Hong Kong

     Plus One sent me to Hong Kong last week to get my E-2 visa. The reason that they send their teachers to Hong Kong is that it is supposed to be a one day process there. Yes it can be one day, but the policy is two days. Luckily the lady that works there has a heart of gold and she did mine in one day, and I was able to catch my flight.
     I had a working day to kill while I was waiting on my passport so I decided to kill it by going to see the largest-outdoor-bronze Buddha in the world. It was a good choice as it really did kill most of the day. I left the consulate at about ten in the morning, and I made it back just a tad after three. And that included taking a detour to look around Kowloon station.
     To get to the statue take the Tung Chung line on the Hong Kong subway system. You want to go all the way to Tung Chung, currently the last stop on the line. When you are exiting the station just follow the signs for Ngong Ping. The fare for the cable car was less than $100HK for a round trip.
     Just as a side note. The Incheon airport in Seoul is now trying to double as an art gallery. They had an interesting, though slightly annoying display of art by Nam June Paik set up on the first floor.

hongkong

Han River

     Back in July, Jungwon and I went to the Han River. The Han River (Hangang {한강}) is the main river that runs through the center of Seoul. We took the number 2 (green) subway line to Sincheon Station {신천역} and walked north for a block to get to the river. The area that we walked around was a public park of sorts. There was a swimming pool, a walkway that was fairly crowded with people, and some ferries.
     The swimming pool made me realize again that there are many differences between Korean and American culture. The women were pretty well covered. If they weren't swimming, the women had loose dresses on to cover themselves. I was thinking that many girls walking around the party areas of Seoul wear less than these women were swimming in. In contrast, the men were wearing little speedo swimsuits. They had no qualms, in the water or out, of showing off their....packages. These are probably the same men that walk around in business suits, in the middle of summer, no matter what type of business they are attending.
     The walkway was full of pedestrians, cyclists, small dogs, picnics, and vendors. At times it was difficult to walk around the sporadic picnics, but we managed not to fall into the river. Another cultural phenomenon that I noticed was spitting into the river. At first I thought it was just the older men, but after it was mentioned we noticed young people including women spitting nice wads into the waves. Maybe it was just a desire to mix their water with the water of the world.
     Finally, we decided to ride one of the river ferries. Just due to timing we ended up purchasing the more expensive tickets for a ferry that featured a Live Cafe. There weren't any seats outside on this particular ferry so my camera was having a fit trying to focus on the outside world, the dirty window, and the reflections on the windows. The good news was that there were no mosquitoes in the ferry.
     All of the pictures were taken before we hopped on the ferry. It was getting fairly late in the evenings and I got a few decent shots of the sun struggling through the clouds to shine on the water. The movies were taken on the ferry. The first one is on the way down the river, looking at the south bank. The second movie is heading back up the river, looking at the north bank. The final movie is a shot of the Namsan tower. The background noise for the movies isn't very good, just the murmur of a few dozen people around us, and the music from the cafe.
     On a side note: during the whole trip to the river I kept thinking of this movie.

hangangpics

Heading West, Looking South.

Heading East, Looking North

Namsan Tower

Octopus

     One day while we were walking through Yeongtong, Jungwon noticed one of the new restaurants. She got really excited. After about a month we finally made it to the restaurant.
     The restaurant is named Kimmyeongja {김명자} and they specialize in octopus. After work tonight Jungwon and I stopped by to order a couple of freshly chopped squirmy things and soju.
     The restaurant itself was very nice. It of course had floor seating, but the cushions were nice and thick. The tables looked nice and the side dishes were very good.
     The side dishes included diced turnip in a red pepper sauce, white kim chi served in a bowl of ice, and gaeronjjigae (which is a type of boiling scrambled egg). Jungwon ordered us the sanakji {사낙지} which didn't have a price listed on the menu, and a bottle of soju. In the end the whole meal came out to be less than 25,000 won.
     Sanakji is nothing more than freshly chopped octopus legs. The guts and the section that I guess you can call the shoulders were served in a side dish. The octopus is so fresh that the legs continue to writhe about on the plate, and they are actually quiet tricky to eat as the suction cups grab on to everything, including your mouth.
     The still pictures of the meal aren't so bad. I made many, many movies, and they may not be for the faint of stomach. Sorry for playing with my food, but it was truly an experience I will not forget.

