Ok, so there's a bit of a story, and it's quite interesting. Lauren actually just recently moved into this apartment so she didn't have the internet transfered in her name yet, and she didn't have any sort of wifi -- the internet has been accesible thus far through an ethernet cable plugged into the wall, and through a couple "open" but very weak wifi's floating around.
So the guy who came to transfer the internet over gets on my computer -- which was the one plugged into the ethernet at the time. Not only is my computer in english, but it's also running linux (ubunt) so the machine is all but incomprehensible to him, with no linux experience and no english experience it must have been akin to trying to work a computer terminal on the alien mothership... I figured he was probably going to look for the IP address so I opened up a terminal and put in the "ifconfig" command; which in linux speak means "interface configuration" and outputs the ip address.
In any case, he tried "ipconfig /all" until it got frustrating so I tried to walk him through it. We got it -- he got the ip and the transfer was finished.
But that's not all. Lauren wanted to find out if she could get wifi! So he spends then next few minutes trying really hard to communicate that we need a router, saying the same two words over and over again.
Thanks to the unsecured wifi next door, and the power of google translate on my phone we managed to get through the next 15 minutes by me holding my phone up to his face, asking him if the speech recognition was correct, and reading the translation; then subsequently typing in my response and having him read MY translation. It actually worked quite nice! Lauren managed to explain that she already had a router, but didn't know the password because it was given to her by a friend -- then he reset it and and I asked if I could change the password (because honestly not having one is just plain dangerous...).
Since the 192.168.0.1 server in the address bar gave a firmware page full of hangul, he navigated until he got to the security page and I pointed to the "WPA2" setting and we were all done.
Then after he left, having the page still open I could change the SSID to "pink sparklz" -- mission accomplished.
On Monday Lauren's gonna buy a Samsung Captivate :P and I'm gonna try really hard to find out if someone can get 3g to work on mine ;)
Friday, June 10, 2011
First full day in Busan
One of the things that is immediately apparent when walking around Busan is the constant bombardment of smells on your nose -- everything from delicious smelling food to nasty city smells come at you concurrently so that you end up walking through a random heterogeneous mess of smells. It's quite interesting!
So our first destination was to get some food -- "Korean Pancakes" is how Lauren described them; they also had a Korean name, but I don't really remember what it was. I should probably start writing those down soon... On the way we passed by a couple things that you'd never see back home; such as:
Live eels in a tank! In any case, I don't think that I ate any eel today, instead we had the delicious pancakes with (of course) some kimchi -- this time the authentic korean edition:
After brunch we got to walk around the beach a little bit; which is quite beautiful and surrounded by mountains on either side. The city envelops the one on the left (east?) and the one on the right (west?) is untouched (as far as I can tell) nature. By the picture you can see they have rental umbrella's and buoy's for swimming :)
And apparently the previous weekend they had some kind of "sand" festival, so the beach was littered with things like this:
After the beach Lauren went to work and I spent some time reading a book about Hangul (the famed Korean writing system) and then took a three hour nap :P After napping I went for a walk and saw a couple more interesting things. Apparently there's some kind of weird holiday or event called "Thank's day"
An advertisement for cow chairs:
Canned coffee machine:
Which apparently has a nice option for both hot AND cold drinks... Of course the infamous McDonald's "McDelivery" scooters:
One of the coolest things though, was this stretched, shaft-driven cargo trike. In the states you'd never think of something with an engine that small carting around something that big...
Went back to the beach to see it at night and then came back to do some blogging before bed. The last picture is posted almost exclusivley for the viewing pleasure of my sisters:
Ahh, if you've made it this far into the post then there's one more thing I forgot to mention. We stopped by a Japanese clothing store on the top (7th) floor of a mall so that I could compensate a little bit for my baggage getting lost. I bough a Canon EOS t-shirt and a pair of boxers. These Japanese boxers are probably among the most comfortable underwear I've ever worn in my entire life -- I might just have to stock up!
