Sitting in Dubai Airport.

Sitting here, wondering what to do.

I think I will write up a flow-chart on how to spot an Englishman.

The first line will be:  Are they wearing a football shirt? Yes -English No -Are they wearing crass gold jewellery all over their bodies?  Yes -English No -Are they covered in hideous tattoos? Yes -English No -See the first question.

An Absence of Posts

You may have noticed (or you may not have) that there have been significantly fewer posts as of this month, than you might normally expect.  This is due to a number of factors, not least of which is my ever uninteresting life, that warrants no additional comment.

I am, however, sitting in the airport, ready to travel back to England for a few days.

I'm hoping to take some marmite back with me.  Luckily, it's not particularly popular beyond the shores of England, so I get to keep most of it for myself.  I'm in the process of thinking what else I should buy, but I'm not really sure at the moment.

The One MP3 Player

I am sometimes mocked for my technological preferences, namely the companies I choose to purchase various technology from.

While price and performance are primary considerations, there are times when similar products warrant an illogical deciding factor to dictate where cash should be splashed.

In this case, I'm referring to manufacturers.

A few people have a disproportionately advertised (we often hear of how good they are, despite low uptake in several key markets) love of Apple, and the inferior and overpriced products they peddle to ill-informed customers.  Unfortunately, Apple customers are the most vocal, so the fact that half of their ipods explode within six months due to faulty batteries, or they cease functioning for no apparent reason after two years, forcing the owners to purchase the latest model, rarely gets many technology column inches.

The reason I bring this up right now?  My own dad has been through dozens of Iphones, Ipods, I-these and those, through misuse and abuse, and through no fault of his own.  Yet I have recently dropped an MP3 player in a rain soaked road, where it was literally being washed away by the torrents - as cars and lorries were barreling overhead, and upon picking it up, water gushed forth as if it were a minuscule watering can.

An Apple product would have given up many years ago, owing to battery malfunction or outmoded interfaces.  My plucky little Sony Walkman Personal Media Player (/end plug) carried on trucking though, through thirty foot falls and weather that forced its' owner off, before it decided to quit, and now this devastating blow that would destroy all but the most hardy little media devices.

This little guy still works, still holds the five years of pictures I've taken, and still wants to eschew the sounds that beat all others.

I salute you, little media player; for you are a fantastically built, superbly crafted, one in a million device.

Never Trust a Woman with Directions

Don't trust women with directions.  I've been walking around in the rain for two hours, trying to find this place.  It's 1.30 AM.  Actually, make that an hour and a half.

I had to wake up a work colleague in the dead of night, and I'm certain I've got myriad diseases.

I was trailing a comedy pool of water behind me, as I trudged up the final set of stairs.  My umbrella was soaked through, a sign that the waterproofing had been washed away; presumably when I took a swim in a giant puddle.

My MP3 player, housing all the photos I've taken in the last 5 years, went flying into the middle of the street, into four inches of water.  This, as a hundred or so cars went flying over the top of it.  When the traffic calmed down, I ran to retrieve the player, which was still in one piece.  The comedy continued however, as I picked it up and water came pouring out of the housing.  It's now a high-tech watering can - albeit of a limited capacity.  (It was only 16 gigs in the first place.)

So despite, misdirection, falling over, destroying all my year 6's homework (oh I forgot to mention, all their marking was in my bag, with the intention of finishing it on the homeward leg.) when I went for an impromptu swim, being soaked through for two and a half hours, waking up a colleague in the dead of night (hell is to pay, I'm sure) destroying my MP3 player with half a decade of memories on it, and getting a taxi with an imbecile who got lost twice, it was a fun trip.

On the plus side, a shining light came from an employee of seven-eleven, the ubiquitous convenience store from the states.  I couldn't find a single person to help, as they all shyed away from the big scary foreigner, or they just middle-fingered me because I looked like a hobo.  The one man in the convenience store, I salute you for letting me borrow your mobile phone.  (Everyone has several mobile phones here, so there are no payphones.) It turns out, the only nice Korean in Seoul, willing to help someone in obvious distress, was Australian.  Go figure...

