Coffee

I absolutely love coffee. Cafe’s are great places to casually read or do some work that could benefit from a little background noise. I find that the atmosphere helps me concentrate as long as I’m not doing calculations or equations. For a while I just drank coffee occasionally to no I’ll effect, but as I started drinking coffee every day I started to have heartburn more and more frequently. Eventually the heartburn subsided as I began to drink coffee any time the thought crossed my mind. The worst of this was during my recent trip to the US where my wife and I had to adjust to a half-day time difference while maintaining an action-packed schedule. A few times during the trip I got an awful headache on days where I didn’t drink coffee by lunch time, but was somewhat in denial that this could be the actual cause of my headaches.

Since coming back to Korea three days ago I haven’t had a cup of coffee. I’m not sure why, as it wasn’t planned, but I’ve been dying for a sip of the strongest, blackest coffee I can imagine. I’ve been physically exhausted and somewhat incapacitated (I thought drinking coffee was supposed to be a laxative, not stopping) as well as thoroughly exhausted. Today I feel somewhat more energetic than yesterday but I still am feeling pretty lazy. I’m not totally convinced that the reason for my exhaustion is due to lack of coffee… I could have gotten some bug in Japan! I will probably hold off on coffee at least until this weekend, but maybe longer. I don’t have intentions of quitting for good but I do love experiments so I’m dragging this out as long as I can stand. I heard caffeine withdrawal symptoms can last up to two weeks. Let’s hope that’s not the case so I can be productive (although I’ve got no immediate obligations I have a lot of paperwork I need to prepare).

Was it all just a dream?

The last three or four weeks just completely flew by. Hyomin and I were so busy preparing for our trip to the US, and then it was delayed because in our excitement there was some paperwork we overlooked. Now we double check everything and we know rushing is never worth it.

Our short time in the US now feels like it was just a very long dream. We visited San Diego, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. Every day we were busy running errands and meeting people. In California we met a bunch of relatives, most of which I had never met before. They made us both feel right at home and the terrain in San Diego was breathtaking. Although it is a little dry and hot, it made me feel like I was in paradise, and Hyomin and I are considering moving there when we come back to the states. We were careful of what time we travelled in LA so we didn’t really run into any traffic and although we met three different groups of people, got married, and we’re still able to see a bit of famous LA. On our way to get married we drove on mulholland drive by accident and it provided an amazing view of the entire city. We felt not as if we were tourists but actual residents of California. All in all, we met a total of 19 relatives or soon-to-be relatives in California (my 84 year old uncle is getting married next week) during our one week stay in California.

Our time in Texas was equally busy. We had a family gathering in San Antonio with about 25 people, great Texas barbecue, and delicious Texas beer. It was great seeing everyone after such a long time but it was also weird because my time was stretched between so many people.

In Houston we had some dim sum with Hyomin, her cousin-in-law, and his kid and I found out that I am a more adventurous eater than any of them although while in korea I didn’t know this because they will all eat any korean food as well.

Austin was nostalgic. We walked around campus, said hello to a bunch of my ex-coworkers at the International office, and met up with a few friends. I had forgotten how delicious the tapioca is at tapioca house. That day the texture was perfect. I don’t even remember what flavor I got because the tapioca blew me away.

On the way home we had an 18 hour layover in San Diego and a 13 hour layover in Tokyo. We rented a Honda CRX (si) in San Diego and had a lot of fun. Hyomin and I were both really glad to see my cousin Paul and his wife Shauna again, as well as my Uncle Paul and his fiancée Sharley. Sharley is a good balance for my Uncle who is loud and opinionated (although usually in a hilarious and non offensive way). He and Sharley live in a senior citizen community with optional assisted living. The facility has everything from independent apartments to hospital like care for people with dementia. It’s like a hotel resort filled with old people, and Hyomin and I thoroughly enjoyed our time there making use of the amenities and chatting with my uncle and his fiancée (we stayed a few nights with them in the beginning of our trip).

