Nath's Blog

Ok, so I still haven’t filled in the gaps from my last couple of posts. I’ll get there eventually. Maybe.

Right now, I want to write about my trip home. For my last two days in Korea, I stayed with Matthew and Priscilla, their two children, two hamsters, and Priscilla’s parents, in the biggest apartment I’ve seen in Korea. I’m sure there are larger, but not that I’ve been inside. Anyway, less than 10 minutes walk from their apartment is a collection of bus stops, including one for a bus that travels to the airport.

The bus I caught to the airport was clearly different to the standard buses. For one, it had the names of the airports it stops at written in English on the side. There were the huge luggage compartments underneath, where the driver stowed suitcases. Then there was the price. Where an average bus fare would be 1500 or 2000 Won, this fare was 8000 Won. Hardly extravagant, especially compared to public transport costs in Australia, but still higher than normal. Priscilla told me the trip would take about an hour, something I was a bit surprised about – the map at the bus terminal showed there were just 11 stops between where I was, and Incheon International Airport. She explained there was about 30 minutes between the last two stops – knowledge I was very grateful to have.

Clambering aboard, I paid my 8000 Won and settled in to a seat near the back. With the outside temperature around -1 or -2 Centigrade, the windows quickly fogged up. More and more passengers got on the bus as we travelled, and after about 30 minutes, we stopped at an airport. Fortunately I noticed a sign in English that had the name of the airport written on it. I don’t remember which airport it was, but it wasn’t Incheon International. That, combined with the unexpectedly short trip to this airport, and the majority of passengers remaining seated, was a pretty good indication I didn’t want to get out here.

Eventually I arrived at the airport, checked in, and navigated customs and baggage screening. I took a bit of a look around, and made my way to the gate in time to queue up to board the plane. In a repeat performance of my experience last year, after presenting my boarding pass and heading down the aerobridge, I had to present my checked on baggage for a cursory inspection. I’m not sure what the point of this inspection is – hand luggage had already been X-rayed as we entered the sterile section of the airport, and it wasn’t an overly thorough inspection. I wonder whether the workers there were paying more attention to passengers’ body language than what they were seeing inside the bag.

The inspection over, I headed into the plane, and took my seat. I was towards the front of economy – row 15, so I sat back and watched people pouring in, and disappearing into the depths of the aircraft behind me. Eventually, I discovered who I would be sitting next to for the next 10 hours. Two young kids, probably around 10 and 5, with the 5 year old boy sitting next to me. Wonderful. Then, to complete my nightmare, their mother disappeared towards the front of the plane. I was almost outraged, that a mother would travel business class and abandon her two children to the mercies of the strangers surrounding them in economy. Then I figured they’d probably sleep for most of the flight, something I planned to do also, so it wouldn’t matter so much.

The next 15 or 20 minutes weren’t much fun. The kids seemed to have one Nintendo DS between them for entertainment, and in between tirades of Korean, the DS was swapped between the two. Fortunately the kids got tired of this soon after take off, and the boy lay down across the two seats, with his head in his sisters lap. I was greatly relieved – the next 10 hours wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Then about 10 minutes after take off, one of the air hostesses came to chat to me. She said the mother of the two children was in business class, but wanted to know if I’d swap seats with her, so she could mind her children. I was understandably very reluctant to give up my cramped economy seat for the luxuries of business class, but soon I was on my way. What an experience business class was! Reclining seats, about as many hostesses for the 10 rows of business class as there were for the entire economy section, and a delicious four course dinner complete with tablecloth, glassware, menus, and some great wine. Later there were blankets, pillows, bottles of water, and the discovery that the reclining seat would stretch out almost flat, although still on an angle.

Business class was a great experience, one that I would almost consider paying for next time. It certainly makes the flight much more enjoyable. The perfect way to cap off a great holiday.

We’ll return to the story of my trip in the next post, but I wanted to take some time to write about the feel and culture of Korea.

