Start of Research

The last time we met our traveling protagonist he was sitting in a cafe on the campus of Korea University.  The taste of coffee seemed to compliment the sweet jazz kicks flowing through the speakers.

Anyways; I contemplated writing the whole post in the third person; but after getting to the third or fourth paragraph I realized that there's just no way I could keep it up.  Here's a picture of the street that the Cafe is on:

Also they have some really awesome [looking] forms of two wheeled transportation.  This one's called the "MAD ASS"  -- which is a hillarious name; but here we go:

Which is probably something like 125cc but still looks like it has some serious punch to it.  The next noteable example is this cafe racer.  I think it's pretty sweet because it does a really good job of staying true to the spirit of the cafe racer style bike; but has a nice modern touch to it; on top of what looks like a fairly small engine (250cc?)

Anyways; shortly after the cafe, Charlie and I met back up with Andrea and Kalon -- who had by this point been hanging out with Tim (an alumni of the program who is pretty knowledgeable about the area.)  We talked to him for a while and he gave us suggestions for where to go to get some shopping done.  


The next stop was Dongdaemon (the shopping district) which was filled with little street shops like:

After this we headed back to KU (Korea University) land.  Kalon and Charlie went to the "Dollar Store" and in the meantime Andrea and went to get her passport and bought her a cell phone at the same little shop that we got Charlie's at.  The last part of the evening was the first reunion of the Seoulites -- the EAPSI'ers who live and near Seoul for the summer:

I know it's a terrible picture but it's all I've got -- the food ordering experience was pretty fun because no-one knew what anything meant :)  A lot of guessing happened; and for the most part we were pretty sucessful.  As you can tell by the picture -- I ate more fish!

For the rest of the evening we walked around for a while; stopped at an icecream shop and eventually ended up chilling at another bar for an hour and a half or so.  The bar food was some kind of cereal on the side; with a giant bowl filled with shaved ice, some kind of milky liquid and a ton of fruit.  After this we all headed back.

The next morning the first thing we did was meet up for more food:

We didn't really know what we were getting -- or how to read the menu...  It worked out great for the three of us; but Andrea (vegetarian) ended up just eating rice...  After lunch we went to go visit Charlie's future workplace and spent a lot of time just walking around the KU campus.  This went on until it was time for Kalon and I to pack up to head to our new dorm -- or so we thought.

After wheeling down our massive bags from the top of the hill (delawareans would call it a mountain) and carting them into the underground via several flights of stairs; just before getting on the metro we got a call that said we couldn't move into the dorms that night due to some kind of weird reason.  So naturally we had to take our stuff all the way back up to Charlie's.

The next morning we took a taxi to SNU from KU -- the fare ended up being about $20 -- super reasonable being that we had over 150 pounds of luggage and it was the middle of rush our.  And that's how our first day in lab began.



So..  First things first -- The guys in this lab are awesome.  We finally met the infamous 원진 (Rom: Wonjin).  The other guys are pretty cool too; there's 헨절 (Rom: Haenjuhl, I think...), who goes by the monkier "the captain", 지나 (Jina), 민 (Rom Min), is the sarcastic sarcastic dude.  Here's a pic of him wearing my glasses:

And me wearing his -- the famous Korean black thick-rimmed style:

He claims that they make me look smarter.  Let me know if you agree!  Continuing there's 태행 (Taehyung) and 헤동 (Haedong) which for some reason stick in my mind as something of a dynamic duo -- but that might be just because they walked into the room at the same time.  More on this later!

There's 석진 who we call Jin -- which ironically is the same romanization as our crazy tour guide.  He's a bit less crazy and a bit more engineer.  He will actually be heading back to the U.S.A. before me because he got an appointment as a graduate student at Texas A&M!  경주 and 병선 (Kyoung Ju and Byoung Sun) round up the pack -- Byoung Sun now goes as "zen" which is a better romanization than the one I used above for the last part of his first name.

