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By Marty, May 8, 2012 9:19 am

Have you heard this one?  A guy walks in to a bar and has a few beers. The bartender runs a tab and on the third beer the guy wants to pay – for one beer. The bartender argues the guy hasn’t paid for any beers and the guy argues he has.  The argument gets louder, curses fly and the bartender orders the guy out of the bar. The guy picks up a bar stool and begins to swing it at the bartender. Two others guys watching immediately jump up, force the guy to drop the bar stool and then unceremoniously hustle the guy out of the bar and down the stairs.

End of story, you think?  Not in Korea.

The guy was a Korean and he claimed that the the two foreigner guys who threw him out beat him up on the way down the stairs.  So he called the police.  Despite there being multiple witnesses who told the police the Korean guy was an ass and, no, no beat him up, the police continue to play out the story with  multiple visits to the police station for questioning.  Apparently the guy self-inflicted a few minor scratch wounds on himself and wants to press charges.

In any other land, they’d run the guy off telling him he should have paid his bill. End of story. Not here in Korea. With no self defense law, anyone hurt by another, even if he started the fight, has the right to sue.  So even though the Korean guy picked up a bar stool and was about to smash someone or something before being stopped, he can claim is owed damages because the guys who stopped him hurt him.  Essentially, it’s who ever is hurt worse gets paid. It’s no wonder Korean middle aged men, are such assholes.  Get in somebody face and start a fight only to lose and collect cash.

I was one of the two who threw the guy out of the bar. I’ve been to the police station once, and not sure if they want me to come back. The Korean guy has no witnesses that saw him get beat up, but he swears it’s true and the police listen. Meanwhile, I have witnesses that swear he didn’t get beat up but simply pushed out of the bar. We’ll see who wins.

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By Marty, April 24, 2012 4:29 pm

Just a few pictures I took while out scouting places for this years scooter inferno

Remnants of a Japanese fortress built in 1593 just on the south side of town.

The fortress overlooks an inlet and a small beach town. But incoming ships can be seen for miles from the fortress which is about 400feet above the sea

I meant to upload this one above rather that the duplicate below. The perils if updating web pages from a smartphone I suppose.

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By Marty, April 21, 2012 1:54 pm

And no time to update this blog, apparently.

At least I have some decent excuses.

I picked up a new website to develop back in March. Two teachers here in Ulsan want to start a ESL (English as second Language) website that provides resources for students who are learning, teachers who are teaching, schools who want to hire teachers, etc., etc.  There are already some pretty big players in that market, but these boys think they want to climb that hill anyway.  They had previously contracted with a company in the UK to construct their website, and they had done an admirable job piecing together some off-the-shelf web applications. They hadn’t, however, bothered to make the website look like a single, cohesive site rather than a bunch of disparate apps thrown together. Clicking from one function to another gave the user little to believe he was even on the same site.

Anyway, the two guys here knew I managed Ulsanonline.com and are frequent users of the site. They asked me if I could take over the work from the boys in the UK and I agreed — for a couple thousand bucks, sure.  So, beginning in April, I’ve been hard at work trying to make their site look like a single website with multiple functions.  Check it out and see what you think. Still not quite done and it’s not ready to launch (they’ll pay me more money to add functionality they has yet to be developed, such as online video classrooms) but at least it looks like a single website. The site is ESL Heaven.  I redesigned the front page and just put in some garbage text, but we’ll fix that…I think…these boys aren’t terribly web savvy and likely haven’t even read it.

I’ve also embarked on a “Best Of Ulsan” campaign for my own site, UlsanOnline.com.  I’ve modeled it after the “D Magazine” articles they did every year for best and worst of Dallas. I had to create a few forms for people to vote, a backend database to record all the votes and then tabulate them and then stay active online with trying to get the couple thousand or so foreigners here to fill it out.  Once voting is done, we’ll write multiple articles on which restaurant has the best x, which service provides the best y, etc.  But that’s just an add-on to the continual, on-going efforts of our very popular website and I write articles for it weekly.

June is our annual “Ulsan Inferno” event in which teams of motorcycles and scooters compete in a scavenger hunt/race/adventure challenge around the city and surrounding areas. I’m part of the planning committee on it this year, having won 1st and 2nd place in the event in 2010 and 2011, respectively. It’s a lot of fun and get’s people who sometimes don’t get out of the city much to see the smaller, lesser known points of interest in this beautiful country. We’re in the middle of planning for this event and that takes a few hours per week.

