Owner: I'm A Seoul Man URL:www.seoul-man.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:47:15 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Life of an English Expat in Seoul, South Korea.
Places to go, things to do for tourists and locals.
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Seoul Christmas Lights 1970-01-01 00:59:59 As promised I was out this evening with the new camera and happened by sheer chance to be in the right place at the right time to see the lights being switched on in Seoul
City plaza:The whole grassy area has been filled with a large construction covered in thousands of coloured lights and a christmas tree installed as well. Beside it there is an ice skating rink at which we were treated to a short ice dancing demonstration by several skaters.Moving on to the Cheonggyecheon both sides of the stream have been adorned with similar lighting.Lotte department store have pulled out all the stops and covered all available trees with lights. Read more:Christmas
, Lights
Demanding an Apology from KBS for racist TV 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Fellow blogger Michael Hunt (The Metropolitician) is demanding an apology from KBS for the Korean media's continued racist and sexist stereotyping of foreign people. Please sign his online petition on his blog from the link. Read more:Apology
Christmas in Korea 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well blow me down, Christmas
is coming. I am delighted to hear that our Christmas cards are arriving already. If you haven't got one and are expecting one, please let me know. If you haven't got one and were not expecting one from us, to wish you a very Merry Christmas here's a scan of one of the two designs we sent, :For those friends and relatives coming to the blog for the first time having typed in the website from our "round robin" letter, greetings and welcome from me and The Bat. This is how my wife requested to be referred to on the blog to protect her anonymity, so if you feel enthusiastic enough to comment on the blog please don't refer to her real name! I receive all the comments by email, so don't think that by commenting on any of the older posts I will miss your remarks.When I started the blog it was initially aimed at friends and family that would be interested to know what we got up to in South Korea
. However as I began writing up our adventures I realised how lit
Snowfall in Seoul 1970-01-01 00:59:59 After we came back from the cinema last night it started to snow. When we got up this morning we were greeted to this delightful scene:The film was "The Holiday" starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. It's this month's only western film on at the moment. It's a slushy romantic comedy with the two actresses swapping lives and houses in LA and the home counties and meeting men. Excellent christmas material. Read more:Seoul
Hagwons Hassled by new law 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Since none of the Korean news themed blogs ( The Marmot , Lost Nomad and Yeolchae ) picked this up I thought I'd mention this from the Korea Times yesterday. Students who quit studying at private institutes will get refunds for their fees according to the days left in the school term.The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development made the announcement yesterday. The practice will begin in March next year.To date, students who paid a month tuition fee for lessons to private institutes could not get the fees refunded even though they gave up the lessons after a day. Only if private schools are unable to give the lessons, do they get the refunds according to the private institute law.To correct the flaw in the current law, the revision bill allows students who give up the lessons to get refunds according to the days left if they claim the refund before two-thirds of the lesson days pass. `It will help lift the financial burden of many parents caused by private education at the
Too much blogging? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Oh Dear. I was thinking of doing a post about blogging.But then this morning I read Diamond Geezer who mentioned Twitter which has a blog which had a link to Scobleizer and the first thing on the list of "signs you have been blogging too much" was "you blog about blogging".It is a continuation of Darren Rose's "8 signs it might be time to take a break from blogging " where there were another couple of signs that apply to me.So maybe I'll stop posting for a bit.We'll see.