Tokyo was really interesting. Japanese intonation sounds a bit like that of the Busan dialect of korean. We flew into one airport and left through another so we had to take a bus between the two. Japan looks like a Grey mix of Korea and the US. I can’t pick out any features that make it look more American than korea but that’s just the feeling I got. It literally feels like It’s in between Korea and the us. I wish we had time to look around Tokyo but there was no time since our plane arrived right when public transportation stopped and taxi fare to the nearest area of interest was around $80.

Since I don’t know when I’ll be able to go to the us next I tried to soak in every detail I could. I found the nature scenes and city scenes equally beautiful. Whether walking along a nearly empty and pristine beach at sunset in LA Jolla, shopping in downtown San Diego, or looking out over a heavenly landscape of clouds 30,000 feet above Seattle, I realized there is nothing too small to be appreciated.

a couple of videos (biking on the han river and suwon at night.)

biking on the han pt 1: https://vimeo.com/72661590

 

biking on the han pt 2: https://vimeo.com/72661591

 

happenings in suwon (near galleria dept. store) at night: https://vimeo.com/72661592

a few pictures all from greater than 30 days ago

Here are a few random pictures from over a month ago.

 

 

The wonderful process of moving in.

 

More moving in.

 

One of the main buildings at night.

 

View from the bus stop Glen and I stood at many times before going on an adventure.

 

The is the view from the bus stop where the bus took us to work in the morning. Across the street is a convenience store we went to too many times.

 

The entrance to the dorms.

 

A weird assembly in a gym where we were all wearing business casual and sitting on the floor.

 

Part of another activity where we were listening to all the different departments give speeches and trying to decide which one we would apply for.

 

Mostly good times. But the good times were great times.

The rest of the Samsung Internship

The rest of the internship at Samsung flew by. I mostly stuck to my mediocre sandwiches for breakfast (except when there was some sort of pumpkin, potato, or blueberry in them). Sandwiches are ridiculously expensive in Korea, so it was a really nice change of pace to get a free sandwich every day. On good days I made the bus at 7:38 and only had to walk a short way to work. On bad days I had to walk a relatively short distance but up a pretty big hill and I was always winded and sweaty when I got to work. On my way to work I would grab a sack-breakfast just before scanning into the building I worked in. I sat my stuff down at my desk, turned on my computer, and went to the break room to have a 5-10 minute breakfast. Since I always got sandwiches it was no big deal and I was usually not gone for more than a few minutes.

 

Once I was done with breakfast I had to find something to occupy my time with until lunch. In the beginning of the internship my schedule was very open ended and I was basically doing self study and research on some topics I knew next to nothing about before the internship, namely, effective large scale software development. Every day I would plan out what I would do before and after lunch for a few minutes while my computer was logging in and starting all of the security programs that we had to install on our computers. A large portion of this research was going through most of the Pro Git book (http://git-scm.com/book), doing some git tutorials, and practicing a lot of text editing using vim.

 

Lunch was usually a hellish race to not finish last. I’m a pretty fast eater usually but since there were no other foreigners on my team this turned out to be a conscious effort every time I ate with my coworkers. The longest we EVER spent eating was the day we had Sam-gye-tang 삼계탕 (I like to call it chicken in a sauna) where each person eats an entire chicken stuffed with rice sitting in a bowl of delicious light broth. We ate for 20 minutes on this occasion. Most times I would eat as fast as humanly possible and get up and leave what felt like about 7 minutes after sitting down. This would be trivial eating something like a burger but when you’re tasked with some entree and three side dishes it’s no laughing matter. Glen and I even incorporated this into a speech we did at the end of the internship in which I compared how my grandpa used to say that you should always chew one bite of food 30 times before swallowing with the race (and probably three chews per bite) that happens at the Samsung cafeterias. I promise to speak English more slowly if we can please slow down eating a LITTLE bit! The strange thing is that while the actual eating is a race against time and human biology, afterwards we usually strolled around, had coffee, or ate ice cream for up to an hour (although usually closer to 20 minutes). The best lunch I had was on my birthday when I went to the “Foreigner Line” which is always Indian food. Apparently you can only go there with a foreigner, so I ate with a Korean coworker and an Indian coworker. We ate slowly, and we ate fairly good Indian food (my Indian coworker said you can at least call it Indian food). Afterwards we had coffee and chatted for quite a while. The rest of the day was pretty slow since it was a Friday and everyone seemed a little bit antsy to leave.

