On Sunday, July 15th, 2007 my good friend Carl Sable married the beautiful Cha-Eun Koo in New Jersey.
While I was a grad students at Columbia University, one of my first and best friends I made there was Carl Sable. I think the story about how we met is completely indicative of Carl’s character. I went to one of the first classes that I had to take entering the Master’s program in Computer Science, and I saw a guy wearing a Hoagie Haven T-shirt. Since I grew up in the Princeton area, I knew about Hoagie Haven and knew that I had to talk to this guy.
I went over and sat down next to Carl, and we struck up a conversation since the T-shirt made an easy introductory topic. Prior to coming to class, I had (for some reason) been thinking about palindromes. We started talking about those, and Carl let me know that he’s been making palindromes since he was a kid, and had a great one with: “We? I vote cinema! ME! Nice to view!” Of course, it takes some explanation, but is completely understandable. Carl loves movies. In a hypothetical situation where a group of people are talking about what to do, Carl might suggest to go see a movie, which is quickly vetoed by everyone else. After lots of arguing about what to do, someone else suggests a movie and everyone agrees to it. Then Carl is mad, and utters his palindrome.I was really impressed and even more so when I told Carl that I had been thinking that it must be possible to make some sort of palindrome with “flog” and “golf”, but hadn’t come up with anything. Carl almost instantly responded with “Re-flog a golfer”. Since then, we’ve been great friends.
So when I heard that Carl was getting married, I made sure that I could make it out there for the wedding. The timing worked well, since it followed a business trip to Italy (which I’ll hopefully write something about soon) and I was able to swing by Dallas to see my family for a few days as well.
I am very happy for Carl and Cha-Eun. I’m not positive, but I think that the first time that Carl and Cha-Eun met was when I invited Cha-Eun, a friend of mine through our mutual friend Lena Park, and Carl to a Bishop Allen and We Are Scientists
concert at CBGB’s. I’m not sure that this is correct though – I could just be misremembering horribly. I’ll have to ask Carl about that actually.
Anyway, it was a beautiful wedding, with great friends, great food (and too much of it!) and interesting music. One of the (controversial) highlights was when Carl and Cha-Eun walked into the ballroom after the reception. The music was the theme song from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. Sounds strange, but it totally worked.
The ceremony was non-denominational, outside, and very brief. I was really impressed with how to-the-point the ceremony was. Cha-Eun’s grandmother dressed in a Hanbok, the traditional Korean formal dress, while the rest of the party was in western formal clothes. There wasn’t a very strong influence of Jewish or Korean customs, but some of each around the edges which was quite nice. I particularly liked how at the reception we sang and danced the traditional Hava Nagila song, and also raised the Bride, Groom, and their parents in chairs. Everyone seemed to enjoy the dancing and food after the wedding.
The one complaint that I would have is that, when I think back to Dave Han’s wedding in Korea, one of the points that most stood out was when Dave Han bowed to Jiseon’s parents, he got down on the ground and put his head to the floor. A full out kow-tow. When Carl bowed to Cha-Eun’s parents, it was only a very small head and upper body bow! (Of course, I’m mostly joking Carl, I love you!)
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