My vacataion with friends to HK and back in Korea

Recently, I had some friends come through Korea. They spent 5 days here where we ate lots of good food, drank some good drinks, hiked a little, watched some baseball, and had a good time.

After they left, they decided to pack one more thing... me! I was convinced to take a trip to Hong Kong and Macau with my friends. We spent a week there, ate some more good food, played some poker, had some more to drink and then before I knew it the week was over and I headed back to Korea as they continued on their way. When I finally got home and turned on my computer, I found a surprise waiting in my inbox. They were headed back to Korea for another five days!

Very random, very fun. I have some pics and videos up on facebook but I will post a few here as well. Enjoy!

Decent seats
Johnny Walker Blue and some warmed Cashews.
Lobby of the first hotel we checked into.
Awesome Peking Duck
The Bank of China building
The Hong Kong skyline
Getting some tailored shirts with friends

Helicopter?!? View from above

Live Lobster (it was definitely still moving when they served it).
At an Icebar in Seoul
Cheers!

April and the Cherry Blossoms

So two weeks ago was the time when the cherry blossoms come out. Luckily, Kongjoo and I had time to go to Namsan and enjoy a little hike and enjoy the day.

Namsan is north of the Han river which splits Seoul in Half. It is also the location of Seoul tower or Namsan tower. The top picture shows the Han river splitting Seoul. Namsan tower is located at the southernmost gray circle. The picture below shows a satellite photo of Namsan tower.

This is the highest point in Seoul. There is an observation deck at the top and a neat bathroom where you can overlook Seoul from above all while going to the bathroom. I have visited the tower before but it was nice to finally get to walk around the mountain.

The day was perfect. The weather was nice and there was a cool breeze. Of course, there were tons of people walking around and taking pictures but we never felt completely crowded.

Naturally, because I love food, I have to tell you about the really great strawberry milkshake that I had from this place called the Flower Cafe. It was a nice little spot with a swing bench at one table. We had sandwiches as a light meal before our hike and will definitely be back for the milkshakes and coffee.

Finally, lots of pictures of our day. Enjoy!

Comparing Yangji Resort and Mount Snow

Honestly there is no comparison. I miss my home mountain! I couldn't get the sizes exactly the same but it was pretty close.

Now the first picture is Yangji Resort which is where I skiied all of this past season. If you notice where all the white is that is obviously the ski area. Now there are other areas that look like they may be trails... well they aren't. They are actually holes on the golf course. Yangji is just that small. The bottom of the mountain is the top left side. The top of the mountain is the bottom right. So if you tilt this picture about 90 degrees counter clockwise you would be looking at the mountain from the bottom top perspective.

Drum roll please....

And here is mount snow. Now I should also point out that Yangji is zoomed in a little more than the picture of mount snow which means the size gap is even wider. None of those trails are golf holes they are all the trails that scatter throughout mount snow. Now I can't imagine a Breckenridge or Whistler compared to these to pictures and I honestly don't feel like going to google maps and looking it up but you can see the difference clearly from these two pictures of what my mountain was like here in Korea.


Another note to make which may be a blog post in the futre is that I used Daum.net maps to get the photo of Yangji. daum.net is kind of like the yahoo of Korea, even though there is a yahoo.co.kr available. The two big players are Naver.com and Daum.net. I must say that the daum.net maps is very impressive. It can even calculate bus routes from one address to another and after all the tests I have done are extremely accurate. Anyway, I can write about this all later.

Happy Friday!

Using Mozilla Firefox with international websites

Living in Korea is a great thing if you love technology. Korea is one of the most connected countries in the world. Broadband access here is something like 35 million people who are actively connected to the internet which I find quite impressive for a country with only 50 million people. Never dropping a cellphone call and being able to access live TV anywhere in the country is also another great thing to boast about.

There is one piece of technology though that has been held back to near the 1990’s era. I’m talking of course about the near monopoly that internet explorer has on the Korean market. There are very few websites that will run correctly using any other type of browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari). It’s almost ridiculous to think that a country that is about 2 or 3 years ahead of most other countries technology is still limiting their advancement in internet browsing.

Being from the US I have enjoyed the use of Mozilla Firefox for some time now. It runs much smoother than IE and since I am still running Windows XP and refuse to upgrade my operating system until a better form of Windows 7 comes out my IE runs at a snail’s pace. I finally got so frustrated with IE today that I needed something. I had even downloaded Google Chrome today just to see if that would work, but with no avail. That’s why I am so happy that I was able to find this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419. What this add-on does is it allows someone using Firefox to open an IE tab within the Firefox interface. You can change back and forth between rendering engines and it has so far worked perfectly on many of the Korean websites that I have tried.

I hope this knowledge of the add-on helps people in their enjoyment of other web browsers while still being able to enjoy the viewing of all Korean websites. This is why today was a great day. Today I decided to quit my dependency on opening the full IE browser for running Korean websites

Time to get back on that board!

Time to go skiing again, only this time I was going to get back on my board. So correction, it's time to ride! This is the first time I have ridden in about two years. I was very excited but was worried it would take some time to get used to being on a board again. Not the case. I once i latched down my bindings I was good to go.

It was nice seeing Yangji Resort at night this time. We went from about 2 pm until 9 pm. It was nice because when we went home this time the trip only took an hour and a half because there was no traffic on the road.


In between riding in the afternoon and night we hung out in the season pass lounge which is only for the premium pass holders. It is nice because they give you free soda and coffee and little munchies as well as free Internet and a warm place to relax.

Here is a view of that triple black diamond again. Obviously it is not a triple black. Maybe almost double black. It was pretty steep but again nothing like Ripcord.

I felt very comfortable riding again. It will take some time until I get full control over my body again but I was able to do a few things on the board.

A friend leaves Korea (for a short while)

I almost forgot to post this. Taya left Korea at the end of December to head back to the states for a bit. She will return to Ilsan which is just north of Seoul in February. So we got together for a farewell dinner to wish her well in her travels and will await her return. There were some silly photos along the way. What exactly is going on here? I have no idea. Here are Kongjoo, Taya, and Amy.

Me and Taya.
Taya and Kongjoo.
After dinner we had some tea and Paul and Sunny's home. Here she is preparing a flower tea for us. It was light and delicious.
After that, of course, Nore bang. Here Taya is singing her heart out one more time before she heads home.
The dynamic duo otherwise known as Tony and Taya. I swear they act a bit like an old married couple. Their interactions are hilarious to watch and I'm sure they will both miss each other as we will all miss Taya. Until you return my friend!