Korea itself is a place of contradictions, of opposition and compromise. As a nation, they’re fiercely nationalistic, with good reason. Thousands of years of culture, and occupation by Japanese and Chinese, have left the nation very closed to outsiders. Except for the very rich, everyone drives Korean cars, trucks, and busses. Probably scooters too, but I didn’t catch the manufacturer of any of the numerous scooters around. There’s almost no foreigners around – except for the people I’m travelling with, I could spend a whole day out visiting tourist locations, travelling busses and subway trains, and not see another white person.

Yet this is a country where tens of thousands of US troops have been stationed for decades, where English is taught in school, and speaking English is often a requirement for a job. One would expect the ‘Western influence’ to be quite prevalent. And in some ways it is – misspelt English adorns signs (want some cooffee?) and labels in an attempt to differentiate themselves, English words written phonetically in Korean letters, busses and trains include announcements in American-accented English.

But in many ways Koreans ignore outside cultures. Although English is taught in schools, and required to differentiate oneself from the myriad of other jobseekers, for the most part people lack a sufficient grasp of English to interact in the most basic of conversations. Where American culture is apparent, it’s still heavily influenced by Korean culture. Numerous American restuarants exist, serving foods from an American heritage, albeit with a Korean twist. Steak with a side of Kimchi anyone?

Kids from university that we met at haeundae beach, having spent years learning English, can manage only basic questions – where are you from, how old are you, what’s your name. I’m not sure whether they understood our replies at all.

I find it amusing that one of the questions I was most frequently asked was about my age. Korean culture includes a deeply-ingrained respect for those older than them, typically using completely different words when speaking to someone older. They have difficulty guessing the age of foreigners, hence the question.

I’m sure there are many other examples of Korean culture that strike me as odd, I just can’t think of them right now. Milk comes in cartons of 930ml – just under 1 quart. Why not one litre? Standard international units of measurement are used, but frequently just converted from other forms of measurement.

I’m not sure how much sense this post makes, I’ll probably read it later and be horrified at my grammar and flow of thought.

I realise it’s been nearly 10 days since I posted last. I’ve done loads of stuff since then, but I haven’t gotten around to writing about it. It doesn’t help that I’m relying on the generosity of people to provide open wireless access points for me to use.

So I’m currently in Incheon, but up until Thursday 21st I was still in Busan. I caught the 13:13pm KTX (Korean fast train) to Incheon on Thursday, and I’ve done a few touristy things here since then, in addition with catching up with people.

Quick summary of what I did in Busan:
Saturday – trip on subway to Busan tower, fish market, mueseum of musical instruments
Sunday – trip to Daegu ecclesia
Monday – trip to the end of subway line, paris baguette, then to haendae beach, had a look around, dinner at Bennigans above starbucks
… I can’t remember after that. I’ll have to think back. I’m leaving very soon to go to Lotte World (at least, I think that’s how it’s spelt). More details will be coming when I have a chance.

So it’s been another couple of days since I’ve been able to write a blog post. For some reason I’ve been unable to use international data roaming on my phone for internet access, which is probably not such a bad thing considering the cost. I’ve had to wait until I could find a reliable open wireless access point to connect to the internet.

I’m sitting up in the circular shaped bed in this bizarre motel, which, based on past experience, is pretty much normal for the Korean versions of motels. The room is 3-4 metres square, with a small bathroom. It looks fairly old, and the bed is fairly hard, but hey, it beats sleeping on the floor like I’ve been doing since I got to Korea. It’s on the second floor of a mid sized building, with what I imagine to be the owners, an elderly couple, living in what doubles as their office on the ground floor. The only source of heat seems to be the electric blanket, but it isn’t too cold – unlike the weather outside.

I’ve been pretty cold for the last few days – I’m not sure whether that’s because of my cold, or just because the temperature is really low. Tonight I wore five layers: my ski jacket, a hoodie, a jumper, a long sleeved thick tshirt, and finally my thermal undershirt. Along with my neck warmer thing (I’m sure there’s a technical term, but I don’t know it) and my ski gloves, I wasn’t too cold.

