one of the perks of being an editorial assistant at Columbia College Today, the official alumni magazine of Columbia College, for more than three years was the opportunity to attend the private wine tastings held by Ken Catandella, executive director of alumni affairs and development, whose responsibilities included overseeing the big-time events such as the yearly alumni reunion and homecoming. Ken, who is on the short side and has a mustache, is an eloquent speaker who loves to entertain audiences of all sizes with his knowledge of wines. as a connoisseur, he has traveled all over the world on his spare time to visit vineyards and to taste all sorts of grapes and vintages. he told me that wine knowledge required constant upkeep – ten or twenty minutes of reading here and there, a taste of this and that, good notes, etc. – and that he personally tried to get at least half an hour of fresh new wine material reading each night.

one of my favorite moments at the alumni affairs office was when Ken would bring boxes of wines to the conference room and offer them to the staff for incredibly low prices. i remember, as a curious sophomore, i would snoop around and taste the seven or eight types of wines that Ken brought and explained to everyone. at first, i used these wines to wash down the cheese and biscuits i had stuffed into my mouth, occasionally feeling the buzz after the tenth glass. but with every sip, i began to distinguish the taste little by little. by late junior year, i was buying as many bottles as i could carry each time Ken held these fire sales. and my curiosity for wine grew.

while the film Sideways seems to have made wine into a more accessible commodity, i’ve always appreciated the early exposure to the world of wine through Ken. from time to time, i would ask him which wines would go well with certain foods, and i would ask which vintage of a particular region would be a best buy at the moment. he always had answers and more. i can still remember the time he recommended a Picpoul to go along with Asian foods – especially Chinese and Thai – and boy, did that hit the spot. i still tell my friends that if you want “summer in a bottle,” they should go for a Picpoul (white). and remember – sauvignon blancs from New Zealand have the wonderfully citrusy flavor and more fruit than the California ones.

in anticipation for my upcoming roadtrip with Andy to Vermont this weekend, where we plan to visit three or four wineries and also make a stop at the Magic Hat brewery, i emailed Ken and asked him if he knew anything about Vermont wines and for any other general tips. he replied:

Peter,

Best,
Ken

Heart-warming tips from the man who got me to enjoy wines. I hope Vermont isn’t as terrible as it sounds. At worst, we can always knock back some sweet, fruity wines back in our hotel room, which, coincidentally, is in Shelburne.

Speaking of my days at CCT, I realized that my final article written for the magazine came out a few weeks ago. It was my last Bookshelf Box piece on author Robert Emmet Long, who has written extensively on Merchant Ivory, the independent and critically-acclaimed film company. it was really inspiring to interview Mr. Long, who has spent a great deal of his life writing intellectual criticism in literature, theater, and film. and to see someone of his age (seventies) continue to write so prolifically is truly admirable. I really value the time I had at CCT because of the special access I had to a wide range of writers – from erudite scholars to pop noir writers to chicklet lifestyle guides – and how i was expected, at least one book at a time, to feel, or at least pretend to be, familiar with an author’s genre. knowing the right questions to ask can mean the difference between an engaging article and an uninteresting one — hopefully some people have found these writers to be interesting over the years.

well, it’s late and i must bid farewell. work isn’t so bad, and i found a nice place to drink champagne late into the night only four blocks away (a place called Flute) — anyone interested?

there was a pretty girl i once knew who was an English major. i told her about Robert Penn Warren, poet laureate and author of one of my favorite books, All the King’s Men. she wasn’t familiar with the name but scoffed at the author because he had a “pretentious three-part name.” i had never heard such a thing before since i thought that authors usually go by whatever their names were or whatever they were comfortable calling themselves. Robert Penn Warren sounded harmless enough for me, and i couldn’t imagine where this pretension was coming from.

on Tuesday, i sat at my cubicle and stared at the monitor as my computer generated cashflows for an ABS CDO (asset-backed securities collateral debt obligation). just few days before, i had picked up Native Speaker, written by Chang-Rae Lee, off of my bookshelf and begun re-reading parts of it. midway through the third chapter, i realized that Native Speaker would make a great film. i wondered how i would go about adapting the screenplay and even went as far as to imagine who would play the part of Henry or Lelia in the film. i went as far as to begin planning my future weekends to devote to the project of adapting the novel. so when i sat in front of my computer watching numbers count up slowly, i decided to email the author, the Princeton professor, Chang-Rae Lee.

in the email, i briefly mentioned my own film experience and how i would love to adapt Native Speaker into a delicate screenplay. and i also let loose the fan in me, letting him know how much i appreciated his work. i also told him that, like himself, i too was in finance right out of undergrad, although i wasn’t sure if this was the path i would continue to take. i finished off by saying that i loved to write and continued to do so almost daily. i told him that cashflows were being generated behind the email box i was writing to him. i sent it and stared blankly at the monitor for another few minutes.

today, he replied. although short and definitely a polite “no” to my screenplay idea, it was a nice feeling to receive something from an author i admired so much. how many times had i felt his narrative partly telling my own life story? if anything, i was inspired to write more.

