seoul photos, now with new and improved context

I finally got around to captioning and describing all my photos from my trip to Seoul for Tech Days from two weeks ago.

Add comment November 24th, 2006

the seoul shuffle

had a fun day exploring seoul yesterday with my buddy raghu, who coincidentally happened to be out in seoul this very same week.

the day was gorgeous out (thankfully the weather forecast lied and it was completely sunny and warm). i’m a huge war buff, so we headed out to the Seodaemun Prison History Hall to see some exhibits on the Korean independence movement, and to learn a little more about the Korean War. along the way, we saw the requisite bit of engrish, and ended up walking around seoul for the rest of the day asking each other “didn’t you see my panty?”.

we wandered around the Insadong street shopping area, and had lunch at a place famous for its “doughy potato noodles” (they taste amazingly better than they sound), and an oyster pancake (also better than it sounds).

the famous hammering man statue was well… a hammering man. slightly underwhelming, and not worth the 2km walk.

we saw a street vendor with some pokemon puppets that were bouncing up and down to music. it was amazing. raghu and i stared and stared and could not for the life of us figure out how the thing worked. we plunked down 3000 won to buy one and see how it worked. after what seemed like an eternity of watching (though really probably about 10 minutes), we finally saw the tiniest thread of string running horizontally between the two speakers. the pokemon puppets were then attached to the string, which went into the speaker, and i presume were attached to the actual cone. so as the music played, the cone would vibrate, which sent waves through the string… which in turn caused the puppets to bounce.

amazing. and totally better than the hammering man.

stores/malls seem to have parking lots which have these little booths at the exits with cute girls in them. the girls wear a headset and have a huge speaker system, from which they bow and thank every car that leaves the parking lot. wow. i mean… just wow.

we also saw a really cool performance of an electronica/techno classical violinist in a metro station. he was accompanied by a gaggle of hot russian girls. go figure.

in the evening around dusk, we headed to seoul tower where we got some incredible 360° views of the city in the evening. we took the fun cable car ride up and down. on the way back, we wandered around the Myeong-dong subway station area trying to find this specific restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet that serves samgyetang (korean ginseng chicken soup). it was mentioned as being on the second floor, with no korean or english sign - but only chinese lettering. i can’t even begin to tell you how impossible it was to find this place. after 30 minutes of wandering around trying to map an out of scale map against the streets - we actually finally found the place.

the soup was amazing. totally worth the hunt.

1 comment November 6th, 2006

initial impressions and random ramblings

got in to the hotel last night @ around 20:30.

• stayed awake the entire flight (watched 4 movies, synced up the PG gate to snv50, live-upgraded to snv51, reinstalled frkit, and failed miserably to write better documentation on the Teamware->Mercurial bridge. note to all fr4k users: lugging 3 batteries in your carry-on is totally worth it)

• once i got to the hotel, i did some much-needed stretching/not-really-yoga (i say not-really-yoga, because i don’t think traditionally yoga is practiced while drinking beer) to get my back unkinked from the flight.

• paid the ridiculous 25,000 W/day (~$28 US) for Internet access (what a rip-off. i should see when dp/jimgris get here if we can get adjacent rooms and use my travel wireless router i brought).

• wandered into the COEX Mall late last night (~11pm?) to try and find some grub (of the edible kind, not the boot loader kind. wow. it was still pretty busy. ate some soba, and wandered through the arcade, where i had the following random three observations:

  • is it common for couples to wear matching or identical shirts/outfits?
  • girls play arcade games.
  • why is everyone so dressed up?

• i punched-in to Sun’s network, latency to sfbay is pretty reasonable… and was greeted by a flurry of messages through friday of various opensolaris.org machines being down, non-responsive, etc. etc. looks like i picked a good day to miss work

anyway. it’s 7:37am sunday morning here. i just had some great coffee at the breakfast buffet downstairs and i’m waiting for a friend to get here (who also happens to coincidentally be in Seoul this week) so we can go checkout the city.

i’m torn. should i go to the knife museum? or the kimchee museum? both are supposed to be wonderfully weird and wacky.

1 comment November 4th, 2006