It's a small world 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Everyone has their "It's a small world" story. Here's a small one for today.I was at the Seoul City Club last night for the European Chamber of Commerce Korea and the Europe Korea Foundation Networking event. I've not been to one of these before, but since I met the Marketing Manager for the EECK at the Pudding Club event, I've been on their mailing list, and this party sounded too good to miss. While everyone else there was introducing themselves and the company they work for, I was there just representing myself. When I introduced myself to a group of British and American expats and explained how I'm a house husband, one of them asked if I wrote a blog. When I replied that I did, he asked if I'd left a comment on his blog, and, sure enough, in my exploration of Korean blogs I'd stumbled upon Steve's Seoul Blog and commented on how great minds think alike, as he uses the same blogger template that I do!And in the interests of networking here are some of the people I met: Ther
Recycling in Korea 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I have a keen interest in recycling and it has been instructional to see how seriously the Korea
ns take it. With a city of 10 million people and space for landfill at a premium, you can understand why. In 2003, nearly three-quarters of all waste was recycled; this is one of the best rates in OECD countries. One of the most important pieces of orientation we had from the building manager was an introduction to the rubbish and recycling area in the basement.Here's the deal, at least in our building:Glass bottles, metal tins and cans go in one bag.PET bottles go in another bag.Other random large bits of plastic and polystyrene go in another bag.Large cardboard items are piled up here:Other paper is collected in boxes in the corner.Newspapers are collected in a separate pile.Fabric and material goes into a bag.Small cardboard and paper items go into another bag. All organic waste is emptied into a small bucket outside the front door and the plastic bag you brought it down in goes into an Read more:Recycling
MBC looking for English speaking tourist 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I just saw this on the Lonely Planet ThornTree forum:MBC are looking for an English
speaking tourist
to follow around for the day next week, either Monday or Tuesday 4th or 5th of Dec. They'll pay 100,000 won to get your impressions of the city and see how you get on.If you know anyone who might be interested they'd like to know name, duration of stay, plans for the day, place of accom, telephone / email address. Give them a call on 02 2171 2461 or email team9541@hotmail.comI've emailed them and offered my services if they can't find anyone else!Other things happening next week:Tuesday 5th Dec. To 100th Anniversary of the birth of Ahn Eak Tai Classical music concert. 7:30 at the KBS Hall in Yeouido. Admission free. Thursday 7th Dec. The European Chamber of Commerce Korea and the Europe Korea Foundation are happy to present their Year End Party on the Rocks. Co-organized with Emotions Publicis Events and sponsored by Diageo Korea Co., Ltd., this EUCCK Network Club will take place o
Sunny Day in Seoul 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Not much to blog about today. It was a lovely sunny day yesterday, but very cold indeed. We went for a short walk along the Hangang and this photo shows the Seoul
skyline quite well with Mapo Bridge in the foreground and the Seoul North Tower on the hill.As we walked along the path we discovered the local birdwatchers are now manning a small enclosure where they have setup five very high power telescopes to be able to observe the birds on the small island in the middle of the river. We saw mallards, spot billed ducks, eurasian widgeons, tufted ducks and cormorants.Off to the camera shop today to get the return the loan camera and get the old one back. They finally quoted an unfeasibly large amount to repair it, for some reason waiting for the part to arrive from Germany before telling us. It's not worth spending that much on an old digital camera so it looks like we're going to buy a new one. That's the trouble with buying a Leica. If you drop it, like I did, it hurts in the wallet. Read more:Sunny
What are the threats round here? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, North Korea does not seem to be able to stay out of the headlines. Last I heard they were still having talks about having talks. Everyone still wants to get together to have these famous "six party talks" ie US, Japan, China, Russia and the 2 Koreas. Dear Leader is still procrastinating about whether to join in or not. It's not clear if the sanctions banning the export to North Korea of iPods, Rolex watches and luxury cars have made any difference to his style yet. The Americans are vaguely wittering about offering the North Koreans a peace treaty, they very graciously thought they might allow South Korea to attend the ceremony too, if there ever is one. Since all North Koreans are taught from birth to hate everything American with total dedication it's hard to see a peace treaty being first on the list of things Mr Kim is looking for. Who would they hate then?The latest scandal is a re-insurance fraud. Some foolish English insurance companies might have taken on a few more ris Read more:threats
, round