 

For dinner that day I went to 교대 (Seoul National University Education Station) with Iris and we had 수육, a type of dog meat. The meat itself was pretty tasty but I would have cooked it way differently if I had the choice. It would have been seared instead of steamed and cut into smaller pieces. I still want to try it again cooked differently. We met up with Glen later outside of a convenience store and then caught a subway almost all the way back to campus and a Taxi for the final leg of the journey.

 

Typically after lunch people stay extremely late. Most interns leave at around 5 or 5:30 but one day I had to stay until 9:30pm and there were still people doing their thing around 8:30. The energy policy makes it pretty hard to concentrate some days. Long pants are mandatory and while I was there it got up to 29 degrees C (84 F) some days. Average temperature was between 27-29. During the day there are a few hours (before 9am, between 12-1:30, sometimes a third time around 3 or so) where almost all of the lights in the office are off. I commonly saw people sleeping at their desks, but I don’t blame them since many of them worked 12 hour shifts.

 

(to be continued tomorrow)

Settling in at Work

Overall, work is very cool. We get three free meals a day and I get to dress like an adult. Our apartment is also free. We finally got wifi via a portable wifi hotspot called an Olleh Egg. Although it seems straightforward this was pretty difficult to purchase because the people at olleh stores really don’t like foreigners. The speed is pretty slow but it’s better than nothing, although because of the slow speed I haven’t been using it very much.

 

I finally know what I’m supposed to be doing at work, but it’s confidential so I can’t really elaborate on it. I sit in front of a computer all day looking at documentation or code, or looking up things that could help me understand the documentation/code. It drives me crazy that I have to use Internet Explorer. My coworker is Korean so she has to do a whole bunch of extra stuff involving watching online lectures and making weekly reports. All of the people in my department are really nice and helpful.

 

I happened to buy a book this past weekend while we were at the book store and it turned out that the full time employee one desk away from me has the same book at his desk. It made me feel good about my choice. The cafeterias here are more delicious and infinitely more convenient than at SKKU. There are togo options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and we are allowed three free meals per day. If I miss breakfast I can get lunch and get an extra plate of fruit togo to make up for the missed breakfast. The hours for the cafeteria are much better than at SKKU. There hasn’t been a time when I tried to go and it has been closed. I have been to breakfast as early as 7:20am and dinner as late as 8:00pm. Both of these times would have been impossible at SKKU.

 

Finally surviving that annoying semester at SKKU has totally been worth it. I found out I passed all my classes (I got a B in the class I was worried about failing), and now I just have to wait for my transcript to transfer to UT and for paperwork to go through and then I can finally graduate! I’m having an amazing time in Giheung and I’ve talked to my boss about getting a full time position here after the internship. It is slightly complicated because of my visa and because I haven’t graduated yet, but I’m working on it. I know I’m going to learn a ton in the coming weeks… and then I’ll be off to the US for a few weeks while my friends travel around Korea/Japan.

 

The only thing that sucks is that I can barely see Hyomin these days. I wish we could live in the same city already. While this is infinitely better than being 7k miles away it still sucks not being able to see her every day.

 

Sorry this post is kind of rushed. I had to squeeze another post in before sleeping and now I’ve got to sleep so I can get almost 5 hours of sleep before work starts!

