Saturday

Saturday 5/29/09

Greg took off early this morning, so after breakfast Kim and I took the subway into the northern part of the city to catch the tour bus that circled the city, stopping at various tourist spots and historical sites.

Some shopping sites, some ancient palaces, a couple museams, and a few other spots. You could get off at any spot, explore what was there, and catch any of the buses that came after the one you got off of. They would arrive at that spot every half hour. We spent all day doing that. Started at about 10am and finished the last one at about 6pm. We were pretty tired...especially our feet. Getting off at the last stop there were hundreds of police in riot gear with shields. We weren't sure what was going on but decided not to wait around to find out. After taking the subway back, we stopped in at a pizza place to see how well they made deep dish pizza in Korea. Good, but they make it crispy. I don't think the deep dish version is supposed to be crispy like the thin crust version. O well, it was good. We changed into our swimsuits and headed for the Jacuzzi. After that I worked a little bit on cropping and enhancing some of the pictures we took today, wrote most of this section, and then crashed :)You can see some of the pictures posted by Kim on Facebook here:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015924&id=1633509060&l=368b4aac34

Friday

Friday 5/28/09
Today Greg and I spent the morning working on some things we'll be doing in India next week. We all took a taxi up to Itaewon. It's a street with lots of shopping next to the U.S. Military base. Greg and I met with Sean Kae, my old colleague and manager, who's now the VP of development for Samsung. We talked business, but Sean also gave us some tips for what to do over the weekend here.
After that we took a quick trip up to Namdaemun Market. A pretty massive swap meet type of atmosphere covering many square blocks. You could spend a whole day and not see it all. We did find that like most swap meets, you saw the same thing at a hundred different sellers. Interesting, but nothing I wanted. After a couple hours, we were pretty spent though, and actually spent nothing, and made our way to the subway and took that back to the hotel.
Tonight, Sean Kae picked up Kim and I for dinner. He took us to a traditional "safe" Korean barbaque. Very good. One thing I have learned is that when they say "spicey" here, they really mean it. In the US it means you get some spice instead of nothing. Here it means you sweat and blow your nose a lot :)

First Days

Tuesday 5/26/09
A very long, 13+ hour, plane ride (coach of course) and we arrived. A little sleep on the plane helped, along with the Ambien. :) We were told how great Ambien was for sleeping on the plane. "take it and sleep for 7 hours and wake up ready to go!". Right. I was expecting something just short of Sodium Pentothal, but all it did was make me sleepy. O well, it did help. We felt pretty good on arrival.
We took an hour taxi ride to the COEX Intercontinental hotel. Very nice hotel. One interesting thing was under the hotel. A giant mall. We're talking a couple city blocks square. A bit of a maze. We had to get a map just to make sure we didn't get lost. Could probably spend about two days walking around to get to all the places.

Wednesday 5/27/09
Got to spend the day exploring the blocks around the hotel. Checked out the subway system, walked through the Hyundai department store where everything's got some big name like Gucci, along with the exorbitant price. Then wandered around the underground mall some more. Wandered what Star Trek would be like to watch at the megaplex of 24 theaters in Korean (yes all in that underground mall).
Then about 3:45 I took a taxi over to the IBM office to meet with some of the team. We went over what we would be doing on Thursday with the Korean DoD. Then I ventured out and took the subway back to the hotel. Even had one transfer! The subway in Seoul is pretty good. Once I figured it out I think I could go anywhere in the city on it. At 1/10 the cost of the taxi it's a good deal.
That night my colleague who brought me out here, Greg Hansen, flew in. Greg, Kim and I walked to a Korean Barbeque place for dinner. A very ethnic experience. No one there spoke English so it took a lot of pointing. :)



Thursday 5/28/09
A whirlwind day. In the morning the teammates from Korea picked Greg and I up at the hotel, we drove about an hour to the local airport, bought tickets for Busan, flew an hour, got off and rented a car, drove an hour to the Korean DoD location. Just a day's commute :) Greg and I put together some slides along the way.
We presented and spoke to some people who will be working on a submarine project, and some researchers from their Defense Development agency. They seem to need some serious help with Systems Engineering. Then, drove back to the airport, bought a ticket on the next plane back, then drove through the horrible traffic to the hotel. Got back about 8pm. A long day.
Kim's posting some of the pictures on her Facebook. Check here to see: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=233064&l=5f5ca7252b&id=1633509060

CircleTheGlobe

Kim and I are headed from Los Angeles to Seoul, South Korea, then on to Bangalore, India, followed by London, England and back to Los Angeles. When done we'll have circled the globe.
While most all of this is for work for me, we'll be able to see some sites we wouldn't see otherwise.