Holidays

The Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving is coming up soon. Basically everyone in South Korea goes to visit their families over this weekend. Apparently it will be quite a sight. The head of the department was telling me (he was in the coffee room reading the paper and feeling chatty) that sometimes foreign visitors think it's a war or something. So I guess it's more serious business than US Thanksgiving. Probably because S. Korea is more densely populated to begin with?

Hite

When Prof K and I had dinner, he demonstrated to me that one can go into the little store next to the cafeteria (where I got my "specified bags") and buy a can of beer and take it into the cafeteria and have it with your dinner. I followed his lead in selecting a "Hite." The lettering looks like a cross between "Sprite" and the "Lite" in "Miller Lite." It reminds me of the Japanese boy bands "Smap" and "Glay." And of course "Gackt" who is an individual. Oh, and "Smap" is also a beverage. That is, the boy band is merchandised to the hilt, including a soft drink.

Speaking of Prof K and beer, he told a story at dinner the next night about being in Chennai and tossing back an entire glass of Strong Beer in one gulp because no one had explained the idea of "Strong Beer" to him. (It's 15% alcohol.)

Aaah. Here we are: THE HITE!!

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia seems to say that Gackt is called "Gackt" because his name is "Gackt." This confuses me. I tried to learn Japanese a little bit once and my understanding was that you can't end a syllable with a consonant other than "n" and you can't have two consecutive consonants unless the first one is "n."

Weather

Mom emailed to ask what the weather is. I gave some vague reply ("nice. kind of... medium.") then decided to see if I could get actual numbers online. Link now at right. But while the forecasts for today and tomorrow look about right, as I write, the site indicates that the temperature in Pohang is -7 Celsius. I can assure you that it is not.

Officemates

By the way, this office now has three residents. I am told that the sign on the door indicates there will be a fourth. My new neighbors and I say "hi" and sometimes "bye" to one another, but don't talk much. I had dinner with the newer of the two arrivals I guess two days ago. Nice enough guy, but not chatty. I would guess he'd say the same about me.

Another Talk

I had to give another kind of talk today. This one was supposed to be an overview of the area I'm doing research in with some mention of my own work in it. I spent most of yesterday writing notes and rehearsing, but couldn't find a good presentation. This morning I tried to get up and write fresh from scratch. I was really nervous going in, and I don't think the talk went well, but I also don't think it was a disaster. The problem is, I ran out of time before I got to the specific stuff I have worked on. That's not good, but it's much less bad than the other day: I don't think I started speaking too quickly until the end, when one is allowed. At the end, my host was a bit dissatisfied that I did not give a proper description of my own results. But there was another faculty member in the audience who kept asking topical questions in a manner that gave me the impression he

(a) followed the talk,
(b) would not have followed if I had made more of a beeline for my own work,
(c) learned something he thought was interesting as a result.

So, in all I felt ok about it.

Specified Bags

For some days now garbage has sitting in my kitchen in an ordinary plastic bag, waiting for the day that I would actually find one to specify what a "specified bag" was, so that I would be able to throw it away without risking a hefty fine and eviction. Today I finally spotted them in this little store next to the cafeteria where I generally eat dinner, up by the register, and overpriced the way things only can be when there's a law that says you have to buy it anyway.

So, I know some of you are wondering: what is a specified bag?

It's a bag from the shelf marked "specified bags," silly.

What the ...?

My second lecture went quite well. I think it was one of the best lectures I have given, period. I rehearsed most of it on Sunday evening. On Monday I couldn't find an empty seminar room to do a proper rehearsal but did rewrite my notes completely. And I made myself write big. I think that's a good trick too.

Anyway, after talking for 75 minutes straight I was ready for a nice Pocari Sweat. But the machine downstairs was out: it only had coffee, something that looked like it was probably in the Red Bull family, and these little squat cans with pictures of what look like grapes on them. If I'm sounding out the Hangul correctly the product's name is "Bong Bong." So anyway I figure that's grape juice buy one, crack it open and ... what the !?!?!?!....

