Christmas Cake 2018, and I Meet My Hero

Granted not much has been going on here in my Patch of Seoul, but not a year has gone by that I haven't proudly posted a photo of my Christmas Cake, a delightful Korean tradition. To wit:


Taking advantage of a day without a schedule, I popped over to Incheon Airport to buy baht and dollars for my upcoming vacation to Thailand, which I anticipate will be a restful two weeks on a warm beach of Koh Chang, east of Bangkok, near the Cambodian border. It was here, at the airport, that I had a photo opportunity with my idol, hanging out at a little restaurant on the Arex mezzanine. If I had a chicken leg for every time I heard someone in this country (and some other countries, too) walk past me and murmur to their friend, "KFC!", I would be buried in chicken legs. Come to think of it, not a bad way to go.


I had hoped to include some pics of the MagLev train, but it was quite a disappointment: the entire journey 12 minutes, 5 stops, with a maximum speed of 78 kmph. So instead, here is a photo of an Arex plush doll usurping seating that is supposed to be reserved for pregnant women. And looking very self-satisfied about it.


And Merry Christmas to All!

Let's Flock to Seoul without Any Definite Plans

I realize most visitors to the Seoul Patch are anxious to peruse photos and commentary on my trip to China, but I am still in the midst of the laborious task of sorting the over 900 pics I took during the two week sojourn. Meanwhile, my office at work took a "team-building" trip to Seoul's City History Museum and it was a much easier process to pare down the twenty shots I took to about a dozen.


To my mind, the best thing about this museum is the large scale model of the city (or most of it, anyway), part of which is covered by glass floor. In the last pic above, you can see the World Cup Stadium, and in the pic below, my apartment building is A, the school is B (click to see a larger version). Pretty cool.


There are several smaller "mock-ups" including a classic mixed use building--stores below, apartments above.


There are also full scale transplants including a typical tiny restaurant and a flat from the mid-eighties. "Steve the Butler" on the top shelf there, not a toy I remember in America. And I would.


Lots of other cultural effluvia like this lovely fashion poster.


The exterior space is pretty well used, including some architectural education, a minibus from the 1988 Olympics and old Seoul tram car.


A display about the way Seoul grew and grew after the end of the Korean War included this interesting panel:


The Seoul Museum of History is located midway between Seodaemun and Gwanghwamun stations on the 5 line. It's free. If you have a QR scanner, you can read a fair amount of English info about the exhibits.

China 2018: Highlight Reel

Well, it isn't exactly, but I threw this together after I had a relatively easy time with the "Can Do Kid" video below. This was a lot more time-consuming, and I can't explain the two bits of black-out, since they don't show up in any file except what YT puts up, but it took hours and hours, so I'm damned if I'm going to do it again. The soundtrack works though.


Direct link here: https://youtu.be/2BgV0J2Rv4w
EDIT: Weirdly, this video fails to show up in a lot of cases (because of the music--Perfect Day by Lou Reed) so I quickly changed out the music for a second version. It also has a couple of black-outs, but they are different from the first version. But, I'm done with this video, though I still think it's worth watching.


Direct link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hik3hNlNq9U More on my China trip to come. UPDATE: Blog coverage begins here: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.com/2019/06/beijing-2019-18-planning-hall-railway.html

Summer Camp Video

I'll have a thorough rundown of my awesome two weeks in China soon (EDIT: Not that soon, it turns out, but the Beijing part starts here: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.com/2019/06/beijing-2019-18-planning-hall-railway.html), but this week I was back at work, running a summer camp called "Movie Makers." Usually, the students write and film a short comedy or drama, but this group were frankly not strong enough in English to carry it off, so instead we made a video to accompany the well-known song "Can Do Kid" by David Plummer and John Archambault.


Go here to see it full-size on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbCmi9zlqhY

So You Wanna Visit China ...

… Well, good luck!