Say what you want about Aussies, this guy is awesome.

Two Typhoons, a Birthday, and Being Sick Everywhere

So I'm writing this during lunch, primarily because I can't face eating anything at the moment.

I'm feeling quite terrible, having eaten hateful chicken wrapped in hate and loathing.  At the time it tasted quite nice, but even as I was eating it something unpalatable crept along my spine.  This unpalatable feeling stemmed from the myriad diseases the establishment puts into the food.  The upshot is that I feel quite vile, but the life of a foreign teacher is irriplaceable - unless you die, there's no getting out of work.

In reply to the question about prior storms; yes we have had our storm.  It was pathetic.  We then proceeded to have another storm immediately following, seemingly along the same path.  In a sudden and unexpected turn (sic) of events, it altered heading and veered straight towards us.  In the first 'eye of the storm encounter,' (TM) I have ever had, wind speeds exceeded forty miles per hour.  That's nothing, frankly.  It didn't even turn my umbrella inside out, while walking along the street.

I was exceedingly disappointed, as per usual, but the rain was quite spectacular.  120 mm in two days, I think that's some kind of record, to be frank.  That's two to three months of rainfall, in a day.

What's even more impressive, is that the lag time between rainfall and peak river flow, from cursory observation, is exceedingly small.  This means that the vast majority of the rain that falls, finds its way into the rivers, and in short order.  I would imagine flooding is or was a major problem around Korea, as the abundance of steep-sided mountains means the rain is funneled extremely quickly into the rivers.  When we travelled over the river after the days work, it was extremely high (still nowhere near capacity) and by the next day it was back to normal levels.

And there ends the geography based geeky interest in the landscape of this island.

It rained a hell of a lot, for the summarised version.

Tropical Storm Warning.

Check this link to see the storm brewing in the Korea area.

It's the Japanese meteorological society though, so it might be bunk.

These things have a high chance of changing direction, and for the sake of the island, I hope it does; it's missing us at the moment!

We'll only be in the indirect firing line, as it were, but another day off might be nice.

Swimming in Seoul

 I went back up to Seoul over the weekend, as I felt like doing something different for a change.

Just as Seoul seemed like a relatively familiar place, I  happened upon a few strange things.

Firstly, this picture isn't strange, but it sure is orange.

 I love this kind of shiny car trail photography.  That's the actual name for it too.


The accidental lean notwithstanding, I like how this shot came out.  These shots are ridiculously easy to take; the downside is that it's really difficult to take an interesting picture like this, as they've been replicated a million times over.  Just take lots of them, I guess.

 This was taken inside a normal city bus.  There were a large number of them, one for every seat.

I don't know what they're for, but they certainly livened up an otherwise drab and commonplace interior.

As a side-note, taking steady shots while on a bus is  extremely difficult!

 The woman serving ice-cream, of the mint-choc-chip variety, threw the cone at us.

It landed on the floor, and to my dismay was unsalvageable.  Luckily she promptly handed over another cone, and all was right with the world once more.

Mint-choc-chip is extremely rare here, as it is in Japan.  Finding a food item that's green generally means that it's tea, not mint.

 This funky looking wall surrounded a small stage.

I assume this was some kind of fashion booth during the day.  As it was, we arrived around midnight, so everything was packing up.

I began to wonder why we were wandering at such an hour; it seems Seoul doesn't sleep much though.

(Addendum:  Night photography is really hard!)

 This is the same thing as above - the additional width makes it look more impressive I think.

It was quite an interesting effect, and for a country where fashion has been stuck in a shoulder pad heavy time-loop for twenty years, quite modern.

 This is a closer look at the individual squares that made up the installation.

They were a huge number of random people, all kind of holding hands.  Despite the horrifying simplicity of the 'message,' this wall conveyed, it still looked impressive.

It's funny that this should be so interesting despite it's main characteristic, rather than because of it.

