Sasha's blog

Bike Tour

2011-10-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

This summer Sara and I decided to get out on a bike tour. We took the train with our bikes from Portland to Tacoma, rode to my hometown, Port Townsend, where we stayed for a week with my cousins, then rode back to Portland, about 310 miles all told.

We had been talking about such a trip for a while, but needed to find a way to make it work out with our respective work schedules. Not taking any summer classes, I'd picked up some more hours at Clean Edge, and Sara was doing some program development for UC Riverside. Since both of our jobs allowed us to telecommute, we decided to take our laptops and take a working holiday.

Our Trek 520s fully loaded (food, camping gear, clothes, laptops), we set off for the Portland Amtrak station on September 4th for the start of our adventure. After only a little bit of confusion and getting yelled at by some Amtrak folks for riding on the platform, we were on our way. At Tacoma, we were excited to start riding, and immediately faced one of the steepest and longest hills I have ever ridden in my life. Not the most auspicious start, but after getting to the top of it I took back everything bad I've ever said about the granny gear on a bike.

From there on we rode towards the beginning of the Scott Pierson Trail as suggested by Google Maps bike directions. Now I don't dislike hills - in fact I prefer going up them to down them, and have always thought of myself as a bit of a climber. These hills though, were so pointlessly miserable that getting out of Tacoma was the singular worst experience I've ever had on a bicycle. Up, down, up, down, up, down; you get the picture.

Once we got to the trail, the terrain became more reasonable, and we stopped for lunch at the War Memorial Park just before the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Originally, our plan was to ride the 84 miles to Port Townsend, but the combination of not taking into account how long it'd take to get to Tacoma on the train, and how long it would take to get out of Tacoma, we were hopelessly behind schedule. We decided to just plow ahead and see where we were at when the sun started going down, roughly aiming for the Hood Canal Bridge.

Going over the Tacoma Narrows was a pleasure - there is a huge pedestrian / bike area that is behind a very substantial barrier. There were enough pedestrians and other cyclists out that I didn't get to look around as much as I wanted to, but it was a lovely day, and being anywhere in the Puget Sound puts my heart at ease. On the other side of the bridge we found the Cushman Trail with only a little difficulty (having a spacephone with GPS makes finding trailheads a lot easier, as I was to find out again and again).

The Cushman trail, like the vast majority of trails we took, is paved and took us for a decent distance up the peninsula. Google Bike Directions are pretty good, but they are not the most direct or efficient way to go. We stopped in the early afternoon a little south of Port Orchard and got some food to cook for the evening at a grocery store and decided that there was no chance we were going to make it to the Hood Canal during daylight hours. Neither of us were excited by the prospect of night riding on the small back roads, so I started calling around to campgrounds to see if there was anywhere we could bike in to. There weren't any that were convenient or on our way, so we decided to detour to one NE of Port Orchard.

A few wrong turns later, we were getting punished by some miserable hills, and stopped by a "Welcome to Port Orchard" sign, encouraging visitors to eat at their restaurants and stay in their hotels. By this point, neither Sara nor I needed much convincing, so we decided to sleep indoors that night. It was amazing how much of a second wind that decision gave us; the remainder of the hills just flew by to the door of the hotel.

Now I don't know how much of an economic powerhouse Port Orchard has ever been, but the downtown is largely abandoned, save for a number of pawn shops and bail bond stores. The Comfort Inn was nice enough, and the view was great. A hot shower and a meal of bread, cheese, and rotisserie chicken later, we were quite content.

We got an early start the next day, determined to make it the remaining miles to Port Townsend. It was another beautiful day, and the riding by the Sinclair Inlet was delightful. We made it to Silverdale with little event and had lunch at the Old Mill Park, which was uninspiring, but had bathrooms and water fountains, making it a superb one in my book.

The rest of the peninsula went by smoothly, going down a lot of roads I've never been on. The gates of the Bangor Sub Base were imposing and looked totally deserted, but you know that there had to be eyes somewhere. We joined up with State Route 104 heading towards the Hood Canal Bridge and I was back in my element, having driven that road dozens of times. The bridge itself was very windy and the view didn't fail to deliver, though with the wind and all the crap on the shoulder, I didn't take my eyes off the road much.

On the North side of the bridge I decided to stop paying as much attention to Google Maps; I knew the roads well enough, and I could now see firsthand that it was doing its best to wear us out, send us down unpaved logging roads, and to generally make us vulnerable to cross-traffic. So, onward we plowed on SR104, pounding the hills and our water. We stopped for water when we turned off onto Beaver Valley Road, and later in Chimacum at some farmer's market.

Having driven this route so many times before, I knew all the hills we were coming up to, and was a little scared of the ones my Mazda 323 hatchback struggled to get up. My legs and my 520 turned out to be a better combination, and the hills went by smoothly, thanks in part to some good marching music by Madeon. As a side-note, I wonder if there has been a study on the effectiveness of music on endurance; my guess would be that there is a strong correlation.

We finally got to the outskirts of Port Townsend and turned off on the Larry Scott Memorial Trial, avoiding a dangerous choke point, and took it all the way down to the harbor, including some hard-packed dirt riding. When we first came around the bluff to see the identical blues of the Port Townsend Bay and the sky, I realized why it is my favorite color. We finished off the ride showing up at my cousin's house around dinner time.

We stayed for about a week with the Hanifords, camping in their backyard and working downtown at the Undertown Cafe. My main task was to move Clean Edge's website from a 12 year old php-based CMS to Drupal. Having about 12,000 pages, it was no small task, and I was kept very busy. The week went by, going to work in the morning, walking around and enjoying the sun at lunch, and hanging out in the evenings with Sara and my cousins the Hanifords and Spesers. I began to think of Undertown as "the office", which in a way was too bad, since it is a great cafe, if not a little heavy on the Portland coffee and culture.

The Wooden Boat Festival was in full swing while we were there, and there were hundreds of amazingly made and cared-for boats, as well as a festival atmosphere. The woodworking and craftsmanship that went into the boats was humbling; there were a few 1920 racing sloops that had the most amazing parquet decking. I have never before or since seen such fine woodworking, let alone on a boat!

At the end of the week we took leave of our gracious hosts and started heading south. Wanting to do away with the backroad nonsense of our trip up, Sara and I decided to head down 101 to Olympia, then to follow I-5 to the Colombia River Highway in Longview. The first leg was an easy one, and we camped at Dosewallips State Park. The next day we headed to Olympia.

A bit north of Olympia, 101 turned into a major freeway with cloverleafs and all, not very bike friendly. Google Maps told us to take a road that went just alongside it, West Golden Pheasant Road. As we were going down it, the houses became more and more decrepit, and at one point we passed a vacant lot that had been turned into community a garbage dump. We keep on heading down the road and we pass by a house with a shirtless man out front whose primary occupation seemed to be burning piles of clothing in his front yard. He was chasing some dogs around with a garden rake and I tried not to stare. Then, about 200 feet ahead of us was a dead end and a no trespassing sign.

We turned around, not looking forward to retracing our steps, and headed past the clothes-burning house. The man was staring at us, and then freaked out and started yelling and running towards us with his rake. It turns out that his dogs were bolting towards us at full steam and he was trying to get them back, but we were quickly overtaken. Sara, ever resourceful, pulled out her water bottle and squirted them in the face, giving us the pause we needed to escape. Not seeing any other way around it, we jumped a fence towards 101 South, as many people seem to have done before us, judging by the well-traveled path, and made the best time of the whole trip, practically flying down the freeway.

When we got to Olympia we rode to the house of some friends of my cousins, who we had met in Port Townsend where they had come up for the Wooden Boat Festival. We spent a full day there, as I had some work that had to get done, and headed out the next day towards the Toutle River RV Resort. Not being able to ride on I-5 itself, we criss-crossed it on old roads, going through towns that I've only seen exits for. It was a great ride, with great weather and beautiful countryside.

I had never been in a RV Resort before, but it didn't seem like a bad idea to camp there, as it was a good distance away from Olympia. The Toutle River RV Resort was a bizarre place - they could accommodate hundreds of RVs there, and fortunately for us, the season was over, so we had it mostly to ourselves. The place is basically a triangle, with the train lines on one side, and I-5 on the other, and it was ungodly noisy with freight trains sounding their horns every time they go by. That said, we were happy to be off our bikes, the resort had a little store where we got some wine, and Sara cooked up a delicious dinner, so no major complaints.

Our last day was to head to Longview, over the Lewis and Clark Bridge, and back to Portland on the Colombia River Highway. The ride was fine and we got to Longview and headed towards the border. All the while there was a strange building in the distance - some sort of out-of-place skyscraper in a medium-sized logging town. We got closer and closer and it became apparent that it was the bridge, an absolute mammoth of a thing, spanning the relatively narrow Colombia River with enough height to allow freighters to go underneath. The bridge is very unfriendly to bikes, having a fast speed limit, an endless number of logging trucks, an incredibly steep grade, and a narrow shoulder littered with bark. If that wasn't enough, they were also painting the bridge, so there were tarps boxing most of the superstructure in, adding paint fumes and diesel exhaust to the mix.

On the descent, suddenly a piece of tarp broke free and whipped into the road, hitting Sara, and I thought for sure that she'd fall, but she stayed up like a champ, swerving around some paint buckets that were left in the shoulder. Besides the bridge, the rest of the ride went by very smoothly, and we rounded out the day at just over 90 miles traveled, and could have gone for quite a few more.

The tour was a great experience - it was the longest tour I've done, and my equipment did me proud. Neither of us got a single flat the whole trip! I had even chosen to break in a new Brooks saddle on the ride, (and I don't know why everyone warns against it) and I did just fine. All in all, I can't wait to go on another tour!

For more and larger photos, see here.

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those Buddhist monks.

2011-07-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

I recently got back from a ten day Vipassana silent meditation course at the Northwest Vipassana Center. It was quite the experience. I'm not entirely sure why I went in the first place; it seemed like something different, a challenge, and Sara has been twice and had good things to say about the meditation and the experience, so I decided to give it a shot. The Center is out in the countryside, staffed entirely by volunteers, and is free to take. If you make it all ten days they'll let you make a monetary donation. After getting back and talking to others who have sat for ten days, I've realized how much this experience varies from person-to-person, so instead of going into deep details, I'm keeping this post brief, focusing on my own experience.

If you had asked me if I had ever meditated before day one of the course, I would have said, "Oh, a little bit, this and that." After day one, with eleven hours of meditating behind me, my answer changed to, "No, never." The days are broken up into chunks of one and two-hour meditation sessions, or "sits". After a few days you are encouraged to remain motionless during the one hour session, but you are allowed to get up and go for a walk during the two-hour sessions. Sitting on the floor for an hour without moving is a lot harder than it sounds.

Day one: pain. How on earth can you sit on the floor like this? So many folks were just sitting there like statues, but us rookies were constantly shifting, grabbing more pillows, and being generally miserable. For eleven hours. The instructions had us starting out slowly with Anapana meditation, just watching the breath; no mantras, no forced breaths, no nothing. Just watching the breath. There was no instruction on how to sit comfortably, and we couldn't talk to each other, so I just tried to copy what I saw around me, which was people building pillow nests for themselves, some in the half-lotus position, some on meditation benches.

Day two: pain. I think I could concentrate on my breath if it wasn't for all this pain in my ankles, knees, and hips. More pillows must be the answer, but everyone else had that thought too and there are no more to be borrowed.

Day three: [see day one and two]. During the very last meditation of the day I realized that if I concentrated hard enough on my breathing, the pain faded to the background.

Day four: major progress. My realization from yesterday allowed me to sit for the first time without major discomfort. With a meditation bench, I first sat a one-hour sit without moving, then after a ten minute break, a two-hour sit without moving. After that I moved to the half-lotus position and sat for an hour without moving. Now that we had 33 hours of Anapana practice behind ourselves, observing our breath, it was time to start observing the rest of the body, time to start Vipassana.

Day five: the wheel turns. At the first sit of the day, the phrase, "Goose Laxative" pops into my head, and all the progress that I've made in the past 44 hours of concentrating are shattered and broken. At the time I have no clue what Goose Laxative is, but I am unable to focus until evening when I finally manage to get my composure back. I didn't figure out until I got back to the interwebs that Goose Laxative is written on a bottle in a scene of Futurama, a fantastic show that, other than this one day, gets credit for helping me stay sane during this ten days.

Day six: the boredom started to set in. With the majority of the technique having been introduced by this point, the repetition of doing it so much was wearing me down. Most people, for whatever reason, leave on either day two or day six, and I had the day six blues. During an evening meditation, one of the ones where you are supposed to sit absolutely still, I was analyzing the sensations on my body, trying to cultivate equanimity. A cool breeze on my face; it will eventually go away. A sharp pain in my knees; it will eventually go away. A small furry animal burrowing up my right pant leg; oh gods get it out! I manage to get up without making any noise, and shake a small mouse out of my pants, which scurries over to a woman's pillow pile. I gesture to the assistant teachers who tell the course manager to go after the thing. I sit back down, tuck my pants into my socks, and manage to sit for the rest of the hour, listening to the sound of the manager tiptoeing around, trying to get the mouse. It never did wind up bothering anyone else, and when I brought it up at the end of the course, none of the other students had noticed the commotion. My blues of the day are broken, and I get right back to work.

Days seven through nine: routine. I've adjusted to the routine by now and go about my daily meditations without any problems.

Day ten: discussions. They end the noble silence on day ten to ease people back into real life, which is a great idea. You have so much that you've been processing internally, that heading back into business as usual would be overwhelming without this little cushion.