Octopuses

Fresh Octopus

First (and second) Bite

Stomach and Tired Tentacles

Closeups

Seoul Grand Park

     Jungwon had been wanting to go to the zoo for a while so last Sunday we kicked things off by watching Shrek the Third at CoEx, and then heading down to Seoul Grand Park.
     First the specifics. Seoul Grand Park is on the number 4 line (light blue) 3 stops below Sadang {사당역}. It is subway station number 437 and is listed as Seoul Grand Park {대공원}. When you get off the subway simply follow the signs and/or crowds of people. You'll eventually come to a ticket booth to buy a tram ticket (or as an alternative you can veer right to get a ticket for a ski lift type thing, but I don't know where that will deposit you). The tram follows a circuit allowing you to easily get to any of the park's attractions. There is a rose garden, an amusement park, a museum, and of course, the zoo. The tram costs 800 won and has Korean and English voice overs.
     Jungwon made it a point to mention that she wanted to see the dolphin show so when we bought our zoo entry tickets we made sure to get our reserved seats. The zoo admittance and dolphin show came out to be 9,000 won total for two people. Total cost for tickets including the trams back and forth came out to be 12,200 won. Frozen bottles of water cost 1,000 won in the park, and during the summer they are a necessity. We went through three bottles of water, two that we brought with us, and one that we bought after the dolphin show, and this was only June!
     The zoo had a good collection of animals. Of course I didn't like the small sizes, ugliness, and boringness of many of the animals cages. For the most part the animals did seem to be in good health, although the monkeys and apes seemed very stressed by the jeering visitors and the lack of intellectual stimulation.
     One thing that I liked about the zoo was the fact that it had a lot of educational side shows. Little rooms you could enter that had information (in Korean) about how the wolves at this zoo were genetically altered to have domestic dog stomaches, or a room that talked about animal dung (many Koreans, especially children, seem to be obsessive about poop).


The Goodies


     First we have pictures uploaded to my web folder. There are giraffes, a cute baby hippo, lions cuddling, a rhino, a lemur, and (of course) the room of poop. Next are two videos of the dolphin show. The show started with a couple of performing seals, and then the dolphins showing off. The first video is actually the end of the show. You can see my camera going in and out of focus. The Auto Focus was giving me fits all day. The second video is cute, but unfortunately the end just went totally out of focus. None of the pictures of the show turned out.

Seoul Grand Park

Dolphin Show 1

Dolphin Show 2

Icheon Redux

     I mentioned in my email about Icheon that I made some movies, but was working on converting/editing them. I couldn't find any decent looking freeware to do the converting/editing. Instead I found a way to post them on line in the full horrible glory, Google Video.
     They are horrible do to my own lacking. My Nikon digital camera has very few movie making options. I have very little experience running a camera (and usually it's a high quality camera on a tripod). A lot of video was shot with me holding the camera over the crowd's heads, and my final excuse is that it was horribly bright outside so I could not really see the LCD.
     Anyways, the background for the movies is, we (Jungwon and I) went to Icheon {이천} on May fifth, two thousand and seven. Icheon has a ceramics festival once every two years, and this happened to be one of the years. To make it even more exciting May fifth is Children's Day in Korea. We stumbled upon a Taekwondo {태권도} performance, and later we came across a group playing traditional Korean drums.

Movie One: Korean Drummers (very loud!):

Movie Two: Taekwondo Demonstration; Board Breaking:

Movie Three: Taekwondo Demonstration; Modern Form: