tales from Korea

The Taebaek (태백) mountains form the backbone of the Korean peninsula and offer some of the best walking and hiking trails around. We wanted a chance to go skiing again before the season ended and we stumbled upon a new resort opened close to Taebaek city called the O2 Resort… yeah, like the western mobile operator but this has nothing to do with it. The place only opened last year which meant there was probably going to be less people then the overcrowded Muju resort we visited before. We also managed to book a room (albeit for only one night) at the resort itself, overlooking the slopes.

The drive over was long, but not as painful as Muju as it was motorway for the majority, and only regional roads for the last third of the journey. The view on the drive over was like Muju – just wonderful. Beautiful, misty mountains, clean air rushing through the car’s air vents. Unfortunately, the ‘mist’ never seemed to lift and on driving closer to the resort itself the mist turned to a thick fog – visibility was about 30 meters. When we eventually got to the resort itself, visibility was less then 10 meters. Cars travelled at a snails pace to avoid crashing; we found a parking space and had to walk almost blindly but eventually we reached the resort. Conditions were bad, it had been raining heavily the night before meaning icy slopes and even though most of the slopes were open, they strongly recommended we sit it out and hope it clears by tomorrow. It couldn’t be worse really – the worst weather for skiing, pretty disheartening. We stayed in, drank beer and played “The Game of Life” which Sooha loves and brought along. As a side note, I kept suing Jayeon in the game, and she got really annoyed with me and stayed that way for the rest of the night!

The next morning we opened the curtains to check on our wall of fog – visibility had increased and was now about 25 meters or so. It still sucked, and I felt like we should just give up and go back home at the time. You can’t really ski in that condition, it’s too dangerous. But, Jayeon’s mom convinced us that we should go anyway since we came all the way. The resort was booked up so we had to leave and find another place first before heading to the slopes. We checked into this dinky and high-tech (If quite bizarre) motel; the options for staying were 1. Room with no beds or 2. Room with one bed and the Internet. We chose the second option of course. It was a small room with one huge queen sized bed, a massive 42″ LCD TV, a Dell computer and monitor, a fridge and a strange bathroom with no lock and it was very open to look in on. Also, the ceiling had a kind of plastic reflective quality to it through a section near the end of the bed (Not exactly a mirror but you could tell that this room was designed for a more, ahm, intimate setting). We got kitted out and headed to the slopes! Take a look at this map:

We hit up the easiest Dream 1 slope first just to get warmed up and check the visibility. The ride down was easy and a good way to warm up but the visibility itself was pretty poor. Everyone had to ski (Or snowboard) down at a snails pace and try to avoid the icy patches. We went up and down completing the dream circuit a couple of times before taking a break for lunch. During the lunch time, it started snowing – the fog (essentially the cloud holding the snow) was finally bailing its load. Almost instantly you could see the difference, visibility increased to about 200 meters. We went out again and this time took a gondala up to the top of the mountian to try the intermediate Head and Happy slope. It was glorious – the freshly laid snow covered most of the ice and finally we could see! You could see far enough ahead of you now to ski a lot faster, the course is a bit more challenging and was faster and more fun to fly down. Also, my skiing has developed quite a bit – I’ve stopped ‘A’ skiing altogether and parallel ski almost all of the way down, with better control over turning and braking. I loved straight skiing down the last part of the slope, it’s a bit scary but I must reach speeds of maybe 60 km/h – great fun!

The resort itself (of what we saw) is absolutely outstanding. It’s only a year old, the facilities and slopes are top notch. I advise anyone in Korea who wants to go skiing to hit up this resort next season as it’s bound to begin getting swamped in the next few years. As Jayeon said “Its not that famous yet but once Koreans start to learn about it they’ll come here in droves”.

After the skiing we also did a 10k hike through the mountains, beautiful scenery and a great walk.

Overall if you’re a fan of great scenery, getting out into nature and want to ski at a top resort – head over to Taebaek 태백!

