Journaling Jerry's journeys

Room & Chair, #1

2010-06-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

For today's post, the first of an occasional series of Room & Chair.

Where: the office of the Homestead Cafe in Inyokern, California.

When: 27 December 2009.

Why: hope, abandoned. When I peered through the broken window of the small building next to the cafe I spotted a single chair in a dilapidated room. The office chair, presumably from when the business was an ongoing concern, now vacant - along with the owners and the clientele.

Convergence

2010-05-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

Parallel tracks, coming from everywhere and going, nowhere? Along a railroad siding on the way to San Juan Bautista, stitched panorama from eight individual photographs taken from between the tracks.

(Click for much larger version)

Panoramic photography has always fascinated me - the distorted perspectives that arise are often unpredictable, the final product either surprising or disappointing depending on expectations. Or in the case of this photograph, the final product was both - I was at first horrified at what had emerged from the stitching, but the starkness brought out by the near infra-red black and white conversion brought out what I was originally trying to convey from the scene.

Looking backwards, looking forwards

2010-05-24T20:23:00.001-07:00

I look where I've been through the pictures I've taken, each image locked in an intricate dance of 1's and 0's on my computer - the vast majority never seeing the light of day. Today I begin to catch up on a years worth of moments in time from journeys through California, my home state, which all seems so ordinary because it is home.

Now for the tough part - deciding what to post; digging through thousands of pictures, looking for what I did and where I've gone the past year.

2009: The Year of the Bicycle

In May of 2009 I finally bought a bicycle, for entertainment, exercise, and basic neighborhood transportation. As a side benefit, it did help protect my sanity as an escape pod at the end of the workday, to relieve stress. It has replaced my car for basic errands around town, and I've noticed that I eat lighter if I have to pedal all of my groceries home in my backpack.

Fortunately, San Jose is a very bike friendly city and I live close to Campbell Park with an entrance to the Los Gatos Creek Trail. If you look closely at my bicycle in the panorama pictures, you'll see a tiny Pelican case bolted to the seat tube where I carry a Canon 2100is camera on my rides. The Panoramas were stitched together in Photoshop CS4, and they usually cover 180° field of view.

From home, the first bridge I cross on my way to the trail is over San Tomas Expressway on this pedestrian bridge.

Along the creek are a few bridges, with a bike path on each side of the creek.

As the trail passes through Los Gatos, it turns to an elevated boardwalk.

In Los Gatos, the creek trail crosses over highway 17 on a bridge with brightly painted murals along the walls.

At the end of the creek is Lexington Reservoir, just a couple of miles down from where my brother David lives.

Now that I've broken the ice off of the blog in 2010, it's time to dredge up the interesting pictures I've got squirreled away in the deep, dark recesses of my hard disk.

More soon, I promise!

Jerry.

Home again...

2009-03-07T10:59:00.000-08:00

So I've been home for six months now and people keep asking me when I'm going to update my blog... so here it is.

The trip home from Korea was uneventful, if not a bit disappointing: I returned home on Saturday September 6th, slept most of the day Sunday, went into work on Monday, applied for unemployment on Tuesday, started my resume on Wednesday... well, you get the idea. Actually I didn't seriously look for work for about a month, I took the time to reflect on life and get a bunch of overdue chores done, recuperate from two years of frantic prototype development, and basically re-tune myself into living in America again.

When I was in Korea I kept thinking about what I would miss when I return home, and it would have to the friends I made during my stay in Korea, the friends that helped me hang onto the slippery bit of sanity I have left: Jason, Roger, JR, Gina, Will, and the others I don't recall off the top of my head. Curiously enough, it's the huge circle of friends I have here at home that I missed the most while I was in Korea, and frequent Skype phone calls helped me maintain the ties to my friends. There were a couple of times in Korea that my phone, er, my computer would ring in the evening and it was a friend calling from San Jose, unable to sleep at 3:00am and just wanting to talk.

I haven't updated my blog since I returned home because I didn't feel that I had anything significant to blog about. Because everything seems so ordinary here at home I keep thinking there's nothing worth posting on my blog, even though the state of California is three times the size of the Republic of Korea! Looking back through my pictures, there were a few journeys I've had after my return so I've got six months of catching up to do.

While in Korea I signed up for a retreat at the St. Francis retreat center in San Juan Bautista. My original return date was about a week prior to the retreat and I mailed my registration form from Korea - I can only image what the retreat coordinator thought when he got a retreatant registering from 6,500 miles away. The retreat was a relaxing time to reconnect with friends.

Of course, my transportation of choice for the weekend was my motorcycle. Somehow I always find another vehicle to camouflage the bike in parking lots - the picture does look like it needs a caption, though.

One Saturday morning in October I commented to my roommate that it's been months since I've had a road trip on the motorcycle - he had only one word for me: GO! I quickly packed up the bags, reserved a bed at the Yosemite Bug hostel and headed out for a quick weekend in Yosemite. There's something about being on the road on motorcycle that's indescribably wonderful, and really can't be explained - you have to experience it for yourself.

Saturday afternoon I wandered around the town of Maraposa playing tourist and taking pictures. The atmosphere of Maraposa is somewhere between folksy, kitschy, and historical - it feels like a town that's in the midst of redefining itself while holding on to it's historical past. The downtown business district looks like a wild west movie set with the crew still there, either setting up before or cleaning up after a shoot.

There's a neat little curio shop in downtown Midpines that had one object that caught my eye amongst the totem poles and jade jewelry: a piece of antler with bats carved into it. It's an odd piece that looks like the outer skin of the antler was peeled back revealing a colony of bats living inside.

Dinner on Saturday was Pizza from Pizza+ on the edge of town and it was okay, nothing really to write home about, then off to the hostel. I stayed at the aforementioned Yosemite Bug hostile just outside of Midpines and got a bunk in one of their dorm rooms. The facilities are clean and comfortable and they have a good cafe with a couple of computers available for checking email and such. I arrived too late for dinner on Saturday, but breakfast on Sunday was terrific - eggs, ham, toast and lots of coffee. The only interesting picture I took at the hostel is the dog enjoying the cool morning on the redwood deck.

Riding through Yosemite is always an amazing experience, and when I was there it was the last weekend before the park closed for the winter. Many of the campgrounds had already been shut down - the picnic tables packed up and the outhouses locked for the winter - which meant the crowds weren't there, either. Traffic was especially light, and the people I talked with seemed to appreciate the park more than the regular tour-bus tourists. I entered the park through the West entrance on highway 140 with the goal of making it to the East entrance (Tioga pass) before turning around for home. The motorcyclists in the picture were arriving as I was walking around the Tioga Pass entrance station taking pictures.

While riding out of the park I spotted a gathering of people gawking skyward, so I stopped to investigate. They were watching the climbers on El Capitan, and from the valley floor I couldn't spot them without binoculars. If you look closely at the picture on the right (click on it to see the larger version) you can spot the climber dangling from his rope near the bottom-center of the picture. This guy was probably half way up, so he still had some serious work to do.