It is grape juice.

With little peeled grapes floating around inside.

Actually pretty nice.

Missing Meals

Yesterday I didn't get over to the cafeteria before it closed. Ended up having a canister of Pringles and half a quart of milk. Then skipped lunch today, just because my work groove was good. I thought I was supposed to have lunch with Prof C but she wasn't in her office so I just went back to work. Didn't get hungry until around 4:30. Then had some 3n2's and a Pocari Sweat.

Let me explain. First Pringles. Pringles I know that my American readers are familiar with but since my most avid reader seems to be Indian, I feel the need to explain. Pringles is a brand of potato chips. Sort of. Actually, I'm not sure that I even saw potato chips in India... well, anyway, an ordinary potato chip is a very thin slice of potato, deep fried in oil. Pringles are more processed. It's not a slice of potato, it's like they liquefied the potatos, probably mixed them with some other stuff, and then stamp out these chips that are all exactly the same size and shape. I do wonder how the make them, but the long and short is when you get a bag of regular chips its mostly air, but when you get Pringles, they're in a cylindrical canister and most of the canister is chips.

Now 3n2's. A 3n2 is 3 little crackers held together by two layers of stuff that is kind of like Oreo filling. And by cracker I mean the salty kind of biscuit, if you're Indian.

Now Pocari Sweat. Pocari Sweat is a soft drink that I really like. I first had it in Japan in 2002 (and also in Hong Kong the same year). It's in the same family as Gatorade (it bills itself as an "Ion Supply Drink" and is called "Sweat" because its supposed to put back the same balance of electrolytes you lose by sweating) but it, to my taste, much nummier.

I did make dinner today, though. Don't want to get too out of balance.

My Couch, my Window.

In response to a request in comments: a shot of the couch, two shots of the window, and one looking down out of the window.


Looking down out of the window.

Manners

One thing about lunch today: the graduate students insisted on buying it for me. This strikes me as weird. It may be that the explanation is: they knew I was having cash-flow problems and did not know they had been resolved, since that came up in conversation afterwards. Or it may be that they perceive the existence of a guest-host relationship here. The first day I was here when J was showing me around he bought me lunch, then a Pocari Sweat (soft drink), then a cup of coffee. So, I begin to wonder, are these guys ever going to stop insisting on buying? I mean, one does not want to be rude, but one begins to feel like a freeloader. By contrast, Prof C has stopped buying, which makes it all the weirder.

Incidentally, and odd situation wherein the students had invited me to lunch during a break in the seminar, then at the end of seminar, Prof C suggested that we have lunch together, then said "oh, you're going with these guys, well I will join," then, "actually I will see you Monday, I changed my mind." I think this mainly has nothing to do with being in Korea, though, it just tends to come with being a post-doc. As it happened, back in the US none of the senior faculty members I was on friendly terms with happened to be the advisors of any of the graduate students I was on friendly terms with, but it would have been about the same.

Lunch

Professor C has three graduate students. I may have already mentioned these guys because they helped me move my mattress in, and one of them, J, spent the better part of the first day I was here helping me get situated. Anyway, they have a seminar which meets Wednesday evening(?) and Saturday morning (!!) which I've attended the last two Saturdays (on Wednesday I forgot). So, anyway I just went for lunch with these three guys at a Chinese restaurant in town. Things learned:
* S. Korea has compulsory military service.
* It involves being forced to play a lot of soccer.
* Korean for "army" sounds something like Kunda.
* They call the compulsory army soccer the "Kundasliga" (pun on German Bundesliga).
* Korean for "neighbor" sounds something like "Google." So "anything I don't know I just ask Google" also becomes a pun.
* The MVP of the most recent SuperBowl was born in Seoul to an African American father and Korean mother.

