# Notebook from rather-be-hiking/stc510-public
Path: Module 5/STC 510 - Module 5 Workbook.ipynb

<code>
# The natural language toolkit for tokenizing words and sentences
from nltk.tokenize import word_tokenize
from nltk.corpus import stopwords
from nltk.stem import WordNetLemmatizer
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
#scikit-learn is a key data science module like pandas
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.naive_bayes import MultinomialNB
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
import os
import re
import config5
import pandas as pd
from string import punctuation
from datetime import datetime

DIRNAME = 'blogs/'

english_stopwords = set(stopwords.words('english')+list(punctuation)+['..','...','....','``','//n',"''"])
_____no_output_____def clean_word_list(filelist):
    '''
        Takes a list of XML files
    '''
    corpus = ''
    lemmatizer = WordNetLemmatizer()
    for eachfile in filelist:
        xmltext = open(eachfile, encoding='utf8',errors='replace').read()
        soup = BeautifulSoup(xmltext,features='xml')
        corpus += '/n'.join([x.text.lower() for x in soup.findAll('post')])
    wordlist = [lemmatizer.lemmatize(x) for x in word_tokenize(corpus) if x not in english_stopwords]
    return wordlist_____no_output_____blogfiles = [ DIRNAME + fn for fn in os.listdir(DIRNAME)[:2000] if not fn.startswith('.')]
teenblog = [1 if re.search(r'\.1[3-9]\.',x) else 0 for x in blogfiles] _____no_output_____list(zip(blog_list, teenblog))[:25]_____no_output_____print(datetime.now().strftime(':%M:%S'))
allblogs = [' '.join(clean_word_list([x])) for x in blogfiles]
print(datetime.now().strftime(':%M:%S'))
:49:14
:54:58
df = pd.DataFrame({'filename':blogfiles,'teen':teenblog,'text':allblogs})_____no_output_____# x is the text in the post and y is our is teen value and this is exploring whether features link these
# splts them and tries out fetrue identificationa dn then feature applciation on control
# we could say what split to use, usually 50/50
x_train, x_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(df.text, df.teen, random_state=1)_____no_output_____tfidf_vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(use_idf=True)
# getting a whole set of vectors with words and their frequency in documents
x_train_tf = tfidf_vectorizer.fit_transform(x_train)
# this is our second half from the split that we are preparing to use for prediction with naive bayes
x_test_tf = tfidf_vectorizer.transform(x_test)_____no_output_____naive_bayes = MultinomialNB()
# ask NB to try fitting this with our training data fo our vectors and the 1/0 for teen or not
# check if there is a likelihood of these features map to whteher we have a teen blog
naive_bayes.fit(x_train_tf, y_train)
# now try to predict for the second half to see if you can get teen status right
predictions = naive_bayes.predict(x_test_tf)_____no_output_____print('Accuracy:',accuracy_score(y_test, predictions))
# NOT a good prediction using naive bayes hereAccuracy: 0.612
#df.head()
corpus = '\n'.join(x.strip() for x in df.text)
corpus = corpus[0:100000] # shrinking the massive corpus for now
#for blogtext in df.text:
#    all_blogtext.append(blogtext.strip())

print(corpus[0:90000])
# we could sue corpus.split() but that does nto handle things like words connected by elipsis well
#corpus_sentence_tokenized = sent_tokenize(corpus)
#corpus_sentence_tokenizedInfo has been found (+/- 100 pages, and 4.5 MB of .pdf files) Now i have to wait untill our team leader has processed it and learns html.
These are the team members:   Drewes van der Laag           urlLink mail  Ruiyu Xie                     urlLink mail  Bryan Aaldering (me)          urlLink mail
In het kader van kernfusie op aarde:  MAAK JE EIGEN WATERSTOFBOM   How to build an H-Bomb From: ascott@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Scott) Newsgroups: rec.humor Subject: How To Build An H-Bomb (humorous!) Date: 7 Feb 1994 07:41:14 GMT Organization: The University of Western Australia  Original file dated 12th November 1990. Seemed to be a transcript of a 'Seven Days' article. Poorly formatted and corrupted. I have added the text between 'examine under a microscope' and 'malleable, like gold,' as it was missing. If anyone has the full text, please distribute. I am not responsible for the accuracy of this information. Converted to HTML by Dionisio@InfiNet.com 11/13/98. (Did a little spell-checking and some minor edits too.) Stolen from  urlLink http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dionisio/fun/m...own-h-bomb.html  and reformatted the HTML. It now validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict. How to Build an H-Bomb Making and owning an H-bomb is the kind of challenge real Americans seek. Who wants to be a passive victim of nuclear war when, with a little effort, you can be an active participant? Bomb shelters are for losers. Who wants to huddle together underground eating canned Spam? Winners want to push the button themselves. Making your own H-bomb is a big step in nuclear assertiveness training -- it's called Taking Charge. We're sure you'll enjoy the risks and the heady thrill of playing nuclear chicken. Introduction When the Feds clamped down on The Progressive magazine for attempting to publish an article on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb, it piqued our curiosity. Was it really true that atomic and hydrogen bomb technology was so simple you could build an H-bomb in your own kitchen? Seven Days decided to find out. Food editor Barbara Ehrenreich, investigative reporter Peter Biskind, Photographer Jane Melnick and nuclear scientist Michio Kaku were given three days to cook up a workable H-bomb. They did and we have decided to share their culinary secrets with you. Not that Seven Days supports nuclear terrorism. We don't. We would prefer to die slowly from familiar poisons like low-level radiation, microwaves, DDT, DBCP, aflatoxins, PBBs, PBCs, or food dyes, rather than unexpectedly, say as hostage to a Latvian nationalist brandishing a homemade bomb. In our view the real terrorists are the governments, American, Soviet, French, Chinese, and British, that are hoarding H-bombs for their own use, and worse still, those governments (U.S., French and German) that are eagerly peddling advanced nuclear technology to countries like South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina so that they can make their own bombs. When these bombs are used, and they will be, it will be the world's big-time nuclear peddlers, along with corporate suppliers like General Electric, Westinghouse, and Gulf Oil, that we can thank for it. Gagging The Progressive will do no more for national security than backyard bomb shelters because like it or not the news is out. The heart of the successful H-bomb is the successful A-bomb. Once you've got your A-bombs made the rest is frosting on the cake. All you have to do is set them up so that when they detonate they'll start off a hydrogen-fusion reaction.  Part 1: Making Your Bomb Step 1: Getting the Ingredients Uranium is the basic ingredient of the A-bomb. When a uranium atom's nucleus splits apart, it releases a tremendous amount of energy (for its size), and it emits neutrons which go on to split other nearby uranium nuclei, releasing more energy, in what is called a 'chain reaction'. (When atoms split, matter is converted into energy according to Einstein's equation E=MC2. What better way to mark his birthday than with your own atomic fireworks?) There are two kinds (isotopes) of uranium: the rare U-235, used in bombs, and the more common, heavier, but useless U-238. Natural uranium contains less than 1 percent U-235 and in order to be usable in bombs it has to be 'enriched' to 90 percent U-235 and only 10 percent U-238. Plutonium-239 can also be used in bombs as a substitute for U-235. Ten pounds of U-235 (or slightly less plutonium) is all that is necessary for a bomb. Less than ten pounds won't give you a critical mass. So purifying or enriching naturally occurring uranium is likely to be your first big hurdle. It is infinitely easy to steal ready-to-use enriched uranium or plutonium than to enrich some yourself. And stealing uranium is not as hard as it sounds. There are at least three sources of enriched uranium or plutonium... Enriched uranium is manufactured at a gaseous diffusion plant in Portsmouth, Ohio. From there it is shipped in 10 liter bottles by airplane and trucks to conversion plants that turn it into uranium oxide or uranium metal. Each 10 liter bottle contains 7 kilograms of U-235, and there are 20 bottles to a typical shipment. Conversion facilities exist at Hematite, Missouri; Apollo, Pennsylvania; and Erwin, Tennessee. The Kerr-McGee plant at Crescent Oklahoma -- where Karen Silkwood worked -- was a conversion plant that 'lost' 40 lbs of plutonium. Enriched uranium can be stolen from these plants or from fuel-fabricating plants like those in New Haven, San Diego; or Lynchburg, Virginia. (A former Kerr-McGee supervisor, James V. Smith, when asked at the Silkwood trial if there were any security precautions at the plant to prevent theft, testified that 'There were none of any kind, no guards, no fences, no nothing.') Plutonium can be obtained from places like United Nuclear in Pawling, New York; Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee; General Electric in Pleasanton, California; Westinghouse in Cheswick, Pennsylvania; Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Leechburg, Pennsylvania; and plants in Hanfford, Washington and Morris, Illinois. According to Rolling Stone magazine the Israelis were involved in the theft of plutonium from NUMEC. Finally you can steal enriched uranium or plutonium while it's en-route from conversion plants to fuel fabricating plants. It is usually transported (by air or truck) in the form of uranium oxide, a brownish powder resembling instant coffee, or as a metal, coming in small chunks called 'broken buttons.' Both forms are shipped in small cans stacked in 5-inch cylinders braced with welded struts in the center of ordinary 55 gallon steel drums. The drums weigh about 100 pounds and are clearly marked 'Fissible Material' or 'Danger, Plutonium.' A typical shipment might go from the enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio to the conversion plant in Hematite Missouri then to Kansas City by truck where it would be flown to Los Angeles and then trucked down to the General Atomic plant in San Diego. The plans for the General Atomic plant are on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's reading room at 1717 H Street NW Washington. A Xerox machine is provided for the convenience of the public. If you can't get hold of any enriched uranium you'll have to settle for commercial grade (20 percent U-235). This can be stolen from university reactors of a type called TRIGA Mark II, where security is even more casual than at commercial plants. If stealing uranium seems too tacky you can buy it. Unenriched uranium is available at any chemical supply house for $23 a pound. Commercial grade (3 to 20 percent enriched) is available for $40 a pound from Gulf Atomic. You'll have to enrich it further yourself. Quite frankly this can be something of a pain in the ass. You'll need to start with a little more than 50 pounds of commercial-grade uranium. (It's only 20 percent U-235 at best, and you need 10 pounds of U-235 so... ) But with a little kitchen-table chemistry you'll be able to convert the solid uranium oxide you've purchased into a liquid form. Once you've done that, you'll be able to separate the U-235 that you'll need from the U-238. First pour a few gallons of concentrated hydrofluoric acid into your uranium oxide, converting it to uranium tetrafluoride. (Safety note: Concentrated hydrofluoric acid is so corrosive that it will eat its way through glass, so store it only in plastic. Used 1-gallon plastic milk containers will do.) Now you have to convert your uranium tetrafluoride to uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous form of uranium, which is convenient for separating out the isotope U-235 from U-238. To get the hexafluoride form, bubble fluorine gas into your container of uranium tetrafluoride. Fluorine is available in pressurized tanks from chemical-supply firms. Be careful how you use it though because fluorine is several times more deadly than chlorine, the classic World War I poison gas. Chemists recommend that you carry out this step under a stove hood (the kind used to remove unpleasant cooking odors). If you've done your chemistry right you should now have a generous supply of uranium hexafluoride ready for enriching. In the old horse-and-buggy days of A-bomb manufacture the enrichment was carried out by passing the uranium hexafluoride through hundreds of miles of pipes, tubes, and membranes, until the U-235 was eventually separated from the U-238. This gaseous-diffusion process, as it was called is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Gaseous-diffusion plants cover hundreds of acres and cost in the neighborhood of $2-billion each. So forget it. There are easier, and cheaper, ways to enrich your uranium. First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don't put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.) Now it's time to convert your enriched uranium back to metal form. This is easily enough accomplished by spooning several ladlefuls of calcium (available in tablet form from your drugstore) into each bucket of uranium. The calcium will react with the uranium hexafluoride to produce calcium fluoride, a colorless salt which can be easily be separated from your pure enriched uranium metal. A few precautions: • While uranium is not dangerously radioactive in the amounts you'll be handling, if you plan to make more than one bomb it might be wise to wear gloves and a lead apron, the kind you can buy in dental supply stores. • Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known. If inhaled, a thousandth of a gram can cause massive fibrosis of the lungs, a painful way to go. Even a millionth of a gram in the lungs will cause cancer. If eaten plutonium is metabolized like calcium. It goes straight to the bones where it gives out alpha particles preventing bone marrow from manufacturing red blood cells. The best way to avoid inhaling plutonium is to hold your breath while handling it. If this is too difficult wear a mask. To avoid ingesting plutonium orally follow this simple rule: never make an A-bomb on an empty stomach. • If you find yourself dozing off while you're working, or if you begin to glow in the dark, it might be wise to take a blood count. Prick your finger with a sterile pin, place a drop of blood on a microscope slide, cover it with a cover slip, and examine under a microscope. (Best results are obtained in the early morning.) When you get leukemia, immature cells are released into the bloodstream, and usually the number of white cells increases (though this increase might take almost 2 weeks). Red blood cells look kind of like donuts (without the hole), and are slightly smaller than the white cells, each of which has a nucleus. Immature red cells look similar to white cells (i.e.. slightly larger and have a nucleus). If you have more than about 1 white cell (including immature ones) to 400 red cells then start to worry. But, depending upon your plans for the eventual use of the bomb, a short life expectancy might not be a problem.  Step 2: Assembling the A-Bomb Now that you've acquired the enriched uranium, all that's left is to assemble your A-bomb. Go find a couple of stainless steel salad bowls. You also want to separate your 10 pounds of U-235 into two hunks. (Keep them apart!) The idea is to push each half your uranium into the inside of a bowl. Take one hunk of your uranium and beat it into the inside of the first bowl. Uranium is malleable, like gold, so you should have no trouble hammering it into the bowl to get a good fit. Take another five-pound hunk of uranium and fit it into a second stainless steel bowl. These two bowls of U-235 are the 'subcritical masses' which, when brought together forcefully, will provide the critical mass that makes your A-bomb go. Keep them a respectful distance apart while working because you don't want them to 'go critical' on you... At least not yet. Now hollow out the body of an old vacuum cleaner and place your two hemispherical bowls inside, open ends facing each other, no less than seven inches apart, using masking tape to set them up in position. The reason for the steel bowls and the vacuum cleaner, in case you're wondering, is that these help reflect the neutrons back into the uranium for a more efficient explosion. 'A loose neutron is a useless neutron' as the A-bomb pioneers used to say. As far as the A-bomb goes, you're almost done. The final problem is to figure out how to get the two U-235 hemispheres to smash into each other with sufficient force to set off a truly effective fission reaction. Almost any type of explosive can be used to drive them together. Gunpowder, for example, is easily made at home from potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon. Or, you can get some blasting caps or TNT. (Buy them or steal them from a construction site.) Best of all is C4 plastic explosive. You can mold it around your bowls, and it's fairly safe to work with. (But, it might be wise to shape it around an extra salad bowl in another room, and THEN fit it to your uranium-packed bowls. This is particularly true in winter, when a stray static electrical charge might induce ignition in the C4. A responsible bomb maker considers it impolite to accidentally destroy more of the neighborhood than absolutely necessary.) Once the explosives are in place all you need to do is hook up a simple detonation device with a few batteries, a switch, and some wire. Remember though that it is essential that the two charges -- one on each side of the casing -- go off simultaneously. Now put the whole thing in the casing of an old Hoover vacuum cleaner and you're finished with this part of the process. The rest is easy.  Step 3: Make More A-Bombs Following the Directions Above  A Word to the Wise About Wastes After your A-bomb is completed you'll have a pile of moderately fatal radioactive wastes like U-238. These are not dangerous, but you do have to get rid of them. You can flush leftovers down the toilet. (Don't worry about polluting the ocean, there is already so much radioactive waste there, a few more bucketfuls won't make any waves whatsoever.) If you're the fastidious type -- the kind who never leaves gum under their seat at the movies -- you can seal the nasty stuff in coffee cans and bury it in the backyard, just like Uncle Sam does. If the neighbor kids have a habit of trampling the lawn, tell them to play over by the waste. You'll soon find that they're spending most of their time in bed.  Going First Class If you're like us, you're feeling the economic pinch, and you'll want to make your bomb as inexpensively as possible, consonant of course with reasonable yield. The recipe we've given is for a budget-pleasing H-bomb, no frills, no flourishes; it's just a simple 5-megaton bomb, capable of wiping out the New York metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay area, or Boston. But don't forget, your H-bomb will only be as good as the A-bombs in it. If you want to spend a little more money you can punch-up your A-bomb considerably. Instead of centrifuging your uranium by hand, you can buy a commercial centrifuge. (Fisher Scientific sells one for about $1000.) You also might want to be fussier about your design. The Hiroshima bomb, a relatively crude one, only fissioned 1 percent of it's uranium and yielded only 13 kilotons. In order to fission more of the uranium, the force of your explosive 'trigger' needs to be evenly diffused around the sphere; the same pressure has to be exerted on every point of the sphere simultaneously. (It was a technique for producing this sort of simultaneous detonation by fashioning the explosives into lenses that the government accused Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of trying to steal).  Part 2: Putting Your H-Bomb Together The heart of the H-bomb is the fusion process. Several A-bombs are detonated in such a way as to create the extremely high temperature (100 million degrees C) necessary to fuse lithium deuteride (LiD) into helium. When the lithium nucleus slams into the deuterium nucleus, two helium nuclei are created, and if this happens to enough deuterium nuclei rapidly enough, the result is an enormous amount of energy: the energy of the H-bomb. You don't have to worry about stealing lithium deuteride, it can be purchased from any chemical-supply house. It costs $1000 a pound. If your budget won't allow it you can substitute lithium hydride at $40 a pound. You will need at least 100 pounds. It's a corrosive and toxic powder so be careful. Place the lithium deuteride or hydride in glass jars and surround it with four A-bombs in their casings. Attach them to the same detonator so that they will go off simultaneously. The container for the whole thing is no problem. They can be placed anywhere: Inside an old stereo console, a discarded refrigerator, etc... When the detonator sets off the four A-bombs all eight hemispheres of fissionable material will slam into each other at the same time creating four critical masses and four detonations. This will raise the temperature of the lithium deuteride to 100 million degrees C fast enough (a few billionths of a second) so that the lithium will not be blown all over the neighborhood before the nuclei have time to fuse. The result, at least 1000 times the punch of the puny A-bomb that leveled Hiroshima (20 million tons of TNT vs. 20 thousand tons.)  Part 3: What to do With Your Bomb Now that you have a fully assembled H-bomb housed in an attractive console of your choice you may be wondering, 'What should I do with it?' Every family will have to answer this question according to its own tastes and preferences, but you may want to explore some possibilities which have been successfully pioneered by the American government. 1. Sell Your Bomb and Make a Pile of Money In these days of rising inflation, increasing unemployment, and an uncertain economic outlook, few businesses make as much sense as weapons production. If your career forecast is cloudy, bomb sales may be the only sure way to avoid the humiliation of receiving welfare, or unemployment. Regardless of your present income level, a home H-bomb business can be an invaluable income supplement, and certainly a profitable alternative to selling Tupperware or pirated Girl Scout cookies. Unfortunately for the family bomb business, big government has already cornered a large part of the world market. But this does not mean that there is a shortage of potential customers. The raid on Entebee was the Waterloo of hijacking, and many nationalist groups are now on the alert for new means to get their message across. They'd jump at the chance to get hold of an H-bomb. Emerging nations which can't ante up enough rice or sugar to buy themselves a reactor from G.E. or Westinghouse are also shopping around. You may wonder about the ethics of selling to nations, or groups, whose goals you may disapprove of. But here again, take a tip from our government: forget ideology -- it's cash that counts. And remember, H-bomb sales have a way of escalating, almost like a chain reaction. Suppose you make a sale to South Yemen which you believe to be a Soviet puppet. Well within a few days some discrete inquiries from North Yemen and possibly the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians as well can be expected. Similarly, a sale to the IRA will generate a sale to the Ulster government; and a sale to the Tanzanians will bring the Ugandans running, and so forth. It doesn't matter WHICH side you're on, only how many sides there are. Don't forget about the possibility of repeat sales to the same customer. As the experience of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. has shown, each individual nation has a potentially infinite need for H-bombs. No customer -- no matter how small -- can ever have too many. 2. Use Your Bomb at Home Many families are attracted to the H-bomb simply as a 'deterrent.' A discrete sticker on the door or on the living room window saying 'This Home Protected by H-bomb' will discourage IRS investigators, census takers, and Jehovah's Witnesses. You'll be surprised how fast the crime rate will go down and property values will go up. And once the news gets out that you are a home H-bomb owner you'll find that you have unexpected leverage in neighborhood disputes over everything from parking places and stereo noise levels to school tax rates. So relax and enjoy the pride and excitement of home H-bomb ownership!  Is It For You? Let's be honest. The H-bomb isn't for everyone. Frankly there are people who can't handle it. They break out in hives at the very mention of mega-death, fallout, or radiation sickness. The following quiz will help you find out whether you have what it takes for home H-bomb ownership. If you can answer 'yes' to six or more of these questions, then you're emotionally eligible to join the nuclear club. If not, a more conventional weapon may be more your cup of tea, try botulism-toxin, laser rays, or nerve gas. 1. I ignore the demands of others. 2. I subscribe to one or more of the following: Soldier of Fortune, Hustler, Popular Mechanics, Self. 3. Though I have many interesting acquaintances, I am my own best friend. 4. I know what to say after you say 'Hello,' but I am seldom interested in pursuing the conversation. 5. I have seen the movie 'The Deer Hunter' more than once. 6. I know that everyone can be a winner if they want to, and I resent whiners. 7. I own one or more of the following: handgun, video game, trash compactor, snowmobile. 8. I am convinced that leukemia is psychosomatic. 9. I am aware that most vegetarians are sexually impotent. 10. I have read evidence that solar energy is a Communist conspiracy.  Myths About Nuclear War Ever since the first mushroom cloud over Hiroshima ushered in the atomic age, a small group of nay-sayers and doom-mongers has lobbied, campaigned and demonstrated to convince Americans that H-bomb ownership, along with nuclear power, is dangerous and unhealthy. Using their virtual stranglehold over the media, these people have tried to discredit everything nuclear from energy to war. They have vastly overrated the risks of nuclear bombs and left many Americans feeling demoralized and indecisive; not sure where the truth lies. Well, here are the myths, and here are the facts. Myth: After a nuclear exchange the earth will no longer be suitable for human habitation. Fact: This is completely false. According to one scientist (quoted in John McPee's The Curve of Binding Energy) 'The largest bomb that has ever been exploded anywhere was 60 megatons, and that is one-thousandth the force of an earthquake, one-thousandth the force of a hurricane. We have lived with earthquakes and hurricanes for a long time.' Another scientist adds, 'It is often assumed that a full blown nuclear war would be the end of life on earth. That is far from the truth. To end life on earth would take at least a thousand times the total yield of all the nuclear explosives existing in the world, and probably a lot more.' Even if humans succumbed, many forms of life would survive a nuclear free-for-all, cockroaches, certain forms of bacteria, and lichens, for instance. Myth: Radiation is bad for you. Fact: Everything is bad for you if you have too much of it. If you eat too many bananas you'll get a stomach-ache. If you get too much sun you can get sunburned (or even skin cancer). Same thing with radiation. Too much may make you feel under the weather, but nuclear industry officials insist that there is no evidence that low-level radiation has any really serious adverse effects. And, high-level radiation may bring unexpected benefits. It speeds up evolution by weeding out unwanted genetic types and creating new ones. (Remember the old saying, 'Two heads are better than one.') Nearer to home, it's plain that radiation will get rid of pesky crab grass and weeds, and teenagers will find that brief exposure to a nuclear burst vaporizes acne and other skin blemishes. (Many survivors of the Hiroshima bomb found that they were free from skin and it's attendant problems forever.) We hope this clears up any misconceptions you may have had. Enjoy your H-Bomb!