It was amusing watching a couple of other climbers taking a break, perched on a tiny ledge eating lunch. They weren't very far up the face, thus the tree branches in the picture.

I returned home on Sunday in time to meet friends for a late dinner over stories of the weekend.

Enough for today, I'll continue again soon...

Jerry, the hometown tourist.

I'm going Home!

2008-09-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

I received an EMail today that the company is running out of money for the project that I've been working on, and they asked me to come home ASAP. I'm not really surprised, we've been burning through cash at an alarming rate for a couple of years now so I've had a notion that sometime it would come to an end. What's most frustrating is the short notice of my return.

I've booked my flight home, to arrive in SFO on Saturday September 6th at 12:30pm and I'm already mentally on the plane home. My time here in Korea has been an enriching experience, one that I will never forget and certainly look forward to my next opportunity to work overseas. Now that I know some of what what to expect when living far away from home for an extended period, my next assignment will go considerably smoother.

I have been looking around for what I'm really going to miss when I'm back home and there is one thing that I will try to duplicate back in the states, and that's Korean barbecue. I'm still unsure what cut of pork rib they cook up at the table, but it's simply delicious. The meat is a long strip of pork with a single rib attached, marinated in something tasty and cooked at the table on a charcoal grill. About halfway through the cooking, the waitress brings a large pair of kitchen shears and cuts it up into bit size pieces. The dining table is covered with little bowls, each with something different to wrap up with the pork, usually garlic slices, sliced onions in soy sauce, spicy red bean paste ("Korean Ketchup" as it was described), kimchee (natch!), white rice, garlic shoots, bean sprouts -- the array of flavors is limited only by the imagination. To eat, you start with a folded lettuce leaf in your palm, add whatever suits your pallette and a piece of pork, wrap, and eat. We had this for our farewell lunch today and it is still my favorite Korean meal. And again, I forgot to bring my camera!

I will miss the friends I've made in Korea who helped me maintain some semblence of sanity, namly J.R., Roger, Jason, Jim, Will, Ken, Jerry, and all the others I've met who I don't remember by name. It is this loosly associated group of people who welcomed me as a friend, invited me on weekend getaways, and helped feed me spiritually. My only hope is that I was able to contribute as much as I received. God bless you all.

My next blog entry may be when I'm a hometown tourist, journaling my journeys through San Jose and the bay area, but who knows -- life's a journey, I'll bring my camera.

Jerry.

Shopping in Seoul

2008-09-02T03:59:00.000-07:00

So my coworker Erik and I finally drove to Seoul last weekend. With the US dollar getting stronger against the Korean Won I wanted to shop for a camera lens, and all the internet opinions I found were positive for the Yesdica camera store in the Namdaemun market in Seoul. Finding an address on the internet for Yesdica proved difficult, at least an address in English, but the Namdaemun gate in Seoul is Korea's cultural treasure #1, is shown on all the tourist maps, and the market is in the same neighborhood. If you remember back to the news last January it's the old city gate that caught fire, it was the oldest wooden structure in the country. When we drove past it the entire gate was hidden from view, covered with scaffolding and boarded up while they're doing repairs.

I had been avoiding driving to Seoul because of the horror stories I've heard about the traffic and the crowds, but neither were any worse than I'd expect in Los Angeles or San Francisco on a Saturday afternoon. We left Anseong about 11:00am and drove North on highway 1 toward Seoul, stopping only once at a rest area to fill the rental car with LPG and get a quick snack. I again passed on the fresh grilled squid and got 'ham toast' instead -- basically it's a grilled sandwich on spongy white bread with a slice of ham, a patty made with egg, cheese and rice, squirted with ketchup and sprinkled with sugar. It was tasty in a strange way... too many flavors that I didn't think would work together.

Just past the highway toll booth on the outskirts of Seoul there was road construction and a chain-reaction accident involving many cars and a couple of buses that added probably an hour to our drive -- other than that it was full speed (100 km/h) most of the way. In Seoul the traffic was heavy but nothing oppressive. We did take an unintentional scenic route over a mountain outside of Seoul instead of taking the tunnel through the mountain -- I keep telling people I have a GPS because I need one, not because I want one. I had entered coordinates of the Namdaemun market, picked off of Google earth prior to leaving for Seoul, so my GPS had a good idea of where the market is. The coordinates were close enough that Erik spotted the store as I was following the arrow on the GPS. Parking wasn't a problem either, I parked on a side street half a block across the street from the store and it was a short walk to Yesdica.

Instead of crosswalks there are stairs down to an underground mall to get across the street. The stores in the mall, both underground and at street level, are almost all very specialized in their merchandise, like the necktie store, or the artsy-paper store. Also unusual were how the stores were clustered together: all the stores with clocks and watches were next to each other, as were the stores selling only cameras, or scarves, purses, swimsuits, ginseng, hats, jewelery, etc. It's a very different method of merchandising than in the US, and it's quite convenient to shop at stores next to each other for the best price, or the perfect tie.

Also unusual were the vendors selling things on the stairways leading to the underground mall. The green strips on the stairs are glow in the dark markers, perhaps the vendors have flashlights on hand to help evacuate in case of power failure?

There was even a lady selling fried silkworms, but I was too timid to try one.

What I did bring home are more pictures, some Korean souvenirs, and another camera lens.

The weather over the weekend was sunny and warm, not hot or humid, and perfect for a road trip. This week we had a couple of days of rain but the forecast for next weekend is sunny and warm, so perhaps I can find more stone pagodas!

Jerry

What I did on my Summer Vacation

2008-08-31T19:11:00.001-07:00

I went home for a week of vacation this summer. There's something strange about taking time off and buying a plane ticket so I can sleep in my own bed, cook in my own kitchen, and get reacquainted with my friends. My concept of vacationing changed this year: instead of visiting someplace far away to enjoy and appreciate the foreign culture, I simply wanted to go home. Having been in Korea for four months I needed the familiarity and relaxation I have come to enjoy at home.

At home I did many of the things that aren't available to me here in Korea: smoking brisket, salmon, and ribs for a potluck with my friends; motorcycling through the Santa Cruz mountains and stopping for a real American hamburger with my friend Rich (pictured) at Alice's in Woodside; going to the range with Vic and punching .44 caliber holes in paper; talking (in English!) to people on the air via amateur radio. It's also an under appreciated luxury to be able to buy shirts that fit without the shopkeepers snickering at my large American size, and passing up shoes on the clearance rack because they're actually too big. More guilty pleasures: eavesdropping on conversations in the supermarket, joking with the sales clerks, and generally being included in society instead of being shunned everywhere.