Other than that, eating twice a day was no problem, and the food was delicious vegetarian food prepared by the volunteers at the center. In my free time I listened to a mental recording of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, walked around the walking paths looking at bugs, and slept. Since getting back a few weeks ago, I haven't meditated once.

I've been asked by a ton of people if I would recommend going to a ten day course, and I think that the experience is very self-selecting. If it sounds at all interesting, you are probably right for the it. You have nothing to lose, except ten days of your time. Some people wind up having deep revelations about their lives, but it all depends how comfortable you are being in your own head.

Euro Road Trip Winter 2010/2011

2011-05-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

Year in Review

2011-02-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

This past year has gone by at a snail's pace, having Sara away, but it has also been very full with school, work, and organizing for polo.

School is going well - I am in to my second term (out of a total 12 for the Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering) and I can't express enough the advantages of going back to school as an adult. Everything, from study habits, to critical thinking, to seeing the overall worth of the education I'm getting, is so much fuller as an adult. Looking back on when I got my first degree, I was just some dumb kid trying to do as little as possible to get the best grade possible; it is true that you get out of your education what you put in.

The biggest challenge that I've had in school is accepting that some instructors have a teaching style that doesn't mesh with mine, or more to the point, are just terrible at what they do. Fortunately, by now, I've gotten over myself, and decided that it is up to me to learn the material; if I have a good instructor, it is an unexpected bonus.

As far as classes go, I'm in the calculus series, which is fairly straightforward. Chemistry is absolutely fascinating; it is one of those classes that I never took in high school or college, but as a "science fan", I'm familiar with many of the concepts. Familiar doesn't cut it though, and actually going through the atom one piece at a time is creating a much fuller understanding of how the world works. For the ME degree, I don't have to take more than two terms of chemistry, but I have a feeling that I will take the third in the series out of interest. If it continues to give me an understanding of what is going on in the background for things like electricity, the properties of metals, etc., my time will be well spent.

The other classes I've been taking are in the engineering department. I don't have much to say about them, as they are very lower-level (Wood is a material. It can be used for building structures.). The best part has been doing drafting by hand, which we spent about two weeks on. I've always wanted to be able to draw better without a computer, and short of a drawing class, drafting is a good first step.

I've been working part time with Clean Edge, a clean-tech market research firm, which is turning out to be perfect for this transition phase of mine. Clean Edge is very flexible as far as when I do my work, being a telecommuting-friendly company, so I get a lot of my work done at school between classes, at night, or on the weekends. I consider myself very lucky to be able to continue my career (marketing / communications in the clean-tech sector) while working towards a new career (mechanical engineering in the clean-tech sector).

Polo is the only part of my life that I haven't been able to make enough time for. Fortunately I've still been able to be involved, even if it is on the administrative side, rather than on the playing side. Most of my efforts have been in organizing and normalizing Portland Bike Polo's relationship with the parks department. This has been going quite well, and I hope to continue to grow that relationship. We are also looking into non-profit status, recently won a bid to host a major tournament, formed an alliance with other hockey-type sports, and have received city approval for the ongoing improvement and maintenance of our main polo court.

Finally, Sara got back last week (for good!), and I couldn't be happier.

Sasha

2011-02-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

Bike polo cameo in Portlandia intro.

Herald of Hermes

2010-06-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Four Months In

2010-06-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

It has been about four months since I got back stateside, and I'm well and fully acclimatized. No longer do I accidentally speak Korean to shopkeepers, I don't tense up for the inevitable shoulder check in crowds, and I remember what good coffee tastes like. I still can't deal with the wall of selection in the bread / cereal / shampoo aisle at the American Supermarket, but I really don't see how anyone can, given that particular plethora.

The biggest change, of course, is the long-distance relationship. It is quite manageable, as it turns out, thanks equally to Skype and email. Sara is back in town for a holiday (hooray!), and it is strange not having seen someone in person for that long (four months), and yet not having any new stories to tell, since we are in constant communication via the interwebs.

I'm moving forward with my plan to change careers from marketing/communications to mechanical engineering, and have enrolled at a community college to do lower-level prerequisites. As it turns out, to be a mechanical engineer, you must have an undergraduate degree in the field. This is too bad, since it'll take me four years to get. Some of my previous credits will transfer, but since I got a BS in Business, and not an actual science, I'm missing all the physics, chemistry, etc. that I need.

When I first got back, I thought that I'd support myself doing the freelance marketing/design stuff that I've always done, but since I'm trying to change careers, it has been hard to put my heart into it. This shouldn't come as a surprise, of course, since the whole reason I'm changing careers is that my heart isn't in marketing any more. Generally speaking, you can't get hired on at an engineering company until you start your third year of engineering school, but my current goal is to get involved with an engineering company now, in my first year. I still hope to be involved with alternative transportation / energy / fuel in the future, but at this point, I'll take what I can get. If anyone has any thoughts on how to get involved, let me know!

So, between Skype and school, where has that left me? I built a workshop in my house, putting down an interlocking foam floor to protect the silly bamboo flooring, and have been basing projects out of there. I'm fooling around with electronic engineering, thanks to the Arduino (open source hardware), working on my bicycles, and doing small home-improvement projects. My biggest hobby is bike polo, and I've gotten involved with the administrative side of things, helping to organize tournaments, manage press relations, etc.

Playing polo is still my biggest leisure-time activity, and by far what I have the most fun doing. The sport is getting really popular, so we are looking to expand / move to a different area where we can have more than one game going on at a time, and also have some lights so we can play into the night. I've taken lead on this process, but it is a long one, and there are a lot of passionate voices in the community about how to do it right.

Well, that's about it for now. It is the first beautiful day of the summer and I'm headed outside!
Sasha

Cascadia Triple Crown Presents the Oregon Bike Polo Championships

2010-04-01T10:41:00.004-07:00

Press Release

Cascadia Triple Crown Presents the Oregon Bike Polo Championships
Tournament to be held April 17th and 18th at Rose City Park, Portland, Oregon.

Portland, OR – April 17th, 2010 Portland Bike Polo will host the Oregon Championships, the first of three tournaments making up the Cascadia Triple Crown. Hardcourt bike polo is a fast-paced, full contact, team sport played on bicycles. This exciting sport was born in Seattle, grew up in Portland, and now has a large world-wide following.

Over 100 competitors from around the world are expected to compete. Two other tournaments, in Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC, will complete the triple crown later in the season. The event, Cascadia Triple Crown Presents the Oregon Bike Polo Championships, will be held on April 17th and 18th at Rose City Park (NE 62nd St. and NE Thompson St.). Spectators are more than welcome and this is event is free to watch.

Want to get involved with Portland Bike Polo? Portland Bike Polo is always glad to have new members – come out and play! We play every Sunday afternoon at Alberta Park in NE Portland. We do ask all players to be 18 years or older, due to the inherent danger of the sport.

About Hardcourt Bike Polo:

It is a fast-paced team game played on bicycles.
To play you need a durable bicycle, a mallet and a ball. The sport is very DIY focused, so mallets are hand-built out of old ski poles and PVC tubing. The ball is a street hockey ball.
It has many similarities to grass bike polo, horse polo, and hockey.
There are three people to a team, and games are played to five points.
There are no time outs, no penalties, and there is no referee.
It is played on pavement and is a full contact sport.
Due to its fast-paced nature and spectacular crashes, it is a popular spectator sport.

Press Contact:
Sasha Friedman
Secretary of Polo
sasha[at]portlandbikepolo[dot]com

###

Back in the USA!

2010-02-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

It is good to be back.

Sara and I got back to the US on January 8th and then traveled around visiting my mother in California and Sara's brother and his wife and new daughter in Colorado. We finally made it back to Portland on January 22nd, and a few short days later, Sara was off again to Korea for another year.

A few highlights from the trip and travels:

On the Seoul to Vancouver, Canada plane, Sara had checked her bag at the gate. (This is great way to get around baggage fees. Also, a bike box costs $50 to ship, but an extra suitcase costs $150. So, pack your clothes in a bike box.) When we got to Canada, we were waiting on the tarmac in the cold, dark, and rain, for Sara's suitcase. They finished unloading them all, and it wasn't there. We described it to a worker and he said that he had given it to an Asian man. We were about 500 feet out on the tarmac and there was about another 500 feet of walkway to go to get inside. Since we had been waiting so long, people were already getting inside the terminal. We bolt across the tarmac, down the walkway, and I start yelling at this guy who has Sara's suitcase. He was very apologetic, explaining that he thought it was his friend's suitcase. Since he was walking alone, I didn't think that was a very good excuse and yelled at him for a while and watched him closely in the baggage claim. Regardless, after an international plane ride, there is nothing more invigorating than chasing someone down and yelling at them.
We had a great visit with my mom in California. She lives right near where there are a lot of earthquakes, so we helped with the ever-constant battle of straightening paintings. The earthquakes are the downside, but the upside is how beautiful it is there, between the redwoods and the Pacific. She has an amazing garden and even in the middle of winter, it was incredibly lush (especially compared to Seoul).
It was my first time to Colorado, and I was impressed with the wide-open spaces and the mountains. We were in central Colorado and there was snow on the ground, but it hadn't snowed for weeks, so you could see all of the animal tracks - thousands of them. Sara and I babysat her for her niece, which was really one of the first times that I've spent a good portion of time with a baby (8 mo.) Not a problem!

Being back has not been as hard as I was expecting, although I do have trouble interacting with shop-keepers and supermarkets are totally overwhelming. The hardest part, by far, is getting used to not living with Sara. Thank goodness for the internet - email and video chat make a long distance relationship a lot easier than, say, the telegraph.

Really it felt more like I was in an alternate dimension in Korea and popped back into the regular dimension here in the USA. A few stores have closed down, a few restaurants (and like a hundred food carts) have opened up, a year's worth of drama happened, but everything is more or less the same!

I'm back in my house, which Aurora took great care of. My days are spent with playing polo, figuring out transfer credits (U of O + PCC -> PSU, UW, or OSU) and starting to get my networks back in order. There are a lot of full-time jobs out there, but since I'd like to go to school part time and work part time, I'll be going back to contract work again.

Sasha

A year in Korea... so what?

2010-01-07T04:22:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow I leave Korea, 373 days later. So what of all this?

I came here for a variety of reasons: I was tired of safe, insular Portland; burned out from my last job; wanting a change of pace and to see a bit of the world; wanting to support Sara. I didn't have too many hopes for Korea - I really had no idea what "moving to Korea" meant. I did, however, hope to learn about Korea, make some life-long friends, find a second home, and all that.

Overall, living in Korea is easy. Food is cheap, there is very little crime, and a little Korean can get you pretty far. If English is your native language, and you know how to negotiate, you can get a pretty good salary, a decent apartment and maybe good hours too. That said, unless your favorite activities are drinking and shopping, it is almost impossible to thrive here.

Now it is easy to get all negative on Korea - shooting fish in a barrel is a good analogy. The Koreans are pretty gung-ho on Confucianism, and a lot of times it feels like a bad 1950's sitcom. The workplace is as hierarchical as the army, women are treated horribly, and people treat strangers like dirt. I don't want to dwell on these things though... you can find them discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the internet.

When I first got here, I was so excited to make some Korean friends - get into the Korean counter-culture and ride bikes and play polo. It took me a long time to figure out that the most successful ex-pats here are the ones that have almost exclusively ex-pats networks, and that there is not much of a Korean counter-culture scene. I'm leaving Korea with only one Korean friend, which might actually be a success, but I have to say I find it surprising.

As I have discussed in other posts, one of the things that I've had the most problems with here are how strangers are treated. It has been explained to me that if you know someone, you must be very polite to them, but it doesn't matter if you don't know that person. Wanting to fit in, when I first got here, I copied the locals and it drove me crazy - I hated myself, even if I was fitting in well. I decided that I was just not going to give up this core-value of what I think is polite behavior - being polite to strangers. I've gotten so many crazy looks when I've held the door open for people, let old people sit down on the subway, or simply said thank you to waitresses. Once I realized that I didn't have to give up on who I was, things got a bit easier, at least from my point of view.

Working here was definitely a challenge. Fortunately, foreigners get a lot of leeway in the workplace, and aren't expected to work like their Korean counterparts. Again, I'm going to resist the temptation of talking about how messed up Korean companies are, and just say that I am so happy I don't have to work in Korea anymore. Also, it has made me resolve to buy American-made products whenever possible.

So, besides the fact that I'm not wild about Korea, what have I learned? Well, like they say, only when you don't have something do you realize how much you miss it. I miss living in a community. I miss small groups of like-minded people. I miss trees and clean air. I miss having choices about food. I miss America. Sure we've got problems, and plenty of them, but they are our problems.

Now, perhaps the most interesting part of all of this will come very soon... the reverse culture shock! What will I, in America, prefer back in Korea?

Sasha

Snowy in Seoul!

2010-01-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

I started my first work-day of unemployment (I finished my contract) waking up to eight inches of snow! I went for a walk in the park to take some photos and sure am happy that my Pentax is water-resistant.

Here is a timed-photo that almost went horribly wrong. I should have known better than to lean on that tree, but as you can see - the avalanche just missed me!

Mini-Update

2009-12-27T02:27:00.001-08:00

Snowy in Seoul.
Four days left at work - only one day of teaching.
12 days left total - I just bought a phone [Motorola Droid] for Portland.
Sara's making peanut-butter cups.
The bikes are packed.
All is well.

Busan and Jeju

2009-12-01T17:42:00.004-08:00

Sara and I used our last week of vacation last week, when Sara's mother Karen came to town. We traveled to the South in Korea, to Busan and Jeju Island. The trip was overall quite pleasant, and it is always good to see Korea with a fresh set of eyes. The South of South Korea turned out to be very much like the northern part, just much less crowded.

