I’ve been awful taking pictures recently. I’ve made a bad habit of not carrying my camera. Anyway here are the end of June and July’s photos from when I did carry my camera.

20060722 Killer Kimchi
A few random shots I took - a nice street lamp; a Japanese friend visited and ordered a crazy smoking beer that caused some animal like poses; an ice-cream spoon; some Korean friends I hadn’t met for a long time; a pasta restaurant that had fairly decent food for a reasonable price; some experimental shots in McDonalds; watching football in a tiny bar; and my growing out of control plant!

20060722 Robots
There is a really nice robot collection in Seoul. If you go to the arty area of Seoul in Hyeahwa (혜화) you may spot a nice, grey, metal building with old-skool robot inspired typography. This is the robot museum. I found so many childhood memories here and the toys I had as a child are neatly displayed in their plastic glory. It was great. Admission includes a screening of a 3D film and an opportunity to play with some robots. Well worth it. If you hit up Seoul then go there!

20060722 Shake that cake
Me and my Japanese friends I usually travel with, went to a nice coffee shop to discuss our future trips. They served cake for free and we washed it down with some excellent tasting shakes. So since my friends were conversing in Japanese (in Fukuoka dialect) I played around with the camera. My Japanese is at a level where I can get the subject and some of their conversations but can’t understand the details. So later on they repeated the plan again in a mix of Korean and English. Looks like Japan in September and the UK at Christmas.

20060722 Tissue Box
As part of the culture side of my language course, we visited a folk centre to learn how to make a traditional box. The box actually has a modern usage though. It can be place over those cube like boxes of tissues to make them look a little more special. The process was difficult and messy but a lot of fun. I got to know my classmates a little better and enjoyed the break from intensive language class. Sorry about the size of the people pics. That’s how they were e-mailed to me.

20060722 World Cup
World Cup fever is huge here. The build up included everyone wearing nothing but red (even to work). It really was a red city while Korea were in the World Cup. So the second game - we watched the it in Seoul World Cup Stadium via the big screens. It was a lot of fun as the stadium was full and everyone was up for cheering. The on pitch entertainment was a little lame but the fans made it fun. A nice night out. Shame about the 1-1 score-line.

20060722 World Cup again
For the final group stage game we headed to the business district of Seoul after repeated attempts to get into Seoul World Cup Stadium. Since we arrived late every viewable angle of the giant screens (that are on top of many of the tall buildings) had been taken. We were forced to watch the game from a smelly side alley with some police officers. The smell got too much and with the sun-rising we headed outside of the centre of the business district to catch the second half. Again finding a viewable angle was tough but we eventually did. Korea lost and with it the sea of red became to fade back into city colours. The public transport was impossible due to 700,000 people trying to get into the subway station and the roads being closed. So we walked a long walk to another area of the city to eat some breakfast. We eventually reached home at 8am and slept the afternoon. They city lay silent as Korea were knocked out of the World Cup.

My arm seems to be a foot or two longer thanks to having to constantly carry an umbrella. Yes, the Korean rainy season isn’t letting up. At least it’s not bad rain as I mentioned before. School is increasingly getting more difficult thanks to surprise after surprise of things we need to memorise. It’s getting me down a bit. The weekends can’t come fast enough but when they do I realise another week has flown by and I need to study more. That’s enough negativity.

Actually, some of my class mates seem really nice and I think after midterms I’ll make am effort to be more friendly with them. I guess I haven’t already because some of their Korean is quite incredible and I feel beneath them with level of speech. However, I realise they don’t care about my level of speech as long as I try. It’s becoming more and more apparent that if you have a good understanding of Chinese characters memorising all the new words is very easy. For us westerners it’s hard but the teacher realises that thankfully. Although saying that she won’t cut me any slack haha. It’s okay, I’ll do my best. It’s all I can do.

I’ve been loving Nintendo games recently. Since I’m busy I want games I can pick up and play in 15 minute bursts. Animal Crossing: Wild World and Dr Kawashima’ Brain Training are providing just that! Both offer daily play that fills those gaps travelling on the subway just right. If I have a little more time they let me do other optional tasks. It’s great! Thanks Nintendo!

Ah we are having a Typhoon here. So far it’s just windy and heavy rain but I hear it’ll be worse tonight or tomorrow. Hopefully it won’t strand me anywhere today but I do have to go out.
The rainy season was no where near as bad as I thought or heard it would be. It’s just like normal rain and it’s not exactly frequent compared to Wales. Still it’s rain in summer, so it gets humid. I think it’ll be worse in the next few weeks when the temperature rises above 30 degrees C. In Wales it’s only ever 25ish in summer so the weather here is a little hot for me. It’ll be hardest to bear in August.

See the World Cup final? It was enjoyable (the 1st half at least) and finally went to penalties to settle it. France looked stronger to me but either team could have won. The penalties were mostly well taken so the goalies jobs were made that much harder. It was a fairly good World Cup but where was the fair play?
I returned home from watching that at 6am, so school was difficult with only 2 hours sleep under the belt. Yeah I couldn’t watch every game because of the time difference but did see the ones I wanted. Back to normal life.

I somehow got struck down with a cold in the heat of the summer. It’s very annoying because I’ve just started a new term in Uni and got chosen to do a presentation with only a day to prepare (today). I’ve been designing too with some nice little bits for Keikaku that I will launch when I can. I just need to write write two PHP functions to get that live but it’s code I haven’t learnt before. Also the weather here is hotter than a Wales summer and I have no air-con or even an electric fan so my concentration drops and with that my eyes cause migraines. Basically I have to concentrate to stop my eyes falling out of balance. These days I still get ill with it maybe once a month. My one eye has only 50% vision and thus cannot match the better eye. So I’m on strong medication again. I think the only way I’m going to get through the summer term is to get a schedule in place. I have to factor in homework, study time, design time, exercise time and time for people. It’s a lot but with a little planning I should be able to whip me up a productive term. Sticking to the schedule is my goal for the term. I want to regain the discipline I once had. With that I end this random mash of sentences.