 경주 is the girl that had come over with Dr. Yu back when he did his sabatical back in Newark.  She didn't know that I was coming -- so she was really surprised when she walked into the door and saw me sitting at a desk in the office!  Shocked look on her face and an exclamation of "Ooh Hi!!"  -- It was pretty funny, especially since 태행 had already predicted that outcome!

Soon I will try to get a group photo of the group to post!  In the meantime here is a picture of the dorm that we eventually moved into:

Tuesday we met with Dr. Yu and talked about the reseaerch we'd be doing this summer.  If you're not interested in the technical part you can go ahead and skip the next paragraph...

Basically what I will be working on is the project that I had already defined -- infusion of different fabrics with PVDF and subsequential testing of it's effect on piezoelectric sensing post poling.  I will also be working with a couple of the students here on modeling of my system using COMSOL software package and will hopefully be able to reciprocate on the learning side.  There are a couple guys here doing electrospinning and 원진 is working on some piezoresistive stuff for off axis plain weave fabrics -- which is a direct extension to what our lab group does back home.  This is great because Kalon and I both have some valuable input to what he's working on.

So something amazing happens every afternoon in the lab -- students pull out their guitars and chill with some sick tunes for a while!  Not only that but 원진 starts singing with one of the most amazing voiced I've heard in my life.  It was fantastic -- Kalon and I proceed to get him psyched about going to 노리방 (No-ri-bang) with us (settled on wednesday).  Kalon and I went into town and walked around for an hour and a half trying to find a place to buy bedsheets and pillows -- to no avail.  However, when we called 원진 back up he said that we should just do 노리방 that night!  We managed to stop by a store and get some bedsheets first and proceeded to blast our lungs out for almost two hours.

After that (still carying bags of bedsheets and pillows) we sat at a pub and had a couple rounds of a nice german beer then headed back.

The next day; the real work started (Wednesday now) I got a sample made in the hot press with the PVDF and fiberglass (it didn't go too well, but I was super happy regardless) 적진 helped me a great deal.  I also started studying up on COMSOL and trying to get better at the simulation part of it.

I should pause and mention a couple other things -- mealtimes are super efficient.  You buy these orange and pink "coupons" that you can trade in for meals which are served in a large cafeteria.  The catch is that Korean cafeteria food doesn't suck!!  Not only that; but it's rather cheap!  (Roughtly $2-$3 for a meal)  and you get refils on dishes that you manage to finish.  Meals are very assembly-line-esque.  You get your food; eat it within the first 15-20 minutes, put the dishes away, grab a drink (water or iced tea), pound it, put the cup in a slot, grab a napkin, wipe your face, and head back to the office.  Not only that but there's typically a rather large group of lab members that eat lunch together.  It's pretty neat.

Wednesday was also 해동's birthday:

I also have video footage; but it's not working for some reason -- so maybe I'll post at a later date.

Thursday I went to a presentation by my buddy Charlie at SNU and afterwards went cell phone shopping with 원진.  I had a couple hours to pound some COMSOL and then went to a welcome dinner with Dr. Yu, 원진, 해동, 병선 and Kalon.  It was pretty cool; we tried all sorts of food (including skate ray, which tastes kind of like amonia...) and drank a lot of 막걸리.  It was pretty fantastic.

Afterwards Dr. Yu hired a driver to drive him (and his car) home.  It's a pretty cool service and ends up being super cheap.  The rest of us went out to another bar called the "beer factory" and drank some crappy korean beer (which isn't as crappy when it's being drunk post 막걸리.)

After this we hit up another 노리방 and proceeded to make sure that everyone got home ok. Note that as will be typical; I have (and will) omit some party details due to the public nature of this blog!

Friday (today) was super productive; I made my first working COMSOL simulation and made a much improved (but still voidy) specimen for my research.  Tonight we're going to head to Hongdae to check out the supposedly famous nightlife of Seoul! To finish off (and because there's been a lot of text and not enough pictures) here are some photos of our walk to work in the morning:

I promise there will be more posts!  And the picasa web album will (hopefully) get updated soon!  My computer (laptop) is currently doing an OS upgrade and isn't really avaiable for things like picasa uploads right now...