We got to Busan by train and took a taxi to the hotel that I had booked on the Hostelbookers website, a website that has never let me down... until that day. The Hotel Elysee was not just a Love Hotel, but a really sleazy love hotel. In Korea, there are many of these establishments - a hotel that you go with your mistress or prostitute. Most have curtains around the parking lots so that people can get in and out of their cars without their faces being seen. As the taxi pulled up to the hotel, there were the curtains.

Now some love hotels are over-the-top, with circular beds, jacuzzi, theme rooms, etc., so Sara wanted to check it out, just in case we would have a great story to tell. I hesitated, but Sara knows her mother's comfort zones better than I, so I went along. Before we got to the front door, we saw a few pornographic business cards on the ground, presumably advertising the attributes and abilities of the owners of the women whose cards they were.

The lobby wasn't the nicest, and the clerk had some trouble finding my reservation. After turning to what I guessed was the "stay-the-whole-night" section of his reservation book, he found my name. He asked for a credit card, but we indicated that we'd like to see a room first. He took us up to the fourth floor, past a bookshelf full of porn VHS cassettes, and to a nasty smoke-filled room, without so much as a mirror on the ceiling.

We left and wound up finding a much more acceptable hotel, the Busan Tourist Hotel. It is nominally rated at four stars, which it very well may have been in 1982, but not much had been done to update it since then. A cleanish place to sleep, and no more.

We were very close to the central fish market of Busan, so we spent a day wandering around there, checking things out. There were so many strange fish there, and so many women selling these strange fish. Ice is the only form of refrigeration, and everything is open-air. I really wonder how many fish actually get sold and where the leftover fish go.

Can't get fresher than this

Lacking a certain ceremony

The bustle of the fish market. Pink seems to be "in" this year.

The uniformity of the sea creatures is strange.

Some blue fish - the most familiar fish I saw.

Eviscerated and drying fish of some sort.

Extremely disgusting sea creatures

All of my stay in Seoul I've been disappointed at the lack of hilariously written English mistakes on signs. While they are far from accurate, they just aren't funny. Busan and Jeju did not fail to deliver, so I'll let the signs speak for themselves.

WITH TASTE RUMOR DIFFICULTY HOUSE

Crotch steamed dish

SMELL HOUSE

Small octopus & sellfish broth

AROMA relax house

Let's come on the barista espresso taste world

Originally, we had planned to take a boat from Busan to Jeju Island, but it turns out that it is a eight hour overnight trip. We flew for around $50 a person for the 50 minute flight. We also found out that it is possible to fly domestically with just our resident alien identification cards - no passport needed.

Jeju is a volcanic island that is roughly an oval. We stayed on the south side of the island, since the weather looked better there, in a town called Seogwipo. Jeju is fair-sized and parts of it are set up resort-style with large fancy hotels. Not looking to spend that kind of money, we booked rooms at Hotel Napoli, which I'd rate at one and a half stars. I think in the future I'll spend a little more money on accommodations. Sara and I stayed in a Korean-style room, where you sleep on a mat on the floor, and Karen stayed in a Western-style room, where you sleep in a bed.

There were many mosquitoes in our room and I left at least a dozen new bloodstains on the wallpaper. I also got several bed bug bites. Come to think of it, the only other time I've encountered bed bugs, besides at the Hotel Napoli, was in Naples, Italy. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, Seogwipo is a nice-enough little town, with all the usual Korean things in it. Our first full day, we toured around the East side of the island on our way to some lava tubes. The only bus I could figure out that would take us there was the local bus, which turned out to be the all-stop bus. All in all, it only took two hours to get to the town close to the lava tubes, but it sure did feel like a whole lot longer. I wasn't sure how to get to the lava tubes, so I tried calling the tourist agencies that were on my map. I got a few answers of, "I can't speak English" (in English), when I saw Sara waving me over. She and her mom were standing in front of what turned out to be the taxi company's office. A driver had heard them talking, and offered to take us to our destination. Perfect!

The lava tubes were pretty neat - big tubes underground where lots of lava used to flow out of the ground. The path went for about a kilometer, all underground, dimly lit. At the end of the path was a lava column (?) that was dramatically lit.

After we walked back out, we decided to go to Cheju City, which is the main city on Jeju, and check out the tea museum. We were looking at a bus schedule when a taxi pulled up and asked us if we were heading to Cheju. He gave us a flat rate of W20,000 (about $17) and the bus would've been W15,000 for the three of us, so we hopped in. We gave him Sara's brochure for the tea museum, which he studied with his magnifying glass (while driving) and he had to make a call to figure out where it was. Turns out that it is in Shin-Cheju, or New Jeju, a city right next to Cheju. Anyway, we made it and he kept his word of W20,000, even though he had taken us to a different city.

The International Tea Museum was a complete disappointment. Before we went into the museum, we learned that all of the descriptions are in Korean only, so we decided to just have a cup of tea and look at the gift shop. We were served some pretty terrible tea in paper cups from the server, along with the imperative, "Money." Now not many people speak English in Korea (or if they do, they won't speak it out of fear of making mistakes), so I shouldn't be hard on people who do, but with all of the emphasis of being polite and respectful in Korean culture, what people do say can be surprising.

Tea cups.

After tea, we looked at our guide book to see where we should head next. Nobody felt like museums or the like, so we chose the place where the book said locals hang out outside. We got a taxi there, and wandered the deserted streets for a while, and took another taxi to where we could take the 50 minute bus ride back to our hotel. This taxi driver was notable - he corrected my Korean. Usually it is very hard to get anyone to do this - I know that I am saying things wrong, and I'd of course like to improve.

The next day we spent some time walking around Seogwipo and lay on the grass in the sun. This was the best moment of the trip - very relaxing. The rest of the day was spent walking around and at some point we went to dinner at a fancy restaurant at a hotel.

The ubiquitous grandfather statue.

Another night of killing mosquitoes passed and we got the plane and headed back to Seoul. It was my first time flying into Gimpo airport - it is a whole lot closer than Incheon. We got the new express subway on line nine and were back in the thick of things in 37 minutes.

Overall, a very nice trip. It really underscored how small Korea is - about half the size of Oregon. I've now been to the very northernmost point in South Korea and all the way to the southernmost point, and the landscape looks all very similar. We are very lucky in the US to have such a large country with so many different landscapes and eco-regions.

Sasha

January 8th, 2010: Leaving Seoul

2009-11-18T22:11:00.001-08:00

Sara and I have finally gotten firm dates on the end of our contracts (harder than it sounds) and are set to leave Seoul on January 8th! This is bittersweet news, however, since after a few weeks, Sara will be returning to Seoul with a promotion and another year of work, and I'll stay in Portland. I have no idea how anyone even contemplated a long-distance relationship before the magic of the internet.

Anyway, in the next weeks I know that I'll be reflecting a lot on my time here. What will really be interesting is the reverse-culture shock. When I left PDX, I was fed up with how insular and narrow-minded it was. Now I can't wait to get back to a community of like-minded people. Like they say, you don't know what you value until you loose it. I know I'm a sucker for nostalgia, but the Tea ~~Bagger~~ Party nonsense has done a lot to keep my nostalgia in check.

When I get back stateside, I hope to dedicate a lot of time to polo, traveling, relaxing, and making things with my hands. I also hope to get involved with community organizations, take CERT training, and find a progressive workplace that is a good fit.

Sasha

Vacation at the Suncruise Resort

2009-10-27T23:24:00.007-07:00

Sara and I got back from a very nice vacation the other day. A solid nine days in a row proved itself to be long enough to completely relax, forget about work, and enjoy ourselves! I had been told that Jong-Dong-Jin, on the East Sea of Korea about two hours away from Seoul, was a good place to stay, so I started looking for a hotel. We wound up staying at the first place I found, although when I originally showed it to Sara it was meant to be the joke option.

This cruise-ship-on-a-hill is actually a nine floor hotel, restaurant, rotating sky lounge and banquet hall all wrapped into one unexpected hull. The rooms are divided into either the sunrise or sunset sides, but since they are actually face north or south, they are better thought of as parking lot view or amazing ocean view. You can guess which side we stayed on.

The hotel was quite nice, although needing a paint job in several places. As far as I could tell, besides a group of Chinese, we were the only foreigners there. The restaurant was quite good for dinner and lackluster for all other meals, but to be fair I don't think anyone can do a good American breakfast in this country.

I don't really know what there is to do in the area besides hiking and beach activities, but for us it was the perfect getaway for pure rest. All in all, a complete success!

What sort of poster is this?

2009-10-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

I was walking through my local Seoul subway station and saw this poster. I'm speechless. How could anyone think this was a good idea? I don't know what the poster says, but I can only assume that they are trying to convey the idea that this child could be any Korean citizen.

Language Studies

2009-10-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

Korean is a tough language. It is ranked by the US Department of Defense as the hardest language in the world for a native English speaker to learn as an adult. Before moving here, Sara and I got a tutor in Portland, who taught us some of the basics, like the alphabet and some useful set phrases.

Unlike the rest of the language, the Korean alphabet is perhaps the easiest alphabet to learn in the world. In the 15th century, a King named Sejong, tired of writing with Chinese characters, got a bunch of linguists to design a writing system. What they came up with is now known as Hangul, and it is a very straight-forward phonetic alphabet that is organized into syllabic blocks. All the shapes of Hangul represent how to make the sound of the letter with your mouth and tongue - although this isn't always obvious.

For a few months, we had a teacher here in Seoul, but when she quit her job, we never looked for anyone else. This is partly to do with the Korean educational paradigm, that memorization is the same as learning. More to the point is that Korean uses many borrowed words, and that once you are comfortable reading Hangul and understand the way words are transliterated, things get a lot easier. This is not to say that I can communicate well, but I do feel comfortable meeting most of my needs in restaurants, when shopping and in taxis. For all the time and money that Koreans spend on learning English, you won't actually encounter many people willing to speak it, due to their fears of making a mistake.

To give you an idea of the transliteration scheme, here are a few examples. Included is how they sound when sounded out, separated by syllable. Sometimes there are helpful spaces put between words, sometimes there are not.

I saw this on a poster. 드러잉: 쇼 Deu-rah-ing: syo. Drawing: Show
A tasty meal. 치개산드이츠 Chi-ken-san-deu-i-cheu. Chicken Sandwich
The name of a book (and movie). 더리더 Dah-ri-dah. The Reader
Another movie. 굿모닝 프레지던트 Goot-mo-ning Peu-reh-ji-dan-teu. Good Morning President

As you can see, things can be a little confusing, like using the same syllable block in "The Reader" to convey "the" and "der". It is something I've found myself getting better at over time and I'm amazed at the sheer quantity of words used every day that are transliterated from the English. I'll never be able to have a decent conversation with someone in Korean, but that is OK. For now, I'm back to my 아이스 아매리카노 (a-i-seu a-mae-ri-ka-no).

Lady Hamilton as Miranda

2009-09-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the English painter George Romney's "Lady Hamilton as Miranda", I made the following. It still has a lot of problems, but this is all I'll be working on it for now... drawing is a lot harder when you aren't tracing!

Sasha

New Toy: Intuos4 Graphics Tablet

2009-08-30T01:08:00.007-07:00

In order to not go crazy in Korea, I bought myself a Intuos4 graphics tablet, which is basically a pressure sensitive surface that you can draw on with a pen-type tool. It is a large step up from a mouse for a few reasons - the pressure sensitivity, the "feel" and simply the difference between putting the pen on the pad vs clicking and holding the mouse.

My drawing skills are most weak, so I decided to follow the route of countless people before me and learn by tracing something good. I chose The Kazusa Sea Route, by Katsushika Hokusai, one of the many views of Mt. Fuji. It isn't my favorite, but it has a lot of detail, so I figured that it'd give me a lot of practice. I know dozens of shortcuts that could've made it more accurate and quicker, but for this exercise I decided not to take them. It was a lot of work and I'll not be holding myself to such rules in the future!

I also took some liberties in the coloring department, namely in the color of the ship.

Sasha

Microsoft's Racially Charged Stock Photography

2009-08-25T20:10:00.005-07:00

EDIT: Microsoft has since fixed their strange marketing decision.

On the forums of one of my favorite websites, TheDailyWTF, a poster pointed out that a photo on Microsoft's Polish site had been doctored to remove the black man from the picture, as seen on Microsoft's global site for Optimize Your Business Productivity Infrastructure (OBPI).

Since then, Microsoft (or whoever is in charge of their website) has changed the photos to include the black man in both pictures, but not before I managed to capture the offending photoshoped image, presented in animated gif format for your viewing pleasure.

Also of note, as pointed out on the WTF forums: the Apple laptop. Bootcamp aside, whoever chose that stock photography, as well as made the decisions to edit it for race, needs to get a talking to.

EDIT 2: Story got widespread, Microsoft apologizes. "Marketing site photo mistake—sincere apologies. We're in the process of taking down the image." (source)

Chartjunk: Global Health Council's Chart on Spousal Abuse

2009-08-23T17:34:00.007-07:00

The Global Health Council has "interpreted" some data from unicef on the "percentage of women who believe it is OK for their husbands to hit them" from developing countries. I'm going to completely ignore the far greater issue, spousal abuse, and focus on what is perhaps the worst use of graphical data that I have ever seen.

The whole point of using an information graphic is to graphically show how information is related. I'm siding with Tufte on this one - keep it simple and don't use graphics if you don't have to.

For this graph, they used some sort of pie-chart hybrid. Pie charts are appropriate when you want to show the relationship between "slices" that together make up 100% of the pie. On this graph we have a whopping 731.8% of data shown. Do us a favor and use a bar or line graph.
Is this all the data though? If you click the link provided to the unicef data, there are actually 67 different countries that were surveyed. Why aren't they included? What was behind the decision for the countries that were included?
Take a look at Rwanda (48%) and then at Jordan (90%). They should not be represented as more or less the same size.
What is the actual survey question? If you click to the unicef page, you see that it is "% of girls and women aged 15–49 who responded that a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances (2001–2007)". I'm not going to press on the semantics that much, but the GHC wording makes it sound like the women are referring to themselves rather than women in general.
Data is only available from some countries, most notably "developing nations". It is horrifying to read that the majority of women in some countries believe that spousal abuse can be justified, but for me, I need some comparison numbers. What would the survey say for the United States? Italy? I hope 0%, but without this data, the chart has less meaning.
To that point, to present this data as "shocking", which the GHC was clearly going for, they should not be including the "lower bounds" of Georgia and Serbia. This is biased opinion based off of my ignorance of Georgia and Serbia, but if they are meant to show what "normal" is, they chose the wrong countries.

So, how could you present this data more effectively?

Include all the data or group by distinct categories, like "Sub-Saharan Africa" or "Former Soviet Block" or "Top 10 Spousal Abuse Hot-Spots".
Use either a bar chart or no graph at all: the numbers and the subject matter speak for themselves.
Use full disclosure about what the chart is representing "% of girls and women aged 15–49 who responded that a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances (2001–2007)"
The result is something that is much more sobering, and in my opinion appropriate, for the matter at hand. This doesn't, however, resolve the lack of comparison data, but that is a rant for another day.

Sasha

Seoul Fixed Gear Bike Shop - Skid Bikes

2009-08-17T16:53:00.003-07:00

Over the weekend I went to Skid Bikes to help two people (who had found me via this blog) buy bikes here in Seoul. I had never heard of Skid Bikes (their website needs some help) - they are located pretty close to the metro in Apgujeong.

We spent about two hours there and I watched them answer many questions in English and assemble a new bike (Jamis with a flip-flop) from a box, which took them about a half-hour. They have a very small shop, but overall were very friendly, prompt and competent. Their selection of bikes, components and accessories on hand is very low, due to their store size. They have new bikes for sale as well as used frames - the mechanics all ride very fancy bikes themselves so I assume they can custom order parts for you.

Both people wound up buying a bike - the Jamis - and I was impressed with the whole experience, especially after my overwhelmingly negative experience with LSD. I would definitely recommend Skid Bikes for the foreigner in Seoul looking for a fixed or free single speed bike. Just in case you are wondering, I have no financial or other relationship with them.

Design in the Spare Time

2009-08-14T07:39:00.004-07:00

I've been trying to improve my Illustrator technique lately and produced the following. I've always loved poster art - Mucha and the like. I borrowed the French from a event in Paris - my apologies if it doesn't make sense - I think it is some sort of party. Click for a larger view.

My long term goal is to be able to make digital "woodblock" images, colored in with "watercolor".

Sasha

Moving Forward for the Wrong Reasons

2009-08-09T17:18:00.004-07:00

This video is playing now on TVs across Seoul - a public service announcement (PSA) of sorts - showing both the good and the bad side of Korean culture. It addresses many of the negative "first impressions" a westerner sees when coming to Korea for a short time: impatience, rudeness to strangers, and depression.

Source and translation: http://annalog.blogspot.com/2009/07/korea-no-korean-yes.html

At first glance I really liked this video, (though it missed out on a few things and the Korean on the escalator would never have looked back at the person he pushed aside) but when talking to Sara about it, she made an excellent point. This PSA is not trying to make a better, more polite Korea for Koreans - it is for the foreigners. The message comes off as: foreigners think you are disrespectful. The message should be: respect your fellow man.

This seems to be a common theme with government-sponsored initiatives, like the one that is trying to change the side of the stairs that people walk up and down on, from left to right. This is a completely foreigner-centric policy that is not actually helping Koreans in their day-to-day life.

Sara and Sasha in Mongolia

2009-08-04T18:20:00.012-07:00

Mongolia

[Note: For the full picture set, see here]

Needing a break from humid, crowded Seoul, Sara and I took a vacation to cool, sparsely populated Mongolia. We went on a guided tour and chose to go to Lake Muren in Northern Mongolia. It is a large country, so there are many tour options – most have you drive hundreds of kilometers a day. We chose the lake since we wanted to just go somewhere beautiful and just relax.

We flew in to Beijing from Seoul and I got pulled aside after going through the thermal imager so they could take my temperature. I was worried, since China is notorious for ruining people's vacations right now with forced quarantines. Nobody spoke English and it was a little strange, but my temperature (36.2 C or 97.2 F) didn't cause too much concern (I always run cold), so they let me on my way.

We got our connecting ticket at the appropriately named connecting flights desk (my worries about not being able to find it were unfounded) and a woman from the desk led us around the terminal to get to the connecting flight. She took us through five security checkpoints and then put us on a bus and walked away. We were the only passengers on the bus and we were driven literally over the tarmac - we had to stop for a plane taking off. Being on the tarmac seemed surreal and the bus had a tv that had the X-Files in English playing - it didn't help. Especially since it was a “creepy little possessed girl” episode. We then went through another two security checkpoints and into our terminal. There were no problems at any point – it was just strange... somehow very communist.

The terminal we went to was very modern – from the drive I had assumed we were going to an ancient unused terminal. Lots of people were there - mostly Mongolians. The departure lounge we were in had two planes: one bound for Ulaan Baatar and one for Addis Addiba. It was striking to see people talking to one another – you could tell people were strangers and just making conversation. This is something you never see in Seoul, where strangers do their best (which is pretty good) to ignore each other.

Our flight was a little bumpy (Sara would tell you it was horrifying, but I was once on a two engine plane and one engine failed, so a lot less gets to me) and we landed in Ulaan Baatar with no problem. A very small woman was waiting with our names on a piece of paper and took us to a van, a very old Soviet vehicle. The first thing we noticed when we stepped outside of the terminal was the smell of fresh cut grass. It had been a long time. We shared the van with a couple from the south of South Korea (Pusan) – an American and a Canadian. They have been here for several years and said that Pusan is much more relaxed than Seoul. I wonder sometimes how our South Korean experience would be if Sara and I were in a different city… would we have better things to say?

Anyway, we got to the hostel after a 30 minute drive through Ulaan Baatar. Mongolia used to be a Soviet satellite, so all the buildings are blocky and cement and most are decrepit. Everywhere there is graffiti, dust, garbage and terrible roads. Raw is a good word to describe it – the city felt way more "real" than Seoul. Seoul is so superficial - people don't interact with each other. Everyone always has somewhere to go and they are going there in a hurry. We saw Mongolians just sitting around, hanging out. Casual.

We got our room in Idre’s Guest House (think hostel) and settled in for the night. Not the nicest, but our room was private and had its own bathroom. No soap or toilet paper - glad we brought our own. (You also don't flush toilet paper in Mongolia - you put it in a trashcan.) The next morning we had a few hours before our guide picked us up and we wandered around looking for better food than the one fried egg white we were served as breakfast at the guest house.

Most stores didn't open for a while and then they didn't open on time. Once we got in, there were a lot of Korean foods for sale - familiar brands. Mongolia doesn't make much, so most things are imported, usually from China, Russia or Korea. Later on, we found out that there are often shortages of consumer goods – at restaurants you can't get most things on the menu. We got some cheese for Sara and bread for me and wandered around, looking at the decrepit buildings. People were friendly enough - not overly friendly, but mildly curious and polite. You could call it "just right".

Mongolians write their language with the Cyrillic alphabet, so I could read a lot of signs, but the language itself is very different from Russian. Some borrowed words I got, but most I had no clue. Spoken Mongolian is a strange language. I wouldn't call it attractive, but it seems very utilitarian. I think it evolved so that they could communicate easily across great distances. It has many throaty noises x, ch, ss. People were very quiet, but they could understand each other quite easily. "Yes" is a noisy inhale with your mouth in an "o" position. "No" is a noisy inhale with your mouth in an "iy" position.

Hair Salons

Anyway, our guide picked us up and drove us to a few banks to try to get cash - the money that I had exchanged went towards paying the hostel, since the person on duty couldn't figure out the credit card machine. He turned out to not be our guide, but a driver, and drove us to the airport. In Mongolia there is no regulation for which side of the car the steering wheel is on – you take what you can get. They drive on the right side of the road, but traffic rules seem to be taken as suggestions, not law. At one point we saw the traffic police driving around in marked van yelling over his loudspeaker at anyone who was doing anything illegal and driving on. He yelled a lot.

We had a short flight from Ulaan Baatar to Muren, an hour and a half northwest. It was beautiful to look out the window - the landscape is almost bare of civilization. We came during the green part of the year, so it was very lush looking. There are no paved roads outside of towns, just a network of dirt roads. When a road becomes too rutted, people move off to the side of it and create new tracks. No rules against driving off the trail.

We flew over gers (yurts) here and there and watched herds of animals running. Everything was wild. Rivers, mountains, beautiful hills. The animals are all domesticated, but there are almost no fences.

We landed and our guide and driver met us - the guide spoke very good English, the driver none at all. Gamba was the guide's name - a rather portly Mongolian. As the nomadic lifestyle has turned urban, the diet has not changed. Obesity is a problem and things happened here just like they did in the Midwest. Walking around and doing farm work all day takes a lot of energy. City life does not.

The view from the Muren Airport

Gamba was knowledgeable about Mongolian culture and customs, but annoying since he didn't like many ethnic groups. The Chinese, Russians, Japanese, Koreans and New Zealanders were all on his bad list and he had no problem with sharing this. He also loved Western rock music like Guns ‘n Roses and came up with some pretty random music quotes.

He took us to a restaurant in Muren and we had some beef and noodles. Gamba insisted on ordering for me and wouldn’t listen to what I wanted, ordering me a carrot and cheese dish instead of a side salad. The whole meal was decent – the spices reminded me of Chinese food. Then I remembered that we were very close to China.

After lunch we set out to the lake. The driver drove a Toyota land cruiser and the paved road ended at the airport. He drove fast when he could, but it was mainly very slow going. The countryside is beautiful - very empty. We saw sheep, goats, cows, yaks and horses, all running free. Very few people and only a few other cars.

Our ride - a Toyota Land Cruiser that only got two flats on our 150 mile trip

The views were spectacular. You can see people's gers and herds down by the river

Roads were "suggested" at worst and graded at best

Some sheep running from our vehicle

Every once in a while you would see just a person or two walking somewhere... it looked strange because you couldn't see where they had started or where they were going to. All the animals we saw were grazing or running away from us. It took us about three hours to travel the 60 miles to the lake. It took another 30 minutes to travel the last half mile to our camp.

We were shown our ger (yurt) and then we unpacked. Gers are made of felt stretched around a wooden frame. We could stand up in the middle area, but you definitely have to duck to get in. The ger had a stove in the middle and three beds - one opposite the door, one to the right, and one to the left. There was a small dresser and a small table. Gers are meant to be moved, so things are pretty sparse. It is the tradition to leave your shoes on inside. There was one electric light – electricity is available for a few hours at night. Bathrooms and showers were located in a nearby building – how water only was available at certain times as well. It all reminded me of summer camp!

The only window was at the top middle of the ger - there was some plastic covering the top area around the smokestack. Traditionally this hole was left open except during weather, so it let fresh air in. Also, the bottom edge of the ger was mostly uncovered - it was rolled up a bit to let in air (and the occasional insect). There were some bees and horseflies that wandered in, but not too many. Around the lake there were many, many flies. Free roaming yaks, goats, cows, sheep and horses makes for lots of shit and that means flies.

Ger #5

Sara providing some perspective

The textures of the ger: wood and felt

The textures of the ger door

The inside of our ger showing posts, beams and smokestack.

We checked out the lake and surrounding area for the rest of the day and had the second of what turned out to be many beef meals. I also convinced Gamba that I wanted to try that famous Mongolian drink – fermented mare’s milk – also known as airag or kumis. Milking a mare is a two-person job. One person holds the horse and the other sits directly behind the horse and reaches around to milk it (why was that sentence so hard to write?). Besides extending its shelf life, fermenting the milk also takes away its powerful laxative properties. The descriptions I’d read of the milk made it sound horrible, but I didn’t mind it at all – it reminded me of yoghurt water. Not delicious, mind you, but definitely palatable.

The next day we went to visit a nomadic family - an hour’s drive away, or 20 minutes as the crow flies. The family set up camp in an "accessible" area by the lake and brought their reindeer for tourists to take pictures of (for a fee). It felt a bit like an Indian reservation and made Sara and me uncomfortable. Our guide as well. We went down to the lake and spent time there instead, taking pictures, and ate some lunch (beef). Suddenly a rainstorm came over the mountains and we drove back to the ger.

Sara and I got warm in our ger and went out for a walk after the weather passed. The next day we went for a boat ride to a spit in the middle of the lake. There were many other tourists there, but it was very beautiful. There were a few shamanistic shrines - lots of torn blue cloth, money and vodka offerings. You see these shrine spots all over - torn blue fabric wrapped around trees and rocks here and there. Blue is a sacred color for the Mongolians - the limitless sky.

A view from the lake shore

Another view of the lake

We wandered around, then went back to the camp and hung out and then did some more wandering. Beef again for lunch, but there was a special treat for dinner: goat. Not having an oven, they cooked the goat the traditional way, by heating up some rocks (pillow basalt) in a fire and sticking them in a bag (made of the goat) with the dressed goat meat inside. They handed us the rocks at first – still very hot – which I believe is a tradition. The goat was delicious – I’d definitely eat it again.

The next day we went for a horse ride: Sara, the guide, myself and the horse owner, Ot. His real name is five syllables long, so we kept it at Ot. It was my first time on a horse, so I was on a lead, but it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. My horse was very gassy though. We rode up to a shrine that looked over the nearest town – a beautiful view. There were some other Mongolians up there and people just chatted with each other. Again, it was refreshing to see strangers talking to each other. When hiking, many Koreans listen to the radio or watch their portable tvs.

The gassy horse I rode

Mongolians admiring the view

The shrine and the lake

We saddled back up and rode to a group of tourists who were being led to their campsite on horseback. Some of them had slow horses so Ot rode around to the back of them and encouraged them on. I was on lead, so I followed him, of course. I talked a little bit to Ot in Russian - neither of us spoke it well, but it was fun to be able to communicate and he invited us to his ger for tea.

We rode up to his home area and he hollered for his son to come out and help with the horses. He has 20 or 30 horses and lives in an area with one other family and their ger. As far as I can tell, there is no land ownership, so he has squatter's rights. His ger was very basic - it turns out that our tourist ger is quite fancy with its carvings and stout beams.

His wife made us some “tea” (hot salted milk) and served some fresh made bread and yak butter. Yak butter is absolutely amazing. Delicious. Their ger was kind of dilapidated, but it was good to see how herders or nomads actually live. Every winter they move their ger to the closest town (population 2,000) so his kids can go to school. His horses wander around freely, although they are usually hobbled.

Nearby, all the herds of goats and sheep we saw had a child looking after them. Time and time again, we saw children just hanging out in the middle of nowhere. It was really refreshing to see kids able to wander without fear. The kids in the countryside were quite healthy looking, although we saw street children in Ulaan Baatar who were filthy and impoverished.

Eventually we got back on the horses and rode the rest of the way back to our ger camp. We caught up with the slow group and encouraged them on again, gave up and cantered home. I was shocked at the pick-up horses have… quite some acceleration! Up to that point I had done pretty well at not clinging on to the saddle with my free hand, but damn that horse was going fast.

A forest herd of yaks and cows

A friendly cow (yak?)

After that we wandered to take more pictures. The sky started clouding over and we hurried back. There was an intense lightning storm and I got some great photos. The storm left mammatus clouds – I’ve always wanted to see them in person. That night there was an even bigger lightning storm - several flashes per second for a half hour. All the beef that I had been eating caught up to me and I wasn’t going to be sleeping anyway, so it was a nice distraction.

The bathhouse after the storm

Mammatus clouds over our ger

The next day we drove back and it was quite bumpy, giving me a fairly debilitating headache. Before taking us to the airport, we went to see the deer stones – old megaliths with carved deer on them.

Deer stones

We flew back to Ulaan Baatar and Sara got me some ibuprofen. I took a short nap and felt a million times better. I got up and we went out and ate Cuban food and explored the dirty city. The foreign food in Mongolia is much better than the foreign food in Seoul.

Every city in Mongolia has a land policy where anyone is entitled to a little land to put their ger and animals on. People coming from the country live all around the edges of cities in these ger camps. Walking around, we saw street kids and Porsches, prostitutes and men in suits. There were poor Russians and rich Mongolians, as well as rich Russians and poor Mongolians – I believe this led to a sort of harmony. You also saw interracial couples, with either gender coming from either ethnic group. Due to the traditional Confucian culture, in Korea interracial couples are almost exclusively Korean women with Western men. Not many Western women will put up with the domineering Korean male archetype: think of 1950’s US man.

We spent one full day in Ulaan Baatar, wandering around and at the natural history museum. I think the Soviets were the last people to put any money into it – very decrepit, yellowing and peeling exhibit descriptions, not up-to-date information, horrible taxidermy, etc. They had amazing fossils though – the Gobi Desert is rich with them. My two favorites were of course the famous Velociraptor fighting a Protoceratops; and the arms of a Deinocherious – a dinosaur with eight foot long arms and ten inch long claws. Yikes! The museum was also very firm in their statements about evolution – I had had no idea how the Soviets presented the topic; not surprisingly, it was with an iron fist.

Statues and buildings - all decrepit

BD's Mongolian Barbeque

Creative product endorsement

Poorly presented musk deer

Random Havana-esque building

Seven days and 620 photographs later, Sara and I left early in the morning, feeling spiritually refreshed. I am so happy to know that there are places like Mongolia left in the world – raw, natural, and open. Our drive to the airport was courtesy of some guy – apparently many drivers are opportune taxi drivers. We got one last look at Ulaan Baatar – abandoned skeletal apartment blocks with a few ger squatters, new apartment blocks going up, tired prostitutes, and people resting under billboards while their sheep grazed nearby.

Sasha

Back from Mongolia!

2009-07-26T16:44:00.002-07:00

Sara and I spent the last week in Mongolia. It is an amazing place and I'm happy just knowing that there are still "raw" places like it in the World. I'll post a recap of our adventures soon, but in the mean time, here is a link to some of the photos I took.

Sasha

What I Eat in Korea

2009-07-08T03:39:00.011-07:00

When we first got to Korea I wasn't too fond of the food. Sara took to kimchi with gusto, but it took me a while to get used to oddly spiced and fermented cabbage. I never gave up, however, and now I can say that I truly enjoy the food here. Sure, I eat "western" food too, but I really like Korean food.

The Koreans are convinced that their food is spicy (hot). It is not. What it is, is hot (temperature) and full of spice. When we got here, our food was so incredibly hot (temperature) that we had constantly burned mouths. We've adjusted so that we can start eating our food right away with no problem. Often food is served in a "dolsot" or hot stone bowl that is hot enough to keep your soup boiling for a minute after being served.

Day to day I eat more or less the same thing (I'm easy that way) and I figured that I'd document it here.

Breakfast:

Two eggs over easy, cup of rice, pepper and vinegar sauce. Cooked at home, eaten at work.

Lunch:

Veggie sandwich from Paris Croissant, a cafe and bakery near my office. This is actually a really good sandwich - good bread is hard to find here. A light pesto sauce, zucchini, bell peppers, mushrooms and mozzarella. The mushrooms are the wrong kind for this sandwich, but I'll take it!

Some sort of seaweed-rapped rice triangle with miso and tuna. Delicious. The sea vegetables in Korea are amazing - lightly toasted with sesame oil and sea salt. Bought from 7-11 of all places.

Orange juice, from concentrate (not from concentrate isn't offered). I'm using fruit sugar as my replacement from regular sugar and caffeine. Also in the background is my trusty water bottle. I eat at my desk - since I only work six hours a day, I'm not required to take an hour lunch break. This keeps my six hour work day at six hours. Also, don't be fooled, the desk is made out of plastic.

Dinner:

Chamchi Hoedeopbap from a restaurant down the street. I eat this maybe two or three times a week. It is a bibimbap variant - rice at the bottom with shredded lettuce, carrots, green cabbage, seaweed, and roe. On top are chunks of frozen raw tuna. The frozen part isn't the best, but there isn't much of a choice in the matter at this restaurant. I pour some miso soup (which comes for free) over the frozen tuna and then mix everything around, thawing it out. Then mix in some pepper sauce... Delicious!

Here is some panchan - basically side dishes. At every restaurant, no matter how good or bad, you get side dishes. At this one we get some kimchi (fermented cabbage and pepper sauce), miso soup, and pickled radish, sliced thin. I love pickled radish.

All the food shown above, from breakfast to dinner, comes to about $9.50. I am truly a privileged person living here and making as much money as I do. Minimum wage was just raised to somewhere around $3.00 an hour and as I've pointed out before, paid for a maximum of eight hours a day, regardless of how many hours are worked.

Sasha

Business Culture

2009-06-27T20:59:00.003-07:00

As part of my interviews, I was told about how work was my family, my highest priority. I shared with them that Sara was in fact my highest priority, which got a good laugh (it wasn't a joke). They said, OK, well after Sara, work is your highest priority, to which I gave a "yes sir".

Ignoring the part that most Koreans actually see their coworkers more than their real families, this is truth in this that I didn't understand at first. When picturing what was meant by "your work is your family" I had a picture of a family helping each other out. What they really meant was, "your work is your family and by family we mean a domineering patriarchal family where complete submission is expected".

I heard a story the other day from a university professor in Seoul. He was telling me about his students who were deciding between different jobs to apply for. They invariably chose the jobs that paid the most, regardless of hours.

For example, faced between a job that paid KRW45,000,000 and required 10 hours a day, six days a week and KRW40,000,000 and 8 hours a day, five days a week, they would choose the higher paying one, even though their hourly wage is so much less. This is due to a number of factors:

The weekend is new in Korea - taking two days off is still not normal; most people work six days a week. This is a hold-over of Confucianism: work hard for your family, think of them all the time, rarely see them.
Unpaid overtime is normal in Korea - you get paid for 8 hours, but are expected to be at work for much longer.
You are not expected to get much done at work - I would never have believed the inefficiency here had I not seen it first hand. I now understand that people don't stay at work late six days a week because they are busy, it is because it is what is culturally expected. I read an article about how foreign-owned businesses in Korea are twice as efficient as Korean-owned businesses in Korea.
During marriage negotiations (the two families get together and discuss family background, income, etc) it is very helpful to have a higher salary. On a related note, a leading cause of divorce in South Korea is when a man looses his job. I ain't saying she's a gold digger...

A fun little example of the control and inefficiencies: On overtime reports (which they had to make to accommodate us foreigners who won't work overtime without getting paid for it) there is an area that must be checked off by various people before it can be approved. Who has to approve it? Your direct supervisor, accounting, the CFO and the CEO.

Thoughts Outside of the Fugue

2009-06-24T04:20:00.003-07:00

So my last post was me deep in a "Stage Two" fugue (also known as the 'I hate everything about my host country' stage). Speaking from a more analytic point of view, here are the real reasons behind why living in Seoul is difficult for me.

Seoul is a gigantic city. Absolutely huge. Most destinations are a 30 minutes to an hour and a half away by the subway. This travel time, plus the sheer mass of people (see population density) makes doing anything outside of our neighborhood exhausting. I am not a city boy. In case you are wondering, I consider Portland to be a very large town, Port Townsend to be a medium-sized town and Chimicum is a small town.

Language is a barrier and I do not have typical interests. Sara and I are constantly processing all that we are going through and we constantly have to stop and remind ourselves that we are not "normal Americans". I've been thinking, "What would happen if I were plopped down in the middle of some central or southern American city?" Kansas City or Dallas, for example. Would I hate it as much as we hate living in Seoul?

I don't watch TV, I am not fond of going out to bars or clubs, I love bicycles, I love nature, I like to eat healthy food, and I like a supportive community. Just at that small list, I would not fit in with a lot of people. That said, I know that I would be able to find people in Kansas City of Dallas who I would fit in with. This is where the language barrier comes into play. Finding a group of like-minded Koreans is all but impossible, so what I'm left with is the impression that the entire city is filled with impatient TV zombies.

The conclusion? Seoul is not a good fit, but it is teaching me a lot about my values. I originally left Portland feeling like I was being smothered by a delightful bubble of librality. I now understand how much I enjoy the lifestyle, the values and the culture, although Portland definitely lacks in diversity. I could have told you that before I left, but you never know you miss something for sure until you don't have it.

Sasha

Seoul Poison (a deceptively brief rant)

2009-06-22T02:53:00.007-07:00

For the past six months, living in Seoul has made me angry, aggravated and negative. I understand that I'm in a foreign country and things happen differently here, but I can't seem to get over a lot of it. I know that when spending time in a new culture there are a number of stages that you go through - the honeymoon, the dislike, the ambivalence, the understanding - but I really have a hard time finding much I like here. Try as I might to be open, I find myself being constantly pissed off.

When I got here there was no honeymoon stage - I went straight to ambivalence. Slowly, as we've explored and experienced more, I've just headed into the dislike stage further and further. That said, whenever I leave the city a load is lifted from my shoulders - I feel like myself again. I am no longer negative. I loved the time at the beach I spent with Sara and also my trip to Fukuoka, Japan was a blast, even though everything went wrong constantly. This leads me to one broad conclusion that doesn't make me feel like I'm just a shitty traveler: I am incompatible with the big city.

Foreigners (Americans and Canadians mainly) who I've met are split about 50/50 on their opinions. There are many more people than I'd ever expect who like it here. Often (but not always) these are people who have Korean girlfriends, or are fresh out of college. Some love the fact that bars are open until 5:00AM or that things are cheap or that women will date them. The other half of the people have very similar things to say about Korea as I. They simply don't like it and can't wait to get out.

I often resist the temptation of venting online (I vent with Sara instead), but not today! Here are a few things piss me off.

We put out a notice to our employers that our air conditioner was broken. Since our landlord doesn't speak English, we have to go through work to get anything done. We came home to find that our apartment had been entered. Our pictures were askew, half a bottle of warm orange juice was on our counter, our circuit breaker was open and modified and our air conditioner was unplugged, still broken. I understand that it must be a cultural difference that your landlord can enter your apartment without your approval, but still, this pisses me off to no end.

Cars have the right-of-way everywhere. This counts for crosswalks and sidewalks also. Yes, cars drive on the sidewalks. This started because there is so little parking, that cars park on the sidewalks. Conversely, many side-streets do not have sidewalks. So, when a car comes by, you have to squeeze to the side of the road and let them pass. Honking is an acceptable form of communication. I've been clipped by people's sideview mirrors many times in the crosswalks due to the driver's impatience (they pull out infront of me as I'm trying to cross).