Furniture

Prof C managed to arrange to have the department lend me some furniture. My apartment went from unfurnished (but for a mattress on the floor) to a bit overfurnished in the matter of an hour. The process was one of the more marvelous things I've seen recently. They brought everything in through the fifth floor window. They had a little truck with a long telescoping "neck" and a platform. One second you're looking at a view of some mountains, and the next some guy is standing out there with a couch!

Photos

The main part of campus with the academic buildings is one big complex on the top of the hill. It has three (maybe 4) of those giant clocks. The buildings are all square and flat like that, connected by collonades with first, second, and third levels. There are artificial waterfalls on either side of the steps.
This is from a weird but nice little sculpture garden they have by the
gate I enter through.

Here's the best view I could get of the library and its very impressive footbridge. It doesn't quite capture it though... so I added this next picture to get another aspect of the effect: it's a long way down
There is a little snack shop on the top floor of the library and you can go out and stroll around in a little rooftop garden.

Stationery Again

Turns out the reason I thought they only had expensive fancy notebooks is that I walked right past the pile of cheap ones by the door.

So now I have notebooks. Woo-hoo.

Comments

I just changed the "comments" setting from "Only Registered Users" to "Anyone." So, it should be possible to comment now.

Oy

I think I mentioned I'd been asked to give a series of lectures. The first is over. It went extremely poorly. That is, I botched my job quite badly. I feel lousy but don't want this blog to be about my travails at work.

I spent most of the day in the library thinking I was preparing for my lecture. It was finally a nice day, and I got some photos of the footbridge to the library, and the library itself. Also a pretty nice little sculpture garden they've got near the gate here. Oh, and the 78 steps. It's late: almost 11:30. I'll upload them later. I'm trying to decide whether to upload them to my old university which, I don't know how long I'll have that account, or just do flickr or some such thing.

Pronunciation

Someone just took me down to the docks (literally) to drop off my passport for foreigner registration. I think it's down there because they also do a small amount of customs at the seaport.

After having a couple of interactions with men-- that guy and the guys at the bank-- I arrived at the conclusion that part of the reason "Kamsahamnida" (thank you) sounded so lousy coming out of me is that I was modelling my pronunciation on the Koreans I had heard pronounce it-- which up to that point had all been women. They were pronouncing it in this kind of high sing-song. The men don't do that. And now that I think about it I tend to think that if they tried they wouldn't sound much better than I did.

In other news, the guy that told me not to bring any stationery steered me wrong. The stationery here is nice, but it's also far from cheap. Hopefully it will be possible to get some writing pads for free via the department. Prof C mentioned something to that effect. One wants to be able to scribble away; expensive paper produces writer's block! In the mean time, I have a lecture to prepare. I got a buck's worth. It should last a couple of weeks.

Cash flow problems finally solved:

I was able to write a personal check to myself and have it cashed at the bank on campus.

Well that was heartwarming

It's really pouring here. I just got up from my desk to go have some dinner. As far as I know I went to the closest place food is available on Sundays (since the only place I know of which is closer where food is sometimes available was buttoned up tight) but it still wasn't very close. Pretty much the other end of campus, actually, at the bottom of the 78 steps. (The 78 steps are a POSTECH landmark. The name is pretty self explanatory. You can see how, if you had to climb 78 steps every day to get from your dorm to the academic buildings, you'd remember it. I eat pretty much the same thing for every meal (which is to say, every lunch and dinner-- I rarely eat breakfast anywhere) which is a bowl of vegetables with a fried egg on it and some rice.

