Tuesday, September 18, 2018

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.

Monday, September 10, 2018

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