And if that weren’t enough, I’ve officially been inducted into City Hall’s newspaper efforts. They started last winter with a quarterly newspaper, printed both in Korean and in English. I had a loose arrangement where Ulsanline.com would supply a few articles for each issue but now I am on a team of eight in the paper’s planning committee and we’re setting out the strategy and content for each issue.

I think that’s all the work related things I have going on.  The rest of what keeps me busy is riding the bicycle and rock climbing.  With spring finally here, climbing is back on the agenda as is riding the bike. Gotta stay healthy.  And reading – I still love to read and since Jessie and Teri bought me a Kobo reader last year for my birthday I’ve consumed enormous amounts of text.  My physical bookshelf has been emptied and I gave all the paper books away to friends and some foreigner bars who stock books for lonely newcomers. But my virtual bookshelf of the books I’ve read continues to grow.

I’ll close with a few recent photos of me, just in case anyone forgets what I look like. The beard is gone.

Me and my dogs Sparky (r.) and SaTang on Munsu Mtn.

Sparky doesn't like to be too far away wherever we go. I'm belaying long-time climbing bud, Dee

The Three Amigos, From left Spark, Satang and litter-mate Corker

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By Marty, April 5, 2012 11:52 am

Just this past week it feels like spring might be here. Might. Just maybe.  While the end of March was warm, the first week of April turned bitter cold and windy again.  It’s usually warmer than this in April. Anyway, I took advantage of a decent Saturday afternoon and rode the bicycle out to the coast.  This time, I took the industrial section and rode along side the Hyundai Motors automobile factory.  With a few other, smaller factories in the middle, it then runs along side Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is the massive shipyards.  It’s really tough to portray through pictures the awesome perspective of this place, where factories sprawl for miles on end.  But, being the geek that I am, I am inclined to try.  First, my route, as outlined by Endomono, the application I use on my phone to track my cycling workout. It uploads my path to the internet so I can see where I am, or like now, where I was.

my route, from home on the left. About 38km but with some serious hills on the southern end

I’ve marked on the map the four spots where I took photos.

A.

The first place I stopped has always fascinated me. This is the loading area for Hyundai Motors, where the 1000s of cars they churn out every week are loaded onto ships for destinations around the world.  These ugly-ass, boxy ships are floating parking garages.  They are strictly car carriers and move, depending on size, from 1,200 to 8,000 cars per trip.  Hyundai Motors is  #4  in car production behind Toyota, GM and Volkswagon.

A Eukor vessel being loaded at the factory's seaside gate

teams of men drive cars in an endless stream onto the ship

While this ship is being loaded, other ships await their turn. I travel past this point on my motorcycle regularly and every day a different ship or sets are in port getting loaded. The number of cars  loaded and shipped seems mathematically  astronomical.

Three more ships wait in line to load cars

Meanwhile, across the highway from the bike path, the Hyundai parking lot is jammed with 1000s more autos, each awaiting their turn to being carried off. Although there really are a disproportionate number of white cars, this photo only makes it appear they ALL are white. Protective covering is laid on to hoods and tops and even parts of the sides to keep the sea salt and industrial pollutants in the area from tarnishing the vehicles before they ever hit the showroom.

This is a panorama view, so run your mouse across the image to slide it left and right.

Since this was a Saturday, traffic was fairly light. So was the bike traffic on which I rode. On a week day morning or evening, the paths are filled with bicycle-riding factory workers.

B.

Just around the corner from the car factory, the shipyard sprawl begins.  Just beside the bike and walking path, enormous sections of hulls line the way.

A large hull section is waiting to be placed in a berth

The ships are assembled in chunks, with each chunk being built in smaller covered buildings and then carried by massive cranes to berths where they are welded, bolted, glued and otherwise attached to form a ship.

The berths, beyond this building, are where ships are laid out in chunks and assembled

C.

To get those hull sections into place takes some massive gear. Enormous cranes carry hull sections, equipment and workers    around these incredibly large structures. Even on a Saturday, this place was bustling with workers, small trucks, jeeps, forklifts and equipment cranes.