Anyway, I was on my way out of the building that that cafeteria is in, and some kid says, "excuse me: where are you going?" I suppressed the ex-New Yorker's urge to say "what's it to ya?" and/or get suspicious about the motives of anyone who wants information about me I don't see a reason he needs, and, since I don't know the names of anything, just made a "waaaay over there" gesture towards the top of the 78 steps. He gave a kind of nervous laugh and said something like "sorry." Which didn't make a whole lot of sense, so I just started walking. And he starts kind of following me a little close. So close his umbrella is over me. Which strikes me as a little wierd so I speed up a little. And he speeds up a little and, with some difficulty, manages to keep the umbrella over both of us. At which point I figure out what's going on. The poor kid is trying to do something nice for someone. So I laugh a sheepish laugh and say something like "aw you don't have to do that" but also walk more normally so he will not get himself wet trying to help me stay dry. And he says "I will take you to there." And indicates the corner at the bottom of the 78 steps where the path breaks off to the left. And so we get there and he says "see you" and I say "thank you" in Korean as best I can (it's about the only phrase I can remember, and it sounds awful coming out of me) which is silly given that he's speaking perfect English to me.

So that was heartwarming. Not really necessary (my approach to the rain is to wear a wide brimmed hat and a waterproof jacket that zips up to my chin. At that point I'm safe down to my legs which an umbrella won't help with anyway, and I've got my hands free. ) but heartwarming. Which reminds me that the word "heartwarming" crops up in strange places in Korean English. Like on the plane they were encouraging us to donate our leftover change to UNICEF (I did, all $.04 of it) and the add subtitles said "hungry children need our heartwarming care."

Rain

Third straight day it's pouring. If it ever quits I will take pictures of the pond, the 78 steps, and the library to send. The last, in particular, is impressive. Campus is on a hill. One side of the hill is so steep it's almost a cliff. The library is at the bottom of the hill on that side. If you're coming from campus, you get to the library by means of a narrow footbridge. Inside it's a big circular atrium. In the middle of the atrium, hanging from the ceiling, are some sculptures I think are supposed to look like abstracted clouds. What they suggest to my mind is, rather, half-butchered beluga whale corpses hanging in a meat locker. Except for one, which looks like a giant humanoid torso, the arms, legs and head chopped off leaving five stumps, swaddled in pure white cloth, hanging in the meat locker with the belugas.

I don't think I would feel comfortable taking pictures inside, but I will get some photos from the footbridge. That's the really impressive part.

Coffee problem still lacks a lasting solution. But then, so does the money problem, which is why. Once I have the money problem worked out, I will buy a little electric kettle and be able to make coffee with my french press or with my coffee bags in my apartment. And I'll be able to make little soups or noodle thingies provided they come in their own little bowl and just need water added. Such things seemed to be in plentiful supply at the "Mega Mart" I checked out the other night. (I was looking for one roll of TP. It was impossible to buy fewer than 16.) And they have the little kettles. It might be nice to get a small battery operated travel alarm as well, but so far I am getting up on my own so early it doesn't seem worth worrying about. Finally, it might be nice to get a desk and chair in there. We'll see if I get around to it. That seems pretty hard to work out and I can always just come here.

Actually, I think leaving my apartment completely unfurnished will be a good way to keep my nose to the grindstone.

Speaking of which, back to work.

Ooooh My Secret

Well, I got around to making a decision about how anonymous I feel like being on this blog and the answer is "not very." So I'm just going to change the names and leave it at that. (If you use people's real names it might show up on Google.)

So, I'm doing a Post-Doc at POSTECH in Pohang. Which just this once you should read "PO-Hang" to keep the rhythm of that sentence going, but the correct pronunciation rhymes with "song" not "sang" and the "h" is barely there, so it sounds almost like "Pwong."

I should warn you all now that this is likely going to be a pretty boring blog. I'm signed up to give a series of lectures to the graduate students, and will be working to have something joint and publishable with the person who brought me here, and have another project joint with someone else to not neglect, and soon it will be job application season again. So I expect to be pretty swamped with work most of the time I am here. But being in another country almost always produces interesting experiences whether you go looking for them or not, and whatever life throws my way will show up here.

Now that I've admitted I am in Pohang, I can mention that the local soccer team (and of course it's called "football" here, so it's the local football team) is the Pohang Steelers.

For now that's all I've got. I'll get some pictures up soon.