Turns out, I'm going on Saturday, for two weeks. This will be my fourth visit to China, and by far the most difficult and annoying to arrange. Oh, not the hotels, flight tickets or sightseeing locations, no.

Just. The. Visa.

As I mentioned, I've been to China on three previous trips. All of them have been awesome. I balked (and continue to balk) at the visa cost nowadays--somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 USD--but in obtaining the visa for this trip, that was the least of my concern. Before my first trip, the government had changed the procedure for procuring a visa such that instead of going to the Chinese Embassy at Myeongdong, you applied at any number of "agents", most of them located within a ten minute walk of the Embassy as you walk up the hill from the subway station.

Today, as far as I can determine, there is only one way for an American living in Korea to get this visa, and I'm going to give you the inside poop, if you are interested. Actually, even if you aren't. Sadly, this information is not readily available on any website I know of, certainly not the Embassy or the CVASC (whatever that may be--just kidding, it's the China Visa Application Assistance Center). But it is the CVASC to which you must make your way.

There are two branches of this quasi-official organization in Seoul, and the closest one to me is located at Seoul Station, Line 1 of the metro. Go to Exit 8, but instead of going outside, enter the Seoul Square Mall. Go around the corner to the first escalator, then turn left and go up the second escalator. Turn right and follow the signs to CVASC and take the dedicated elevator to the sixth floor.

Now, get into the "Information" line. The worker there will look over your documents and give you a ticket number--or FAR MORE LIKELY--tell you what documents you don't have so you can go away and get them. There is a chance that you merely need to print some stuff off, so you can go to the bank of printers (which in my experience have a spotty record of being online). 100 W per page, but 200 W up to ten pages.

What documents do you need? I hear you ask. Of course, there are the ones we all expect to need when we go to apply for a visa, to wit:

application

passport

passport style photo

Korean visa with at least six months

ARC

Copy air ticket with ongoing flight

Name of hotel/guesthouse

Money

I've been loads of places, some of which require a visa, and that is the most I've been asked to provide. In fact, on my previous trips to China, that is all. However, the young ladies (all of them were) were quick to point out that there are new Chinese regulations for visas. Annoyingly, none of the information that follows was readily available on the CVASC website. But here is what else you need:

Copy of passport front page

Certificate of Entry (to Korea) for the last year

Copy of hotel bookings for each and every night of your stay

Itinerary of your trip--there is a form you must complete in detail

Okay, it's only a few things, but bear this in mind: 1) none of this is listed anywhere I could find on the website; 2) they won't make a copy of your passport, even though they make a copy front-and-back of your ARC; 2) my passport-type photo--good enough for my actual passport was too small to suit them, so I had to waste a larger shot (maybe 2 mm bigger); 3) you won't have kept your Certificates of Entry to Korea, but you can (have to) go to the Immigration office at Seoul Global Center at Jonggak sta. where they'll give you your all-time list for 2000 W cash; 5) your hotel bookings must match your passport--we had to change my booking.com account and redo the bookings so they had my full name--this was a pain in the royal ass. I asked my "assistant" if this was really necessary, as it was obvious that this is me, and my own booking--she replied, "They (Chinese Embassy) will definitely decline this visa"; 6) for the itinerary, you can't put "sightseeing", they want a specific place (just one...) for each day. Thankfully, I had brought my notes for the trip and didn't have to make up very much BS.

It is difficult to express the level of annoyance this process engendered, and I did my best to contain myself, but at one point I did tell the nice young lady who frankly wanted nothing more than to help me get this visa that I've been to China three times before and never had to do any of this nonsense! She could only say that it is "new regulations". It also engendered worries on my end that the application would be declined--did putting "cooking class" not count as a "landmark"? Is "The Bund" a good enough description for a day in Shanghai? etc.

