Comments (0)

By Marty, April 28, 2011 11:47 am

Less than two days after the bike was stolen I got it back!  Woo hoo! I must be living right!

It turns out the thief sold it to a “friend” and the “friend” brought it to OMK Bicycle shop in Ulsan. OMK is one of several bike shops that know me, but these guys do all the mechanical work on my bike and are also my business partners on my other website, Ulsanonline.com.  They have been regular advertisers on the site and regular mechanics for me. It was no surprise they recognized the bike since a) I just had some work done on it last week and b) the seat was still raised high enough to accommodate a 6’1″ dude.  I’m betting the “friend” is the thief himself and unloaded it as quickly (and as far from my house – 5 miles) as he could. The bike shop owners convinced him the police would be looking for such a bike (they weren’t – I didn’t even call them since the thief had a mask and hat) and that it would be foolish to openly ride it around town.  They called me on Wednesday evening and I picked up the bike Thursday.

Honestly, I think it pays to be a white-face among a sea of Asian faces. Lots of Koreans know me because I look so different. But if I see them outside of the normal environment I have come to know them (i.e I see the butcher not at his store but at the park) I don’t always recognize them.  Back home in teh USA I’d be just another forgettable guy whose bike was ganked.

Anyway, as I expected, when I got the bike  the compact air pump was gone, as was the saddle bag with tools and spare tube. The thief also took the speedometer/odometer but he left the sensor on the front wheel so that’s useless.  All minor problems.  I immediately bought a hand-phone case from OMK BIkes (I love those guys) that will let me clip the phone to the handlebars and I can run Endomondo, a GPS-enabled application on the phone that will track my speed, miles, calories – an even better tool than a mere speedometer/odometer.  Now I just need another air pump and tool bag with tools and I’m set for the long rides into the mountains.

The only bad news from all of this is that my bike now lives in the apartment where we really don’t have room for it.  Even chained to the metal handrails on the stairwell outside the apartment offers no protection from a bolt cutter.

Comments (0)

By Marty, April 17, 2011 10:35 am

And so on and so forth…

Getting back to Korea from my long vacation in the USA was no big ordeal.

Getting from the airport to home was indeed an ordeal, however.  In an effort to make the flight/airport time (i.e. time in a kennel) easier for SaTang, I tried to get the most direct route home.  I usually fly out of Busan to Tokyo and then on to DFW. For whatever crazy reason, even though people were avoiding Japan due to the radiation potential, flights through Tokyo were double the cost of fares to other cities. Flying to Beijing and then on to Busan was cheaper by half but far longer in time to be cooped up in a kennel. Same with Hong Kong or Singapore.  I chose to fly direct to Seoul and then use the trains get to the opposite end of the peninsula.

We got into Incheon airport near Seoul after a mere 14 hours flying time. Happy to have come through security and animal customs cleanly and avoided the Japanese radiation, I took SaTang out of her kennel and we headed for the train from the airport to the main train station. Trust me when I tell you that process is far easier for those who travel light. I had a rolling bag and heavy backpack and a kennel to carry through the numerous escalators and elevators to get just to the train was  a trek.

Once on the train, we had about 40 minutes to ride to the central Seoul Station where I could hop the fast KTX train to Ulsan. We got to the station and had to navigate our way through several levels upward to the station itself from the tracks. Getting into or onto a combination of escalators and very slow elevators with all my gear and dog was extreme. I hope to never have to do that again.

At the train station, I showed the ticketmaster at the counter the email with the ticket number MyeongHee had already purchased for me. Although she bought it almost two weeks prior, it was standing room only.  I would have to stand the two hours on the train. Furious, I told her to cancel that and I’d get another train. No dice – everything on Friday night out of Seoul was standing room only. I could have taken a bus home but that would be five hours more and I wasn’t up for it. I repurchased a ticket and waited for my ride/stand home.

