City of Bulgogi & Kimchi

Just came back from Korea on a business trip last 2 days. Tight schedules. Gift giving in Korea is apparently still more endemic than in Japan. First meetings and visits are seldom made without some gift exchange. Perhaps the Japanese have already been sobered by the burst bubble. Koreans also practice going to a second place and third place after dinner....

I seem to see smiling faces on the street in Korea, was a bit unexpected though. And certainly the ladies have very nice features and shape on the average (arguably...) but that's my personal opinion....and it was gleefully agreed to by my Korean audience with applause, mainly young ladies of course! See the face of popular Korean singer Boa Kwan above and tell me if you disagree...

From my own recent experience, Korean ladies are actually quite charming, as they somehow exude some semblance of sincerity. Somehow, Japanese seem a tad inscrutable by comparison (maybe its the company I hangout with, or maybe i am 外人ーgaijin), or somehow just more restrained or calculated...my words or vocabulary doesn't quite convey my feelings right here....

In any case, Koreans tend to wear their heart out on the sleeve, and are much more comfortable talking about themselves and their feelings, and showing them. Maybe its the spicier diet?

Dinner first night was typical Korean Bulgogi, pronounced as "pulgogi" in Korean or 焼肉 (Yakiniku) as we call it in Japan. The beef we ate was "Galbi", which means rib in Korean, and the dish made from beef short ribs marinated in a sauce made primarily from Korean soy sauce, garlic, and sugar. The accompanying side dishes known as banchan (the most well-known being kimchi), were really tasty. I liked the raw crab kimchi...yummee!

Seoul reminds me of a "sim city", (an old city building PC Game). Roads in the city here are 4-lanes wide, and they seem to have been constructed first before the buildings. Its almost like the use of space is somehow generous. The impression I got was that some historical buildings have been preserved and newer structures built arould them. Good example is the location of the South Gate that was burned down by a disgruntled taxpayer recently.

When I saw the location of where the South Gate used to stand, it actually looked pretty out of place amidst the conrete jungle around it. But then historical monuments are such, you normally don't move them around, just graze them to the ground....

Since it is spring, there were many locations where colourful flowers are planted. In some places, flowers line the clean and wide sidewalks that span along the main roads, as the following pic shows.

The great Han river is more than 1km wide within Seoul city limits! Countless bridges running across this river would make many politicians in Malaysia drool (10 bridge megaprojects to build). According to Wikipedia, the river is known for its huge coefficient of river regime (ratio between the maximum and minimum amount of flow) of 1:390. (For comparison, The Thames and the Rhine have coefficients of 1:8 and 1:18, respectively

It was a bit hazy on my last day in Seoul, the yellow sand blown from the Gobi desert in Mongolia obscured the skyline on an otherwise nice bright sunny day.,

Overall, Seoul is a nice, safe and very clean city. There was little hint of stress, unhappiness in people in general and the city just felt somewhat, sterile, at times. Until the sun goes down that is....

In any case, it was a fruitful trip for business. Meetings, presentations, seminars, lunches, dinners, discussions, entertainment...all in 2 days...