 Bizarrely, arguably, this is my favourite picture.

I love abstract things, and entirely devoid of context, I think this looks cool.

Not being straight just adds to the charm...

 Having lost the ability to maintain a level horizontal plane when I was dropped on my head at three years old, I've always struggled to take good pictures of people.

I opt, therefore, to take extremely close shots, so that my inadequacy is masked, if only a little.

This is the girl I borrowed the camera from.  And very patient she is too.

 And this is her running out of patience.

'Why the hell is he taking random pictures in here?'

Who knows.

 I include this picture because I'm a child.

There is no other reason.

 And this is where Seoul began to surprise me.

This  river is built into the city, with an artificially constructed course that lies well below street level.  It's open all day, every day, and this  picture (taken at one AM) is a reasonable depiction of the start.

I don't know whether the river was originally natural, and has been artificially adjusted to follow this new path, but it's an extremely attractive part of Seoul.  I would go so far as to say that it's my favourite place so far.

There are a large number of bridges crossing this man-made river; each of which has  a pseudo-theme attached.  Some are made in a traditional Asian style, some are ugly concrete, some are brick, and all have interesting lighting or artistic installations.

This is where the pictures stop, because a certain wally (seen earlier) forgot to charge the camera.

Next time I go to Seoul I will definitely take more pictures of this river though.

An hour or so later, after a leisurely stroll, we happened across a Hyundai department store.

It's a twenty-four hour department store, and was incredibly busy despite the ridiculous hour.  People were happily frequenting the coffee shops, purchasing clothes and mingling, as if it were merely midday.

I've never seen anything quite so surreal as a family walking past with balloons and ice-creams, mum carrying shopping, dad carrying the littlest, at Two Am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Why would you take your children to a place like that, at that crazy time?

和 This character means peace/harmony in Japanese, and 'and,' in chinese.

I still don't know what it means in Korean.  I wasn't joking when I said I'd learn more Mandarin and Japanese while I'm in Korea, than Korean.

Korean people just aren't willing to teach foreigners; and then they wonder why no-one is interested in learning about their culture.  Asinine.

New Layout... Or Maybe Not.

Blogger recently introduced a stats counting  facility, and a template designer.

The former is extremely interesting, with fifty referrals coming from facebook last month, sixty one pageviews from England, and a further sixty one from Australia.  (Who is reading this right now from Australia?)

The template designer looks well-featured, but not having access to an image manipulator I couldn't shrink any of my pictures down to the requisite filesize, to create a customised background.  The upshot is that I'm not going to make any changes until I can see exactly what's going on, which I can't with my baby laptop.  I don't want to deprive all those people in Australia, whoever you may all be!

Oh, and to the one hundred people from the states who viewed the site last month, who are you?

Short Break, Madness Resumes

So the there are still a ton of pictures to upload.

I'll start with this one, and hopefully end on something completely different.

If all goes well, this will be my last batch of photographs from the Seoul trip.

The palace grounds are separated into numerous courtyards, and from the few I've seen, they all seem to be divided this way.

The spaces vary in size, but tend to have a single domineering building, surrounded low level quarters.

I guess the peons worked outside the main building, and were the first line of defence against intrusion.

So during my homeward journey, I gazed into a window idly, to see something that made me chuckle.

In the country of dog eaters, the poodle is king.

In my mind these girls were preparing the dogs for dinner.

It could only be improved if there were a restaurant next door...

The next stop on my 'Around Seoul,' trip was Lotte world.

It's a (mainly) indoor amusement park, and has a number of different attractions.  Some are fantastic, like the indoor roller coaster, while others are somewhat more tame.

We took the monorail to have a look around.  I was thinking it would be tiny, but it really is deceptively large.  They have utilised the space efficiently.

I desperately wanted to take my camera on the roller coaster, but I was borrowing it, so I couldn't.

I offered to tape it to my hands and everything!

Despite being rather short, it was particularly jarring and intense, considering the lack of height and speed.  I would definitely recommend 'the French revolution,' to anyone who ventures into Lotte world.