While I waited, I tried to take SaTang outside so she could pee or poop. She’d been in the kennel for a long while and hadn’t done either. Outside the train station in Seoul is a virtual circus of humanity. More than a few drunks and derelicts expressed love and affection for my cute doggie and had to be literally beaten off before she bit them. Like myself, she was a little peeved and irritable from a long flight. I smacked one drunk to the ground and bundled up our stuff to get away from them. We had to go down the ramp rather than the stairs because of all I carried and that’s where the drunks prefer to pee since the ramp had waist-high concrete walls to shield prying eyes. I threw rocks at one drunk in our path who was peeing and finally got him to make way. SaTang got the hint, however, and decided this was as good a place as any to pee and let it rip.  I decided it would be better to wait inside where the drunks and retards weren’t so populous. I bought us both a hamburger at McDonalds and gave her the meat. I had to fight off a few more drunks and homeless who wanted my hamburger, the dog’s hamburger, me to buy them one or me to just give them the money.

Perhaps its the vast difference in price between planes and trains and buses, but I find far less drunks and derelicts in the airports. What a place.

Already up for almost 24 hours by then, I was waiting to board the train when someone asked me if I shouldn’t be getting on. My watch said I had two hours to go but it was actually 14 hours behind – I forgot to change the time from Dallas, CST.  I had mere minutes to get on the train and I ran (or more like hobbled) with SaTang, my rolling bag, backpack and kennel to get through two more escalators to the tracks. I missed my train by seconds and was left pounding on the doors as it pulled away. Arrrgh!

I got on the next train a half hour later and was finally on my way home. It was only a two hour ride from Seoul and standing was only part way. Once some of the people got off and various cities along the way I could take a seat and relax. MyeongHee picked us up at the Ulsan station at 10:20pm and we were home by 11, a whopping 24 hours of non-stop travel.

Now that I’ve had a day to relax and adjust to the time zone, it’s time to get busy here in Korea. Lots to catch up on, including this blog, but some photos to post, videos to make and, not least, find a new job.

Comments (0)

By Marty, February 20, 2011 10:49 am

We pulled a Matrix stunt this weekend while on a bus trip to the resort. Bullets, in the form of bus wheels, flew off. Near misses. No bodily harm caused but lots of fear.

The weekend ski trip is a pretty cheap deal here in Korea. For less than $90 you get a 4 hour bus ride there and back, lift tickets and ski or board rentals. Our trip started at 4am and I rode my scooter at 3:45 am to join my friends. Once on the bus, we chatted briefly and then we all leaned back in our seats for a snooze while we drove to the ski mountain. I had a hard time sleeping as I was sitting near the rear of the bus and kept hearing a strange harmonic “whop whop whop” sound and a slight shimmy.  I’m not bus driver so I didn’t worry too much about it. I figured the bus driver knows his bus better than I.

Less than 2 hours into a 4 hour drive I heard a bump and the driver pulled off the highway. I though we were stopping at a rest stop but the driver got out and started talking rapidly on his cell phone. Not a good sign. I got out to see what the matter was.

Where is our second wheel

It was still before sunrise and a little hard to see. But clearly, we were missing something here. Our bus was listing hard to the left and the rear tire was dangerously compressed. It wasn’t immediately clear what really occurred. A quick look at the right side showed us what it ought to look like:

There should be two wheels on the rear of the bus. This is the right rear side and the wheels and tires extend to the edge of the bus body. Then looking again at the left side it was clear what the shimmy and whop-whop noise was: We had a flat and the driver ignored it. He ignored the noise and shimmy for so long, in fact, that we lost the entire wheel. It must have worked itself right off the studs.

We went back on the bus to wait for a repair job. Then we learned that it would be a two hour wait for a new bus to pick us up and continue the journey. A new bus? Why?

It was after dawn before we realized the truth of what really happened.   Once the sun had come up enough to give us some light, this is what we saw.

both wheels are off the studs with one wheel completely missing

We had nearly lost both wheels. We clearly dodged a bullet. I think the final bump we heard before pulling off the road was the remaining wheel slipping off the studs and resting on the hub.  Metal shavings littered the hub, wheel and ground and left a trail for many meters back along the highway. Nowhere behind us was our missing wheel, which means it must have fallen off quite a while back.  Our bus had come very close to pulling a Fred Flintstone and simply rolling over on it’s side. Had that happened at highway speeds of 100km/hour (70mph) things would have gone very badly. Instead, the driver pulled over just before things got really frisky and our biggest headache was a two hour wait for a replacement bus.

