27 days later.

It's been almost exactly a week since the last time I blogged.  In fact; by the time I finish writing this post; it probably will be exactly one week.  That means I should be able to finish writing and uploading pictures within the next hour and a half.

Wednesday last week was a typical work day -- though several of us did go into town for dinner.  Kalon had left that morning for KIMS (via Busan) and so that evening instead of working or hanging out with friends I did the first thing that came to mind.

Salsa Dancing.

The Salsa club is called "TOP Bar" and is in Apgujeong, which is presumably the "ritzy" part of Seoul, but I didn't learn that until later; and I didn't notice it while I was there so who really knows?  Anyways, from the website that I found the club on I had assumed that when I showed up the club would have a very decent concentrations of foreigners (50%?)  Instead... I was the only one.

Now you think that since music is universal; dance would be too right?  But no.  What they call Salsa, we call Mambo -- and they are in fact very similar; but while Starts with a step forward on the first beat, Mambo starts with a step back on the second; so the syncapation is different.  Obviously it's fairly easy to "phase-shift" the basic steps by a beat; but once you get into fancier stuff it's really tricky to not fall back to your defaults.

Anyways I spent the first 45 minutes 70% watching and 30% dancing -- I did a really nice cha-cha with someone who I now assume must be an instructor of some kind (she wasn't danced with as much; but was very good) and when the music changed to dance music (club style) I did a hustle with a very very suprised Korean girl (until they switched the music because only we were dancing...)

But the biggest relevation/surpise is that the Korean dancers here are really good.  The average dancer at this place was probably about my level; maybe a touch better.  That means the great dancers were really great -- I saw some strange moves that I couldn't even begin to copy and some insane aerials and flips...

Well; after the first 45 minutes an English teacher (I think also a dance instructor -- on the side) introduced himself to me and helped me to actually understand what was going on (remember, up till this point there wasn't really anyone for me to talk to) and in general helped me feel a lot less awkward.  There was a "Salsa circle" for a girls birthday and I got to dance with her; trying my best to do moves that didn't care whether I was on 2 or 1!  But the next guy flipped her a couple times so whatever I did must have been super simple!

Anyways, the English teacher "Sam" told me that the Salsa scene in Seoul is actually fairly huge so I'm super psyched about checking it out!

The next day I had a meeting with Dr. Yu in the morning so I woke up bright and early and prepared a simplistic presentation of what I had done in the week and a half since arriving.  Most of it was spent learning out to compression mold fiberglass; and learning COMSOL -- multiphysics simulation software that lets me do stuff like:

OK, so this is my first try; and as such it's super non-fancy, but the thing in the middle is conductive, and the stuff around it is a piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) and the graph is a surfrace plot of the electric potential field (which is a good way of evaluating the electric field) in the"part."  Most of my effort late last week was trying to find the right mechanical, electrical and coupling properties to be able to simulate my materials instead of arbitrary ones.

Ok, readers relax -- technical part over.  Kalon came back later on Thursday and spent some time zonking out.  We still got a lot of work done though.  Here is the typical scene in the hallway during monsoon season (when it's raining):

EVERYBODY uses umbrellas here.  The "I don't need an umbrella" macho man doesn's exist.  (This might be contributed to by the fact that rain jackets are really really expensive -- I saw one for a thousand dollars...)

That evening we went for a run/jog/walk around half of the campus loop (the road that encircles SNU).  The coolest thing we saw was probably this Korean military utility vehicle on the side of the road:

The following day I got to work just in time to work for a few hours before leaving for Seoraksan.  (san = mount).  I jumped into Zen's car with my bags and we headed out.  The car ride was fairly pleasant -- Korea has a pretty nice highway system (modeled after ours I believe) and I ended up sleeping for a good bit of it.  Every while Zen would yell "Oh Shiii" -- microseconds later I'd be awake, then my synapses fire telling my hands to grab onto something; and before I knew it he had changed lanes or avoided something and I was sleeping again.  Korean drivers are pretty good but they are more aggressive.

When we got to Sokjo (the city close to Seoraksan) the first thing we did was go to "E-Mart" which is like the Korean version of Walmart.  Now because Korea has such a huge premium on space; instead of building it out, they build it up!  That means you have a Walmart-like complex which is 5 or 6 stories tall -- but then, how do you get your shopping cart from the first floor to the third and then back to your car?

Yes.  The carts go UP the conveyor belt.  The wheels have the same size grooves as the conveyor so that when you roll onto the belt the wheels and belt become interdigitated and the distance between the cart and the floor reduces -- then the "brake pads" which are mounted on the side of the wheels (that previously only had a couple milimeters of clearance from the ground) "touch-down" and the cart is "stuck" until you get to the top.

In any case; we got food and drinks with all the other necesseties and then left for the "Pension" -- which is basically a fancy word for "Cabin" we had a decently large space with two bedrooms, two baths, and a large combination dining room/kitchen/living room and a balcony with a large table for traditional Korean eating (sit on the floor.)  Dr. Yu showed up later with his wife and daughter and we proceeded to chill while drinking his favorite drink (I think) -- 90% beer, 10% soju.  The tastes actually balance out pretty well; the local beers arent very good and the soju is a bit strong.  Meeting up in the middle works out pretty well.

