Samsung

Yesterday (Friday) we made a visit to Samsung. Jim Foley was in town on his way to Singapore, so the three of us (Jim, Venkat and I) spent the afternoon visiting with some of the Samsung research folks. The facilities were very impressive and it looks like they have a lot of interesting projects going on there. We had some discussions about potential collaborations between Samsung and GT both with respect to research as well as education and training. We'll probably be making some more trips out there in the coming months as things progress.

One of the researchers we met is a GT alum, and it was nice to hear her say "y'all". Probably the first time I heard that since leaving Atlanta.

The Samsung guys took us out to a really nice traditional Korean restaurant. There was food-a-plenty, and what was also interesting was that there were some dishes where the waitresses prepared the food and then actually fed you (i.e., they stuck food directly in your mouth using chopsticks, so all you had to do was say "ahhhh"). That was certainly a novel experience. We also learned a bit about Korean business drinking practices, which some of my friends had given me some warning about. Needless to say, we went through a lot of bottles of soju.

What's in your future?

I saw this in the Hyundai Department Store right next to their food court. As best as I can figure, it's an entire row of fortune tellers. They each had a deck of some sort of cards (I guess a Korean equivalent of tarot cards) as well as some other books for looking stuff up. It was pretty interesting to see, especially in contrast to the Burger King, KFC, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks surrounding it.

NamDaeMun

Today I wandered over to NamDaeMun (Southern Big Gate, shown above). The area is best known for NamDaeMun Market, which is several intertwined blocks of markets selling pretty much everything: vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, clothing, cameras, hats, formal wear, watches, ... It was fun just wandering around and looking at everything. The food page has several more pictures of the cool looking things in the market, but here's one example:



This is all sorts of types of kimchi. Most are some form of pickled spicy vegetable, but there was at least one that had these small crabs (the bodies are about the width of US quarters).

I also started researching online a little about k-pop (Korean Pop). One group that I found that I kind of like is "The Turtles" (not the "so happy together" group). It's a weird mix of pop, rap, and even some reggae, but all in Korean. You can find a couple of examples on YouTube: Cocktail Love, Bingo. So I picked up a couple of their CDs while wandering around this afternoon.

Credit cards and elevators

Not much new to post here. My credit card got disabled today... apparently making purchases in Korea sets off some of the automated anti-fraud rules, and so I have to get my card reactivated. So for anyone else planning on coming to Korea in the future, I would advise you to call your credit card company ahead of time to notify them that there will in fact be some suspicious looking purchases in the near future.



This is pretty random, but I saw this picture in an elevator. I don't know what the Korean says underneath, but whatever that guy's doing, I want to do it too because he looks he's having an *awesome* time. Look how happy and excited he is! I'm guessing it's "please don't jump and down in the elevator" (because it makes the elevator sad), but if they don't want you to do it, they shouldn't make it look so tempting.

Another interesting aspect of the elevators is that many of them are not wired together. In the US, when you press up or down, there's a small program that determines which of the N elevators it should send to your floor. Many of the elevators here each have their own separate up/down request buttons. So you have to manually check to see which floor each elevator is on (and which direction it's going) and then press the up (or down) button on the elevator that you think will arrive the soonest. To improve average transit times, they also divide the elevators such that some will only stop, for example, on odd floors while the remaining will only stop on even floors (or some other such partitioning... for instance they all usually stop on the first floor).

Weekend Update

On saturday, Younggyun took us around to see some of the sights in Seoul. It wasn't too long of a day as it was very cold outside (maybe in the 20's or so). The first place we went to was Jong-Myo, the ancestral shrine of the royal family of the Joseon Dynasty. It was originally constructed in 1395, but was rebuilt in 1608 after it burnt down (Japanese invasion) in 1592. The shrines house the "spirit tables" of the kings (and others).



After that, we took a cab over to Insadong, which is a cool little street that is filled with shopping, restaurants and street food vendors (see the food page for a full account). We had lunch at a Buddhist restaurant, which had an amazing variety of food. The picture below doesn't really do justice to just how crowded our table was.



