In Chiang Mai

Seoul, Part 1

Back from my first trip to South Korea. Seoul is a very modern city. I'll start by writing about my flight. I left on a Wednesday afternoon on Ethiopian Airlines. I spent the whole time at the airport being conflicted about whether or not I should eat a meal at the airport. Every time I go, I want to eat at fried chicken at Popeye's. But I usually end up gawking at the prices and walk away. I ended up getting a drink and muffin at Starbucks because I was worried that there wouldn't be food on the plane. I noticed the large amount of Hong Kong and Korean people at the waiting area when I finally got to the terminal. There even seemed to be a tour group. And indeed, the flight wasn't very full when we got on. In fact, I don't even think the first class/business class area was ever occupied. Anyway, everything was normal and they even served a meal.

I got to Seoul at around 8pm and walked around the airport and got money, something to drink, and found my way to the subway station. They had two different trains, one of which is an express train. This express train was not part of the research I did on how to get to the airport so I didn't take it. There weren't a lot of people around on a weekday night so it took me a while to figure out if I was entering the right gate. The train from the airport was really fancy and had blinking lights that show you where you are along the line. I had to transfer to another line and this second one was much busier and definitely not as new as the airport line. By the time I got to the station where Yalu and friends where staying, it was around 10pm. I saw a Dunkin Donuts as I was getting out of the station and they had the cutest donuts! I got this bear one.

I got to the hotel and the hotel guy was just showing me where the huge bunch of MIT kids went for dinner when I saw Mike coming down the street. So I had a nice Korean BBQ dinner with them where they basically took up the entire restaurant. The restaurant stayed open late for them because their flight was late.

The next day, they went on tours and I went around Seoul on my own. I was pretty lazy and didn't managed to get up until 10am. This is happens every time I travel on my own. I had a nice breakfast at a cafe across the street that roasts their own coffee. You can basically expect free wifi at every cafe.

Then I took the subway near this big park where the N Seoul Tower is. There is a cable car where you can take it to the top of the hill where the tower is located. But the cable car is kind of big and it didn't seem like you would have very good views if you were crammed in with other people. There weren't a lot of people when I went but I chose to hike up instead. There are many very well kept trails within the park. Many of them have concrete and stone stairs. Trees and flowers are starting to bloom.

View of the city:

N Seoul Tower:

Art pieces using cans and other recyclable material:

On the way down I took a small trail and it took me forever to find the nearest subway station after getting out of the park.

I was pretty tired after walking around all day and got back to the hotel just as the MIT gang was leaving for dinner. I found dinner around the area and read a book for the rest of the night. 

More travel plans!

Updated my sidebar with my upcoming travel plans! I just booked a ticket to go to Taipei for a long weekend. Another friend will be in the area and it just so happens that it is a holiday weekend. It's more expensive to fly but at least I won't have to take any time off. Just realized earlier today that May 30th is the day of the HKIE Annual Seminar. I was all worried earlier about leaving the office too early. Guess if I'm leaving the conference a bit earlier, it won't be too bad. I think my supervisor is speaking at the conference though so hopefully I won't miss that.

Getting ready for vacation

Going to Seoul next week! Really excited to start my string of vacations. The really awesome thing about these upcoming vacations is that not only will I be going somewhere new, I'll get to meet up with friends! I'll get to explore Seoul with Yalu and Mike + other friends. Really looking forward to this trip. I really don't know much about Korea but there are so many Korean things here, cosmetics, food, snacks, electronics. I actually really want to walk around a Korean supermarket. I think it would be really fun. Anyway, now I'm looking for a Taiwan flight so that I can meet up with another friend who will be in Asia in June.

March is here

It got cold enough again to wear thicker jackets outside. I really prefer this weather to the hot summer. Hoping that summer can come later this year. I haven't really done very much running this year. I kind of stopped after that 10k in January. I feel like I got bluetooth earphones and haven't put them to use. 

Spent 3 (or 4?) hours skyping with Yalu yesterday and we planned out our Seoul trip. I think we did a pretty good job! I feel like I still need to do some work on that one day where I'm just hanging out by myself. But I'm always really lazy when I travel by myself so I'll probably just wake up late, walk around, eat, sip coffee at a cafe, repeat. No clue how I would communicate with anyone. Guess I would have to use my sign language and observation skills again. I get a bit nervous looking at Hangul characters. It's not like languages with romanization. They all look alike... Oh wells, can't really get lost in a city with so many subway stations.