We left the ski resort at Yong Pyong yesterday after lunch, then drove to Chong Seong (I’ve no idea on the correct spelling for that). That was an interesting trip to say the least. The hired van in which the 11 of us were travelling wasn’t running properly. After initial consultation with the hire company and a mechanic, it was thought it just needed to warm up more. One hour and some very rough driving later, things hadn’t improved. The diesel powered van seemed to have no power – it would coast fine downhill, but under any sort of load it, for lack of a better term, bunny-hopped along. The sort of driving style one would expect for an inexperienced driver with a manual gearbox, but constantly. The general consensus among the mechanically minded of us was that there was water mixed in with the diesel somehow. Anyway, another visit to another mechanic later, with the fuel filters replaced, the van returned to normal, and we continued our journey.

Like last year, we stopped at Chong Seong overnight, and visited a national park this morning, complete with frozen river and waterfalls. After lunch we continued south to Busan, stopped temporarily at the apartment some of us had been living in for the past 6 weeks or so, before going to the motel. Having organised our accomodation, we went out for dinner. I had a cheesy spaghetti, having eaten Korean food for the past few meals. Korean food, although for the most part edible enough, doesn’t seem to do a great job of satiating my hunger.

After dinner, we handed out some packs of refresher towels, with a sticker advertising the bible seminars here in Busan. It took around 30 minutes to hand out 1,000 of them! We warmed up in the starbucks nearby, before catching the bus back to the motel. The bus driver seemed to think he was driving an amusement park ride, with sudden and aggressive acceleration, braking, and lane changes. It made me very thankful when a seat became available.

And now, time for bed. Tomorrow is certain to be a long day, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to post here again.

A big shout out to Claire, and anyone else who happens to be reading this.

It’s been a couple of days since my last post. I’ve been really busy since I got here, so only now do I have a chance to write an update.

When I arrived in Incheon, there was some light snow falling. Snow was everywhere, at the airport, on the streets, the footpaths, the roofs. It might sound pretty, but mostly it was muddy and annoying. Sarang and Gun-woo met me at the airport, and we took a series of trains to get to the ecclesia in Seoul, before going to Gun-woo’s place, where we spent the night.

Early sunday morning (well, not that early, everyone slept in), we piled into a minivan to drive to Yong Pyong. We were staying in a much nicer building in Yong Pyong, even closer to the snow fields than last year.

Today we’ve had a couple of studies on 2 Timothy, followed by two skiing sessions. I started off fairly badly, but quickly got the hang of it again. My turns are getting better, but still nowhere near as graceful as some highly skilled children that fly past me on the slopes. There’s a lot more snow than last year, which has madethe skiing a lot more enjoyable.

The smell of some korean food makes me queasy now, smells similar to the ones I remember when I caught my stomach bug last year. It’s annoying at meal times, so I’ve been sticking with the ‘western’ food – various curries and port cutlets. I’m feeling quite tired after such a long day, I think it’s time for bed.

Now I’m sitting at gate 54 in Sydney Airport’s international terminal. It’s been an interesting journey getting here.

Checking in was uneventful, as was passing customs. The security screening, on the other hand, was probably the most eventful I’ve endured. Having removed my laptop as is typical these days, I expected to have no problem with my backup. Not so. Firstly I was asked if there was any other laptop in there – I figured the screening person was referring to my Kindle, so I took that out. It wasn’t enough though, I was asked whether I had a camera. I did – my SLR, so I took that out. Still unsatisfied, the screening person asked me if I had anything else electronic. She wanted to take a look inside my bag, and removed my charging adaptors, battery pack for my iPhone, P&S camera, AA batteries, etc. Basically, my bag was totally emptied onto a tray, and that was sent through the Xray machine, along with my now nearly-empty bag. Finally that was satisfactory, and I had the pleasure of re-packing my bag, and being allowed through.

After having a refreshing flat white, claiming the GST on my new leather jacket from the TRS office, I progressed to the currency exchange place. I know I need 300,000 Won for the ski camp, so I decided to get out 600,000 Won. Unfortunately, all the currency exchange place had was 5000 Won notes, except for a few 10,000 notes. So now I have a pile of cash that’s about an inch thick, and its worth about $700 AUD. Since I neglected to bring an extra suitcase just for my Korean cash, I stuffed my wallet, and distributed the rest in my backpack. Korean currency is pretty annoying like that.