Once we were on our way, we got to the ski mountain late, but just in time for lunch and skiing. Our package was for 9am to 4pm but the tour group adjusted the lift times for us (quite complicated here in Korea compared to the simple full-day or half-day prices back in the USA) and we skied from 12:30 until 6pm. We arrived back in Ulsan around 11pm.

On the top, the obligatory photo

We went to “High One” a resort in GangwanDo province. Not a very big ski resort by most standards, but adequate. Only 18 runs are placed around a mountain, the top of which is only about 1200 meters. There are just a few beginner courses, completely overrun with people and more of a roller-derby game than skiing. An equal number of intermediate and advanced and a couple of professional runs and snowboard technical courses dot the higher slopes.

I spent the early afternoon getting my ski legs adjusted. It had been a year since I skied and didn’t want to go too far, too fast, too soon. I’m an old man, after all.  Once I felt comfortable skiing and had my carving skills honed by dodging the thousands of beginners on the easy green slopes I took to the blues and reds.

Experts Only. But I did several of these

No hill for a stepper like me. I plunged down the “expert only” red slopes (in Korea, red is what American’s would view as a blue or perhaps double blue diamond run) and found them to be only steep and fast with almost no moguls (bumps). Of course, I felt a little studly going down the expert runs, but no serious skier would consider these expert only. If you’ve ever been to Taos ski mountain, these would be a difficult blue there. But at least I had the runs mostly to myself and I could ski with abandon. The easier slopes were too crowded with people.

Mountainous Gangwan province, complete with brown haze

Since we arrived late and our lift times were adjusted onward to 6pm, the slopes started to clear off after 4:30. Quite a few other one-day bus trips left at that point and the only remaining skiers were those spending the night in pricey hotels or, like us, leaving later. The higher slopes were shut down, but the lower, green slopes, although easier, were cleared of most of the people. Overall, despite the bullet dodging, not a bad day.

Comments (1)

By Marty, February 6, 2011 10:32 am

Yesterday we got into a car accident. Not a big one and no one was injured. It was startling, though, and we were all shaken.

We were travelling back to Ulsan from a trip to Costco in Busan. We had a load of groceries in the trunk and were just dealing with the massive amount of traffic on the roads. This week was Lunar New Years and being Saturday, the 4th of a five day weekend, many people were heading home and the roads were jammed. We were on the new interstate between Ulsan and Busan and we weren’t going very fast – maybe 40km/hr (about 25mph) and were in one of the many tunnels that burrow through the mountains between the two cities.  Dim, yellowish lighting in the tunnel makes it difficult to see so all of the lanes are marked off with a solid white line, which means no lane changing. This being Korea, however, rules are rarely followed.  One man decided my lane was better than his and he decided he wanted to be in my lane. Unfortunately, we were still in it. He side-swiped us while along the right from the front passenger door to the bumper. His van was scratched from end to end. Koreans generally don’t (nor are they taught to) look in their blind spot when changing lanes (I berated MyeongHee about this for weeks when she first got her license) and this guy was no exception. Had he look, he would have seen us: we were just to his left when he careened into us.