The extremely high-up balloons (probably not the correct name) was a ride I couldn't go on.

If you want to see around the park, either choose the monorail or the balloons.  It's my understanding that the balloons don't go outside, to the island attached to the park, so the monorail wins for pure interest.

I did want to see how high the roof was though, looking down on all the ants wandering around...

Maybe that's just my inner dictator kicking in though...

After not being allowed to take pictures on the roller coaster, I was determined to get pictures from at least one ride.

Some bargaining later, I procured this shot of the swinging ship.

It seems another park-goer had the same idea as me, and I can only assume he has the same shot in reverse.

That would have been interesting to see, alas I didn't get any of his information.

In the queue for the ship, it occurred to me that the facade of such places is always broken, no matter how much effort is expended in keeping the experience 'authentic.'

The illusion is broken often, and in extremely obvious places; so I'm always surprised when people come here for anything other than rides.

It's certainly something else to be indoors for most of the time though, as all the noise is kept echoing around.  I suppose this is one of the benefits of having a place under roof, as it always seems more interesting and exciting than it actually is, because of the crowded conditions and constant noise.

At least they tried to write something in English.

It's probably gramatically correct, but I don't think anyone has used 'lest,' in around two hundred years.  Good effort though, at least.

Another shot from the swinging ship.

I couldn't turn the flash off, no matter how hard I tried.  It was pretty powerful though, judge for yourself in this picture.

It lit up a kilometre of park...

As is customary, I ate several dozen family sized cakes when I was there.

This  is but one of those cakes, and  delicious it was too.

They have a real talent for making good, cheap cakes.

PB means Paris Baguette by the way.  (Free advertising)

Everything has hearts on it, you can't escape this.  Think of the most unlikely, outlandish item.  Now attach a heart to it.

Possibly pink.

That's how people enjoy their products here.  I feel awfully sorry for the men.

The next day I happened across a man selling personal stamps.  He sets up shop on the side of the road, bringing with him a laptop and a CAD machine.

The whole setup is quite surreal, but fantastic.

I had to purchase one, purely for the nostalgic value.

The following sequence is how it was made!

First I chose my design, and the style of handle I wanted.  Being dragon born, I chose my name around the outside, with the chinese symbol for dragon in the middle.

He sorted it all out on the computer, selected the wood, and let the machine do all the work.

This is the overall setup in one shot.

Spartan, but effective.

The wood is sanded, primed and placed into the machine.

The cutting head then moves into position, with a small pressure sensor.

This moves over the wood finding the edges of the piece of wood.  It's surprisingly effective, for such a simple concept.

The sensor takes only a few measurements before the cutting begins.

I have to wonder where he got the software for this machine, and where he got the machine itself.

The whole thing cost roughly fifteen pounds.

I bet he had to make an awful lot of these stamps to pay for the equipment...

These are the handle designs.

They're all wood (I think.  Some looked suspiciously like ivory) and are extremely simple.

The handles are pre-shaped into interesting and exotic patterns, the ends of which are cut by the machine.  No extra work is done on the handles themselves.

He occasionally brushed the machine down, keeping detritus clear of the head.

It's a remarkably efficient process, but I was left wondering whether such a cheap street vendor could produce something that worked.

He had a pair of hands that looked like they'd single handedly pulled Korea into the twenty-first century.

They were scarred, cracked and definitely wisened; but he smiled all the time, so I'm sure he enjoyed what he was doing.

Or he was enjoying the conversation with the woman in the background.  Come to think of it, they were probably making fun of the  dumb foreigner with dragon in his name.

And finally, the finished product.

It came out spectacularly well considering the cost and venue.

If you receive a letter from me, then it will undoubtedly have this stamp affixed somewhere.  I carry it with me to most venues, regardless of whether a stamp is needed.



And those are the Seoul Summer Holiday snaps.  They really were little more than snapshots in the end, but I had fun taking them.

Until next time.