On my way to gate 54, I passed a couple of Asian flight attendants eating an eagle boys pizza with knife and fork. It looked pretty difficult, given the cutlery was plastic, and those personal pizzas are about 90% crust. I also spotted a huge Singapore Airlines aircraft, which I can only assume is an Airbus A380, but I couldn’t get a good look at it.

The seats around here are filling up fast as departure time draws closer. Next stop, Incheon, Seoul.

I’m sitting on my bed at my parent’s place. Next to me sits a bulky, heavy suitcase, and a well stuffed backpack. It’s that time of the year again. The time to travel!

I’ve just driven up from Canberra, and parked my car where it will stay for the next 2 and a half weeks, barring any buglary. The trip itself was uneventful, but every minute was a minute closer to my departure tomorrow.

In an uncharacteristic display of extreme organisation, my suitcase has, for the most part, been packed for the last few days. Unfortunately it was quite impossible to fit all my ski clothing, so the ski pants have been left behind. I’d leave behind my ski jacket too, and hire both, along with my skiis etc, but I’m not sure if my leather jacket will be sufficient to keep me warm. This week in Seoul it’s been -15 degrees Centigrade, and I’m sure it will be much colder in Yong Pyong.

I’ve spent a bit of time researching, but haven’t been able to work out exactly how early I should get to the airport. I’m going to assume 3 hours to be on the safe side, although it will probably mean much boredom and possibly some impulse purchasing.

I’m hoping to be a little more vigilent with my blog posts describing this trip, but don’t hold your breath – I haven’t done a terribly good job of my last two trips.

So today is a public holiday.  Labour day it’s called.  For no particular purpose.

Anyway, prone as I am to procrastinating, I’ve done almost nothing productive on my day off.  No work on my exhort.  No work on writing up more information about my New Zealand trip.  A token amount of cleaning up around the place ready for my rental inspection next wednesday.  Some long overdue washing up.  And I watched the pilot of Stargate Universe.  Anyway, I blame the cleaning up part of my day for my latest time waster.

I had in my closet of computer stuff my old Thecus N2100 which I’d long since retired from its duty of file serving.  I also had an old Apple Airport Extreme base station that ceased functioning, and in some point in the past had been dissembled by yours truly.  Given the N2100 has a mini-PCI slot, and the Airport Extreme makes use of a mini-PCI wireless card, I decided I’d try to get them to work together, and make one useful thing out of two currently useless pieces of electronics.

One small problem – the hard drives that I’d originally used in the N2100 to install debian had long since been re-purposed, leaving the N2100 inoperable.  I knew that in the past I’d seen information on soldering a serial connection onto the circuit board, and google led me to the appropriate page.  I still had my soldering iron out from assembling my Ice Tube clock, and I knew that somewhere in my pile of electronics I had a male RS232 socket.  After a bit of hunting around, I found it, and soldered it to the board.

The next step took a bit of work.  I needed to set up a TFTP server so the low-level Redboot bootloader on the N2100 could load and execute the debian installer.  Easier said than done.  For a software package with the word ‘Trivial’ in it’s name, getting a TFTP daemon running on linux was anything but.  I eventually gave up, and successfully located a TFTP server for OS X.  Five minutes later, I had a TFTP server going.

The instructions for booting the N2100 via redboot that I followed can be found on this page.  Once I had the linux kernel loaded (a typo meant my first attempt didn’t boot), running the debian installer was pretty easy.  Unfortunately debian stable includes only the 2.6.26 kernel, and the Ath9k wireless driver needed to run the mini-PCI wireless card from the Airport Extreme (detected as an AR5416) required a minimum of 2.6.27.

So more searching of google was required to determine how to install a more recent version of debian.  The Arm Eabi Howto directed me towards the appropriate installer, and so the process has begun again.  Of course, there’s no guarantee that this version will work with the wireless card either, but who said procrastination had to be productive?