I also went home to bring back the things that I didn't pack the first time, things I didn't think I'd need or thought I could buy here. Simple things, like my favorite toothpaste, socks, and underwear. Books that I've been wanting to read but had left at home, shirts, another pair of shorts, and new shoes that fit. Being home for a week really drove home the point of how comfortably I really have it.

I knew what to expect upon my return to Korea, so the culture shock wasn't as severe as when I first arrived in April, but I also realize that I've got to make a few subtle changes in my daily routine to keep my sanity intact. Specifically, I now know more than ever how important it is for me to have human contact -- friendly conversation and interaction, like discussing the news, trading ideas on the latest political developments, sharing a joke and actually having it understood and appreciated.

Here in Korea I work with a team of ten or so people, two of us are English-only Americans and thankfully Erik and I have similar senses of humor and political views. After work, however, it's like solitary confinement, the important difference being the locks are on the inside of the door. I cook dinner for myself since I can't handle the spicy Korean cuisine anymore, which is a shame because I enjoyed it when I first arrived; Ordering food in a restaurant is playing dinner roulette: I never know what I'm getting without an interpreter. Besides, cooking my own food gives me opportunity to interact with the Korean people in the supermarket, and it alleviates some of the evening boredom.

But I am back in Korea, well, rested, and ready for more adventures.

Jerry.

July 12 - Visiting Bulguksa Temple

2008-07-27T03:59:00.001-07:00

Ohmygosh, it's been a month since I've updated my blog - where does the time go? So here's the posting that I've been waiting to finish for a few weeks. I discovered that the pictures I take look better if I don't see them for a couple of weeks, something about a fresh look reveals details overseen when they're fresh in the camera.

--==##==--

"Life's a journey, not a destination."

I was invited to a conference out of town on the weekend of July 12, and naturally accepted. The conference was ho-hum, but the journey was fascinating. Having lived in California all my life, I'm used to the rest areas along the highway being, um, the bare necessities -- they're places to stop only when you really really have to go while you're getting to where you're going. Here, the rest areas are built to considerably higher standards, with cafes, food courts, real fresh brewed coffee, and swap-meet like vendors selling all sorts of dime store treasures.

One of the outdoor food vendors was cooking up fresh squid on the grill. Fortunately, another patron ordered one up just in time to snap a picture. Nothing defines a road trip like fresh rest area squid!

The squid looked much more appetizing than the fried silk worms for sale along the walking path to the temple. I would have taken a picture of the silkworms bubbling away in the frying pan but was afraid I would be obliged to actually eat one... there are limits to what I'm willing to do for a picture.

Destination: Bulguksa Temple

The names and explanations of items on the temple grounds were copied from the guide book I purchased for 4000 won at the temple.

Along the path to the temple grounds is Banyayeonji, or the Pond of Wisdom, teeming with koi. The reason it is called "Banya" is that it symbolizes wisdom, which is like a pure lotus flower not contaminated in muddy water.

On the bridge at the left side of the picture is Roger and looking out from the trees is Jason, two of my friends from Osan.

The Bulguksa temple, as explained on the sign at the entrance

To enter the temple grounds you must first pass through the Gate of the Guardian Kings, where the watchful eyes of the four sentries stand allowing only the virtuous to pass. Shown here, from left to right, are Virupaska guarding the west, Vaisravana guarding the north, Dhrtarstra guarding the east, and Virudhaka guarding the south.

Sitting on the floor between the legs of the guardians are some creatures, not sure exactly what they are but they look like they may feed on the remains of the impure who try to pass through the gates.

Finally arriving at the main temple, it's quite a sight.

The stairways up to the main temple are properly called bridges, the lower flight of stairs is the Blue Cloud Bridge and the upper stairs the White Cloud Bridge. The guidebook states, "if one enters the temple by the bridge, one is freed from the ignorance and suffering of the world." Unfortunately, the bridges were fenced off so I guess I'll 'm cursed to forever suffer in ignorance.

What what tourist attraction would be complete without a gift shop? Inside there are all sorts of trinkets, but a couple of things caught my eye, like the wall of miniature Buddha statues, and one golden Buddha in particular on a table full of Buddha statues.

There is so much more to this temple, it is simply huge. Here's a garden gate, to who knows where.

"The Dabotap, which is considered the most beautiful pagoda in the world." (Description as printed in the tourist guide from the temple.)

"Dabotap (multi-jeweled pagoda)
National Treasure Number 20

This pagoda of Many Treasure, sometimes called Chilbotap, Seven Treasure Pagoda, is one of the most famous monuments in Korea, symbolizing several different things. The teachings of the Buddha are symbolically portrayed. The square-shared base stone symbolize the Four Noble Truths (a teaching about the unsatisfactory of life and how to overcome it), one of basic principles Buddhism. Ten stone stairs rise from each of the four sides symbolizing the forty practices of Buddhism.

"A record states that originally there were four stone lions up until 1902. Three of them disappeared when the pagoda was repaired by the Japanese colonial government in 1925. During the dismantling of the pagoda in preparation for repairing it, two gold Buddha statues and many relice were found. The pagoda stands 10m 40cm high and is National Treasure No.20."

"Seokgatap (Sakyamuni Pagoda)
National Treasure No.21

"The official name of this pagoda is Three-story Stone Pagoda of Bulguksa. It stands 10m 40cm high, when Gim Dae-seong constructed the temple in 751, he built these two pagodas. The perfectly proportioned Seokgatap is representative of the trend in the Unified Shilla Period when pagodas were simplifies to consist of three stories standing on a two-story base.

"Eight lotus flowers, the Golden Seat of Eight Direction or the Lotus Pedestal Seat of Eight Directions, have been called around the pagoda, the simplicity of this pagoda is enhanced by the complexity of its twin, the Pagoda of Many Treasure.

"When the pagoda was dismantled for repairs in 1966, the Great Mantra Sutra and 70 cultural relics (28 different kinds) were found in the pagoda. These were designated National Treasure No.126. Seokgtap has another name as well, thus Sakyamuni Pagoda is sometimes called the Pagoda without Reflection."

That's about all I've got from the Bulguksa temple visit, and for that matter I want to find other national treasures to blog about. Pagodas are cool and all, but when you get right down to it, they're piles of rocks.

4th of July rafting and spelunking

2008-07-07T05:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever gone into the bathroom on a humid day just after someone got out of a long, hot shower? Or imagine the sticky wet feeling of going into a sauna fully clothed. . . The feel of putting on clothes fresh from the dryer, when they're warm but not yet dry. That's what it's like outside right now here in Anseong Korea, at 9:26 pm. I never thought it could be dark and hot and windy and foggy all at the same time. I've been told it's a dry 'wet season' here this year but it's plenty humid.