testing!!!  testing!!!
Thanks to Yahoo!'s Toolbar I can now 'capture' the URLs of popups...which means now I can show you some cool links to Korean Pop (K-Pop) audio and video without the need to relate instructions like: 'go to the site, click on the pop-audio button then choose...'.  So, without further ado here is the link to 24-hour K-Pop  urlLink audio  and the  urlLink video  streaming.  Enjoy.
I had an interesting conversation with my Dad this morning.  We were talking about where Koreans put their money.  Invariably, they have a lot of real estate and cash.  (Cash would include short term investments under one year as well as savings accounts.)  The reason?  Real estate makes money here.  A lot of money.  I've seen surveys of Seoul real estate rising about 10-15% PER YEAR for long stretches, even after taking into account the 1997 Crisis (referred to as the IMF crisis here, although it was the IMF that bailed Korea out).  Compare that to Korean corporate bonds which fell 90-99% in 1997 and only modestly recovered, and a local stock market (represented by KOSPI, or their version of the Dow Jones Index) that has not gone appreciably above its 1980s high of 1,000 points (it is now about 800 points, see  urlLink link ) and you can see why real estate makes sense here.  But back to the conversation...I noted that here a 'real big' or 'elite' real estate investor has over 6 billion won (about USD 5,000,000, see  urlLink converter ) in properties.  Dad seemed a little flabbergasted.  'What the heck do they need 5 million dollars for?  They don't need that much to retire.'  Maybe so, but there is a lot of risk here too.  Take real estate (or any other South Korean asset) for example: if the North toots their horn louder or make a move on the country that 5,000,000 USD is worth about 5 cents.  Also, all of it is denominated in won which, during the 'IMF Crisis', dropped about 50% vis-a-vis the USD. Also, if you make a bad investment or some fall victim to a scam--the latest here was the  urlLink Good Morning City  project--you're toast.  I saw a lady on TV who lost everything in it.  Her comment (between the tears): 'Now I know what it's like to go from a rich person to a beggar in one day.'  If you have one of those, some saber-rattling from North Korea and a weak exchange rate your little nest egg could be almost wiped out.  The government has almost zero help for unemployed, disabled or otherwise disenfranchised workers.  The role of family is more important here...so if you have money you should help your family, and if you don't then you should go to them first.  Thus the idea that more is more.  Koreans go all out in most things they do, and investing is no different.  Why have one apartment when you can have 7?  The  urlLink jeonse  system supports this as well.  You see, if you have a 400,000 USD apartment and you rent it out there are two systems you can use in Korea (neither of which are the Western ones, except in rare circumstances).  1.  Renter signs a 2-year contract and deposits about half the market value (200,000 USD) with the owner.  No monthly rent is paid, but the owner can invest in Korean Treasury Bills for about 4-5% per year.  That's a monthly rent/return of $750.  At the end of the term the 200,000 USD is returned to the renter.  2.  Renter signs a 1-year or 2-year contract and deposits about 10%-20% of the market value of the property (10,000-20,000 USD) plus some monthly rent of $400-$600 a month.  In both cases, if the value of the property increases or decreases the jeonse will need to be topped-up or partially refunded.  (Of course I'm using USD in this to save my '0' key and to help 'foreigners' reference it better.)  Thus, if you buy a place for $400,000 you can turn around and rent it out and get $200,000 to (if you like) buy another place or whatever.  Since there are very, very few mortgages in Korea (kind of a cash society, although there are home-equity lines of credit) the system here is a bit different.  The key, of course, is that real estate prices keep going up.
Somehow Coca-Cola has a way of summing up things so well.  In the early 1970s they had as their flagship jingle 'I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke' (to the tune of 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing') that pretty much summed up the post-Woodstock era so well.  It didn't add much to sales, but it was a catchy tune.  In Korea Coke's theme is  urlLink Stop Thinking. Feel it.  which pretty much sums up a lot about Korea and Koreans.  (Look at how relaxed that couple is, now that they stopped thinking and started feeling.) Of course they have a high regard for education and math and logic and such, but deep down I think many Koreans really like to work on emotion more than anything else.  Westerners seem to sublimate this moreso, or at least display it in a different way.  Maybe scratch all that...Westerners and Koreans are probably pretty similar, but the context in which we do it is different.  Anyways, if you think you're losing it in Korea just repeat to yourself 'Stop thinking, feel it. Stop thinking, feel it. Stop thinking, feel it.' and everything will be alright.
If anything, Korea is a country of extremes.  Everything here seems fad-based.  I think it may come from Korea's history.  It has been invaded a reported 700 times over the years, and each time they got independence I imagine they had to move quickly to get to the next level before the next war or occupation.  Lately (well, not really lately...in 1945) the Japanese Occupation ended.  Then the Korean War occurred from 1950-3.  After that there was turmoil, but in 1961 Park Chung Hee took over as dictator/president.  He had elections, in which everyone was 'encouraged' to vote, but he was still a dictator.  After his assassination in 1979 the next few leaders were basically of the same ilk.  President Park did some amazing things in his time, however.  He took an incredibly backward country and set it on the road to industrialization. Japan had stripped Korea of its resources, people and even its language and culture (many buildings and palaces were razed and Japanese was the official language here from 1910-1945) but President Park was determined to change that.  He orchestrated the 'Han River Miracle' (the Han River, or Hangang 한강 is the main river in Seoul/Korea) and Korea made terrific strides, if at the expense of some civil liberties.  Fastforward to the present, and my point, and we see that Korea is the world's #1 wired nation.  More than Canada, Finland and way beyond the U.S.A.  There was a craze to have PC방s (PC bangs or rooms) EVERYWHERE in the country.  As well, instead of PlayStation-like games where players go against the computer or one or two people, Korean gamers (always the communal types) play online games with hundreds or thousands of others. in typical Korean fashion, gamers who left their seat for a second could not pause their game...in fact, they may be eliminated.  So PCbang owners sold drinks, ramen nooodles and other junk to their clientele.  It was just a matter of time before someone died, as related in  urlLink this article .  Yes, someone died from being on the PC.  People thought he was just sleeping (imagine how long he was there before they really checked him out) but, alas, he was the first known casulty of the Net in Korea, maybe the world.  Korea, built on extremes, both good and bad.
Take a read of this news article from urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  about North Korea's opinion on the scaling down of troops in Seoul and Korea (specifically, 3,600 troops are heading to Iraq and by the end of 2005 the current total of 37,000 should drop to about 24,500).   North blasts U.S. troop cuts  North Korea again blasted the United States yesterday for what it calls 'an increase of U.S. defense capabilities' after the planned relocation of 3,600 U.S. troops in South Korea to Iraq. Pyeongyang's state-run television network said the plans were preparations for a second Korean war.  'Even though part of the U.S. ground forces will be transferred to Iraq, instead of causing a capability vacuum, U.S. President Bush is augmenting his war policy against the North,' the broadcast complained.  'The U.S. security commitment [to South Korea] is a commitment for preemptive war against us,' the current affairs commentary said.     Ok, let me get this straight...moving troops OUT of South Korea and, further, OUT of the area closest to North Korea (the DMZ, or DeMilitarized Zone) is somehow INCREASING the U.S. defense capabilities in South Korea???  Well, I've read a lot of North Korean propaganda (such as at  urlLink DPRK.com , check out the DPRK News section) but this one is pretty unreal.  And with that I'd like to remind everyone that those in the DPRK (I should tell you that means Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea) are probably very good people, it's just the leadership that seems to be making all the waves (I could be wrong, but I'm not going to go up there and find out).  The Korean War from 1950-3 was a brutal event that severed many families...some of whom are now lucky enough to see their aged relatives again (remember, it's been 50+ years) in special reunion projects (albeit only for a few hours before everyone is whisked off to their respective countries).  Many, however have or will pass on without ever seeing a sister, brother, child, parent or boy/girlfriend again.  We in the West, especially Canada where we've never had a war on our own soil except the War of 1812, could never fully comprehend such things.  It really makes your wonder how far one would go to support ideology...I guess we have an idea now.
I surf the English news sites a lot looking for tidbits on Korea and how foreigners (like me) view the 'Hermit Kingdom' but also as a way to keep up with this fast-moving place.  Sometimes, though, one needs to check the veracity of the figures put in the papers...especially the local ones.  Here are two examples of how the English version of the Korea Times and that of the JoongAng Ilbo (Daily).  The first is pretty straightforward.   urlLink Korea Times  said that 249 people were arrested for forging Korean passports, but  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  says just 114 were accused.  Huh?  Another one:  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  said that S&P is positive on Korean banks (a good thing), while the  urlLink Korea Times  said that S&P was a tad worried about the bad loans that banks extended to small and medium-sized firms.  I have no idea why the simple facts seem to be presented so differently...it can't simply be translation, can it?
Ah, the Korean language...it looks so difficult at first, then as you figure out how to read Hanguel (Korea's surprisingly easy-to-learn alphabet of 24 characters) it seems so easy. Then the vocabulary starts. Oh no. Then the backwards (to us) sentence structure.  Yikes!  Luckily there are many options for us slow-witted foreigners to take on the language.  Of course I could list them here but  urlLink this JoongAng article  says a lot and there are more resources  urlLink here .    Well, if you're a guy here is some motivation for you: Jeon Ji Hyun (전지현), the latest 20-something (24, actually) star of movies and CFs (I hear this means Commercial Feature, but not positive).  I saw her latest movie on Sunday night.  It's hard to describe the name...the English version is 'Windstruck' but the Korean version is 여친소 (yeochinso) which is short for 내여자친구를소개합니다 (ne yeojachingu rul sogayhamnida) or 'I'd like to introduce you to my girlfriend'.  Surprisingly, both titles make sense.  If you like, there is a website (Korean and English, looks quite good, actually)  urlLink here .  The movie is shown in theatres with subtitles at special times, that info is  urlLink here . For a list of many of the theatres in Seoul click....  urlLink here!    urlLink    Here is a great reason to learn Korean...if I wasn't already married, that is.  I went with a few foreigners as well as a local/Korean/National...of course the Korean HAD to take a picture...so I HAVE to put it up here.   urlLink    Here we are after the movie...and before the hof/bar.     Update:  A bud of mine passed  urlLink this link  on to me. It's 전지현 in a Giordano ad. Apparently it was NOT aired in Korea (nothing XXX about it, it's all about sensibilities of some sort).
If you click on my profile you'll make a not-so-startling discovery...I was born in Year of the Pig, as they say in the Korean/Chinese calendar.  But blogger.com figured it would be more appropriate to call it Year of the Boar/bore...thanks guys.  Anyways, you may be wondering how a fat, lazy, smelly Canadian guy born in a little town waaaaaay up north finds himself in a place like Seoul...and Yeouido, no less, where only a handful of foreigners visit, let alone live and work.  The culprit is my wife.  She is Korean, as you may know, and when I was doing financial consulting in Canada we came across an interesting client.  He found us through his wife's (see a pattern here?  Korean women rule the men) reading my column in the Vancouver Chosun (Chosun is the name of the last dynasty to rule Korea--it was ended by the 1910-1945 Japanese occupation) which you'll find  urlLink here . It's all in Korean, my email and webpage have changed, though.  Anyways, this client is a big guy here in Seoul as well as in Canada and wanted (for some reason) to do something for us...so the next time he went to Seoul we went as well (with our first son, second one wasn't around yet).  When we arrived in Seoul for our 2-3 week visit we met his 'godfathers' as he called them.  He wasn't mixed up in anything, he just liked the sound of being untouchable.  From there we met another guy then another guy and then, the next day, my current CEO.  We had what economists call a 'coincidence of wants'.  He wanted a foreigner with training and experience in securities and alternative assets and I wanted a guy with the connections to get things done in Seoul.  After a week or so of meeting for dinner and such (his English was pretty good and is better now, but my wife did a lot of translation in the first part) he said: 'Don't go back to Canada, stay here and work with me.'  Not work for me...with me.  That was interesting.  I knew he had a more enlightened view than most Korean bosses right then and there.  So here I am.  It's not perfect, I can't speak a lot of the language and sometimes I almost go nuts here what with the differences in culture and business, but it's not bad at all.  I also go home every 2 months or so (my wife had baby #2 in Canada and is still there for a bit longer) which means lots of time in airplanes.  I always fly  urlLink Singapore Air  but even then, the prospect of being in the air for 100 hours a year is not all that appealing (ya, that's over 4 DAYS flying, over 1% of the year).  I do, however, watch about 20-25 movies a year on the plane, which is cool because Singapore Air has individual monitors with on-demand TV and movies for ALL passengers.