As it comes to the end of February, and my vacation days, the new school year is about to begin. Korea’s school term starts in March and runs until December, with January and February being the main vacation time with maybe two weeks during the summer for a respite. The vacation days I planned for this month are just about up – went by in a breeze, and I barely did anything. I went back to Ireland for the majority of it – nearly ten days; being at home as doing all kinds of things made it never really feel like a ‘vacation’, though. Not that I wasn’t happy to see everyone, it’s just that not much happened. It feels like the build up to the vacation was better then the pay off. But, I’m almost ready to go back, my mind is certainly not in school mode yet and with a new grade and double the amount of students to last year it may take some getting use to. The second half of my contracted year – I wonder what it’ll have in store for me, one thing I know for sure – It’ll be full on go for the next few months once I land back in my desk in a weeks time. No breaks for holidays, no vacations, just full on work. But, hopefully I can plan time for photography over the coming weekends, I have a few things in mind and looking forward to seeing what I can try to capture this year.

One thing you can do pretty easily while living in Korea is take a trip to Japan – just 90 minutes to Osaka and less then 3 hours to Tokyo.

I’ve dreamed of visiting Japan since I was young. One time I phoned the Japanese Embassy in Dublin to inform them of my intent to visit, they asked me when and I said “When I grow up”. They posted me out a package of books, pencils and other bits and bobs. I’ve always looked at Japan and admired their unique and delicate culture, been fascinated by their high points (Feudal Japan) and their low (WWII). Being in Korea has definitely given me a little bit of a tarnished view of how the Japanese behaved during WWII; then again can you really hold it against the current Japanese people? I can understand why the Koreans behave the way they do, but I won’t go into that (Dokdo or Takeshima, anyone?). A lot of my interest about the country stemmed from Japanese comics, I learned quite a bit of the culture from those right-to-left Tokyopop mangas. When I think of a place like Tokyo now, I remember the film Lost in Translation – man, that film is right up there in the best for me.

A Loner’s Life

A stark contrast between Korea and Japan. In Korea, eating meals are always eaten with company… family or friends, usually in big groups. It’s seen as a little depressing to eat on your own. People who are on their own often opt for a take away and go back home or eat in the street to avoid the ‘embarrassment’ and ’sadness’ of eating alone in a restaurant.

In Japan, many of their restaurants are built around the concept of individual eating alone, petty much the complete opposite of Korea. Many places have a bar style layout with a few two or four person tables scattered around, even in big chains like McDonald’s they have more individual seats facing walls or a partition then at tables. Quite a few times we ended having to order and eat at the bar in a line because the very few tables there are taken, usually by a small family. Still the bar format tends to lend a certain type of atmosphere, almost forcing you to be close to other people there, centred around the action at the bar rather then yourself at a group table. In one bar in particular, we experienced this enjoyment – the staff and other patrons almost more then our own conversations. In a way I’ll miss that, maybe Japan is more friendly to the lonely/seeking traveller? Who knows.

Osaka / 大阪府

We crossed down the narrow steps in the station and waited just a few seconds for the Osaka express to take us into the mega-city. We sat down and I studiously studied everything Japanese around me, it may have just been a train – but it was in JAPAN! We realised after a stop or two, that we didn’t actually buy the express tickets and didn’t have any assigned seat numbers. Would our first 30 minutes in Japan get us fined? Of course with a few minutes an inspector came over and we handed her tickets, she gave us a laminated card with instructions in a few languages: “You must pay 500 Yen now”, only $5 each so no big deal really. I peered out the oval aircraft like window for most of the way looking at the sprawled concrete landscape below. I was a little surprised to see how disorganised and drab the streets and buildings looked, I though after WWII they would have planned the city and rebuilt it, but it still seems a mess. In a way I felt that there was more uniqueness to the place, compared to Korea’s planned towns and rows of identical apartment buildings. More small streets, back alleys, individually designed houses and strangely shaped residential blocks. However it appeared so disorganised, I don’t know how I’d ever find a house in that jungle.