Christmas present from Skype 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I just saw yesterday that skype are offering free international phone calls from Korea to the United States and Japan for a limited time during the holiday season.From Dec. 23 to Jan. 3, calls made to the two countries will be free, regardless of whether the call is made to a fixed-line phone or cellular phone. No separate application is required during the offer because computers will automatically detect if calls are made from Korea.I'm not sure if that applies to Canda too, is it clever enough to figure out which area codes are Canadian and charge for them? I can't see anything on the skype website about it at the moment.For those who've not got onto the bandwagon: nip out to your local electrical shop and buy yourself a headset (or order one online), download the free software from skype, (available for all platforms) create a skype account, and start calling over the internet for free. You can also send SMS messages, use the text chat feature and make video calls with the lates Read more:Christmas
, Skype
Fog in Channel; Continent Cut off 1970-01-01 00:59:59 One misconception that a lot of foreigeners have, is that there is a lot of fog in London. Well it seems for once they are not wrong. I saw the news reports on the bbc site yesterday about how fog caused British Airways to cancel all domestic flights and it looks like the delays are continuing, so if you are trying to get home this Christmas from England I hope you make it.If you don't make it home, check out Diamond Geezer's Foggy Christmas Carols that you can all sing along to. North Korean's soldiers are getting Karoke machines to sing along with too, that should keep their spirits up.Stafford's twelve days of Christmas at the Chosun Bimbo has not reached eleven lords a leaping yet, but that fog caused Lord Fraser to lose his rag and resulted in an air rage incident.The preparations for the big Christmas dinner at our place are building up. We haven't bought the meat yet, but don't worry we wont be keeping it fresh in the fridge like this.Update: I knew there was a better hea Read more:Channel
, Continent
The joy of Google Translation and other comments 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I have used GoogleTranslation
service many times and it usually gives enough information to give you a rough idea of what the Korean text is about. This time it came up with something quite unusual. It is a translation of a page from the Immigration web siteand the first paragraph comes back with :The advance booking which leads the Internet of Immigration Bureau civil affairs administration sells in advance, aviation volume or the theater ticket hospital medical treatment reservation date and the time when it is convenient the civil affairs official does under visiting the man with underdeveloped genital organ together home page leads and it is a system which it has reserved.Quite how an organ got in there I cannot figure. I don't know what the translation is like from English to Korean but here's a link to see what this blog looks like in Korean.A letter from the spokesman of the Association of Korean Oriental medicine in the Joong Ang daily caught my eye. There has been a great d
Trip to Gyeongju 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Gyeongju, not to be confused with Gwangju, Jeonju or Jeju, is the ancient capital city of the Silla Dynasty that ruled parts of the peninsula for nearly a thousand years from 57 BC to 927 AD. It is a popular tourist destination due to the large number of historic sites in the area.We caught a KTX train from Seoul station and, with a change at Dongdaegu to a local train, the total journey time was just over 3 hours. The tourist information office at the station provided us with an excellent map of the area and we soon found our way to the guest house Sa Rang Chae which we'd booked earlier in the week. On the way we could not help but notice the prevalence of Gyeongju 'Bread' shops. Intrigued, we stopped at Hwangnam where we could see them making the cakes behind the shop counter and so we bought a box. It's not bread at all but pastry filled with Korean red bean paste, it made a very tasty breakfast snack.We took a 20 minute trip on the local bus (number 11) to Bulguksa. Statues lik Read more:Gyeongju
Hyundai recruiting Foreigners 1970-01-01 00:59:59 For anyone wanting to work in Korea and not teach English, get yourself over to Hyundai
Automotive Group. They are looking for expats to work in CorporatePlanning/Strategy, Finance,Sales, Marketing,HR and Procurement. But hurry, applications close on Monday Feb 5th.Thanks to JoongAng. Read more:recruiting
Win a Free trip to Korea (from the UK) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The Korea
Tourist Office in London is running a promotion with the first prize of a return ticket to Korea for two people. All you need to do is register at their site and complete a short survey.For those of you in Korea who, like Joel, have run out of ideas for things to do and places to go at the weekend, do not despair. Starting Thursday (Feb 8th) the KTO is hosting the biggest domestic travel expo of the year at the COEX mall."You will be saying "I never knew there was such a place in Korea' when you see them," said Park Young-hee, one of the event's organizers.He has also selected the photos for a display at the show featuring the work of amateur photographers . Hours are 10 a.m to 6 p.m. Visit the Korea Travel Expo 2007 website to print out a free admission ticket before you go. Admission is 2,000 won at the door, and the Expo runs until Feb 11th. However, if it's anything like a similar show we stumbled upon the last time we were at the COEX mall, there will be no En
