It’s time to take advantage of the cool mornings and chilly nights while we still can.

It’s time to take advantage of the cool mornings and chilly nights while we still can. In the next few weeks, the scorching, sticky summer days will be upon us. Many of us already have trips planned, most probably to places much colder. For a few days, or weeks, we’ll be trying to escape the oven that is Philippine summer months.

One of the more popular destinations nowadays are northeastern Asian countries like Japan and Korea. With the Corona Virus hopefully contained, air travel should be getting back to its normal, frantic pace. With the popularity of South Korean culture in recent years being bolstered by the Oscar wins of the movie Parasite, Seoul may just be where a lot of Filipinos will be this summer. K-pop, K-dramas, K-movies and all the samgyupsal we’ve been gorging on these past few years might just make Filipinos one of the top foreign visitors of Korea in 2020.

Speaking of Parasite, I think the Oscars they got were well deserved with the mix of comedy, drama, tragedy and thrills, all exquisitely shot and told by Director Bong Joon-Ho. Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Picture plus nominations in a couple more categories, Parasite definitely made South Korea beam with pride. Speaking of awards, if there was a best food scene award in the Oscars, Parasite might have gotten that too. In the movie, there was a scene where the star was a seemingly simple dish—instant noodles, which actually made a statement with the addition of premium Korean beef. The Ram-Don Steak had Hanu Beef, Korea’s premium beef, comparable to Wagyu. In a movie that cast light on the opposite ends of economic classes in Korea, this scene drove the point home. By adding expensive beef to cheap, everyday food (instant noodles), the class divide was perfectly demonstrated. Of course, for us foodies, that scene meant a search for where to buy the noodles and premium beef featured in the movie. I’ll let you know in the next issue how my Ram-Don experiment goes.

After Parasite, it was all-Korean for me and my wife Gel. Crash Landing on You and Something in the Rain are two Korean dramas we’re currently binge-watching. So I guess it may take a while before I get over my K-fever. We might even see each other in Seoul. Annyeong!