Anya's Musings

No title because I can't think of any. First of all, apologies to any who bother to read my blog to know more about any K-dramas...I had said I'd review 4 last month and only got around to doing so with just 3. I have my reasons: I was (and still am) watching two K-dramas these days at not-lightening-speed and was also watching (and finished) watching the very very awesome Game of Thrones. Also, I've been catching up on a lot of reading. And films. Oh, films. I swear this June was the first time I entered a movie theater after almost a year & I succeeded in embarrassing my friend by acting like a country bumpkin. Ah, well.

In other news, it is annoyingly humid in Delhi. Don't get me wrong...I like rains. It's the non-raining, humid, making your hair frizzy beyond belief and dehydrating you till you drop climate that I abhor. When will this end?!?

Apart from the struggle with the weather, there is nothing going on really. Unless you count my endless love with food. I have been eating SO much, as is obvious with my present cover picture on my blog. That's pretty much all. Hopefully I'll return to my blog soon. ^^

 Show: Flower Boy Ramyun Shop
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Lead Actors: Lee Chung Ah, Jung Il Woo and Lee Ki Woo

 Note: I do not own any of the pictures in this post.
It's time for another adorable, immensely cute and one of the funnest watches in the K-drama land. I will begin by saying that I absolutely loved watching Flower Boy Ramyun Shop. I'm telling ya, if you're at all the romantic-comedy types, watch this show without any further delay. And it'll make you laugh your head off. Before watching this show, I was just a wee bit hesistant because out of three leads in this show, I had only seen the work of Lee Ki Woo (and I had loved him). But Jung Il Woo and Lee Chung Ah were new to me. Of course, now two years later I have promptly fallen in love with all three of them and have since then watched everything with Jung Il Woo in it! :D
 So anyways, this particular show goes by multiple names like Flower Boy Ramyun Shop, Flower Boy Ramen Shop, Cool guys, hot ramen and 꽃미남 라면가게. It is a 2011 series with a total of 16 amazingly funny episodes, each one hour long. And here is the plot without giving away too much:

Yang Eun Bi
(played by Lee Chung Ah) is a 25 year old who is preparing for her civil services exam that will qualify her to become a high school teacher. That's all she wants: to have a steady goverment job, with steady goverment salary and eat rice. Her mom had died when she was just a child & now she is kinda estranged from her dad because he wanted her to take over his ramyun ("ramyun" is "ramen" in Korean) shop. It is said throughout the series that she used to be an amazing volleyball player in her high school days and had quite the temper. We see glimpses of the temper which Eun Bi tries to hold back because she has to make it big and secure in the demanding adult world.

Eun Bi and Dong Joo.

Her best friend, junior and roommate, Dong Joo, is the anti-thesis of Eun Bi. She is a year younger than our dear Eun Bi but is already a high school teacher at one of the best high schools in the country and has men falling at her feet. Eun Bi...not so much. Eun Bi has a boyfriend who doesn't respond as much to Eun Bi.

That aside, there is the very, very, very handsome (& aware of it) Cha Chi Soo (played by Jung Il Woo)
who is the sole heir to the Cha Industries. Incredibly charming and incredibly charming, he knows how to flirt and charm around anything...to the extent that he can even charm his way around his dad. Chi Soo is a high school student, in his final year who has just returned from USA.
 I was a bit worried that Cha Chi Soo might just be yet another Gu Jun Pyo but happily, he is not. Admittedly, they're both handsome and both very rich and both very aware of it...but Chi Soo is more of a flirt. Which I adore! Oh and the one million adorable facial expressions of Jung Il Woo = *swoon*
So anyways, Eun Bi and Chi Soo have a few random encounters that can only be so meangingful and funny in a good rom-com and Eun Bi end up thinking that Chi Soo is 6 years older than she is. There is a reason behind this: seeing Chi Soo so self-assured & suave, she asks him his zodiac sign (which is the Chinese zodiac, depending on the year of one's birth), and he tells her that he's a rooster. Now, Eun Bi is a rabbit which means, as per her calculations, that Chi Soo is either 6 years older or younger than her. It doesn't even occur to her that someone that much in control and self-possessed can be just a 19 year old high school kid. And then there is her shock that he looks very baby faced, assuming that he is 31!
As fate would have it, Eun Bi ends up calling Chi Soo "Oppa" in an attempt to flirt and asks him out, something he shamelessly laughs at...and the very same day she realises that the school she is interning at is (a) the school that Chi Soo is a student of, and (b) the school that the Cha empire owns.

Anyways, more confusions and hilarity later, Eun Bi's father dies, leaving her the ramyun shop (she has lost her job as the intern and is sad that there goes her chance of eating rice and has to, instead, do with ramyun). There she meets a half Korean-half Japanese & very, very, very handsome prodigy of her late dad's, the rooster who is 31 years old...Choi Kang Hyuk (played by Lee Ki Woo) who lives with her as her roommate above the ramyun shop and for some insane reason, takes care of her and insists on calling her his wife. 


More plot twists later, Eun Bi, Kang Hyuk, Chi Soo and two other guys open up and work in the ramyun shop and behave like a family. Of course.
Then we have both Chi Soo and Kang Hyuk fighting over Eun Bi. And that's when I want to be Eun Bi!


