Since my last review I’ve read another 48 Korean blogs. Again the majority are written by Americans and Canadians. I found one Finn Juho, but he's left to go back to Finland; A Dutch couple who have moved back to Holland; a Welshman named Aled and another Englishman called Craig.
Almost all the blogs are written by ESL teachers, one exception is DramMan a lawyer who is one of seven nominees for the Asia Blog Awards Best Korean Blog. He also posts on the The Marmot's Hole. Robert's blog is not in the running this year as he is one of the judges. The other nominees are Oranckay; Jodi’s The Asia Pages she writes on the single life in Korea and life as an expat American; Jeff Harrison seems mainly focussed on motorcycling; David at Staypuff is an Australian ESL teacher I mentioned last time; Michael Hurt at the Metropolitician who has some good postings and Occidentalist a group blog which has included some very detailed posts about the issue of the Dokdo Islands and the debate about whether Japan or Korea should rule them.
The poll closes on Oct 17th so get busy voting. You need to register your email address with the site to receive a link to the poll, but it is very quick to fill out your vote.
The other non teachers are The Idiots Collective where Aaron's occupation is listed as Maritime, Andy the Christian professor and Gary who has some very detailed posts on Korean Language. I also found Cat at Seoullife another trailing spouse and two mothers who blog Buhay and I particularly enjoy Jennifer's long posts on Between Pee and Kimchee. There were a total of 15 female bloggers including Expat Jane and Kathreb who both post interesting and regular items on Korea, though Kath lives in the UK.
I found a couple of blogs with some great photos Gdimension and Max Watson and two excellent comedy blogs The Yangpa which posts satirical Korean news stories and Beloved Leader, the supposed musings of Our Leader Oop North.
I exchanged a few emails with Alan the owner of the Korea Bloglist and he has made a couple of changes to the site to make it easier to report broken sites and changed the latest blog page to show all the blogs in the order they were added.
He has now moved to Japan and has less time to dedicate to the site. I did volunteer to help him maintain the site but he was unable to give me rights due to technical difficulties. I hope he continues to maintain this very useful resource. I have found that up to 20% of visitors to my blog have come from there.
I also found three other lists of Korean blogs. The ExpatBlogs site has a list of 34, This wiki which only has a list of 10; Here at Galbijim which is another wiki with a list of over 100 Korea blogs. Since the latter is open to anyone to be able to edit and update I am considering uploading the list of blogs and fields I have been collating to that page. I think the fields would be name, gender, nationality, frequency of posts, number of links, RSS feed and a general description of the blog.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Friday, October 13, 2006
Temple Stay weekend Palman Daejanggyeong Festival
Just a short post in case there are any Korean based readers who are interested.
The Palman Daejanggyeong Festival happens once a year when the sacred wooden tablets of the buddhist faith are paraded. The festival is held in the temple Haeinsa in Hapcheon on 27th to the 29th October.
There are various programs for not only Buddhists but also for the general public and foreigners so they can become familiar with Buddhist culture. Korean website.
There is a two day, one night tour run by the Korean Buddhist Templestay organisation.
In Summary the tour takes you from Seoul at 08:00 on Saturday 28th morning to the temple, approx 5 hour bus ride. You visit the festival, stay in the temple and follow the monks ritual and leave on Sunday getting back to Seoul in the evening. There is a participation fee of 10,000 Won. It's a very good deal as I was looking into transport and staying overnight and it's not cheap or easy.
To participate send an email to the email address on the webpage. They would like name, age, gender, nationality, address and phone number. Please apply before 16th October.
I have not been on a templestay weekend before, it sounds very interesting, I am not looking forward to getting up at 3am on the Sunday though!
The Palman Daejanggyeong Festival happens once a year when the sacred wooden tablets of the buddhist faith are paraded. The festival is held in the temple Haeinsa in Hapcheon on 27th to the 29th October.
There are various programs for not only Buddhists but also for the general public and foreigners so they can become familiar with Buddhist culture. Korean website.
There is a two day, one night tour run by the Korean Buddhist Templestay organisation.
In Summary the tour takes you from Seoul at 08:00 on Saturday 28th morning to the temple, approx 5 hour bus ride. You visit the festival, stay in the temple and follow the monks ritual and leave on Sunday getting back to Seoul in the evening. There is a participation fee of 10,000 Won. It's a very good deal as I was looking into transport and staying overnight and it's not cheap or easy.
To participate send an email to the email address on the webpage. They would like name, age, gender, nationality, address and phone number. Please apply before 16th October.
I have not been on a templestay weekend before, it sounds very interesting, I am not looking forward to getting up at 3am on the Sunday though!
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Jirisan National Park and WWOOF
Since spotting a reference in the Lonely Planet guidebook to an organisation called WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) The Bat and I have been planning to try out the scheme where-by you do volunteer work on a farm in exchange for bed and board. We phoned the organisation and got directions to their office in Seoul to go and join up. The young lady running the show admitted the website is not up to date with the farms available and neither is the book she gave us, however at her suggestion we booked a stay with the Jiri Mountain BioLand farm near Gurye over the long holiday created by Federation day national holiday on Oct 3rd and Chusok on the 5th. Since Chusok is a variable date every year this holiday is not always as long. When we booked the train tickets on 5th September they had already sold out of tickets for the Saturday and Sunday, so we bought tickets to return on Friday 6th.
On booking tickets: Korail have a very good website for checking train times and availability. To be able to book tickets on-line you need to: go to Seoul Station, go to booth 23 with your Alien Registration Card and 7,000 won and you can get annual membership. This gives you a membership number for the site. It also gives you a 5% discount on tickets bought via the internet and upto 20% discount on tickets bought on the day "according to the ticket early phase" whatever that means.
I have not found anything similar for the Express buses, but the KNTO site has an excellent page where you can at least find out which of the five Bus terminals to head for, how long the journey is, how much it costs and how frequent the buses are for long distance trips.
Mr Choi greeted us at Guryegu station on Tuesday evening after our first train journey in South Korea. The farm is not far from the station and as he drove he told us he is a keen exponent of WWOOF and has had over 300 visitors from more than 40 countries. When we arrived we met another WWOOFER staying on the farm, a young Japanese student who spoke Korean. The farmhouse was clean, well maintained and warm. We were given a room with a decent double mattress.
Wednesday. Up at 7am (a bit of a lie-in for us, since we normally get up at 5am) and after Kimichi for breakfast, we started our job for the day: watering the radish plants. We soon figured out an optimal trajectory with the hose and it was quite a relaxing Zen like task in the hot sun. The leather gloves posted to us by a very good friend from the UK proved invaluable in saving the delicate hands of The Bat. You cannot buy decent gardening gloves for love nor money, all they sell here is cotton gloves dipped in a bit of red plastic!
Thursday. Mr Choi generously invited us to share Chusok with him at his parents house not far away. There we met his two brothers and their families, who had come from Seoul for the holiday. We visited the Hwaeomsa temple in the Jirisan National Park in the morning with the family and admired the large gold statues of Buddha and the famous five storey stone pagoda. In the afternoon we played a gentle game of 5 aside football and other games before taking a very brisk walk up to the top of Osan, the mountain that overlooks the farm, which, probably because it is not in the national park, was very quiet. We had excellent views over the valley just before sunset from the temple at the summit.
On Friday we left the farm thanking Mr Choi for his excellent hospitality, we felt like he had got a very bad deal out of us, as we were there for such a short time, but the WWOOF experience was very intersting and I hope to visit further farms.
We were still unable to change our train tickets for a seat at the weekend, but we were able to purchase bus tickets back to Seoul for the Sunday afternoon, so we got a refund on the train tickets (less an small admin fee) and headed towards the national park. We chose the Jirisan Swiss hotel from the Lonely Planet book, which had good things to say about it. [Though quite why having shower curtains was felt to be worth mentioning is a mystery to me. In fact our room did not have any shower curtains!]
We went bird spotting in the NP near the temple and saw three species new to us : a large flock of vinous throated parrotbills, one brown dipper and a flock of azure winged magpies. Just after sunset we were still in the temple and listened to some very powerful drumming by the monks on the enormous drum, it was an impressive performance of great skill and rhythm.
Saturday we were out of the hotel and into the NP before 8am, too early for breakfast at the hotel. Heading up the valley for the Nogodan pass the path of granite rocks was wide, even and not too busy, we paused at the Hermitage temple. From there on up it was a very hard slog up a much steeper more rugged path for 4km until we finally hit a wide gently sloping path where everyone who drove up to mountain round the other side was walking and we could make the final assent to the Nogodan Pass. The view looking east towards the rest of the mountain range was well worth the effort. It is a completely unspoilt vista of trees that were just starting to turn autumnal and in the distance we could see the second tallest peak in South Korea Cheonwangbong.
Sunday after the hard day we didn’t get up until just after 9am, too late for breakfast! Luckily we found alternative sustenance before going to the other temple in that area of the park the Cheoneunsa temple. It is smaller and quieter than Hwaeomsa. Our trip back to Seoul by bus was uneventful. There were a couple of short traffic jams at one point in the journey but the predicted heavy traffic did not materialise for us.
Due to an unfortunate accident I dropped our camera at the railway station just before we left, so I have no photos to share with you. It is going to take at least three weeks to get the part to repair it, but in the meantime the very obliging shop have leant us a replacement camera!
On booking tickets: Korail have a very good website for checking train times and availability. To be able to book tickets on-line you need to: go to Seoul Station, go to booth 23 with your Alien Registration Card and 7,000 won and you can get annual membership. This gives you a membership number for the site. It also gives you a 5% discount on tickets bought via the internet and upto 20% discount on tickets bought on the day "according to the ticket early phase" whatever that means.
I have not found anything similar for the Express buses, but the KNTO site has an excellent page where you can at least find out which of the five Bus terminals to head for, how long the journey is, how much it costs and how frequent the buses are for long distance trips.
Mr Choi greeted us at Guryegu station on Tuesday evening after our first train journey in South Korea. The farm is not far from the station and as he drove he told us he is a keen exponent of WWOOF and has had over 300 visitors from more than 40 countries. When we arrived we met another WWOOFER staying on the farm, a young Japanese student who spoke Korean. The farmhouse was clean, well maintained and warm. We were given a room with a decent double mattress.