Saturday began, as all Saturdays should, with a sleep-in, followed by breakfast.  We went for a road trip inland, to the Wairarapa area.  To get there from Wellington meant crossing a mountain range, known as Rimutaka’s.  This was my first introduction to the sorts of roads I’d be travelling on for the next two weeks.  Almost without exception one lane each way, twisting and curving, etched into the contours of the mountains.  Sheer rises on one side, dramatic falls on the other.  At least on this road the relevant traffic authority had deigned to provide a barrier between the roadway and the steep drop just beyond – other roads later in the trip weren’t so fortunate.

The area is famous for its wineries, so we stopped by at a couple – Ata Rangi and Te Kairanga – to taste their wares.  I was quite grateful for the superior knowledge and experience of my brother in law in this area – he was able to explain the process, expound the virtues of different kinds of wine, and most importantly, provide an example that I could follow and pretend I knew what I was doing.  I’d never been wine tasting before, but I’m quite glad I have now.  I took note of some of the wines I found agreeable after discovering most were available in Australia.

We had lunch at a cafe in Martinborough, where I ate some delicious corn fritters topped with avocado, sour cream, bacon and sweet chilli sauce.  Not exactly the most healthy of lunches, but the fantastic flavour made up for it.  After lunch, we drove to Carterton to visit Stonehenge Aotearoa – a replica of Stonehenge, adjusted to function correctly as a calendar in relation to its latitude and longitude.  Unfortunately when we arrived, we learned that a 90 minute tour had commenced about 30 minutes ago, so we’d have to wait about an hour before we could visit.  We decided it wasn’t quite worth waiting around for an hour, so I took some photos from the car park, and we headed home.  That night was Wellington’s CYC, so I got to catch up with some vaguely familiar faces.

Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of rain falling on the roof and streaming down the windows.  It was falling softly, although an occasional gust of wind flung the rain onto the window with greater force.  We had the Nicholls family and Lance over for a delicious roast lunch, followed by an afternoon relaxing.

Monday I caught a lift with Jonners into Wellington city.  The day started off cloudy and windy, and slowly progressed to being sunny and windy.  Wellington was certainly living up to it’s reputation as being windy.

The ferry we were booked on departed at 2pm, so I planned to take things easy, and relax in a coffee shop with my book.  Steve’s flight from Auckland was due in about 10, although it was after 11 by the time he showed up at the train station.  He needed to charge the battery for his camera, so we went back to the coffee shop and begged to use a power point for a while.  It probably helped that I knew the person I was asking – I don’t think I’d have the guts to ask some total stranger if I could use a power point in their shop for an hour or so.

Anyway, while we were having coffee, Steve suggested we do some research into car hire companies that were more local.  He rang a few listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook, and found one that would hire us a car for about half the price that Hertz were going to.  With that, it was time to head to the train station, where the bus for the ferry terminal would depart.  I’d checked the location earlier in the morning, and the sign there said the bus would leave 50 minutes before the ferry was due to depart, so we got there around 1pm.  And waited.  And waited some more.

At 1:30, Steve rung the ferry company.  They assured us a bus was on its way, and not to worry.  I think it was about 1:40pm that a shuttle bus arrived, and the bus driver announced that he was filling in for the normal bus.  We never did find out what happened to the regular bus.  Luckily the ferry terminal was only about 10 minutes away.  We hurriedly checked in, and in the process, handed over our suitcases in much the same way as checking in for a flight.  A couple of minutes later, boarding was announced, and we walked up a long passageway that led onto the ferry.

We were both pretty hungry at this point, so we bought some lasagna and L&P for lunch, and watched out the window as we slowly left Wellington harbour.  Afterward, we went up onto the top deck to get an unrestricted view of the coastline we were leaving behind.  It was really windy up there, and fairly cold, so we had the deck almost to ourselves.  Later, when the coastline had disappeared and the coast of the south island was just a smudge on the horizon, we went back downstairs, and found some nice comfy chairs aft.  I had a bit of a snooze – the regular motion of the swell was making me feel a bit nauseous now that I was inside and at the front of the boat.

