Fast forward 1 hour to our trip to the royal palace. After a bus tour of the grounds, including a peek at the president's "blue house", we stopped at the main gate and watched the changing of the guard.
Bear in mind that the sand drilling grounds in front of the palace had essentially no shade, and the 10:00 sun was made it uncomfortably hot even in shorts. The actors were dressed in traditional Korean ceremonial dress (photo courtesy of Margie):You'll notice that each guard is wearing at least 3 layers of heavy clothing, along with a black hat and large, thick boots. Despite the sweat-inducing conditions, they did an admirable job of illustrating the process. In a nutshell, the new guards march out from the barracks, line up face to face with the old, exchange documents and other affects, and then the old guards march out.
Throughout the whole process, there was traditional Korean flute music playing. The procession would play the instruments you see in the photo. The drums were powerful and resonant, especially the large bass (left). The horns sounded like someone had backed a truck over them first, but they played them with all the pomp they could muster.
The palace itself was impressive, with what must be tons of ceramic tiles supported by a dense, hand carved trellis of logs. The stone bases of the palace buildings were essentially open chimney, so that cooking fires in the kitchen also heated the floor of the entire building. As such, the palace and related buildings are single-story, so that the inhabitants can always be near the source of heat (the floor). Since ancient Koreans pretty much did everything there (eat, drink, sleep, 'sleep',etc.), they kept the floor as clean as we would a table (hence the taking off shoes and whatnot).
We noticed as we were leaving that the palace was a popular destination for school children. You could tell each school because all of the kids wore the same color uniform and backpack. Some of the more outgoing kids were anxious to apply their English lessons, waving enthusiastically at us and cheerfully shouting hello.
Lunch that day was Korean/Chinese fusion, which basically means the chef can play fast and loose with ingredients and proportions. Luckily, we Americans didn't really know the difference, so it worked out perfectly. They loaded fried and boiled meats, vegetables, rice, kim-chi, beer, and soda onto a big revolving tray on our (circular) table. This was the first of many meals in which I was determined to grow a set and ignore the persistent burn in my mouth (more on this later)
A short hop across town brought us to the '63' building, which is functionally equivalent to the Empire State building. It has an observatory that lets you see most of Seoul, as well as a days worth of LED production from Samsung to light and decorate the food court. Think of an entire corridor modeled after the warp core of the Enterprise-D, only with changing colors.
The introductory symposium we attended next was meant to be a classy and formal end to our first day. We dressed up, had a banquet-style dinner (of "western" food, to Sarah's vocal disappointment), and met some of the higher-ups in the NSF and KOSEF. We received a very generous gift of a 1GB stainless flash drive, as well as 400000 Won of our living allowance. We then found out we were supposed to make a brief speech about our research topic. Channeling my best Dr. Oh, I started from the basics, explained the what and why, harped on collaborations, and 3 minutes into my 1 minute spot, ran out of things to say.
The highlight of the evening had to be the 5 minute video introducing KOSEF and NSF's partnership. They meant well in producing it, I'm sure, but the result came off like five separate, 1 minute commercials stitched together in windows movie maker. I heard the phrase "strategic development" at least 3 times, and and no point in the video did they cite specific examples, present any facts or statistics, or in any way support their claims of fostering partnership. I understand that it was meant only to be an introduction, but they wasted minute after minute saying the same thing over and over again. The message was essentially "Korea / America have scientists. Scientists need money to research. We give them money. We want to give them more money." There...add 10 seconds of fancy graphics for a solid, simple message. No bullshit, no using 20 words to say what you could with 5, and no patronizing an intelligent audience.
The first big night out started at the "Budweiser" Bar across the street. This illustrates the phenomenon of "imported=good", but we opted to drink soju and try some tentacled seafood. We shared stories of youthful indiscretions involving one or more of: (too much) alcohol, driving, broken windows, significant others, the men's bathroom, and overbearing mothers. From there, the true partiers proved their mettle by going to a no-rae-bong (karaoke). John/Jon immediately distinguished themselves as having the biggest lungs and biggest spirit. It didn't matter that we collectively were kind of tone-deaf...we, and particularly they, had the enthusiasm. I've never heard "Bohemian Rhapsody" sung quite so. When Madonna worked her way into the song queue (inevitable given the group average age of ~30), Margie and Theresa did great justice to "Papa Don't Preach". Actually, I think they did it better, since they didn't have that reediness that makes Madonna a little annoying. There was Guns and Roses, more 80's music, even a ballad. I tried my voice at Superfreak, which worked fairly well, except that I forgot the rhythm in some spots.
During this time, events were unfolding that would precipitate heated negotiation of broken English and frantic hand gestures. A total of 9 beers were consumed @ 5000 each; what they didn't tell us was that we had to buy food too, and so snuck in a fruit tray. At the conclusion of the night we discovered its price : 40,000 Won. After counting, recounting, accounting, and negotiations, the price was whittled to 20,000 Won. The value of the lesson learned was greater...in particular the phrases "an-ni-yo" (no) and "no-mu" (too much).
Big discoveries of the day
- Due to wartime destruction, Seoul is on average a very new city, with most buildings dating to the 1950's or later
- KOSEF did not spare any expense on the tours, meals, and accomodations
- Government agencies can't do marketing
- Always make sure of an establishment's ordering rules ahead of time
http://picasaweb.google.com/MSSBlueJay/200706KoreaPartI
1 comment:
funny. i'm glad u enjoyed seoul. one of my fav cities. i've applied for eapsi singapore. i was wondering about the tickets.
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