Wednesday. Up at 7am (a bit of a lie-in for us, since we normally get up at 5am) and after Kimichi for breakfast, we started our job for the day: watering the radish plants. We soon figured out an optimal trajectory with the hose and it was quite a relaxing Zen like task in the hot sun. The leather gloves posted to us by a very good friend from the UK proved invaluable in saving the delicate hands of The Bat. You cannot buy decent gardening gloves for love nor money, all they sell here is cotton gloves dipped in a bit of red plastic!
Thursday. Mr Choi generously invited us to share Chusok with him at his parents house not far away. There we met his two brothers and their families, who had come from Seoul for the holiday. We visited the Hwaeomsa temple in the Jirisan National Park in the morning with the family and admired the large gold statues of Buddha and the famous five storey stone pagoda. In the afternoon we played a gentle game of 5 aside football and other games before taking a very brisk walk up to the top of Osan, the mountain that overlooks the farm, which, probably because it is not in the national park, was very quiet. We had excellent views over the valley just before sunset from the temple at the summit.
On Friday we left the farm thanking Mr Choi for his excellent hospitality, we felt like he had got a very bad deal out of us, as we were there for such a short time, but the WWOOF experience was very intersting and I hope to visit further farms.
We were still unable to change our train tickets for a seat at the weekend, but we were able to purchase bus tickets back to Seoul for the Sunday afternoon, so we got a refund on the train tickets (less an small admin fee) and headed towards the national park. We chose the Jirisan Swiss hotel from the Lonely Planet book, which had good things to say about it. [Though quite why having shower curtains was felt to be worth mentioning is a mystery to me. In fact our room did not have any shower curtains!]
We went bird spotting in the NP near the temple and saw three species new to us : a large flock of vinous throated parrotbills, one brown dipper and a flock of azure winged magpies. Just after sunset we were still in the temple and listened to some very powerful drumming by the monks on the enormous drum, it was an impressive performance of great skill and rhythm.
Saturday we were out of the hotel and into the NP before 8am, too early for breakfast at the hotel. Heading up the valley for the Nogodan pass the path of granite rocks was wide, even and not too busy, we paused at the Hermitage temple. From there on up it was a very hard slog up a much steeper more rugged path for 4km until we finally hit a wide gently sloping path where everyone who drove up to mountain round the other side was walking and we could make the final assent to the Nogodan Pass. The view looking east towards the rest of the mountain range was well worth the effort. It is a completely unspoilt vista of trees that were just starting to turn autumnal and in the distance we could see the second tallest peak in South Korea Cheonwangbong.
Sunday after the hard day we didn’t get up until just after 9am, too late for breakfast! Luckily we found alternative sustenance before going to the other temple in that area of the park the Cheoneunsa temple. It is smaller and quieter than Hwaeomsa. Our trip back to Seoul by bus was uneventful. There were a couple of short traffic jams at one point in the journey but the predicted heavy traffic did not materialise for us.
Due to an unfortunate accident I dropped our camera at the railway station just before we left, so I have no photos to share with you. It is going to take at least three weeks to get the part to repair it, but in the meantime the very obliging shop have leant us a replacement camera!
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
North Korea tests Nuclear Bomb
As you have probably all heard on the news "our friends oop north" have just admitted to testing a nuclear bomb. They seem quite pleased with themselves, it's certainly one way of getting your country in the news. It's just a shame they cannot make more money out of tourism from it.
Apparently it was only a 1 kiloton TNT equivalent, Hiroshima was 13 kilotons. [correction from this morning]
Life carries on here as normal, however the leader of the opposition party did ask his members not to play golf (unless it was absolutely necessary). The students, having more time on their hands to worry about this sort of thing, are already worrying about their future unborn children, but all the adult students in The Bat's class were more concerned with getting on with work as normal.
Not having TV means we miss some of the news but Robert at the Marmot's Hole has summarised the events so far.
There is a good posting from the blog of the metropolitican about gallows humour in this situation.
The newspapers this morning are all full of the news, as I'm sure papers around the world will be, because lets face it, it makes a good story. Summary: China, North Korea's one and only friend has called it a brazen act; The Japanese and South Korean Prime Ministers agree the test is non pardonable, but were unable to agree on anything else at all, nor even make a joint statement after meeting yesterday; The KOSPI (Korean Stock Exchange Index) fell 2.4 per cent yesterday; The Korean won fell in value by 1.6 per cent against the US dollar; Seoul has suspended a shipment of 4,000 tons of cement to North Korea; There is unlikely to be any environmental damage from the test here in South Korea.
I think now would be a good time to buy Korean stocks, because the markets fall every time there is North Korean news, but they bounce back after less than a week.
As Robert says, we now have to wait to see what the American response to this is. If they start to get aggressive then things could turn ugly, but short of invading North Korea a very foolish move indeed considering the size of the North Korean army, I cannot see what military action they can take. Blockade the ports? Well there is hardly any trade anyway and it will only make the country more unstable.
More news as it happens.
Apparently it was only a 1 kiloton TNT equivalent, Hiroshima was 13 kilotons. [correction from this morning]
Life carries on here as normal, however the leader of the opposition party did ask his members not to play golf (unless it was absolutely necessary). The students, having more time on their hands to worry about this sort of thing, are already worrying about their future unborn children, but all the adult students in The Bat's class were more concerned with getting on with work as normal.
Not having TV means we miss some of the news but Robert at the Marmot's Hole has summarised the events so far.
There is a good posting from the blog of the metropolitican about gallows humour in this situation.
The newspapers this morning are all full of the news, as I'm sure papers around the world will be, because lets face it, it makes a good story. Summary: China, North Korea's one and only friend has called it a brazen act; The Japanese and South Korean Prime Ministers agree the test is non pardonable, but were unable to agree on anything else at all, nor even make a joint statement after meeting yesterday; The KOSPI (Korean Stock Exchange Index) fell 2.4 per cent yesterday; The Korean won fell in value by 1.6 per cent against the US dollar; Seoul has suspended a shipment of 4,000 tons of cement to North Korea; There is unlikely to be any environmental damage from the test here in South Korea.
I think now would be a good time to buy Korean stocks, because the markets fall every time there is North Korean news, but they bounce back after less than a week.
As Robert says, we now have to wait to see what the American response to this is. If they start to get aggressive then things could turn ugly, but short of invading North Korea a very foolish move indeed considering the size of the North Korean army, I cannot see what military action they can take. Blockade the ports? Well there is hardly any trade anyway and it will only make the country more unstable.
More news as it happens.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Coffee morning at the Ambassador's
Being a House Husband; Trailing Spouse; or Gentleman of Leisure, as I’ve been describing myself, I thought it about time I attended a coffee morning. I discovered the British Club of Seoul had been invited to the British Ambassador’s for a coffee morning organised by the wife of the Ambassador in aid of Macmillan Cancer Nurses as part of their Worlds biggest coffee morning event.
The brick and granite building was built in 1890. Located beside the Toksugung palace in the centre of Seoul it is a remarkably quiet and tranquil spot. Admiring the grounds it was easy to forget you were in the middle of such a large city.
I arrived promptly at 10am at the Embassy and had my named checked off on the list of registered guests. Following another guest I walked round the modern Embassy building to the Ambassador’s residence. We were met by Pam, the hostess, on the lawn where there was a wide variety of cakes and fruit laid out. The butler serving coffee and tea has been working at the house for over 25 years. I met a number of ladies and several gentlemen and discussed life in Seoul; skiing; where else people had lived; other organisations etc. I also met several of the Embassy staff who came out to enjoy the cakes and the sunshine in the very well kept garden.
I was disappointed not to win anything in the raffle. The prizes included: Champagne, a jar of Branston pickle and some cuddly toys. Warwick Morris, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador (as it says on his business card) dropped by for a short while. I was delighted to be able to speak to him and we discussed some of the delights of getting a job teaching English out here.
This week is Chusok holiday in Korea, a thanksgiving harvest festival where everyone goes back to their families, so The Bat gets some time off from the school and we are getting out of Seoul for a couple of days. Not as many days as we would have liked as we were not aware of the exact dates and significance of the holiday until quite late, so by the time we came to book our tickets all the train seats on the way back on the Saturday and Sunday of the weekend had already been sold. So we have to come back on the Friday.
The brick and granite building was built in 1890. Located beside the Toksugung palace in the centre of Seoul it is a remarkably quiet and tranquil spot. Admiring the grounds it was easy to forget you were in the middle of such a large city.
I arrived promptly at 10am at the Embassy and had my named checked off on the list of registered guests. Following another guest I walked round the modern Embassy building to the Ambassador’s residence. We were met by Pam, the hostess, on the lawn where there was a wide variety of cakes and fruit laid out. The butler serving coffee and tea has been working at the house for over 25 years. I met a number of ladies and several gentlemen and discussed life in Seoul; skiing; where else people had lived; other organisations etc. I also met several of the Embassy staff who came out to enjoy the cakes and the sunshine in the very well kept garden.
I was disappointed not to win anything in the raffle. The prizes included: Champagne, a jar of Branston pickle and some cuddly toys. Warwick Morris, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador (as it says on his business card) dropped by for a short while. I was delighted to be able to speak to him and we discussed some of the delights of getting a job teaching English out here.
This week is Chusok holiday in Korea, a thanksgiving harvest festival where everyone goes back to their families, so The Bat gets some time off from the school and we are getting out of Seoul for a couple of days. Not as many days as we would have liked as we were not aware of the exact dates and significance of the holiday until quite late, so by the time we came to book our tickets all the train seats on the way back on the Saturday and Sunday of the weekend had already been sold. So we have to come back on the Friday.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Review of Forums for Korea
In my surfing time I’ve come across a number of forums or discussion boards about Korea in English so I thought I’d review them here:
The most popular site I have found so far is the Korea Bridge Forum. There are 15 conferences, the two most popular are the general discussion and jobs related forums. Postings made are moderated on all conferences, so they do not appear immediately. They claim over 700 users and over 15,500 posts.