People ride their motorbikes on the sidewalk. Traffic is so congested on the road that people ride their motorbikes on the sidewalks. Usually they go slowly, but they'll go full speed as well. I've seen so many near misses (no slowing down for children or old people). People often don't wear helmets. They'll carry their children on their laps or baskets too. To be fair, some people do wear helmets, but they are construction helmets without a chin strap. Won't do you much good in a crash, now will it?

At the local supermarket, Sara and I were shopping and I saw someone standing behind the counter at the butcher's department, spraying a can of aerosol at chest height at nothing in particular. I got curious and walked over for a closer look and it turned out he had a can of Raid and was just spraying it into the air. From the nation that is so convinced America is full of mad cow beef that they staged huge protests, here is your food safety.

I was assigned a number of proofreading assignments for elementary students. One of the lessons focuses on antonyms by talking about "opposite day". The teacher instructs the students to write out a list of compliments for each other. Suzy is pretty. Jimmy is smart, etc. Then the teacher says, oh, remember, today is opposite day! So, we have to tell each other the opposite of everything. Suzy, you are ugly! Jimmy, you are dumb! This leads me to my next point...

South Korea has an incredibly high suicide rate. Suicide has a very different social context than it does in the US and I won't claim to understand it. When ex-president Roh (his real last name is No, but it was Romaized as Roh to prevent the negative) killed himself, the nation united in sympathy and support. No talk about how suicide is the wrong way to deal with your problems though. Teachers and professors throughout the land are currently uniting in denouncing the current government for being anti-democratic. A leading pro-democracy leader killed himself in protest. Also, see this post for a rant on women's rights and what celebrities do when they get into controversies.

At a fixed gear bike event about 150 people showed up on their fixies. Then they got off their fixies. Then they played ring-around-the-rosie and leapfrog and had a thigh-width measuring competition. There was one event where people were on their bikes - a skid competition - and to be fair a lot of people were riding their bikes around - but after three hours of leapfrog I got bored and went home. Not that I played leapfrog, mind you. Events were for "crews" - groups of friends. I know it seems like a bitchy point to make, but thinking of how inclusive we are in Portland, people just didn't even try reaching out to us foreigners. We were allowed to join (I rode in the skid competition) but the rules were not explained.

Well, I didn't manage to cross much off my list - all these things are either ongoing or just off the top of my head from the past two days. I'll continue to look for the positives, but damn Seoul, you just make it hard.

Sasha

Workday Profile

2009-06-13T19:53:00.003-07:00

It occurs to me that I've never blogged about what I do all day in Korea.

On weekdays, I get to work a little before 8. I don't have to be there until 9:30, but I avoid the larger subway crush by going in early. It is still crowded at 7:30, but you don't get pushed around much. You can judge how crowded it is by how many people are touching you at any given point. Normally, you are wedged in between two to four people. Crowded is four to eight. If I can leave my backpack on for the whole ride, I consider the subway empty.

I usually teach one class each day - sometimes it is two a day. The classes I teach are for preparing students for Sara's class - the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) certificate course. All my students are adults (why I chose this job) and class lasts for three hours. I enjoy teaching way more than I would've expected - the students make it great. I've learned so much about Korean culture through them.

I am contracted to teach a maximum of six hours a day, five days a week, so if I only have one class a day, I have three hours to work on writing projects. My company mainly does online stuff - they are one of the biggest in Korea - and they have no end of things to edit or write. Most of the stuff I'm asked to edit is in pretty poor shape - 26 pages of text with no articles or prepositions - that sort of thing.

Sometimes I work on example sentences for test preparation (What is your favorite holiday and why?). I also have to come up with five multiple choice questions a week for an online quiz program, called "Quiz Quiz" (I believe they got the name from the free paper's "Quiz? Quiz!" section). Content doesn't matter, so I've taken that cue and gotten creative:

What were the flowing hair styles painted by Alphonse Mucha, the Czech Art Nouveau artist, famously satirized as?
a. Mucha's Mackerel
b. Alphonse's Alfredo
c. Mucha's Macaroni
d. Alphonse's Melted Mozzarella

The Rural Cemetery Act of New York was passed in 1847 to make way for development in Manhattan by moving graveyards and many graves to other parts of New York. What long term effect has this created?
a. There have been ongoing problems with water quality.
b. There are more dead people than live people in some districts.
c. Families of the deceased who were forced to move receive taxpayer money.
d. There are ongoing disputes about property ownership.

Recently I was tasked to rewrite a Korean folktale into something easier for young readers. This was a lot of fun.

Heungbu and Nolbu

A long time ago,
It was windy, windy, windy.
A little bird got hurt.

Nice Heungbu helped the bird.
The bird got better.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Next year, the bird came back.
The bird said, “Thank you Heungbu,
Now I give a gift to you.”

It was a big gourd seed.
Heungbu planted the seed,
Hoping it wasn’t a weed.

The plant grew a big gourd.
What a great reward!

Heungbu’s family sang,
“Let’s have a gourd, let’s have a gourd.”

Heungbu’s family opened a gourd.
What was in the gourd?
Treasure! Rice! Oh so nice!

The family was so happy.
They had a magic gourd!
They danced and danced a silly, happy dance.

Was everyone happy?
Not Heungbu’s brother, Nolbu.
Nolbu was mad.
He wanted treasure too.

Nolbu found a bird and hurt it.
Nolbu was so mean!
He wanted a magic seed.

Next year, the bird came back.
The bird said, “You were mean Nolbu,
Now I give a gift to you.”

It was a big gourd seed.
Nolbu planted the seed,
Hoping it wasn’t a weed.

The plant grew a big gourd.
What a great reward!

Nolbu was happy.
He opened a gourd.
What was in the gourd?
No treasure, no rice. It wasn’t very nice.

It was a huge ogre!

The ogre was angry at Nolbu.
The ogre said,
“You are so mean!”
“You hurt a bird too!”

Nolbu was scared.
The ogre hit Nolbu.
Nolbu cried, “Boo hoo!”
Nolbu said “I’m sorry for hurting the bird.”

The actual story goes on a while after this, but the children's version ends here.

My workday wraps up at around 2:00 or 2:30 and then I go home on an empty subway, have some lunch and hang out or ride my bike. Sara gets home around 5:30 or 6:00 and we will go out for bi bim bap (rice and vegetables) or occasionally kalbe (thin strips of beef you grill at your table), or we'll eat at home.

The answers are: c and b.

Bike Polo - This Saturday!

2009-06-06T06:28:00.002-07:00

Rejoice! Bring your bikes!

Saturday the 13th. 2:00 PM.
Line no. 3, Gyeongbokgun Station. Entrance #4.

We'll meet up at Entrance #4 and go to the court from there. Mallets are provided (thanks to Imaze and friends). First-timers are welcome - most people will be brand new!

Map: http://map.naver.com/?lat=37.5760410&lng=126.9731524&level=1&mapMode=1

Sasha

Women's Rights in South Korea

2009-06-06T01:50:00.005-07:00

Living in South Korea has brought many challenges to me. I haven't spent much time focusing on the negatives on this blog, but I've been thinking about them the whole time I've been here. So, here we go.

One of the most widespread problems I see in South Korean society is the treatment of women. Traditionally, this poor treatment came from Confucianism. While I've been told things are getting much better - women aren't beaten for smoking cigarettes, pay equity coming closer to parity, many jobs are open to women now - there are still a lot of problems.

Only recently have married women gained the status of "human". This came during a spousal rape court case - a man was actually found guilty of raping his wife. The judge noted that this must be taken on a case-by-case basis and should not be used as precedent.
Ajumas, generally middle aged or older women from poor backgrounds, are considered a neuter or third sex who are neither a women or a man.
When marrying, a woman's name is crossed off her parent's records and added to her husband's.
A euphemism for a widow is "A woman who has not died yet".
Most women are expected to do all of the child-raising.
Women feel they have to choose between having a career or raising a family.

The other day, the Supreme Court ruled that the "heirs of the late actress Choi Jin-sil must compensate an advertiser since she failed to maintain her dignity as a model when pictures of her after a beating by her then-husband Cho Sung-min were publicized in media."

Basically, she was a celebrity, married to pro baseball player. She had a modeling job that required her to maintain personal dignity. Her husband beat her, photos got out on the internet, they got a divorce. She moved on, an actor friend of her's committed suicide, she committed suicide.

Now, since she "broke her contract" by getting beaten by her husband and not hiding it, her two young children who are in the care of her mother have to pony up the cash to pay the settlement.

Sources:
Chosun Ilbo - Choi Jin-Sil
Chosun Ilbo - Spousal Rape
"How Koreans Talk", Choe, Torchia

What health code?

2009-05-24T03:35:00.003-07:00

Sara and I went to the Biennial Ceramics Festival in Icheon today and saw many lovely and functional pieces of ceramics.

When we first got to the festival, we went to the outdoor Food Court area, since we were both hungry, and found there only to be one tent with food (it turned out to be the auxiliary food court).

We waited in line for quite a while, watching a little girl pour herself a cup of water from the water cooler and wash her hands with it. She then went back, filled her cup and repeated, enough times to empty the water cooler.

Finally we got to the front of the line. Out of the six items on the menu, one looked good to me. When I ordered, my pronunciation was deplorable and not understood. Sara came to the rescue and then we were notified that they were out of it. On to Sara's order, some sort of octopus and chili sauce over rice dish.

While we were waiting we watched the kitchen workers put on the most disgusting food preparation act I had ever seen. The entire operation was not up to code - but for non-sit-down restaurants in Korea, there isn't actually a health code. I won't go through every gross thing we saw, but just the preparation of the Cold Udon Soup.

Step one: Dishwasher stops washing dishes and pulls out a handful of udon noodles from the sink with her rubber dish gloves, placing them in a bowl. Yes, this is the same sink that she was washing dishes in. Yes, these are the same gloves that she was washing dishes with.

Step two: Blood sausage / pig liver handler (who wears what were once white cotton gloves) pulls a hard boiled egg out of a container (not refrigerated) and slices it in half with a wire that is attached to the counter.

Step three: Blood sausage / pig liver handler picks up the bowl and scoops some partially frozen broth into the bowl and hands it to the customer.

Other highlights:
The woman cleaning out the deep fryer scooped crap out of it with a sieve and dumped it on the ground right next to her.

A kid walked up to the food prep counter and asked where to put his dirty dishes. The cook indicated the food prep counter and there it went.

In case you were wondering, Sara's meal was served from a chafe plate with a proper ladle and we feel fine. There was enough chili sauce on it to hopefully kill anything that was living around it.

My bike is finally finished!

2009-05-23T00:41:00.002-07:00

Here she is:

Subway Story

2009-05-16T23:25:00.002-07:00

So most days the subway is so crowded that you never interact with people, as long as you don't count being touched by at least seven other people. Last Friday I was taking the subway home at about 2:30PM and it was pretty empty (I count empty as not having to take my backpack off) - probably only 100 people on the car.

At one stop (Sadang), about five middleschool girls got on the train and came and stood over by me. The brave one of the group said, "Hello" in English and I replied with a "Howdy" that set off a fit of giggles. They asked me where I was from in English and as this is a phrase I know in Korean, I told them (cho nin mi gook saram is sayo). More giggles ensued.

They then got in a tizzy about something, chattering back and forth. The brave one told me that they loved my eyelashes, so long and brown... to which I replied, "Shouldn't you be in school right now?"

Fortunately my stop (Naksongde) was the next one.

Maui

2009-05-04T01:28:00.004-07:00

Sara and I joined my mom in Maui for a week long vacation. As far as I'm concerned, Maui might as well be paradise. We spent most of the week hanging out - very few activities - which was just what we needed to unwind from the busy Seoul life.

I bought myself a new camera - a Pentax K20 - and spent a lot of time getting to know it - 900+ pictures on the week long trip. The odds were on my side, and I managed to snap a few good shots.

The sunsets were beautiful.

A photogenic rock / stream.

Said stream.

Showing off the Pentax's shutter speeds.

A friendly cardinal.

Playing with the shutter speed - a 30 second night exposure.

A beautiful beach covered in basalt.

A broken post.

Enjoying the beach with Sara.

Mount Haleakala's debris field.

Yet another beautiful sunset.

The condo area by night (long exposure)

Haleakala means business. 10k feet (drivable), cinder cones abound.

We live at the mall

2009-04-12T04:15:00.004-07:00

There are so many people here. Always people people people. At all hours. At all places. I can't emphasize this enough, so here is a graphic.

Sasha

New apartment tour video

2009-04-04T20:40:00.004-07:00

Here is the new apartment tour - we've changed a lot with our little (212 sq ft) home.

Here is a link to the "before" video.
http://lamoix.blogspot.com/2009/01/forget-setbacks-were-in-korea.html

Sasha

How to Keep Everyone Employed - Or Korean Window Washing

2009-03-28T23:04:00.004-07:00

As can be expected, I've been learning a lot about Korean culture and especially the Korean business culture and work ethic.

It is absolutely amazing how hard Koreans work - most work six days a week with 12 hour days. Only recently has the two day weekend been introduced, and it seems that many people ignore it. This strong work ethic is testament to how quickly Korea has risen up in status - turning from basically a peasant agrarian economy to a modern economic powerhouse in the past 50 years.

For all the work that Koreans do, it turns out that they don't get paid that well, or for the time that they actually work. Overtime is expected and not reimbursed - the thought is that if you have to work overtime, it shows that you are struggling and can't actually get your work done in the time allotted. It is not considered overtime if you aren't getting paid for it, so you don't report your overtime work - you just do it.