These smaller cranes service the ships that are in for repairs or modification

These cranes, however, are the largest in the world, carrying 1,600 tons each as they drop hull sections into place

D.

They didn’t really like me taking photos. In this panorama, the security guard tried to wave me off and tell me I wasn’t allowed to photograph. Being the butthead that I am, I merely told him I was on a public road. High walls surround other parts of the shipyard, but the truck traffic in and out at this gate is just too much to deal with to have large gates open and close constantly. I took a few shots and then rode on.

This still photo panorama was belies the amount of activity going on here. Trucks, scooters, forklifts and people swarm the area as raw materials are brought in, unloaded, stored and ships are built.

On the far southern tip, a huge sea wall encloses large parts of the shipyard. Partially for protection from the weather, partially to keep out prying eyes (like mine) and partially to just keep the sea out, the walls form a huge ring for miles. Just another public road at this point, as fishermen are plentiful on the seaward side, where large numbers of ships await business in port.

I rode a long way on this seawall. That's a lot of concrete.

Outside the seawall, Koreans fish while ships wait their turn in port.

Inside the seawall, more huge hull sections line the path as they await the cranes that will place them in a berth

I could have ridden for hours longer around this place, but I was 20km from home and the afternoon was getting cool. I took my photos and headed back around the peninsula, back adjacent to the car factory and across the river to home. A relatively short ride, but I hope to get some truly epic rides in this summer.

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By Marty, March 16, 2012 1:58 pm

We’ve had a couple of nice days of weather and I took advantage of them with a little hiking.  Just behind our apartment is a nice park surrounding a smallish mountain and a pond. On nice days I take the dogs out and let them run on the many trails.  One day I decided to take my video camera and show off the city.

My video camera couldn’t zoom in enough, but I caught MyeongHee while she was on the phone
to me on the mountain. Anyway, just a little live action from here on the peninsula.

With the placement of the mountain I shot the video from and it’s position just south of the city, it blocks the majority of the petrochemical complex (Mordor!) from view. We still get a lot of its haze and funk, even if we can’t see the smokestacks because of the park in between.

A lot has changed since I first came to Ulsan, South Korea. That was eight years ago in April 2004.  None of the high rises were there. In fact, I still have a panorama photo I took of Ulsan in 2004. This photo is hazy, but that’s typical Ulsan air in the summer. It’s gotten quite a bit better since these hazy days, but this is the armpit and industrial hub of the nation and it is still funky and the brown streak is still visible in the video above.

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By Marty, December 28, 2011 10:35 pm

Another Christmas in Korea – certainly not the worst Christmas I’ve ever had.  I really wanted to come home but a lack of vacation, high airline prices and it jsut wasn’t gonna happen.  I made the best of it and MyeongHee and I went to Dee’s house for a Christmas pot-luck feast.

I’ve probably babbled on in the past about some of the benefits of living overseas. Forgive me if you’ve heard this before, but one of the cool things about being here is all the other teacher’s I’ve met from other parts of the globe.  Native English speakers are in high demand in Korea and they come from the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and probably a few other places I can’t remember. Anyway, this Christmas since it was a pot-luck dinner I got some grub that is traditional Christmas fare in other lands.  Nick is from England and made yorkshire pudding. I’d heard the name before, and I would have thought of it as like any other pudding we eat in America. Not so. It’s really a biscuit – a light and fluffy biscuit – that is then ladled over with gravy until it’s “sogified.”  That was awesome.  Arielle, another Brit, made Christmas figgy pudding. No figs, but various dried fruit. It was almost like a fruit cake, but wetter, more alcoholic and way richer. Especially after it was drenched in brandy and lit on fire.  Kimberly brought Scottish stuffing. It was good, but I like Mom’s stuffing better.   Dee made lots of roast chicken, gravy and potatoes and I brought bbq sausage for a little Texas flare.  Everyone brought a bottle of wine and we spent the day eating (all day, literally) and drinking.

It wasn’t a fabulous Christmas being away from home, but it was made a whole lot better with the good friends I have here. Despite being 10,000 miles from our various homes, we  made a family holiday a lot of fun for us.