The LifeInAsia site has created conferences for South Korea. Split into two halves, there are clubs for the main cities and provinces and then a separate set of discussion forums for topics such as teaching, buy and sell. This does make it very difficult to target a question or announcement since at least half the forums have no postings since the start of 2006.
The Korea Times website hosts three boards Talk Box, Study board and Market place. Postings are on average 2 a week.
The Seoul Times also runs a bulletin board, however all the postings this week seem to be spam type adverts.
The Korea Infogate site has 30 “clubs”, for different interests, however most seem to be completely dormant.
The Seoul city council website has a community page where you can post want ads or find friends. There are 7 items in the "for sale" conference since Jan 2006.
The Korea Joblink site has a forum section: 15 postings in the market place section since July. The job discussion conference has 15 postings in September.
Seoul Selection (home of The Marmot) has a forum section. There are 10 conferences, most have recent postings. Not many have any replies or followups. They report over 350 users.
SeoulStyle.com has a link to usfkforums.com. Also divided into 10 conferences, it is mainly aimed at military expats.
Dave’s ESL cafe has 8 conferences in the Korea section, focusing not only on teaching English but also travel, current events, technology and buy/sell. The site claims over 12,000 users. You cannot tell how many are in Korea but all conferences have very recent posts many with followups.
The @llo Expat site hosts a large number of country specific forums. The one for Korea has 17 separate conferences including 3 each for Seoul, Busan and Daegu. Most of the posts have no replies, some that do are advertising posts that have not been deleted.
The Tour2Korea website has various conferences for discussion on topics including learning Hangul and Korean events. Not many postings in any of them.
Another Expat site www.expat-blog.com has 16 conferences split by continent. The Living in Asia conference has 32 posts since Jan 2006.
The Lonely Planet run a very popular travel forum called The Thorn Tree. The conference on North Asian countries is dominated by questions on China, HK and Japan. Those on Korea get answered quickly and accurately.
Trip Advisor has a forum for Korea, it receives the occasional question, mostly from North Americans venturing into this part of the world. Posts are sporadic averaging two or three a week, but there were 8 today.
Forums need to reach a critical mass. In my opinion the Korea Bridge forum has reached that size. The number of posts indicates a regular number of people that post and reply to questions for it to be worthwhile using.
So my suggestion, if you'd like to ask questions about Korea to as wide an audience as possible, is to create an account at Korea Bridge and ignore all the rest, however Dave's ESL forum does seem to be very popular.
I am tempted to suggest to the other Korean based sites to abandon their forums and just put links to Korea Bridge, it would increase the traffic for all concerned. I'll let you know what their replies are.
The most popular site I have found so far is the Korea Bridge Forum. There are 15 conferences, the two most popular are the general discussion and jobs related forums. Postings made are moderated on all conferences, so they do not appear immediately. They claim over 700 users and over 15,500 posts.
The LifeInAsia site has created conferences for South Korea. Split into two halves, there are clubs for the main cities and provinces and then a separate set of discussion forums for topics such as teaching, buy and sell. This does make it very difficult to target a question or announcement since at least half the forums have no postings since the start of 2006.
The Korea Times website hosts three boards Talk Box, Study board and Market place. Postings are on average 2 a week.
The Seoul Times also runs a bulletin board, however all the postings this week seem to be spam type adverts.
The Korea Infogate site has 30 “clubs”, for different interests, however most seem to be completely dormant.
The Seoul city council website has a community page where you can post want ads or find friends. There are 7 items in the "for sale" conference since Jan 2006.
The Korea Joblink site has a forum section: 15 postings in the market place section since July. The job discussion conference has 15 postings in September.
Seoul Selection (home of The Marmot) has a forum section. There are 10 conferences, most have recent postings. Not many have any replies or followups. They report over 350 users.
SeoulStyle.com has a link to usfkforums.com. Also divided into 10 conferences, it is mainly aimed at military expats.
Dave’s ESL cafe has 8 conferences in the Korea section, focusing not only on teaching English but also travel, current events, technology and buy/sell. The site claims over 12,000 users. You cannot tell how many are in Korea but all conferences have very recent posts many with followups.
The @llo Expat site hosts a large number of country specific forums. The one for Korea has 17 separate conferences including 3 each for Seoul, Busan and Daegu. Most of the posts have no replies, some that do are advertising posts that have not been deleted.
The Tour2Korea website has various conferences for discussion on topics including learning Hangul and Korean events. Not many postings in any of them.
Another Expat site www.expat-blog.com has 16 conferences split by continent. The Living in Asia conference has 32 posts since Jan 2006.
The Lonely Planet run a very popular travel forum called The Thorn Tree. The conference on North Asian countries is dominated by questions on China, HK and Japan. Those on Korea get answered quickly and accurately.
Trip Advisor has a forum for Korea, it receives the occasional question, mostly from North Americans venturing into this part of the world. Posts are sporadic averaging two or three a week, but there were 8 today.
Forums need to reach a critical mass. In my opinion the Korea Bridge forum has reached that size. The number of posts indicates a regular number of people that post and reply to questions for it to be worthwhile using.
So my suggestion, if you'd like to ask questions about Korea to as wide an audience as possible, is to create an account at Korea Bridge and ignore all the rest, however Dave's ESL forum does seem to be very popular.
I am tempted to suggest to the other Korean based sites to abandon their forums and just put links to Korea Bridge, it would increase the traffic for all concerned. I'll let you know what their replies are.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Hangul Romanization Revision Proposed
Only yesterday I wrote about how the transcription of Hangul into Roman letters was changed in 2000. Today I read in the Korea Times today that they are considering a proposal to change it again due to the confusion I mentioned.
The headline story reports :
Some 75 percent of South Koreans think the government-enacted Romanization system does not reflect the original pronunciation of Hangul properly, a survey conducted by the Yoido Institute, a think tank of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) showed yesterday.
Of the 2,150 adults polled last week, 66.1 percent wanted the current system to be revised despite the expected financial cost, according to the survey conducted on the occasion of the 560th Hangul Day which falls on Oct. 9.
Hangul was first Romanized using the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system in the early 20th century, when a number of foreign missionaries came to the Choson Kingdom.
'Confusion we experience today has been caused largely due to the arbitrary attitudes of armchair linguists and some misguided government officials' said Kim Bok-moon, professor emeritus of Chungbuk National University.
Scraping the traditional M-R system, which had prevailed in the past decades, the government adopted a new system on July 7, 2000, shifting Pusan, Kobukson (turtle ship) and kimchi into Busan, Geobukseon and gimchi.
The English-language media, including the state-funded Yonhap News Agency, had resisted the change for a period of time. But, as time went by, all the news media gave in to the new system except The Korea Times, which has maintained the M-R system concluding that it is the most similar to actual pronunciation.
Let alone the tremendous cost of the revision, the main problem of the current system is that it does not ensure the exact pronunciation of the original sound of various Korean words.
Kim, who serves as president of the Research Institute for Korean Romanization (KOROMA), has made sole efforts to end the confusion, submitting a petition to then President Kim Dae-jung and presenting a Constitutional petition.
According to Kim, 16 out of the newly Romanized 21 vowels of Hangul are out of sync with actual sounds when they are read by English-speaking people, who have no knowledge about the premise that 'eo’ should be pronounced as ㅓ. He has devised his own system, which he claims ensures the best pronunciations.
Critics say the Romanization system should be revised in a way that best reflects the characteristics of the Korean language and the reunification of the two Koreas should also be taken into consideration.
North Korea has a system similar to the M-R system, which writes its cities and places in English as Pyongyang, Kaesong and Mt. Kumgang not Pyeongyang,Gaeseong and Mt. Gumgang.
North Korea once proposed the unification of the different Romanization systems used by South and North Korea in a meeting of linguists from the two Koreas in Berlin, Germany, in 2002.
[Text copied from KT site and edited slightly for brevity because the link will only work for 7 days, after which they'd like you to pay to access the historic articles.]
So, as if it wasn't difficult enough already, it may change again. Lets hope Mr Kim and his buddies have come up with a suitably logical and straightforward approach. I wonder how long it will take to get agreed.
I don't normally find much to comment on from the news papers but since I've started there were a few other stories I thought worth mentioning:
Han River Projects to Enliven Seoul.
They are planning to try and brighten up the area around the Han river, the main river that runs through Seoul. I've walked across a couple of the bridges into Yeoido, it really is not a very pleasant experience. It's a long way, there is a lot of traffic and there is not that much to see while walking. I can't see their idea of converting one lane in to a pedestrian zone on five of the cross river bridges is going to make it any more appealing for people to walk when crossing the river.
Buses to have seats allocated for pregnant women.
Pregnant women will get issued badges from their hospital to allow them to use seats set aside for them. This was something Annie Mole mentioned sometime back on her Going underground blog. I'm sure she'll be delighted.
Bye bye Liza The Editor of SeoulStyle.com is leaving for Hong Kong. She told me in an email about a group of house husbands she know of who were trying to start a group to rival SIWA (Seoul International Women's Association). They were calling their support group 'DHIK' Dads, Husbands in Korea. Of course the group fell apart since there weren't enough DHIKS to keep the 'poker coffee mornings' alive.
CCTV to be installed on Metro carriages. A sad reflection on the increase in crime in this country.
The Oktoberfest comes to Seoul The Hilton has waitresses dressing up and Lotteworld has parades, dancing troupes, live music, games and events in a setting that replicates the city of Munich!
And finally, there was also a story, that I can't find on their site, of a rare item of news about the UK. It reported on this story from the Guardian about how the Ministry of Defence tried to prevent the public from finding out about unit DI55 that was investigating reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects. Quite why that was of interest rather than any news about the Blair / Brown battle (which they actually covered yesterday) I don't know.
The headline story reports :
Some 75 percent of South Koreans think the government-enacted Romanization system does not reflect the original pronunciation of Hangul properly, a survey conducted by the Yoido Institute, a think tank of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) showed yesterday.
Of the 2,150 adults polled last week, 66.1 percent wanted the current system to be revised despite the expected financial cost, according to the survey conducted on the occasion of the 560th Hangul Day which falls on Oct. 9.
