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.