Next, we took a cab up to Seoul Tower, which is up on a "mountain" (more like a really big hill) from which you can get some fantastic views of the city. Looking out at miles and miles of houses, high-rises and skyscrapers really gives you an incredible feeling for just how many people live in this city.




On Sunday I played ice hockey again (8am game, which meant I woke up at 6am to go catch a subway). We played a friendly game against the Seoul Maple Leafs (we even had refs), which was initially a close game, but then I think the other team was just getting tired and then things opened up quite a bit. I also went out on a hunt for a set of hair clippers (apparently the only people in Korea that keep their hair short like I do are gangsters! ha ha!), which was a little hard to find but I eventually found a set in a department store. I get do laundry tonight, and perhaps work on my Korean a little more (and boy, does it need work!).

Hockey!

The big news today is that I got to play some ice hockey! I found a group of hockey players (mostly English teachers from Canada) who play twice a week (Rocky Mountain Tavern Chief). I had contacted them, and I decided to make a trip out just to scope them out and see how long the subway ride was. It's actually a pretty long trip (about 1:15 door-to-door), and it took me quite some time to find the rink after I got out of the subway station (it's a about 4-5 blocks away). When I got there, they said I could borrow some equipment and just join in. Sweet! I was stumbling all over the place because I was wearing someone else's skates, but I was playing hockey. Next time I'll bring my own skates, and I'll just have to keep borrowing equipment until mine shows up. This was a very pleasant surprise.

New Campus

As promised, some photos of campus...



This is a view looking down on the main square of the science campus.



This is the science building where the CS department is located. This is where our offices are. Classes are being taught in this building right now, but as we sort out the schedule, we may move rooms possibly to a different building.




If you look at the first photo, you can see a square/plaza in the middle. Underneath that is an entire mini-complex that includes a food court (it even has a burger king), a variety of stores (cell phones, electronics, 7-11-like mini-mart, etc.), a barber (4000W hair cuts for men, which is about $4USD), study rooms, classrooms, an open computer lab, lounges, a fitness center, and more. Quite impressive. Beneath this, there are many floors of parking (I lost count... seemed like 4 or 5 levels).

Overall, the campus is very new and the facilities are *very* nice.

We also picked up our cell phones today.

First Day of Classes

This morning we had the orientation for the new KU/GT MSCS program. A lot of the presentations were in Korean, so I couldn't really follow along, although this was mostly for the students, not for the faculty. After the orientation, they showed us around the science building. No pictures today, but I'll post some of the campus pictures tomorrow. The facilities are quite nice. The faculty offices aren't ready for us to move into yet, but they are larger than what we have in the states, and each one comes equipped with a sink!

The dean took us out to lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant. You had to take off your shoes and sit on cushions on the floor. My long legs don't like to sit cross-legged for long periods of time, so my legs and feet were getting sore by the end of the meal; they'll probably get more used to it over time. The food was very good, and it was culturally very interesting to experience a meal like this.

In the afternoon, I gave my first lecture. The class has about 19 students, which is smaller than the average class I've had in Atlanta (I can't say "in GT", because I am in fact at GT, just at our new Korea campus!). I was a little worried about possible language problems, but it seems like most of the students are not having any problems following along.

We tried to get cell phones later that afternoon. We decided that getting one with pre-paid minutes seemed to be the easiest thing to do. However, they require your passport or some other official/internationally-recognized form of ID (i.e., my GA driver's license doesn't count - not that I would expect it to). We'll go back tomorrow and try again.

Subways and More Food

Day #2 in Seoul. I think I've more or less gotten over the jetlag now. Today we ventured out onto the Seoul subway system. It's so nice having access to a *real* subway system (as opposed to MARTA). They have RFID cards like the MARTA breeze cards, but the subway fares are much cheaper here (less than $1USD) and the subway is far more useful. I think you can get practically anywhere a tourist would want to go to on the subway. The Seoul subway is the opposite of MARTA: MARTA is practically useless except for getting to the airport, the Seoul system can get you practically anywhere, except for the airport!

