Orientation Day 3

The 30th anniversary of KOSEF's foundation was celebrated in a day of lecture and fine dining at the Westin Chosun Hotel. from 9:30 to about 12:00, there were 4 presentations from reps of various Asian equivalents to the NSF. The real meat-and-potatoes messages of their presentations seemed to be:

1. Science funding agencies are good,
   
2. KOSEF is a science funding agency
3. Happy Birthday KOSEF
4. Other countries also have science funding agencies, which are also good.
5. New Zealand accents are funny

To present those facts took several hours of broken english and poorly formatted slides. Now, I must emphasize that the ability to speak more than 20 words of a foreign language is something I seriously respect, and so all the presenters deserve praise for their abilities and effort. The presenters did the best they could with a dry and boring topic. The result, unfortunately, made me want to make the razor-to-wrist gesture, if not actually carry out the deed.

Luckily, the lunch was packed with a variety of foods and styles, and we all left full and sated. The latter half of the presentations were far better, with the highlight being a scientist from Florida who basically said that our present climate of science taking a backseat to politics is akin to taking the titanic full speed ahead across the North Atlantic. He was blunt, somewhat inflammatory, a bit overzealous, but made his point more clearly and effectively than the rest of the presenters put together. He reminded me a lot of Richard Dawkins, due to both his accent and his position strongly in favor of rationality.

As we walked through the street market after his speech, we noticed that there were several street preachers with bullhorns broadcasting to the hip, young crowd. It was sad, really...these tired and weathered souls were likely haranguing the masses about whatever the latest deadly sin is. It was futile at best, and probably counterproductive, since any God that needs his word spread in that sad a manner is a weak deity. As schizophrenic as He was, at least in the old testament God knew how to make certain groups of people very aware of his presence. Now it seems that's not even possible.

The dinner that followed was probably the best food we had eaten on the trip to date (left, again courtesy of Margie). A traditional meal was spread out into something like 6 courses. Some of the better foods were raw fish, pickled greens, a sort of sesame-and-rice tortilla with 9 kinds of filling, grilled meats, squid, and a sort of scorn jello. While almost everything ranked somewhere from "interesting" to "delicious", the acorn jello was less appetizing than it looked. Imagine mud & hot pepper Jello jigglers...
The alcohol was consistently good, from the light but effective beer to the tart but fruit bek-se-ju (a kind of wine). One thing I've noticed is that consumption of Korean alcohol tends to be self-limiting. The first glass or shot of soju is cold and delicious, but by the fifth it's lukewarm and about as palatable as rubbing alcohol.

For the big night out, we split into 2 groups. Erica, Margie, Theresa, Matt, Nastaran, and I headed for the stream, while Jon, John, Amy, and Ben (?) went to Itaewon to drink and shop. The "stream" was a little waterway that was covered up by the Japanese during the colonial period. It's a big point of pride that it has now been uncovered, and the flow restored through downtown. Think of the sight and smell of Tookany creek (with sidewalks), for those at home. There were rocks in the middle to cross or take pictures on, and Several bridges that covered spots for people to stop or sit and enjoy the water. The highlight of the stream is the 600 ft. mural depicting a royal funeral procession. Every member of the procession is represented in detail.

We eventually left the stream and headed to Insadong market, which was coincidentally the same place I visited in October to purchase gifts and test my Korean phrasebook-reading skills with Keith. It was mostly closed when we arrived, though there was still the occasional street vendor with odd-smelling fried things on a stick, or shoes or tea or something. The tea shop we ended up visiting was a hole-in-the-wall place, but the tea was top notch. The 6 official flavors of tea we tried were:

1. plum (hot)
2. plum (cold)
3. pine
   
4. chrysanthemum (hot)
5. cherry
6. some kind of root

what they actually tasted like:

1. plum
2. hot plum
3. sherry and pine nuts
4. fresh clarinet reed
5. cherry jolly rancher
6. chinchilla fur / cage
   

Everyone was skeptical of my analysis, but I did get some agreement on the chinchilla one. We returned to the hotel afterwards without drinking any alcohol, a shocking rarity during orientation week.