Osaka is a really happening place, a great vibe almost everywhere we went. We ate so much great food, and soaked in the atmosphere in some traditional Japanese bars.

Overall we had a great time, taking in the city… doing some shopping, seeing the sights. But, after our two nights, we were ready to move on to our next destination – Kyoto.

Kyoto / 京都

A bit of magic

Kyoto, a city of remarkable history. Even people who don’t know much about Japan will likely have about this place. We elected to stay three nights here, but thanks to its fame it is also more expensive – so we went from a nice hotel in Osaka to a modest but atmospheric youth hostel instead, for the same price. The name of the place is “K’s house”, and we’d recommend it to anyone. The staff here are great, friendly and genuine. When we stepped off the train we were greeted by Kyoto’s impressive train station, but exiting the station were equally surprised by how drab the area around the station is. The ugly “Kyoto Tower” staring back; no matter, ugly as it is it became a useful point of orientation when we became lost.

Actually the main city centre is not very exciting at all, mostly a sleepy enough place with a grid like layout. Kyoto’s ingenious city planners decided years ago to rip it apart and create it in that way – leaving most of the old city, temples and sights scattered around the outside of the city. So we took the bus everywhere, and hopped between some of the sights. At times, I could almost imagine myself as a samurai, or Buddhist priest, roaming the temples, taking in the serenity of these places, sneakily hidden away from everything. The gold temple was wonderful, and despite the droves of tourists (Us being part of it), were notably moved by this place.

We came across some Geishas at one point, posing for another photographers photo shoot. He wasn’t particulary happy when I tried hijacking his shoot. Unfortunately the strong sunlight played havok with my camera – I had light leakage and flair, despite taking precautions to avoid both.

Another beautiful shrine we came across was the Fushimi Inari shrine, hundreds (or possibly thousands) or individual gateways leading up a mountain to a holy place. It was a wonderful photographic opportunity.

Some nice people we spent a night with in K’s guest house. Some Koreans, Austrians and a Taiwanese girl.

Let’s Be Naked

The public baths were not that new to me, since Korea has a similar style (jimjilbang), but the casual attitude of the bathers, and staff was a little arkward at the beginning. We nipped across to a local baths just across the street from the guesthouse and entered separate doors for men and woman. Once inside, a wall separated both areas but the front desk counter looked into each one. One old lady greeted us and took the cash from Jayeon. From the front door, there was the locker room and no further room before getting into the baths. I was thinking, what… do I just strip off here? No further room in which to change. The front desk lady was looking in, and if the mens door opened some of the street was visable. In Korea’s jimjilbang’s you usually go through a section for shoes and lockers before the showers and changing area. But, everyone was just stripping off and seemed content. As my last piece of clothing came off the receptionist suddenly appeared behind me, I turned around a little surprised. “Yes yes, free shampoo… take”, “Urm no… arigato ga day mas, I’m okay”. I scuttled towards the baths and jumped into the water. The Korean bath waters can be very hot, but this was ridiculous.

2 Minutes, Is this actually scalding me? My whole body is itchy.
4 Minutes, Maybe my heart rate is 120-130 or so…
6 Minutes, Moving my arms and legs cause some pain.
7 Minutes, Starting to feel faint…
9 Minutes, Dizzy… pull myself out of tub and cool down.

I felt a bit wimpy, how can the Japanese men stay in for so long? I got out and changed, and to my surprise Jayeon came out at the same time. She found it so hot as well, time for a cold beer.

After our time was up, we pressed on to Kanazawa and our good friend – Loki.