So our first destination was to get some food -- "Korean Pancakes" is how Lauren described them; they also had a Korean name, but I don't really remember what it was. I should probably start writing those down soon... On the way we passed by a couple things that you'd never see back home; such as:
Live eels in a tank! In any case, I don't think that I ate any eel today, instead we had the delicious pancakes with (of course) some kimchi -- this time the authentic korean edition:
After brunch we got to walk around the beach a little bit; which is quite beautiful and surrounded by mountains on either side. The city envelops the one on the left (east?) and the one on the right (west?) is untouched (as far as I can tell) nature. By the picture you can see they have rental umbrella's and buoy's for swimming :)
And apparently the previous weekend they had some kind of "sand" festival, so the beach was littered with things like this:
After the beach Lauren went to work and I spent some time reading a book about Hangul (the famed Korean writing system) and then took a three hour nap :P After napping I went for a walk and saw a couple more interesting things. Apparently there's some kind of weird holiday or event called "Thank's day"
An advertisement for cow chairs:
Canned coffee machine:
Which apparently has a nice option for both hot AND cold drinks... Of course the infamous McDonald's "McDelivery" scooters:
An add on a bus which I have a feeling has some of those people from the bands you guys listen to!
Ahh, if you've made it this far into the post then there's one more thing I forgot to mention. We stopped by a Japanese clothing store on the top (7th) floor of a mall so that I could compensate a little bit for my baggage getting lost. I bough a Canon EOS t-shirt and a pair of boxers. These Japanese boxers are probably among the most comfortable underwear I've ever worn in my entire life -- I might just have to stock up!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Done Travelling -- For now
So I woke up at 8am today, and again at 10am -- I'm hoping that that's good news for the jet lag. Anyways, here's a blog post with all the details from the travels (because I really wasn't gonna type that much on a cell phone...)
Philly was super easy as usual; I got to the terminal within half an hour of getting to the airport -- got a DD bagel and then just waited. The flight to Seattle was rather uneventful, got some good sleep in and watched a movie on the laptop. In order to connect in Seattle, you have to take a train across from one terminal to the next; which takes about 5 minutes. While I was eating the aforementioned cod sandwhich I heard the intercom come on and a woman ask if Jacob, Cedric could please come to the terminal. It was cool because she had gotten me a "better" seat! I had a pair of window seats all to myself!
For the most part that worked out really well, got to watch a bunch of movies... But at the same time it makes the flight a little lonely. Better than getting unlucky and worse than getting lucky with the "conversational sparring partners" we sometimes find on airplanes.
The descent was awesome -- you could see the low hanging clouds over the countryside with large slightly aggressive mountains poking through which had the effect of making it look like the clouds were the ground, and the mountains were just floating on them.
And then I got to the baggage claim and realized my bags weren't there. Now to be fair -- In Seattle I had to take that train, on top of walking for 15 minutes to get to the terminal just about 15 minutes early... But they still should have found some way to get my bags there on time. In any case, I get to try and track them down after writing this post :) fun! I pulled out a print-out from an e-mail sent to me by my friend Lauren Cook (who is teaching english in Busan) and it became like a bible for the next few hours!
The exchange rate for cash is pretty nice -- you chop off the last zero (it's always a zero) and imagine a decimal place and you're done. Makes it very non-confusing to buy things; a coca-cola here is a touch cheaper than it is back home :) I took a bus from Incheon airport to Seoul Station (really impressed by the highway system), which took about an hour; then boarded a KTX train to Busan which departed at 9pm and arrived at 11:40pm -- it was not the high-speed express line; which I may attempt to take in the future just for the "experience." The train was pretty nice, fairly comparable to Amtrak, but $50 instead of $150; which is a pretty nice perk.
I got to Busan and reached Lauren on a pay phone (100 Won) -- she was already at the station at a different quai. So next was the taxi ride back to the apartment, she gave a spat of instructions that I didn't understand and when we got closer said some words that I had to assume meant left and right until we got to the apartment :) One funny thing about the language: Yes is "neh" which is kind of funny, because it either sounds like "meh" or reminds you of a certain monty python film (yes I know it's "ni" but its close enough that my brain makes the connection...)
We had dinner at a Korean diner, which consisted of some rice and noodles with seaweed, lettuce, some seasoning and hot sauce. There was some Chinese kimchi on the side, which Lauren informed me was being imported because of a cabbage shortage.
We finally got back to the apartment around 1am, at which time I was able to skype my family over skype and see my sisters (and mom) make funny faces at me! Then I tried to make friends with Lauren's dog Dexter -- he doesn't seem to hate me... But we're not quite friends yet either.