Last night was pretty fun...mostly because of the company I kept.  I recently met a couple of finance-types here in Yeouido (which isn't too hard to do, as it's referred to as Korea's Wall Street) who spoke pretty good English (which is a rarity here not only in Yeouido but everywhere in Korea).  They had studied outside Korea and deal with international business...but still my brutal Canadian accent made it pretty tough for them to figure out what I was saying sometimes.  There was one time that their accent got in the way, though.  When we went to the restaurant the guy (Junseok, the gal is named Hye-Kyung) asked: 'Do you like deok?'  I wrote it just as I heard it.  I thought he meant dog (they eat that here) so I called his bluff and said, 'Sure, let's go! What kind of dog?' 'Oh no, deok, deok!' 'Ya, dog?' 'No, deok,' he said again. Then I figured out that he meant 'duck' and said, 'Oh, 오리 (oh-ri), duck! Not 개 (gay), dog! Why didn't you just speak Korean?  I know 오리 and 개!'  The food was great, then we went to the obligatory 이차 (ee-cha, thanks Hye-Kyung for the correction) or second round.  Koreans can never just go to one place to eat and drink.  Usually we will wander the streets and go out to three, four or five places. A couple of weeks ago in Hongdae (university bar district here) we went to 4 places: the 산낙지 (san-nak-ji, living octopus) restaurant, Old Rock (cool bar), a 노래방 (noraebang, Korean word for karaoke) and finally clubnb (or noise basement) until the wee hours of the morning.  (Personally I prefer the Kangnam version of clubnb, but since we were in Hongdae we went to that one.)  The coolest thing here about bar-hopping/pub-crawling is there is almost never a lineup and very rarely a cover (just in the clubs, never in bars).  I think this is because people are always moving.  In Canada if you get in a bar you never, never leave until you go home...which means those who want to get in have to lineup.  Also, if a Korean is asked to wait (for anything, especially after a few drinks) they will just balk and leave...and no bar-owner would like that.  Maybe that's why Koreans in general are moving around more and Canadians are so sedate (relatively...if you've lived in both places you know what I mean).   Update:  looks like everyone wants to be on my blog...for some reason.  Here are the pics of my gracious hosts of the evening.   urlLink    Junseok, who works in International Business and has an MBA...he's trying to come up with a fitting Western name for himself, if you have one to suggest just leave a comment, please.   urlLink    Hae-Kyung, who works with him.  She too has an MBA (and from my wife's alma mater of Ewha Women's University, no less).  Hae-Kyung is really good at English and is quite bright...and single (men, take note). She thinks her face looks like the moon, or 달덩이 (Daldeong-ee) as they say here, I guess so...
There is so much that is different here from anything I've ever seen (well, I haven't travelled that much, just in Canada, the US, Philippines and Japan).  And I mean totally different.  Maybe it's because I've been here long enough to see a lot, I dunno.  Anyways, if you'd like more on this place take a look at my  urlLink Virtual Tourist pages .
urlLink    Here it is, the superfantastic phonebox!  Today is a great day.  Our lovely officegirl Jung Mi (please no letters, that's what secretaries are called here) went to LG Twins building and got me a new phone.  I really needed one on account of (i) my old one was all in Korean...which was fine because I memorized where to go to do things on it...and (ii) the screen kept going blank because I produce copious amounts of sweat when I inline skate and was dumb enough to be on the phone at the same time.  Well, after 4 screens at 60,000 won a pop I decided it's time to get a new one...but I may end up breaking this one too.  It's soooooo cooooool.  It has a little camera which I used to take a picture of the box (of course it took me a while to figure out that I couldn't use it to take a pic of the actual phone).  I also took a pic of our lovely officegirl...and then inputted her name and number as well...then ordered up caller ID (something I didn't have before, much to my chagrin).  Then I asked her to call me to test it out.  Her mug showed up on the little screen on the outside of the phone (how cool is that?!?!) and she immediately started panicking and saying, 'Change! Change!'  haha, Some Korean girls really hate to have pictures taken of them.  She did, however, insist that I put the pic on this posting...go figure.  This phone really rocks.  I can take pictures, email them or send to other phones, and send and receive normal emails too. Also, it has a language converter so everything is finally in English.  It's tiny, too...like the size of a fat businesscard.   urlLink    Here she is doing the Korean sign for 'take my picture'.   urlLink    Here is a coworker of mine with the same pose.  Why? Why?
One thing I love about Seoul (and I mean this about Korea in general...I just happen to be a little Seoul-centric) is the street sellers.  I don't really trust the food they sell on the side of the road (except ice cream) but virtually everything else is fair game for me.  For example, to get ready for my trip to Canada and generally stock up, in the last two weeks I bought:  2 plants in a can for my nieces (8,000 won) 2 lightweight sports shirts for inlining (10,000 won for both) 1 pair of shorts for inlining (20,000 won) 3 bags of dried 고구마 (goguma, sweet potatoes or yams, they were selling 1 for 3,000 won , 2 for 5,000 but I got 3 for 6,000) 1 tie (at an amazing price of 5,000 won, or USD 4...and I can't really tell how it's worse than the ones I bought for USD 100 back home.) 10 disposible razors (for 1,000 won, or USD 0.80 FOR ALL TEN) 1 noise-making toy hammer for boy #2 (1,000 won) 3 Disney photo albums (but I'm sure ol' Walt didn't make a penny on these....just 1,000 won each)  The clothes-seller guy spoke pretty good English...I know because he held my hostage for 5 minutes as we talked about how Korean men are getting fatter (hence his stock of larger sizes for husky guys like me) and how he learned English working for the US Army about 20-30 years ago.  The goguma-guy didn't know a lot of English, but he did speak Spanish owing to the fact that he lived in Argentina for a few years.  Unfortunately, Spanish is not one of my languages...I know a fair bit of French from my school-days, a smattering Japanese and, of course, some Korean. Anyways, when I passed the goguma-guy later in the week I gave him a big 'hola!' (Spanish for hello, and the extent of my proficiency) and he returned one as well...wow, bridging the cultures with another one...how UN of me.  Below is a picture of the famous Yeouido tie-truck.  This guy stops in the hotspots and unloads silk and polyester ties on neckwear-hungry salarymen.   urlLink    Here they are: 2 for 5,000 won (USD 4.50)!
urlLink    Wonderful oh-gyup-sal at my favorite pork restaurant.  It's official, pork has now outstripped beef as the top meat import to Korea.  (See  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo link ) and no wonder...what with Mad Cow Disease and Avian Flu virus going around.  The only thing that seems 'safe' is pork.  Of course, as you may know, oh-gyup-sal literally means 5 layers of fat...so maybe it's not super healthy.  Well, I wasn't that bad, I did do 2 hours of inline skating (as they call it here...rollerblading seems to have a tough time rolling off the Korean tongue) beforehand...but the 오겹살 was drowned by a lovely concoction called 오십세주 (oh-ship-say-joo) which is a 50/50 mix of 백세주 (baek-say-ju, literally: hundred year alcohol) and 소주 (soju, literally: booze) thus the translation of the combined drink is called 50 year alcohol.  Intersting, eh?
Here is the latest from the Korean rumor mill (it made it all the way to Coquitlam, and my wife's ears).  It seems The Grand Hyatt Hotel's (in Itaewon)  urlLink J.J. Mahoney's  has a reputation for beautiful Korean ladies using it as a place to pick up foreign (likely white) men...even married ones.  So, if you're single and looking for a good time check out J.J.'s (just bring a lot of dough, the prices are about two times that of most other Western bars).  If you're married...well, that's up to you (you should know that some of the gals on the prowl there are 'ladies for sale' there was well, and the prices are reportedly quite high).  If your man is in Seoul and reading this (or otherwise knows the score) better get a polygraph...from what I saw some of those gals are pretty good looking (not that I was looking, of course).  Well, that's it for tonight.  I gotta take the boy to school tomorrow at like 9AM (which is early for my vacation-time now).
Well, I stand corrected, again.  Yesterday I blogged that Coquitlam was an oasis of Whiteness in the sea of Asians that is Vancouver, but oh how I was wrong.  We went to the, aptly named, Coquitlam Mall today and put Spencer in the play area with a few other kids.  I heard a lady speaking Korean to her boy, then a flock (well, three) ajumas (older Korean ladies) came and sat near us.  Later, when we went to the pool, we saw that the neighbors right next to us and across the street are Koreans too.  Then on the way back I learned that another two sets of neighbors are Korean as well.  They're everywhere!  It's actually pretty cool.  One thing about Koreans is they have a pretty good sense of community.  Get a group of white people (who aren't farmers) together and we seem to be pretty stand-offish...or at least it takes a while to warm up.  Koreans, as you may know,  urlLink refer to each other as sister or brother  as soon as 3 minutes of meeting one another (as I have seen).  This is, I think, quite extraordinary.  From first meetings with my son my wife called the girls in the area 'nuna' or 'older sister, as said by a  younger brother' (they have a special word for every family member).  Also, since Koreans don't normally take to English all that well (or quickly) they really, really appreciate speaking with someone from home.  Thus, the community here is quite tight.  So I've still got jetlag...although it's pretty nice not to have to work through it.  The boys tend to keep me moving all day, though.  Usually I sleep at 3AM or 4AM then get up at 11AM, but it's not a good  urlLink REM  sleep.  My best sleep seems to be 1-2 hour naps at 3PM or 7PM.  When I wake up from those it's really like getting up in the morning; and getting up in the morning is like waking up at midnight.  My father-in-law thinks I should just adjust 100% in like 2 days, but I'm not sure if I'm built that way.  If I need to I can do it, but it's like I'm on vacation here.  Besides, I do my work at night anyways, when the kids are asleep (and Seoul is awake).  I guess that's it for now.  Nothing more profound than this from the day, which is a little sad.  I love it here: so clean, peaceful and easy to live; but I kinda miss Seoul too: so dirty, loud and easy to get run down by  urlLink deliveryboys on motorcycles .
So I've been in Vancouver a few days now...in Coquitlam, actually.  It's really an interesting place; I used to think it was full of Chinese people (not that there's anything wrong with that, but Vancouver's #1 mother tongue is Mandarin/Cantonese, so you'd assume there'd be tons here).  Our area is up on a hill in a little bit of paradise, actually.  It has started to remind me of Newport in that show  urlLink The O.C.  (O.C. means Orange County).  Well, it isn't full of million dollar homes (but there are a few) but the topography is similar (hills, lots of parks, but no beach) and it's really, really white here.  I think the only Koreans I've seen have been family and Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager (ya, still have jetlag...watching anything that hits the screen here).  On that note, I think I'm having T.V. overload.  Well, with the kids I don't get to see too much of it, but when I do I'm boggled by the 60+ stations (and that's not even satellite!) and all, save one, of them are in ENGLISH!  Wow!  In Seoul I didn't even bother with cable so all I had was  urlLink AFN  (American Forces Network) (that guy on the homepage is their 6:30 newsanchor...the very reason I like to inline/rollerblade from 6-8PM).  Even if you have cable you only get like 2-3 other 'B' movie stations...nothing to write home about.  Truth be told, though, AFN has a pretty good lineup and I get to learn all about opsec (operational security) and that the U.S. Army in Korea is looking for E-4s and E-5s (enlisted ranks) to be MPs (Military Police).  So if you can handle the G.I. ads AFN is pretty cool.  Anyways, I didn't remember so many ads for weight-loss programs, get-rich-quick schemes and fantastic kitchen products, but there they were.  Of course in Korea most people are pretty fit and they know the best way to get rich is to marry rich or work hard--there are some ads there for kitchen and cleaning product, though, proving that some things truly are universal.  One ad that did throw me, though, was one for a 'male enhancement' pill.  What?!?!?  You take a pill for a bigger willi?  One version even had about 30 allusions to 'wood' throughout it.  I thought it was a spoof...maybe it was...it was on CNBC during  urlLink The Dennis Miller Show .   If anyone knows, please comment.  Ok, back to my time here.  We went down to the clubhouse to have a dip (ya, it's a little swanky...but the pool is outside, so it's not super-swanky) and there were some 18-something gals there sunning themselves and gabbing.  Man, this is NOT Seoul.  For one thing, no one actually tries to get a tan in Korea.  They wear Darth Vader-inspired visors to keep out all the rays they can and everyone is totally covered up.  Even when exercising Korean have pants, long-sleeves,  even suits .  Also, two of the three of them were 'plus size'.  They weighed like 2-3 TIMES that of a typical Korean gal.  (Not that that's a bad thing...it's just differences...please, no flames.)  Then you have to think...if they are 18 aren't they still in school?  By that I mean, they have not graduated from college.  An 18-year old Korean would be in the library or at a DVD bang, at least.  Most likely not at a pool (and I hear they're there everyday for hours on end)...what a different lifestyle.  Even after school is finished they'd be working or looking for a husband, or both.  Let's face it, many Koreans have little time to be idle (I must say, they do take time to drink and go to the sauna, though).  Maybe I'm becoming too Korean now, beating up these gals simply for having a little fun.  All I know is if they did that in Korea people might think they are  urlLink R.S.  (room salon, or places where men pay women to drink with them, sing with them and...uh...do other things) girls.  Maybe that's part of the Korean ideal.  Women should study and work and find a husband and if they are 'wasting' their time everyday then they must be of low moral fiber.  Hmmmm...there could be something to that.  Maybe it's part of the reason why so many Korean gals work their butts off (literally, Korean women are usually devoid of a derriere) and seem to push off their own pleasure in some Calvinist tradition.  Korean men seem to support this as it not only support the Confucius ideals that many Koreans follow but makes their place as symbolic leader of the home that much more solid (whether it is deserved or not, and we know that in many Korean homes a strong wife controls more than she advertises).
Whenever I see a pregnant Korean lady I really feel for her, because I know that within a few months she will have a 3-5 year sentence to complete and utter child-rearing duties.  As with most things Korean, mothers go all out...right from before conception to...well, it never stops.    Today I got a taste of that.  What a day!  My 3-year old (Spencer) woke me up at 9AM (which is early seeing as I still have some jetlag and was up from midnight to 3AM last night).  The younger, Winston, was already up, too.  My wife and I must have fed these kids like 5-7 times during the day, they just never stop!  Spencer and I went to his swimming class.  We get a discount on regular swimming since he's enrolled.  The gal behind the counter asked if he was swimming outside of the class as well...I really had no idea what was happening and said, 'I'm not sure.'  She said, in no uncertain terms, that it meant a lot to her whether he was or not.  I just said, ok, he is, how much?  Let's see $1.30 plus $2.60...$3.90.  You've got to be kidding?! You're bent about chun-on? (1,000 won/$1.15)?  This would not happen in Seoul.  They'd see Spencer and pay HIM to come into there!  Anyways, what I did with him in the pool was pretty much what the 'instructor' did as well...but she had 3 kids to handle.  I thought he'd be doing lengths or strokes, but I guess not yet.  After swimming I got my wife a Starbucks coffee.  She loves the stuff, and apparently can't justify to herself to buy herself one...those selfless Korean women, bless their hearts.  After I came home there was shopping to do.  I volunteered to go (kudos for me and time to think), then I suggested Spencer come too (thought he'd fall asleep in the car, especially after swimming) then thought we might as well all go (the list she gave me was going to take a couple of people to complete).  Well, the kids stayed up the whole time and I started to realize that this parenting thing is a lot harder when the kids are actually in the country with you (I'm usually in Seoul) and it's just you two (her mother and sister were out of town).  Good God, these kids didn't sleep until 11PM!  Someday they'll make great investment bankers, I mused.  To all those out there who are single parents, or even just parents, get yourself a Starbucks...you may not be able to drink it before it gets cold, but at least you have a piece of luxury in your hand for a few seconds.
My wife posed a strange question to me tonight.  Apparently this is the new fad in Korea...men are asked 'if your wife and your mother are drowning (neither can swim) and you have time to save just one of them who would you choose?'.  Many men say, 'my mother, because I can always remarry...but I can never replace my mom.'  Ok, true enough, but usually its the wives who ask this and one fellow I know said, in front of a throng of relatives (including his wife) that he'd save his mom.  The wife was not impressed.  Let's look at this on a more cultural level for a moment.  Much of Korean tradition is based on Confucius' teachings; where younger take care of elder, women take care of men and duty to family is first.  Parents sacrifice a lot for their kids to get them the best education, lifestyle and necessities; children, in turn, are expected to do the same when they have the means.  Thus, a man should choose to save his mother, who did everything for him (and perhaps still does) rather than his wife who is a bit of a late-comer.  The reason for all of this ultimatum questioning comes from family conflict.  A husband's mother often endures a lot from her husband, children, society and her own mother-in-law and, not one to stop the cycle, she will often unleash her frustration on the unsuspecting wife.  She comes to pry into, advise upon and attempt to control many parts of the couple's lives under the guise of helping her dear son.  With divorce becoming more accepted and this has broken up more than a few marriages lately; and now people are getting a little pre-emptive, perhaps, in asking the husband to make a choice in order to ascertain his convictions.  So, men, if you get this question posed to you first think of who is asking it (probably your wife) take a look around the room to find out who is listening and then give the best answer you can.  Just remember, you likely sleep with your wife every night, not your mother.
As readers will know, my favorite airline is Singapore Air (SAI).  They have those personal monitors for everyone with on-demand movies, TV shows and games..and some lovely-looking stewardesses, of course.  Another thing going for them is their empathy with their passengers.  I've twice been bumped up to business class (with it's better meals and basically flat sleeper beds...what an experience that is).  Once because the travel agent made a mistake and SAI decided they'd make my life a bit easier (hint: if you take the same flight 5-10 times they get to know you, too) and another time my flight was overbooked so I too business to San Francisco and got another one to Vancouver (both covered by SAI) as well as 500 Sing$ (300 USD, 350,000 won) which made for a 40% discount from my ticket price.  Anyways, this time I was in line for about 30 minutes (maybe it was longer) and a few times I squatted to relieve my legs a bit.  The gal at the counter apologized and put 2 'Solitaire' tags on my bags (will upload pic when I get back to Seoul so you can put your color printer to good use and make a few of your own) that basically put them on par with business class for unloading.  Nice.  The meals on the flight were good, there were lots of good movies and, as usual, they gave me one of those sleeper masks when I asked for it (in business it's automatic, but if you ask in economy you'll get one).  Upon arrival in Vancouver I saw a rare sight, the customs area was packed!  A cruise was in port and normal flights all bunched up to.  Not to worry, though, as just as I approached the line they opened another area of inspectors...and in about 10 minutes I was picking up my bags.  To top it off my cabbie spoke English (something that eluded me in Seoul and Vancouver much of the time) and we had a pretty cool conversation about life, marriage and cultures.  (He too believes that once you stop looking for a spouse you'll meet them...a little wisdom for you single-but-lookings out there.)  My phone can take pictures here but needs a special chip to connect.  I forgot its charger and extra battery, and already ran down the old one...so that's the only blotch on this trip so far; which ain't too bad.  I've decided to start to teach him my limited French...which should keep him on his toes.  He's already got some of the accent down when he speaks baby-talk.
When I was in Seoul these last few months I thought my wife had it kinda easy here with 'just' our 2 kids to take care of.  Now I know that this parenting thing is pretty tough.  The worst thing is they 'tag team' us.  For example, one stays up til 3:30AM, the other wakes up at 7AM.  One has a nap, and the other gets hungry.  And my wife isn't into lots of crap food for them, too...so she is constantly cooking and preparing wonderful delicacies like 'rice brocolli cheese tofu cakes' and 'seaweed and beef soup'--sounds great, eh?!  Well, the kids like it and I guess it's good for them.  When I go back to Seoul I know I'll miss these days (and nights) and start my old routine of 6PM rollerblading and going out to the bars on the weekends (maybe even during the week a bit, as my  urlLink CFA  test is finished for a few months).  I know the days will be a little less full without my 3-year old jumping (from the couch) onto my stomache/back/gonads...ah, how can I survive?  We will have the webcam and daily phonecalls to make things a bit easier, but it won't be the same.  Ug, so tired now...it's past 11PM and I know tomorrow will be busy...and the next day too.  My bud of almost 25 years is coming to visit and I'll make the trip to the ferry terminal to pick him up and the new place is now inconveniently 60 minutes from the docks compared to 30 minutes for our old place.  No matter, I imagine I'll relish the time alone on a simple car trip.
You may have noticed a new feature on my blog...it's a blog email notification thingy ( urlLink Blogarithm ).  All you need to do is put your email in the space and 'Keep it Fresh' and you'll get an email every time I update this blog.  I use this on blogs that I normally read (once I get better at code I'll actually have them posted on this page too) and find it pretty handy.  The last few days have been pretty hectic.  Basically in the pool (our complex's or the public one) everyday and running around with the kids and not getting a lot of sleep.  My wife and I take turns (one was up til 3AM last night, the other awoke at 7AM)...man, getting back to Seoul and my bachelor pad will be like a vacation--no matter how much work I have at the office.  There they go again...gotta go.
Korea, especially Seoul, is pretty cool; and Canada, especially Vancouver is pretty cool too.  Here are a few things I will (and will not) miss:  Things to miss about Korea: being a celebrity (well, a little one, at least...just for being me); 100 kinds of ice cream at the local convenience store (and all for 500 won/USD 0.40); 7 24-hour convenience stores within a block or two of my place;  urlLink inlining/rollerblading along the Han River ; bars with no line-ups; bar-hopping to at least 2-4 places in a night; Korean people; not worrying about water on the floor of my  urlLink fully tiled bathroom ; super-efficient  urlLink subways ; super-cheap  urlLink cabs  where the subways leave off;  urlLink no taxes ,  urlLink no tipping ; great food, and seconds for free;  urlLink alcohol  available at any store; eating  urlLink live octopus  (I mean live as in swimming around in a bowl/on a plate on the table); getting free fruit and/or tea and/or coffee and/or sugary drinks after every meal.  Things to miss about Canada:  urlLink no pollution  (or not noticeable, at least); good mixed drinks (like Dr. Pepper and Long Island iced teas, although that's changing in Seoul now); our complex's pool just 5 minutes away (and it's usually just us or a few people there);  urlLink burgers that are not served raw   (hellloooooo! heard of e-coli?).  Things not to miss about Seoul: drunk guys pissing in the streets at night (well, I am one of them sometimes); people always thinking I'm crazy for not liking tofu; paying like $10 for enough ground beef for 2 hamburgers; having to go to the foreign food section to get my M&Ms.  Things not to miss about Canada: line-ups and cover charge at almost every good bar; larger Canadian chicks (hey, no flamings, please); union leaders who think someone should make $20 an hour to pick up trash when Korean 60-year-old men do it in Seoul for like $100 a month; Vancouver rain in the winter...and spring...and fall...and summer; high (14.5%!) sales  urlLink tax ; tips treated as if they are expected (no matter the service); having to go to the foreign food section to get my ramen noodles.
It seems everything is not all that smooth in Seoul concerning the recent changes.  This makes sense because, as Koreans would, they decided not only to change the payment system but also all of the bus color-schemes, routes numbers and routes and even the structure of the roads in some areas of the city (see pic below of a fast lane for buses in one of the worst traffic areas of the city).  More in  urlLink this Korea Times article .   urlLink    Life in the fast lane.
This may be a long blog...got a lot of thoughts going through my head this last couple of days, not least because of my reading  urlLink A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market --a very cool book and one that I wish I read before embarking on the  urlLink CFA  designation exams (wrote 2 of the 3 required exams already).  Anyhoo, went out for some drinks last night (yes, Thursday night, a school night, but I really wanted to break this jetlag and I find that going out is one of the most effective, and most fun, ways to do so) at a little place called Han's Sausages near Hong-Ik University (usually referred to as HongDae).  So upon ordering the bratwurst and beer I noticed something interesting, the beer came in a special pitcher that has dry ice in a compartment in the bottom of it and passages that allow the vapor to flow to the top and escape.  Pretty cool idea, and I had seen it before in another bar in Sinchon (another teen/bar district near HongDae).  While out on the town I started to think, 'What are the odds that I know someone here in this bar or meet them on the street?'  Likely pretty low, but then I remembered the last night I came here and got a call from an old co-worker who was basically 2 blocks from me and had just had 산낙지 (san-nak-ji, living octopus) in a little place that we almost went to (now that was interesting).  Then I remembered that a friend of mine's former girlfriend is in Korea--not Seoul, in Pusan. But her sister-in-law's friend is engaged to a Korean girl in Daegu who often comes to Seoul (HongDae/Sinchon specifically) to see friends.  So, what if one of the thousands of people I saw were one of those friends?  How many  urlLink degrees of separation   is that?  Two to the Pusan friend (or one, if you count that I know her now), plus three to the groom-to-be (or two as the Pusan friend already knows her sister-in-law) and two more to the friend(s) in Seoul.  So that's 4 to 7 degrees, not bad.  I could also suppose that the people on the street know my wife or one of her friends (as she went to school there) but we are older than these kids and it's not quite as interesting a story as going to Vancouver then Daegu then back to Seoul.  Another area: yesterday I met some guys from an asset management firm here (for business).  One spoke quite good English, and when he found out I was from Vancouver he noted that his brother-in-law is living here.  As well, the owner of the  urlLink 삼계탕  (samgyetang, ginseng chicken soup) place across from my apartment has a home in a suburb of Vancouver. What are the odds of that?  Now let's deconstruct this a bit, and take a bit from my current reading (and suspend for a bit the idea that I have incredible selective memory and am merely drawing connections from random events).  On the beer: both restaurants were in the same relative are (more or less) and it makes sense that a seller of those dry-ice pitchers would service both of them.  For the people on the street: the university district is full of school kids, school kids are not (usually, especially in Korea) destitute poor and they are (by definition) educated (or nearso) and it is the well-to-do and educated that end up going to foreign countries and meet/marry foreigners (there are exceptions, just humor me for a bit).  Thus, it makes some sense that I (who knows many educated people in Korea and Canada, as I am one myself) would have an ok chance to have some connection with similar people in another country, no matter the whereabouts.  (This reminds me of when I spent a month in the Philippines with my bud Carlo who met a friend there who ended up being his distant relative. Especially in places where the economic/social strata is well-defined the 'top 1%' seem to flock together.)  Concerning the people who have ties in Vancouver.  Proximity is one factor, and wealth is another.  Vancouver is the closest airport to Seoul (one hour longer to go to San Francisco) and it also has an inviting climate and seems to attract the wealthy from many countries (including the U.S.).  So it makes sense that these, again, well-to-do and educated people would have some connection to my other home.  What's my point and how does it lead to a better understanding of Korean culture?  It's this: When you meet a Korean (or when they are  urlLink on their first dates ) they will always ask questions to  urlLink figure out if they have some connection  such as  urlLink age  and ethnicity or school ties or anysuch thing that could prove a connection.  For foreigners this kind of questioning is sometimes seen as rude, but this is just a part of Korea: you get used to it.  This is one reason that Koreans study their butts off to go to the best/largest schools such as  urlLink Seoul National University ,  urlLink Korea University ,  urlLink Ewha Women's University  and  urlLink Yonsei University  and then put themselves through incredible stress to get into major companies such as  urlLink Samsung Group .  It's because after all that study and hard work one will have instant camaraderie with fellow alumni and, thus, be able to move to Vancouver when they retire and not have to work selling dry-ice beer pitchers to every bar in Korea.
I've always thought of Seoul's  urlLink subways  as a real joy to be on. They are clean, fast, efficient(more or less) and CHEAP.  Buses, on the other hand, are a bit of a mystery to me.  I take one bus regularly, but that's it.   urlLink taxis , however, are plentiful, cheap and (once you know a little Korean) pretty easy to use.  Now things are getting a lot easier and logical.  As of today (July 1st) rates will be based on distance traveled rather than number of rides.  This makes sense as it always irked me when you had to pay again to transfer from one bus to another or from the bus to subway (this doesn't happen in Vancouver).  The new system just has you pay for the length of each little trip.  As well, my phone will be able to house my T-Money so I don't need to carry change or fish around for my wallet or 'stored-value' ticket.  (It can even be used in convenience stores and cabs soon! And carry up to 500,000 won, or about 435USD)There's also a color-coding scheme to the buses which may or may not make things easier.  Unless they have little maps on the buses I think most foreigners will find the new system about a confusing as the old, but a lot of that has to do with the language and familiarity with a city/district that covers many, many square kms.  Check out articles on all this stuff  urlLink here ,  urlLink here  and  urlLink here .
Big cities are famous for being expensive places to live, some more than others, of course.  Here is the latest (2004,  urlLink source ) list of priciest cities to live in (sorry not sure how to format a table):                             1  Tokyo, Japan                         2  London, UK                           3  Moscow, Russia    4  Osaka, Japan    5  Hong Kong    6  Geneva, Switzerland      7  Seoul, South Korea      8  Copenhagen, Denmark    9  Zürich, Switzerland   10  St. Petersburg, Russia   11  Beijing, China   12  New York City, USA   13  Milan, Italy   14  Dublin, Ireland   15  Oslo, Norway   16  Shanghai, China   17  Paris, France   18  Istanbul, Turkey   19  Vienna, Austria   20  Sydney, Australia   21  Rome, Italy   22  Stockholm, Sweden   23  Helsinki, Finland   24  Abidjan, Ivory Coast   25  Douala, Cameroon   26  Amsterdam, Netherlands   27  Los Angeles, USA   28  Berlin, Germany   29  Hanoi, Vietnam   30  Shenzhen, China   31  Taipei, Taiwan   32  Guangzhou, China   33  Tel Aviv, Israel   34  Budapest, Hungary   35  Chicago, USA   36  Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam   37  Beirut, Lebanon   38  San Francisco, USA   39  Luxembourg   40  Düsseldorf, Germany   41  Glasgow, UK   42  Frankfurt, Germany   43  Munich, Germany   44  Bratislava, Slovak Republic   45  Jakarta, Indonesia   46  Singapore   47  Dakar, Senegal   48  Riga, Latvia   49  Prague, Czech Republic   50  Athens, Greece   51  Birmingham, UK   52  White Plains, USA   53  Brussels, Belgium   54  Kiev, Ukraine   55  Miami, USA   56  Barcelona, Spain   57  Honolulu, USA   58  Hamburg, Germany   59  Zagreb, Croatia   60  Algiers, Algeria   61  Madrid, Spain   62  Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates   63  Amman, Jordan   64  Kuwait City, Kuwait   65  San Juan, Puerto Rico   66  Casablanca, Morocco   67  Melbourne, Australia   68  Washington, USA   69  Lyon, France   70  Boston, USA   71  Lisbon, Portugal   72  Morristown, USA   73  Houston, USA   74  Almaty, Kazakhstan  75  Tallinn, Estonia  76  Warsaw, Poland  77  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia  78  Manama, Bahrain  79  Sofia, Bulgaria  80  Auckland, New Zealand  81  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia  82  Ljubljana, Slovenia  83  Dubai, United Arab Emirates  84  Mexico City, Mexico  85  Atlanta, USA  86  Wellington, New Zealand  87  Brisbane, Australia  88  Adelaide, Australia   89  Toronto, Canada   90  Seattle, USA  91  Vilnius, Lithuania  92  St. Louis, USA  93  Leipzig, Germany  94  Perth, Australia  95  Limassol, Cyprus    96  Vancouver, Canada    97  Accra, Ghana  98  Cleveland, USA  99  Cairo, Egypt  100  Denver, USA  101  Detroit, USA  102  Monterrey, Mexico  103  Kingston, Jamaica  104  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  105  Portland, USA  106  Panama City  107  Winston Salem, USA  108  Guatemala City, Guatemala  109  Mumbai, India  110  Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei  111  Lagos, Nigeria  112  Pittsburgh, USA  113  Montreal, Canada  114  Calgary, Canada  115  Tianjin, China  116  New Delhi, India  117  Dacca (Dhaka), Bangladesh  118  Lima, Peru  119  Bangkok, Thailand  120  Tunis, Tunisia  121  Nairobi, Kenya  122  Tehran, Iran  123  Santiago, Chile  124  Ottawa, Canada  125  Lusaka, Zambia  126  Johannesburg, South Africa  127  Colombo, Sri Lanka  128  São Paulo, Brazil  129  Bucharest, Romania  130  San José, Costa Rica  131  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  132  Karachi, Pakistan  133  Chennai (Madras), India  134  Caracas, Venezuela  135  Blantyre, Malawi  136  Quito, Ecuador  137  Bangalore, India  138  Manila, Philippines  139  Bogotá, Colombia  140  Harare, Zimbabwe  141  Buenos Aires, Argentina  142  Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic  143  Montevideo, Uruguay  144  Asunción, Paraguay   Whew, that was long...I have to learn more about cutting code so I can make this thing prettier.  Anyways, Seoul is #7 and the first Canadian city is the 'Big Smoke' (as my Dad calls it), Toronto at #89 then my recent/dual hometown of Vancouver at #96 (I suspect it'll rise next year as real estate is on a bit of a tear lately).  Thing is, if you have the residence/home thing taken care of (as most teachers do in Korea) then living in Seoul/Korea can be pretty cheap.  Of course you can always spend $4,500 USD for a bottle of  urlLink Macallan 50 year-old whisky  at  urlLink SkyBar , but if you keep your head on straight it's not too bad.  Every morning I go to my local 7-11 and have 2  urlLink 삼각김밥  (sam-gak-gim-bab, literally 3-angled/triangle seaweed and rice) for about 1USD.  Today I splurged for a 새우버거 (say-oo/shrimp burger) but the price was still under 2USD.  (It's good for dieting too, as my wife near-constantly reminds me, because rice has 1/3rd the fat of bread and likely 1/100th that of a croissant, muffin or bagel.)   urlLink    My lovely breakfast.  Shrimp burger and triangle kimbap.
Koreans have a great sense of community.  So much so that sometimes they figure they can have a nap any old place.  Now I understand taking a snooze in a subway car (they are safer here) or taxi (done that a few times), but on some steps?  Well, it happens.   urlLink    I couldn't resist taking a pic of this guy...it was like 6PM and he was already sacked out on the front steps of a building in Sinchon (teen district of Seoul).  Notice his jacket is a step or so down from his resting place.  Must be nice to be in a virtually crime-free city.
urlLink    The business class tag for baggage.  I have to keep this in pristine condition for future flights.
I used to cook for myself all the time (making bulggogi, kalbi and even lasagna).  Now, however, I'm getting pretty lazy.  Food is so good, plentiful and cheap in the restaurants (nevermind that Koeans love to go out to eat so if I did cook a large amount of food about half of it would go to waste anyways) that I've decided not to shop for anything more than noodles and booze.  (See photos for the result.)  Far from what I expected, I ended up losing weight and spending about the same amount of money, go figure.   urlLink    What a balanced diet I have...noodles and more noodles, tuna, gochoo jang (sauce).   urlLink    My fridge, the oranges are just for show, they've been in there for like 6 weeks.  Notice the contents: ketchup, mayo, orange juice (jeju-do) beer, soju, beaksayju, mayshilju, onions.
I often wondered where the restauranteurs heated up the briquettes or brinks or rocks that they placed in the table for traditional Korean cooking...then I saw this.  This place (not a good pic, it was from a taxi with my phone-camera) actually has a fire on the sidewalk right in front of it!  The guy is pickin out a red/white-hot brick for the patrons inside.  Only in Korea.   urlLink    Fire in the hole!
It feels like I didn't even leave this place, which is a little scary.  Things will be a little weird for a bit (as I take about a week to get over jetlag, unlike some people I know who take about 2 days) so postings may be a little sporatic for a bit.  As well, work is getting busier...which is fine my me.  It's kind of interesting, actually.  At this job we always have something to do (I do the weekly newsletter, research, presentations to clients, and liaise with our foreign partners) but there are definate lulls and busy times.  Just before my vacation was a lull, now we're back in the thick of things.  Speaking of thick, take a look at this pic.  Many days here are like this (although, admittedly, not this brutal).  Some are blue-skied, but even then you know that the pollution is there.  I left my windows upon when I went home and when I came back there was a thin layer of soot on the floor...hmmmm, that seems real nice, eh?  Now I know why my mother-in-law always cleaned the floor every day or so.  Apparently Seoul has DOUBLE the amount of particles (I'm assuming 'bad' particles) in its air.  Anyone who jogs here is nuts (but I, of course, do inline/rollerblade almost everyday, so I'm no better).   urlLink    Lovely Seoul smog.  One problem is the number of cars here, another is the level of industrialization and lack of environmental laws (or enforcement thereof) but there is also the polution that comes over from China (where things, from what I hear, are a lot worse) and the  urlLink Yellow Wind/Dust  that makes its way to our shores once or twice a year.  I was in one of these storms a few years ago (I was the only gomer without a surgical mask on) and I felt pretty weird afterward.  If you have a respiratory problem things could get ugly.
It's been a busy last couple of weeks, but I'm on my way back to Seoul today.   Didn't get near what I wanted to get done on this trip--had planned on heading downtown to see a few buds but couldn't get the time to get away at all.  A few friends made the trek up to our place, though, which was cool.  It's nice to see friends you've known for 10-20 years after being away for a while.  One guy that came up here was a friend of a sister of a friend who is marrying (as soon as he gets the familial blessing) a Korean, so my wife and I gave him the 411 on Koreans and ways to do things.  (More on that when I get back to Seoul, and have more time.)  Got to go now.