Kanazawa / 金沢

Kanazawa station itself is impressive and the citizens seem proud of the iconic wooden entrance built to resemble a temple. Our arrival got off to an enthusiastic start picking up a well written and detailed visitors guide from the helpful tourist information office. They were overeager and seemingly surprised at foreign English speaking tourists being there at all; the city itself is a popular enough tourist destination but more for Japanese nationals then big nose whites. One of the staff told me that she was a Japanese English teacher on the JET program and knows some of the teachers who live around here. The place had already given that local feel, after all the city only has a population of 500,000. We wandered down the main street, looking up at the heavy, dark sky and then down at the map in our flashy guidebook. A castle in the centre of the castle, and the population… this place really is like Edinburgh – one of the reasons for Loki picking the place (We don’t know why he’d want to do that, but, different strokes).

We found the place quite dull in just a short period of time and ended up running for coffee when the raindrops starting touching town. We waited a bit and met up with Loki after school was finished, looked mightily bearded and in good spirits. We all trodded the modest walk to his apartment, we got there and had fun catching up and drinking all in one packets of “Milk Tea”. We met one new face there, Loki’s multilingual friend Jeff who Loki claimed could speak English, Taiwanese, Mandarin Chinese and Korean, I admit being a little skepticalat first Loki really wasn’t kidding. Jeff and Jayeon spoke in Korean at some length. We all headed off in Jeff’s box van, with sushi in mind and wallets stuffed with Yen, we headed to a 100 Yen Sushi restaurant.

The place was just fascinating, I loved the fact you could order sushi for yourself on the little computers at each table. Also, when you finish you put your plates down a little slide (To where?) and get a chance to win a little plastic ball with something inside – like from a vending machine. With more then 40 empty plates on the table, we played away and won twice. Here’s a video of us putting the plates in and winning one useless plastic thing:

The Ninja Temple

The next day when Loki was in school, Jayeon and I made our way to the so called “Ninja temple”, of course it was never ninja who occupied this building, but samurai. A lord lived here, with the samurai sworn to protect him. The house was not a reconstruction, but almost completely original. Unfortunatly the guides only speak Japanese, but English speakers get a pamphlet with descriptions about each part of the house you visit. On the outside of the building, it appears to be a normal two story dwelling. Back in the time it was built, no building could be higher then three stories. But inside the house has 4 levels, with staircases everywhere. It was called the ninja temple of course because of it’s traps and tricks, employed to protect the lord who lived there from attackers. Simple, but ingenious – I loved the pitfalls, optical illusions employed to hide an observation room, a see-though stairs from the back used to see and spear enemies running up it. Such simple but clever devices, it made me really feel like I was back in an ancient time.

After out wonderful time in Kyoto was up, we headed to the capital – Tokyo.

Tokyo / 東京

Tokyo was the last destination of our trip and we had limited time, but with all the sights covered in previous places, we decided to just take in the atmosphere – Shinjuku, Shibuya, Akihabara. So many sights, sounds and smells. Too much for one and a half days, but enough to get a good impression.

This dodgyness of everything in Tokyo led us to to try one wacky idea, a maid cafe.

The Maid Cafe

Descending a random elevator in a subway station, we saw a huge advert for a “Maid Cafe”, I laughed and joked about going there and before I knew it, that was the next plan. Well I guess this is Tokyo, so you have to see some crazy things, right? We were only a few blocks outside of the subway station and we spotted some girls in elaborate maid outfits throwing flyers around and blinking their eyelashes at passers by. We met a pretty girl and without much convincing needed she hurdled us into an elevator. What were we getting ourselves into? The elevator doors opened on the 8th floor to bells and two maids ready to greet us. We all froze and realised this may be a bad idea, but Jayeon pushed Loki out and so we followed. After a look around in astonishment, I quickly realised what a creepy place it was. Individual, desperate looking Otakus’ sitting by themselves being served drinks by bored looking ‘fake’ maids. I realised that, while looking for fun, I wasn’t looking for a creepy experience like this. We embarrassingly got back into the elevator and in a panic all mashed the 1st floor button. That idea was firmly done and dusted!