We visited a market area called Dongdaemun (literally "east big gate" or dong1 da4 men2 in mandarin) which was a mix of modernish department stores and street level markets.




The street markets also had plenty of street food stalls, so I got my first taste of Korean street food; hooray! The picture above was some sort of meat ball, battered and fried, coated in some sort of sweet and spicy sauce. Not really sure what it was, but it tasted good.

Younggyun, the TA for my course, moved into the apartment complex today. His parents took us out for dinner at a 50-year old noodle shop where I got to try some dishes that I had not had before.

Orientation's tomorrow morning, and my first class is tomorrow afternoon, so I'm spending this evening getting ready for that.

First Day

There doesn't really seem to be anything planned for us, so we were pretty much on our own. I got up a little before 6am this morning due to the jet lag (and probably woke up 3 or 4 times during the night). It had snowed a bit last night and this morning, so it was a pretty nice view.



After it stopped snowing, I went out and explored the neighborhood a little. The section of town down the hill from the Faculty housing has a lot of restaurants and shops. There's also a mini-market (more than a 7-11, but much less than a US supermarket) that has produce, groceries, and other non-food items (soap, TP, etc.); I'm sure I'll be visiting this place many times during the next few months.




The streets around this section of town are very narrow. It reminds me a bit of the small sidestreets in Tokyo. I went to a random restaurant to get some breakfast; the waitress didn't speak any English, so she grabbed a student from another table to help me out. The food was good, if not a little weird. I didn't do too much during the rest of the day since it was pretty cold and windy out.

Goodbye A-Town, Hello Seoul!

Obligatory depature shots from Hartsfield. The plane was a 747-400 which is fairly spacious. Even in coach, the leg room was decent, esp. compared to our domestic carriers. No AC/DC in coach, but each seat has its own video-on-demand entertainment unit. I ended up watching three movies plus several short programs/documentaries. Probably slept for a total of about 3-4 hours on and off as well (it's a 15-hour flight).



The first meal choice was either beef or bibimbap. I chose the bibimbap, and it was honestly the best meal I've ever had on a plane. I've had better bibimbap before, but this was far better than the standard "chicken or beef" options back when domestic airlines actually provided food beyond "premium snack mix" packets. The bibimbap comes with gochujang which was some sort of spicy paste.



The flight actually goes over the top of the world; this was the first time that I saw the arctic (1st pic) and Russia (2nd pic). The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful. We landed in Incheon Int'l airport, cleared through immigration and customs with no problems (although the immigration agent warned me that I'd have to get a visa extenstion since we were issued 90-day visas and we'll be here for more than that), and then Younggyun (one of the TA's) got us a taxi/van to take us to Korea University. Between Venkat, his wife, and me, all of our stuff barely fit into the back of the van. Total cost was about 100,000W (~90USD)... the airport is a ways out of town. I'd also recommend not arriving on a friday evening if you don't want to sit in traffic (or maybe it's like all the time?). The driver didn't know where the CJ International House was (nor did we), so it took a little bit of wandering around on campus before we found it. The door man (Mr. Kim) was very helpful in getting us all set up.

The apartments are not the large ones that I guess were originally promised to Leo, but they will have to suffice. It's a very new and modern building, and the apartments are fully furnished. There's a gym, piano rooms, study rooms, cafeteria (although I think it's not open right now as KU is still on winter recess), and other amenities. There's even a linen service!



We have balconies outside of our bedrooms with a really good view of (what I assume is) downtown Seoul (haven't really gotten my bearings yet). (You can click on the picture for a full view.)

Off to Korea

I'm off to Korea tomorrow. Wonderful 15 hours in coach, but at least it's Korean Air rather than Delta. International carriers tend to have better meals. I should probably start packing soon.