A night out in Korea can seem pretty overwhelming, especially in HongDae, Kangnam Sinchon,  urlLink Sincheon , Itaewon, Daehak-ro or any of the other major hotspots in town.  Hongdae, Sinchon and Daehak-ro make a name for themselves by being close to the major universities; Kangnam is a place for lavishing high-priced liquors and girls on clients; Itaewon is near the US Army base, so it's a haven for GIs and other English-speakers (who seem to have more money than brains sometimes, myself included) and Sincheon is a teen district as well, in the well-to-do area of Songpa-gu.  My latest foray was to Daehak-ro (daehak/daehak-kyo means college/university, ro means street).  We went to a ddak-kalbi (grilled chicken) place and saw a group of 3 guys whooping it up Korean style (copious amounts of soju and food and louder speaking).  One was pretty funny. I don't know if he was doing it for my benefit or to show-off to the Koreans around him (Koreans sometimes show that they know English as a form of one-up-man-ship...it shows they are educated and studied a lot, no matter how brutal the usage).  He was saying such things as 'Excuse me, could you calm down?' (actually, he said that A LOT) and 'I'm sorry' and 'Okay!'.  I think he was practicing to be a bar bouncer or something.  Anyways, these guys got pretty loaded.  When one of them was away from the table it looked like the other two were a little amorous (Korean men sometimes hold hands or put their arms around each other, especially after a gallon of soju).  I snapped the picture below before we left.       urlLink     2 guys who really like each other (but they are not gay).   Then when we finished walking nature was calling me...but not #1.  I took a look into the  urlLink hwa-jang-shil  (bathroom) in the restaurant, but it was a squat-type.  Then we came across this theatre (below...oh, and Koreans usually pronounce theatre and Seattle the similarly).  It was new so I took a look.  Man, that bathroom was spotless--maybe it looked so good because I figured that all of the ones in the area were squatters or brutally dirty affairs, as they usually are in smaller, older buildings (man, how do these women do it?).  Anyways, that's the tip.  Look for the newest, hippest building (especially ones with Western food or themes inside) to find the best W.C. (another way Koreans denote watercloset).   urlLink     Fantaseum   Since Korea has millions (ten of millions, likely) of cellphones (handphones, as they call them) you'll find public pay phones only in a few places: the airport, the train/bus stations, major hotels and the subways.  (Well, I've seen them on the street sometimes, but not that often, and not when you need one.)   urlLink     phones   Another instance of Korean marketing gone bonkers.   urlLink Red Mango  is a major bing-soo (shaved ice garnished with fruit and stuff and then topped with yogurt or ice cream).  But the tagline for the firm is a little....well, weird 'Start loving myself!'.  When I explain it to people they really get confused.   urlLink     Red Mango  Another thing here that's funny is girls wear shirts that say '69', it's a brand here but they are oblivious to the hidden meaning (if you don't know I can't explain it here, this site is family-friendly).  Or church-going girls will have a Playboy scrunchie in their hair...not knowing who 'The Hef' is.  Koreans also have no idea the multitude of words we have for a part of the male anatomy (so the scene in  urlLink Austin Powers  where they say 'woody, Johnston, boner, balls, willi...) goes over most of their heads.  They have one word here for it  urlLink go-choo  (hot pepper), and they're pretty surprised to learn that their word for 'ward' in a city (dong) is also another euphemism for gochoo.   urlLink     And, to cap it off, in the subway there was a guy taking a snooze right on the floor.
Some of you may remember my first article on oh-gyup-sal (five layers of fat pork). Oh-gyup-sal is a one-up on sam-gyup-sal (three layers of fat porl), so it only makes sense that this land of hyperbole would come up with chun-gyup-sal (1,000 layers of fat pork)--and it did.  As amazing as it may seem, someone got the great idea of leap-frogging all of the competition and calling what is basically pork chop a name that denotes something a little more superlative.  Why not trillion layers of fat pork (jo-gyup-sal)?  I have no idea.   urlLink     The sign says '1,000 layers of fat pork'...mmmmmmm.   Well, Korea isn't the only place where things get blown out of proportion sometimes, it's just that they do it so well here and we're not used to it.  Who can forget the launch of the  urlLink Gilette Mach 3 ?  Yes, that's what I need!  Three blades on my face!  (Of course they had 'Excel' versions of their Sensor, Mach 3 and ladies' razors, too, as if we needed that little white strip to save from cutting our faces open.)  Recently the  urlLink Schick Quattro  came out (for those of you who failed Latin, Italian, Audi or whatever language this is in: quattro means expensive).  Now Gillette has a 'power' version of its razor.  Now this is getting ridiculous!  Here in Korea I get 10 good razors for 2,000 won (USD 1.75).  (Yes, 17.5c each!)  They're so cheap I only use them twice then throw them away.  (Please no Greenpeace/eco-friendly group flamings.)  And you know what?  I get a pretty good shave out of it, too...similarly I only buy plain ol' pork chops at home.
Sometimes this place really makes me think.  So many things are so different here (language, expressions, people, culture, shopping, driving habits) but, yet, some things are just like home.  Take my building, for instance, there are a few guards (we call them 아저씨, ajeosshi, or 'mister') in the lobby...well, they're no so much guards as they are greeters, like at Wal-Mart (neat article  urlLink here ).  After they figured I was not a visitor, but a long term resident of Seoul they started saluting me, waving and saying 'Morning'.  Huh, morning?  Ok, I guess they learned that greeting somewhere. Many Koreans in lower-level jobs know absolutely no Eng
print(corpus[0:90000])Info has been found (+/- 100 pages, and 4.5 MB of .pdf files) Now i have to wait untill our team leader has processed it and learns html.
These are the team members:   Drewes van der Laag           urlLink mail  Ruiyu Xie                     urlLink mail  Bryan Aaldering (me)          urlLink mail
In het kader van kernfusie op aarde:  MAAK JE EIGEN WATERSTOFBOM   How to build an H-Bomb From: ascott@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Scott) Newsgroups: rec.humor Subject: How To Build An H-Bomb (humorous!) Date: 7 Feb 1994 07:41:14 GMT Organization: The University of Western Australia  Original file dated 12th November 1990. Seemed to be a transcript of a 'Seven Days' article. Poorly formatted and corrupted. I have added the text between 'examine under a microscope' and 'malleable, like gold,' as it was missing. If anyone has the full text, please distribute. I am not responsible for the accuracy of this information. Converted to HTML by Dionisio@InfiNet.com 11/13/98. (Did a little spell-checking and some minor edits too.) Stolen from  urlLink http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dionisio/fun/m...own-h-bomb.html  and reformatted the HTML. It now validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict. How to Build an H-Bomb Making and owning an H-bomb is the kind of challenge real Americans seek. Who wants to be a passive victim of nuclear war when, with a little effort, you can be an active participant? Bomb shelters are for losers. Who wants to huddle together underground eating canned Spam? Winners want to push the button themselves. Making your own H-bomb is a big step in nuclear assertiveness training -- it's called Taking Charge. We're sure you'll enjoy the risks and the heady thrill of playing nuclear chicken. Introduction When the Feds clamped down on The Progressive magazine for attempting to publish an article on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb, it piqued our curiosity. Was it really true that atomic and hydrogen bomb technology was so simple you could build an H-bomb in your own kitchen? Seven Days decided to find out. Food editor Barbara Ehrenreich, investigative reporter Peter Biskind, Photographer Jane Melnick and nuclear scientist Michio Kaku were given three days to cook up a workable H-bomb. They did and we have decided to share their culinary secrets with you. Not that Seven Days supports nuclear terrorism. We don't. We would prefer to die slowly from familiar poisons like low-level radiation, microwaves, DDT, DBCP, aflatoxins, PBBs, PBCs, or food dyes, rather than unexpectedly, say as hostage to a Latvian nationalist brandishing a homemade bomb. In our view the real terrorists are the governments, American, Soviet, French, Chinese, and British, that are hoarding H-bombs for their own use, and worse still, those governments (U.S., French and German) that are eagerly peddling advanced nuclear technology to countries like South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina so that they can make their own bombs. When these bombs are used, and they will be, it will be the world's big-time nuclear peddlers, along with corporate suppliers like General Electric, Westinghouse, and Gulf Oil, that we can thank for it. Gagging The Progressive will do no more for national security than backyard bomb shelters because like it or not the news is out. The heart of the successful H-bomb is the successful A-bomb. Once you've got your A-bombs made the rest is frosting on the cake. All you have to do is set them up so that when they detonate they'll start off a hydrogen-fusion reaction.  Part 1: Making Your Bomb Step 1: Getting the Ingredients Uranium is the basic ingredient of the A-bomb. When a uranium atom's nucleus splits apart, it releases a tremendous amount of energy (for its size), and it emits neutrons which go on to split other nearby uranium nuclei, releasing more energy, in what is called a 'chain reaction'. (When atoms split, matter is converted into energy according to Einstein's equation E=MC2. What better way to mark his birthday than with your own atomic fireworks?) There are two kinds (isotopes) of uranium: the rare U-235, used in bombs, and the more common, heavier, but useless U-238. Natural uranium contains less than 1 percent U-235 and in order to be usable in bombs it has to be 'enriched' to 90 percent U-235 and only 10 percent U-238. Plutonium-239 can also be used in bombs as a substitute for U-235. Ten pounds of U-235 (or slightly less plutonium) is all that is necessary for a bomb. Less than ten pounds won't give you a critical mass. So purifying or enriching naturally occurring uranium is likely to be your first big hurdle. It is infinitely easy to steal ready-to-use enriched uranium or plutonium than to enrich some yourself. And stealing uranium is not as hard as it sounds. There are at least three sources of enriched uranium or plutonium... Enriched uranium is manufactured at a gaseous diffusion plant in Portsmouth, Ohio. From there it is shipped in 10 liter bottles by airplane and trucks to conversion plants that turn it into uranium oxide or uranium metal. Each 10 liter bottle contains 7 kilograms of U-235, and there are 20 bottles to a typical shipment. Conversion facilities exist at Hematite, Missouri; Apollo, Pennsylvania; and Erwin, Tennessee. The Kerr-McGee plant at Crescent Oklahoma -- where Karen Silkwood worked -- was a conversion plant that 'lost' 40 lbs of plutonium. Enriched uranium can be stolen from these plants or from fuel-fabricating plants like those in New Haven, San Diego; or Lynchburg, Virginia. (A former Kerr-McGee supervisor, James V. Smith, when asked at the Silkwood trial if there were any security precautions at the plant to prevent theft, testified that 'There were none of any kind, no guards, no fences, no nothing.') Plutonium can be obtained from places like United Nuclear in Pawling, New York; Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee; General Electric in Pleasanton, California; Westinghouse in Cheswick, Pennsylvania; Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Leechburg, Pennsylvania; and plants in Hanfford, Washington and Morris, Illinois. According to Rolling Stone magazine the Israelis were involved in the theft of plutonium from NUMEC. Finally you can steal enriched uranium or plutonium while it's en-route from conversion plants to fuel fabricating plants. It is usually transported (by air or truck) in the form of uranium oxide, a brownish powder resembling instant coffee, or as a metal, coming in small chunks called 'broken buttons.' Both forms are shipped in small cans stacked in 5-inch cylinders braced with welded struts in the center of ordinary 55 gallon steel drums. The drums weigh about 100 pounds and are clearly marked 'Fissible Material' or 'Danger, Plutonium.' A typical shipment might go from the enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio to the conversion plant in Hematite Missouri then to Kansas City by truck where it would be flown to Los Angeles and then trucked down to the General Atomic plant in San Diego. The plans for the General Atomic plant are on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's reading room at 1717 H Street NW Washington. A Xerox machine is provided for the convenience of the public. If you can't get hold of any enriched uranium you'll have to settle for commercial grade (20 percent U-235). This can be stolen from university reactors of a type called TRIGA Mark II, where security is even more casual than at commercial plants. If stealing uranium seems too tacky you can buy it. Unenriched uranium is available at any chemical supply house for $23 a pound. Commercial grade (3 to 20 percent enriched) is available for $40 a pound from Gulf Atomic. You'll have to enrich it further yourself. Quite frankly this can be something of a pain in the ass. You'll need to start with a little more than 50 pounds of commercial-grade uranium. (It's only 20 percent U-235 at best, and you need 10 pounds of U-235 so... ) But with a little kitchen-table chemistry you'll be able to convert the solid uranium oxide you've purchased into a liquid form. Once you've done that, you'll be able to separate the U-235 that you'll need from the U-238. First pour a few gallons of concentrated hydrofluoric acid into your uranium oxide, converting it to uranium tetrafluoride. (Safety note: Concentrated hydrofluoric acid is so corrosive that it will eat its way through glass, so store it only in plastic. Used 1-gallon plastic milk containers will do.) Now you have to convert your uranium tetrafluoride to uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous form of uranium, which is convenient for separating out the isotope U-235 from U-238. To get the hexafluoride form, bubble fluorine gas into your container of uranium tetrafluoride. Fluorine is available in pressurized tanks from chemical-supply firms. Be careful how you use it though because fluorine is several times more deadly than chlorine, the classic World War I poison gas. Chemists recommend that you carry out this step under a stove hood (the kind used to remove unpleasant cooking odors). If you've done your chemistry right you should now have a generous supply of uranium hexafluoride ready for enriching. In the old horse-and-buggy days of A-bomb manufacture the enrichment was carried out by passing the uranium hexafluoride through hundreds of miles of pipes, tubes, and membranes, until the U-235 was eventually separated from the U-238. This gaseous-diffusion process, as it was called is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Gaseous-diffusion plants cover hundreds of acres and cost in the neighborhood of $2-billion each. So forget it. There are easier, and cheaper, ways to enrich your uranium. First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don't put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.) Now it's time to convert your enriched uranium back to metal form. This is easily enough accomplished by spooning several ladlefuls of calcium (available in tablet form from your drugstore) into each bucket of uranium. The calcium will react with the uranium hexafluoride to produce calcium fluoride, a colorless salt which can be easily be separated from your pure enriched uranium metal. A few precautions: • While uranium is not dangerously radioactive in the amounts you'll be handling, if you plan to make more than one bomb it might be wise to wear gloves and a lead apron, the kind you can buy in dental supply stores. • Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known. If inhaled, a thousandth of a gram can cause massive fibrosis of the lungs, a painful way to go. Even a millionth of a gram in the lungs will cause cancer. If eaten plutonium is metabolized like calcium. It goes straight to the bones where it gives out alpha particles preventing bone marrow from manufacturing red blood cells. The best way to avoid inhaling plutonium is to hold your breath while handling it. If this is too difficult wear a mask. To avoid ingesting plutonium orally follow this simple rule: never make an A-bomb on an empty stomach. • If you find yourself dozing off while you're working, or if you begin to glow in the dark, it might be wise to take a blood count. Prick your finger with a sterile pin, place a drop of blood on a microscope slide, cover it with a cover slip, and examine under a microscope. (Best results are obtained in the early morning.) When you get leukemia, immature cells are released into the bloodstream, and usually the number of white cells increases (though this increase might take almost 2 weeks). Red blood cells look kind of like donuts (without the hole), and are slightly smaller than the white cells, each of which has a nucleus. Immature red cells look similar to white cells (i.e.. slightly larger and have a nucleus). If you have more than about 1 white cell (including immature ones) to 400 red cells then start to worry. But, depending upon your plans for the eventual use of the bomb, a short life expectancy might not be a problem.  Step 2: Assembling the A-Bomb Now that you've acquired the enriched uranium, all that's left is to assemble your A-bomb. Go find a couple of stainless steel salad bowls. You also want to separate your 10 pounds of U-235 into two hunks. (Keep them apart!) The idea is to push each half your uranium into the inside of a bowl. Take one hunk of your uranium and beat it into the inside of the first bowl. Uranium is malleable, like gold, so you should have no trouble hammering it into the bowl to get a good fit. Take another five-pound hunk of uranium and fit it into a second stainless steel bowl. These two bowls of U-235 are the 'subcritical masses' which, when brought together forcefully, will provide the critical mass that makes your A-bomb go. Keep them a respectful distance apart while working because you don't want them to 'go critical' on you... At least not yet. Now hollow out the body of an old vacuum cleaner and place your two hemispherical bowls inside, open ends facing each other, no less than seven inches apart, using masking tape to set them up in position. The reason for the steel bowls and the vacuum cleaner, in case you're wondering, is that these help reflect the neutrons back into the uranium for a more efficient explosion. 'A loose neutron is a useless neutron' as the A-bomb pioneers used to say. As far as the A-bomb goes, you're almost done. The final problem is to figure out how to get the two U-235 hemispheres to smash into each other with sufficient force to set off a truly effective fission reaction. Almost any type of explosive can be used to drive them together. Gunpowder, for example, is easily made at home from potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon. Or, you can get some blasting caps or TNT. (Buy them or steal them from a construction site.) Best of all is C4 plastic explosive. You can mold it around your bowls, and it's fairly safe to work with. (But, it might be wise to shape it around an extra salad bowl in another room, and THEN fit it to your uranium-packed bowls. This is particularly true in winter, when a stray static electrical charge might induce ignition in the C4. A responsible bomb maker considers it impolite to accidentally destroy more of the neighborhood than absolutely necessary.) Once the explosives are in place all you need to do is hook up a simple detonation device with a few batteries, a switch, and some wire. Remember though that it is essential that the two charges -- one on each side of the casing -- go off simultaneously. Now put the whole thing in the casing of an old Hoover vacuum cleaner and you're finished with this part of the process. The rest is easy.  Step 3: Make More A-Bombs Following the Directions Above  A Word to the Wise About Wastes After your A-bomb is completed you'll have a pile of moderately fatal radioactive wastes like U-238. These are not dangerous, but you do have to get rid of them. You can flush leftovers down the toilet. (Don't worry about polluting the ocean, there is already so much radioactive waste there, a few more bucketfuls won't make any waves whatsoever.) If you're the fastidious type -- the kind who never leaves gum under their seat at the movies -- you can seal the nasty stuff in coffee cans and bury it in the backyard, just like Uncle Sam does. If the neighbor kids have a habit of trampling the lawn, tell them to play over by the waste. You'll soon find that they're spending most of their time in bed.  Going First Class If you're like us, you're feeling the economic pinch, and you'll want to make your bomb as inexpensively as possible, consonant of course with reasonable yield. The recipe we've given is for a budget-pleasing H-bomb, no frills, no flourishes; it's just a simple 5-megaton bomb, capable of wiping out the New York metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay area, or Boston. But don't forget, your H-bomb will only be as good as the A-bombs in it. If you want to spend a little more money you can punch-up your A-bomb considerably. Instead of centrifuging your uranium by hand, you can buy a commercial centrifuge. (Fisher Scientific sells one for about $1000.) You also might want to be fussier about your design. The Hiroshima bomb, a relatively crude one, only fissioned 1 percent of it's uranium and yielded only 13 kilotons. In order to fission more of the uranium, the force of your explosive 'trigger' needs to be evenly diffused around the sphere; the same pressure has to be exerted on every point of the sphere simultaneously. (It was a technique for producing this sort of simultaneous detonation by fashioning the explosives into lenses that the government accused Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of trying to steal).  