Insa-dong Tour and Not Sitting for a Long Time

I’ll start off with bad news and then get more positive… and then end on a really high note. My lovely dog Blaze had to be put down after nearly a decade of love and devotion to the family. She was always loyal and friendly and I’ll never forget her many warm greetings. One that especially stuck with me was the time my dad brought her over to my grandparents house before my grandpa passed away and she ran up to my grandpa and smiled at him while vigorously beating her tail against the piano. Grandpa lit up brighter than the tree and pet her on the head and she wagged her tail even more vigorously. She was an amazing dog.

 

Blaze looking majestic.

 

Blaze’s final resting place.

 

Hyomin and I got to have a nice relaxing weekend. I just wish she didn’t have to work so hard Monday – Saturday. I feel so bad for all the effort she has to put in for her internship. We had a great anniversary except for the fact that we didn’t have nearly enough time together. I wish I could work 12 hours a day for 4 days and have Fridays off. Interns have no such flexibility though.

 

Hyomin and me at a coffee shop.

 

Hyomin and me at the same coffee shop.

After another long week of work (and mostly sitting all day long) we went on a field trip to make Kimchi and Ddeokbokki as well as go to a couple of museums at Insa-dong (the center of Seoul where the president’s office is, etc.). The museums we visited were of the history of the Republic of Korea (1945 – present).

 

“Fast Foot Truck”

 

 

 

Depiction of Korean miners and nurses working in Germany.

 

First Kia truck

 

The story behind Hyundai becoming a huge ship builder is pretty crazy. The CEO realized there was a business opportunity in the shipbuilding industry and went all around the world looking for loans. Finally a british bank said they would give him a loan if he was able to get an order for the ship (Hyundai had no experience building ships, let alone super tankers). After countless rejections, a Norwegian client ordered two ships to be delivered within two years with the stipulation that if they failed to deliver at the agreed upon date then there would be a refund and a 100% penalty fine (the ships cost around $2,000,000,000). The contract was fulfilled something like three months ahead of schedule (unheard of).

 

Hyundai Supertanker

 

“Golden Girls” or something like that.

 

Korea used to do animation for most of the popular American cartoons like the Simpsons.

 

Old animation posters.

 

Replica of the presidential podium, oddly cropped.

 

Presidential Podium.

 

Acting official behind the presidential desk replica.

 

Doing Important Work.

 

I think someone was saying stupid stuff because we had trouble keeping it together for this picture.

 

Not being serious.

 

The Korean White House (aka the Blue House) is at the base of this mountain.

 

Mountain behind “blue house.”

 

Audio Devices for the 1988 Olympics.

 

The most interesting thing here is the silicon wafers.

 

Old Electronics.

 

Is that Bush?

 

There’s a museum directly under the statue devoted to King Sejong (the inventor of Hangul – the Korean alphabet) and General Yi (the inventor of the first ironclad ships).

 

“Great King Sejong”

 

Quote from General Yi.

 

This place was beyond delicious. I don’t want to talk/think about how much money we spent that day but it was 100% worth it. The honey glazed pizza was amazing!!!!

 

The pasta was too delicious to get a picture of. We got three pasta dishes (one of which came with steak) and we got free unlimited pizza. It was glorious.

 

Windter being silly after eating bibimbap.

 

I took a picture of the receipt so I could remember exactly what we got. If you’re ever at Le Bois you’ve got to try the “단호박 Pasta.” This was around Gangnam Station exit 10.

 

The pumpkin pasta was amazing.

 

Insadong alley.

 

I love Uniqlo. Sometimes their ads are strange though.

 

I thought Iris had remembered the ad wrong. Then we ran into it again.

 

Insadong alleyway.

 

This picture somehow got out of order. This was after the tour and eating bibimbap but before shopping/eating amazing pasta.

 

“What should we do now?” Iris and me: “TEA”

 

We went to 종로3가 station and found a cheap beer place that allowed us to get only drinks (most of them require you to get overpriced, crappy food as well). There’s a column of ice in the middle of the “Beer Tower.”

