Weird Items

So Paul (the theory TA) and I frequent this BBQ joint near campus, and we've been there enough times that they treat us pretty well. (I think they may be somewhat entertained by the fact that these foreigners keep coming back.) Anyway, we've gotten many "service" items from them, which are basically free things given out as a "thank you for your patronage" gesture. I find this particularly interesting given that there's pretty much no tipping in Korea, and so this is almost like some sort of anti-tip. We've gotten free cokes, free beer and free soju. On a recent trip, they gave us a gold piggie bank to add to the wall behind the register. I'm not exactly sure what this is all about, but I guess all of their regular customers get to be "shown off" on the wall of pigs. Or perhaps it has something to do with this being the year on the pig in the lunar zodiac? I don't know, but we now have a pig with our names on it in Seoul.

I've seen some interesting items in stores in Korea. Here's one that I saw recently that particularly struck me as odd:


Do you get a love virus from drinking this milk? Or is it milk for people that love virii? (This was not an actual container for milk, but some sort of gift box that you might put presentes into.)

And I didn't know that they were into the Dirty South... O-kaaay! Ye-eah!

Atlanta for a Week

I just got back into Seoul after spending a week back in Atlanta. Not surprisingly, there were many meetings and in the end the week seemed to go by too quickly. It was good to have a face-to-face re-synch with my students, and I also got to meet with both a prospective faculty candidate as well as a few prospective ECE PhD students. I also got a chance to catch up on the consumption of American foods that are difficult/impossible to find in Korea.

In any case, here were a couple of pictures from my flight to Atlanta.

A good towel if you need to be refreshed, but don't mind the side-effect of not having any more children.

They try to keep you pretty well entertained on the flight. Each seat has its own in-seat entertainment, with video-on-demand (20-30 movies with full pause/fwd/rew capabilities, music, and some unexciting video games).

I've been trying to do some sort of activity with the students each semester as sort of a group/team-building thing. Last semester we went out for dinner and a movie. This semester was a little tougher since I'm in Korea. I had planned on attending the Thrashers vs. NY Rangers hockey game anyway, so I brought along the students who could make it.

Action down in the Thrashers' defensive zone (including obligatory fans banging on the glass).

End of the game announcement of the "three stars of the game." We got a little bit of bonus hockey as the game went into overtime, and the Thrashers' ended up winning 2-1 on an OT power play goal.

Magritte

This past weekend I took the subway over to the Seoul Museum of Art. They had a Rene Magritte exhibition going on. It was about $10 to get in which is actually pretty expensive by Korean standards, but about on par with the US. It was a pretty good show. They didn't have too many of the more famous works, but they had a pretty good variety from different periods of Magritte's life.

Museum atrium. You can see that it was pretty crowded.

A view of the museum foyer.

Weather Rollercoaster

Wow, I've gone through a wide range of weather lately. Right before my Singapore trip, the weather in Seoul was in full spring mode. Sunny and mid- to high-50's. Then I went to Singapore, where it was in the 90's. Then when I got back to Seoul, it's winter time again!!!


View from my office window. You can see all of the snow blowing by.

Later that afternoon, on top of Hana Square.

Looking the other direction. Hopefully it'll warm up again soon.

Singapore Ice Hockey Tournament

Pretty much anywhere I go, I like to be able to play ice hockey. (That was part of my background research on Atlanta before I even interviewed at GT.) This semester in Seoul is no different. I'm currently playing with a group of Canadians who live in Seoul. This group (the Rocky Mountain Tavern Chiefs) organized a team to fly down to Singapore to compete in a tournament there. You don't get too many opportunities like this in life (how many people can claim they've played ice hockey in the tropics?), so after clearing it with Sue, I was off to Singapore. Since this doesn't really have to do with Korea directly, I'll be dumping the relevant posts and photos to a separate blog (food stuff will still show up on the food blog) to avoid cluttering stuff here any further.