Seoul in Review
Ok, so as anticipated I was not able to keep up with everything while in Seoul and so I have a number of things I want to cover now from Illinois about the last week or so.
So. On the 6th I got up went to Woori bank and got a check for most of the money that was in my account, leaving about $100 to keep the account open. I don't know whether anybody plans to put any more in there, but at any rate at this point Prof. C. and I have an unfinished project and it looks rather likely that I will be back at some point. When I went to the math dept. office to return my key, the secretary took me back to Woori bank because it turns out my Korean government pension (!) could not be deposited into my existing Woori bank account and so I needed to open a second Woori bank account. The best part is that if I understood correctly this was because the one I opened in September was a "non-Resident account" and so what we were doing in December was opening me a new account as a Korean resident. Well, whatever.
Then I went back to my apartment and finished moving out, met up with SH and SB (J had gone to Seoul the previous day) and headed for the train station to leave Pohang for good. (Only sort of, maybe, but enough so to accent the absurdity of opening a "Korean resident" account immediately beforehand.)
On the train I played Sid Vicious's "My Way" for SH and SB and SH played a bunch of Korean songs for me on his MP3 player. One of these was a guy with a gravelly voice singing a song called "Bring me some water." (Or so SH translated it.) And I then showed him my Howlin' Wolf "Asked her for water (She brought me gasoline)". SB got off early. He was staying with his parents that night. J stayed with his parents the whole time. SH, who is from Incheon was not sure which night he would spend at home. We got the subway to Hoegi and then took a taxi. I'm not sure of the pointfulness of that taxi ride. First, taxi drivers do not know about KIAS. They know about KAIST which is the university which occupies much of that campus, but do not know that one of the buildings on it occupies something called KIAS. So the guy went right past the gate. Later we determined that there is a third thing called KIST around the corner which he might have been tring to take us to. Anyway I got SH to make him turn around and take us to the KAIST campus and then we wandered around for some time in a taxi with the meter running, before giving up and getting out. At about this time I remembered I had a KIAS campus map in my luggage and would be able to find the housing that way.
The timing was perfect. I was supposed to be sharing with a Japanese fellow whose initial is T. He was just on his way out. They had not left a second set of keys for me so I only just barely got in. T. was going out with friends and kindly agreed to leave me the keys. If he got back before I did, he'd wait at their place. Then SH and I found his housing, deposited his stuff and had a quick dinner. I wanted to avoid T having to wait, and did, in fact, get back before him. I switched on the TV which may have been a bad thing. Subsequent experience kind of suggests maybe it was one of those deals you get in hotels sometimes where you put in a credit card number and the cable works. If so this was on T's tab. But it wasn't for long. He got back, he and I chatted a bit. Then he went to bed early and I worked on the talk I was to give in two days, and that's about it.
The next three days were a conference. This was very nice but also a bit wierd. My advisor DG (not to be confused with my collaborator DG or my college buddy DG or Marmadont) was there along with DB, SF and JH. These last three are pretty inseperable. They're senior faculty, a little bit younger than DG. SF is the most approachable and I consider him a friend. DB is the author of two books from which I have learned most of what I know about our subject. JH I was meeting for the third time and he did not remember either of the first two. Incidentally SF put me onto the project with DG the collaborator, and DB and SF are two of my references (as is my advisor, so the only references missing from this conference were my teaching reference (JS for those of you I know from SC. Hey Abbreviatin' is Phun!) and DG the collaborator).
So the thing that was a bit wierd was having these two very different sets of acquaintances around. On the one hand, SH, SB and J, and on the other hand DG, SF, and DB.
I had a million things I wanted to talk to DB about and only managed to get through a few of them.
So. On the 6th I got up went to Woori bank and got a check for most of the money that was in my account, leaving about $100 to keep the account open. I don't know whether anybody plans to put any more in there, but at any rate at this point Prof. C. and I have an unfinished project and it looks rather likely that I will be back at some point. When I went to the math dept. office to return my key, the secretary took me back to Woori bank because it turns out my Korean government pension (!) could not be deposited into my existing Woori bank account and so I needed to open a second Woori bank account. The best part is that if I understood correctly this was because the one I opened in September was a "non-Resident account" and so what we were doing in December was opening me a new account as a Korean resident. Well, whatever.
Then I went back to my apartment and finished moving out, met up with SH and SB (J had gone to Seoul the previous day) and headed for the train station to leave Pohang for good. (Only sort of, maybe, but enough so to accent the absurdity of opening a "Korean resident" account immediately beforehand.)
On the train I played Sid Vicious's "My Way" for SH and SB and SH played a bunch of Korean songs for me on his MP3 player. One of these was a guy with a gravelly voice singing a song called "Bring me some water." (Or so SH translated it.) And I then showed him my Howlin' Wolf "Asked her for water (She brought me gasoline)". SB got off early. He was staying with his parents that night. J stayed with his parents the whole time. SH, who is from Incheon was not sure which night he would spend at home. We got the subway to Hoegi and then took a taxi. I'm not sure of the pointfulness of that taxi ride. First, taxi drivers do not know about KIAS. They know about KAIST which is the university which occupies much of that campus, but do not know that one of the buildings on it occupies something called KIAS. So the guy went right past the gate. Later we determined that there is a third thing called KIST around the corner which he might have been tring to take us to. Anyway I got SH to make him turn around and take us to the KAIST campus and then we wandered around for some time in a taxi with the meter running, before giving up and getting out. At about this time I remembered I had a KIAS campus map in my luggage and would be able to find the housing that way.
The timing was perfect. I was supposed to be sharing with a Japanese fellow whose initial is T. He was just on his way out. They had not left a second set of keys for me so I only just barely got in. T. was going out with friends and kindly agreed to leave me the keys. If he got back before I did, he'd wait at their place. Then SH and I found his housing, deposited his stuff and had a quick dinner. I wanted to avoid T having to wait, and did, in fact, get back before him. I switched on the TV which may have been a bad thing. Subsequent experience kind of suggests maybe it was one of those deals you get in hotels sometimes where you put in a credit card number and the cable works. If so this was on T's tab. But it wasn't for long. He got back, he and I chatted a bit. Then he went to bed early and I worked on the talk I was to give in two days, and that's about it.
The next three days were a conference. This was very nice but also a bit wierd. My advisor DG (not to be confused with my collaborator DG or my college buddy DG or Marmadont) was there along with DB, SF and JH. These last three are pretty inseperable. They're senior faculty, a little bit younger than DG. SF is the most approachable and I consider him a friend. DB is the author of two books from which I have learned most of what I know about our subject. JH I was meeting for the third time and he did not remember either of the first two. Incidentally SF put me onto the project with DG the collaborator, and DB and SF are two of my references (as is my advisor, so the only references missing from this conference were my teaching reference (JS for those of you I know from SC. Hey Abbreviatin' is Phun!) and DG the collaborator).
So the thing that was a bit wierd was having these two very different sets of acquaintances around. On the one hand, SH, SB and J, and on the other hand DG, SF, and DB.
I had a million things I wanted to talk to DB about and only managed to get through a few of them.
posted by GB at 4:14 AM
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