Work is the same old business. New guy is still not being very productive. I feel like I finally forced something out of him today. At least I have an end product, sort of. 

I joined a board level committee that's part of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering after the Paris conference last September. The committee that I"m a part of focuses on young people and their involvement in the society. There are 3 representatives for each region. But I feel like we haven't really done much. We've had two Skype calls, elected people to be Vice Chair and Secretary, and signed up for task forces. But I really feel like none of the task forces have done anything. I'm chairing a task force to fix up the website. I've tried and failed to set up a meeting, encouraged people for suggestions, and have even set up a Google Sites website as a test page. I really think the Google Site is a good idea since people can write and change things without making a mess on the real website. But so far no one has done anything. These committees have a long term outlook since each term is at least 2 years. But unless you do something every week, there's going to be no progress. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I kind of wanted to be Vice Chair so that I could poke around to see how the other task forces are doing. But I really feel like they haven't done much. I signed up for 2 out of 4 task forces and both of those have had some emails fly back and forth due to my prompting. Need to figure out ways to motivate the motivators.

Found this really nice cafe that's literally across the street from where I live. There is a little sitting area that leads to a dead end street. I've peeked down this street several times but never gone down it because it didn't look interesting. Turns out, it's a mix of auto body shops and small restaurants. There is the cafe (been there twice already!), a western-Asian place, dim sum place, and a ramen shop. The dim sum place looks popular too. Might try that out next time.

February - busy, busy

After having a pretty chill January, I am back being extremely busy. These past few weeks have been really, really busy. Basically living in the office again. For some reason, projects always seem to all have stuff happening at the same time. They never seem all calm down at once though.

Our structures team has started another project with the an international school in HK. The school has been looking to redevelop for a while and their applications seem to finally be getting through. It's nice to be working on a new project but I really haven't had the chance to really look at everything. Since we have been the design engineer for this client forever, our job folder is a crazy mess. I spent one day on a weekend reorganizing the entire folder. Now I can finally find things! But my other projects are in the process of being approved and require all my attention.

Our team got some new people lately. One of the new guys is a recent graduate and is supposed to be helping me with this new project. But it's taking a while for him to learn the basics. I guess it takes everyone a while to really get on board. And since I've been pretty busy lately, I haven't had time to really sit down and help him. I expect people to ask questions but he never really has questions. It makes me nervous when people don't ask about major assumptions that they are making when calculating stuff. And I always feel that it takes people a while to get used to working. When you're in school, the expectations and environment is not the same as the working environment. I think that it takes a while for the new graduates to get used to the idea that they're in a working environment and that they have report to someone. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Can't wait for the end of March to come. Looking forward to my vacations.

CNY holidays

This is a bit late but I thought I'd write about how I spent my Chinese New Year holidays. I went to Zhongshan this year. Took the ferry back on CNY eve and basically went straight from the ferry to dinner. The seats in first class are nicer and I slept basically the entire way. My visa also expired after this trip. I found out that the "Enter Before" date means that you can still enter on the day of. My visa had a "Enter Before" date of 30 January 2014 so it allowed me to enter the country up until 23:59 that day. Every time I get a China visa, I promise to make better use of it but it never happens.

Anyway, I always feel so dependent on people whenever I go back. After dinner I went to stay with one of my aunt and uncle. They have an extra bedroom since their daughter is away in school. I basically ate a lot the few days I was there. I kind of wish I have the chance to go back on of these days and be and tourist around the city. Really get a better feel for the layout of the city by taking the buses around. I always feel like I have no sense of direction because I usually just get driven around.

I'm going to wait until I get my Hong Kong visa renewed before getting another China visa. Hopefully I can get two years but not really sure if that's possible here. Anyway, at least a year would be good. I also have a lot of trips coming up soon so I really don't know if I would be able to make use of the visa. But I guess it would come in handy if I wanted to do weekend trips to Mainland cities or if one of my friends just happen to be around, like the time I went to Hangzhou.

It was unusually warm during the CNY holidays. When I got back to Hong Kong, I spent a couple of days walking around in shorts because it was so nice and warm. And then the weather took a turn the other way and it became freezing cold and rainy the last week. I also made turnip cake when I got back. It was easier than I thought but the flavor was a bit off. I liked them better fried, SE Asian style. I might make more later today with just turnip and rice flour and fried them after. I don't actually like the other fillings (mushroom and Chinese bacon/sausage).