Hangul was first Romanized using the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system in the early 20th century, when a number of foreign missionaries came to the Choson Kingdom.
'Confusion we experience today has been caused largely due to the arbitrary attitudes of armchair linguists and some misguided government officials' said Kim Bok-moon, professor emeritus of Chungbuk National University.
Scraping the traditional M-R system, which had prevailed in the past decades, the government adopted a new system on July 7, 2000, shifting Pusan, Kobukson (turtle ship) and kimchi into Busan, Geobukseon and gimchi.
The English-language media, including the state-funded Yonhap News Agency, had resisted the change for a period of time. But, as time went by, all the news media gave in to the new system except The Korea Times, which has maintained the M-R system concluding that it is the most similar to actual pronunciation.
Let alone the tremendous cost of the revision, the main problem of the current system is that it does not ensure the exact pronunciation of the original sound of various Korean words.
Kim, who serves as president of the Research Institute for Korean Romanization (KOROMA), has made sole efforts to end the confusion, submitting a petition to then President Kim Dae-jung and presenting a Constitutional petition.
According to Kim, 16 out of the newly Romanized 21 vowels of Hangul are out of sync with actual sounds when they are read by English-speaking people, who have no knowledge about the premise that 'eo’ should be pronounced as ㅓ. He has devised his own system, which he claims ensures the best pronunciations.
Critics say the Romanization system should be revised in a way that best reflects the characteristics of the Korean language and the reunification of the two Koreas should also be taken into consideration.
North Korea has a system similar to the M-R system, which writes its cities and places in English as Pyongyang, Kaesong and Mt. Kumgang not Pyeongyang,Gaeseong and Mt. Gumgang.
North Korea once proposed the unification of the different Romanization systems used by South and North Korea in a meeting of linguists from the two Koreas in Berlin, Germany, in 2002.
[Text copied from KT site and edited slightly for brevity because the link will only work for 7 days, after which they'd like you to pay to access the historic articles.]
So, as if it wasn't difficult enough already, it may change again. Lets hope Mr Kim and his buddies have come up with a suitably logical and straightforward approach. I wonder how long it will take to get agreed.
I don't normally find much to comment on from the news papers but since I've started there were a few other stories I thought worth mentioning:
Han River Projects to Enliven Seoul.
They are planning to try and brighten up the area around the Han river, the main river that runs through Seoul. I've walked across a couple of the bridges into Yeoido, it really is not a very pleasant experience. It's a long way, there is a lot of traffic and there is not that much to see while walking. I can't see their idea of converting one lane in to a pedestrian zone on five of the cross river bridges is going to make it any more appealing for people to walk when crossing the river.
Buses to have seats allocated for pregnant women.
Pregnant women will get issued badges from their hospital to allow them to use seats set aside for them. This was something Annie Mole mentioned sometime back on her Going underground blog. I'm sure she'll be delighted.
Bye bye Liza The Editor of SeoulStyle.com is leaving for Hong Kong. She told me in an email about a group of house husbands she know of who were trying to start a group to rival SIWA (Seoul International Women's Association). They were calling their support group 'DHIK' Dads, Husbands in Korea. Of course the group fell apart since there weren't enough DHIKS to keep the 'poker coffee mornings' alive.
CCTV to be installed on Metro carriages. A sad reflection on the increase in crime in this country.
The Oktoberfest comes to Seoul The Hilton has waitresses dressing up and Lotteworld has parades, dancing troupes, live music, games and events in a setting that replicates the city of Munich!
And finally, there was also a story, that I can't find on their site, of a rare item of news about the UK. It reported on this story from the Guardian about how the Ministry of Defence tried to prevent the public from finding out about unit DI55 that was investigating reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects. Quite why that was of interest rather than any news about the Blair / Brown battle (which they actually covered yesterday) I don't know.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
A Shaggy Dandy?
I had my hair cut last week. I wanted to go into this barbers and ask for a "Shaggy Dandy" :
But The Bat took me to another place and I ended up with a regular hair cut.
It is amazing how you can get by without speaking a word of Korean. Most people do not speak any English at all. Some people can understand a couple of words but 99% of communication has to be with gestures and pointing.
Inspired by so many people, including Gdog at The Daily Kimchi, who have said it is very easy to learn the Korean alphabet (Hangul) I have started to try and learn the letters. So far I can pick out a few of the consonants. Learning on the metro seems to be a good way because each station is announced and the electronic displays alternate between the Hangul and English spellings of the stations.
One confusing thing about the Romanisation of Hangul is that the Government changed the rules in 2000. So older guidebooks and text may have the old way of writing place names which do not correspond to the current signs. For example Pusan, became Busan etc.
But The Bat took me to another place and I ended up with a regular hair cut.
It is amazing how you can get by without speaking a word of Korean. Most people do not speak any English at all. Some people can understand a couple of words but 99% of communication has to be with gestures and pointing.
Inspired by so many people, including Gdog at The Daily Kimchi, who have said it is very easy to learn the Korean alphabet (Hangul) I have started to try and learn the letters. So far I can pick out a few of the consonants. Learning on the metro seems to be a good way because each station is announced and the electronic displays alternate between the Hangul and English spellings of the stations.
One confusing thing about the Romanisation of Hangul is that the Government changed the rules in 2000. So older guidebooks and text may have the old way of writing place names which do not correspond to the current signs. For example Pusan, became Busan etc.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Trip to the DMZ
One of the most heavily publicised tourist day trips out of Seoul is a visit to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). Stretching for 248 km from coast to coast this 4 km wide strip of land divides the two nations on the Korean peninsular : the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea DPRK to the North and the Republic of Korea ROK to the South.
The Military Demarcation Line (MDL) runs approximately along the 38th parallel, this line was agreed after 20 months of talks in 1953 and its agreement marked the Cease fire in the Korean war. Note: It is just a cease fire, the two nations are still in theory at war.
Today at least five companies offer tours of various combinations of the sites of interest that lie around 50km north of Seoul. We went with www.tourdmz.com who offer a full day visit.
Our first stop, after an hours bus ride, was the 3rd Infiltration tunnel. We were shown an upbeat and very optimistic video presentation highlighting some of the history of the war, before being seated in the small cog railway to be taken 300m down the access shaft to intercept the North Korean built tunnel at a depth of 73m.
Information from a defector in 1974 started the search for the tunnel. The method of detection was to drill a number of boreholes, line them with PVC pipes, fill them with water and watch and wait. In 1978 their patience was rewarded when one of the boreholes erupted due to the dynamite explosion from the construction of the tunnel below. [Why they could not use Seismometers, I did not get a chance to ask]. The tunnel is roughly 2m high and 2m wide. Blasted through mostly granite rock it reached 435m into ROK territory, only 50km to go to their intended target of Seoul. It seems to me a highly dangerous and unpredictable method of infiltration, but the North Koreans had other ideas and three other tunnels have been discovered.
The tour moved on the Dora Observatory, where we surveyed the DMZ from the lookout on the hillside. We could also see the tallest flagpole in the world in the North Korean village of Gijeong-dong and the smaller one on the opposite side in South Korea.
The next stop was Dorasan railway station.
This large modern building was opened in 2002 and would be the envy of many British towns and cities. Spacious, clean and modern the only thing missing is a reason to come here. Trains arrive three times a day from Seoul for the local population and military, but tourists cannot leave the compound around the station. One day it could be an International station with the possibility to travel on the Trans EurAsian Railway network, for the moment it's a peaceful tourist attraction in its own right.
The next stop was the Freedom bridge and peace park, this non descript bridge was the scene of the first exchange of prisoners after the Korean war.
After our meal of Bulgogi, we started the second half of the tour with another visit to the Freedom bridge. Not great organisation on the part of the tour company there. The highlight of the tour was the trip into the DMZ to Panmunjeom and the Joint Security Area. After a lecture from our guide on the history of the area we were taken under strict security to the small shack that lies on the actual MDL. One half of the room is in North Korea, the other half in the South. It was here that the Armistice was signed on July 27th 1953.
The whole camp is very quiet and well ordered. The buildings are modern and well kept, it almost looked like a university campus. The American soldiers that escorted us were friendly and knowledgeable. They were pleased to answer questions on life at the base and history of the place. All too soon we had to get back on the bus to come back to Seoul. It was a very interesting tour and it really does bring the history to life, I would highly recommend a trip to the DMZ to any visitor to Seoul.
The Military Demarcation Line (MDL) runs approximately along the 38th parallel, this line was agreed after 20 months of talks in 1953 and its agreement marked the Cease fire in the Korean war. Note: It is just a cease fire, the two nations are still in theory at war.
Today at least five companies offer tours of various combinations of the sites of interest that lie around 50km north of Seoul. We went with www.tourdmz.com who offer a full day visit.
Our first stop, after an hours bus ride, was the 3rd Infiltration tunnel. We were shown an upbeat and very optimistic video presentation highlighting some of the history of the war, before being seated in the small cog railway to be taken 300m down the access shaft to intercept the North Korean built tunnel at a depth of 73m.
Information from a defector in 1974 started the search for the tunnel. The method of detection was to drill a number of boreholes, line them with PVC pipes, fill them with water and watch and wait. In 1978 their patience was rewarded when one of the boreholes erupted due to the dynamite explosion from the construction of the tunnel below. [Why they could not use Seismometers, I did not get a chance to ask]. The tunnel is roughly 2m high and 2m wide. Blasted through mostly granite rock it reached 435m into ROK territory, only 50km to go to their intended target of Seoul. It seems to me a highly dangerous and unpredictable method of infiltration, but the North Koreans had other ideas and three other tunnels have been discovered.
The tour moved on the Dora Observatory, where we surveyed the DMZ from the lookout on the hillside. We could also see the tallest flagpole in the world in the North Korean village of Gijeong-dong and the smaller one on the opposite side in South Korea.
The next stop was Dorasan railway station.
This large modern building was opened in 2002 and would be the envy of many British towns and cities. Spacious, clean and modern the only thing missing is a reason to come here. Trains arrive three times a day from Seoul for the local population and military, but tourists cannot leave the compound around the station. One day it could be an International station with the possibility to travel on the Trans EurAsian Railway network, for the moment it's a peaceful tourist attraction in its own right.