I fell asleep at 2am on Thursday after leaving home at 6am on Tuesday to the first "night-time" I had seen in over 40 hours!
Philly was super easy as usual; I got to the terminal within half an hour of getting to the airport -- got a DD bagel and then just waited. The flight to Seattle was rather uneventful, got some good sleep in and watched a movie on the laptop. In order to connect in Seattle, you have to take a train across from one terminal to the next; which takes about 5 minutes. While I was eating the aforementioned cod sandwhich I heard the intercom come on and a woman ask if Jacob, Cedric could please come to the terminal. It was cool because she had gotten me a "better" seat! I had a pair of window seats all to myself!
For the most part that worked out really well, got to watch a bunch of movies... But at the same time it makes the flight a little lonely. Better than getting unlucky and worse than getting lucky with the "conversational sparring partners" we sometimes find on airplanes.
The descent was awesome -- you could see the low hanging clouds over the countryside with large slightly aggressive mountains poking through which had the effect of making it look like the clouds were the ground, and the mountains were just floating on them.
And then I got to the baggage claim and realized my bags weren't there. Now to be fair -- In Seattle I had to take that train, on top of walking for 15 minutes to get to the terminal just about 15 minutes early... But they still should have found some way to get my bags there on time. In any case, I get to try and track them down after writing this post :) fun! I pulled out a print-out from an e-mail sent to me by my friend Lauren Cook (who is teaching english in Busan) and it became like a bible for the next few hours!
The exchange rate for cash is pretty nice -- you chop off the last zero (it's always a zero) and imagine a decimal place and you're done. Makes it very non-confusing to buy things; a coca-cola here is a touch cheaper than it is back home :) I took a bus from Incheon airport to Seoul Station (really impressed by the highway system), which took about an hour; then boarded a KTX train to Busan which departed at 9pm and arrived at 11:40pm -- it was not the high-speed express line; which I may attempt to take in the future just for the "experience." The train was pretty nice, fairly comparable to Amtrak, but $50 instead of $150; which is a pretty nice perk.
I got to Busan and reached Lauren on a pay phone (100 Won) -- she was already at the station at a different quai. So next was the taxi ride back to the apartment, she gave a spat of instructions that I didn't understand and when we got closer said some words that I had to assume meant left and right until we got to the apartment :) One funny thing about the language: Yes is "neh" which is kind of funny, because it either sounds like "meh" or reminds you of a certain monty python film (yes I know it's "ni" but its close enough that my brain makes the connection...)
We had dinner at a Korean diner, which consisted of some rice and noodles with seaweed, lettuce, some seasoning and hot sauce. There was some Chinese kimchi on the side, which Lauren informed me was being imported because of a cabbage shortage.
We finally got back to the apartment around 1am, at which time I was able to skype my family over skype and see my sisters (and mom) make funny faces at me! Then I tried to make friends with Lauren's dog Dexter -- he doesn't seem to hate me... But we're not quite friends yet either.
I fell asleep at 2am on Thursday after leaving home at 6am on Tuesday to the first "night-time" I had seen in over 40 hours!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Incheon
Made it to seoul - long flight... And they lost my bag :) trying to get a bus to the ktx station, then headed to busan.
Hopefully my bags find me...
Anyways, the picture is the first food joint I saw in the country :)
Seattle
Made it just in time to get a cod sandwich. Asiana airlines! A new one for me!
Got two seats!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Packed and ready to go!
Ok! So today I finished everything that needed to be done in the great old U.S.A. -- Returned the hiking boots that (unfortunately) didn't fit, visited the bank and took care of some finances, and signed up for some travel health insurance.
Completely manageable to carry.
Then tied up the loose ends at the lab, and cleaned a little. Put a webcam on my desk so I can keep in touch with people there and said goodbye to all the people I could find. Home, dinner, then packing.
All said and done -- two bags, one weighing in at 45 pounds and the other somewhere between 10 and 15 -- one checked and one carry on (two laptops, random cables and chargers, and a bunch of chocolate bars :)
Completely manageable to carry.So there's the first blog entry! Going to print my boarding pass, and sleep for a few hours before leaving for the airport at 6am! Onwards to Seattle.
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