The three week long winter camp is nearly at an end. It went by pretty quickly, a lot of feelings about the success of the camp I’ll keep firmly in my head and off the Internet. But, I can always talk about the great things that happened, and the greatest thing for me was my brilliant class. Each class was expected to have between 8-10 students, mine had 8 originally but two dropped out on the first day leaving me with a tidy six. The class bonded together very quickly – Three of the students are from the same school, two other girls are both aspiring artists with similar interests and took a liking to each other on the first day. The last boy kinda forced himself to fit in, I’m sure you can tell from the photo above which one he is.

Quotes

Some of my favourite quotes and things that happened during the camp:

“Teacher, don’t Vikings still exist?”
“Yes, that’s one reason I came to Korea, to escape the murder and pillage”.
“Ahh really teacher? Wow… like the pirates I read about in the news”.
“Young Mu – I’m joking! The Vikings were around about 1000 years ago!”

When writing about the movie Saving Private Ryan, one student wrote the directors name as Steven Smallbug.

“Teacher I love you, and I love your fashion”.

One of the students wrote ‘Paul is legend’ on the board.

“Teacher, are there blacks in Ireland?”

“Teacher – I know about RIA!”
“I think you mean IRA.”

When acting out a performance, one girl shouted at her ‘boyfriend’ [pointing at another girl] “You sleep?! You sleep?!”.

“Students, listen up, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate this lesson?” [not my lesson!]

“0″, “-10″, “Boring”, ”1″, “Can’t rate – too horrible”, “바보”.

Give me 5 new years resolutions, one student is obsessed with GG:
1. Meet Girls Generation.
2. Hug Girls Generation.
3. Kiss Girls Generation.
4. Shake hands with Girls Generation.
5. Marry Girls Generation.

[Maybe more if I can remember...]

The camps end: The performance

On the last day of the camp is the ‘performance’ the students have been working on for 20 minutes a day. Three weeks to prepare something may sound like a lot but it really isn’t. I like my classes ambition, though. They chose to do something a little different, they wanted to do something Irish, since that’s where their teacher’s from. After showing a few scary videos of Irish dancing and Michael Flatly, we found a Ceili dance that’s relatively easy to perform. At this stage, they have it down pretty well. Well, they have the movement and pace of the dance, the footwork is more like skipping but still, I’m impressed. I’ll upload the video of the performance after Friday.

Update: The performance video.

First Place!

My class won first place in the performance competition – beat back the beatles, Grease (Sorry Jeremy!) and some plays! Very happy, they worked hard for it and pulled off a good performance. I think I was more nervous then they were.

In some ways it almost makes me sad to think of going back to the 28-35 sized classrooms in my own school when the new semester starts. The noise and discipline problems, seeing them once a week – you can’t really build any sort of relationship with the students. I got to know these six students better in this short time then any of the students in my own school. Hopefully I can change that a little when I go back for next semester.

You’ll be spoilt for choice when shopping in Korea, that is, as long as your size is pretty small and you have a similar build to a Korean. For men, I think it may be a little easier as some Korean men can be pretty big – comparable to a normal western man. But for everyone else, having a slightly oversized romp, being extra tall or having a wide chest can mean giving up on high street shopping and going instead for some specialist shopping in Itaewon.

I’m 178cm, pretty normal, I’m not a very big guy, but have quite wide shoulders and a wide chest – I am XL everywhere in Korea, and at that the XL barely fits. By the way, they don’t really have the American style XXL XXXL type sizes in Korean stores – XL is the biggest. For top sizes, I look for the Korean “105″ which is generally the biggest size, and it fits me just about. Pants, jeans ect are a little easier, you can get them pretty easily up to 36″ waist – but most of them have a fixed length (Or they just say ‘normal’ or ‘longer’). If you’re a rather tall fellow – you’ll probably have to head off to Itaewon. I know quite a few westerners who don’t really get any clothes in Korea, they have to haul it all from their home country.