Windows Vista in Korea 1970-01-01 00:59:59 As you may have heard, Microsoft has just launched WindowsVista
in Korea
and around the world. However most Koreans will be leaving it well alone for the moment due to the number of Korean websites that will not work with the new operating system."Vista has [re]vamped security functions, which caused certain Internet security programs or video-streaming programs running on Web sites and software to crash,"said Seo Byeong-jo, of the Information Ministry.Stafford and ZDNET have some more details as to why Vista will not work with a number of Internet banking sites. The banks affected are expecting to have updated their websites within the next few months to allow Vista users to be able to use them.There were some complaints earlier in the week about the high cost of the software in Korea compared to other countries, but it was revealed that the higher cost was due to the Korean vendors adding a hefty markup. [The story is in the bottom left hand corner, I don't seem to be able to Read more:Windows Vista
Magritte Exhibition in Seoul 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I went to the Seoul
Museum of Art last week to see the Rene Magritte exhibition that has opened recently. He is one of my favourite artists, so it was a treat to see his works here in Seoul.The show includes not only a number of his paintings in a variety of styles (Impressionist, Surrealist and Vache) but also many photos of the artist and his family. These are reproduced in tiny prints, some no bigger than a postage stamp, which made them difficult to see. Also exhibited are examples of the posters he produced while working as a graphic artist.In the fourth and final gallery, eight of his home movies are on show, most of them were shot on 8mm black and white film. For the exhibition they have been poorly digitised, and to make matters worse, these grainy images are greatly enlarged and projected onto screens on - er - the floor ! They are difficult to see and the perspective is distorted, so I watched very few of them. Still, I am sure there are serious artistic reasons for the un Read more:Exhibition
Caught up with the Korea blogs 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I've finally caught up with all the blogs I read after coming back from snowboarding. NewsNetWire tells me there are 61 feeds I'm currently subscribed to, 43 of them are Korea
n, and that does not include those that don't have RSS feeds. Gdog at The Daily Kimchi had a great holiday in UAE, plenty of pictures of food as always. Daegueowl at Kimchi for Breakfast has taken down the Christmas decorations (unlike the rest of Korea where the Christmas lights are all still on) and is looking for a job over here. I don't have any leads at the moment. Fencerider 's diet is still going well, he has not eaten too much at Christmas. Mary at MaryEats has left Korea to go to Seattle and is training to be a Chef, she says she will continue to keep up the blog about Korean food. The Marmot , Lost Nomad , ROK Drop and Richardson have been busy keeping up with the news as always. You can hear The Marmot talking about his blog on a podcast over at the Metropolitician. Michael was getting very excited Read more:Caught
Christmas Dinner and Boxing Day 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It was the warmest Christmas
day in Seoul for 100 years with temperatures reaching 12.6 deg C I just read in the paper today. We ventured out of the house for a short walk near the Hongik University to enjoy the sunshine and bought some more chocolates from the best chocolate shop in Seoul CacaoBoom.We had some friends round for Christmas dinner. The highlight of our seven course meal was beef cooked in red wine with mashed potato and carrots. The meat had been marinated overnight and was especially tender and rich. The Christmas Pudding we had made went down very well with Erkin and his girlfriend, but I think it was a little too rich for our two Korean guests who are maybe not so used to such sweet and heavy puddings. Dessert does not really seem to exist in Korean restaurants we have noticed, though ice cream parlours are very popular here.Unlike in the UK where Boxing Day is a holiday too, here The Bat had to go to work as normal, so to entertain myself I decided to take a bus at r Read more:Dinner
What we did today 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We got the subway to Jongno-3ga and walked along Insadong. The Crowards, my visitors, were most interested in all the shops and bought a brilliant Polar bear hat, earrings and a necklace, a ring and a scrapbook for the holiday souvenirs.We were looking for traditional Korean drumming, asking in the tourist information office we discovered there was a performance on, that very afternoon with drumming and B-Boys organised by the Rainbow Youth Center. We went for a coffee at Cafe Pascucci and had the best hot chocolate ever. We then went for a walk along the Cheonggyecheon and played with the ice. Coming back to Insadong we were in time to catch the B-Boys doing their breakdancing.
