White Day

On the weekend, Carrie and I celebrated "White Day". This is the Korean answer to Valentine's Day with a little bit of a twist. You see they celebrate Valentine's Day too, but it is for the men. I remember being out and about that day and seeing thousands of young women carrying candy for their men. White day is for women and occurs March 14 (one month after Valentine's Day). It is subsequently followed by Black Day on April 14, whereon people who did not receive a gift on either Valentine's Day or White Day must eat a black noodle dish, or the dish of shame as I like to call it. As you can probably imagine these holidays lack any sublty along with all things Korean.

The flower arrangements are hideous. They resemble the worst wedding bouquet you could possible fathom. The flowers are tied tight at the bottom and about 3 quarters of the way up and then have yellow and pink lace and mesh wrapping sprouting out the sides and the flowers are somewhere in the middle. They might be mistaken for m'aidez flares. If the women aren't carrying these they are carrying baskets of candy with the same decor noted above.

Some of the men are real romantics. Take the couple sitting next to us at the Italian food restaurant on Sunday night. They shared (I mean shared) a spaghetti-type dish. They were force-feeding each other. I think it started as a cute little thing to do, but escalated out of control. Neither one wanted to eat what the other person was dishing out, but they kept feeding each other. The pinnacle was when the man went to slip a roll of noodles into the woman's mouth when things went aury. The noodles unravelled and where dangling from her mouth. He was helping her scoop them in her mouth while she slurped away. Disgusting!

It should be noted that the ritual of Valentine's Day and White Day seems to end with the onset of marriage. In my experience, the men purposefully forget this day, which may cause the woman (in the case of my director's wife) to cry. Not to worry though, the day wasn't all lost. He went on a motorcycle tour with his good friend for the day.

Why didn't I think of that,

Joe