The next stop was the Freedom bridge and peace park, this non descript bridge was the scene of the first exchange of prisoners after the Korean war.
After our meal of Bulgogi, we started the second half of the tour with another visit to the Freedom bridge. Not great organisation on the part of the tour company there. The highlight of the tour was the trip into the DMZ to Panmunjeom and the Joint Security Area. After a lecture from our guide on the history of the area we were taken under strict security to the small shack that lies on the actual MDL. One half of the room is in North Korea, the other half in the South. It was here that the Armistice was signed on July 27th 1953.
The whole camp is very quiet and well ordered. The buildings are modern and well kept, it almost looked like a university campus. The American soldiers that escorted us were friendly and knowledgeable. They were pleased to answer questions on life at the base and history of the place. All too soon we had to get back on the bus to come back to Seoul. It was a very interesting tour and it really does bring the history to life, I would highly recommend a trip to the DMZ to any visitor to Seoul.
Friday, September 22, 2006
The Pudding Club : Seoul Chapter
Last night, while The Bat was at work, I was out on the town at a local society event at the Millennium Seoul Hilton attending the 8th Pudding Club dinner.
I saw a newspaper story about this regular event, and I was tempted into going by a posting from Rudolf on the Korea Bridge Forum.
After pre-dinner drinks, the meal started with Autumn Mushroom and Scrambled Egg with Smoked Salmon in Chive Cream and it was followed by a Cheddar Cheese Soup.
The main course was delicious Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding with a selection of vegetables and Natural Jus. Sadly let down, we all agreed, by the lack of roast potatoes. It was then time for the main event of the evening: The Pudding Parade. Previous themes have included James Bond in The Pie who loved me, Robin Pud and The Full Monty.
The latest theme was royalty. Each of the nine desserts was introduced to us by someone of royal standing: Prince Charles and Camilla; Prince William; Tony Blair; Mick Jagger; Mr Bean; Posh 'n Becks and to bring in the final dessert of the night, none other than Her Majesty The Queen !
Serenading us on the piano was 'Elton John' who sang a number of delightful renditions of some of his hits including 'And I guess that's why I get Pudding blues', 'A little Creamy', and 'Don't go Baking my Tart' which he dueted with your favourite member of the Spice girls : 'All Spice'. Other hits of the night included 'Puddings are forever','Can't get no Choco Satisfaction", and 'Bowl Licking'. Lyrics available on request.
The introductions over, we were invited to serve ourselves from the nine desserts offered :Victoria's Pudding
Lord Randall's Pudding
Queen's Pudding
Rhubarb Crumble
Chocolate Pudding
Ginger Syrup Sponge
Prince Albert Pudding
Banana Rum Trifle
and that most famous of English desserts: "Spotted Dick" which was the only pudding of the evening that I did not taste. [I've had it once before... but the antibiotics cleared it up eventually.]
A photographer from the Korean Tatler was there and I am looking forward to my appearance along with the other distinguished guests at the event in the next issue of their esteemed magazine.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Who's Sori Now?
Thanks to Robert Koehler posting a last minute message on The Marmots Hole on Thursday, we had an extremely enjoyable weekend as guests of the
Arts council Korea visiting Jeonju and the Sori festival
Organised by the Korean Music Festival and Seoul Selection, this visit is one of a series of four tours intended for foreigners to experience Korean culture and visit some historically significant sites.
We departed by luxury coach from outside the Seoul Selection bookshop and arrived three and a half hours later in Jeonju in time for bulgogi lunch at the restaurant Honamgak. For The Bat and me this was our first trip outside of Seoul, so it was interesting to finally see some countryside and get a glimpse of the country from the bus. First impressions are that land is scarce and every available plot is used for growing crops. We also observed how densely packed the apartment blocks are particularly on the outskirts of Seoul.
The first musical event was to see and hear the the great voice of ‘Kim So-hee, The Voice of Heaven’ at the Sori Art’s centre Yeonji Hall. She performs traditional Korean style singing which we had not heard before. It was an unusual sound: opera-like does not really begin to describe it, but very enjoyable. Kim, the other singers and musicians are obviously of the highest standard and it was a pleasure to hear them. I managed to snatch a quick photo :
After an evening meal of bibimbap we came back to the Art’s centre for the opening gala performance of the Jeonju Sori festival. It was a varied and exciting show including a huge group of Korean harp players, traditional folk singing, a fusion group of western players and Korean singers, a Korean Rap singer and Korean break dancing.
Our accommodation overnight was in the traditional folk village of Jeonju, where we were comfortably looked after in a beautiful old building and sampled living in the style of the Yangban (the elite ruling class of Korea of old).
After kimchi for breakfast we were introduced to the Korean tea ceremony. Our host explained some of the customs and traditions associated with drinking the precious tea and we did our best to imitate her style and grace. They also had traditional clothing called hanbok for some of us to try on. Here I am :
We were served another delicious meal at a local restaurant at lunchtime before being driven back to Seoul through the rain resulting from Typhoon Shanshan.
The previous trip suffered a few problems with delays but on this trip we could not fault the organisation and planning in any way. Our group of approximately thirty foreigners from Britain, America, Canada, China, France, India, Australia and New Zealand from a variety of different professions all had a very entertaining and enjoyable trip. Many thanks to Robert and the other organisers and sponsors. We look forward to the next two trips to Damyang (Sep 30) and Songgwang-sa/Seonam-sa temples ( Oct 14-15) Contact Seoul Selection to book.
For those wondering about the title of the post, Sori is Korean for Music.
Arts council Korea visiting Jeonju and the Sori festival
Organised by the Korean Music Festival and Seoul Selection, this visit is one of a series of four tours intended for foreigners to experience Korean culture and visit some historically significant sites.
We departed by luxury coach from outside the Seoul Selection bookshop and arrived three and a half hours later in Jeonju in time for bulgogi lunch at the restaurant Honamgak. For The Bat and me this was our first trip outside of Seoul, so it was interesting to finally see some countryside and get a glimpse of the country from the bus. First impressions are that land is scarce and every available plot is used for growing crops. We also observed how densely packed the apartment blocks are particularly on the outskirts of Seoul.
The first musical event was to see and hear the the great voice of ‘Kim So-hee, The Voice of Heaven’ at the Sori Art’s centre Yeonji Hall. She performs traditional Korean style singing which we had not heard before. It was an unusual sound: opera-like does not really begin to describe it, but very enjoyable. Kim, the other singers and musicians are obviously of the highest standard and it was a pleasure to hear them. I managed to snatch a quick photo :
After an evening meal of bibimbap we came back to the Art’s centre for the opening gala performance of the Jeonju Sori festival. It was a varied and exciting show including a huge group of Korean harp players, traditional folk singing, a fusion group of western players and Korean singers, a Korean Rap singer and Korean break dancing.
Our accommodation overnight was in the traditional folk village of Jeonju, where we were comfortably looked after in a beautiful old building and sampled living in the style of the Yangban (the elite ruling class of Korea of old).
After kimchi for breakfast we were introduced to the Korean tea ceremony. Our host explained some of the customs and traditions associated with drinking the precious tea and we did our best to imitate her style and grace. They also had traditional clothing called hanbok for some of us to try on. Here I am :
We were served another delicious meal at a local restaurant at lunchtime before being driven back to Seoul through the rain resulting from Typhoon Shanshan.
The previous trip suffered a few problems with delays but on this trip we could not fault the organisation and planning in any way. Our group of approximately thirty foreigners from Britain, America, Canada, China, France, India, Australia and New Zealand from a variety of different professions all had a very entertaining and enjoyable trip. Many thanks to Robert and the other organisers and sponsors. We look forward to the next two trips to Damyang (Sep 30) and Songgwang-sa/Seonam-sa temples ( Oct 14-15) Contact Seoul Selection to book.
For those wondering about the title of the post, Sori is Korean for Music.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Movies and Entertainment
Finding movies in English or with English subtitles has not been easy. The Korean government sets a limit on the number of Hollywood movies cinemas are allowed to show. So the only two films in English on at all the big cineplexes are Miami Vice and The last House this month. However thanks to the Seoul Selection website we found one last week : Time. A Korean movie shown with English sub titles.
It was an unusual plotline. The girl of a couple that have been going out for two years is worried that her boyfriend finds her boring and that he wants a change. So she does the obvious thing and has cosmetic surgery. Suddenly leaving him for six months with no warning or explanation. He pines over her and generally has a sad life until a new waitress starts at his local cafe. This girl, it turns out, is the same girlfriend as before, but he does not recognize her. Still pining for his lost love he does not fall for the new girl. When she reveals it is her all along he gets (understandably) upset. There are various recriminations, including him visiting the cosmetic surgeon and fighting with him trying to ask him why he did this to her. Then, in a desire to get his own back, he himself has cosmetic surgery and gives himself a new look. She then tries to find him again, testing out various boys along the way to see if they are him. It is all very confusing. If you can suspend your disbelief long enough then it certainly was an entertaining thought provokin movie. The scenes of cosmetic surgery the surgeon shows her to try and deter her are not for the squeamish.
At the Sponge House cinema that this was showing at, we discovered the Seoul International Film Festival was on this month. The timing of the shows coincide with the times The Bat is working so sadly she has not been able to see any. I have watched two so far and I'm about to go into a third one later today.
The first "Portait of a Lady Far Away" was not to my taste. An Iranian movie about an architect who gets a call from a stranger who says she is about to comit suicide unless he comes. So he does, eventually, and he meets a friend of the caller. They go to a Art performance that she stars in, he figures out it was her who made the call. It goes on. There are various old women and small children involved, families, dreams etc. (Not going to make it as a film reviewer am I?)
The second "Apart from That" was an American movie about the lives of three pairs of people. It was a well observed film about life and people, no real story, just "stuff happened". Pleasantly distracting for two hours. Tonights movie is "Aura" about a taxidermist. I am looking forward to this!
Other entertainment has been to see Blondie last night. Yes the punk rocker of old is still going strong. We really enjoyed her "First and Last concert" as it was billed. We missed the start as I had assumed there would be a support act. D'oh. Not. Oh well, we will know for next time. Gotta go, show starts in 15 mins.