New Years Day at YongPyong 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The Bat and I celebrated New Year's Eve with a seven course meal with the Crowards. We greeted the New Year in on the top of our apartment building singing Auld Lang Syne! If there were any large scale fireworks in Seoul, sadly we could not see them, but we enjoyed the few small ones let off by enthusiastic locals.Getting up for 7AM this morning was tough, but I made it. We met the travel agent rep at the appointed location, the metro station Euljiro-1 in Downtown Seoul. For reasons unknown this was not the actual start point for the coach to the resort, but a short walk away. We settled ourselves in the comfortable large coach, the five of us were almost the only passengers. There was a short stop at Jamsil where we paid for the bus 26,000 Won per adult return. For reasons unknown, this was taken out of the package on the day and we had to pay in cash. We reached the YongPyong resort at 11:30 after two and a half hours on the traffic free expressways, at least they were in our direct Read more:Years
, New Years
Snowboarding at YongPyong 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I have returned safely from my holiday with no broken bones or other damage, so it's time for some pictures and the details.In spite of having lived in Switzerland for six years I have only ever been snowboarding twice and until now I had never skied. I had taken snowboarding lessons on both previous occasions so this time I felt I could do without.It took me quite a long time to get used to being on a snowboard again, but by the fourth day I could 'board down the Rainbow Paradise run with a certain amount of skill, but not much style. It's a 5km slope, rated intermediate, which starts from the highest peak at the resort reached by the (Swiss-made) gondola and we managed it seven times during the last day with a stop at the top for a Starbucks coffee at lunchtime.Father and Son Crowards, already good skiers, eschewed snowboarding lessons and having boned up on the 10 steps to Snowboarding
were soon comfortable on the boards. Which was good because private lessons would have been 170
Upgraded to New Blogger 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Notice anything different? No neither do I. Which is good because I just logged into Blogger
.com and I was presented with the option to upgrade to the new 'Out Of Beta' Blogger or whatever they are calling it.It said 'you can skip this only once' so I crossed my fingers and clicked OK. The upgrade requires a Google login. I already had a Google account, which saved some time. After that it took a minute or two before it came up with the message 'All Done'.Creating this post there is now a line below to add labels which are one of the new features of the upgrade. It will be interesting to see if you need to add something in the template to make the labels appear in the sidebar. I've not read the manual yet!Another other good feature is that they have added RSS site feed as standard, which is something I have been persuading several fellow bloggers to add to their blogs. This will save you having to go to Feedburner.The spelling checker is a lot more friendly. It highlights all t Read more:Upgraded
Blogger Update and Blogging statistics 1970-01-01 00:59:59 One item of feedback I received from my father Grumpy Old Bookman was that after I moved to the new version of blogger, he saw 25 posts he'd previously read, as "new" in his RSS reader, bloglines.com . So apologies to the people using bloglines.com, I did not see this problem with the RSS reader NewsNetWire that I use.As mentioned before, I also had to fix the template so that clicking I'm A Seoul Man takes you to the home page as before. Since the ItemPage attribute no longer worked, I removed the four references to it and it now seems to work.This ensures anyone reaching one of my posts from a post-item link can easily go to the home page without having to edit the URL in the address bar.So, how do people reach the blog? The wild and wonderful stats of Google Analytics lists these search strings, amongst others:seoul mangerry beversask enquired clothingsk korea send sms to englandplaces to go in seoulbosintangprisoner of wonderland: an esl misadventurechristmas in koreanati Read more:Blogger