Minimum wage is ₩4,000 per hour (about $3.00) and people work their asses off for it. While Korea is cheap for things like food and services, Seoul is especially expensive for housing, and many people live with their parents until they get married. Here are some prices (in USD):

Haircut (with drink, shampoo, cut, shampoo, back / scalp massage) $15 (including tip)
Bi Bim Bap (big delicious bowl of rice and veggies, maybe a little meat) $3.30 (you don't tip)
Daily metro commute $1.34 (round trip)
30 minute taxi ride $7.45
A cup of horrible coffee $2.25
A carton of 20 eggs $3.34 (we get the good kind)
Five kilos of rice $8.92
One month's electricity / gas bill $85 (for our 212 sq ft studio)
One month's rent for our studio $558
One Vittoria Roundeneer tire $26

Income: $3 x 8 hours x 6 days x 52 weeks = $7,488 per year.
Rent + utilities: $558 + $85 x 12 months = $7,716 per year.

As you can see, housing is disproportionately expensive, especially for people who make minimum wage. This is why people live with their parents for years, or live out in the suburbs where things are much cheaper. I don't know how many hours of work people actually get paid for, but I know it isn't the 12 that they put in. Many things in Korea are copied from the US, so there is a good chance wage is calculated from an eight hour work day.

*It should be noted that our apartment is brand new, in a good location, a five minute walk from the metro station and only five stops (four miles) from a main business area.*

As there is almost no state-provided social security system, many older people are either supported by their families (respecting the elder members of your family is very important) or work, or both.

The other day as I was waiting for students to show up, a whole brigade of older women came through the conference room, washing windows. This is a classic example of how Korean business works - many people, highly stratified positions and questionable efficiency, paired with the ability to financially support a large number of people. I think the thought is that paying a bunch of people very little is much better than paying one person a regular wage.

A list of the interior window washers and duties:

Window Washer: Washing the windows
1st Squeegee: Squeegee most of the windows
2nd Squeegee: Squeegee what 1st Squeegee missed
1st Rag: Standing on the window ledge, drying water off the sides of the windows
3rd Squeegee: Squeegee what the 1st and 2nd Squeegees didn't get
2nd Rag: Drying the bottom of the windows
3rd Rag: Cleaning the window ledges where 1st Rag stood
4th Rag: Drying anything anyone else missed
1st Blind Closer: closing half of the blinds
2nd Blind Closer: closing the other half of the blinds

I don't know what to say... at least they all have an income? It was crazy to watch all these people filtering through the room. To their credit, they managed to clean the 7 windows before any of my students came in.

Sasha

Sara brought back the bikes!

2009-03-22T04:40:00.005-07:00

Man I'm stoked - Sara took a little trip to the US and brought our frames back here Korea. Since she was just bringing frames (size / weight / solo traveler restrictions) I had her bring my Litespeed instead of my Redline. I figure if I'm going to be building a bike up anyway, might as well be this damn nice frame I've been sitting on for so long.

Sara brought her Bianchi, which she's ridden for well over 15,000 miles, now on three continents. She's going to convert it to fixed gear - her first - which I'm excited about. Both of our bikes have vertical dropouts, so we ordered a pair of White Industries ENO Eccentric hubs to make them behave themselves.

Since I'll be riding on titanium, I figured I might as well go for a carbon fork (ti forks are $$$)... Since I can be pretty rough on forks, I chose the White Bros. Rock Solid Carbon. No rake, disk mounts (that will go unused), some shock dampening and is a mountain / xc fork so hopefully can take some abuse.

Bad picture, but it ain't much to look at till its put together. I haven't figured out how I'll get all the components together yet - LSD probably. Hope they will let me do my own wrenching.

It'll be interesting riding a mountain frame fixed - I grew up on geared mountain frames, but in Portland my stable was solely a fixed road bike and a fixed polo bike, both set up like mountain bikes.

I'm a bit apprehensive about knocking around the fork... I know how hard I knocked my Redline and polo bike around and they took it well, just like steel should. This new bike is going to be my commuter / polo / dicking around bike all in one, so it will definitely take some abuse... I can't wait to see how hard a direct hit carbon can take!

Bonus picture: LSD bought a vintage campy tool set.

Practically worthless. 100% awesome.

Sasha

LSD Expansion Party

2009-03-18T03:43:00.007-07:00

Well howdy there. Quick update - we went to the LSD Fixed Gear shop expansion party and met a ton of people who are interested in playing polo.

They don't fool around here in Korea - the party was complete with a wall of logos and "Fashion Portal" photographers who were there to scout for trends.

To the left is just a small part of the photos from the party.

And well now, I just remembered I had a business card from one of the photographers... turns out I made their homepage. I have no idea what they are saying (you have to register for the site to click further and registering requires a social security number.)

Anyway, I assume their homepage changes quite often, so here is a screenshot for posterity's sake. (Click on the pictures for bigger resolution.)

Exotic Sushi Night

2009-03-02T05:03:00.002-08:00

One of Sara's students took her, myself and his other teacher out for sushi the other night. We went to a place he's been going to for years - Ni Ko Japanese Restaurant. It is the sort of place where the owner has his picture on the big sign out front and his business card too.

It just so happened that the owner was there that night. Instead of ordering rolls, fish or whatever, you order the level of how fancy you want your sushi. It is all you can eat after that. Since the odds were pretty good we were the first white people who had been there in a long time, we got an amazing assortment of sushi, as well as many "service" items, aka free stuff, and also special stuff that the owner only carts out when he likes you. It also should be noted that he didn't cook many things - his role was mainly to have drinks served to him and to tell some people what to cook.

We started out with the most amazing tuna I've ever eaten. It was category defining. The flavor put all other tuna to shame. Not just shame... I'm at loss for an adjective to describe how good it was. Other tuna, once realizing how not up-to-par it was, committed ritual suicide... it was that amazing.

Anyway, we moved onto a variety of other fish:

Salmon - very good
Whitefish of many types - the texture was very stringy... not a fan
Sea Urchin - horrific texture... like slimy goo that held together
Eel - always good
Blowfish - the infamous Fugu - see below
Sea Cucumber - I passed, but Sara loved it
Abalone - strange flavor - it was still alive in the display case
Scallops - great
Shrimp - meh

Also on the menu:

Fried mountain potato - delicious
Korean pancakes with scallops, shrimps, eggs, green onions
Tempura things - I have no idea... not very good
One sushi roll - called "gimbap" - very tasty
Seared tuna with crispy leeks - holy crap was this delicious
Clam and lemon soup - very delicious

The seared tuna.

And to drink:

Beer - Cass is a pass
Hot Korean sake - good fruity notes
Soju - tastes like rubbing alcohol smells
Mushroom water - tasted like water
Raspberry wine - drank a full bottle of it
Tea - why drink tea when you got all the other stuff?

I'm pretty sure that this covers what we ate... I had a lot to drink, so I'm not entirely sure. Also, as a side note, we were told that about half the stuff we were served were either 1. aphrodisiacs or 2. potency enhancers. All the food was either offered off of a plate that you took from the chef with your chopsticks, or he just put it onto your plate with his hands.

Some upside down cups.

A potato.

An interesting tradition is that the chef gets to decide what he wants to drink and you order them booze. Waitstaff too. The trick is that once you bought them booze, they can't ask for it, so you have to offer. If you are offering too much to fast, they get loaded, since they can't turn it down as it would be impolite.

Some notes on the Fugu:
We ate its flesh, its skin and its intestines.

Flesh: very interesting texture... not sure if my palate is sophisticated enough to notice the flavor though
Skin: delicious like only skin can be... it was in a vinegary / salty sauce that was too much for me
Intestines: imagine a marshmallow that has been roasted so the outside is firm and the inside is gooey. Now imagine that it is fish guts. I actually really liked it, although I doubt I would ever eat it again.

Slapping the poor fugu

The fugu is in a total fugue

No video, so here is a poorly put together gif!

My morning commute

2009-02-16T15:08:00.002-08:00

So my morning commute is something like this... not quite as extreme as there are no pushers... but regular riders will push as hard as the pushers do.

[EDIT] Removed the youtube video... not sure how I was violating terms of service...

Anyway, here is a photo I took on the train. It doesn't really show how many people there are and how crowded it is, but there are a lot. Seriously a ton of people. Each subway car is jammed full - an estimated 450 people. Multiply that times 10 cars in a train and we have 4,500 people. A full subway car comes by ever 90 seconds during rush hour. Sometimes I can't fit on (I don't care for pushing people too hard).

The car gets so crowded that the other day one of my mp3 earbuds got jostled out of my ear, but I was helpless to put it back in.
As the train speeds up and slows down, people shift against each other and you hear cries of pain.
Once I couldn't move my feet as I was being pushed in and I wound up at a 20 degree angle resting on some poor Korean. I couldn't right myself for three stops.
Getting out of the train can be a chore, with so many people in the way, so people will push just as hard to get out. Since there is no room to maneuver, I often get pushed off the train and then have to get back on. The other day I noticed someone behind me getting anxious as we approached a stop. I felt a hand on the middle of my back settling in as a jab right below my shoulder blades, preparing to push me out. Not wanting to get poked in such a sensitive spot, I turned around to glare at the young woman and then pushed open a hole for her to get out.

Apparently in Korean culture, relationships are very important. With that in mind, complete strangers don't matter and it doesn't matter if you push them. This is pervasive throughout society and I've heard that it puts a real hamper on police activities - nobody respects them.

All said, I dislike riding the subway at rush hour, but I put up with it. Sara and I were remarking the other night about how we would never get on such a full car stateside, but here we do it with only a little complaining.

Sasha

Photos from the past few weeks

2009-02-10T03:40:00.005-08:00

I've been pretty busy with work lately - presto all of the sudden I'm an English teacher. Anyway, here are a few photos from the past few weeks.

We woke up to snow!

Sara and I in the storm.

They didn't need to keep the fishes on ice today!

Going for a walk we got a nice panorama of the hills.

And we found a park and a temple.

It was very peaceful - I'm interested to see what the foliage looks like in the spring.

We found a path that lead up to a ridge. This is a view through the trees at the city - it goes on for miles and miles in every direction. House upon skyscraper upon apartment block.

The park (and part of town) is named after General Naskongde, a figure from Korean history. Here seen in statue form.

In downtown Seoul there is a restored river.

It was quite cold and there were some frozen bits.

A shot from inside a train station... a bit of smog today.

Helping ourselves to a tasty treat. Vanilla frozen yogurt, chocolate gelato, corn flakes, cherry tomato, grapes with finger prints, and a slice of orange and kiwi. We only had a vague knowledge of what we were ordering - it was ordered by pointing to a random desert on the menu.

A not so tasty treat, rice cake with beans. Sara likes this stuff a bunch. I like things with bean paste in them, but these beans are barely smushed, let alone pasted.

End of employment with SeQuential

2009-01-31T20:40:00.004-08:00

Well, after four plus years, I am finally all done working for SeQuential. My formal employment ended last November, but I stayed on as a contractor until now. Ignoring all the sentiments, I wanted to share the following discovery:

I archived all my old emails and found that from 6/9/05 to 2/1/09, a period of 1,333 days, I sent 35,501 emails (not counting multiple recipients), which works out to 27 emails per day. Counting business days only, there were approximately 917, or 39 per day.

Sasha

LSD Fixed Gear Blog

2009-01-31T02:12:00.003-08:00

LSD Fixed Gear wrote a post about my visit - check it out. (The post is in Korean, but here is an automatically translated version... be warned the translation leaves much to be desired.)

Sasha

Some random moments

2009-01-29T03:47:00.004-08:00

Things have been moving quickly here lately, so I figured I'd dump a bunch of experiences onto one page instead of sorting them all out into separate stories.

I finally have a job (training starts tomorrow) teaching English to adults. I don't know yet whether it will be business English or just prepping people for Sara's classes. All in all, I had two interviews, one mock teaching and another surprise interview with the #2 in command at the company. After the interview we went to lunch and had the best food I've had here yet - some noodles and beef, cooked at the table. This really was the first beef I've intentionally eaten in over 10 years - I may have given up on being a vegetarian, but force of habit meant that I never really got around to eating much meat... I got this far without it, so why do I need it? Anyway, it probably would have been culturally inappropriate for me to no want to eat the food, so good thing I had no qualms! It was delicious!
The Lunar New Year was last weekend. It is the biggest holiday in Korea (so I've heard) and people go back to their homes for it, meaning Seoul empties out. Sara and I were going to go to Busan in the south for the holiday, but train tickets were sold out. Staying in Seoul was nice - the quietest we've seen it. The subways ran fewer services and there were not many people on. Even the outdoor market closed down - there were taxis driving down it (it is closed to cars normally) looking confused - they had probably never been on that street before.
Sara and I went out to dinner and a cultural show with a friend of her's from graduate school. We went to a Brazilian restaurant where meat was the name of the game - they bring it in a never ending stream to you your table on skewers. Steak was my favorite, the roast beef and garlic beef were pretty good, chicken hearts were surprisingly good and the chicken wings were poor. I turned down the pork dishes - though I heard they were the best out of all.
The cultural show was an hour and a half of traditional drumming, dancing, singing and music. The drums were ok, if a bit loud, but they had a metal cymbal-like percussion instrument that they just beat without mercy, which was piercing. The more serious dances were a bit too sophisticated for me (read slow). The singing was a great sort of wailing guttural haunting strange sound.