Once home, I tried to call everyone, but apparently so did everyone else. I use Skype, a computer based program that let’s you call for just pennies a minute over computer networks.  I tried several times Sunday night and early Monday (late Sunday morning back home) and I couldn’t get through. Luckily, Jessica figured things out and called me on her mom’s home phone (no calling card – must’ve been expensive) so I got to talk to my girls.

So now that the big holiday is passed, I learned that I do get some vacation after all. I’m taking vacation on January 20th, which is just before Lunar New Year, another big Korean holiday. I’ll add those holidays into my vacation and get a whopping two weeks to come home.  I’ll arrive home on Saturday the 21st of January and won’t have to go back until Sunday morning on the 5th.   Not as good as last year’s six weeks home, but two weeks paid is a good deal.  Flights are much cheaper then, too.

Not much else to report, so I’ll sign off.

See you in Dallas in January!

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By Marty, December 12, 2011 10:56 am

Not much going on here….which is why I haven’t written lately.  It’s work-home-sleep-repeat for days on end.  These days, I’m not even working very much. I bring home a full salary – as much as any other teacher working full time, but I work only 19 hours a week.  Lots of time to read books, do some programming, write an article or two for my Ulsan website and generally slack off. I’d work more, but it’s difficult to find part time teaching gigs to fill the gaps in my existing schedule. Mostly, it’s 1pm-5pm with a couple of early morning business classes and a couple of evening private lessons.

We haven’t done much else as I’m trying to put back some money for my eventual return to the states. Previous years, we were able to save some decent coin. But this year has been harder. DongHyun started university in the spring and so we’re paying for that, while I’m still paying for Teri’s student loans and some back taxes I owed.  But we’re not making as much these days, either. MyeongHee’s hair shop hasn’t been near as busy – a new high rise apartment opened up next to her shop in 2009 and this year a new hair salon opened on the retail floor of the apartment building. She’s still making a profit, but we lived off her cash-only business and we socked my salary in to the back. I’m having to take my salary and pay a bit more for living and less in the bank these days.   She’d like to move her shop to a better location, but that takes both money and time. And with the plan to head back to the US in 2013 with her following in 2014 moving her shop just wouldn’t make sense. So, we live within our means and save what we can and plan for brighter days later.

In the meanwhile, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m close to 210lbs – down from nearly 240 earlier this year. The size 40 jeans I was wearing don’t fit and even the smallest size I own – size 36 – are a little big. Not sure why I’m losing weight as I haven’t been riding the bicycle since summer.   Still not a skinny boy, but I look a lot less fat than I did in the spring when I was in the U.S.

On Saturday, we had a total lunar eclipse here in Asia. In America it was not visible but we had clear skies and a great view as the Earth’s shadow passed over the moon and left it a very reddish tint.  It was directly overhead, so we had to watch from outside in the cold. We drank schnapps  and ate sweet potatoes  to keep us warm. I took a lot of pictures, but my camera just isn’t good enough to take really breathtaking shots. I did get this one that came out pretty decent, just towards the last 20-25% of the eclipse before it went all red. After that, my camera wouldn’t focus on the dim, red moon.

No plans for Christmas other than to stay warm. Both Christmas and New Years fall on a Sunday, which means that we won’t get any extra days off here.  But I hope everyone back home has a grand time over the holidays.

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By Marty, November 23, 2011 12:43 pm

I really wish I could be home this year for Thanksgiving. I haven’t had a decent turkey dinner with all the trimmings in years. Although that would just be the cherry on top, so to speak. I really miss my family and friends.  I’ll try to call sometime over the holidays, but it’s going to be tough to do it while everyone’s together – 15 hour time zone difference makes mid-afternoon America an early morning thing here.

I’ve decided that unless something spectacular happens between now and then I won’t be coming home for Christmas. Flights are just too expensive. I get 10 days vacation, but so does everyone else and the prices are jacked up from mid-December through mid-January. If I can swing it, I’ll defer my vacation until spring and get a cheaper flight. If that doesn’t work, I may just stay until early 2013 when the lease is up on our apartment and I’ll move back to America. Of course, that all depends on the economy in the US – and that’s anyone’s guess as to what that will be like.

This weekend is another kimchi weekend at the mother-in-law’s house. Cabbages are on sale all over the vegetable markets in town. It’s also MyeongHee’s mom’s birthday, so we’ll go up on Saturday evening, have a small party and then make kimchi.