Part 2: Putting Your H-Bomb Together The heart of the H-bomb is the fusion process. Several A-bombs are detonated in such a way as to create the extremely high temperature (100 million degrees C) necessary to fuse lithium deuteride (LiD) into helium. When the lithium nucleus slams into the deuterium nucleus, two helium nuclei are created, and if this happens to enough deuterium nuclei rapidly enough, the result is an enormous amount of energy: the energy of the H-bomb. You don't have to worry about stealing lithium deuteride, it can be purchased from any chemical-supply house. It costs $1000 a pound. If your budget won't allow it you can substitute lithium hydride at $40 a pound. You will need at least 100 pounds. It's a corrosive and toxic powder so be careful. Place the lithium deuteride or hydride in glass jars and surround it with four A-bombs in their casings. Attach them to the same detonator so that they will go off simultaneously. The container for the whole thing is no problem. They can be placed anywhere: Inside an old stereo console, a discarded refrigerator, etc... When the detonator sets off the four A-bombs all eight hemispheres of fissionable material will slam into each other at the same time creating four critical masses and four detonations. This will raise the temperature of the lithium deuteride to 100 million degrees C fast enough (a few billionths of a second) so that the lithium will not be blown all over the neighborhood before the nuclei have time to fuse. The result, at least 1000 times the punch of the puny A-bomb that leveled Hiroshima (20 million tons of TNT vs. 20 thousand tons.)  Part 3: What to do With Your Bomb Now that you have a fully assembled H-bomb housed in an attractive console of your choice you may be wondering, 'What should I do with it?' Every family will have to answer this question according to its own tastes and preferences, but you may want to explore some possibilities which have been successfully pioneered by the American government. 1. Sell Your Bomb and Make a Pile of Money In these days of rising inflation, increasing unemployment, and an uncertain economic outlook, few businesses make as much sense as weapons production. If your career forecast is cloudy, bomb sales may be the only sure way to avoid the humiliation of receiving welfare, or unemployment. Regardless of your present income level, a home H-bomb business can be an invaluable income supplement, and certainly a profitable alternative to selling Tupperware or pirated Girl Scout cookies. Unfortunately for the family bomb business, big government has already cornered a large part of the world market. But this does not mean that there is a shortage of potential customers. The raid on Entebee was the Waterloo of hijacking, and many nationalist groups are now on the alert for new means to get their message across. They'd jump at the chance to get hold of an H-bomb. Emerging nations which can't ante up enough rice or sugar to buy themselves a reactor from G.E. or Westinghouse are also shopping around. You may wonder about the ethics of selling to nations, or groups, whose goals you may disapprove of. But here again, take a tip from our government: forget ideology -- it's cash that counts. And remember, H-bomb sales have a way of escalating, almost like a chain reaction. Suppose you make a sale to South Yemen which you believe to be a Soviet puppet. Well within a few days some discrete inquiries from North Yemen and possibly the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians as well can be expected. Similarly, a sale to the IRA will generate a sale to the Ulster government; and a sale to the Tanzanians will bring the Ugandans running, and so forth. It doesn't matter WHICH side you're on, only how many sides there are. Don't forget about the possibility of repeat sales to the same customer. As the experience of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. has shown, each individual nation has a potentially infinite need for H-bombs. No customer -- no matter how small -- can ever have too many. 2. Use Your Bomb at Home Many families are attracted to the H-bomb simply as a 'deterrent.' A discrete sticker on the door or on the living room window saying 'This Home Protected by H-bomb' will discourage IRS investigators, census takers, and Jehovah's Witnesses. You'll be surprised how fast the crime rate will go down and property values will go up. And once the news gets out that you are a home H-bomb owner you'll find that you have unexpected leverage in neighborhood disputes over everything from parking places and stereo noise levels to school tax rates. So relax and enjoy the pride and excitement of home H-bomb ownership!  Is It For You? Let's be honest. The H-bomb isn't for everyone. Frankly there are people who can't handle it. They break out in hives at the very mention of mega-death, fallout, or radiation sickness. The following quiz will help you find out whether you have what it takes for home H-bomb ownership. If you can answer 'yes' to six or more of these questions, then you're emotionally eligible to join the nuclear club. If not, a more conventional weapon may be more your cup of tea, try botulism-toxin, laser rays, or nerve gas. 1. I ignore the demands of others. 2. I subscribe to one or more of the following: Soldier of Fortune, Hustler, Popular Mechanics, Self. 3. Though I have many interesting acquaintances, I am my own best friend. 4. I know what to say after you say 'Hello,' but I am seldom interested in pursuing the conversation. 5. I have seen the movie 'The Deer Hunter' more than once. 6. I know that everyone can be a winner if they want to, and I resent whiners. 7. I own one or more of the following: handgun, video game, trash compactor, snowmobile. 8. I am convinced that leukemia is psychosomatic. 9. I am aware that most vegetarians are sexually impotent. 10. I have read evidence that solar energy is a Communist conspiracy.  Myths About Nuclear War Ever since the first mushroom cloud over Hiroshima ushered in the atomic age, a small group of nay-sayers and doom-mongers has lobbied, campaigned and demonstrated to convince Americans that H-bomb ownership, along with nuclear power, is dangerous and unhealthy. Using their virtual stranglehold over the media, these people have tried to discredit everything nuclear from energy to war. They have vastly overrated the risks of nuclear bombs and left many Americans feeling demoralized and indecisive; not sure where the truth lies. Well, here are the myths, and here are the facts. Myth: After a nuclear exchange the earth will no longer be suitable for human habitation. Fact: This is completely false. According to one scientist (quoted in John McPee's The Curve of Binding Energy) 'The largest bomb that has ever been exploded anywhere was 60 megatons, and that is one-thousandth the force of an earthquake, one-thousandth the force of a hurricane. We have lived with earthquakes and hurricanes for a long time.' Another scientist adds, 'It is often assumed that a full blown nuclear war would be the end of life on earth. That is far from the truth. To end life on earth would take at least a thousand times the total yield of all the nuclear explosives existing in the world, and probably a lot more.' Even if humans succumbed, many forms of life would survive a nuclear free-for-all, cockroaches, certain forms of bacteria, and lichens, for instance. Myth: Radiation is bad for you. Fact: Everything is bad for you if you have too much of it. If you eat too many bananas you'll get a stomach-ache. If you get too much sun you can get sunburned (or even skin cancer). Same thing with radiation. Too much may make you feel under the weather, but nuclear industry officials insist that there is no evidence that low-level radiation has any really serious adverse effects. And, high-level radiation may bring unexpected benefits. It speeds up evolution by weeding out unwanted genetic types and creating new ones. (Remember the old saying, 'Two heads are better than one.') Nearer to home, it's plain that radiation will get rid of pesky crab grass and weeds, and teenagers will find that brief exposure to a nuclear burst vaporizes acne and other skin blemishes. (Many survivors of the Hiroshima bomb found that they were free from skin and it's attendant problems forever.) We hope this clears up any misconceptions you may have had. Enjoy your H-Bomb!
testing!!!  testing!!!
Thanks to Yahoo!'s Toolbar I can now 'capture' the URLs of popups...which means now I can show you some cool links to Korean Pop (K-Pop) audio and video without the need to relate instructions like: 'go to the site, click on the pop-audio button then choose...'.  So, without further ado here is the link to 24-hour K-Pop  urlLink audio  and the  urlLink video  streaming.  Enjoy.
I had an interesting conversation with my Dad this morning.  We were talking about where Koreans put their money.  Invariably, they have a lot of real estate and cash.  (Cash would include short term investments under one year as well as savings accounts.)  The reason?  Real estate makes money here.  A lot of money.  I've seen surveys of Seoul real estate rising about 10-15% PER YEAR for long stretches, even after taking into account the 1997 Crisis (referred to as the IMF crisis here, although it was the IMF that bailed Korea out).  Compare that to Korean corporate bonds which fell 90-99% in 1997 and only modestly recovered, and a local stock market (represented by KOSPI, or their version of the Dow Jones Index) that has not gone appreciably above its 1980s high of 1,000 points (it is now about 800 points, see  urlLink link ) and you can see why real estate makes sense here.  But back to the conversation...I noted that here a 'real big' or 'elite' real estate investor has over 6 billion won (about USD 5,000,000, see  urlLink converter ) in properties.  Dad seemed a little flabbergasted.  'What the heck do they need 5 million dollars for?  They don't need that much to retire.'  Maybe so, but there is a lot of risk here too.  Take real estate (or any other South Korean asset) for example: if the North toots their horn louder or make a move on the country that 5,000,000 USD is worth about 5 cents.  Also, all of it is denominated in won which, during the 'IMF Crisis', dropped about 50% vis-a-vis the USD. Also, if you make a bad investment or some fall victim to a scam--the latest here was the  urlLink Good Morning City  project--you're toast.  I saw a lady on TV who lost everything in it.  Her comment (between the tears): 'Now I know what it's like to go from a rich person to a beggar in one day.'  If you have one of those, some saber-rattling from North Korea and a weak exchange rate your little nest egg could be almost wiped out.  The government has almost zero help for unemployed, disabled or otherwise disenfranchised workers.  The role of family is more important here...so if you have money you should help your family, and if you don't then you should go to them first.  Thus the idea that more is more.  Koreans go all out in most things they do, and investing is no different.  Why have one apartment when you can have 7?  The  urlLink jeonse  system supports this as well.  You see, if you have a 400,000 USD apartment and you rent it out there are two systems you can use in Korea (neither of which are the Western ones, except in rare circumstances).  1.  Renter signs a 2-year contract and deposits about half the market value (200,000 USD) with the owner.  No monthly rent is paid, but the owner can invest in Korean Treasury Bills for about 4-5% per year.  That's a monthly rent/return of $750.  At the end of the term the 200,000 USD is returned to the renter.  2.  Renter signs a 1-year or 2-year contract and deposits about 10%-20% of the market value of the property (10,000-20,000 USD) plus some monthly rent of $400-$600 a month.  In both cases, if the value of the property increases or decreases the jeonse will need to be topped-up or partially refunded.  (Of course I'm using USD in this to save my '0' key and to help 'foreigners' reference it better.)  Thus, if you buy a place for $400,000 you can turn around and rent it out and get $200,000 to (if you like) buy another place or whatever.  Since there are very, very few mortgages in Korea (kind of a cash society, although there are home-equity lines of credit) the system here is a bit different.  The key, of course, is that real estate prices keep going up.
Somehow Coca-Cola has a way of summing up things so well.  In the early 1970s they had as their flagship jingle 'I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke' (to the tune of 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing') that pretty much summed up the post-Woodstock era so well.  It didn't add much to sales, but it was a catchy tune.  In Korea Coke's theme is  urlLink Stop Thinking. Feel it.  which pretty much sums up a lot about Korea and Koreans.  (Look at how relaxed that couple is, now that they stopped thinking and started feeling.) Of course they have a high regard for education and math and logic and such, but deep down I think many Koreans really like to work on emotion more than anything else.  Westerners seem to sublimate this moreso, or at least display it in a different way.  Maybe scratch all that...Westerners and Koreans are probably pretty similar, but the context in which we do it is different.  Anyways, if you think you're losing it in Korea just repeat to yourself 'Stop thinking, feel it. Stop thinking, feel it. Stop thinking, feel it.' and everything will be alright.
If anything, Korea is a country of extremes.  Everything here seems fad-based.  I think it may come from Korea's history.  It has been invaded a reported 700 times over the years, and each time they got independence I imagine they had to move quickly to get to the next level before the next war or occupation.  Lately (well, not really lately...in 1945) the Japanese Occupation ended.  Then the Korean War occurred from 1950-3.  After that there was turmoil, but in 1961 Park Chung Hee took over as dictator/president.  He had elections, in which everyone was 'encouraged' to vote, but he was still a dictator.  After his assassination in 1979 the next few leaders were basically of the same ilk.  President Park did some amazing things in his time, however.  He took an incredibly backward country and set it on the road to industrialization. Japan had stripped Korea of its resources, people and even its language and culture (many buildings and palaces were razed and Japanese was the official language here from 1910-1945) but President Park was determined to change that.  He orchestrated the 'Han River Miracle' (the Han River, or Hangang 한강 is the main river in Seoul/Korea) and Korea made terrific strides, if at the expense of some civil liberties.  Fastforward to the present, and my point, and we see that Korea is the world's #1 wired nation.  More than Canada, Finland and way beyond the U.S.A.  There was a craze to have PC방s (PC bangs or rooms) EVERYWHERE in the country.  As well, instead of PlayStation-like games where players go against the computer or one or two people, Korean gamers (always the communal types) play online games with hundreds or thousands of others. in typical Korean fashion, gamers who left their seat for a second could not pause their game...in fact, they may be eliminated.  So PCbang owners sold drinks, ramen nooodles and other junk to their clientele.  It was just a matter of time before someone died, as related in  urlLink this article .  Yes, someone died from being on the PC.  People thought he was just sleeping (imagine how long he was there before they really checked him out) but, alas, he was the first known casulty of the Net in Korea, maybe the world.  Korea, built on extremes, both good and bad.
Take a read of this news article from urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  about North Korea's opinion on the scaling down of troops in Seoul and Korea (specifically, 3,600 troops are heading to Iraq and by the end of 2005 the current total of 37,000 should drop to about 24,500).   North blasts U.S. troop cuts  North Korea again blasted the United States yesterday for what it calls 'an increase of U.S. defense capabilities' after the planned relocation of 3,600 U.S. troops in South Korea to Iraq. Pyeongyang's state-run television network said the plans were preparations for a second Korean war.  'Even though part of the U.S. ground forces will be transferred to Iraq, instead of causing a capability vacuum, U.S. President Bush is augmenting his war policy against the North,' the broadcast complained.  'The U.S. security commitment [to South Korea] is a commitment for preemptive war against us,' the current affairs commentary said.     Ok, let me get this straight...moving troops OUT of South Korea and, further, OUT of the area closest to North Korea (the DMZ, or DeMilitarized Zone) is somehow INCREASING the U.S. defense capabilities in South Korea???  Well, I've read a lot of North Korean propaganda (such as at  urlLink DPRK.com , check out the DPRK News section) but this one is pretty unreal.  And with that I'd like to remind everyone that those in the DPRK (I should tell you that means Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea) are probably very good people, it's just the leadership that seems to be making all the waves (I could be wrong, but I'm not going to go up there and find out).  The Korean War from 1950-3 was a brutal event that severed many families...some of whom are now lucky enough to see their aged relatives again (remember, it's been 50+ years) in special reunion projects (albeit only for a few hours before everyone is whisked off to their respective countries).  Many, however have or will pass on without ever seeing a sister, brother, child, parent or boy/girlfriend again.  We in the West, especially Canada where we've never had a war on our own soil except the War of 1812, could never fully comprehend such things.  It really makes your wonder how far one would go to support ideology...I guess we have an idea now.
I surf the English news sites a lot looking for tidbits on Korea and how foreigners (like me) view the 'Hermit Kingdom' but also as a way to keep up with this fast-moving place.  Sometimes, though, one needs to check the veracity of the figures put in the papers...especially the local ones.  Here are two examples of how the English version of the Korea Times and that of the JoongAng Ilbo (Daily).  The first is pretty straightforward.   urlLink Korea Times  said that 249 people were arrested for forging Korean passports, but  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  says just 114 were accused.  Huh?  Another one:  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo  said that S&P is positive on Korean banks (a good thing), while the  urlLink Korea Times  said that S&P was a tad worried about the bad loans that banks extended to small and medium-sized firms.  I have no idea why the simple facts seem to be presented so differently...it can't simply be translation, can it?
Ah, the Korean language...it looks so difficult at first, then as you figure out how to read Hanguel (Korea's surprisingly easy-to-learn alphabet of 24 characters) it seems so easy. Then the vocabulary starts. Oh no. Then the backwards (to us) sentence structure.  Yikes!  Luckily there are many options for us slow-witted foreigners to take on the language.  Of course I could list them here but  urlLink this JoongAng article  says a lot and there are more resources  urlLink here .    Well, if you're a guy here is some motivation for you: Jeon Ji Hyun (전지현), the latest 20-something (24, actually) star of movies and CFs (I hear this means Commercial Feature, but not positive).  I saw her latest movie on Sunday night.  It's hard to describe the name...the English version is 'Windstruck' but the Korean version is 여친소 (yeochinso) which is short for 내여자친구를소개합니다 (ne yeojachingu rul sogayhamnida) or 'I'd like to introduce you to my girlfriend'.  Surprisingly, both titles make sense.  If you like, there is a website (Korean and English, looks quite good, actually)  urlLink here .  The movie is shown in theatres with subtitles at special times, that info is  urlLink here . For a list of many of the theatres in Seoul click....  urlLink here!    urlLink    Here is a great reason to learn Korean...if I wasn't already married, that is.  I went with a few foreigners as well as a local/Korean/National...of course the Korean HAD to take a picture...so I HAVE to put it up here.   urlLink    Here we are after the movie...and before the hof/bar.     Update:  A bud of mine passed  urlLink this link  on to me. It's 전지현 in a Giordano ad. Apparently it was NOT aired in Korea (nothing XXX about it, it's all about sensibilities of some sort).
If you click on my profile you'll make a not-so-startling discovery...I was born in Year of the Pig, as they say in the Korean/Chinese calendar.  But blogger.com figured it would be more appropriate to call it Year of the Boar/bore...thanks guys.  Anyways, you may be wondering how a fat, lazy, smelly Canadian guy born in a little town waaaaaay up north finds himself in a place like Seoul...and Yeouido, no less, where only a handful of foreigners visit, let alone live and work.  The culprit is my wife.  She is Korean, as you may know, and when I was doing financial consulting in Canada we came across an interesting client.  He found us through his wife's (see a pattern here?  Korean women rule the men) reading my column in the Vancouver Chosun (Chosun is the name of the last dynasty to rule Korea--it was ended by the 1910-1945 Japanese occupation) which you'll find  urlLink here . It's all in Korean, my email and webpage have changed, though.  Anyways, this client is a big guy here in Seoul as well as in Canada and wanted (for some reason) to do something for us...so the next time he went to Seoul we went as well (with our first son, second one wasn't around yet).  When we arrived in Seoul for our 2-3 week visit we met his 'godfathers' as he called them.  He wasn't mixed up in anything, he just liked the sound of being untouchable.  From there we met another guy then another guy and then, the next day, my current CEO.  We had what economists call a 'coincidence of wants'.  He wanted a foreigner with training and experience in securities and alternative assets and I wanted a guy with the connections to get things done in Seoul.  After a week or so of meeting for dinner and such (his English was pretty good and is better now, but my wife did a lot of translation in the first part) he said: 'Don't go back to Canada, stay here and work with me.'  Not work for me...with me.  That was interesting.  I knew he had a more enlightened view than most Korean bosses right then and there.  So here I am.  It's not perfect, I can't speak a lot of the language and sometimes I almost go nuts here what with the differences in culture and business, but it's not bad at all.  I also go home every 2 months or so (my wife had baby #2 in Canada and is still there for a bit longer) which means lots of time in airplanes.  I always fly  urlLink Singapore Air  but even then, the prospect of being in the air for 100 hours a year is not all that appealing (ya, that's over 4 DAYS flying, over 1% of the year).  I do, however, watch about 20-25 movies a year on the plane, which is cool because Singapore Air has individual monitors with on-demand TV and movies for ALL passengers.