When I go shopping for clothes, I have a quick checklist which goes from the most important (Practicality) to the least important (Style). Pretty much everything I buy has to fulfil these criteria, but if one point weights heavily above the point below it, I may still get it. For example, if something was really damn comfortable, even if it was expensive, I’d probably get it. This may all sound a bit pretentious or something, but really it’s just my priority when buying clothes. Like most men, I couldn’t care, but I still have the inbuilt strict money sense from being a student for so long. Here’s the list:

• Practicality
• An item should have a purpose and be build well for that purpose, it should be practical and useful.
• Comfort
• It should be comfortable to wear and not cause any pain even with extended use*.
• Cost
• It should be reasonably priced – Build quality and materials equal to a fair price**.
• Style
• It should look good, and not just be made for a current fashion trend but be good for a while.

* This is why high heels fail the test (Obviously for girls!).
** Most designer labels you’re paying for the brand over the quality of the product hence that’s why i don’t buy any.

Yeah, you all know how anal I am.

The three shops I’m going to recommend which provide what I need with those requirements are Giordano, UNIQLO and Basic House. By the way, I’m not being sponsored, this is just my opinion.

Giordano is great for casual clothing, I like their simple but attractive styles. Their jumpers are neat: Round necks and hoodies, in a variety of colours so you can easily match to taste. They have some really high quality shirts too; a little pricey mind, but they’re really nice. I do wear some of the shirts for school, and none have ever shrunk in the wash. I’ve never bought any pants here, but I did buy a very nice long jacket that was on sale (-40%) because it was last seasons fashion.

UNIQLO is one of all my all round favourite shops – It’s actually a Japanese company. Check out their pants and jeans – they usually have some formal ones good for school and some casual ones good for outside school. They regularly run sale events and you can usually pick up a genuine bargain there. I’ve bought jumpers for school, great underwear, Thermal pants, Jeans and other things there. Very good prices for the quality, I’ve generally found. There is a huge UNIQLO in the 명동 (Myeongdong) shopping area.

Basic House is another good all rounder. They have a lot of clothes that are good for school wearing – cotton pants, ‘teacher’ style jumpers and a lot of decent shirts. I’ve found the quality to be a bit hit and miss, but it’s still a shop worth checking out. Prices are a bit odd too – Some things are very well priced while others seem arbitrarily high. Sometimes they have very fashionable clothes in one section and in the other they have very basic and generic universal styles.

There are a few other places worth checking out, but these three seem to be the best for western male teachers buying clothes in Korea, in my opinion.

During one meeting last year we were informed by one of the SMOE coordinators that the Gangdong district was going to make additional afternoon classes entitled “Arts and Sports”, and took the names of teachers that may be interested. When i though of the title, the first thing that jumped into my head was photography. “Hey there’s something I know about, it’s an art… I can teach that, right?”. Quite a few teachers signed up, each with their own ideas: Music, knitting, modelling, painting, etc (I didn’t see anyone offering to teach a sport). A few weeks went by and the title seemed to have changed to “Arts and Crafts camp”, it seemed that these extra classes were a first for the Gangdong area and they were altering the purpose of the classes as needed. Each school advertised the classes… but not surprisingly, numbers were low. After all, students have to go to the winter camp, most of them probably go to hagwons (Private learning institutes) and aren’t too enthusiastic about signing up for voluntary extra classes. My school seemed to fair better – with my co-teachers advertising the class, 4 students signed up.

We heard finally, the Gangdong office had decided that classes must have over 5 students to proceed – the final numbers came in, my class was the only one with over 5 students; in fact I was pleased to see that 7 had signed up – 3 students from other schools as well. I felt sorry for the other teachers, some classes had zero students. I feel it more a case of the schools doing a bad job of advertising the classes rather then the subject of the classes themselves. The classes were laid out as 3 classes per day, starting at 2pm, for 5 days (One week essentially – 15 classes in total). I made an overview of what the teaching schedule was like but it was a little stretched, to say the least. What should I do for 15 classes? It seemed a bit much. It ended up changing to 10 classes, which was great, so I decided to do them back to back and have it from 2pm – 3:30pm for the Monday to Friday.

I spent a while preparing for the lessons… Photography, what was I thinking? These are 1st and 2nd grade middle grade students (14 and 15 year old), can they handle this? I mean seriously, photography has some pretty dynamic scientific components with some very specific and uncommon vocabulary. How can I dumb it down though, and then expect them to take good photographs? I decided to just put in the essential information without dumbing it down and all, and though that real life demoing might peak their interest enough to try and remember [and use] the information. The schedule was set for the week, Monday and Tuesday would be classroom based – powerpoints, the history of Photography, the uses, etc, all the way into how photography works – how to take a good picture. Wednesday was half based in the classroom, the first part was just about composition – I tried to emphasise the importance. The second half of the class was them running around the school taking photographs of each other, trying to apply the information they learned during the last two days.

When the classes started, I actually only had 6 students, one had dropped out due to sickness. It was more a little more convenient for making teams though, and I easily divided them into three pairs. I informed them of a competition that would take up all day Thursday in which we would go outside and shoot for the whole 1 and a half hour, the place was Garden5, just across the road from my school. On Friday we would be choosing and editing the photographs using Photoshop, their choices would be submitted and I would pick the winning team there and then. Friday was a day for criticism too – I explained how to give and take criticism, and how important it is in photography.

The competition:

I explained the students must submit a final 5 photographs, based on these requirements:

• Photograph One:
• Portrait, shallow depth of field.
• Photograph Two:
• Theme is “Circles”.
• Photograph Three:
• A building, deep depth of field.
• Photograph Four:
• Theme is “Moving people”.
• Photograph Five:
• A photograph of your choice.

Here are a few images of the students when we went out shooting on the competition day.

Some of the students creativity was just inspirational, I felt like I really got them thinking about how to use their own imagination and skill to try and capture something a normal person would never have thought to look at that way. Here are the images taken by the winning team:

I have to say, the class was an absolute success and I really enjoyed teaching it. I’ve never taught anybody photography before, I still have a lot to learn myself, but to get the elementary stuff across was still really useful for these aspiring students. It was such a good feeling to see them inspired, being creative, having fun and following me around like my own little photo posse, armed with SLRs slung over their shoulders.

The end of a year and start of a new one, usually things go out quietly… One year rolls into another one, you can’t tell the difference and almost forget that it happens until you sign something and write the year date wrong. More has happened in the last 10 days then has really happened in the rest of 2009. My brother and his girlfriend had a baby, just a few days before Christmas. Jayeon and I announced our engagement, and just a day after, Jessie, the family dog was taken ill and had to be put down.

A few days of absolute joy, surprise, laughing and cheering as well as inevitability, incredible sadness and loneliness.

Jayeon and I haven’t made any dates yet, but it’s likely we’ll be married here in the summer of 2010. We won’t have anything high-key, you know us.

I want to congratulate Mark and Lindsay again, and wish the best for them and their baby.

I will miss my dog, terribly; I wrote a small document (13.3MB) with some memories of her.

Looking forward to this year… So many great things planned.

Special meals are worth special trips. This particular trip was to the East coast of Korea, outside of Seoul in the Gyeonggi-do region close to the ever-growing city of Incheon. There is an area famous not just for its delicious shellfish, but also the manner in which you can get it: Unlimited and grilled on a BBQ. You wouldn’t think it was possible to get unlimited shellfish, this type of food is usually mighty expensive, but as we got to the main strip with the restaurants it started to make sense why it was being offered. The reputation of this particular area brings a lot of people over, and that means more restaurants setting up – competition is rife and they’ll go to great lengths to get your into their place.