It was an unusual plotline. The girl of a couple that have been going out for two years is worried that her boyfriend finds her boring and that he wants a change. So she does the obvious thing and has cosmetic surgery. Suddenly leaving him for six months with no warning or explanation. He pines over her and generally has a sad life until a new waitress starts at his local cafe. This girl, it turns out, is the same girlfriend as before, but he does not recognize her. Still pining for his lost love he does not fall for the new girl. When she reveals it is her all along he gets (understandably) upset. There are various recriminations, including him visiting the cosmetic surgeon and fighting with him trying to ask him why he did this to her. Then, in a desire to get his own back, he himself has cosmetic surgery and gives himself a new look. She then tries to find him again, testing out various boys along the way to see if they are him. It is all very confusing. If you can suspend your disbelief long enough then it certainly was an entertaining thought provokin movie. The scenes of cosmetic surgery the surgeon shows her to try and deter her are not for the squeamish.
At the Sponge House cinema that this was showing at, we discovered the Seoul International Film Festival was on this month. The timing of the shows coincide with the times The Bat is working so sadly she has not been able to see any. I have watched two so far and I'm about to go into a third one later today.
The first "Portait of a Lady Far Away" was not to my taste. An Iranian movie about an architect who gets a call from a stranger who says she is about to comit suicide unless he comes. So he does, eventually, and he meets a friend of the caller. They go to a Art performance that she stars in, he figures out it was her who made the call. It goes on. There are various old women and small children involved, families, dreams etc. (Not going to make it as a film reviewer am I?)
The second "Apart from That" was an American movie about the lives of three pairs of people. It was a well observed film about life and people, no real story, just "stuff happened". Pleasantly distracting for two hours. Tonights movie is "Aura" about a taxidermist. I am looking forward to this!
Other entertainment has been to see Blondie last night. Yes the punk rocker of old is still going strong. We really enjoyed her "First and Last concert" as it was billed. We missed the start as I had assumed there would be a support act. D'oh. Not. Oh well, we will know for next time. Gotta go, show starts in 15 mins.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Turning Forty and Eating Bosintang
Yesterday was my fortieth birthday. Star Trek is also forty. I didn't feel any older yesterday than I did the day before so I am not going to dwell on this little milestone anymore.
Almost the first thing people mentioned to me when they knew I was going to South Korea was “They eat Dog don’t they?” so since I arrived I have been planning to try some. Lets get some myths out of the way first:
1. No Koreans do not all eat dog all of the time. In fact it is a bit of delicacy and quite pricey. You do NOT find it in all restaurants and you have to know what to ask for to get it.
2. They do not eat any old dog off the street. The dogs are bred specifically to be eaten and are treated like other animals bred for slaughter like cows, sheep, pigs, chickens.
3. Yes during the football world cup and the Olympics there was some controversy about how these animals were reared and, having read some websites today, I cannot say hand on heart that I am sure they are not mistreated these days, but can anyone say that about all their food?
My birthday meal was organised by The Bat (my non-carnivorous wife, for those new to the blog). Two other teachers from The Bat’s English School came with us. Richard, who can speak Korean, asked a taxi driver to take us to a
restaurant that sells dog meat stew. The taxi driver phoned his mate and they found us a very small, out of the way place, not that far from Yeouido and we went inside.
It was more of a private house, than a restaurant. We ordered the Bosintang “healthy soup” as it is known. When it arrived it looked very much like pork. The taste was different, not as strong as venison, more like pigeon if I had to compare it to anything. Personally, I could not connect the meat in the stew with an animal but one of the guys had a momentary crisis of conscience at one point.
Some of the other comments during the meal were : “Is that a dog hair or a human hair?”, “Is that the tail. No it’s just a vegetable”, "Do I hear barking", “Can I have a hot-dog” and to round off the meal : “Do you think they'll give us a doggy bag?”
So there we have it: I’ve eaten dog. It was OK, but I am not planning on eating it again, I prefer the beef, chicken, pork etc.
Here is one of the dogs from outside the restaurant :
Postscript. Looking through the Korean blog List there is one blog named No Dog Please. Reading his blog I noticed a recent post about the Gupo Dog market. Not for the faint hearted I am afraid. For more references to dog welfare see here.
Almost the first thing people mentioned to me when they knew I was going to South Korea was “They eat Dog don’t they?” so since I arrived I have been planning to try some. Lets get some myths out of the way first:
1. No Koreans do not all eat dog all of the time. In fact it is a bit of delicacy and quite pricey. You do NOT find it in all restaurants and you have to know what to ask for to get it.
2. They do not eat any old dog off the street. The dogs are bred specifically to be eaten and are treated like other animals bred for slaughter like cows, sheep, pigs, chickens.
3. Yes during the football world cup and the Olympics there was some controversy about how these animals were reared and, having read some websites today, I cannot say hand on heart that I am sure they are not mistreated these days, but can anyone say that about all their food?
My birthday meal was organised by The Bat (my non-carnivorous wife, for those new to the blog). Two other teachers from The Bat’s English School came with us. Richard, who can speak Korean, asked a taxi driver to take us to a
restaurant that sells dog meat stew. The taxi driver phoned his mate and they found us a very small, out of the way place, not that far from Yeouido and we went inside.
It was more of a private house, than a restaurant. We ordered the Bosintang “healthy soup” as it is known. When it arrived it looked very much like pork. The taste was different, not as strong as venison, more like pigeon if I had to compare it to anything. Personally, I could not connect the meat in the stew with an animal but one of the guys had a momentary crisis of conscience at one point.
Some of the other comments during the meal were : “Is that a dog hair or a human hair?”, “Is that the tail. No it’s just a vegetable”, "Do I hear barking", “Can I have a hot-dog” and to round off the meal : “Do you think they'll give us a doggy bag?”
So there we have it: I’ve eaten dog. It was OK, but I am not planning on eating it again, I prefer the beef, chicken, pork etc.
Here is one of the dogs from outside the restaurant :
Postscript. Looking through the Korean blog List there is one blog named No Dog Please. Reading his blog I noticed a recent post about the Gupo Dog market. Not for the faint hearted I am afraid. For more references to dog welfare see here.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Convex Magnum Opes
No, I don't understand it either. I wonder what the T shirt designer thought it meant?
Ever since I arrived a few weeks ago I have been amazed by the "English" on some T shirts. Here's a few of my favourites :
Flashers Football
Make the green in heart
Dear the Blue
"Pretty good Baby
Choose Juicy"
Juicy Private school, Never go Home
Ask Enquired This is a brand name around here. They use the Union Jack as a logo!
What's this? Gold dust everywhere
Whose fingerprint is this?
...Stop making sense. I've seen this a couple of times now, it always makes me smile
Beaver Hunters Beware
"Morning & Snack
I keep seeing POLHAM everywhere, which is a local brand name, but for some strange reason they like to add the words "THE JUSTIFIABLE" beneath the name on some of their shirts. What are they trying to justify?
Another brand name is HUM, and likewise they feel the need to add a word as well, so you get shirts saying "HUM BRIMMING", which conjures up some very strange images.
I wish I had photos of some of them, but I fear I may get arrested going around photographing young girls wearing T shirts, so the shot of the couple above is the only one I have I'm afraid.
A cute young couple we saw yesterday had matching T shirts: his (in blue) said 'She's my girlfriend' with an arrow pointing to the left, and hers (in pink) said 'He's my boyfriend' also with an arrow pointing to the right. So sweet. Apparently here it's very important to look the same or to have matching clothing when you are young and in love.
I've just added my blog to feedmap.net and I was looking at other blogs in the area. A lot are either in Korean or have not posted to for more than six months but there are some good ones and I found Miss Koco does korea who has also posted about the same subject this morning!
She also has a great photo of the name of a shop in the earlier post. The best shop name I've seen so far is "Wet Pup".
Ever since I arrived a few weeks ago I have been amazed by the "English" on some T shirts. Here's a few of my favourites :
Flashers Football
Make the green in heart
Dear the Blue
"Pretty good Baby
Choose Juicy"
Juicy Private school, Never go Home
Ask Enquired This is a brand name around here. They use the Union Jack as a logo!
What's this? Gold dust everywhere
Whose fingerprint is this?
...Stop making sense. I've seen this a couple of times now, it always makes me smile
Beaver Hunters Beware
"Morning & Snack
BISCUIT HONEY"
I keep seeing POLHAM everywhere, which is a local brand name, but for some strange reason they like to add the words "THE JUSTIFIABLE" beneath the name on some of their shirts. What are they trying to justify?
Another brand name is HUM, and likewise they feel the need to add a word as well, so you get shirts saying "HUM BRIMMING", which conjures up some very strange images.
I wish I had photos of some of them, but I fear I may get arrested going around photographing young girls wearing T shirts, so the shot of the couple above is the only one I have I'm afraid.
A cute young couple we saw yesterday had matching T shirts: his (in blue) said 'She's my girlfriend' with an arrow pointing to the left, and hers (in pink) said 'He's my boyfriend' also with an arrow pointing to the right. So sweet. Apparently here it's very important to look the same or to have matching clothing when you are young and in love.
I've just added my blog to feedmap.net and I was looking at other blogs in the area. A lot are either in Korean or have not posted to for more than six months but there are some good ones and I found Miss Koco does korea who has also posted about the same subject this morning!
She also has a great photo of the name of a shop in the earlier post. The best shop name I've seen so far is "Wet Pup".
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Bukhansan National Park
In a bid to escape the concrete jungle of Seoul at the weekend, we ventured into the nearest National Park to Seoul : Bukhansan. This is proud to hold the Guinness world record for the National park with the largest number of visitors, over 5 million at last count. ( It's a shame they had to build a motorway through it ). The large park ( 79sqkm) is easily accessibly by Metro and Bus and there are over 40 different ticket booth entrances to chose from.
We went to the north western enterance ( Subway line 6 Yeonsinnae, and then Bus 34 ) which takes you right to the gate. Unsure as to what the catering arrangements were inside we had some lunch at a small shack on the road, it was tasty but not cheap.