When we got into the sounds of the south island the water was a lot calmer, and there was actually something to look at.  We spent a bit of time on the front deck, taking photos of the gorgeous scenery.  Once we disembarked, we headed over to the strip of rental car agencies, located Ace rentals, and hired our car.  It was a fairly old looking car, probably mid 90s, with the interior trim a brown colour that looked like something from the 80′s.  There were plenty of stone chips, scratches, dents and other cosmetic blemishes to ensure were fully documented before we signed our lives away.  And with that, we were off to Kaikoura.

Actually, we only got a short distance before we realised we had no idea which road to take through town to get us in the right direction, so it was time to break out the GPS.  It was pretty dark at this point, and the last thing we’d eaten was the meagre portion of lasagna at lunch time, so we stopped at a convenience store to fill up with snacks and water, before progressing down the coast towards Kaikoura.  It was an interesting drive, with an unfamiliar car, at night time, driving over some mountain range, replete with switchbacks, hairpin turns and generally windy roads.

I’ll leave our adventures in Kaikoura to part 3.

As promised, this begins a series of posts describing my recent holiday in New Zealand.

The excitement really started the night before I left to go to New Zealand.  I’d packed my backpack and suitcase, and driven to Sydney.  Mother suggested I weigh my suitcase on the bathroom scales to make sure it wasn’t too heavy.  Aghast, I discovered it was 4kg over the allowed weight, and I wasn’t too interested in paying $18/kg for the privilege.  I took out a shirt or two, put a small quantity of shampoo in a little bottle rather than take the whole thing, and moved some of the cherry ripes to my backpack.

About those cherry ripes – my sister quite likes them, and apparently theyr’e quite difficult to come by in New Zealand, so she’d asked me to bring some over.  I figured it would be a while before there’d be another opportunity for such a delivery, so I bought just over 1 kg of them for her.  That, plus the two bottles of Tokay, and some other presents, along with my sleeping bag, shoes, and camera tripod, left little room or weight for clothes.

In the end, according to the bathroom scales, the bag was still a couple of kilos overweight.  Fortunately, due to either the scales at the baggage check-in counter, or the woman processing my check-in, I wasn’t charged any excess baggage fees.  I enjoyed a leisurely coffee before buying a bottle of water to drink on the plane, and eventually boarded the 737-300.

To my great delight, there was an empty seat in between my aisle seat, and the woman sitting in the window seat.  Apparently we had similar ideas regarding how one could occupy oneself on such a flight – we both had bottles of water and novels to read.  Although, I suspect her book was more intellectual than mine, at least judging from the serious-looking cover on her book.  I’d bought Daniel Silva’s latest book, The Defector, to read.

All was well when I got to the Wellington Airport.  I withdrew some cash (all in $20′s, apparently fairly common with NZ ATMs) and headed outside to find the bus to the railway station.  There was one just outside the door, a shuttle bus.  The journey took around 15-20 minutes, and I took the opportunity to send my brother in law, Jonners, a text saying I was on the way.  We’d arranged the day before for me to do this, and he’d extricate himself from his client meeting, and come and meet me.  Unfortunately the vagaries of international roaming and text messages meant this message wasn’t delivered.  In fact, I don’t think he ever got the message.  I rung him when I got to the station to find out how far away he was, only to discover that he’d not received the text.  No matter – I’d spend the time walking up the street to find a place to buy a vodafone pre-paid SIM card.

Further international roaming related issues meant Jonner’s number didn’t show up on my phone when he rang – in fact the number was completely unrecognisable as a normal phone number.  Luckily, we spotted each other back at the train station, and after having a brief lunch, we left for his office.  There I left my suitcase in the boot of his car, and set out for an afternoon of solo exploration.  I had about 3.5 hours to kill before he would be finished work, so I took my time, venturing up to the Botanical garderns, into the classical music store I’d visited last time I was in Wellington, to the waterfront, and around various streets of Wellington city.  Finally, I ended up in the cafe at Borders, sipping on a Caramel Latte, and continuing the adventures of Gabriel Allon, the main character in The Defector.

I can’t recall too much more of that evening, other than the joy of catching up with Sharon and Jonners.  The Cherry Ripes and Tokay were well received, and after helping to clear out the packing boxes from the spare room, I had a nice futon to sleep on for the night.  Thus concluded my first night in Wellington.