Last night was pretty fun...mostly because of the company I kept.  I recently met a couple of finance-types here in Yeouido (which isn't too hard to do, as it's referred to as Korea's Wall Street) who spoke pretty good English (which is a rarity here not only in Yeouido but everywhere in Korea).  They had studied outside Korea and deal with international business...but still my brutal Canadian accent made it pretty tough for them to figure out what I was saying sometimes.  There was one time that their accent got in the way, though.  When we went to the restaurant the guy (Junseok, the gal is named Hye-Kyung) asked: 'Do you like deok?'  I wrote it just as I heard it.  I thought he meant dog (they eat that here) so I called his bluff and said, 'Sure, let's go! What kind of dog?' 'Oh no, deok, deok!' 'Ya, dog?' 'No, deok,' he said again. Then I figured out that he meant 'duck' and said, 'Oh, 오리 (oh-ri), duck! Not 개 (gay), dog! Why didn't you just speak Korean?  I know 오리 and 개!'  The food was great, then we went to the obligatory 이차 (ee-cha, thanks Hye-Kyung for the correction) or second round.  Koreans can never just go to one place to eat and drink.  Usually we will wander the streets and go out to three, four or five places. A couple of weeks ago in Hongdae (university bar district here) we went to 4 places: the 산낙지 (san-nak-ji, living octopus) restaurant, Old Rock (cool bar), a 노래방 (noraebang, Korean word for karaoke) and finally clubnb (or noise basement) until the wee hours of the morning.  (Personally I prefer the Kangnam version of clubnb, but since we were in Hongdae we went to that one.)  The coolest thing here about bar-hopping/pub-crawling is there is almost never a lineup and very rarely a cover (just in the clubs, never in bars).  I think this is because people are always moving.  In Canada if you get in a bar you never, never leave until you go home...which means those who want to get in have to lineup.  Also, if a Korean is asked to wait (for anything, especially after a few drinks) they will just balk and leave...and no bar-owner would like that.  Maybe that's why Koreans in general are moving around more and Canadians are so sedate (relatively...if you've lived in both places you know what I mean).   Update:  looks like everyone wants to be on my blog...for some reason.  Here are the pics of my gracious hosts of the evening.   urlLink    Junseok, who works in International Business and has an MBA...he's trying to come up with a fitting Western name for himself, if you have one to suggest just leave a comment, please.   urlLink    Hae-Kyung, who works with him.  She too has an MBA (and from my wife's alma mater of Ewha Women's University, no less).  Hae-Kyung is really good at English and is quite bright...and single (men, take note). She thinks her face looks like the moon, or 달덩이 (Daldeong-ee) as they say here, I guess so...
There is so much that is different here from anything I've ever seen (well, I haven't travelled that much, just in Canada, the US, Philippines and Japan).  And I mean totally different.  Maybe it's because I've been here long enough to see a lot, I dunno.  Anyways, if you'd like more on this place take a look at my  urlLink Virtual Tourist pages .
urlLink    Here it is, the superfantastic phonebox!  Today is a great day.  Our lovely officegirl Jung Mi (please no letters, that's what secretaries are called here) went to LG Twins building and got me a new phone.  I really needed one on account of (i) my old one was all in Korean...which was fine because I memorized where to go to do things on it...and (ii) the screen kept going blank because I produce copious amounts of sweat when I inline skate and was dumb enough to be on the phone at the same time.  Well, after 4 screens at 60,000 won a pop I decided it's time to get a new one...but I may end up breaking this one too.  It's soooooo cooooool.  It has a little camera which I used to take a picture of the box (of course it took me a while to figure out that I couldn't use it to take a pic of the actual phone).  I also took a pic of our lovely officegirl...and then inputted her name and number as well...then ordered up caller ID (something I didn't have before, much to my chagrin).  Then I asked her to call me to test it out.  Her mug showed up on the little screen on the outside of the phone (how cool is that?!?!) and she immediately started panicking and saying, 'Change! Change!'  haha, Some Korean girls really hate to have pictures taken of them.  She did, however, insist that I put the pic on this posting...go figure.  This phone really rocks.  I can take pictures, email them or send to other phones, and send and receive normal emails too. Also, it has a language converter so everything is finally in English.  It's tiny, too...like the size of a fat businesscard.   urlLink    Here she is doing the Korean sign for 'take my picture'.   urlLink    Here is a coworker of mine with the same pose.  Why? Why?
One thing I love about Seoul (and I mean this about Korea in general...I just happen to be a little Seoul-centric) is the street sellers.  I don't really trust the food they sell on the side of the road (except ice cream) but virtually everything else is fair game for me.  For example, to get ready for my trip to Canada and generally stock up, in the last two weeks I bought:  2 plants in a can for my nieces (8,000 won) 2 lightweight sports shirts for inlining (10,000 won for both) 1 pair of shorts for inlining (20,000 won) 3 bags of dried 고구마 (goguma, sweet potatoes or yams, they were selling 1 for 3,000 won , 2 for 5,000 but I got 3 for 6,000) 1 tie (at an amazing price of 5,000 won, or USD 4...and I can't really tell how it's worse than the ones I bought for USD 100 back home.) 10 disposible razors (for 1,000 won, or USD 0.80 FOR ALL TEN) 1 noise-making toy hammer for boy #2 (1,000 won) 3 Disney photo albums (but I'm sure ol' Walt didn't make a penny on these....just 1,000 won each)  The clothes-seller guy spoke pretty good English...I know because he held my hostage for 5 minutes as we talked about how Korean men are getting fatter (hence his stock of larger sizes for husky guys like me) and how he learned English working for the US Army about 20-30 years ago.  The goguma-guy didn't know a lot of English, but he did speak Spanish owing to the fact that he lived in Argentina for a few years.  Unfortunately, Spanish is not one of my languages...I know a fair bit of French from my school-days, a smattering Japanese and, of course, some Korean. Anyways, when I passed the goguma-guy later in the week I gave him a big 'hola!' (Spanish for hello, and the extent of my proficiency) and he returned one as well...wow, bridging the cultures with another one...how UN of me.  Below is a picture of the famous Yeouido tie-truck.  This guy stops in the hotspots and unloads silk and polyester ties on neckwear-hungry salarymen.   urlLink    Here they are: 2 for 5,000 won (USD 4.50)!
urlLink    Wonderful oh-gyup-sal at my favorite pork restaurant.  It's official, pork has now outstripped beef as the top meat import to Korea.  (See  urlLink JoongAng Ilbo link ) and no wonder...what with Mad Cow Disease and Avian Flu virus going around.  The only thing that seems 'safe' is pork.  Of course, as you may know, oh-gyup-sal literally means 5 layers of fat...so maybe it's not super healthy.  Well, I wasn't that bad, I did do 2 hours of inline skating (as they call it here...rollerblading seems to have a tough time rolling off the Korean tongue) beforehand...but the 오겹살 was drowned by a lovely concoction called 오십세주 (oh-ship-say-joo) which is a 50/50 mix of 백세주 (baek-say-ju, literally: hundred year alcohol) and 소주 (soju, literally: booze) thus the translation of the combined drink is called 50 year alcohol.  Intersting, eh?
Here is the latest from the Korean rumor mill (it made it all the way to Coquitlam, and my wife's ears).  It seems The Grand Hyatt Hotel's (in Itaewon)  urlLink J.J. Mahoney's  has a reputation for beautiful Korean ladies using it as a place to pick up foreign (likely white) men...even married ones.  So, if you're single and looking for a good time check out J.J.'s (just bring a lot of dough, the prices are about two times that of most other Western bars).  If you're married...well, that's up to you (you should know that some of the gals on the prowl there are 'ladies for sale' there was well, and the prices are reportedly quite high).  If your man is in Seoul and reading this (or otherwise knows the score) better get a polygraph...from what I saw some of those gals are pretty good looking (not that I was looking, of course).  Well, that's it for tonight.  I gotta take the boy to school tomorrow at like 9AM (which is early for my vacation-time now).
Well, I stand corrected, again.  Yesterday I blogged that Coquitlam was an oasis of Whiteness in the sea of Asians that is Vancouver, but oh how I was wrong.  We went to the, aptly named, Coquitlam Mall today and put Spencer in the play area with a few other kids.  I heard a lady speaking Korean to her boy, then a flock (well, three) ajumas (older Korean ladies) came and sat near us.  Later, when we went to the pool, we saw that the neighbors right next to us and across the street are Koreans too.  Then on the way back I learned that another two sets of neighbors are Korean as well.  They're everywhere!  It's actually pretty cool.  One thing about Koreans is they have a pretty good sense of community.  Get a group of white people (who aren't farmers) together and we seem to be pretty stand-offish...or at least it takes a while to warm up.  Koreans, as you may know,  urlLink refer to each other as sister or brother  as soon as 3 minutes of meeting one another (as I have seen).  This is, I think, quite extraordinary.  From first meetings with my son my wife called the girls in the area 'nuna' or 'older sister, as said by a  younger brother' (they have a special word for every family member).  Also, since Koreans don't normally take to English all that well (or quickly) they really, really appreciate speaking with someone from home.  Thus, the community here is quite tight.  So I've still got jetlag...although it's pretty nice not to have to work through it.  The boys tend to keep me moving all day, though.  Usually I sleep at 3AM or 4AM then get up at 11AM, but it's not a good  urlLink REM  sleep.  My best sleep seems to be 1-2 hour naps at 3PM or 7PM.  When I wake up from those it's really like getting up in the morning; and getting up in the morning is like waking up at midnight.  My father-in-law thinks I should just adjust 100% in like 2 days, but I'm not sure if I'm built that way.  If I need to I can do it, but it's like I'm on vacation here.  Besides, I do my work at night anyways, when the kids are asleep (and Seoul is awake).  I guess that's it for now.  Nothing more profound than this from the day, which is a little sad.  I love it here: so clean, peaceful and easy to live; but I kinda miss Seoul too: so dirty, loud and easy to get run down by  urlLink deliveryboys on motorcycles .
So I've been in Vancouver a few days now...in Coquitlam, actually.  It's really an interesting place; I used to think it was full of Chinese people (not that there's anything wrong with that, but Vancouver's #1 mother tongue is Mandarin/Cantonese, so you'd assume there'd be tons here).  Our area is up on a hill in a little bit of paradise, actually.  It has started to remind me of Newport in that show  urlLink The O.C.  (O.C. means Orange County).  Well, it isn't full of million dollar homes (but there are a few) but the topography is similar (hills, lots of parks, but no beach) and it's really, really white here.  I think the only Koreans I've seen have been family and Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager (ya, still have jetlag...watching anything that hits the screen here).  On that note, I think I'm having T.V. overload.  Well, with the kids I don't get to see too much of it, but when I do I'm boggled by the 60+ stations (and that's not even satellite!) and all, save one, of them are in ENGLISH!  Wow!  In Seoul I didn't even bother with cable so all I had was  urlLink AFN  (American Forces Network) (that guy on the homepage is their 6:30 newsanchor...the very reason I like to inline/rollerblade from 6-8PM).  Even if you have cable you only get like 2-3 other 'B' movie stations...nothing to write home about.  Truth be told, though, AFN has a pretty good lineup and I get to learn all about opsec (operational security) and that the U.S. Army in Korea is looking for E-4s and E-5s (enlisted ranks) to be MPs (Military Police).  So if you can handle the G.I. ads AFN is pretty cool.  Anyways, I didn't remember so many ads for weight-loss programs, get-rich-quick schemes and fantastic kitchen products, but there they were.  Of course in Korea most people are pretty fit and they know the best way to get rich is to marry rich or work hard--there are some ads there for kitchen and cleaning product, though, proving that some things truly are universal.  One ad that did throw me, though, was one for a 'male enhancement' pill.  What?!?!?  You take a pill for a bigger willi?  One version even had about 30 allusions to 'wood' throughout it.  I thought it was a spoof...maybe it was...it was on CNBC during  urlLink The Dennis Miller Show .   If anyone knows, please comment.  Ok, back to my time here.  We went down to the clubhouse to have a dip (ya, it's a little swanky...but the pool is outside, so it's not super-swanky) and there were some 18-something gals there sunning themselves and gabbing.  Man, this is NOT Seoul.  For one thing, no one actually tries to get a tan in Korea.  They wear Darth Vader-inspired visors to keep out all the rays they can and everyone is totally covered up.  Even when exercising Korean have pants, long-sleeves,  even suits .  Also, two of the three of them were 'plus size'.  They weighed like 2-3 TIMES that of a typical Korean gal.  (Not that that's a bad thing...it's just differences...please, no flames.)  Then you have to think...if they are 18 aren't they still in school?  By that I mean, they have not graduated from college.  An 18-year old Korean would be in the library or at a DVD bang, at least.  Most likely not at a pool (and I hear they're there everyday for hours on end)...what a different lifestyle.  Even after school is finished they'd be working or looking for a husband, or both.  Let's face it, many Koreans have little time to be idle (I must say, they do take time to drink and go to the sauna, though).  Maybe I'm becoming too Korean now, beating up these gals simply for having a little fun.  All I know is if they did that in Korea people might think they are  urlLink R.S.  (room salon, or places where men pay women to drink with them, sing with them and...uh...do other things) girls.  Maybe that's part of the Korean ideal.  Women should study and work and find a husband and if they are 'wasting' their time everyday then they must be of low moral fiber.  Hmmmm...there could be something to that.  Maybe it's part of the reason why so many Korean gals work their butts off (literally, Korean women are usually devoid of a derriere) and seem to push off their own pleasure in some Calvinist tradition.  Korean men seem to support this as it not only support the Confucius ideals that many Koreans follow but makes their place as symbolic leader of the home that much more solid (whether it is deserved or not, and we know that in many Korean homes a strong wife controls more than she advertises).
Whenever I see a pregnant Korean lady I really feel for her, because I know that within a few months she will have a 3-5 year sentence to complete and utter child-rearing duties.  As with most things Korean, mothers go all out...right from before conception to...well, it never stops.    Today I got a taste of that.  What a day!  My 3-year old (Spencer) woke me up at 9AM (which is early seeing as I still have some jetlag and was up from midnight to 3AM last night).  The younger, Winston, was already up, too.  My wife and I must have fed these kids like 5-7 times during the day, they just never stop!  Spencer and I went to his swimming class.  We get a discount on regular swimming since he's enrolled.  The gal behind the counter asked if he was swimming outside of the class as well...I really had no idea what was happening and said, 'I'm not sure.'  She said, in no uncertain terms, that it meant a lot to her whether he was or not.  I just said, ok, he is, how much?  Let's see $1.30 plus $2.60...$3.90.  You've got to be kidding?! You're bent about chun-on? (1,000 won/$1.15)?  This would not happen in Seoul.  They'd see Spencer and pay HIM to come into there!  Anyways, what I did with him in the pool was pretty much what the 'instructor' did as well...but she had 3 kids to handle.  I thought he'd be doing lengths or strokes, but I guess not yet.  After swimming I got my wife a Starbucks coffee.  She loves the stuff, and apparently can't justify to herself to buy herself one...those selfless Korean women, bless their hearts.  After I came home there was shopping to do.  I volunteered to go (kudos for me and time to think), then I suggested Spencer come too (thought he'd fall asleep in the car, especially after swimming) then thought we might as well all go (the list she gave me was going to take a couple of people to complete).  Well, the kids stayed up the whole time and I started to realize that this parenting thing is a lot harder when the kids are actually in the country with you (I'm usually in Seoul) and it's just you two (her mother and sister were out of town).  Good God, these kids didn't sleep until 11PM!  Someday they'll make great investment bankers, I mused.  To all those out there who are single parents, or even just parents, get yourself a Starbucks...you may not be able to drink it before it gets cold, but at least you have a piece of luxury in your hand for a few seconds.
My wife posed a strange question to me tonight.  Apparently this is the new fad in Korea...men are asked 'if your wife and your mother are drowning (neither can swim) and you have time to save just one of them who would you choose?'.  Many men say, 'my mother, because I can always remarry...but I can never replace my mom.'  Ok, true enough, but usually its the wives who ask this and one fellow I know said, in front of a throng of relatives (including his wife) that he'd save his mom.  The wife was not impressed.  Let's look at this on a more cultural level for a moment.  Much of Korean tradition is based on Confucius' teachings; where younger take care of elder, women take care of men and duty to family is first.  Parents sacrifice a lot for their kids to get them the best education, lifestyle and necessities; children, in turn, are expected to do the same when they have the means.  Thus, a man should choose to save his mother, who did everything for him (and perhaps still does) rather than his wife who is a bit of a late-comer.  The reason for all of this ultimatum questioning comes from family conflict.  A husband's mother often endures a lot from her husband, children, society and her own mother-in-law and, not one to stop the cycle, she will often unleash her frustration on the unsuspecting wife.  She comes to pry into, advise upon and attempt to control many parts of the couple's lives under the guise of helping her dear son.  With divorce becoming more accepted and this has broken up more than a few marriages lately; and now people are getting a little pre-emptive, perhaps, in asking the husband to make a choice in order to ascertain his convictions.  So, men, if you get this question posed to you first think of who is asking it (probably your wife) take a look around the room to find out who is listening and then give the best answer you can.  Just remember, you likely sleep with your wife every night, not your mother.
As readers will know, my favorite airline is Singapore Air (SAI).  They have those personal monitors for everyone with on-demand movies, TV shows and games..and some lovely-looking stewardesses, of course.  Another thing going for them is their empathy with their passengers.  I've twice been bumped up to business class (with it's better meals and basically flat sleeper beds...what an experience that is).  Once because the travel agent made a mistake and SAI decided they'd make my life a bit easier (hint: if you take the same flight 5-10 times they get to know you, too) and another time my flight was overbooked so I too business to San Francisco and got another one to Vancouver (both covered by SAI) as well as 500 Sing$ (300 USD, 350,000 won) which made for a 40% discount from my ticket price.  Anyways, this time I was in line for about 30 minutes (maybe it was longer) and a few times I squatted to relieve my legs a bit.  The gal at the counter apologized and put 2 'Solitaire' tags on my bags (will upload pic when I get back to Seoul so you can put your color printer to good use and make a few of your own) that basically put them on par with business class for unloading.  Nice.  The meals on the flight were good, there were lots of good movies and, as usual, they gave me one of those sleeper masks when I asked for it (in business it's automatic, but if you ask in economy you'll get one).  Upon arrival in Vancouver I saw a rare sight, the customs area was packed!  A cruise was in port and normal flights all bunched up to.  Not to worry, though, as just as I approached the line they opened another area of inspectors...and in about 10 minutes I was picking up my bags.  To top it off my cabbie spoke English (something that eluded me in Seoul and Vancouver much of the time) and we had a pretty cool conversation about life, marriage and cultures.  (He too believes that once you stop looking for a spouse you'll meet them...a little wisdom for you single-but-lookings out there.)  My phone can take pictures here but needs a special chip to connect.  I forgot its charger and extra battery, and already ran down the old one...so that's the only blotch on this trip so far; which ain't too bad.  I've decided to start to teach him my limited French...which should keep him on his toes.  He's already got some of the accent down when he speaks baby-talk.