The Koreans, we have discovered, are very keen indeed on their hiking. It was a hot day but there were hundreds of very well equipped walkers streaming down out of the park, it was busy, but not crowded. As the day wore on the numbers thinned out a lot. We did not walk all that far, but came across a small buddhist temple in the hills which looked almost brand new and was very peaceful.
Inside one of the temple buildings were all these little statues:
There was not much birdlife around, too many humans, but a number of trees had been labelled in Korean and with their Latin names. We also saw a couple of small mammals a Siberian Chipmunk and Siberian Weasel according to the display boards. We need not have worried about going hungry, there plenty of small places to eat. It was almost like being in a small village at one point there were so many inside the park.
We went to the north western enterance ( Subway line 6 Yeonsinnae, and then Bus 34 ) which takes you right to the gate. Unsure as to what the catering arrangements were inside we had some lunch at a small shack on the road, it was tasty but not cheap.
The Koreans, we have discovered, are very keen indeed on their hiking. It was a hot day but there were hundreds of very well equipped walkers streaming down out of the park, it was busy, but not crowded. As the day wore on the numbers thinned out a lot. We did not walk all that far, but came across a small buddhist temple in the hills which looked almost brand new and was very peaceful.
Inside one of the temple buildings were all these little statues:
There was not much birdlife around, too many humans, but a number of trees had been labelled in Korean and with their Latin names. We also saw a couple of small mammals a Siberian Chipmunk and Siberian Weasel according to the display boards. We need not have worried about going hungry, there plenty of small places to eat. It was almost like being in a small village at one point there were so many inside the park.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Scenes from the inferno
This was the scene at 08:45 on Friday 1st September from inside the apartment :
I quickly exited the building to watch the fire brigade arrive.
The camera crews were on the scene very quickly . All three of the major broadcasters KBS, SBS, and MBC have their headquarters on the island.
And then this was the scene upstairs in our apartment :
Once the fire brigade had gone, the cleanup operation began very quickly and by 2pm when The Bat came home the floor was dry and clean again.
I've just had someone from the insurance company come round. (It is not entirely clear but I am assuming he's from the company insuring the building opposite) We had prepared a list of the clothes and items destroyed and the cost to replace them. He seemed very keen that I reduce it. Maybe this is some sort of custom or bargaining position I'm not sure, but I've stuck with our figures so I am hoping for a payment that will cover the cost of replacing all our winter gear.
I've just been to the COEX Mall this morning to get a new power supply for the Mac laptop. Luckily it was only the power supply on the floor that got soaked and stopped working, not the computer as well. In spite of the apple website denying they have any offices in South Korea we did eventually find an Apple service center and they have very kindly lent me a power supply until they can give me a new one next week.
I quickly exited the building to watch the fire brigade arrive.
The camera crews were on the scene very quickly . All three of the major broadcasters KBS, SBS, and MBC have their headquarters on the island.
And then this was the scene upstairs in our apartment :
Once the fire brigade had gone, the cleanup operation began very quickly and by 2pm when The Bat came home the floor was dry and clean again.
I've just had someone from the insurance company come round. (It is not entirely clear but I am assuming he's from the company insuring the building opposite) We had prepared a list of the clothes and items destroyed and the cost to replace them. He seemed very keen that I reduce it. Maybe this is some sort of custom or bargaining position I'm not sure, but I've stuck with our figures so I am hoping for a payment that will cover the cost of replacing all our winter gear.
I've just been to the COEX Mall this morning to get a new power supply for the Mac laptop. Luckily it was only the power supply on the floor that got soaked and stopped working, not the computer as well. In spite of the apple website denying they have any offices in South Korea we did eventually find an Apple service center and they have very kindly lent me a power supply until they can give me a new one next week.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Yeouidos Burning
Very exciting morning this morning. I was sitting in the apartment, when I noticed some smoke coming up outside the building. I closed our windows quickly, and retreated as moments later the blue builders netting on the building site opposite burst into flames in front of the window.
I managed to grab a couple of photos before getting outside rather quickly. Outside the extent of the fire was not great but was threatening the local petrol station. The Fire brigade were on the scene fairly quickly and soon tackled the blaze. The news crews were on the scene almost as fast as the emergency services and all three stations had crews covering the fire. After milling around outside I was accosted by our cleaning lady who urgently insisted I go upstairs very quickly.
When I reached our apartment I was greated by a crew of firemen in breathing apparatus who immedidately went into the apartment after I unlocked our door. It turned out that I had forgotten the small room containing the air conditioner had a vent that was open to the outside. A small spark or ember must have got in and set fire to the two suitcases and a box of winter clothing we had stored there. As a result of the firemen dousing the flames there was a deluge of water in the apartment. It was swilling around about 3 cm deep. Mercifully I had put all our bedding up on a chair earlier. As the fire brigade were milling about and checking it was all out the TV crews came in. One who spoke English asked me what happened and after he put a microphone on me I explained the sequence of events. I then repeated the explanation for the other two crews! I then showed one of them the photos I had taken and they took screen shots of the photos.
I spent all morning cleaning up the mess. Luckliy the only damage was the suitcase and box of clothing. The parquat floor seems to have servived intact. The Bat came home after lunch to survey the damage. In fact there was not that much to see. She was upset about the loss of the clothes.
I have plenty of photos but the power supply for the computer has been full of water, so am unable to upload them for now. ( I am at in internet cafe now)
I hope someone can video the local news from either MBC, SBS or KBS to see if the interview of me is on! I must check their websites for any photos. If there are stills of flames in a window, they are mine and want some royalties!
The neigbours have been extremely kind in helping clean up and translate for the various people that have been round this afternoon to deal with the repairs.
I managed to grab a couple of photos before getting outside rather quickly. Outside the extent of the fire was not great but was threatening the local petrol station. The Fire brigade were on the scene fairly quickly and soon tackled the blaze. The news crews were on the scene almost as fast as the emergency services and all three stations had crews covering the fire. After milling around outside I was accosted by our cleaning lady who urgently insisted I go upstairs very quickly.
When I reached our apartment I was greated by a crew of firemen in breathing apparatus who immedidately went into the apartment after I unlocked our door. It turned out that I had forgotten the small room containing the air conditioner had a vent that was open to the outside. A small spark or ember must have got in and set fire to the two suitcases and a box of winter clothing we had stored there. As a result of the firemen dousing the flames there was a deluge of water in the apartment. It was swilling around about 3 cm deep. Mercifully I had put all our bedding up on a chair earlier. As the fire brigade were milling about and checking it was all out the TV crews came in. One who spoke English asked me what happened and after he put a microphone on me I explained the sequence of events. I then repeated the explanation for the other two crews! I then showed one of them the photos I had taken and they took screen shots of the photos.
I spent all morning cleaning up the mess. Luckliy the only damage was the suitcase and box of clothing. The parquat floor seems to have servived intact. The Bat came home after lunch to survey the damage. In fact there was not that much to see. She was upset about the loss of the clothes.
I have plenty of photos but the power supply for the computer has been full of water, so am unable to upload them for now. ( I am at in internet cafe now)
I hope someone can video the local news from either MBC, SBS or KBS to see if the interview of me is on! I must check their websites for any photos. If there are stills of flames in a window, they are mine and want some royalties!
The neigbours have been extremely kind in helping clean up and translate for the various people that have been round this afternoon to deal with the repairs.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
A Round up of some Korean blogs
I’ve been reading a lot of Korean blogs in the past couple of weeks to get to know what’s happening and read what other foreigners have to say about life in Korea. As you can imagine a large number of bloggers are English teachers (ESL English as Second Language) . From the 36 I have sampled so far the majority seem to be American or Canadian, with a few Australians and British. Those that are not teachers are either Army, (GI Korea) , Students , Accountants or Attorneys. The current ratio of male to female bloggers is 23 to 10.
Most bloggers post between two and three times a week on average, but the most prolific blogger must be RJ at The Marmots Hole. This blog, which is quoted in the Joog Ang daily newspaper, is probably the one blog most often linked to from other blogs. His regular daily postings cover aspects of the news in Korea often relating to foreigners and items of Korean culture that interest him and the large number of folk who comment. Thanks to his ability to read Korean he can gain a better understanding of current news than I ever will be able to. Today there are already eleven posts, including some from other contributers to the blog.
Other popular blogs that are also referenced a lot include The Lost Nomad, Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms and ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal. All three cover current news items, humour, the ups and downs of teaching, their travels and food and cooking in Korea. The authors have all been in Korea for several years and have built up an enthusiastic following with their wacky and interesting posts.
Some blogs have been around for several years, since May 2001 in the case of David at Staypuff , whilst others have only just started in March . Almost all the blogs include photos of their own and sometimes videos of their exploits or links to youtube with clips of interest. An example blog with no photos is Korean Liberator who focuses on the antics of North Korea and it’s leader. The blog keeps readers abreast of worldwide news coverage of the country. Some blogs are photos only for example Seoul Daily Photo where Kais posts interesting and unusual photos on a regular basis, she also has a blog in Korean on a separate page.
Big Hominid and Seoul Hero get the prize so far for the largest number of links to other sites, I estimated both have more than 200 links. Some sites have no links to any others at all, but the majority of blogs have between 10 to 30 links to other blogs and websites on their blogroll. (That's the list of other blogs the writer has put links to, usually down the side of their blog.)
A lot of blogs have setup RSS feeds which makes life easy for keeping track of new postings. For those not familiar with this, RSS provides a publishing mechanism so that you can use software either on your own computer or create an account at one of the many dedicated websites to enable you to monitor posts from the blogs you read in one place, without having to visit each individual blog website to see if they have posted or not. If you have a blog, it’s not too difficult to setup. I used a third party site feedburner to publish posts from this blog, it's that small orange symbol below the "Power Blogger" logo on the righthand side, and I have installed NewsNetWire to subscribe to the blogs and read them on my computer at home.
Most bloggers main topics are life in Korea, the food, their travels, their work and life , family and friends and items of interest to their readers. The one exception to this is Feetman Seoul who has just started and who has dedicated his blog to photographing and discussing the legs and feet of the ladies of Seoul. Don’t worry, it is work safe, as he focuses strictly below knee level.