No worries, though, as it was just a flesh wound to the car and everything still functioned. It was only a matter of getting the official things done.  MyeongHee called the insurance company who came out to the scene within 15 minutes or so. He inspected the accident, took a few pictures and then asked us to drive out of the tunnel and out of traffic (I’m sure we caused an even great backup while we sat in the middle of the tunnel) so he could take better pictures in daylight. We spent another 10 minutes there while he took our stories of the accident. He figured ti would take 2 days or so to fix our car and asked if we needed a rental. Yes, we told him, we would. He then suggested we follow him to a repair shop where we could drop off the car  and pick up a rental. We still had a trunk full of groceries and I thought this would be a long, drawn out trip through busy Busan traffic followed by a stack of paperwork.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We drove maybe 10 minutes through heavy traffic to a repair shop, spent all of 2 minutes doing paperwork and then were on our way home again in a new rental, our groceries safely transferred to the new trunk. I thought that was pretty efficient, but that sometime this week we’d have to drive back down to Busan to pick our car from the repair shop. Wrong again. They deliver. MyeongHee gave them the address to her hair shop and they’ll drop it off when they’re finished and pick up the rental.  Although any accident is a hassle, this was absolutely almost zero hassle.

Say what you will about Korean drivers and their lack of blind spot checking, rule following or whatever. But the efficiency they have in getting things done, as experienced by this accident and by last week’s highly efficient apartment move, and we’re pretty happy campers.  By contrast, the last time I moved in America was from Plano to Farmer’s Branch and Circe hired a moving company to get it all. It took nearly all day and twice the price they quoted her (and 2X what we paid here.)  And the last car accident I had in America was an exercise in dealing with insurance company estimates, finding a garage, dealing with the rental agency and then returning said rental; a far from almost zero hassle experience.

One final bright spot was that this accident will also repair a nice long scratch on the car we got a month ago when we had our first snow storm and slid into  a parked truck. We were prepared to fix that on our nickel but this guy yesterday was nice enough to side-swipe us and have his insurance company fix it for us.

Comments (1)

By Marty, January 10, 2011 9:29 am

I called up American Airlines this weekend in search of deals. I have about 30,000 frequent flier miles built up from previous years trips back home and thought I might be able to use them. I had been looking on the websites like Travelocity for a way to get home cheap and even the AA site to perhaps get an upgrade. No luck in either course so I had to go stone-age and use a telephone.

Anyway, for the miles I have, AA has decided they can get me home for a mere $76 – all in fees and taxes – and 25,000 of my miles.  That’s a one-way trip. I’ll have to buy my return trip later, which will likely run around $600-800. But that means my stay at home is for as long as I can stand being away from my lovely wife, or as long as my money holds out.

I haven’t made it official, but will this week – I’m waiting on a couple of universities to decide I’m a great guy and offer me a job for the semester starting in March. I’m only giving them four more days as I have only five for the reservation I made to expire if I don’t buy it/mile it.  For $76, I suppose I can always change it to June when summer vacation begins.

Anyway, mark your calendars. March 6th at 9:20am I’ll arrive at DFW airport.

Comments (0)

By Marty, October 24, 2010 11:17 am

I’ve been remiss in writing here lately. Not because I don’t like or want to, but simply because I haven’t had time.

Two of Circe’s friends came to Korea to visit. Not me, specifically, but they made a side trip. Brandon and MJ, neither of whom I had met before, came to Korea to visit Brandon’s sister in Busan. Since that’s just down the coast from Ulsan they made a side trip up and spent the morning with me. I showed them my little Shangrai La and a little about the city. We ended up taking a short hike in the mountains for a quick visit at Paraiso Waterfalls, one of the 12 scenic areas of Ulsan.

Brandon and MJ at Paraiso Waterfall in the Yeongnam Alps near Ulsan

They were really nice people, which isn’t surprising being Circe’s friends. We had a nice time and they brought me some pinto beans and flavored creamer for my coffee – two things that just don’t exist here in Korea. I gave them a set of suction cups (medieval things, really, designed to suck the “bad blood” from a small area) to take back to Circe for her massage business.

Last week I was busy hosting a teaching course. Through my Ulsanonline.com business I advertised the course, registered attendees and secured a room. The course instructors merely had to show up and teach and I got about 10% of the fees.  That was a lot of leg work in running around getting things setup.