So the rainy season is supposed to be upon us and my raincoat is hanging at the ready in my closet... in San Jose. Fortunately shopping for clothes in this town is easy, the local Lotte Mart has a nice selection of jackets and there are quite a few familiar brand-name outlets in town. Unfortunately my stature doesn't resemble the Korean norm, as was displayed most unfavorably by the look of horror on the face of the nice lady at the Lotte Mart as I tried on a size XL raincoat. The sleeves ended just below my elbows and zipping it up wasn't going to happen - even spandex won't stretch that far. So I peeled off the jacket being careful not to tear anything and wriggled into a size XXL. Much better, I could actually zip this one up... if I held my breath. I didn't really check the sleeve length, I was afraid the shoulder seam might tear if I reached forward. The look of exasperation on the clerk was enough to convince me to look elsewhere. Down the street are a few outlet stores that sell outdoor gear, so I choose to try on a size XXXL jacket at the Black Yak store but it was still too tight across the shoulders and the prices were scary expensive. So where does an American buy clothes around here? Outside the Osan American Air Force base! There I found a USA sized XL jacket, quite reasonably priced and hand-made by the seamstress in the store. I'm warming up to the 'think globally, buy locally' concept!

Shoes. Now that's another story. I was invited to go river rafting over the 4th of July weekend so a pair of water shoes were also on my shopping list. Fortunately, the sneekers I wore from home have my european size printed inside, but unfortunately finding size 295 water shoes is difficult. One shopkeeper looked at my feet, shook her head and told me 'no big sizes.' After wandering around the shopping district for a couple of hours I settled on a pair of Adidas size 305 - they're a bit narrow but they stretched to fit okay. Ironically, I returned to first store I looked to buy them.

Saturday July 5th, 5:30AM. The insistent bee-bee-bee-beep bee-bee-bee-beep of the alarm clock drifts through my head, dredging out sleep like a vacuum cleaner sucking up a trunkfull of goose down. I think I have finally figured out that alarm clocks don't awaken their sleeping owners, they're merely empty vessels that fill themselves up with sleep when they sound off in the morning. Snooze buttons are merely valves that open to return a tiny bit of sleep back to you, to be sucked away again a precious few minutes later.

Roger is picking me up around 7:00AM and I still have to stuff my clothes into my day pack. The Plan, as I understand it, is to drive East, camp on Saturday night, go rafting on Sunday and return home. I've been told not to worry about food, and Roger has a spare tent and sleeping bag. Just in case I pack a few apples, hard boiled eggs and instant coffee. It's a privilege to be a passenger in Rogers SUV for the weekend, riding East along highway 38 let me enjoy the scenery and it reminds me of the Sierra foothills back home - low hills covered with thick brush and lightly forested. The highways we traveled are only a decade old and in great shape, with more tunnels than I'm used to on U.S. highways.

We arrived around 11 am and met up with the rest of the group at the camp site, unpacked and set up the tents on the sandy banks of the Dong Gang river. The shade of the bridge over the river was welcome relief from the mid-day sun, and surprisingly the mosquitoes didn't find my blood to their liking. The afternoon was lazy, we did go in to town to get lunch and supplies but mostly just splashed around in the river and enjoyed the day. For dinner there was fresh corn on the cob and chicken bought from a local farmer. The corn was different from American corn, tougher and not as sweet but good all the same. The chicken was boiled in a huge pot set in the top of a 55 gallon drum with a fire below, then rice added for a combined dish best described as chicken porridge. I also enjoyed the freshly picked, boiled white potatoes.

Sunday morning my hard boiled eggs and instant coffee were breakfast, the kimchee raman cooked up by the group didn't appeal to me for breakfast. We packed up and drove up the river to where the river rafting outfitters set up shop, packed ourselves into their vans for the drive up the river where we would mount the rafts. The road to the drop off point is mostly under construction so it wasn't the smoothest road through the mountains. Our group filled up two vans of mostly Koreans with four Americans mixed in for ballast. I found size does have it's privileges in the raft, the guide assigned me to the front right of the raft and Ben on the left. It must have been a good choice since the guide kept shouting instructions in Korean with mounting enthusiasm throughout the trip -- he would shout, and Ben and I would paddle like crazy. I don't know why the others on the boat kept looking at us like we were deaf -- neither of us hid the fact that we don't understand Korean... After the guide switched to shouting, "one two three four" for the paddling cadence he seemed to calm down a lot.

Roger had his little waterproof digital helmet camera along for the trip and here's one of the video clips he took of us navigating one of the few whitewater portions:

It was fun floating the river, with the water levels low this year the whitewater was really calm though.

After rafting, we visited the Gossi cave, it goes about 700m into the mountain and is pretty amazing. At the cave entrance visitors were asked to take a hardhat for safety, a good idea since mine got used a number of times once inside. Along the entire path inside the cave, catwalks and handrails have been installed to keep people, and the cave, safe from each other. I can't believe they let visitors actually touch some of the formations inside the cave, they look incredibly fragile and have taken millions of years to form.

It took me a couple of weeks to get around to posting this time, I'll try to be more speedy and less wordy in my next post.

Since I began this post three weekends ago, I visited the Bulguksa temple on July 12th, and also went to lunch in Fukuoka, Japan on July 19th. It has also started raining today July 20th so I may have a lot more time to update my blog.

Thanks for reading,

Jerry.

Temples. . . all over the place

2008-06-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I just get lucky.

My tourist M.O. follows the accidental tourist mentality: I drive around until I see a sign pointing to a landmark, follow the arrows, and hopefully when I arrive there's something to see. Usually the objects of the arrows are big and obvious enough that even this English-only American can find them, like the monument to King Jeonjo the Great, and the Anseong brassware museum. Sometimes after following the arrows in circles I just give up, baffled, frustrated and wondering why there's an English sign on the highway but only signs in Hangul at the destination. Ironically, the Korean Literary Museum is one such landmark I haven't yet found. Fortunately, temples are big, colorful, generally hard to hide and easy to spot.

Driving East along highway 38 one weekend I simultaneously spotted a familiar-looking brown sign with an arrow, presumably pointing toward a landmark. I checked the rearview mirror while braking hard and swerving onto the access road, and mentally added 1.2km to the odometer as indicated on the sign. After a few weekends of seeking landmarks my skills are improving, but sometimes I wonder why people don't want to ride along on my weekend excursions.

The road follows a gentle stream with families picnicking on the wider banks, and at the end lies the parking lot of the Seongnamsa temple.

The first building I saw from the parking lot was over the steps to the temple grounds.

The building is a large open room facing the temple grounds, empty except for a stack of woven rugs stacked in one corner. Perhaps this is the dance hall? The pictures really speak volumes more than I can write, the paintwork is absolutely amazing.

The painted dragon banner picture on my blog page is from one of the beams

I do wonder about the wooden fish though...

Continuing up the steps I see the main temple at the top, with its doors open.

Midway up the stairs is a clearing with still more things see

Yet another stone pagoda...

And finally, I reach the temple. I poked my lens inside the open doors and this is what I saw:

And finally, on the walk back to the parking lot, I discovered the how the Buddhists do real Korean BBQ

Until next time...