The stupidest or most ironic thing about this whole process is that as an American, the visa--which is legally and (almost) irrevocably in my passport--is good for 10 years, with sixty days on each visit. All of it without going through ANY of this nonsense of writing out a detailed itinerary, printing out hotel bookings that I can cancel the next week, or making a copy of my passport page.

It's almost definitely as though they don't want my tourist dollars, which are the easiest dollars for any country to make. Unless they have something to hide. Please, just take my $180 and be done with it, like everywhere else.

Travel List

In three weeks, I will have been in Korea for ten years.

When I go home, or talk to family, they occasionally raise the question, "When are you coming home?" The easy answer is, "Well, I just went home X years ago (at the moment: less than one)." Of course, that's not really the answer to the question they were asking.

For whatever reason, they don't seem to understand the more complex answers to the question. I wouldn't have understood it myself until the last few years. Yes, I do enjoy living in Korea--it's a cool change of pace. But I suppose San Fran or Austin or NYC or Oklahoma City would be, too, compared to semi-rural Georgia.

And, I suppose it's not fair to say, "Well, I can't possibly abide being under the dominion of the Circus-Peanut-In-Chief!" After all, when I came to Korea, Barack Obama had not even been elected yet. Also, it's not fair to say Korea is particularly more liberal or welcoming of foreigners or anything like that--hell, abortion is illegal in this country...

Still, I have a pretty good gig, where grading papers (the bane of my previous existence as a "real" teacher) just isn't a thing. Sure I work hard planning lessons, creating materials, trying to improve the educational outcomes of my students, as I always have done. But at 4:30, I'm finished, and get to have my own life. Surf around the blog to see what life for me is like here.

But the coup de resistance, the thing Americans--who have probably never even been to the Grand Canyon or the Gateway Arch (neither have I, BTW!)--don't get is the ready availability of travel for me. I'll go tomorrow to get my Korean visa renewed, and then Wednesday to get a visa for my upcoming two week trip to China. It'll be my fourth trip there. "Travel List" is the name of the post, and here it is (remember to click to see the full size if you can't read it):


I just have to shrug and say, "Livin' the dream."


EDIT:
Today, in furtherance of getting my visa for my upcoming China trip, I had to take a side trip to Immigration to get a copy of my "Certificates of Entry" for the last 12 months. Never had to do that before ... on three previous trips. New regulations are making tourism to China untenable--apparently, they only want to make American dollars by selling poisonous shampoo and substandard melamine.

Anyway, gather round. So, I took the side trip to get these documents--by the way, nothing was mentioned on the website about this requirement, or the photocopy of passport ID page, or copies of hotel bookings (none of which were needed in the past)--and found the only document that Korean Immi provides is a complete list of all your entries and exits. For 2,000W, chump change compared to the 200,000W China wants for my visa. I'm getting side-tracked …

I decided to verify the list I provided above, which was mainly based on blog posts and memory, and found I have left off two trips, and want to set the record straight, as follows:
August, 2013 -- Thailand, Koh Samui
April, 2017 -- Cambodia, PP, Kampot

Korean Fast Food

Of course, Seoul being a very modern place, there are loads of fast food restaurants like KFC (first to blanket the country), Subway (world's largest fast food chain), Burger King, Mickey D's, and even Quiznos. But Koreans have had their own version of fast food for centuries, including street vendors carts called pocha 포차, short for pojang macha 포장마차 (meaning covered wagon).

But today I got my lunch from a newly opened place across from my building. It's not technically a pocha, since it's in a building, but the term has come into use for such places, as long as they offer the usual fare. Among the items they sell are o-deng, or fish spam, which I don't much care for, and sundae 순대, or pig blood sausage, which I do. Like so many pocha, ddeokbokki 떡볶이 is a staple. It's a kind of rice cake stewed with spicy red sauce, slivers of o-deng and a sprinkle of pa 파, spring onion.