During that time, a pair of Italian journalists contacted me. They planned to come to Ulsan to do a story on shipbuilding and were looking for places to stay. Again, because of Ulsanonline, they contacted me and asked for help. There aren’t many English language websites (or anything else) in this city so a quick google for anything in Ulsan and chances are you’ll hit my site. Anyway, I pointed them in the direction of a hotel to stay in and helped them get access to Hyundai Shipyards. I didn’t know anyone at the shipyards, but I tried.

Things turned out pretty damn good, actually. I contacted YoungSook you was the director at my school. She has excellent English and I thought she could help translate Korean into English for them. She came out with MyeongHee and I when we met with teh jourmalists, Maria and Marco, and she called some of her friends to see if they knew anyone at the shipyards. After a few phone calls she a fairly high level manager – the husband of a friend of a friend – and he gave Maria and Marco an interview. That was interesting as YoungSook translated his Korean into English for Maria who translated English into Italian for Marco who then asked questions  back down the same chain.

Youngsook(l) translates English for Marco and Maria from the Korean of Mr Kim(r)

After an hour or so of sitting at a park near the shipyards and talking, we got a private tour of the shipyards from the manager. We were all blown away by the sheer size of the place. We were told no pictures, which really frustrated the journalists, but because this guy was not just some guy by apparently #3 or 4 in the place he allowed us a few shots.

The Guest House at the Shipyards

The guest house is where dignitaries stay when they visit the shipyards. They selling ships for a few hundred million dollars each and its not uncommon for some high level people to visit and see what they’re state funds are going for. Lesser accommodations for the ship crews who take possession of the ships are not quite so fancy. This nice house was right on the cliffs overlooking the ocean at the edge of the shipyard.

On the other side of teh guest house, looking back toward the shipyards, I was allowed to take a picture of the crane.

A massive crane that move sections of the ships are they are put together

These beasts hold up to 1,290 tons of ship as they move huge sections together for assembly. When they move, its not the monotonous beep-beep-beep of a tractor or backhoe, but the music of a carousel and they play a catchy melody as they slowly move on the rails over the assembly line.  They allowed Maria to take a couple of discreet pictures of the place for their book and magazine, but they were very cautious. Apparently, industrial espionage is rampant – they tell me that an engineering feat of shaving even a tiny fraction of 1% efficiency in a ship design can save millions of dollars in fuel cost.

Honestly, the sheer magnitude of the place was overwhelming. A place large enough to turn out about 70+ ships a year – that’s more than one ocean-going monster vessel per week. But each one must “dry” the paint, waterproofing, welding, etc for a period of two years before delivery.  We drove in the manager’s car around the area for nearly 40 minutes with our jaws dropped most of the time.

I stole a few pictures from their website just to give you a hint of the place’s enormity.

Aerial view of the Hyundai shipyards. The guest house is the brown hill in the center

So anyway, that was quite an adventure, made more exciting by the fact that I got to be in the middle of it someone else’s journaling. Maria and Marco spent another week or so here and YongSook helped again with translations. Since my role of putting them in touch with both a translator and shipyard contacts complete I didn’t get to go but apparently they got even better pictures in their 2nd and 3rd shipyard visit. Maria sent me a few links of their other work, most of which is about the shipping industry including an icebreaker trip and drilling platform. Their next journey is to Pakistan where they’ll document the ship graveyard – where ships are dismantled for scrap. Check out their work here:

http://www.letteraventidue.com/libri/016_grandeatl.html

http://periodici.repubblica.it/d/index.jsp?num=692&page=76

http://periodici.repubblica.it/d/index.jsp?num=632&page=46

Meanwhile, I’m back at home and making a pot of beans. Later, I’ll spice them up and ladle them over a plate of chips and grate some cheese over them for a bad-ass plate of nachos. Not getting this stuff very often makes it a special treat.

Comments (0)

By Marty, September 14, 2010 12:16 pm

MyeongHee and I have taken to short rides in the country on Sunday afternoons. We hop on the scooter and ride where ever things look interesting, which is just about anywhere outside the city. It’s mid September and the farmers are all expecting great harvests from the looks of things – lots of sun and rain this summer.

We stopped at two places this past Sunday that were worth a photo. The first was a historical marker of a nobleman who over 1000 years ago went on a quest to rescue the two sons of the King. One went to the far northern part of Korea, which some even claim is China, and the other was taken to Japan. This guy saved both sons but was tortured to death by the Japanese. The Koreans still revere this guy and have built a small museum around where his home was. All of these pictures link to a full size shot if you want to see more.

These two pictures are of the “living room”, which clearly has no front wall.

MyeongHee and I take turns posing at the front gate of the home.

Hard to see in just a few photos, but this time of years is awesome. Bright blue skies and warm days followed by cool nights. We made this trip just after 5pm and by the time we got up to this memorial the sun was casting long shadows and the air was growing quite cool.  Not cool enough to go home, however. We continued on up into the mountains to this very quaint Buddhist temple. Only an old nun, her head shorn as the women will do in the temples, was home. She was very kind however, and invited us back when the temple’s owner, a German, would return. Go figure. An English speaking Buddhist temple owning German in the mountains of Korea.

I have to remember to bring my real camera next time. My smartphone takes only middling grade pictures and this one of the brightly colored temple is a bit fuzzy

Everyone knows Marty likes garden ponds. This one was nice.

We especially liked the little baby Buddhas lined up like a small army below the Bodhisattva, most of them with yellow wool caps, but a few with bright red ones.

Next week is Chuseok – Korean Thanksgiving. We’ll see what treats that brings.

Comments (0)

By Marty, August 2, 2010 3:59 pm

With 50 million people in a country the size of Indiana it’s a little crowded. Toss in the fact that 60% of the place is mountainous and the crowding becomes even more severe.

MyeongHee and I had decided earlier in the week that’d go out on Sunday and have a picnic along one of the rivers. We started out early to beat the crowds, but apparently, everyone else had the same time at the same time. We left a little after 9am in search of a spot where we would wade in the cold water coming down the mountain but still find some shade out of the fierce August heat. Our usual spot about 30 minutes out of town was already full. SO was the next spot, and the next and the next. The roads were jammed with people, and sometimes, in typical Korean fashion, the roads were jammed with empty cars, the owners of which didn’t seem to care if they blocked or impeded traffic.

We ended up driving nearly two hours to find a spot that wasn’t overrun with people. But that’s not all bad. We ended up taking some roads we hadn’t travelled and found some interesting sights.

We took this twisting mountainous road which winds up the right side of this lake. While it’s not that far from home as the crow flies, its a long way since we had to drive around several mountains to get there.

This is pretty much what our little corner of Korea looks like once outside the city. There are a lot of mountains and not much else. There aren’t a lot of roads through them, and few, if any, homes tucked into and around them.  That’s always amazed me as I compare them with my memories of Colorado or New Mexico there are homes sprinkled throughout most places. For whatever reason, as crowded as the cities are, Koreans tend the leave the mountains to themselves. Sure, there are the very occasional mountain homes, and of course some Buddhist temples, but the majority of the buildings near the bases of the mountains, along the rivers.  In fact, one can find numerous “pensions” along most of the mountain rivers. Pensions are what we would call a “lodge” or “cabin” but are essentially the same – a rented building for a weekend getaway.

This was our “shady spot” we found. Not even a tree, but a weed that regrows every year and produces enormous leaves.  We picked this place at the base of the dam (visible behind MH)  in the previous two pictures. The water flowing from out of the damn was wonderously cool and refreshing. For our picnic, MyeongHee made samgyeopsal – pork with slices of garlic and red bean paste wrapped in lettuce leaves. Meanwhile, I relaxed in the shade and played with the two dogs while throngs of people played in the water away from us.

Next time, we want to go to “Ice Valley,”  another mountain valley with a cold running stream nearby. This one is famous for it’s summer (not winter) ice forming because of the strange thermodynamics of the rocks and wind.