The best part they saved towards the end - the drummers dance around with special hats on that have spinning ribbons on them... something like this:
As part of the show, two of the performers were trying to show the other up. They got out some plates and spun them on sticks and would do a trick, asking for the audience for applause. One was good natured and the other bad - he would always give the other guy a thumbs down. They then went out into the audience, looking for volunteers. Despite my best efforts at ignoring them, I got chosen to come up on stage and was given a spinning plate on a stick and told to throw it up in the air for the other guy to catch. Of course I was given the bad natured fellow as a receiver and he let my first toss fall to the ground, despite it being on target. I played along and he caught my second throw. As a thank-you, I got the following prize:

What I need a 2.5 foot bamboo pipe for, I will never know.
I went back to LSD Fixed Gear and got invited to a group ride on Sunday. They are having a film shoot for an UNQLO project and need footage of riders. I'm borrowing a kind of wonky bike - loose bottom bracket and hubs - but I'll make due. A teaser:

Overcoming the language barrier, I deduced what the beautiful Del Rosa is destined for: being painted, given some stickers of a company I've never heard of and added to the collection. Not for sale - just repainted and relabeled nice frames. On the lighter side, there is a bike company called Gayass.

Sasha

LSD Fixed Gear Bicycle

2009-01-21T03:52:00.008-08:00

EDIT: In the following months after writing the below post, my enchantment with LSD has turned to a cold reality. I have been trying to beat around the bush and not make any enemies, but I guess I should just come out and say that unless you are looking for a biking community, you should bypass LSD completely. They are expensive, slow, and as mechanics they are moderately to dangerously incompetent. We have had so many problems with them and it is heartbreaking since they had so much potential.

Sasha

----------------------------------

Before coming to Korea, I searched around to see if Seoul had a fixed gear scene. I came across a bike shop called LSD (http://lsdbikes.tistory.com/). Through the magic of google translate, I gathered that they act as a hub for bike events and rides. I tried finding their shop a few times with no luck, but then finally figured out that they were in a basement shop with the staircase in sort of an alley.

Within five minutes of being there, I had a beer in my hand (a Hoegaarden) and knew that I had found a new home. It is a decent sized shop (for Seoul standards) and has lots of parts, frames, wheels, etc. The language barrier is definitely present, but they had heard of bike polo and definitely want to learn. I borrowed someone's bike and we rode around in the alley doing some tricks - it has been 21 long days away from my bike.

A shot of some of the swag in their shop - lots of Roundeneers, Michle, a few pieces of Phill Wood, some Aerospokes, and boxes and boxes of all colors of glittery cable housing. I didn't see a single break or deurrailer in the place, so I'm not sure what the cable housing was about.

A full line up of Park Tools. They seemed open to letting people use their tools.

I spent a few hours there and a steady stream of people came in and out to say hello or buy parts - not bad for being in the middle of winter, coming up on a large holiday (the Lunar New Year) and in the middle of the afternoon. One person came in who had pretty good English - we were making small talk and he asked if it was hard for me to get into the country, which it had not been. He then asked if I had ever been to the US... I was a bit confused and told him I was from the US. Apparently, when I had told people that I was from Portland, they had heard Poland!

After a while, I asked where a bathroom was and was lead to a storage area and pointed towards a door. I walked through and found myself in a very short stairwell that led nowhere, filled with some random pieces of wood and a few boxes.

Squat toilets are not unheard of here, so I began searching for one, but couldn't find anything. After a few minutes of thinking, I figured that when I asked for a bathroom, it might have been heard as backroom. Cognitively, it made no sense whatsoever, but I decided to go back and ask again. Turns out that one of the walls was actually a sliding door to a regular bathroom... go figure.

There is an absolutely beautiful De Rosa frame at the shop - usually I'm not a fan of bright colors - I prefer grays or browns or blacks - but this green De Rosa calls to me.

I was snapping photos of the place when someone asked for my camera and called everyone around for a group photo.

LSD does rides on Fridays or Saturdays, with monthly events, etc. I'm looking forward to getting back on the saddle (they offered to loan me a bike) and learning the streets of Seoul! I don't know how easy it will be to find ski poles, but all the other parts for mallets are readily available. I think I'll start working on that while talking people up for polo.

Sasha

Our visit to America Street

2009-01-17T19:26:00.003-08:00

Due partly to not being able to find food that fully satisfies, and partly just out of curiosity, Sara and I took a trip to America Street. Named by its proximity to a US Military base, America Street is filled with GIs, expats and shops to serve them.

In the other parts of Seoul we've been to, like the part we live in, there is hardly any diversity at all - just Koreans, the occasional Chinese and the very rare Caucasian. America Street had a full range of ethnicity, which was nice to see. Shops were labeled in English and there was a wide variety of ethnic restaurants - Greek, Arabic, Indian, Mexican, Thai, Italian, etc. It seemed poignant at the time that what made me feel longing for home was restaurants serving food from foreign lands.

We of course went to a Mexican restaurant (we didn't have high hopes). I know it must be difficult to create a meal out of ingredients that aren't available... but I wonder if it is worth the trouble. The tortilla reminded me of a burrito I ate in college - it was a microwave burrito and I had forgotten to turn the microwave on. The beans were all wrong. The rice was Korean short grained white rice. The bell peppers were fresh and delicious. The sauce was canned chili with ground beef. The spices were based in Korean chili peppers.

Anyway, we wandered the street, making our way by cart after cart of fake Gucci purses. Listening to other Americans talk was painful at times - our reputation for being loud and obnoxious didn't come out of the blue. People were walking around shops drinking Budweiser. I saw a few prostitutes. I thought about getting a suit custom made.

I had expected to enjoy hearing people speaking English and being able to read words on signs and products. In reality, since Sara and I are trying to fit into Korean culture as best we can - but the people on America Street are just doing their thing, not trying to learn. You can't blame them really, as you get stationed wherever you get stationed, but I think for now we'll stick to the rest of the city.

Sasha

Sasha's Big Day Out or Seoul is a Large City

2009-01-09T02:05:00.007-08:00

The other day I decided to take the metro to the Han river (that bisects the city) and check out the paths and recreation areas. The river is only three metro stops away, so I decided that I'd walk back to the house from the station... without a map... turns out the city is a lot larger than I imagined.

The river Han itself is about a kilometer wide. There are a ton of bridges over it, but since they are so big they aren't as personal as those in Portland.

This shows the walking paths, the other side of the river and the little island halfway accross.

Here is a bit better view of the park - good sized, but kind of barren. Granted it is January, but there are only four people out, playing croquet of all things...

Way off in the distance you can see some more high-rises. I'm not sure if that is Seoul proper, but I assume so.

Crossing the bridge is not to eventful - wide sidewalks and what will probably be much better views in the summer. But then at the end of the path:

A bunch of highways and largely deserted areas. Not wanting to get too lost in what didn't look like the best part of town (although I've been assured there are no bad parts of town...) I decided to take the path on the south side of the river towards what I thought would be the continuation of a metro line I knew.

The path stretched on for a very long time with no exits - the freeway was on one side and the Han on the other. Again, I thought that this place would be full of people, but it is January and the banks of the Han had ice on them. Every once in a while a cyclist would go past me - I found an interesting sign for bikes as well.

I expected stairs or something, but it was only a hairpin turn - nothing I would put a sign up for.

The path went on and on - past people fishing, some swan paddle boats tied up for the winter, and a lot of construction. Really there wasn't anything too exciting to look at, but this building with a coke-esque line on it caught my eye:

Love your life.
Love your dream.
Write on your buildings in a language your population can't read.

I eventually had to cut through some construction zone to get off of the foot path and back into the city.

From here I managed to find a sign towards a station - sure it was a few klicks away, but I had already walked a ton, so why not keep going. I finally got there, after learning about underground crosswalks (can't disrupt the cars), and realized that it was a light rail station - not the metro. I had no idea how it met up with any of the metro stations, but I managed to get someone at the help desk to say which train I needed to take. I got on the train and managed just in time to figure out what line I was on and which transfer I needed in time to jump back off.

So, after four hours of walking and about 25k, I made it back home, the three metro stops away.

Searching but no finding

2009-01-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

The past few days have been spent getting the apartment in order - dishes, cookware, towels, a floor bed mat, etc. and figuring out food. We're almost set with knowing what food we are going to get when we order and our rice-maker at home is working great.

Today I decided to try to get some of the harder things on our list: floor and table lamps, a wireless router (I blew mine up with this spicy Korean electricity) and since it was Sara's first day of work, some flowers for her.

A few days ago I found a wireless router, but it was 80,000 won, which is about $69. Figuring I could find a better deal, I started wandering the streets. I found an Office Depot, which only had wired routers (but an incredible selection of stickers), and a few other computer stores that were closed. Finally I found a computer store that was open, but I got the "you don't understand what I'm saying so I'll say it really loud and slowly" treatment from the owner in Korean.

While wandering around, I found one store that sold lamps, but none of them had price tags. I asked the shopkeeper how much they were and he got this stupid grin on his face, managed to get it back off his face and then quoted me a few prices. Needless to say, I didn't buy any lamps there!

As an intermission, I got myself a little bun from a bakery that had some sort of creamy something on the inside. I have no idea what it was and I can't say that I'll get one again.

My search for flowers also came up fruitless - in fact I don't think I've seen any live flowers or live grass since I've gotten here. Most trees are deciduous, so the only green things I've seen are some landscape bamboo at the Samsung tower and a few scraggly hedges.

Well, I think I'll do some research before I go out next time - wandering the streets isn't the worst, but I'd like to get some accomplishments under my belt. Now I'm back at home, warming my feet (damn it is cold outside) and thinking about dinner.

Sasha

Forget the setbacks - we're in Korea!

2009-01-02T23:18:00.000-08:00

So skipping all the details, the waiting and the final decision to go (with only three weeks notice), Sara and I are in Korea! Our plane left at noon on December 31st and we arrived January 1st at 10pm - and no, they didn't serve champagne in cattle class. The flight was about 12 hours from Portland to Tokyo and two hours from Tokyo to Seoul, but all in all, it didn't feel that bad.

Our apartment is pretty small, but has radiant floor heating, which is great. I never knew I liked having warm feet until now. We got a bunch of kitchen / bath supplies as well as groceries - I didn't think ahead of time how much you have to have to set up a home.

Sara and I have been walking around and exploring - back streets, alleyways, subways, etc. Her new employer showed us where she's going to teach - a pretty swanky place in a swanky part of town - and gave us some tips on riding the subway, etc.

At first, we didn't have a dictionary, so food was pretty hit or miss - just select a random thing off of a menu (unless there were pictures). I had some great udon noodles today and also some seafood fried rice. We took a paper menu home and have been working on translating it so that we are better in the know.

We went into a Dunken Donuts to get a coffee and what we got was a shot of drip coffee into a cup full of hot water - a bastard Americano if you will. Ordering Americanos is much more productive, although not up to Portland standards.

In general, people don't pay us too much attention, but on the subway, I notice a lot of people looking at my beard. An old man came up and talked to us in English (the first time we've been approached) and asked where we were from. He told me he liked my beard and gave it a little poke. Then he said he was 80 years old and got off the subway. Very cute. We've seen very few white people thus far - they stick out like a sore thumb though.

In all the shopping and eating out that we've done so far, we have encountered close to no English speakers. Fortunately, it is easy enough to say hello, yes, no and thank you in Korean. The exchange rate is killer and things are pretty cheap regardless.

So far I'm in great spirits - I keep on forgetting I'm in Korea to be honest - it seems more like a giant Korea Town. Being connected to people around the world and news sources in English helps, but I know that at some point it will hit me that I'm thousands of miles away from everything I know and understand. I've done some reading on living abroad and there are set stages you go through:

Everything is new and exciting
Everything is foreign and confusing
Everything sucks and you want to go home
You get over yourself and everything is just OK

It'll be interesting to see myself go through these stages - I'm definitely in the first stage - I wonder if knowing about them will help when I hate the world!

Sasha

Slight setback: paperwork

2008-09-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems Sara and I won't be leaving town in the middle of October - paperwork woes have pushed us back to January... a little disappointing, but a good thing is worth waiting for!

Moving to South Korea

2008-09-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

Well, Sara and I have made the decision to move to South Korea together. The timeline is as follows:

Portland has been feeling a little stagnant and the two of us are ready to move on.
Sara is a very good teacher of English as a foreign language, making her employable worldwide.
In a notably uncharacteristic move, I take a back seat in the planning department and decide to follow Sara to wherever she feels she could get the best job.
Sara has been hired on by the University of California: Riverside extension in South Korea teaching English.
My employer of almost four years is very supportive. I'll continue to work for SeQuential part time, telecommuting, and find part time work in Korea (for a work visa).

Sara's contract is for one year, with a possible one year extension. We'll see what adventures we have - everyone I talk to that has spent time in South Korea loves the country, from the people to the landscape to the food!

San Juan Islands

2008-09-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Sara and I recently were recently on holiday - up to Port Townsend for a wedding (congrats Phil and Miriam) and then up to the San Juan Islands for a Kayaking trip.

Notable moments on the trip:

Sara meeting my mother for the first time, as well as a large number of cousins. It all went well, of course!
The kayaking was a surprise - I managed to keep the three day long, guided trip a secret from Sara until on San Juan Island, outside a grocery store, our future guide spotted us. She knew two people from Portland were meeting the group on their bikes, so she came up and asked us, "Are you two kayaking tomorrow?" I stammered for a few moments and then, reluctantly, said "yes".
Our guide made up for it later by bringing along a gorilla suit to the remote island on which we camped. After dark one night I donned the gorilla suit and, chocolate cake in hand (care of the dutch oven), sneaked up on the group and yelled "SURPRISE!"

Here are a few photos from the trip:

Our bikes and tent.

Our campground from the water.

Sunset on the island.

Paddling.

A lavender farm on San Juan Island - the best smelling place ever.

Bikes lashed to the ferry.