Rendez-Vous

She may not need an introduction for some of you, but if you don't know her, allow me to introduce you to Tania Vogel. Tania and I worked together at Bearbrook pool last summer and together we combined to offer the highest quality socials to the staff (not like those pathetic little events that the Dream Team would come up with). Tania is an avid traveler and after having toured around Asia with her family she stopped by in Seoul for a few weeks to stay with one of her best friends, Natasja Mackwood (who I'd only met briefly at a party last summer) who is teaching English in Seoul. When we found out that we would both be in Seoul at the same time we made sure that we would meet up at least once.

Tania sent me a message when she arrived in Seoul and we planned on meeting Saturday (the day after the last day of Kookmin's festival). She was going to be out with Natasja for a friend's birthday and I was to meet up with them after their dinner. I was to meet them at 10pm outside of Carne Station, a restaurant in Myeong-dong, a popular shopping district with a great night life. 10pm is a little late for me to be going out, but I had already decided that I would not be back by midnight and that I would either get the demerit points or I would sleep in the lab.

By the way, I've ruled out trying to sneak back into rez after midnight. This is what they do to the doors at night, I wonder what to do in case of a fire...
-Regular electric lock
-Chain with a padlock
-Wooden bar

Now back to my night out. I had received directions to the restaurant from Natasja:

Exit #7 at Myeong-dong station. Check.
Walk down the street with the CK store. Check.
Turn right onto the street when your street ends. Check.
The restaurant is in the basement of a building on the right hand side of the street. Hmm.
Maybe it's further down the street.
Maybe just a little further.
A little further?
Ok, this street is getting a little sketchy, there are no more lights.
I think I've gone too far.

I'm now late, so I went into the first metro stop I found and used a pay phone. I didn't have any change with me but I wasn't worried, I had my T-money card. T-money cards are great, you put money on it and you can use it to take the bus or the metro, you can use it with pay phones, vending machines and even in convenience stores. The phones that I found in the metro had the T-money logo on them, so I took the phone off of the receiver and slid my card into the slot. "Wrong Card." I flip the card over. "Wrong Card." I was confused, why was the phone not accepting my card? I tried another phone. "Wrong Card," it told me again. I tried two other phones but they wouldn't take my card either. Since I couldn't get a phone to work, I decided to retrace my steps and try and find the restaurant and hope that Tania was still there.

I was almost back to the street with the CK store when I saw a group of foreigners standing around. Unfortunately neither Tania or Natasja were with them. I asked them if they knew where Carne Station was. They said that it was in the building that we were standing in front of, but that the restaurant closed at 10. I thanked them for their help and walked towards Myeong-dong to look for another pay-phone. I found a bunch of phone booths and tried each phone and not a single one would take my card. After I slammed down the phone and exited the last booth I saw the same group of foreigners. They asked me if I was able to get in touch with my friend. I told them how I could not get a pay phone to work, so one of the guys offered to let me use his cell phone.

I called Natasja and asked for Tania. Unfortunately, Natasja and Tania were heading home because Tania was feeling sick. Apparently Carne Station is an all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink restaurant for only $25. The catch is that you can only be there for 2 hours. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself and I guess Tania took full advantaged and payed the price after.

I was disappointed that I came all the way to Myeong-dong and wouldn't see Tania as I handed the phone back to the guy, but I was more curious by the people around me at the moment. I got a few strange looks as I said hello to Natasja and asked to speak with Tania. Ends up I was in the company of Natasja's friends. They had just left the restaurant when I first ran into them and I just missed Tania. They knew that Tania was waiting for a friend so they invited me to join them for the rest of the night. They were heading to Daehango. I declined their invitation though. It was getting late and I decided to get home before they shackled the doors. I didn't want to use up my demerits if Tania wasn't there.

I did meet up with Tania in the end though. We had lunch on Tuesday. I took her to the Tak Kalbi place in Daehagno. It is still by far my favourite Korean food. It was really nice to talk with Tania because it was the first time in a while that I could talk like a normal person. I have to be careful to talk slowly and to keep my sentences as basic as possible when I speak to Koreans. At times I catch myself talking like them and I slap myself. It's one thing to speak in sentences that are stripped to the bone, its another to start talking in fragments, and I'm certainly not doing them any favours by talking like that.

Ok. I finished. We talk later.

Festival

I showed up in Seoul at the perfect time of year. The weather is perfect (25C pretty much every day), its not too humid yet, and Kookmin was having its annual end-of-the-year festival. This was only my second week at work (May 26-30), and while I had already met many people, the first few days of the festival allowed me to meet many more.

The spring term at Kookmin ends mid-July (they then get 2 months off before school starts again in Septembre). Every year the university has a big festival before the end of classes. Its a little like OAP, just much bigger. During the day there were many activities on campus, including a basketball tournament. Unfortunately I was in the lab all day and couldn't participate much. On Tuesday and Wednesday evening the entire campus turned into an open air pub. Each faculty had its own little areas set up outside of their respective buildings. After work, I would head outside and hang out until midnight and have a few beers with all of the engineers, all the while trying to avoid the soju as much as possible. It felt a lot like OAP except that you could actually find a place to sit and you didn't have to stand in line to get a beer, it was brought to you. It was the perfect opportunity to meet new people and use my rock star appeal. Being a foreigner really paid off as I didn't pay for any food or drinks either night as I wandered from table to table as people introduced me around. Then again, I don't think I ever saw anyone pay for drinks, I'm not quite sure how that worked.

I was particularly looking forward to Thursday evening, the night of the concert. I had seen the posters for the concert all over campus the previous week. Koreans tend to add the set list to concert posters (I've seen this for a couple of different shows) which really got me interested. The set included such classics as Come Out and Play, The Kids Aren't Alright, Tick Tick Boom, Sweet Child O' Mine, Hysteria and Stockholm Syndrome. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to see Koreans trying to cover The Offspring let alone giving Muse a go.

I left work just be for 5 and headed up to the concert. The stage was set up on the lawn in front of Bugak Hall, the main building on campus, or at least the most imposing building. I arrived just as the first band was finishing up their sound check. As I was heads and shoulders above everybody else, I got myself a nice spot in the back facing the middle of the stage. There weren't many people at the show yet so I was only about 10 meters from the stage. The first band steps up to the mic: Let the show begin!

"Sit down? Are they asking us to sit down?" I don't ever think I'll ever go to another concert where the band asks the crowd to sit down before diving in to Come Out and Play by The Offspring.

The first band had spunk, I'll give them that, but both their English and playing needed a little polish. This is their first song: Come Ourra Pway
(Not offensive because that is how they talk in movies*)

Don't worry if you didn't catch most of the words, they weren't all there. The singer only really knew the more memorable lines. The end result was more ARHGHRAHRH ARHHFHARHA ARHA ARH come out and play!

As I said before, what this group lacked in skill and elocution they made up for in spunk. This was most evident in their closing song Tick Tick Boom by the Hives. Now if you don't know who the hives are you only need to know that their lyrics move quite quickly. This was not an ideal song for these guys, but they sure got the screaming down.

The second band was much stronger then the first and only sang Korean songs. The third band was stronger again, as the quality of the show slowly improved. The third band was certainly one of the most entertaining bands as the lead singer jumped around stage, did power slides and all of the other standard rock and roll moves. His credibility did take a hit when his moves resulted in him hitting the stage unexpectedly and missing a few lines, but it was entertaining. Also, notice the sweet behind the back action of the lead guitarist and the rhythm guitarist's sick power stance. Rock On!

Two bands played Muse. The first one performed Hysteria, a rather forgettable experience which I did not record. The second band played Stockholm Syndrome and did a pretty good job of it (it takes a fair bit of talent to play a Muse song half decent). I got a big kick out of seeing these Korean guys play Muse. Few people in Canada know about them, but I've been told that they are very popular in Korea and Japan.

As the show progressed, I realised that it was just a collection of local amateur. It started to remind me of Sam-En-Scène, except with more music and more talent, plus everyone was Korean. The Sam-En-Scène comparisons really hit home after the beatboxer and hip-hop dance routines. The show also had a really good acapella group, an amazing singer who sang some Sinatra classics. Of course, a talent show wouldn't be complete with out Sweet Child O' Mine.

Just as it was starting to get dark a band came on stage and the singer asked us all to stand up! Everyone rushed the stage (I was afraid I would get trampled) and the band started playing. These guys were pretty good. I thought that they were the closing act, maybe some local professional band.

They were pretty good, the singer was a lot of fun and they crowd really got into it. It was a good end to the concert.

Wait. What's this? Another band? O.K. These guys seem to be pretty big, the girls are screaming. Hold on a sec, the guys are screaming too? These guys are best described as pretty-boy-pop-rock (though the guitarist did have a nice PRS). Here they are playing the famous Korean rock anthem: #1.

I thought for sure the show was finished when these guys left the stage, it was dark and the show had already lasted at least 3 hours. I was wrong, again. After these guys came another band, and another, and another. I can't really remember exactly how many, but they all seem to be pretty popular. One band in particular came out dressed in what I can only compare to those fluorescent coloured track suits that we used to wear in the 90's. The best way to describe their music is korean-indie-funk-pop-rock-rap-fusion. They were a lot of fun (I regret not taking any pictures or video of them) and I'm about 85% certain that their band's name was Napoleon Dynamite. I'm not 100% certain of it, because I never learned the names of any of the other groups, but they kept repeating "Napoleon Dynamite" in their set without any obvious reference to the movie, leading me to believe that that was in fact their name, which is awesome.

At various points during the concert, in between sets, an older, more professional looking guy would talk to the crowd. I can only assume that he was some kind of representative from the university, but my main problem with the guy is that every time he came on stage he would make everyone move away from the stage and spread out so that we could sit down to listen to him. This would always take a couple of minutes as there was close to 2000 people at the show, and after his 45 second talk another band would come on stage and every one would get back up and rush back to the stage. Each time this happened I found myself further from the stage and from the centre. It didn't bother me too much since I could easily see over the heads of everyone in front of me.

The older guy wasn't all bad though, he did throw out glow-sticks to almost everyone in the crowd just before my favourite act.

On doit changer de langue pour présenter mon groupe préféré de la soirée. Encore une fois j’ai de la difficulté à définir un genre pour ce group. Leur style se rapproche du rap, mais avec un style coréen. La meilleure façon de décrire ce group est qu’ils sont le fun. La raison pourquoi j’écrie en français et le moment saillant du concert se trouve ci-dessous.

Entendre la chanson des Stroumpfs à l’autre bout du monde est l’un des meilleurs moments de mon voyage. Je n’aurai jamais imaginée que la b-d de Peyo serait reconnue par des milliers de coréens.

La prochaine vidéo est le dernier numéro du groupe et le dernier numéro que j’ai assisté. Après c’est gars c’était un rapper qui a pris la scène. J’ai trouvé qu’il essayait d’être trop américain et il était tard, alors je suis retourné chez moi.

Friday night was the last night of the festival. The open air pub was only on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were concert nights. I had enjoyed the concert the previous night but the Friday night concert was headlined by a famous Korean rapper. Most of the people I talked to were very excited that DJ Doc was coming. I saw a few of his videos on YouTube and decided to pass on the concert.

In the end my opinion of DJ Doc would be inconsequential when Kwan Woo, another student from Han's lab on the first floor, told me that we were going out to dinner and then to a bar with his cousin that night. I was supposed to meet Kwan's cousin the previous Saturday but all the new Korean germs decided to have a field day with my western immune system.

We met Kwan's cousin, Jin, at Daehango and then had supper at Bennigan's. We had a really, really good steak and even though it was a western restaurant, we ordered once for the whole group. By one order I mean that there was 1 salad, 1 plate of fries and 1 steak and we all ate off of the same plate. It was very interesting. I wasn't about to complain though, the steak gave a much needed boost to my struggling taste buds (more on Korean food at a later date).

Jin and I both had a beer with dinner, but Kwan only had a lemonade. I was beginning to get suspicious of Kwan's motives. Finally I asked Kwan why he didn't have a beer and he told me that he had to go back to work after dinner (it's almost 8pm on a Friday night). After dinner we wandered around looking for a bar and I was able to convince Kwan to come in for one beer. After his second beer, we left the bar and Kwan bid us adieu as he had to return to the lab (these people would keep working through a nuclear holocaust).

"Feels a lot like a blind date eh?" Jin asked me after Kwan had left. "I think so." I replied. (Jin didn't actually say "eh?", but I have no idea how else to finish that sentence.) We wandered down the street to find another bar, and that was when I discovered one of the strangest things I have ever seen.

The picture you see here is an alcohol kiosk. A little stand on the sidewalk which sells mixed drinks in plastic bags. I know. So you walk up to this place and ask for, say, a Bailey's and milk, the guy mixes it for you, sticks a straw in it, seals the bag and then you're set to stroll the streets with your drink. I know. You can drink anywhere in Seoul. You can buy a beer at a corner store and then sit at the tables out front and drink it (just don't even think about bringing back to rez though). You can wander the streets with a drink if you so please. I had a huge smile on my face as I walked through Seoul with my Bailey's and milk wondering what would happen if I did this in Montréal. Jin told me that they also set up bars on the sidewalk at night. I thought she meant that the bars had patios, but in fact these places are little tents that are set up on the sidewalk which serve food, beer and soju.

We spent the rest of the night in a proper bar with walls and a roof. We had a great time. Jin has traveled all over Europe and Germany in particular so we spent a lot of time talking about Europe and other countries and cultures. She also described her musical preferences as jazz, bossa nova and the blues, more fodder for conversation. And as always I was back in my room by midnight.

You can check out the rest of my pictures from the festival here.

*A quote from The Office, thus not offensive...again.

Insa-Dong

I met up with Han around noon on the Sunday (the 25th of May) and

we took the bus to Insa-Dong. Insa-Dong is a market that sells traditional Korean art and has many little shops and cafes. We met Sara and Cindy (a graduate student from Han's lab) at a restaurant where we had a cold noodle soup with clams. Not my favourite meal so far.

After lunch we walked around Insa-Dong which is a pedestrian street, a little like Spark's Street. There were many little shops and street merchants, buskers and a parade. The parade was interesting as everyone was dressed up in traditional Korean clothes and beating Korean drums.

We stopped to watch a busker for a few minutes, I had trouble following the act though. The guy was dressed up as a woman and was talking in a high pitched voice and was handing out some type of toffee. So your guess is as good as mine.

The street was full of activity, many of the street vendors were quite interactive, giving demonstrations or little performances to sell their wares. One little shop sold Korean sweets which are made of an almond-paste core wrapped in what I can only describe as silk honey. They started off with a solid chunk of honey into which they worked a small hole and then stretched it into a loop. They then folded the loop in two, making two loops. They then stretched the two loops and folded them to make four loops, then eight, then sixteen... They must have repeated this about 15 times (2^15=32768) until he hand a hole armful of fine strands of honey. All the while, the 6 guys behind the counter had a whole routine worked out where they would count the number of loops and make jokes throughout. It was really entertaining. We bought a box of the almond sweets and they were quite good.

Another vendor was selling rice cakes. As with most things in Insa-Dong, the cakes were prepared in the traditional fashion. The traditional way being a man beating the (insert expression of choice here) out of the rice with a giant mallet. My friends wanted me to have a go, so they asked the guy to let me try. I went up and grabbed the mallet as the guy showed me where to hit. I lifted the giant thing over my head (if you think the thing looks heavy, its heavier) and I closed my eyes, prayed that I would hit the target and swung down with all of my might. CRACK! The sound of the mallet hitting the rice paste was deafening. I was quite proud of the sound. I took the mallet up again to try and improve on the effort and to show the Koreans what Canadian strength is all about. Unfortunately I must have gotten a little cocky as the mallet didn't come down perfectly square and it just bounced off of the paste with an emasculating 'thud'. And thus ended my rice pounding career.

Just wandering around Insa-Dong was quite pleasant, we got to see a lot of Korean art and food. I'll certainly be returning at the end of the summer to pick up a few souvenirs before I leave Korea. Cindy left us around 3pm as she had to prepare for an interview on Monday.

When Cindy left had reached the end of the market. Han, Sara and myself decided to visit Changdeokgung Palace which was a 10 minute walk from Insa-Dong.

Changdeokgung Palace (also known as the East Palace) in one of the 5 royal palaces built in Seoul. The palace was completed in 1412 and occupies over 500 000 square meters of land. It was not the main Palace of the Korean Emperors, except for a period in the 18-19 century during which time the main palace was rebuilt following a Japanese invasion. I'll spare you the rest of the history of the palace. Check out Wikipedia for more information.

You have to visit the palace with a tour guide, you can't just wander around at your leisure. Unfortunately, there were no more English tours when we arrived so we took a Korean tour instead. It wasn't terrible as Sara was able to translate the most important aspects, but I still feel like I missed out on a lot of interesting things.

The palace itself was nice but I wasn't all that impressed. The buildings were interesting but not terribly ornate or impressive. The court yards were large, but again not all that impressive. After having visited large European palaces like Versaille and Shönbrunn and castles like Neuschwanstein, I was certainly underwhelmed. We couldn't go inside the buildings, we were forced to cram around the windows to see into the King's bedroom or the throne room.

The throne room was quite interesting though. In the video above, the throne room is the large building that I am facing at the beginning of the video. The room had beautiful wood working and beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings. The throne was also identical to the one I saw at the National Museum of Korea. I had already snapped a few pictures of the throne room when Sara relayed to me that the painting behind the throne is the same image that is found on the 10 000 won bill. I took my camera out again to take a closer picture but it wouldn't turn on. I was terrified that I had already broken my new camera. Ends up the battery was just dead... 10 minutes into the 2 hour tour. Turns out plugging the camera into my computer doesn't charge the battery. "Lesson learned," thought the fool.

It really is unfortunate that my camera died because as unimpressive as the palace buildings may have been, the gardens were absolutely amazing. Changdeokgung is famous because it was not built like Versaille, in its symmetrical and artificial beauty, rather, it was built to be in harmony with its natural surroundings. I almost felt like I was at the cottage as we walked through the trees on the dirt path. The gardens are certainly a highlight of my trip so far. My favourite place in the gardens was a square pool with a circular island slightly off-centre. The pool represented the sky, and the island, the earth. The pool was set at the bottom of the hill and in front of the royal library. It just felt like the perfect place to relax and read a book in the shade on a summer afternoon.

After we finished visiting the palace we were pretty tired. We then had to choose what to do before dinner. We had two options, go to a traditional tea house in Insa-Dong or go see the new Indiana Jones movie in Daehangno (we had talked about it the night before). I wanted to see the movie, but I also thought it would be a good to experience more Korean culture. None of us could really decide what to do, so I flipped a coin. Heads: Indiana Jones. Tails: Tea House. I caught the coin...Heads.

The movie experience is the same as in Canada, except for the Korean subtitles and the assigned seating. Oh and the chairs were built for Koreans, which meant that I had to sit with my knees up by my ears. The movie was a lot of fun, but I left the theater feeling conflicted, if you've seen the movie you probably know what I'm talking about. It was fun, but the story left you feeling...

After the movie we went out for supper. We had Tak Kalbi, which is like a chicken stir fry at your table with rice noodles and vegetables. After you've cleaned up most of the chicken and noodles they bring out some rice and they stir that in with the leftovers. It is by far my favourite food in Korea. And they use CHEESE. I was so happy when I saw the little bowl of grated yellow goodness. Korean's don't use cheese quite enough.

After supper we made our way back to the dormitory and that was that.

You can see the rest of my pictures from Daehangno and Insa-Dong here.

Week 2

My second week in Korea and my first at work was uneventful after my Basketball experiment on the Tuesday night. The rest of the week consisted mainly of reading scientific journals and meeting and chatting with people from the department. I got to visit a bunch of labs and see some of the really cool stuff that is going on here like flexible polymeric memory devices, organic LEDs, quantum dots, nanotubes and other cool stuff.

Friday after work Doo-Man Han (I just call him Mr. Han), a friend from the lab and the one who talked me into the basketball game invited me out to meet his friend. We went to Daehangno, a very trendy strip with many restaurants and bars that is very popular with students. While we were waiting for Han's friend to arrive we wandered into a park from which this melodious sound was emanating.

Yes, it was a Korean rapper. This guy was tough, his sound guy was eating a doughnut on a stool beside the mixer, it was intense. There's some culture for you.

Daehangno has many foreign restaurants and we stopped in at the Krispy Kreame shop to wait for Sara, Han's friend. When Sara arrived we headed over to California, a restaurant/bar that is painfully decorated with amricana. By this I mean that most walls had a picture of Marilyn Monroe or Bruce Springsteen. I guess they thought I would feel at home. I had told Han on my birthday that next time we were out I would show him an Irish Car Bomb. The bar was decently stocked and had both Baileys and Guinness but no Jameson. I didn't want disappoint Han so I decided to swap the Irish Whiskey for, fittingly, Canadian Whiskey. I guess it wasn't a true Irish Car Bomb maybe a Fenian Car Bomb is better. Convincing the bartender to make the drink was enough trouble as I had to point out which glasses to use and how much of each alcohol to use.

Han had never done anything like this, even the dropping of the shot glass into the tumbler was foreign. Once I made sure that the instructions had been properly translated (mostly thanks to Saram who's English is much stronger then Han's) and on the count of three we downed the drink. Han was amazed, he had never had Irish Cream before and he loved it. He loved it enough to ask for another round anyways. We finished the night off with just Baileys on the rocks and I'm a little concerned that I may have introduced Han to the new and dangerous world of Canadian drinks. Before Han and I left to make it back by midnight we made plans to meet up again on Sunday to visit Insa-Dong, a traditional Korean market and a very popular tourist destination.

The Day After

Tuesday morning was pretty rough. I tried to find some magic juice but I could only find Gatorade in 250mL formats (stupid Korea). Fortunately most of my day consisted of reading articles so I never had to exert myself too much. The real problem started at 9pm, the time at which I had committed myself to a basketball game the previous day.

Basketball is huge here. "Do you like basketball?" is another question that I often get. I always respond that yes, I do like basketball. They then immediately assume that I'm a terrific player because I'm tall and from the West. At one point people talking about how I used to play for my high school team (not sure how that one started). I'm a decent basketball player but I haven't touched a ball since last summer and haven't played a real pick up game since high school, but these are Koreans, I have at least 6 inches on most people, how bad can it be?

Ends up they're pretty good and all I succeeded in doing was making a fool out of myself. I figured I'd just hang around the key and use my size, but these Koreans are bloody fast and they play dirty. At one point I had one guy standing behind me trying to take my knees out by pushing in on the back of mine with his. I did make a few baskets and my team lost both games by a single point, but for each basket I made either missed a shot or gave the ball away. It's been almost a month now, I haven't been asked to play again.

My Birthday

May 19th 2008 was quite a day. I turned both 21 and 22 years old. While I may be 21 in Canada, I'm 22 in Korea. Here they give you credit for the time spent in the womb. I wonder what the pro-choice groups have to say about that here.

The 19th was also my first day at work. I didn't know what time I was to start at so I showed up at 8am, but prof. Lee wasn't there. I wandered around a bit and came back at 8:15. Still not there. 8:30. Not there. 8:45 ... 9:00 ... 9:15 ... 9:30. Not there. I walked back to rez to check my e-mail in case there were instructions to be found there. Nope. I finally found him in his office at 10:30. Ends up most people start work at 10am.

First Prof. Lee showed me his lab. The place is pretty impressive. It's not very large, but has tons a really interesting equipment like sputtering and atomic layer deposition machines and a yellow room (a clean room). You have to get dressed up like spacemen to work in there. The second part of the lab has a couple of desks where prof. Lee's students work. There's Yong-Mu Kim, a graduate student (he picked me up at the airport) , Song..., an undergrad and myself. Neither one of them speak english very well so the first meeting was a little awkward, but they've improved a lot and we can at least function moderately effectively.

Next on the agenda was finding out what exactly I would be doing for the next 3 months. I was a little disappointed when prof. Lee told me that he didn't have anything planned for me and that I would be doing my own little research project. I was hoping to work with prof. Lee or at least be working on a project that would help with his research. He suggested I look into the synthesis of nanoparticles and come up with something to do with them for the summer.

I was also given a second task. English is very important in the Korean business community and proficiency in the language is a huge hurdle for many Koreans. Koreans start learning English in middle school and most continue taking classes well past their university years. However, most of their classes consist of listening to the teacher speak English and reading textbooks, very rarely do they get a chance to practice speaking the language. They have all of the knowledge, but no execution. Because of this, prof. Lee asked me to help his students with their English.

For this reason and because I'm the only foreigner in the department (everyone is Korean) I attracted so much attention that I felt like a local celebrity. For the first few weeks it was hard to get any work done because people were constantly dropping in to chat. I didn't mind this at all since I got to meet a lot of people very quickly and made me feel welcome in the department almost instantly.

It was fun listening to everyone because they seemed to ask the same questions:
-Do you like Korea?
-Do you like Korean food?
-What time did you go to bed at?
-How old are you?
-Do you have a girlfriend?

They seemed particularly interested in the time I went to bed and how old I was. Koreans work ridiculous hours (more on that later) which explains their interest in my sleep patterns and age is very important in Kroean culture. They need to know if you are older or younger then they are and there are conventions depending on who is older. For example, if you are at a restaurant it is tradition that the oldest person picks up the tab. Also, when addressing someone who is older then you, you add Hyung at the end of their name, or Nuna if it's a woman. Through all the questions about my age the word got around that it was my birthday.

I was starting to feel a little homesick because it was my birthday and I wasn't sure what I was going to do that evening. I had settled on getting a nice dinner and watching a movie in the dorm when Young-Mu brought me to the conference room downstairs. They had bought me a cake and they sang me happy birthday. Here were a bunch of strangers that I had only met once or twice that day and they all gathered around to wish me happy birthday (actually they say "congratulations" instead of "happy birthday" I haven't figured out why yet), it really speaks volumes about Koreans. They are the friendliest people on the planet. After eating the cake, with chopsticks, they took me out for a traditional Korean dinner.

We had Sangchussam which was described to me as a Korean barbecue. We all sat around a hot plate and cooked little strips of pork on a bunsen burner. We then took the pieces of meat and placed them on a leaf of lettuce with garlic and onions and other toppings. We then folded the lettuce over the food and ate it in one big bite. It was very good. The meal also featured lots of Soju. Now Soju is Korean liquor. It's only 19% alcohol, but that is all that it is. There's no flavour other then alcohol and it has no redeeming qualities other then the fact that it can make things begin to spin if consumed in large quantities. The did make me a bomb though, which is composed of soju placed on a shot of coke in a glass which is then filled with beer. It was ok but had nothing on an Irish Car Bomb which I tried in vain to describe to them.

After dinner we went out to a bar and then finished the night off at a little diner (which also served Soju). The night ended with me stumbling back home just before the midnight curfew and landing hard on my bed. I then had to get out of bed and stand, with everything slightly out of focus, for the room inspection before crashing back onto my bed.

Tuesday was going to be a rough day.

National Museum of Korea

The plan for my first Saturday in Seoul was to visit the War Memorial of Korea, but when I woke up Saturday morning it was raining. I knew that a large part of the Memorial was outside I quickly changed my plans and headed to the National Museum of Korea.

To get to the museum I had to take the metro. I got a map of the metro system from my roommate and directions on how to get to the closest metro station. Armed with only "Stay on the bus for about 20 minutes and get off at the first stop after the hairpin turn and the metro station is behind the buildings, through the alley," I got on a bus for the first time in Seoul. I took the 20 minute ride to Gireum station and exited at the first stop after what was a 270 degree turn. I felt moderately confident that I was at the right stop since most of the passengers were getting off. I then followed the throng of people through a street/parking lot and thankfully into the metro station.

The Seoul Metro system is massive and is used over 8 million times a day. The curious thing about the metro is that the fare depends on the distance traveled. Once I gave up trying to use the automated ticket machines in order to save what dignity I had left, I asked a teller for assistance. I finally got my ticket after he tried to send me Incheon (back to the airport) when I wanted to go to Ichon . Once I got on the metro there were no problems. All the station names are given in Hangul and English so navigating the system is just as easy as in Berlin, Vienna, Paris...

The national museum is a sprawling complex with a giant building surrounded by gardens. Since it was raining, I restricted my visit to the exhibition hall. The National Museum is similar to our Museum of Civilizations both and the building is fitting of such comparisons. The photo here shows the huge courtyard that divides the complex in two. To the right you have the grand hall (large circular room with the glass wall) and the permanent exhibitions and to the left you have the special exhibitions, the children's museum, gift shop, library and so on. The Museum of Civilizations is a great museum but it is dwarfed by the National Museum, through no fault of its own. The fact is that Canada only has around 400 years of recorded history. The Koreans have thousands. The exhibits seemed to flow without end, from period to period, kingdom to kingdom, age to age. I'll spare you the detailed visit but there were a few highlights.

The neolithic and paleolithic exhibits were very interesting and featured your standard tools, arrow heads and pottery. Once exhibit really caught my eye. I believe the title of the display was archeohumurous hoaxorius. What you see is a pile of flatish, roundish stones and the description marks them as having been used as net sinkers (click on the photo to enlarge). This is hard to swallow, the ones on the left maybe, but the pile on the right? Really? I wonder how they figured that one out...

"Damn it Frank! You lost the vase?"
"Take it easy George we'll figure this out."
"Take it easy? Are you trying to tell me that we camped out in the mountains for 3 months, nearly got shot by those Nazis, boiled to death by natives, not to mention this rash that hasn't gone away yet-"
"Put that away man, my daughter is on her way up."
"-and to think that the exhibit opens tomorrow. Tomorrow! You now that the board is just aching to punt us out of this museum as it is. If we don't fill that display case with something..."
"I said don't worry about it, I'll come up with something."
"You can't just sweet talk yourself out of this one Frank, this isn't Bangkok. This time-"
"Hi Daddy."
"Hi sweety. George cover that thing up. How was your day at school honey?"
"Good. I picked you a bouquet of rocks for your collection daddy."
"Oh thanks sweetheart. Wow, did you just pick the flattest and roundest rocks?"
"Mmhhm."
"Thank you so much. You know what sweety? I think I know a very special place for these rocks."
"Frank? I know that look. Frank? You wouldn't dare..."

Of course the world wouldn't be what it is today without its most important people. Materials Engineers. Fittingly, most of the museum* was dedicated to metallurgy and materials. The first of such exhibits was a collection of bronze casts from the early bronze age. Watch the instructional video for more information .

That's about it for me. If you want to see more of my pictures from the Museum you can see the whole album here.

*maybe a dozen items

First Few Days in Seoul

So here I am, in Seoul and the only person I've really met is my Russian roommate, Andre, and I have 4 days to get settled in. Fortunately, I didn't suffer from jet lag. I was up for over 24 hours but went to bed at 7pm, got a full night's sleep. I woke up the following day refreshed and didn't feel the effects of the time difference. I spent the first few days wandering around campus and the area surrounding the university.

Kookmin has a beautiful campus. It is on the edge of Seoul and backs onto the mountains and is covered in plants and trees giving it a very comfortable feel. The buildings are also very modern which gives the whole campus a very different feel then McGill with its old buildings and open fields.

Kookmin University is located in Seoungbuk-gu, a district in the northern part of Seoul. The area surrounding the university is primarily residential. The main streets are large with modern buildings but step off the main road and you find yourself in a very stereotypical asian atmosphere: little winding streets with small, old oriental buildings. I wandered into a little market one day and enjoyed walking around and seeing all of the fresh produce and fish. Well, not so much the fish, the smells were a little nauseating at times, but I was still fascinated at the varieties of fish that I had never seen before. The market also provided my first big culture shock as I tried to buy a little something to eat from an older lady and I realized that the language barrier here is much greater then elsewhere.

When in Germany or the Czech Republic, the languages were foreign but the sounds were similar which made communicating difficult but possible. Here that difficulty is accentuated by the large gap between Engilsh and Hangul (Korean language), the sounds are so different that I forget words and words that I learned a minute ago. Names are a big problem for me, I will forget someone's name shortly after they tell it to me despite my efforts to commit it to memory, but if they give me a western name I'll remember it when I see them days later.

Seoul is a very impressive city. The city proper is home to over 10 million people and over 23 million live in the metropolitan area. This is a major city. The first thing that struck me about Seoul, while driving in from the airport and while walking around, is the massive quantity of giant apartment complexes. Ottawa doesn't have anything that compares. In Montreal, imagine La Cité, but they're everywhere. My description of Seoul is to take La Cité and the McGill Ghetto and multiply it by a couple thousand, and then place the city in the Laurentians. The picture here doesn't really do the city justice, but it'll give you an idea.

Dormitory

I'd describe my year living in Upper Rez at McGill as a pleasant learning experience but not one that I would be eager to relive. I like having my own apartment, kitchen, living room, bathroom... thank you very much. I knew we had it good at McGill with our single rooms but I had no idea how good we had it. I'm in a four person room that is only twice as large as my old room at McGill. So if you can, imagine a single rez room. Now stick a second bed above the existing one, replace the shelves at the foot of the bed with a second desk, get rid of the dresser and divide the closet in two. Now mirror that image and you have my room. Fortunately we're only three in the room. It is still a lot for such a small place but it sure beats having four. They won't place foreigners with koreans (for a more extensive list of the dormitory's dos and don'ts keep reading) so I'm sharing the room with a Russian (Andre) and a Chinese. Andre is studying international relations and is here to learn Korean. He speaks English quite well so we talk quite a bit. The Chinese doesn't speak English and very little Korean so we don't talk with him much. He seems like a good guy and doesn't cause any problems except for sleeping in the nude on the top bunk (eye level) on the other side of the room.

It isn't all bad though, we do have our own shower, sinks (2) and toilet. Just to make sure that you don't fully enjoy these amenities they stuck them directly in the front entrance. I'm not talking about "Oh Andrew it's terrible, my bathroom is right off of my front entrance." I'm talking about the front entrance BEING THE BATHROOM. When the front door is open, the only thing preventing someone in the hallway from seeing you in your full glory while in the shower is a pane of frosted glass. To get a good idea, the picture shown here is taken while holding the front door open and standing in the hallway.

The kicker in all of this are the dormitory rules. Again, coming from McGill, one of the more liberal schools in the country if not the world, this is what put me over the top. I should apologize for earlier, this is an exclusive list of don'ts.
-No smoking (no problem there)
-No alcohol (is this not a univerisity? but fine)
-No cooking in the dorm rooms (pretty standard. So where are the kitchenettes? There aren't any? Oh, there's one microwave in the basement for the whole building? Cool) Oh and to boot the cafeteria hours are as bad as at BMH, but I don't use it.
-No guests (fine)
-No guys in the girl's dorm (ok...)
-No girls in the guy's dorm (hmm... complete segregation then. What about common space then? A hallway with padded benches and a big screen tv? Lovely)
-There are room inspections every Monday at midnight (Seriously?)
-The doors are locked between 12am and 5am (WHAT?)

So for the first time in I don't know how long I have a curfew. It is not a mandatory curfew (with the exception on Monday nights) you just can't get in or out of the building between midnight and 5am. If I'm out and don't want to be home by midnight (which normally implies leaving wherever I am by about 11:15) I have to either stay out until 5am or I can go see the porter and ask him to let me in. But if I ask the porter I am given two demerit points. 10 of those and I'm kicked out. I could care less about receiving a few demerits for being out late, I'm only here for 90 days. I just have to make sure not to use them all up. Could you imagine living here for the whole year? Other offenses are worth more points, I think having guests is 5, but I shouldn't have any problems with those.

The first thing that crossed my mind when this was explained to me was "What is the age of majority here?" Both the age of majority and the drinking age are around 18 or 19, so it turns out it's just the university being overly aggressive in trying to avoid any problems. Of Course, all of this doesn't prevent beer and soju bottles from appearing in the recycling bins in the morning.

The last fun part of rez life at Kookmin is the laundromat. They have a lady in the basement who takes care of the laundry. That's awesome! Except that she is only open for business from 10am-6:30pm during which I'm at work. So I have to either be late for work or take a break to do my laundry. The place is also closed on the weekend. As soon as I finish writing this I'm heading to Myeong-Dong to do some shopping because I found out too late that today ( Friday the 6th) is a Korean holiday and all of my clothes that I handed in to be washed on Thursday are now locked away until Monday. Leading to my present clothing crisis. Other then the hours, their system is quite good. We all have a basket for our dirty clothes. We bring the lady our basket, she washes and folds the clothes and we just pick the up later in the day. It's $2.50 for a load. A load consists of one basket full. If the clothes go above the lip of the basket she will charge more. This leads to having to fold your dirty laundry in order fit as much as possible into one load. Imagine if you will having to fold your dirty laundry but not your clean laundry. I truly am on the other side of the world.

You can click here to see pictures from my first few days in Seoul as well as pictures of the university and the dormitory.

Long Time Coming

I've been meaning to set up this blog for quite some time and while I'm stuck here at work waiting to use the UV spectrometer on Monday I'll try and get you up to date on my trip to the Republic of Korea. For your reading pleasure I'll divide my first month's worth of activities in to multiple posts so as to not bore you with one long narrative, though that may happen anyways.

I left Ottawa at 7am on May 13th for a short 5 hour flight to Vancouver. The flight was uneventful other then then the tons of turbulence we had. I had a 3 hour lay-over in Vancouver which was fine with me. It gave me a chance to stretch my legs as I wandered around the airport. I'm not sure if you've ever seen the international departures lounge there, but it's amazing. They have a million shops and restaurants as well as a little oasis with plants, a stream and a giant fish tank with what I believe were salmon. I also used to duty free shop to get my professor in Korea a gift from Canada. I was debating if I should get him some maple syrup but I settled on a bottle of Canadian iced wine.

My flight to Seoul was long, about 12 hours, but reasonably comfortable. I spent most of my time watching movies or tv. I think I got through an episode of Spenny vs. Kenny, the Big Bang Theory (which is about as corny as sitcoms come Chris), the Flight of the Conchords and a few movies: L.A Confidential, the Wedding Singer, Charlie Wilson's War and maybe one other that I cannot remember. The food was cold and bland, which is to be expected. I finally arrived in Incheon around 4pm on the 14th, local time. The descent into Incheon was amazing. The airport is right on the coast of the Yellow Sea and you get a good view of the coast and its many islands as you land.

I didn't get any significant sleep during the trip and was exhausted as it was about 3am on the 14th in Ottawa. I met prof. Lee's grad student, Yong-Mu Kim at the airport who drove me into Seoul. Yong-Mu's english is not very strong so the trip served as an introduction to the Korean landscape (which reminds me of the Laurentians with different plants and trees) as well as to Korean music. Incheon is a huge city of about 2.5 million, located east of Seoul, which is loosely considered a suburb of Seoul. It took about an hour of driving to get to Kookmin University in the north of Seoul.

I first checked into my dormitory (more on that in another post) and met my prof. He was dressed in military fatigues as he had just finished his mandatory military training. He is however a soft spoken man and very easy to get along with. I was told to take the rest of the week off to recover from my trip and that I would start work on Monday the 19th.

After our meeting I promptly went to bed after my 24+ hour day.