Oy

The trip downtown to the Citibank was a bust. I figured "Well, Citibank's going to be Citibank, wherever you go." But actually, not so much. I'm still not sure what the problem is. I wasn't even able to try to get money from my US bank account. What I was able to do was try to get cash advances from my credit cards, but to no avail.

I just got around to reading my "Residence Guidegbook"[sic]. It seems that I can be fined a million won and thrown out of housing for failing to used the "specified" garbage bags. The guidebook says the bags can be bought at this that and the other market. I hope it will be obvious which ones to get since nowhere in the book does it actually make any attempt to specify what the "specified" garbage bags are. It just lets you know that you damn well better use them.

Additional Notes

I'm still getting my feet under me here. One thing about which I was fairly dumb was access to my American bank account. I just assumed the ATMs here would be on the big international networks-- basically, because S. Korea has a reputation as the most wired country in the world. Well, most ain't. There is a Citibank in town, but we're a bit outside of town. I don't know how feasible it is to get downtown on my own and will feel like a heel if I one of my colleagues has to be put out every time I need an ATM. Someone is taking me to the Citibank today. I need 400,000 won (knock off the last three zeros for the approximate dollar value) for a deposit on my apartment and could maybe use a little more walking-around money for until my first paycheck.

On the upside, it's not as bad as I was initially told it was. The first time I asked if there was some international bank nearby I was told there were none in this city, and thought I might need to go to the nearest large city two hours away, or all the way to Seoul.

Also on the upside, I've got my computer working already as you can see. The plug adapter I bought in Lebanon works here as well. And after a bit of work we were able to get me hooked up to the internet. It took a bit of work because I'm unfamiliar with network stuff and the network guy was unfamiliar with Macs.

Went downtown to try to get me registered at the office where foreigners have to register if they're staying longer than 90 days, but were told to come back Monday. Although, actually, I think I'm not staying more than 90 days. But what can you do?

Greetings

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you found the place.

I haven't quite settled how serious I am about being anonymous on this blog. So I haven't decided whether I will discuss my profession or past travel experience or name the smallish city in Korea that I am living in.

I haven't been here long. Do I have anything interesting to say yet? Well, you be the judge.

The trip here came off more or less without incident. Flight from US to Seoul Incheon, bus to Seoul Gimpo, Flight from Gimpo to here. Nervous moments at the baggage carousel in Incheon, but my second bag finally arrived. On the plane there was an ad for something called the BBB card which I want to check out. You call the number on it and are connected to a volunteer interpreter. Could be really helpful. And other than that we watched MI-3, Nacho Libre, and some Korean romantic comedy about a ne'er do well being forced by his grandfather to become a schoolteacher or lose his inheritance.

Gimpo is pronounced how it's spelled. This goes against what my Korean tutorial said was going to happen-- namely that the relevant Korean letter is only pronounced "g" when it is in the middle of a word, and at the beginning of a word will be the unvoiced version of g, i.e., "k".

Gimpo Airport contains an appliance showroom billed as a "Free Experience Space."

Water coolers here do not have the little conical paper cups. Instead, you get something that looks a bit like the little envelope your keycard comes in at some hotels. It's made of paper which is approximately the same weight as ordinary notebook paper. Maybe even a little lighter. Drinking from it is not as hard as you'd think, but if you're really thirsty, you will find that by the fourth refill it is beginning to lose structural integrity. Now, one thing to clarify is that the water cooler itself is not what Americans typically think of as a water cooler-- with the big jug of water on top. It's a filter hooked up to the wall. And I don't think I have seen a drinking fountain yet.

The wierdest thing yet, by far, has been the signs indicating the police stations. They feature cartoons. Something like a Pokemon in a police uniform with "Police Station" in English and Korean (I'm assuming that's what the Korean says) and an arrow. Buh?

My apartment here is unfurnished. It's good I decided at the last minute not to bring a pot and pan: there is no stove. There is also no fridge. My host at work did arrange a mattress and some bedding. I'm not sure if I feel like getting anything else. I won't be here that long.

But anyway, I should quit with this, and go find some dinner.