Jerry.

Three-storied stone pagoda in Dogi-Dong

2008-06-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have The Map! One of my coworkers picked up an english-language tourist map for me from the highway rest area. I've been looking for one of these, even asking at the museums and attractions for a map or tourist guide in English without success. And now, in my possession I have a guide to everything historical, photogenic, and cultural around Anseong mapped out on paper. I now know how it feels to have discovered the Rosetta Stone.

Beginning with the most local artifact to my apartment, I set out to find the Three-Storied stone pagoda of Dogi-Dong. According to the map it stands across the street from the Anseong fire department headquarters, which is down the road from the police station. Finding the police station is easy, it's near the park where I joined the nice family for a picnic lunch.

Driving past the police station I quickly found the fire department headquarters and soon thereafter the road past as shown on the map - I'd driven too far. Driving back I discovered a Buddhist temple and thought maybe the pagoda is an artifact on their temple grounds, but alas looking around I saw nothing made of stone or three stories tall. I assessed the gas station as not being pagoda-shaped and not nearly tall enough, but given the fuel prices these days I briefly considered the wisdom of erecting a shrine to gasoline.

I drove around the area, over roads between the rice paddies carefully threading the rental car over the narrow winding paths. All the roads between the rice paddies are about two feet above water and just barely wide enough for a farm truck, strangely crooked and completely flat. I did find a three story church not far from where the map showed the pagoda, but at last check Christians don't build pagodas.

There's lots of egrets around here. I keep taking pictures of them but I haven't gotten any really good close ups yet, they spook easily, and it probably doesn't help to wear an orange tee-shirt while sneaking up on them, either. I can walk or drive within about fifty feet from them before they flee but I keep trying. When I do get a good picture it'll be here, but for now here's one I saw while searching for the pagoda.

How hard could it possibly be to find a three-story stone pagoda? I mentally reviewed what I'm looking for: a pagoda - it should look like big stack of boxes. It's made from stone: I can take it for granite. It's three stories tall - anything that tall should stand out like a huge stone lightning rod around here! I'm in the middle of a huge flooded marsh recently planted with rice shoots, how could I not find it? With frustrations mounting I stop at the intersection of a paddy road and the highway and restore my blood sugar with peanut butter & jelly and an apple. Okay, I admit I did buy the California Farms brand of peanut butter, but it's Ottogi brand strawberry jam and Seoul Food brand bread! I'm really trying to fit into the culture!

As I finished my last bite of apple and swallow of iced tea I saw it: the stairway. Across the rice paddy I spotted a stone stairway and with trembling hands I took a shaky picture zoomed way in to document my discovery. Could this actually be the stone stairway leading up to the Three-storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong? As I got closer I wondered what type of treasure I might find at the top - the stairway looked ancient, the stair treads possibly worn thin from the of millions of pilgrims that must have made the long journey to Dogi-dong. I could only imagine the relief in the hearts and minds of those who came before as they spied the stairs and gathered all their remaining strength to make the final ascent. I was quivering with excitement, finally have found the steps to the pagoda...

I mounted the stairs, basking in the glow of my good fortune to have come so far from home to visit a sacred relic in the Land of the Morning Calm. At the top of the stairway, just outside the fence guarding the stone pagoda, there's a sign proclaiming that this is an official "Monumental monument" of Gyeonggi-do. The entire plaque reads,

"Three storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong, Anseong.
Cultural Property of Gyeonggi-do No. 76

This is a pagoda with the height of 5.4m erected on a hill from where one can look over the downtown of old Anseong. The overall configuration indicates that it is one of the pagodas of Goryeo, which followed the style of those of Baekje."

I'll let you do your own Wikipedia lookup for Goryeo - it's amazing how old this is. And here it is, in all it's glory.

So there it is, the Three-storied stone pagoda of Dogi-dong. On my way home I spotted this sign at the highway:

Later in the day I visited two Buddhist temples and they deserve a blog entry of their own. Stay tuned, it's just getting interesting.

Jerry

Namsadang performance center

2008-06-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday May 31, 2008

Three of my coworkers and I visited the Namsadang Performance Center and wandered around for a couple of hours. At the art center there were sculptures and a glassware shop, but most of the time I spent there was watching the show.

At the entrance of the art center there's a building that stands as a reminder that I'm on the other side of the earth. Either that or it confirms that my perspective of the archatechure is upside down. Inside is a gallery of handmade stained-glass artwork from local artists.

There's not a lot to write about the show since the dialogue was all in Korean - the story was truly lost on me. We watched what I understand was a drama, the costumes were colorful and the performance spirited but I couldn't understand a word that was spoken.

Then it got really exciting! A troupe of inmates from the asylum next door managed to get their straight jackets untied and started running around the performance area! Soon their meds started working agian and they walked back inside...

Time to move on to other attractions in the area, maybe something that transcends the language barrier.

More later,

Jerry.

BMW Seoul, and Downtown Anseong

2008-06-01T03:11:00.000-07:00

Hello again from Anseong. It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry, I haven't had much interesting stuff to post until now.

On Saturday 24 May I went to Seoul with some friends from Osan for a seminar. People back home keep asking about the food here so I'm beginning to bring my camera with me at lunch. This day I had the bimbibap - it was served in a burning hot clay bowl on a trivet, with rice, sliced carrots, seaweed, bean sprouts, and other stuff that I couldn't identify mixed in. In the bowls above it is spiced squid, kimchee, noodles, and bean sprouts. Nothing fancy, just basic Korean food.

After lunch a couple of us snuck down to the BMW dealership to look at the shiny toys. JR wanted to check out a used F650GS they have for sale, so the two of us walked down the street to visit the dealer. The panorama is on the second floor of the dealership where they keep the used bikes with JR checking out the 'gs.

There are some models I haven't seen in the US yet, like the C1 executive they had parked out front. I wasn't brave enough to ask for a test ride, besides I can't imagine splitting lanes on the freeway in San Jose on this, but it would certainly attract attention. And look mom, it must be safe -- it has a seatbelt!

Amongst the used motorcycles there's one green RTP model that I especially liked. If I can't get the entire bike, I would love to have the seat with the radio box for my own r1100 back home. It would be the perfect amateur radio bike for CW motorcycle mobile, and the lights and siren would help get through the morning commuting traffic, too.

On Friday 30 June I picked up three of my coworkers from the bus terminal in downtown Anseong. I arrived about 9:30pm, early enough to find parking and to walk around a bit with my camera until they arrived. With the neon signs lighting the streets the grimey humanity of downtown still shows through, looking only more surreal and desperate than when sunlit. Every time I drive through a downtown section of a city I keep thinking it looks like a hollywood set gone too far, there's way too much neon to be real but it is.

The picture at the left was looking down a side street across from the bus stop.

The panorama was stitched together from pictures taken right in front of the bus station in downtown Anseong, so it's not the best part of town. Even at 10:00 on a Friday night there were middle-school aged students milling about in their school uniforms, I was told after-school tutoring can run late into the night. Most of the people at the bus station looked college-aged, either arriving in town for the university or leaving for the weekend. I saw a few well dressed businessmen walking (stumbling?) around hailing cabs and such, presumably after late night business dinners.

After dropping off the luggage we all went out for a midnight snack to a local restaurant where their specialty is fish stew. It was obvious the meat in the stew was fish (bones and all). There were unhappy little clams, fish, seaweed, tofu, green onions, all swimming in a spicy red pepper stock, and to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, if you gaze for long into the stew, the stew gazes also into you. I'm not used to seeing seafood see me, at least not at the table. If you look closely at the pot of stew you can see the dark nose of a fish poking it's nose above water against the left side, opposite the ladle. I asked what the curly things were, expecting some kind of exotic noodle but no, they're fish guts. Sorry guys, I don't think I'll be asking to go back there on this trip.

On Saturday we visited the Namsadang performance center, and on Sunday I was playing tourist again but this time with an official Anseong tourist map! In English!! I'll have to write more soon but tonight it's getting late. They shifted holidays on us this week: we work on Monday but get Friday off for Korean Memorial Day.

Keep Checking back, I'll be posting again this week sometime.

Jerry.

Visiting Suwon

2008-05-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

(pssst... did you know the pictures are little previews of something bigger? If you click on one, it gets bigger!)

Hello from Anseong.

This weekend is only two days long, there's no holiday on Monday... I was just getting used to these three-day weekends. Oh well, back to a five-day work week this week.

Being in Korea has presented me with wonderful opportunities to be a weekend tourist, and if I could find a tourism map in English I'd be set! I just keeping driving around, keeping track of my wanderings on my GPS so I can find my way home. This weekend I wandered across something truly amazing: I was driving through Suwon and came upon a giant structure with the road going around it in a traffic circle. I later found out it's the Paldalmun (aka, the South Gate), part of the old walls that surrounded the city before the city outgrew it's own walls.

As I drove further down the road I could hear music playing and a crowd occasionally cheering, and after circling the block a few times I finally found a parking lot next to the Hwaseong Fortress. The music was coming from a pipe player and a drummer, playing as a tightrope walker performed in front of the fortress. I took a bunch of pictures (natch!), but chose to return on Sunday to explore the fortress (I was running of of time...) Here's the guy walking the tightrope, a little wobbly at first...

Oops, I'm Falling! It's ok to drop the fan, but hold onto the microphone! I'm not sure but I think losing his balance is part of the show. Other than this slip, he had amazingly good balance.

One of the other guys in the troupe retrieved the fan the tightrope walker dropped.

After the close call the guy really needed to take a break to calm his nerves, he sat on the rope working the crowd for a few minutes.

Bouncing on the tightrope, this guy got some serious air! He was bouncing off of his butt, not his feet -- I can only imagine how long he had to practice before managing not to bounce sideways just enough to miss the tightrope on the way down, or land just wrong on the tightrope.

"Thanks, and keep coming back..." After the show he sat down and posed for pictures.

That's all I had time for on Saturday, seeing the show was a nice touch of the history and culture. I met some friends for dinner in Songton, Korean food again (surprise...). They have a cucumber kimchee that's unique, and the Korean spicy pork is very good.

Sunday 18 May 2008, in Suwon, South Korea

On Sunday the rain and I arrived in Suwon around 11:00am. It was wet and close enough to lunch time to get a bite to eat, so I stopped at a hole-in-the-wall place for lunch. You can see the menu above the chef on the right side of the picture (click it to enlarge), and if you can read it your Korean is much better than mine! I've been hesitant to go out to eat alone since I don't speak any Korean and usually the people in the restaurants don't speak any English: ordering food is like a box of chocolates. I don't know what I'm worried about, I haven't had anything that I wouldn't eat again in this country. Ordinary restaurant food is generally inexpensive, lunch today cost me 6,000 Korean Won (about $6).

I'm never sure what I eat but this tasted... just ok, nothing to write home about. I did recognize shrimp and egg fried into the rice, and the ubiquitous kimchee. The red soup in the bowl on the right was hot, both in temperature and spice and had bits of tentacles and tiny crab legs in it. The yellow things in the bowl are slices of pickled radish and are really tasty in a strange way - hard to describe, sweet & sour & crunchy. The white things in the bowl with the yellow things are slices of sweet onions. The red stuff in the far bowl is cabbage kimchee and this restaurant has a pretty good recipe, it's just a bit different than other kimchee I've had. The little puddle of black stuff in the middle bowl, God only knows... When I leave I'm either going to love or hate kimchee, but I haven't decided yet.

Waiting for the rain to pass, I took a few pictures of the street since it was a rare opportunity to take pictures without fear of being run over or trampled. The rain really kept people off the street, which you can see in the picture. This is a street in Suwon, not really a back alley but one of the small streets though the city. Imagine this street clogged with traffic trying to flow both directions and you can imagine what it's like on a busy day.

When I got to the parking lot of the palace the rain had eased up a bit, so I walked up the hill a ways. From the road on the hill there is a nice view of the walled palace, the far buildings with the same black tiled roofs as the gate in the foreground, are the buildings inside palace.

About 250 meters further up the road there's a bronze statue erected as a tribute to King Jeonjo the Great. I stitched together yet another panarama. The statue stands about 25 feet high, and as you can see the place was empty today.

I still haven't seen the palace - the storm came in and I got back to the car just as it started to really pour. I'll go back again soon to tour the grounds of the palace.

Back in Anseong I stopped at the LPG station to gas up the car and at the far end of the parking lot spotted an antenna growing out of a shipping container, and
the sign next to the door confirmed what I had suspected.

I stopped in and visited two guys from HL0LPM, the local amateur radio club, but the language barrier kept us from really having a QSO. We all understand QSL cards though, and I traded a photocopy of my license for their QSL card. One world, many languages.

Thats all for now, I've got to get some sleep and go to work tomorrow - it'll be the first Monday I've worked in a couple of weeks.

More later after the rain clears out.

Jerry.

Shopping and Tourism in Anseong

2008-05-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Good evening, today is Sunday May 11, 2008 and I'm still wondering how the stars aligned to put me in Korea.

I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. My coworker Erik snuck in a care package for me with our last shipment of machine parts: I may be in possession of the largest stash of whole-bean coffee in the city of Anseong, perhaps the entire province of Gyeonggi. I've only been able to find instant coffee in the markets, which is fine in a pinch but it's just not right. It is truly heartwarming to know people back home care about me.

I packed my coffee press in my luggage and a pound of coffee that lasted for about a week, but I didn't pack a coffee grinder figuring one could be found here in town. Lotte mart is where I've been shopping for most of my food and housewares so it was where I went to shop for a coffee grinder.

Lotte Mart is a lot like a Korean WalMart, but they do things differently here. On the road between parking lots is a man directing traffic and he's polite to a fault: he waves his arms furiously to stop the oncoming traffic, directs me to turn in to the parking lot, and executes a perfect bow as I enter the intersection. Finding a parking spot is easy, too, there are two ladies greeting people driving into the lot and directing them to empty spaces.

After parking, I walk over to retrieve a shopping cart and fortunately I have a 100 won coin with me - the shopping carts are locked together, and it takes a 100 won deposit to unlock the cart from the queue. When you return the shopping cart and lock it back in, your 100 won coin is released.

Once inside, Lotte Mart looks like a blend of shopping mall and department store, with various departments set apart by aisles and individual cash registers, but there's also a line of check stands for purchasing food and household goods.

The store is on two levels with an escalator between them with the shopping carts riding on the escalator with the people. To keep the loaded carts from mowing over people downhill, the ridges on the wheels nest into grooves on the escalator belt, allowing the wheel fenders to lock onto the belt. Ingenious.

I was partially correct about finding a coffee grinder, Lotte Mart does indeed sell coffee grinders... unfortunately, they're of the hand-crank variety. Fortunately, they have a housewares section where I found a small blender that does a bang-up job on coffee beans. This morning I brewed a fresh pot of coffee to drink with breakfast. Life is good.

Erik, when you come to visit you're always welcome to come by for a cup of coffee. I even have a spare mug.

The Anseong Machum Museum

I've been driving past the sign pointing toward the museum for a few weeks now and I finally stopped in Saturday afternoon to look around. It's a nice place, costs 500 won to get in, and most of the displays have an English and Japanese translation of the Korean text. I learned that Anseong is renown for its metalworking, especially white brass. There is a large collection of pieces on display from the brass foundries that were in Anseong, along with displays showing how the artisans made the pieces. Some of the culture surrounding the use of brass tableware is also explained.

There are some other pieces that I found interesting also, like the antique mousetrap on display. The round inside portion is about seven inches around and looks quite heavy. There wasn't an explanation of how it worked, I can only imagine... poor mouse.

I revisited the totems today, and someone has repainted them! I took a bunch more pictures and it was sunny this time:

And finally, I'll sign off with a self-portrait. Mental note: the bright orange shirt really stands out when taking pictures along a road - traffic notices. It's also stands out when trying to take pictures of wildlife - birds notice, and flee.

That's all for now, it's getting late and I've got to rest up since tomorrow is another holiday, it's Buddha's birthday.

Jerry.

2008-05-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Good morning from Anseong! Today is Monday 5 May 2008, and it's Children's day holiday here in South Korea. I'm writing my blog off-line since I still don't have internet access at home. I'm told progress has been delayed because of the holidays. The closest telephone booth is two blocks from my apartment, so it's an effort to talk to people back home. Hey, I found a wireless connection just outside my apartment building, so I can post blogs!

Sunday was an eventful day: I started out watching my laundry tumble, one more reason to love a front loading washing machine. There's something mesmerizing about seeing my socks roll around one way then the other for an hour. (yes I am easily amused... why do you ask?)

Jerry gets adopted

After spreading out my laundry to dry I took a drive around town to get acquainted with the lay of the land. Near the Anseong police station, I found a traffic circle with a park and a small hill in the center. Always the curious one, I parked, grabbed my camera an walked to the top of the hill.

The view wasn't anything spectacular, it's only about ten meters above the surrounding farmland and trees pretty much obstructed the view. As I was walking back to my rental car I saw a family had set up a blanket and a gas grill to cook lunch. One of the gentleman motioned me over and invited me to sit down and join them for lunch, which I graciously accepted.

I took off my shoes and sat on a corner of their blanket joining the family for lunch of grilled pork, mushrooms, and garlic cloves wrapped in lettuce leaves, spiced with Korea death paste and some sort of grass salad. Cherry tomatoes were passed around, as were home-made sushi-like rolls. I drank water with lunch, the two men sipped soju, the ladies drank beer, and everyone toasted their good fortune with each refill of the paper cups. It's a custom to never fill your own glass, and I watched with amusement as one man would fill his friends cup, then hand the bottle over so his friend could fill his, then another round of toasts. Dessert was some sort of melon, and it too was quite tasty.

Small talk was difficult since I don't speak a word of Korean yet, but the two girls knew enough English to translate for us. I helped them clean up and felt welcome in Korea for the first time since I arrived. I may never meet this family again, but their kindness really made my day.

Next stop: Geocaching!

Spoiler alert! If you're going to search for this geocache, you might want to stop reading. The specific hiding spot isn't shown, but the general location is discussed.

Not far from Anseong is the “Korean Totem Pole” geocache. If you don't know geocaching, check out the www.geocaching.com web site and take a look around – it's basically a treasure hunt game using a GPS receiver to guide you to interesting places.

There must be some significance to the totem poles along this road but I don't yet know what it is, there are easily fifty of them standing in groups of three to fifteen along both sides of the road for about half a mile. In the first picture you can see my rental car parked at the far end, for size comparison. The poles range from six inches diameter to about ten inches and are up to about fifteen feet tall.

This sign is at the bottom end of the road:

The problem is not that there's a duck on your head...

Scary faces:

“Korean Gothic” (with apologies to Grant Wood):

I did find the geocache, signed the logbook and left a travel bug I've been carrying around for a couple of years.

Enough totems for today, it's time to head off to Osan air base for dinner. I met JR, a friend of a friend, at the entrance of Osan air base. We went to the Mustang Club for dinner and their steak served sizzling on a platter was very welcome for this American far from home, with no Kimchee in sight anywhere. After dinner JR gave me a quick driving tour around the base, showing me the new buildings and the golf course. He introduced me to Roger who is a motorcyclist and has stable full of bikes, including a couple of loaners. Roger invited me to join him, riding his BMW f650gs through the mountains some weekend this summer – I could be on bike again soon, touring Korea! I may have to ask my friends back home to ship my helmet and jacket.

So that was my Sunday this weekend: meeting new friends, seeing new places, geocaching, getting absorbed in the Korean culture. I'm really beginning to enjoy this.

Talk to you all soon,

Jerry.

Living in Korea – the first week

2008-04-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

Greetings!

I'm living in an Officetel in Anseong, South Korea – see wikipedia's entry for Anseong if you're interested. As it was explained to me, an Officetel is a combination office / hotel, and what immediately popped into my head was a suite in some fancy hotel that I could use for an office by day and entertaining business guests in the evening. Boy was I wrong - this is neither an office nor a hotel. Think “Student studio apartment on a budget” and you'd be right on the mark. Now don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for where I'm staying and I'd rather have my own studio apartment and not worry about leaving my socks on the floor for housekeeping to discover. It has everything I could want for the three months that I'll be here.