Pictured is the "double set", which is technically for two people at 9,000 W. But I wanted a full load of sundae, there in the middle, with steamed offal--yum! On the right is a fried sampler of batter-fried stuff, 튀김, including crab (probably imitation), sweet potato, mandu 만두 dumpling, and kimbap 김밥 or seaweed roll.


맛있게 드세요!

Flyer

People between jobs do piecework. They do any number of things, apparently one of them being handing out flyers in front of subway station entrances.

As a foreigner, most of these hawkers don't bother with me, which is fine by me--unless they're handing out something useful like candy or those packages of moist towelettes. One time I got a pair of socks. But usually, they are selling something mainly Koreans are interested in buying: new apartments, rubbish miracle cures, restaurant openings.

Today, outside Gayang sta. the young lady was quite persistent in trying to get me to take her flyer, so, a bit grudgingly, I took it. I glanced at it once inside the station, looking for a recycling bin, and understood why.


That translates as "Skinny Gym". I kept it anyway, I'm not sure why.

My Saturday Night

It's easy to see I don't blog very much anymore, and I feel generally that that's because I've pretty much said everything I have to say about living in Seoul. Most posts nowadays are about my vacations. I'm still enjoying my life in Seoul, however, so I decided to do a little photo essay about my Saturday evening. There's not much to it, but here it is.

Dinner of "bone-in hangover soup" 뼈해장국, at one of the favorite restaurants of mine in the neighborhood that specialize in it. This place is a postage stamp of a restaurant, with only six tables. The name reads in English "Deungchon station potato soup experts"; it's called potato soup, even though it will probably not contain potatoes, because the bones are said to look like potatoes.


Some people just take off the meat from the bones as they eat, and others, myself included, strip all the bones and toss them into the bone can that you can see at the end of the table. It is fairly low-fat meat from next to the backbone of the pig, and very flavorful.


After that, a stroll down the restaurant row to my favorite coffee shop, Caffe Bene, for my regular order and weekend indulgence, a caramel frappe, which is more or less coffee ice cream.


By now, it's 8:30, so I head home to polish off the evening by polishing off some beers, accompanied by, well, this post, and maybe some YouTube.


Saturday night in Seoul.

Curious Canvassing

Next Wednesday is Korean Memorial Day (6/6), and the Wednesday after that is local election day. Both of these are national holidays, and while of course Memorial Day is a holiday in the US, I think Election Day should be, too. Instead of so much fighting over early voting, absentee ballots, etc, just have the day off and everyone (well, everyone who is legally eligible) can exercise the franchise.

My apartment overlooks a significant intersection in the Gang-seo district of Seoul, 등촌 삼거리, and the next two weeks are going to be a headache for the likes of me. For whatever reason, the electioneering tradition in Seoul (and elsewhere in Korea, I'm guessing) requires megaphone-style canvassing at such locations. Though I live on the twelfth floor, the sound carries ...

After work today, I came home, fired up the computer for some light ent. on the YouTubes, and then the yammering started. Rather than be annoyed, I thought of you, the lovely visitors to my little Patch of Seoul, and decided this might make a good post to share with you the joys and jollities of living in Korea. I have previously remarked on Korean electioneering, in 2010 and in 2014.

Anyway, I grabbed my iPhone and ran downstairs to snap a pic or three, shown in order below. The odd thing about this might escape the viewer on her initial perusal of the photos/video. After all, all the surrogates/electioneers/cheerleaders are all in blue. And they are all #1 (candidates are numbered here, so you don't need to remember a name, just a number). If you look carefully, there are actually three different candidates vying for the attention of potential voters at the Deungchon three-way intersection!


And video (turn the sound up all the way for some idea of the actual effect):

Korean Drinksie

After a long hiatus, I met up with The Stumbler at our old haunt in Gangseo-gu cheong, at Saemaul Shikdang (New Village Restaurant), for an overdue dinner of grilled pork and soju, Korean-style.

We usually meet well in advance of dinner time for, let's just call it "cocktails", a few drinksie at a chicken hof or, ideally, at a convenience store with a couple of tables outside--lower overhead on the beer prices.