This past weekend was a climbing fest in Munsu. The Korea on the Rock climbing group folks came into town and replaced a bunch of old rusted hardware on the mountain so that future climbing is safe. I personally took off a few terribly rusted anchors and replaced them with shiny new stainless steel chains. Then we climbed that route, which we hadn’t done in years because of the rotten condition of the anchor.  Here’s a link from the KOTR folks with more details and pictures.

The one the left is the old crusty one, and the new stuff on the right. The bolt on the left was a little rusty but still solid and another crew will come out in the next week or two to replace that. They were having trouble with the charge on the drill battery running out before it should have, so not enough bolts were drilled. Crappy anchors removed, the climb is tons safer than it was.
Again, any climbers wanting a tour of Korea would be well advised to plan a trip next year. After that, you’ll have to find your own way around as I hope to be back in America.

That goes for the rest of you, too: of all my family and friends back home, and all the years I’ve been here, only two friends have ever come to visit Korea, Mark in 2007 and Kim in 2005. We’ve got a spare bedroom so we could put you up and give you the $2 dollar tour. 2012 is likely the last chance to visit this place and get a guided tour.

A few pictures from this weekend:

The crew works diligently to remove old anchors on top of a 33 meter route

Late in the afternoon, the sunset turned things magically orange

My trusty climbing partners wait for me to finish replacing an anchor

Anywho, not much else going on here. My Thanksgiving celebration will likely be no more than drawing a picture of a roast turkey on the blackboard and explaining the holiday that is this week. Guaranteed to get a million questions about what turkey tastes like since they don’t eat much of it here. Few people have ovens at all since most Korean meals are either grilled or pan cooked. The few that do are not large enough to prepare a bird of that size. And besides, they like their meat with scads of red pepper, and I’m not sure that would even taste good.

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By Marty, November 14, 2011 7:59 pm

After four rainy weekends in row we finally had a nice weather weekend. I took advantage of the sunshine and went  up to Munsu for a couple of climbs. I wish I would have done more than the three short routes I did, but all that rain gave me a cold.

The dogs had a great time running around on the mountain, although it wasn’t as much fun or them as last time when we saw the goats up there. Lots of goat poop all around the trails, but we didn’t see the goats.  On the way back down the mountain I asked the old monk about the goats. He told me that they were neither his goats nor the farm down in the valley. They’re wild goats! They’re bugging him, leaving pellets all around his mini-temples and shrines. So he encouraged us to catch them and eat them.

SaTang relaxes between climbs

Both dogs are snack hounds, waiting for a handout

Hunting goat might be something fun to do next weekend. There is a large group of climbers from around Korea coming to our mountain for a route-repair weekend. Korea on the Rocks, and an initiative group that sprung from it have a yearly program to preplace old worn out climbing hardware on only a couple of mountains per year. Munsu got two of the four projects this year and the routes are looking spectacular – no more sketchy bolts or anchors. They have done a great job so far and next weekend there will be even more of our 70+ routes cleaned up. KOTR’s website is a great resource for climbers in Korea (284 separate climbing locations in this small country. And for my climbing readers back in Texas – it’s a must-read before hitting the walls out here in kimchi land – and this might be my last year to give you a tour of Korea and a sofa to sleep on.

Or maybe a full bed.  MyeongHee’s son, DongHyun went down to Busan today for his military medical fitness test. Not sure what what the outcome was, but I’m betting he’s fine.  He’s a healthy young man. They say once the physical is done, they’ll send a letter detailing when to show up for military service. We predict early next year. He’s already gone 5 of 7 days a week up in Daegu at the university. Once he goes in the Army, however, he’ll have just a few short trips home thoughout his 2 year stint.

Yesterday, we went to Ulsan Grand Park. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were lots of people in the park. I guess everybody else was enjoying the weather after the crap weekends we’ve had.

We found a nice maple tree in the park for a picture

or two or three. Hard to get the dogs in the shot

MyeongHee poses next to a large praying mantis

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By Marty, November 6, 2011 8:31 pm

Make that 4 rainy weekends in a row. This is getting a little ridiculous. For four weeks now it’s been sunny and brilliant blue skies all week and then its rained on the weekend.  Sad weather.

Fortunately, I have lots of movies to watch and books to read. Not much to do outside.