I've got a single bed to rest my head after a long day. The mattress is firm, the pillow is big, and I haven't had a bad nights sleep yet. I'm getting used to using a quilt covering the mattress and sleeping under a light blanket. Things are different here, they don't use bedsheets.

I've got a bathroom. It has a toilet, a place to hang the TP, a sink, a mirror, and a place for my toothbrush. It also has a hand shower attached to the faucet, and with the turn of a knob, the room zooms from a loo to a spacious shower. The entire room is sunken about an inch, sorry, 25mm from the living area and there's a drain in the floor, and as long as I'm careful not to shower the TP or my towel, life is wonderful. It's really easy to keep clean, too, I just hose down the whole room every morning when I'm done showering!

I've got a kitchen. Okay, a kitchenette. Actually, a galley would be more accurate. It has a nifty glass-top electric hotplate, an RV size fridge, and enough cabinet space to store cookware and service for the entire US pacific naval fleet. The sink, er, basin is almost large enough to bathe in, it probably takes up 40% of the counter space.

Under the counter is a washing machine, and after my co-worker translated the instructions for me it works just fine. I was reading the instruction book for this silly thing, actually I was looking at the pictures in the manual, and I mostly understood the gist of the icons: don't stack things on top, don't wash your sneekers, and my favorite, don't wash the cat. I mentioned this to my co-worker and he said it's an old Korean joke that if some American washes their cat then the manufacturer gets sued, so they print the warning.

Off the galley is a utility closet, very handy for storing my luggage, and it houses the boiler and A/C unit. On my first morning in Korea it took me a while to figure out how to get hot water – the boiler is controlled by a thermostat next to the front door and it only heats water for a while after pushing the 'on' button. It takes about five minutes to get scalding hot water, and I'm sure it saves a bunch of energy by not keeping water hot when it's not needed.

I don't know how the place is heated, but every day when I get home it's warm. I think it's radiant heat through the floor since I feel warm spots here and there, but I don't know how to turn it up or down. It's comfortable, so it's something I don't worry about.

My apartment is on the fourth floor but you won't find it by looking at the buttons in the elevator which are marked (1) (2) (3) (F) (5) (6). I'm told it's bad luck to have a fourth floor, since 'four' in Korean sounds like the word for 'death'.

I don't worry about getting out in case of fire, since I've got the Simple Descending Life Line to save me! I won't explain, see the picture... It's tempting try it but I'm not brave enough to jump out of a perfectly good apartment. Yet.

That's my apartment in Anseong. If I ever figure out what my address is, I'll email it to my family and friends to send care packages. (hint: great bear, jitter critter, peets...) Next blog: life in Anseong outside the apartment. Shopping is.... surreal.

Jerry.

2008-04-28T02:07:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Korea! I'm writing this on Saturday morning off-line since I don't have internet access in my apartment yet.

The Flight:

I took off on Wednesday afternoon, the wheels leaving American soil at 2:15 in the afternoon on Singapore airlines flight SQ15 bound for Incheon airport. Leaving the US for the first time in my life, I felt anxious about what I would find in Korea. There's something unsettling about leaving my comfort zone for a culture, language, and environment completely different from what I've known all my life. I wasn't looking forward to being cooped up in an aluminum tube for fourteen hours either, I get restless on much shorter flights.

I must give credit to Singapore airlines: their in-flight entertainment is outstanding. I watched three movies, learned Korean number and played video games during most of the flight, all using the little LCD monitor and hand-held controller build in to the seat. I also did a little bit of reading during the flight to break up the monotony. The food service was good, too. I had chicken and baby red potatoes for lunch, and beef with rice for dinner. Snacks were served regularly, except when turbulence made navigating cabin hazardous.

If dogs could fly I'd fit right in along side them, with my head hanging out the window and my tongue flapping in the breeze. I always like to sit in a window seat, using my GPS to see if we're still in Kansas and watching the landscape roll by, but there wasn't much to see out the window this time, and I didn't turn on the GPS knowing we'd be over water most of the way. Most of the time there were clouds and ocean to be seen out the window, but I did get to see some of the Aleutian islands, and the sight was magnificent. On the display in-flight I watched our progress as we inched across the pacific

Landing in Incheon was uneventful, as was customs. My co-worker and I retrieved our luggage and we found the bus to take us to Anseong, where I will be living for the next few months. On the bus (affectionately called a limousine) I saw my first glimpse of Korean life: neon everywhere blazing in the night, lighting up gritty downtown street scenes, but looking at the people they all appeared contented and safe. In Anseong there were university students in their uniforms milling about, along with people in general out walking around the town.

What struck me most was how vertical everything is. I'm used to urban sprawl covering large pieces of land, but here the buildings seem very tall for their footprint. On a plot of land where I would expect a one- or two-floor single-family home, theres a six floor apartment building. It's pretty obvious the architecture isn't designed with earthquakes in mind, and I wonder if the buildings will fall over in a strong breeze.

That's enough for now. Next time: a touch of culture shock, moving in to my studio apartment.

Jerry

Safe and sound in Korea

2008-04-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I arrived safe and sound in Korea yesterday, or was it today? It's really weird, I took off from San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, arrived in Korea, went to bed, and woke up on Friday morning. Where did Thursday go??

I don't have internet in my apartment yet, so this post is from my temporary desk at work. When I have the time and bandwidth, I'll put up some more pictures from the flight and first impressions of Korea.

Jerry

My last night in San Jose

2008-04-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

The rent is paid, my roommate has money for utilities, my car will be parked at work and driven by my co-worker (until he joins me in Korea), the bags are packed, and tomorrow I'm off to Korea. As unusual as this trip is in my life, I'm sure it's routine for some people but the anxiety of my first trip overseas is unsettling. My mind is awash with thoughts of what I'm going to experience in the Land of the Morning Calm: the food, the language, the customs, the lifestyle -- everything will be totally new to me.

My phone has been buzzing out of my pocket all day with friends calling to wish me well in my travels, constant reminders of how much I'm going to miss the community of friends I've gathered in the short two years I've been living in San Jose. This evening my roommate and I cooked dinner together, and I think it's the little things like that I'll miss the most.

I know it's going to be difficult to sleep tonight, I have a million things running through my mind thinking about what I've forgotten to pack, but I can sleep on the flight.

Next post: South Korea.

Jerry.

Greetings from San Jose, California

2008-04-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

Ack! I'm going where? Korea? Oh, okay... that's South Korea, Right? Oh good... I can handle that. You want me there how long? Three months? Maybe I heard you wrong, did you say three months? Oh, I guess this is going to be an adventure after all.

Keep checking back as this California native adjusts to life in Korea for a few months.

Jerry.

Here's a test photo from downtown Los Gatos. I'm new to this blog stuff, I'll be doing a lot of experimenting 'round here.

jb