Korean Serial: Spring Waltz
17/05/2007
5-7-5: Summary in a haiku
Famous pianist and
Childhood sweetheart reunite
Breaking Philip’s heart
Drama level
Started out light, but turned into a bit of a sobby romance.
Eye candy
- Daniel Henney (as Philip)
Love shape
Square (two guys in love with the same girl, another girl in love with one of the guys)
The variables
World renowned pianist, diplomat adoptive parents, Philip the lovely half Korean hunk, crazy music producer ex-girlfriend, a case of identity substitution, Austria, beautiful islands off Korea and a pink truck.
The hiccups
Crazy music producer chick who falls in love with him.
Immense guilt for living someone else’s life, and for causing heroine’s mother’s death.
Politics.
The quirks
Lovely soundtrack. The title track is soothing and pretty, and since the dude’s a pianist, there’s a lot of that playing in the background. Lovely Daniel gets to pretend to play the piano as well, and he looks so much hotter doing so than the main dude (who’s kind of scowley).
The plot
It’s complicated. But the beginning was set in Austria in the winter, and the middle bits (the childhood bits) were set on Cheongsan-do (very pretty). So ruffian’s father causes the death of sweethearts mother, and boy has to let himself get adopted so sweetheart can get surgery. He grows up thinking she died, but is unable to forget her.
He meets her later, but what ensues are obstacles one after another.
Final rating: 4/5. Loved the music, loved the scenery, love Daniel Henney, the storyline isn’t too bad, the main actor reminds me of a former co-worker from Hong Kong turned world-traveller and Flickr fan, the chick is cute. But I mostly watched it to see Daniel Henney – even better when he breaks out in Korean.
Soy What?
28/10/2006
Before I start on Survivor Cook Islands, I gotta tell you about making your own beancurd – tau huay, not tau hoo.
I bought a carton of Sobe Unsweetened Pasturised Soy Milk the other day, and curiously, there was a small package attached to it. I only found out that it was two packs of coagulant to make tau huay.
Excited, I tried it out. Measure out 250ml of soy milk, add one packet of coagulant, stuff in the microwave on low-medium for 6 minutes, leave to stand for 1 minute, and there you go. Well not quite idiotproof, mine came out lumpy as heck!
Fortunately for the wonders of Yahoo! Answers, I found this site, and someone asked about making (drum roll) beancurd, and I found this neat article about making beancurd dessert.
Is that cool or what?
Back to Survivor, Cook Islands. I loved the first episode. I hate that I’m rooting mostly based on racial lines, but I guess it’s pretty much instinct. I wonder if the other races look at the Asian tribe and think the young ones all look the same. It’s a pity there were 2 Koreans, 2 Filipinos, a Vietnamese but no Chinese representation. But I guess the Chinese person would have to top Shii-Ann to be memorable, and that’s tough.