Comments (0)

By Marty, July 30, 2010 6:12 pm

Nothing like playing in the mud. I haven’t done that since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  Or something like that…

Anyway, there’s an annual festival on the west coast of Korea – the Mud Festival!   The city is just a small thing tucked into a bay that has some serious mud flats. They decided a few years back to capitalize on their geology by making the festival around the mud – some of which is used in making makeup and skins creams.

A group of my friends here all decided to make it a group trip so 22 of us crowded into a small bus for a five hours trip to the west coast. We left at 6:45am and spent the ride drinking and telling off-color jokes.  It rained the whole way there and was still raining when we got to the beach. Not that rain was going to matter – we were planning on playing in the mud, so what’s a little rain? By the time we got settled in our resort, unpacked and headed out to the beach the rain was just a slight drizzle but the air was warm.

Although there were quite a few Koreans there, this is probably a 70% foreigner attended affair. Lots of young people – teachers, engineers and more than few military.  The event had lots of activities including colored mud body painting, mud slides, mud mosh-pits, mud slinging areas and mud slathering areas. We liked the slathering area as it was more of a love-fest, rubbing gooey sticky mud all over each other. It turned into a mud slinging area when the army boys got there and got rowdy.

I had my camera in a ziplock baggie to keep out the rain and the mud – it worked pretty well, but it was cumbersome and a couple of the pictures didn’t turn out well.   I thought about posting them here, but it’s just too easy to post to facebook. I hope this link to my facebook album works for those of you who don’t facebook.

My facebook MudFest photos

Our resort was really nice. It was about a 30 minute walk from the beach but that was fine – everything near the beach is a 24 hour party and those of us who aren’t into that were happy while the others could make a short trip to party ’til they puked. They did and they puked. A lot.  The resort was less than a  year old and still had that new building smell.  We had a hot tub that got some serious use, too.  Although my pictures of the hot tub are fuzzy (probably a good thing) there was a significant amount of nudity.

Across the parking lot, there was a pool for the whole place. Lots of little kids and families. When we got in to play on Sunday morning, the Koreans all moved to one end and left of us to our end. We did a couple of experiments and slowly eased our group off the center and into “their” side, each time crowding them further and further into the shallow end. Whether it was fear or loathing, we weren’t sure. But the Koreans in general could be herded into a rather small area by subtly expanding our little circle. Fun stuff – someone should write a paper on non-verbal communication about it someday.

We headed back around noon on Sunday and by then the rain had finished and Sunday was bright and sunny and humid. Just in time for a hot bus ride home.

It was a much needed getaway from Ulsan. This week, I started a short, two week course at Ulsan University. They have a group of students who are going to spend a semester in Canada so they’re prepping them for living in an English-speaking city with a 4-hour/day intensive speakign and writing class. I’m working 4 hours in the morning and then  another 7.5 in the afternoon/evening at my normal school. For two weeks, I’ll feel like I’m back in the real world again working long hours and having to wake up with an alarm clock. It’s been a few years since I used one – other than vacation buses or planes.   I’d actually like to turn this short time gig into a full time job – and I might have a good shot at it. The head of the English department at Ulsan Univ, a Korean man, studied in the US – at the University of North Texas – same as me. We traded some stories of bars and restaurants in Denton that we’d both been to.  He’s a nice guy and I’m hoping our shared past might help me get into the University. We’ll see.

Comments (2)

By Marty, June 10, 2010 11:53 am

Just a smattering of photos from last week’s Scooter Inferno.

Me and my partner, Sam, with our Grand Prize winnings - a couple of helmets and goggles

The Bonus shot - Dancing Girls. Almost every store grand opening or big sale event has a pair out front

At Tohamsan Garden restaurant deep in the mountains between Ulsan and GyeongJu

At the monument to Canada nuclear engineers near the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant. I think the radiation made me get a little crazy

The Sea Penis. I swear they look just like dicks in their tubs. Pick one up and it will pee

From left, Sam, Nikki, me, Scott, Dee and Wolfie. Two teams working together until the last 15 minutes

Lots more pictures, but some aren’t fit for publication. And here, also is a the video created for the awards banquet.  Check it out.

Anyway, that’s all for now.