More reason to be super jealous of Eun Bi...
*distracted*

Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is a hilarious show! I love how it takes a cliched plot lines, using them and making it into something mindbogglingly funny.

I adore the part where Chi Soo, the I've-got-it-all prince that he is, is stuck in a railway platform without his cell phone or cash or warm clothes, in his pajamas (don't ask), shivering in cold where he starts asking a little girl for money who in turn wounds his pride by asking him if he's a beggar.
In the end, out of kindness, the little girl donates her Pororo blanket to him. I love how this Pororo blanket becomes a symbol of comfort and protection later on in the show to Chi Soo to the extent that his dad becomes jealous of Chi Soo's growing affection for the animated penguin!!

I won't say anything more in case I blurt out the entire story line before you watch it. But I'm telling you, if you're into food and romantic-comedies and two very hot men, do watch this show. Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is a yummylicious show!

My ratings for Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is a 9/10. Yes, this show is that funny.
Other K-drama reviews by me:

• Coffee Prince
• Boys Over Flowers
• Dae Jang Geum
• Full House
• Personal Taste
• Playful Kiss
• My Girlfriend is a Gumiho
• Queen In Hyun's Man

My review on the Korean film I love with Lee Ki Woo in it: The Classic.

 Note: I do not own any of the pictures posted on this post.


I promised at least 4 K-drama review before June end and I shall do it, even if it has me reaching out to bag of chips and brewing coffee in the ungodly hours of late night. My previous review, actually, all of my perious reviews of any K-drama has been from the romantic-comedy genre, a genre which may or may not appeal to many. They do, however, make other genres in television shows in Korea and I do watch them. So here is one.

Dae Jang Geum is perhaps the first Korean drama that I have ever watched. It is an extremely popular show, has been aired in India dubbed into Hindi in Doordarshan as Ghar ka Chirag (in fact, it was this Hindi version that my mother had introduced me to...somebody had told us it was a Japanese show but then I googled it and watched the dubbed version with subtitles and discovered that it is very much Korean...and then I got hooked to watching K-dramas), in fact I remember seeing a version dubbed in Oriya as well. You'll find this show under many names like Dae Jang Geum, The Great Jang Geum, The Jewel in the Palace, 대장금 and so on.

This is a historical drama with political intrigue. I won't even attempt to go into the entire plot detail simply because it is so intricately woven and also because I don't wish to spoil the mystery for you. But I shall give you the basics...however, before I venture on to that, I should perhaps give you an extremely rough sketch of the Korean history. Now, I am just summarizing in my own breezy manner so don't go around the world quoting me. I am simply giving the jist, please feel free to Google the rest. During the reign of Joseon Dynasty (which should be around the 15th century) in Korea, was the King Seongjong who had ordered his already exiled wife Queen Jeheon (also known as Deposed Lady Queen Yun), mother of the Crowned Prince, drink poison and die. This he had done because apparently the Queen was very much the rebel, highly jealous of the King's concubines and had even scratch the King's face. The Crowned Prince, unaware of the punishment his mother was made to go through grows up believing himself to be the son of his father's next wife until one day, after his father's death, he takes over the throne and becomes King Yeonsangun. After he becomes king, he learnt the truth about his mother and well, pretty much "lost it" as they say these days. He was so disturbed after learning about how and why his mother died, that he had ordered to kill anyone who had anything at all to do with his mother's death, becoming perhaps the worst tyrant in the history of Korea. Now, Jang Guem was the first and only female Royal Physician during the Joseon Era. 

The story of this TV show begins with some royal gaurds getting and carrying out the king's orders to poison the Deposed Queen Lady Yun, after which she curses them all. Shortly afterwards, one of the royal gaurds, Seo Cheon Soo runs into a mysterious monk who predicts that three women will surround his life: one who he will be forced to kill, one who he will save and one who will the cause of his death. Sure enough, he realises (and so do we) that the prophecy has already started coming true. He had been forced to kill the Deposed Queen. He later on rescues, falls in love with and marries a gungnyeo who has fled the palce after an attempt on her life has been made (because she accidentally stumbled upon the workings of some dirty palace politics). They both live away from the village, keeping their identities a secret until one day their little daughter, Jang Geum (played by Lee Young Ae as the adult Jang Geum and Jo Jung Eun as the child Jang Geum)lets slip their true identity, causing the death of her parents. 

Thus begins the struggle of Jang Geum to make ends meet in the world. She becomes a gungnyeo like her late mother and works in the kicten. As time goes by, she becomes the Royal Physician, enraging many. That's all I am going to reveal of the story. I will tell you though that this show is an exciting one to watch. 

Dae Jang Geum first introduced me to the world of Korean food.

Since Jang Geum is a Palace Woman/Gungnyeo who works in the royal kitchen, a lot of yummy looking food is shown. In fact, I remember watching a documentary once on Korean food that credited Dae Jang Geum for promoting the Korean royal court cuisine in the rest of the world in today's age.

Watch this show if you are at all interested in historical dramas and narratives about the political power play. I really enjoyed this show.

My other K-drama reviews include:

• Boys Over Flowers
• Coffee Prince
• Playful Kiss
• Full House
• Personal Taste 
• Flower Boy Ramyun Shop
• My Girlfriend is a Gumiho  
• Queen In Hyun's Man