Thanks for your thoughtful, and kind, note. I appreciate your interest
but unfortunately those rights [for the screenplay] are already spoken for,
and so you’re out of luck. I do want to say that I appreciate your interest in
the novel, and hope that you’ll continue to work through those long, long
nights of number crunching — as you suspect, I felt similarly all those
years ago, sort of just biding my time. Good luck with the work.

Best wishes,
CRL

and i thought how funny it was that he signed his named that way – three parts.

for your reading pleasure, i found this extensive interview of CRL in which he discusses all his novels to date as well as other questions, such as the media’s comparisons of him to Kazuo Ishiguro (which he doesn’t seem to like too much).

one of the first things i did when i was president of my korean students association during my junior year at columbia was to change our club’s september bbq event into a Chusuk (or as John would write – Chuseok) Festival. growing up as a pastor’s kid, i remember my dad was very big on korean cultural celebrations at church, especially as a reverend in America, where Koreans often found most of their cultural exchanges on Sundays. i would always look forward to this time of year, knowing one of the Sundays would have a lot of bulgogi and song pyun, the little rice cake that seems to taste especially good on this holiday. of course, never having really cared about the Lunar calendar, i wasn’t too keen on the meaning of the holiday, and every year, I’ve had to ask my mom to look up and see when the next Chusuk would be.

this year, because of work, not living on campus, and infrequent contact with the parents, i almost forgot about Chusuk entirely. melanie had emailed me the previous day and told me a bunch of things about some sort of “Moon Festival” that was going on in Taiwan, but I couldn’t quite put two and two together, especially since Chusuk, at least in my mind, has a distinctively Korean quality to it. so i sat mindlessly in front of my computer on a Sunday night, wondering if it was really necessary to have crunched numbers on Bloomberg on a beautifully sunny day. i receive an IM from Jeff Hsieh, my Chinese buddy who currently dates a Korean girl, and he asks me if I had done anything for Chusuk. doh! i looked up at the clock and it was still 10:30pm. i suddenly had a craving for song pyun and maybe some dduk guk. i was ready to just go to k-town solo and satisfy myself before i realized that company would enhance the experience. speaking of company, i asked my “Lehman Bro” (oh man, looks even cornier when written) Brandon if he would join me. he surprisingly said yes and trekked all the way from the financial district to meet me at Kunjip for a late late meal. as i waited for him on 32nd Street, i called up my dad, whom i hadn’t spoken to in a long time, and let him know about my craving and my late trip. he reminded me to ask for song pyun and seemed to love that i was still korean, unlike my sister who probably doesn’t even know what Chusuk is (haha, big mo).

inside, i ordered dduk guk as planned and Brandon ordered dwen jang jigae. we also had two rounds of OB beer, the ultimate complement to a Korean meal, in my opinion. i also asked the waitress if they had song pyun and she said she would check for me. she returned and gave us four pieces. during the meal i realized i missed my family and wished i could’ve been at home eating with them. at the same time, it was nice sitting with a co-employee (we work in different departments) chatting about our company’s success, our crappy hours, and whether or not we would look shady if we went to a college party this coming Thursday night. those few minutes of heavy breathing after the bowls have reached bottom and only one or two gulps remain in the glass of beer – and yet, you still find yourself picking at some random piece of banchan – i think it’s a Korean moment that has never ceased to make me feel both happy and proud. our waitress also gave us each a small cup of shikhae, a sweet traditional Korean drink, which seemed to clinch the deal for me.

when i returned to the apartment, i told Warren about how i realized it was “Korean Thanksgiving” and rushed to K-town for food. “You mean, Chinese Thanksgiving,” he said. moon cakes? no thanks.

***

one side note. i went to Boston (Cambridge, rather) this weekend to visit Jina, and it was a great time. i’m actually thinking about making a mini-website using the photos i took on the trip since i seem to like doing that with all my Boston visits (winter 2002, summer 2002, 2003, 2004). thanks to Jina for a wonderful weekend – i really loved the coffeeshop Finale, Little Italy, and Baker Library. and the showers in her dorm reminded me of Wien’s awesome pressure showers, the ones that sting when you first get hit with water.