random nobodies!

So, I have not seen that particular drama (anything with Felix as the headliner, I didn't want to watch, but I've heard it was great actually!). But I went down the cast list, and like you said Stephen Chow was in it, and his role isn't even given a name! He's just listed as "Student", alongside Teacher and a few other Sudents. I remember seeing all Five Tigers in bit parts here and there, and it was always a "can you spot a famous dude" game I played.

Kent just kinda looks sleazy, you know, not that he is, but he gives off that vibe, whereas Tony probably coasted on his nice-guy image and got a pass for the same infractions. Also, dumping Barbara, the top TVB actress, was not a good career move for him. If asked to pick a side, which side would have you picked - yeah, Barbara.

I'm not sure if actors in Korea can get "frozen" like this anymore. But it can happen in TW, oh yes it can. So, Ethan Ruan was part of a crew of models turned actors who came out at the same time, but Ethan insisted on dating another actress and they refused to break up or keep it hush hush, so Ethan was "frozen" by his management company and studios for 2 years! While his compadres Joe Cheng and Mike He went on to get a head start. And when Ethan re-merged, he got a bit part in Hana Kimi, and then his big breakthrough in FTLY. Oh, Ethan's GF, confirmed, of course, is Tiffany Hsu, formerly the second fiddle in ISWAK, currently the second fiddle in AC. Ethan had to diffuse a rumor that Vanness was coming btw him and Tiffany during the filming of AC.

@ langdon813

what if your nerdy turned army FB friend is a kdrama watcher and visitor to the DB site?? and he's reading about you updating us all on his status? lol.

i can't believe everyone's STILL talking about toilets..

but here's my poop, i mean scoop:

on vacation in thailand.. there is NO flushing.. there is a pail of water w/ a bowl.. and you rinse everything away.. i am so NOT a fan of going over a hole in the ground w/ no seat to sit on. i CANNOT pee standing up.. 1--i'm not a man, and 2--i wear pants. PLUS. i hated having to pay for toilet paper, so i just stole from my hotels.. even if i was only there for one night, i took the toilet paper. next trip, i'm bringing a suitcase full of charmin. cuz bears that poo in the woods prefer charmin. that's what they tell me in the commercials.

@ ockoala
o!! that's actually a super sweet romantic gesture of Ethan... I didnt know they have been dating for soooo long! :) I watched my share of TW varieties...and some of the stuff said was soo outrageous I'm not sure what to believe.

I don't know y, but watching that said Felix drama was like watching CandyCandy real action for me, the hair and costume and all the angst! haha or maybe I started my drug habit way too early.

and samsooki, just a note... antibacterial soaps r not antiviral...ie it's not going to do much killing off cold and flu viruses on its own and with any 'drug'/agent it needs a certain concentration and duration of exposure for it to be potent/effective.

@247 - mookie,

Good call on the soap not being anti-viral. And I got the point about the surfactant, which is why the time spent scrubbing is as important as the contact with soap.

@ lb_tmi

Well, that's a good passive-aggressive way to get the hint across, I suppose! ;-)

To steer the subject back to dramas for a moment, tonight I'm watching Taereung National Village (thanks again Thundie) with my I LUB YOU. It's so GOOD!

Only bad part...hubby walked by, saw LMK and had the NERVE to call him goofy-looking. I'm like "oh, he's only the guy I'm going to leave you for one day, no big deal."

He seemed oddly unconcerned. :-(

@ 214 Kender

hehe...I found the mistake in the subs quite amusing. Chul Soo said he went to Geneva for a motor show and then on to Italy, but the subs said he went to a place called Jaba (in NW Nigeria). ROFL.

Answer to Trivia Question #14 -
- wine (2 bottles)
- a Brunello di Montalcino wine (sangiovese grape, grown around the town of Montalcino in Tuscany)
- called Pian delle Vigne

@ 217 asianromance

The first time I heard the word tinkle was from my mother-in-law, and it make me chuckle. It's so cute when she says she needs to go tinkle. :P

Korean animal sounds:

cat - yaow
dog - mong-mong (that's why kids call dogs -> mong-mong-i)
rooster - kko kki oh (had to look that one up)
sheep - mae
pig - kkul kkul