 

“Beer Tower”

 

I really wanted to buy these pants, but I resisted.

 

The end of a fun day/ the start of a fun night.

 

We had an amazingly long day. After barely getting to sit down a few minutes all day and a ton of shopping, eating, walking around, and a bit of dancing, we went to a Jjimjilbang and slept for a few hours before taking the amazingly convenient bus back to Samsung campus (25 minutes from Seoul to Yongin). I’m not completely sure what Iris did the rest of the day but Glen and I basically slept/lounged around until dinner time.

Everything’s Confidential

After moving in most of the foreigners from UT immediately started work the next day. Ryan and I, however, experienced a mind numbing series of lectures that lasted 8 hours a day for an entire week (Tuesday morning until Wednesday afternoon the following week). These lectures were all about all the different departments, and all of the lectures were given solely in Korean. I was once dozing off and the lecturer called on me asking if I could understand and what my name was and I promptly embarrassed myself by saying “I don’t know” in Korean. The rest of the lectures were a good review of material I’ve seen in classes and gave me a pretty good idea of which department I wanted to be in. Halfway through the orientation week was Hyomin’s and my 2 year anniversary. I was so excited to see her but we were both exhausted so we ended up just hanging out, eating some great food, going to a coffee shop, and seeing a movie. Still, just being with her made the weekend perfect.

The next week was followed by more Korean lectures and two interviews to decide exactly which department I would be place in. Finally by the following Friday (the 10th day of my job I knew exactly which department I’d be in and had an extremely basic idea of what I would be doing. On thursday my boss took me and a fellow intern, a girl named Park WonBin (those of you who follow Korean dramas will get a kick out of that) out to chicken and beer, or a business dinner meeting known as Hyesik (회식). The chicken was excellent. The beer was typical Korean draught beer which is much better than most Korean beer.

Through fire and flames, and monsoons soon.

Emotions have been running hot the past few weeks. With sudden deadlines, tons of projects, and finals all crammed into one week combined with many uncertainties ahead we have all been a bit on edge. This culminated with moving on Monday morning (our first day of work) with Glen and I starting around 4:45am.

We first moved all of our stuff downstairs, which took an average of ~2.3 trips per person. We moved the stuff again up a hill and 50 meters down the street because the road directly in front of the dorm was blocked off. Glen and I crammed a bunch of stuff and ourselves into the first taxi and we took off to Suwon station. Later we found that everyone else could only fit one person to a taxi and they were charged up to 8,000월. The taxi fee was 5,100원 so we handed the driver 6,000원 cash and unloaded all of our stuff into the dirt. (there’s construction going on at the moment). After looking around for a few minutes we were forced to move all of our bags about 1.5 bus lengths around a bus (semi-in traffic) or through a tiny gap which most of our luggage couldn’t even squeeze through. We met a Samsung employee who said we should wait there for the bus. When the others arrived except for Windter and Ryan, the bus came and we were told to load the bus, so we loaded the bus and got on.

At this point another Samsung employee came to meet us and told us we got on the wrong bus and that there was a special bus just for US because we were going to a different orientation. We then had to unload all of our stuff and put it on the new bus. Did I mention that we were wearing suits since around 5:30am?

Once we got on the bus we were then informed that we would need to take our electronics out of our bags when we got there to take them through security, meaning we would have to pull a substantial portion of our luggage out of the bus and dig through it and find all of our electronics, take them through security, and then load them back on the bus. We then got to the first meeting at 8:25 or so, just in time for the 8:30 speaker.

We went through a whole day of lectures and orientation about Korean history, the history of Samsung, etc. I must say this is when things picked up. I found the orientation engaging and interesting (except for one young speaker who was amazingly boring). I was glad to receive some actual information (AND WORKING ID CARDS!). It was a stark contrast to the SKKU orientation which was all show and no content.