Coming into the town there is a man, or a lady, standing outside each establishment trying to flag cars down and convince them to try their place over their neighbours’. Luckily for us, the choice had been made already as Jayeon’s mum had picked out a place that was recommended online. We parked and headed upstairs; the place was very simple, wooden tables with a hole cut out for the bucket of hot coals, plastic chairs and no décor on the walls. The staff handed us two rather unexpected (to me anyway) tools – Pairs of gloves and a large blue plastic bucket. What exactly am I suppose to do with these? I hope I don’t have to pick my meal out of a fish tank. Luckily that was not that case. The gloves are for handling the shells and the bucket for throwing them into.

We tucked in to a load of different shellfish, some huge, some tiny. Some were salty, some were meaty, some had little taste and some too much. It was an interesting experience; again something Korea does well – making a shellfish meal a simple but delicious and no-frills experience. After we had stuffed ourselves silly, we took a walk down the harbour and market area, and I got too see the slightly darker side of this district. There was a pier lined with Spartan, vinyl cabins with smoke chimneys occupied by older independent fish merchants. There was a mark of desperation on many of their faces. Some chopped, piled and hacked all manner of fish and shells in a kind of solemn contemplation. We passed one woman who proclaimed she has had no sales that day, and begged to buy something. Jayeon’s mom paid 5000 won for some Oysters, she took her measuring cup and filled it to the brim, but continued to stack the overflowing cup and eventually poured it into the plastic bag. Her hands were scarred, worn, with thin fingers and blistered fingertips. She asked me to call her 할머니 (grandmother). The chimneys continued to bellow out an oaky scented smoke, which clung to our clothes for the rest of the day, constantly reminding me of the seeming dichotomy still relevant in Korea today – the division of the hidden traditional ways and the in your face modern capitalism.

The Korean market for phones is notoriously locked in. This seems to be the common viewpoint from the west, and one to a certain degree I agree with. From a Korean perspective, they’re simply proud of their domestic electronic giants and that by supporting their own market it will ultimately benefit their economy. I can’t really see how this can still be a worthy argument, especially considering that Samsung and LG are the second and third largest phone manufactures in the world. The number one is still Nokia, of course, but according to some Koreans I’ve talked to “Nokia came to Korea but just totally failed, no one was interested in their products”. I’m a bit sceptical of this, but no matter. Then the rumours of the iPhone came along, a popular Smartphone in the U.S. and Europe, it picked up the nickname ‘Next months phone’ because it has been constantly delayed for pretty much the last few years. Korean law has some nice regulations protecting the domestic market, but in fairness the government seems to be taking steps to loosen these regulations. When the iPhone passed the regulations just two months before, KT picked up the bandwagon and released the phone here just a few days ago. This is even after a release in China last year! The lone company who released it is KT (Korean telecom) and in my opinion, they made some smart choices about the hurried release. They could have accepted the Korean foreign phone failure attitude and just have directed the iPhone at a very niche market where they could have charged outlandish monthly charges they this segment would be willing to pay. But they released the phone with a heavy subsidy and several different pricing options marketed at a broader audience. The one ‘catch’ per-se, is the 24-month contract.

I never would have picked up an expensive Smartphone back home, for one simple reason: The chances of it being stolen are probably quite high. In Korea, this type of theft is extremely uncommon – most people have nice phones and with most phones being CDMA with no SIM card, stolen phones are essentially useless.

The iPhone cost W396,000 ($346) upfront with a W45,000 ($39) a month contract, this was my choice.

The slew of extremely useful features makes it for me, very much worth the money. I’m a happy man.

The first time at having a chance to visit a large comic convention came up today and I couldn’t resist jumping at the opportunity to head over and check it out. It was well worth going to; many people showed up in magnificent costumes and the convention itself, whilst being amateur, had a whole lot of talented artists displaying their goods. I would of liked to support the comic creators but of course the comics are in Korean.

Here is a selection of photographs from the convention: