I got my first haircut in Korea.  I reallllly need to work on my Korean as well as not assuming that hairclipper setting #3 in Canada is NOT the same as clipper setting #3 in Korea.

I’m no “Ox Baker” but I’m sure he would approve.  I think I now have more hair on my face than on my head.  Ah well, in 4 months, I’ll be able to get another trim….just not this short.

Like all of the US, and some parts of Canada, they sell Alcohol in all their stores.

This is our local grocery story (GS Supermarket).  By far, Soju (Rice-based alcohol) is the cheapest.  Typically around $1 a bottle and has an alcohol content of about 20%.  I tried a little shot of it awhile ago, not terribly unpleasant and it easily explains how easy it is to get drunk over here.

And here we see the first real snowfall of the year.

The snowflake are huge.  No the picture is not zoomed it, this is my ‘view’ out our window.  I can almost touch the next building.

While we don’t have Tim Hortons, we do have Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks.

This, I believe, is the first Starbucks in Korea to use the Korean script (Hangul) in it’s title.  This one is in Insadong.

Western food chain stores continually expand over here.  This is Korea’s first Taco Bell in Itaewon.

And right by it you have Quizno’s along with Cold Stone Creamery.

I have had one and almost a second bad experience in Quizno’s (One in Canada and the second here).  I’ll just avoid them in the future.

Itaewon is a major tourist/shopping area.  They have a TON of street vendors all with these large carts.  Here you see them taking them from their parking location to their street spot.  They all have little electric motors to help move them.

Let us not forget the ubiquitous Hard Rock Cafe.

A side note on this.  The Hard Rock cafes have a saying on each building that says “Love All.  Serve All.”, this one does not.

I continually try to meet new people.  One of the guys I have met is in the US Military (there are a whole bunch of US bases here).  If you are married and have a child, you can get a bigger and much nicer place.  He lives in an apartment building but his place is two stories.  It’s rather large (I would dare say bigger than our house from Hamilton) but just no backyard.  It’s very nice, lots of wood used in decorating, and not the cheap wood either.  That being said, the view off his porch gives a bit of an idea of what housing/apartments are like around the Itaewon area.

Had to get the sun rays poking through the clouds.

Can you spot the white bunnies on the rooftop?  Not gonna speculate on what they being used for, but who knows.  I know of some foreigners who keep bunnies as pets here.

One of my main goals is to meet business people while I am in Korea with the idea of doing business to help people and make some money while doing so. I have been actively searching for networking events and learned about the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Korea.  I was happy to find them so I gave them a call.  I found out that they were having a Christmas Party.  Tickets were about $80 per person.  A little upscale but worth making some contacts and finding out exactly what type of people are involved, while having a good time doing it.

The party was at The Plaza Hotel in Seoul.  We were in the Diamond Room on the 22nd floor (top of the hotel).  It was a nice and fairly casual evening and had a great view of the city as well.  The food was good with enough meat for the ‘meatatarian’ in me :)  We met some interesting people from a wide range of jobs and businesses.  Air Canada was a major sponsor and they donated a round-trip to Vancouver as one of the door prizes.  We won two door prizes that night.  A 700mL bottle of Canadian Club and a $100 gift certificate for Antonios Vinoteca Ristorante Italiano.  Looking at the menu there and that $100 will go very quickly.  In fact, we’d be short $10 if I ordered the T-Bone steak!  I’m looking forward to eating here!
While in another country, one of the biggest fears (aside from war) is getting hurt or being sick.  Well we seem to have the possibility of one and just finishing up the other.  Sure North Korea is an important concern and that Seoul just finished doing a simulated ‘North Kore Attack Drill‘ in downtown Seoul.  I was curious as part of the drill  included a couple of fighter jets to fly over Seoul.  When I heard the sirens begin, I went for a walk outside hoping to see the jets.  It was a remote hope as there are a bunch of buildings around me and by the time I may have gotten into the clear, the jets were probably long gone.  Assuming that they were even flying near my point of view.  Oddly, I did see them briefly.  I’m sure many people back home would be freaking out, saying things like “I think you should get out of there.” or “I would leave right away!”  Maybe I should be more concerned than I am but I read a lot and read way past the hype that media plays in their articles.    What I get, and keep getting, from these articles is the same thing I said in my very first post about the topic of war.  North Korea is behaving like a spoiled child.  This exact statement has been echoed in just about every article I read, some even word for word.  I don’t have to be a parent to know what happens to spoiled children who cry wolf all the time.  And that is exactly what is happening to North Korea right now.   The ‘adults” are sitting the child down and telling him to grow up.  Everyone is kind of hoping that the Child won’t need a ‘spanking’ but that’s exactly what he’ll get.  It won’t be pretty but it will be swift and good enough to knock some sense into him, should it come to that.

As for being sick, I rarely am.  Maybe once a year, puts me out for 1 or 2 days then I’m back to normal.  This happened last week.  Some stupid cold got me, all the usual symptoms of coughing, stuffed sinuses and such.  I did the usual stuff, relaxed (even more than usual :) ) and took lots of  Vitamin C.  Their Vitamin C I used came in this lemon-flavoured powered stuff.  You simply open the packet, dump it in your mouth and within 10 seconds it’s practically all dissolved.  It’s really cool stuff.  I was doing 2-3 of those a day and I think it definitely helped.  I just have this kind of lingering dry cough, but that’s because it’s a dry cold here.  Rather annoying but we’re managing.  Of course Bharati got the cold after me, she’s just about over it now.

In keeping with business learning skills, I have understood what causes businesses to fail.  Having a product or service and trying to find a need.  This is completely backwards.  Very few businesses have the know-how to artificially create a need for something that wasn’t there before (think Apple and how it markets).  The best way is always to find a need and then create a solution.  Well I found that the English teachers here need help.  Many of them flounder around with the language and the country without really getting it all.  Sure they survive but having asked a lot of them, they would gladly like some more help.  So I started a new blog/mailing list to help them.  The Korean Cafe was born to help those people, as well as travelers in general.  The goal is to help English-speaking  people learn more about Korea, it’s language, it’s infrastructure and such.

I have also started an English/Korean Club.  The goal is to get people from both cultures and to learn to communicate.  I figured it would be rather boring to do it on my own.  Having the need to meet more people, this was the best way to help everyone and meet new people at the same time :)

And that was all in just the last week :)  Looking forward to next week!

Directions in a foreign country can be downright frustrating to say the least.  That is until you understand how things are organized.  In North America, everything is done by streets and addresses.  If I say 123 Main St E, it is simple for those from North America to find Main St and then find 123.

In Korea things are not like that.  In order to mail something here, you start in ‘reverse’ order if you will.  To quote Wikipedia:

A typical building in South Korea is described by the administrative divisions in which it lies. If the address is written in Korean, the largest division will be written first, followed by the smaller divisions, and finally the building and the recipient. If the recipient is in a multi-unit building, the floor and apartment or suite number may follow.

It’s a logical breakdown from largest to smallest and makes a lot of sense.

Here is it in a table format:

Since addressing looks so confusing, it is very easy to just say “I’m lost” without looking any further.  Fortunately I don’t give up easy

Even after you have the address, there is the problem of getting there.  That means you need damn good directions.  Because you simply can’t just find a street and walk to the address when you are dealing with a ‘block addressing’ format, you absolutely rely on addressing being given to you by the people living/working in the area you are going to.  In plain words, if you get into a taxi you ask the driver to take you to ‘the McDonalds in Westdale’.  As there is only one McDonalds in Westdale, the driver knows exactly where to take you.  This doesn’t work so well for brand new places.

Let me explain.  Each building in Korea has a name assigned to it(or group of buildings).  Our building is “Ji Young Village”.  Event currently on Google Maps the lot shows a vacant spot as our building is less than a year old.  So when I got here and asked him exactly that, he looked confused.  When he saw the name of the school on the paper I had, he knew where to go exactly(even if he did purposed go at a rather leisurely pace…..native people will generally take advantage of non-natives as they somehow assume you are stupid.  I saw this and mentally chuckled to myself.  I still gave him a tip just to make his day and give him another story to tell his friends).  It is always a good idea to have a local friend write out your address in Korean, makes like much easier

Now, to use the subway system is yet another skill you need to master.  Again, you need more information than where you start and where you begin, at least until you get the hang of things.  So here is my near-foolproof method of using the Seoul Metro Subway.

For each destination you will need the following:

• What line number you are on
• What line number your end stop is on
• What is the last station is in the direction you are going
• What is the next stop in your direction

That seems like a lot of info but it really makes it easy to get around and vital to your ‘sense of direction’ when here.  So here is a simple table layout that would be of great value if you are new and need absolute guidance:

Click to see simple sheet

For example, we wanted to go to Yongsan Electronics Market to get some more memory for my Netbook and see what else is there.  We started at Uijeongbu Station.  Here is what our table would look like.

Click to see our simple one-stop table

That is a very straight forward get on/get off.  It gets to be a lot of fun when you switch lines but as long as you keep it simple as above, you’ll get around just fine.

So lets take a look at our travels last Saturday.  We hit 4 places around Seoul so hold onto your hats!

Click here to see spreadsheet

As you can see, if you want an ultimate control and near full-proof method for getting around, it takes a wee bit of planning.  Of course, once you are used to the area, this tool is no longer needed.  Still, there are people who will rely on something like this for their entire lives.

Also, looking at that some may be thinking that it cost us a fortune on fares.  Far from it.  I think we spent a grand total of around $5 or $7 for the day.

Culture shock can happen in many different ways.  From the way people talk, the way people look or simply the weather you experience.  Can you imagine yourself in such a foreign environment where you are a serious minority?  For me, culture shock being in Korea has been the lack of diversity.  Canada is such a melting pot of every other nation around the world, it is a real eye opener to see such homogeneous numbers of people.  Add in constantly hearing another language and seeing different characters on every sign, it could be quite overwhelming to the vast majority of people who do such things as travel/move to another country.

Things we take for granted are completely reversed here.  Let’s take people and walking.  In Canada, the pedestrian has the right of way no matter what the scenario.  Even should a person cross against a light, it would still be tough fight for any motorist trying to escape blame for not being vigilant enough to see the person they just hit.  In Korea it is just the opposite.  You cross the street in front of traffic at your own peril.  Drivers will honk at you for your apparent lack of judgement.  In many ways they have a good point.  Cars weight 1800lbs+ while you might only be less than a 1/10th of that.  You wouldn’t walk out in front of a charging elephant so why would you do so in front of a vehicles that weigh upwards of 1 TON or more?  Simply a different way of thinking, neither right nor wrong, just different.

Food.  I have slightly touched on this subject previously but some more details are necessary.  It’s quite easy for anyone to walk to the local grocery stores (that are popping up like Tim Hortons in Hamilton) and pick up some bananas.  You can buy them by any size of bunch.  You can even break up the bunch and buy only 3 or 4 if you will.  You can also just grab some of the loose ones that others have broken off.  Here this is not the case.  They are sold in set sizes of bunches despite the selling methods (i.e. so much per weight).  Here is the bunch we bought recently:

On top of being a rather large bunch for just two people, they are also ripe.  I have yet to see green/unripened bananas in any store.  One can also only eat so many bananas over any given time period.

The other day we bought a blender.  I wanted to make sure it was glass as I’m working my best to use less plastic and more things where the material breaks down significantly less.  The local “LotteMart” (kinda like a WalMart) had a range and the one we got was discounted because it was the last one and there was no box for it.  We didn’t mind getting a 40,000KRW for 28,000KRW

This blender was simple.  It only had 3 buttons.  I figured that it was one speed, one momentary and a stop.  That is exactly what it was.  More on that in a bit.  The purpose for the blender was so I could resume my morning fruit smoothies that have been a great health benefit for me.  The blender does an adequate job.  It would be nicer to have a higher speed to finely chew up the apple skins, still nothing to give up on.

In order to function better I’ve also been thinking and searching for a method to translate Korean into English.  Many would think, at first thought, that it would be easy but not so.  There are all kinds of online translators (I mention Babelfish in a previous post) but there is a severe limitation.  Those online translators are excellent for translating English into 50+ other languages but no so much for the other way around.  It takes a lot more work as how many of you have Korean characters on your keyboard?  How would figure out to input a Korean(Hangul) character in order to get some sort of English equivalent?

So after some hard thinking I realized that Windows has the ability to switch languages fairly easily.  Happens all the time in Canada with French characters seemingly popping up (notably on laptops) because some user hit a key-combination and now the / key makes an e with an accent.  Ok, so adding in the Hangul keyboard is easily done thought the Languages settings on the control panel but now what?  How do I know which character is which?  I don’t but making a chart is easy .  I opened up a spreadsheet and in one column I put all the English characters and switched languages and the second column I used the same keys but saw the corresponding Hangul character that is assigned to that key.

It is worth noting that the Hangul character assigned to any key does NOT relate to the English equivalent at all.  Meaning if I press the letter “a” and then switch to the Hangul character set and press the same key I get a Korean character.  This Korean character is NOT the ‘a’ in their language.  It is simply the character assigned to that key.  The English speaking world maybe used to the QWERTY keyboard but not a single other language uses any/all of those characters, thus no keyboard equivalent.

Ok, so now I have my conversion chart.  I can now begin my translations

The first thing I tackled was the heating control for our apartment.  Although we were told which button does what, it would be infinitely more useful to know what the labels actually say.  That and it’s good practice

Doing my best to match up characters, I got the labels and they matched up quite well.  Although I got English words for the Korean characters, sometimes translations are not literal and more of an idea.  For example, you will see ‘out’ in the picture below.  I didn’t quite understand that until Bharati said it was for when you leave the place to set the temperature.  Normally we just turn it on and off as the place stays warm for quite some time and we still don’t know how to play with the temperature setting.

And I think I’ve gotten the understanding how to allow the heat to self-regulate.  Still, the apartment is well insulated and it will take many hours before a noticeable change in temp is felt.  I have this egg-shaped clock/alarm/thermometer that works well.

I have this cell phone with a dictionary built into it.  It’s useful enough to get my point across.  When I first met Minhye (a friend of Bharati’s friend) she spoke some English ok enough but there was tons of concepts that didn’t translate.  The little cell helped get my ideas across and it was cool to be able to ‘converse’ enough to understand each other.

I’m still looking for someone to exchange language learning with.  I really want to be fluent enough to carry on a decent conversation by this time next year.

Got trip to Bharati’s old town when she was here last, to see the Buddhist temple out there.  We donated some money last time and got our names put on small brass Buddha statues that went on a shelf.  Hoping to find them again