The follwing picture is Kalon, Dr. Yu, Mrs. Yu and me standing in front of a sunset over the mountains:

Next, some cooking and eating:

Then the beach -- I'll post this picture because I think it's funny; but try to not laught TOO hard...

And a nice group shot:

After that it was crazy party time, and then sleeping.  The next morning we woke up and immediatly rushed out the door to the mountain.  The hike up the first peak was cheating, because we started out in a cable car:

Which was followed by a 15 minute hike to the peak.  It was really strange up there because there were vendors on the top of the mountain; selling trinkets and souveniers.  Not only that but there was a fairly decent crowd...  I still managed to take some really good photos though.  Here's a group shot of the whole lab -- there were two people missing; Jina and Ryeoul.  Jina was sick and Ryeoul hadn't returned from military service yet.

Here's one of Kalon on the edge:

After descending it's a nice hike to the base of the other peak -- the large rocks in this picture:

It was a pretty nice hike, the whole thing is along a trail and follows the river almost the whole way:

At the end of which is a buddhist temple type area with a (supposedly) famous "rocking boulder" which you can shake by pushing, but you can never really tip over:

Now for the next section there are a lot of pictures which you will be able to find on the PicasaWeb Album so I won't post too many, but there are a couple really nice shots:

At this point I should mention that somewhere around 10-15% up the mountain I ran out of water to drink -- and I was already dehydrated to begin with.  I'll mention one thing -- hiking up a mountain while dehydrated is really really hard esspecially when you havent had breakfast...

And there were the steel stairs.  Lots and lots of stairs:

What was kind of neat was that under the more modern steel staircase, you could see the ancient stone staircase the proceeded it.  The stairs actually go all the way to the top:

Once Wonjin bought us some iced tea from the vendor up there.  And man was it good -- the liquid and sugar was enough to jolt me straight into being fully awake and almost 100% there.  That said; the hike down was super fun and pretty quick because I was able to run almost the whole way.  A couple times min and I took shortcuts through the woods; and I crossed a couple rivers.  I was very happy to find out the my boots are actually water proof up to something like 15cm deep water.  Almost at the end, here's a pic of the guys:

After I got to the bottom (I wish it had been before...) I learned a secret buddhist technique that lets you absorb water from the super humid air so that you don't have to bring water with you!  I was super good at it actually; here's me a few minutes after the first lesson:

They asked me to use the nozzle so that I wouldn't get water all over the place...  We had lunch on those tables that you see there in the background, then went back to the pension to shower and nap.

For dinner, after playing an awesome game of soccer on the beach, we went to the seafood market and had some really interesting foods...

This first one is sea squirt, and some kind of octopus or squid tentacles.  The sea squirt tasted a bit like clams and was pretty good, but I actually liked the tentacles better:

Next we ate my buddy mister crabs:

And ate a whole tuna.  Raw.  That had been flopping around before being killed in the kitchen a few minutes prior.

Some kind of other fish, sitting in a stew of delicious vegetables:

After dinner we went back down through the food market and got some famous street side fried shrimp (they just bread the entire shrimp and eat it; including the head and tail.  Yes. that includes shrimp eyeballs.)

That night we sat around and chilled for a while before going for a nice walk on the beach for a few hours.  We set off a couple firecrackers (which is legal on the beach here) and watched EVERYBODY ELSE set off theirs!  It was really cool; the entire beachfront was filled with small amatuer firecrackers lighting the whole place up.  After walking the length of the beach we got some ice cream and headed back in time to promptly pass out.

The next day consisted of getting in the car and driving back to Seoul.  It was weird because while I was sleeping in the car this time, I had a dream where I was in a car driving through America somewhere.  Now, the dream's length was probably about 4 or 5 hours, but it took place within 1 hour of actual car time; so by the time I got back to the dormitory, I felt like I had been in a car for 6 hours or so...  It was pretty exhausting.  After some some catching up on computering and showering, Kalon and I went into town to grab some Pizza.  After that he went to go watch a movie with a labmate and I went up to Itaewon to meet up with some EAPSIers who had come north for the weekend.  I got to spend about half an hour with Wallace, Liz, Katrina and Hui.  Eunice, Aurora and I then went to go watch Transformers 3 (which coincidentaly is what Kalon went to go see -- though he watched it in 3D).  Before the movie Aurora and I (while waiting for Eunice who had had to go back to her appartment first) took some "Egg Photos."  If I get a chance to I'll try to upload some of them, they're super funny.

After the movie went back.  I skyped with my family for a while and then sat around until I was tired enough to fall asleep.

Yesterday was just a regular work day -- Kalon and I left a bit early to get dinner with some EAPSIers in Insadon (a historic cultural district) where we loaded up with Dumplings and Koeran BBQ to celebrate American Independence day.  Then we walked around the city for a while before grabbing some beers and hanging out at the renovated creek for some serious chill time.


Today was super-productive mode at work.  I made some nice progress on my simulation and got some serious learning in about how dielectrics work; so now I sortof understand how to use Maxwells equations to describe both dielectric and conductive materials and how the conductivity and permeability combine to make the distinction.  I also learned about about complex permeability and the distinction between real (how much of the electric field is let into the material) permeability and imaginary (time lag from dipole movement that results in loss) interact with each other.  I also made some sweet plots plots...  This is a cropped section of another potential field:

Anyways, that's all I have for now.  Until next time!