Around 5pm we finished up with the orientation and went to move into our dorms. The girls got royally shafted in this aspect as they share a tiny room, have a community bath, have no wired internet, and wifi is prohibited. As for the guys, we have an amazingly huge apartment for three people, our own patio to dry clothes on, a washing machine, oven, microwave, fridge, sofa, private rooms, two bathrooms, and an AC unit in each bedroom. I was in heaven and totally relieved when we got into the apartment for the first time.

Of course, the men’s dorms are on the opposite side of the campus from the women’s dorms, which is a shame because it effectively prevents us from ever hanging out with Iris and Joy.

So far there are only two downsides, but I’m really enjoying myself. I’m always tired and there’s no internet (yet?). Hopefully I will have time this weekend to do a more complete post and perhaps add some pictures of my apartment.

Freedom

In the US you hear people go on and on about freedom all the time, especially when comparing the US to other countries that are supposedly not as free. There is definitely more freedom in the US than in Korea, but I don’t think most Americans know what freedoms they really have compared to other countries. I’m sure every country is different, but as far as Korea goes the area with the largest lack of freedom is your schedule.

The most annoying thing in this respect (although excellent if you’re on a diet) is the school cafeteria. It is open strictly from 8-9:30, 11:30-1:30, and 5:30-7:00. In addition, there are only two meals to choose from at both breakfast and lunch, and only one meal at dinner. When you choose a meal, it comes with all the side dishes for that meal and there is no mixing and matching. This sucks during breakfast because usually I want some cereal but the things that come with the cereal are really gross (koreans don’t really know how to make american breakfast and it ends up being totally wrong).

Depending on class schedule, this can lead you to only being available for one meal a day and have to go out to eat a lot. I end up being available for most of the meals but there are countless times when I’ll wake up late and be starving by 9:30 but not be able to eat until lunch.

The curfew is also pretty annoying, and I can’t really find any justification for it. All of the buildings stay open (you don’t have to leave at a certain time), but they do chain the doors shut around midnight. Dorm curfew is from 1am to 5am, meaning the doors are chained shut between those hours. Buildings are usually locked from 12am to 6am though, so if you have to do some project that requires using the lab computers and it takes you past midnight, you’re going to be there until 6am. There are electronic locks and I’ve seen people scan in/out of the building but I was told that only grad students can get access.

In addition, the subway stops around midnight and doesn’t start til between 5:00-5:30am. All of these put together can be especially annoying if you’re coming from out of town. Seoul is an hour and  a half away and Busan is between 3-5 hours away depending on how you travel. This means that you have to waste a good portion of your evening on a train OR you take the first morning train at 5:00 and don’t arrive until around 6:30, at which point you can’t eat breakfast, but if you go to bed and wake up around 9:30 (a reasonable length nap) or 1:30 (a reasonable night’s rest) you also won’t be able to eat until the next meal hours later. If coming from out of town you can ride the train that arrives around 4:00am, but then you have to either take an expensive taxi and sit outside until 5:00am or wait until the subway opens around 5:15 and then go home.

This brings me to my next point. Koreans don’t seem to mind waiting. We went to Seoul Forest (don’t get too excited, it’s just a large park) on Korean Memorial Day and had a great time, but getting there took way too long. First, six of us met at the dorm entrance, then we rode the subway for an hour and a half (or maybe 2 hours), ate lunch at a traditional market, and then met up with four other friends. The other friends hadn’t eaten, so we stopped by a cafe, and then when we were done with that they wanted to meet up with four other friends, who also hadn’t eaten. Finally by the time we got to the park it had been five hours, and we only stayed there about an hour and a half. If it were up to me we would have just gone straight to the forest (quickest route is one hour and fifteen minutes), stayed there for 3 hours or so, and then gone back home to eat dinner, instead of making a 12 hour day of “visiting the Seoul Forest” even though that particular activity was only 1/8 of the time we actually spent out.

Seoul Forest was really fun, but the rest of the day was pretty annoying. I will update with a video and some pictures later.