To wit, the latest addition to the constellation of Korean beers is the Filite "Fresh", in the blue can. The particular establishment at which I awaited his arrival happened to have some, so I gave it a shot while waiting. Here's the can; it doesn't have a lot to recommend it, other than the price, 1,600 W, which is the same as the green one. And frankly, the "clean barley flavor" of the original suits me much better.


While waiting (the weather started to turn, affecting traffic), I had a second one. It didn't really change my opinion, but I didn't mind it as much. At this point, it's coming up on half-seven and I'm getting peckish, so I stroll toward our dinner spot. I barely have time to explain to the wait-staff that my friend is late and order some drinksie when a team (okay, a pair) of promoters come into the restaurant. They are promoting Cham-i-sul ("real dew") soju, whereas I had just ordered, as usual, Cheoeum-cheoreom ("like the first time").

The fact that one member of the team was a pretty girl in no way convinced me to change my order. Nope, I just hadn't had my picture taken in a while, that's all.


As an additional inducement, the young woman is holding a giant cut-out soju bottle, which you can see below is a kind of alcohol advent calendar. Pick a window and win a prize.


Truth is, I've played this game a dozen times, at least, from Guro Digital to Cheolsan to Hongdae and back again, but I keep playing on the off-chance I'll win a small island in the Caribbean, or at least a Hyundai Sonata. I picked IU 아이유, a hot Korean actress, but had to settle for a large packet of mul-tissue (moist towelettes) and some skin cream.

Grrr. Next time, soju advent calendar, next time!

Seoul Subway Signage

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, then at least two people asked me this week-end if I was ever going to resurrect this blog, so here it is. I have written numerous times in the past about elements of the subway, here is a partial list:
Yangcheon gu cheong station: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.kr/2015/04/or-my-local-subway-station.html
Yeouinaru station: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.kr/2010/10/yeouinaru.html
That time they changed the left-right on the escalators: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.kr/2009/10/she-told-me-to-walk-this-way.html
And two posts about when they opened Line 9: http://seoulpatch.blogspot.kr/2009/05/subway-saturday.html and http://seoulpatch.blogspot.kr/2009/07/tuttle-rides-nine.html

As the title suggests, this post is about signs you find on the subway. First up, the very helpful maps of station, local area and system:


Here's a moderately helpful sign pointing out safely and comfort features of the subway:


And here's one showing good manners and proper behavior on the subway:


...but it doesn't include my two favorite images of the series (in the first one, the Hangeul says: "Out!"):


Here are a few advertisements you might see today, the last one for the "Goblin Night Market" a glorified flea market or car boot sale, as the Brits might say:


You see a few of these around (including at Yangcheon gu cheong station, as pictured in that post):


And finally, Seoul Best Toilet, awarded in 2001 to the World Cup Stadium station. Well done!

Seonyudo Park

About once a month, the teachers in my office, the 교과실, are allowed to leave campus in the afternoon for a "team-building" experience. I recently posted about our trip to an art museum--a couple of times last year we went to see a movie. Anyway, yesterday, we went to Seonyudo Park. Some things that end with -do in Korean are islands, and that is the case here. But don't get it confused with the one in Gunsan 군산 , on the west coast. This Seonyudo 선유도 is a small island in the middle of the Han River, north of Yeouido; it was once the site of a water purification plant, but today the entire island is a park.

Walking across the pedestrian overpass to the island has some good vistas of the city,


...but I liked this shot with the leafy frame.


As I've noted, it's springtime, and there were lots of blooms (azalea, peach and lilac, not sure about the next one offhand):


The last one above is a Japanese red maple--it's always like that.

The park has numerous features, including an aquatic garden, a couple of greenhouses, and this:


And of course, walking paths. Here are my co-workers ahead of me on one of them.


Finally, a pic of me in the greenhouse.