, Update
, Blogging
North Korea's 007 and Hennessy XO 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Never mind all that boring news about NorthKorea
in the six party talks. North Korea
is getting some fuel in exchange for agreeing to maybe let a few international inspectors come in and have a look round. Oh, and if you are lucky, they may break up a nuclear reactor, but they won't actually be dismantling the nukes that everyone is worried about.This is much more amusing : It's a spoof movie by some Chinese of the story of North Korea's special agent 007 trying to get a vital part of their country's imports : Hennessy
XO for the Dear Leader.It has been watched 2,839,288 times and received 2,119 comments on a single site alone (6rooms) as of 11:22 PM, February 2, 2007.YouTube has it in four parts(two three four), the whole 30 minute movie is available here and here too.
Rail link between Seoul Airports Incheon and Gimpo to open next month 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Travellers to South Korea will be interested to hear that the new rail link from the main International Airport of Seoul
at Incheon
will open next month March 23rd.The new rail link to be known as AREX does not, as yet, take you right to Seoul city centre, but it does take you to the other airport in Seoul : Gimpo
. From there you can travel on the Seoul Subway into downtown on Subway line 5.However, judging by the timing and price quoted in the article I'm not sure how many customers it is going to attract. The journey between the two airports will take 33 minutes and cost 3,100 won on the slow train (every 12 mins). The express train (once an hour) will take 28 minutes for a price of 7,900 won. By comparison, a bus takes about 30 minutes and costs 4,500 won.I guess the trains will be more frequent than the existing buses, but most visitors who are travelling to parts of Seoul beyond Gimpo will probably continue to take the limousine bus services. They go direct to a number of differ Read more:Airports
Friday things 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A few items of interest from the news.Today was "Dear Leader's" Birthday. The North Koreans are celebrating the 65th birthday of their leader Kim Jong-Il. As a special treat they might get round-the-clock electricity supply during the holiday, instead of the usual limited periods, along with extra rations.Today the exodus from Seoul starts for the Lunar new year celebrations. About 34 million people are expected to travel to their hometown during the three-day holiday for the Lunar New Year's Day, or `Sollal'.At Sollal children are treated to small packets of foreign currency. The Korea Exchange Bank has sold over 360,000 presentation sets of 'sebae' or good luck money. One set includes a $2 bill, a 10-euro bill, a 10-Canadian dollar bill, 10-Australian dollar bill and 100-yuan bill and costs around 42,000 won. The price is subject to change according to exchange rates. What the youngsters are supposed to do with these small bills is a mystery to me. Perhaps the Western EFL t Read more:Friday
, things
Can you dig it? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Readers may be familiar with the site digg.com where website links are submitted by users, other users see the link and if they 'Digg' it enough it will get on to the front page. The Koreans have noticed this and, since digg.com is English only, have created their own version kligg.com. It's only in beta at the moment, but it may catch on. For Korean readers it may be of interest to you.I put it through google translate and most stories seem to be technology related, but it did have a link to the photos of Daegu in 1954 that have been referred to on The Marmot and other blogs.Whenever I see 'Digg This' links I think of a song which includes the lyrics 'Can you dig it, oh yeah' however I cannot find who sings it. I have found various songs either titled or including the phrase, but none of them seem to be the song. It may be The Mock Turtles, but I've not found an online recording of it. Does anyone else know the song I mean?Meanwhile I'll leave you with a photo of these Korean
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