Category: Lifestyles

Clooney upfront about criticism of director

Jae-Ha Kim

Chung Goo Ho remembers of the Korean War, “When it got dark, the soldiers aimed searchlights on us. Then they began shooting at the crowd. . . . To dodge the bullets we tried to hide behind the corpses. . . . My mother was shot. At the time, she was hugging me and my younger sister to her breast to protect us from the gunfire. She was killed by four bullets to her head and her back. My sister and I could do nothing but wait. We had nothing to eat and we drank bloody water out of a nearby stream.”

Please, all Johns keep out: Besides the privacy issue, there are some sights best left unseen.

Jae-Ha Kim

There’s one thing I don’t ever want to see in a women’s room — a man. Ever since “Ally McBeal” hit it big on Fox, talk around the water cooler has centered on two things: the brevity of our heroine’s hemline and the uncomfortable concept of the coed bathrooms that the attorneys share on the show.

Spring cleaning for the soul

Jae-Ha Kim

Dumping your friends is different from losing touch. The latter is passive action that happens because one of you moves away, or he gets married, or she has a baby and is too busy to listen to you harp about a Kate Spade handbag that you absolutely have to have. Eventually, you run into each other again, exchange new numbers and addresses and make an effort to renew your friendship.

Beyond Asian stereotypes

Jae-Ha Kim

“Chink-a-Chink-a Chinaman sitting on a fence; Trying to make a dollar out of 59 cents.” My parents were mortified when their 5-year-old daughter came home from school singing this chant. My friends and I had learned to jump rope to this song from older kids who thought it would be fun to teach a bunch of kindergartners a thing or two. At the time, I had about as much concept of what a “Chink” was as I did the actual value of 59 cents. But I was too young to see past my parents’ forced smiles.

For most part, condo living is easy when snow isn’t melting

Jae-Ha Kim

Seven years ago, I decided to take the plunge and invest in a home. The greedy part of me wanted a house with a huge lawn, 2-car garage and a roomy basement. Then I thought about mowing the lawn eight months out of the year and, worse yet, shoveling snow for the remainder. Suddenly, a condo sounded like a better alternative. So I checked out various developments and eventually arranged to put down a deposit on a unit. When I got there at the appointed time, I learned the broker had sold the plot of land she had promised to me.

Jehsah (제사)

Jae-Ha Kim

I was almost 5 years old when my family moved from Seoul, South Korea, to Chicago. Language barrier aside, I couldn’t figure out why some of my new pals were so excited about the arrival of an old man they didn’t know, who would slide down chimneys that some of them didn’t have, to drop off presents under decorated trees in their living rooms. Couldn’t this Santa person just use the door like everyone else?

The Baby Myth

Jae-Ha Kim

When you’re a 20-year-old coed, you can barely hear your biological clock ticking. At that age, most young adults worry about summer jobs, graduating and trying not to get pregnant. But Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (Talk Miramax, $22) warns women of all ages that having babies must be timed at least as carefully as career choices.