lesbiassparrow

Before I head out I wanted to post this. According to one site this is a summary of the show: "A westernized Irish adoptee, Joong-Ah inevitably flies back to Korea to confront her past and to see the country she is really from, only to fall in love with her brother, Jae-Bok. Their love is painful, as they are never meant to be together as lovers, but merely as brother and sister. The show’s message is that there is no such thing as noble innocent love and that love is adversity itself. Therefore, love mustn’t be impeded by so-called "destiny" or family, no matter how ironic or difficult the case may seem. Although destiny is cruel and arduous, the two young lovers radiate pure happiness. The show describes how love survives the tragic bondage of family, destiny and romance."

They could well be right: I only got to episode 3 and I think I only understood about 10% of what was going on in the plot. I mainly watched it for Not!Ireland scenes involving the tragic demise of the heroine's adoptive Irish family, who apparently were IRA terrorists and whom she thinks she killed.

( massive picspam behind cut )

Outside it is pouring down and grey and generally horrible, which suits my mood of homesickness for Ireland and my mourning over the fact that today is the last day of Christmas holidays. Eheu! Ireland was wonderful and there was even a minimum of family rows until the second to last day that I was there, but that didn't involve me so I could feel all virtuous and above the fray.

On Christmas Eve my sister and I found a stray dog which had a collar but no address. Due to everything being closed over the holiday we had it in the house for 5 days, much to the disgust of the resident cat. We should have know how the whole thing would go when the dog proceeded to fall in the river on Christmas Eve and then had to be hauled out by my sister because it couldn't get up on the bank on its own. When we took it around to some of the houses in the neighbourhood to see if anyone recognised it much sympathy was expressed for the poor wet thing, but none for ourselves who were almost as wet. Despite the fact that it managed to also drag me through mud in Phoenix Park, bounced all over the house like Tigger, acted like every person it met was its long lost owner who must be covered in mud it was still sad to see it go off with the animal services people. Though they were very nice and positive about its chances for adoption. The dog was certainly not upset at being led off by them.

I actually got to see Doctor Who on Christmas Day (forced the family to watch) and I am sorry to say that, well, I was rather disappointed. Mainly it was the acting, especially that of the Prime Minister of the World (aka Great Britain) who was just appalling. ( Further spoilery thoughts )

ETA: over the break read 'Smoke and Mirrors' Gaiman's collection of short stories. Hmmm. I didn't realise that it would contain painfully bad poetry of the sort which makes the toes curl and the fingers clench as the brain shuts down to protect itself. I like his novels but a poet he is not. Nor, IMO, a particularly strong short story writer; most of the stories read like notes for planned novels or longer pieces that never worked out which were then revised a bit and tossed together in book form along with his lyric musings. This is a bit annoying in a collection which you've paid good money for; I was actually waiting for his shopping list to turn up at some point as desperate filler.