Other attributes I’ve not been keeping track of are: Advertising: some do, some don’t. Comments: almost all the blogs allow you to comment on the posts. You have to have a login for some blogs, but quite a few allow anonymous postings. You have to type an antispam code for some, this is to prevent automated programs adding spam comments to the blog advertising other websites.
Surprisingly not everyone who is on the Korean Blog list has a link on their blog back to the site and there are several bloggers who’ve not added theirs to Alan Scully’s masterpiece of a list. I’ve so far only found one dead link and one blogger who has moved on from Korea, in his case to Syria. Almost all the blogs I’ve visited so far have posted at least once in August, so this list is most assuredly a valuable and up-to-date repository.
If you are interested in reading more Korean blogs, due to the sheer number of blogs on the list it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps Alan would consider adding a few more fields to help make it easier to select based on the material? But, dear reader, I shall be doing my best over the coming months to visit them all. 36 down, 316 to go. (based on the current total of 352)
Most bloggers post between two and three times a week on average, but the most prolific blogger must be RJ at The Marmots Hole. This blog, which is quoted in the Joog Ang daily newspaper, is probably the one blog most often linked to from other blogs. His regular daily postings cover aspects of the news in Korea often relating to foreigners and items of Korean culture that interest him and the large number of folk who comment. Thanks to his ability to read Korean he can gain a better understanding of current news than I ever will be able to. Today there are already eleven posts, including some from other contributers to the blog.
Other popular blogs that are also referenced a lot include The Lost Nomad, Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms and ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal. All three cover current news items, humour, the ups and downs of teaching, their travels and food and cooking in Korea. The authors have all been in Korea for several years and have built up an enthusiastic following with their wacky and interesting posts.
Some blogs have been around for several years, since May 2001 in the case of David at Staypuff , whilst others have only just started in March . Almost all the blogs include photos of their own and sometimes videos of their exploits or links to youtube with clips of interest. An example blog with no photos is Korean Liberator who focuses on the antics of North Korea and it’s leader. The blog keeps readers abreast of worldwide news coverage of the country. Some blogs are photos only for example Seoul Daily Photo where Kais posts interesting and unusual photos on a regular basis, she also has a blog in Korean on a separate page.
Big Hominid and Seoul Hero get the prize so far for the largest number of links to other sites, I estimated both have more than 200 links. Some sites have no links to any others at all, but the majority of blogs have between 10 to 30 links to other blogs and websites on their blogroll. (That's the list of other blogs the writer has put links to, usually down the side of their blog.)
A lot of blogs have setup RSS feeds which makes life easy for keeping track of new postings. For those not familiar with this, RSS provides a publishing mechanism so that you can use software either on your own computer or create an account at one of the many dedicated websites to enable you to monitor posts from the blogs you read in one place, without having to visit each individual blog website to see if they have posted or not. If you have a blog, it’s not too difficult to setup. I used a third party site feedburner to publish posts from this blog, it's that small orange symbol below the "Power Blogger" logo on the righthand side, and I have installed NewsNetWire to subscribe to the blogs and read them on my computer at home.
Most bloggers main topics are life in Korea, the food, their travels, their work and life , family and friends and items of interest to their readers. The one exception to this is Feetman Seoul who has just started and who has dedicated his blog to photographing and discussing the legs and feet of the ladies of Seoul. Don’t worry, it is work safe, as he focuses strictly below knee level.
Other attributes I’ve not been keeping track of are: Advertising: some do, some don’t. Comments: almost all the blogs allow you to comment on the posts. You have to have a login for some blogs, but quite a few allow anonymous postings. You have to type an antispam code for some, this is to prevent automated programs adding spam comments to the blog advertising other websites.
Surprisingly not everyone who is on the Korean Blog list has a link on their blog back to the site and there are several bloggers who’ve not added theirs to Alan Scully’s masterpiece of a list. I’ve so far only found one dead link and one blogger who has moved on from Korea, in his case to Syria. Almost all the blogs I’ve visited so far have posted at least once in August, so this list is most assuredly a valuable and up-to-date repository.
If you are interested in reading more Korean blogs, due to the sheer number of blogs on the list it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps Alan would consider adding a few more fields to help make it easier to select based on the material? But, dear reader, I shall be doing my best over the coming months to visit them all. 36 down, 316 to go. (based on the current total of 352)
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Wildlife in Seoul
I've mentioned Yeouido park a few times. There is also the Yeouido Setgang Ecology park which I have been visiting these past couple of days. It is, as it's name suggests a lot more natural than the park, the footpaths here are all gravel and there are no labels on the trees etc.
It has been a good place for birdspotting. In the past two days I've seen : Spot Billed and Mandarin Ducks, an Egret, two Night Herons, several Grey Herons, a Black Naped Oriole, a pair of Rufous Turtle Doves, plenty of Brown-eared Bulbuls, Magpies and Sparrows are everywhere, a Yellow Wagtail, a Kingfisher, a Marsh Tit and an unidentified wader and a warbler.
Since my photos of the birds just show very small brown blobs, I thought I'd share this one of a Cicada.
These small creatures make such a loud racket it's incredible. It's taken a while to get used to such noise. There are also plenty of other smaller animals about: we saw two very large butterflies and other smaller ones; dragonflies are very numerous and colourful and the bees are also large. The ponds have koi carp and also turtles in them, and I've seen several small rodents in the park. All in all, not too bad for the centre of the city.
It has been a good place for birdspotting. In the past two days I've seen : Spot Billed and Mandarin Ducks, an Egret, two Night Herons, several Grey Herons, a Black Naped Oriole, a pair of Rufous Turtle Doves, plenty of Brown-eared Bulbuls, Magpies and Sparrows are everywhere, a Yellow Wagtail, a Kingfisher, a Marsh Tit and an unidentified wader and a warbler.
Since my photos of the birds just show very small brown blobs, I thought I'd share this one of a Cicada.
These small creatures make such a loud racket it's incredible. It's taken a while to get used to such noise. There are also plenty of other smaller animals about: we saw two very large butterflies and other smaller ones; dragonflies are very numerous and colourful and the bees are also large. The ponds have koi carp and also turtles in them, and I've seen several small rodents in the park. All in all, not too bad for the centre of the city.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
I'm a Legal Alien
I went back to the Korean Immigration Office in Seoul yesterday to collect my Alien registration card:
All very fast and efficient, only 10,000 won. I've checked, and my spouse's visa does not allow me to work. They are very strict about this so no working for me, oh dear what a shame, but since the house husband lark is going very well so far I don't think this is going to be a problem.
I met up with The Bat in the afternoon and we went "into town" to the Bank Of Korea Museum. It's not a very large museum and does not seem to be on many maps, but it is free. Inside, the building and the atmosphere reminded us both a great deal of the Bank of England Museum in London.
There is not very much English text on the display boards, but all the objects in the museum were labelled in English. The most unusual was a Horse hoof shaped silver coin. It was about 8 cm across, 4 cm deep and shaped like a cast of a hoof: not very comfortable to carry in the pocket.
One document of historic interest was a telegram from the IMF:
Date : Aug 23 2001.
Regarding Korea's repayment of the IMF loan of Dec 3rd 1997.
We are pleased to inform you the following sums have been transferred : 106,294,596.67 Euro (Germany) , 19,360,584.89 Euro (France) 8,683,250.67 Euro (Greece) 5,294,419.29 Euro (Ireland) 4,541,659,622 Dinar (Kuwait) .
Korea has repaid in full the standby credit of 14,412,500,000 SDR extended by the IMF.
It's surprising that with those huge sums of money they go right down to Euro cents to balance the books.
Also currently at the museum is a temporary exhibition of a collection of currencies from around the world. A large selection of notes and coins from over 50 countries are viewable in pull out cases. A small improvement would have been to include the year of production for the notes, since not all were the current notes in circulation. There were also some exhibits of currency oddities. I liked: the 3 dollar note from the Bahamas; The half franc note from Tunisia; A 2 Tala bill from Samoa; and the 15, 45 and 90 unit bills from Myanmar.
Well worth a visit if you have 30 or 40 minutes to kill. It's less than ten minutes walk from City Hall. Strangely the BOK does not even mention it on it's website! It's like they want to keep it a secret.
All very fast and efficient, only 10,000 won. I've checked, and my spouse's visa does not allow me to work. They are very strict about this so no working for me, oh dear what a shame, but since the house husband lark is going very well so far I don't think this is going to be a problem.
I met up with The Bat in the afternoon and we went "into town" to the Bank Of Korea Museum. It's not a very large museum and does not seem to be on many maps, but it is free. Inside, the building and the atmosphere reminded us both a great deal of the Bank of England Museum in London.
There is not very much English text on the display boards, but all the objects in the museum were labelled in English. The most unusual was a Horse hoof shaped silver coin. It was about 8 cm across, 4 cm deep and shaped like a cast of a hoof: not very comfortable to carry in the pocket.
One document of historic interest was a telegram from the IMF:
Date : Aug 23 2001.
Regarding Korea's repayment of the IMF loan of Dec 3rd 1997.
We are pleased to inform you the following sums have been transferred : 106,294,596.67 Euro (Germany) , 19,360,584.89 Euro (France) 8,683,250.67 Euro (Greece) 5,294,419.29 Euro (Ireland) 4,541,659,622 Dinar (Kuwait) .
Korea has repaid in full the standby credit of 14,412,500,000 SDR extended by the IMF.
It's surprising that with those huge sums of money they go right down to Euro cents to balance the books.
Also currently at the museum is a temporary exhibition of a collection of currencies from around the world. A large selection of notes and coins from over 50 countries are viewable in pull out cases. A small improvement would have been to include the year of production for the notes, since not all were the current notes in circulation. There were also some exhibits of currency oddities. I liked: the 3 dollar note from the Bahamas; The half franc note from Tunisia; A 2 Tala bill from Samoa; and the 15, 45 and 90 unit bills from Myanmar.
Well worth a visit if you have 30 or 40 minutes to kill. It's less than ten minutes walk from City Hall. Strangely the BOK does not even mention it on it's website! It's like they want to keep it a secret.
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