When I was in Seoul these last few months I thought my wife had it kinda easy here with 'just' our 2 kids to take care of.  Now I know that this parenting thing is pretty tough.  The worst thing is they 'tag team' us.  For example, one stays up til 3:30AM, the other wakes up at 7AM.  One has a nap, and the other gets hungry.  And my wife isn't into lots of crap food for them, too...so she is constantly cooking and preparing wonderful delicacies like 'rice brocolli cheese tofu cakes' and 'seaweed and beef soup'--sounds great, eh?!  Well, the kids like it and I guess it's good for them.  When I go back to Seoul I know I'll miss these days (and nights) and start my old routine of 6PM rollerblading and going out to the bars on the weekends (maybe even during the week a bit, as my  urlLink CFA  test is finished for a few months).  I know the days will be a little less full without my 3-year old jumping (from the couch) onto my stomache/back/gonads...ah, how can I survive?  We will have the webcam and daily phonecalls to make things a bit easier, but it won't be the same.  Ug, so tired now...it's past 11PM and I know tomorrow will be busy...and the next day too.  My bud of almost 25 years is coming to visit and I'll make the trip to the ferry terminal to pick him up and the new place is now inconveniently 60 minutes from the docks compared to 30 minutes for our old place.  No matter, I imagine I'll relish the time alone on a simple car trip.
You may have noticed a new feature on my blog...it's a blog email notification thingy ( urlLink Blogarithm ).  All you need to do is put your email in the space and 'Keep it Fresh' and you'll get an email every time I update this blog.  I use this on blogs that I normally read (once I get better at code I'll actually have them posted on this page too) and find it pretty handy.  The last few days have been pretty hectic.  Basically in the pool (our complex's or the public one) everyday and running around with the kids and not getting a lot of sleep.  My wife and I take turns (one was up til 3AM last night, the other awoke at 7AM)...man, getting back to Seoul and my bachelor pad will be like a vacation--no matter how much work I have at the office.  There they go again...gotta go.
Korea, especially Seoul, is pretty cool; and Canada, especially Vancouver is pretty cool too.  Here are a few things I will (and will not) miss:  Things to miss about Korea: being a celebrity (well, a little one, at least...just for being me); 100 kinds of ice cream at the local convenience store (and all for 500 won/USD 0.40); 7 24-hour convenience stores within a block or two of my place;  urlLink inlining/rollerblading along the Han River ; bars with no line-ups; bar-hopping to at least 2-4 places in a night; Korean people; not worrying about water on the floor of my  urlLink fully tiled bathroom ; super-efficient  urlLink subways ; super-cheap  urlLink cabs  where the subways leave off;  urlLink no taxes ,  urlLink no tipping ; great food, and seconds for free;  urlLink alcohol  available at any store; eating  urlLink live octopus  (I mean live as in swimming around in a bowl/on a plate on the table); getting free fruit and/or tea and/or coffee and/or sugary drinks after every meal.  Things to miss about Canada:  urlLink no pollution  (or not noticeable, at least); good mixed drinks (like Dr. Pepper and Long Island iced teas, although that's changing in Seoul now); our complex's pool just 5 minutes away (and it's usually just us or a few people there);  urlLink burgers that are not served raw   (hellloooooo! heard of e-coli?).  Things not to miss about Seoul: drunk guys pissing in the streets at night (well, I am one of them sometimes); people always thinking I'm crazy for not liking tofu; paying like $10 for enough ground beef for 2 hamburgers; having to go to the foreign food section to get my M&Ms.  Things not to miss about Canada: line-ups and cover charge at almost every good bar; larger Canadian chicks (hey, no flamings, please); union leaders who think someone should make $20 an hour to pick up trash when Korean 60-year-old men do it in Seoul for like $100 a month; Vancouver rain in the winter...and spring...and fall...and summer; high (14.5%!) sales  urlLink tax ; tips treated as if they are expected (no matter the service); having to go to the foreign food section to get my ramen noodles.
It seems everything is not all that smooth in Seoul concerning the recent changes.  This makes sense because, as Koreans would, they decided not only to change the payment system but also all of the bus color-schemes, routes numbers and routes and even the structure of the roads in some areas of the city (see pic below of a fast lane for buses in one of the worst traffic areas of the city).  More in  urlLink this Korea Times article .   urlLink    Life in the fast lane.
This may be a long blog...got a lot of thoughts going through my head this last couple of days, not least because of my reading  urlLink A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market --a very cool book and one that I wish I read before embarking on the  urlLink CFA  designation exams (wrote 2 of the 3 required exams already).  Anyhoo, went out for some drinks last night (yes, Thursday night, a school night, but I really wanted to break this jetlag and I find that going out is one of the most effective, and most fun, ways to do so) at a little place called Han's Sausages near Hong-Ik University (usually referred to as HongDae).  So upon ordering the bratwurst and beer I noticed something interesting, the beer came in a special pitcher that has dry ice in a compartment in the bottom of it and passages that allow the vapor to flow to the top and escape.  Pretty cool idea, and I had seen it before in another bar in Sinchon (another teen/bar district near HongDae).  While out on the town I started to think, 'What are the odds that I know someone here in this bar or meet them on the street?'  Likely pretty low, but then I remembered the last night I came here and got a call from an old co-worker who was basically 2 blocks from me and had just had 산낙지 (san-nak-ji, living octopus) in a little place that we almost went to (now that was interesting).  Then I remembered that a friend of mine's former girlfriend is in Korea--not Seoul, in Pusan. But her sister-in-law's friend is engaged to a Korean girl in Daegu who often comes to Seoul (HongDae/Sinchon specifically) to see friends.  So, what if one of the thousands of people I saw were one of those friends?  How many  urlLink degrees of separation   is that?  Two to the Pusan friend (or one, if you count that I know her now), plus three to the groom-to-be (or two as the Pusan friend already knows her sister-in-law) and two more to the friend(s) in Seoul.  So that's 4 to 7 degrees, not bad.  I could also suppose that the people on the street know my wife or one of her friends (as she went to school there) but we are older than these kids and it's not quite as interesting a story as going to Vancouver then Daegu then back to Seoul.  Another area: yesterday I met some guys from an asset management firm here (for business).  One spoke quite good English, and when he found out I was from Vancouver he noted that his brother-in-law is living here.  As well, the owner of the  urlLink 삼계탕  (samgyetang, ginseng chicken soup) place across from my apartment has a home in a suburb of Vancouver. What are the odds of that?  Now let's deconstruct this a bit, and take a bit from my current reading (and suspend for a bit the idea that I have incredible selective memory and am merely drawing connections from random events).  On the beer: both restaurants were in the same relative are (more or less) and it makes sense that a seller of those dry-ice pitchers would service both of them.  For the people on the street: the university district is full of school kids, school kids are not (usually, especially in Korea) destitute poor and they are (by definition) educated (or nearso) and it is the well-to-do and educated that end up going to foreign countries and meet/marry foreigners (there are exceptions, just humor me for a bit).  Thus, it makes some sense that I (who knows many educated people in Korea and Canada, as I am one myself) would have an ok chance to have some connection with similar people in another country, no matter the whereabouts.  (This reminds me of when I spent a month in the Philippines with my bud Carlo who met a friend there who ended up being his distant relative. Especially in places where the economic/social strata is well-defined the 'top 1%' seem to flock together.)  Concerning the people who have ties in Vancouver.  Proximity is one factor, and wealth is another.  Vancouver is the closest airport to Seoul (one hour longer to go to San Francisco) and it also has an inviting climate and seems to attract the wealthy from many countries (including the U.S.).  So it makes sense that these, again, well-to-do and educated people would have some connection to my other home.  What's my point and how does it lead to a better understanding of Korean culture?  It's this: When you meet a Korean (or when they are  urlLink on their first dates ) they will always ask questions to  urlLink figure out if they have some connection  such as  urlLink age  and ethnicity or school ties or anysuch thing that could prove a connection.  For foreigners this kind of questioning is sometimes seen as rude, but this is just a part of Korea: you get used to it.  This is one reason that Koreans study their butts off to go to the best/largest schools such as  urlLink Seoul National University ,  urlLink Korea University ,  urlLink Ewha Women's University  and  urlLink Yonsei University  and then put themselves through incredible stress to get into major companies such as  urlLink Samsung Group .  It's because after all that study and hard work one will have instant camaraderie with fellow alumni and, thus, be able to move to Vancouver when they retire and not have to work selling dry-ice beer pitchers to every bar in Korea.
I've always thought of Seoul's  urlLink subways  as a real joy to be on. They are clean, fast, efficient(more or less) and CHEAP.  Buses, on the other hand, are a bit of a mystery to me.  I take one bus regularly, but that's it.   urlLink taxis , however, are plentiful, cheap and (once you know a little Korean) pretty easy to use.  Now things are getting a lot easier and logical.  As of today (July 1st) rates will be based on distance traveled rather than number of rides.  This makes sense as it always irked me when you had to pay again to transfer from one bus to another or from the bus to subway (this doesn't happen in Vancouver).  The new system just has you pay for the length of each little trip.  As well, my phone will be able to house my T-Money so I don't need to carry change or fish around for my wallet or 'stored-value' ticket.  (It can even be used in convenience stores and cabs soon! And carry up to 500,000 won, or about 435USD)There's also a color-coding scheme to the buses which may or may not make things easier.  Unless they have little maps on the buses I think most foreigners will find the new system about a confusing as the old, but a lot of that has to do with the language and familiarity with a city/district that covers many, many square kms.  Check out articles on all this stuff  urlLink here ,  urlLink here  and  urlLink here .
Big cities are famous for being expensive places to live, some more than others, of course.  Here is the latest (2004,  urlLink source ) list of priciest cities to live in (sorry not sure how to format a table):                             1  Tokyo, Japan                         2  London, UK                           3  Moscow, Russia    4  Osaka, Japan    5  Hong Kong    6  Geneva, Switzerland      7  Seoul, South Korea      8  Copenhagen, Denmark    9  Zürich, Switzerland   10  St. Petersburg, Russia   11  Beijing, China   12  New York City, USA   13  Milan, Italy   14  Dublin, Ireland   15  Oslo, Norway   16  Shanghai, China   17  Paris, France   18  Istanbul, Turkey   19  Vienna, Austria   20  Sydney, Australia   21  Rome, Italy   22  Stockholm, Sweden   23  Helsinki, Finland   24  Abidjan, Ivory Coast   25  Douala, Cameroon   26  Amsterdam, Netherlands   27  Los Angeles, USA   28  Berlin, Germany   29  Hanoi, Vietnam   30  Shenzhen, China   31  Taipei, Taiwan   32  Guangzhou, China   33  Tel Aviv, Israel   34  Budapest, Hungary   35  Chicago, USA   36  Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam   37  Beirut, Lebanon   38  San Francisco, USA   39  Luxembourg   40  Düsseldorf, Germany   41  Glasgow, UK   42  Frankfurt, Germany   43  Munich, Germany   44  Bratislava, Slovak Republic   45  Jakarta, Indonesia   46  Singapore   47  Dakar, Senegal   48  Riga, Latvia   49  Prague, Czech Republic   50  Athens, Greece   51  Birmingham, UK   52  White Plains, USA   53  Brussels, Belgium   54  Kiev, Ukraine   55  Miami, USA   56  Barcelona, Spain   57  Honolulu, USA   58  Hamburg, Germany   59  Zagreb, Croatia   60  Algiers, Algeria   61  Madrid, Spain   62  Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates   63  Amman, Jordan   64  Kuwait City, Kuwait   65  San Juan, Puerto Rico   66  Casablanca, Morocco   67  Melbourne, Australia   68  Washington, USA   69  Lyon, France   70  Boston, USA   71  Lisbon, Portugal   72  Morristown, USA   73  Houston, USA   74  Almaty, Kazakhstan  75  Tallinn, Estonia  76  Warsaw, Poland  77  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia  78  Manama, Bahrain  79  Sofia, Bulgaria  80  Auckland, New Zealand  81  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia  82  Ljubljana, Slovenia  83  Dubai, United Arab Emirates  84  Mexico City, Mexico  85  Atlanta, USA  86  Wellington, New Zealand  87  Brisbane, Australia  88  Adelaide, Australia   89  Toronto, Canada   90  Seattle, USA  91  Vilnius, Lithuania  92  St. Louis, USA  93  Leipzig, Germany  94  Perth, Australia  95  Limassol, Cyprus    96  Vancouver, Canada    97  Accra, Ghana  98  Cleveland, USA  99  Cairo, Egypt  100  Denver, USA  101  Detroit, USA  102  Monterrey, Mexico  103  Kingston, Jamaica  104  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  105  Portland, USA  106  Panama City  107  Winston Salem, USA  108  Guatemala City, Guatemala  109  Mumbai, India  110  Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei  111  Lagos, Nigeria  112  Pittsburgh, USA  113  Montreal, Canada  114  Calgary, Canada  115  Tianjin, China  116  New Delhi, India  117  Dacca (Dhaka), Bangladesh  118  Lima, Peru  119  Bangkok, Thailand  120  Tunis, Tunisia  121  Nairobi, Kenya  122  Tehran, Iran  123  Santiago, Chile  124  Ottawa, Canada  125  Lusaka, Zambia  126  Johannesburg, South Africa  127  Colombo, Sri Lanka  128  São Paulo, Brazil  129  Bucharest, Romania  130  San José, Costa Rica  131  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  132  Karachi, Pakistan  133  Chennai (Madras), India  134  Caracas, Venezuela  135  Blantyre, Malawi  136  Quito, Ecuador  137  Bangalore, India  138  Manila, Philippines  139  Bogotá, Colombia  140  Harare, Zimbabwe  141  Buenos Aires, Argentina  142  Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic  143  Montevideo, Uruguay  144  Asunción, Paraguay   Whew, that was long...I have to learn more about cutting code so I can make this thing prettier.  Anyways, Seoul is #7 and the first Canadian city is the 'Big Smoke' (as my Dad calls it), Toronto at #89 then my recent/dual hometown of Vancouver at #96 (I suspect it'll rise next year as real estate is on a bit of a tear lately).  Thing is, if you have the residence/home thing taken care of (as most teachers do in Korea) then living in Seoul/Korea can be pretty cheap.  Of course you can always spend $4,500 USD for a bottle of  urlLink Macallan 50 year-old whisky  at  urlLink SkyBar , but if you keep your head on straight it's not too bad.  Every morning I go to my local 7-11 and have 2  urlLink 삼각김밥  (sam-gak-gim-bab, literally 3-angled/triangle seaweed and rice) for about 1USD.  Today I splurged for a 새우버거 (say-oo/shrimp burger) but the price was still under 2USD.  (It's good for dieting too, as my wife near-constantly reminds me, because rice has 1/3rd the fat of bread and likely 1/100th that of a croissant, muffin or bagel.)   urlLink    My lovely breakfast.  Shrimp burger and triangle kimbap.
Koreans have a great sense of community.  So much so that sometimes they figure they can have a nap any old place.  Now I understand taking a snooze in a subway car (they are safer here) or taxi (done that a few times), but on some steps?  Well, it happens.   urlLink    I couldn't resist taking a pic of this guy...it was like 6PM and he was already sacked out on the front steps of a building in Sinchon (teen district of Seoul).  Notice his jacket is a step or so down from his resting place.  Must be nice to be in a virtually crime-free city.
urlLink    The business class tag for baggage.  I have to keep this in pristine condition for future flights.
I used to cook for myself all the time (making bulggogi, kalbi and even lasagna).  Now, however, I'm getting pretty lazy.  Food is so good, plentiful and cheap in the restaurants (nevermind that Koeans love to go out to eat so if I did cook a large amount of food about half of it would go to waste anyways) that I've decided not to shop for anything more than noodles and booze.  (See photos for the result.)  Far from what I expected, I ended up losing weight and spending about the same amount of money, go figure.   urlLink    What a balanced diet I have...noodles and more noodles, tuna, gochoo jang (sauce).   urlLink    My fridge, the oranges are just for show, they've been in there for like 6 weeks.  Notice the contents: ketchup, mayo, orange juice (jeju-do) beer, soju, beaksayju, mayshilju, onions.
I often wondered where the restauranteurs heated up the briquettes or brinks or rocks that they placed in the table for traditional Korean cooking...then I saw this.  This place (not a good pic, it was from a taxi with my phone-camera) actually has a fire on the sidewalk right in front of it!  The guy is pickin out a red/white-hot brick for the patrons inside.  Only in Korea.   urlLink    Fire in the hole!
It feels like I didn't even leave this place, which is a little scary.  Things will be a little weird for a bit (as I take about a week to get over jetlag, unlike some people I know who take about 2 days) so postings may be a little sporatic for a bit.  As well, work is getting busier...which is fine my me.  It's kind of interesting, actually.  At this job we always have something to do (I do the weekly newsletter, research, presentations to clients, and liaise with our foreign partners) but there are definate lulls and busy times.  Just before my vacation was a lull, now we're back in the thick of things.  Speaking of thick, take a look at this pic.  Many days here are like this (although, admittedly, not this brutal).  Some are blue-skied, but even then you know that the pollution is there.  I left my windows upon when I went home and when I came back there was a thin layer of soot on the floor...hmmmm, that seems real nice, eh?  Now I know why my mother-in-law always cleaned the floor every day or so.  Apparently Seoul has DOUBLE the amount of particles (I'm assuming 'bad' particles) in its air.  Anyone who jogs here is nuts (but I, of course, do inline/rollerblade almost everyday, so I'm no better).   urlLink    Lovely Seoul smog.  One problem is the number of cars here, another is the level of industrialization and lack of environmental laws (or enforcement thereof) but there is also the polution that comes over from China (where things, from what I hear, are a lot worse) and the  urlLink Yellow Wind/Dust  that makes its way to our shores once or twice a year.  I was in one of these storms a few years ago (I was the only gomer without a surgical mask on) and I felt pretty weird afterward.  If you have a respiratory problem things could get ugly.
It's been a busy last couple of weeks, but I'm on my way back to Seoul today.   Didn't get near what I wanted to get done on this trip--had planned on heading downtown to see a few buds but couldn't get the time to get away at all.  A few friends made the trek up to our place, though, which was cool.  It's nice to see friends you've known for 10-20 years after being away for a while.  One guy that came up here was a friend of a sister of a friend who is marrying (as soon as he gets the familial blessing) a Korean, so my wife and I gave him the 411 on Koreans and ways to do things.  (More on that when I get back to Seoul, and have more time.)  Got to go now.
A night out in Korea can seem pretty overwhelming, especially in HongDae, Kangnam Sinchon,  urlLink Sincheon , Itaewon, Daehak-ro or any of the other major hotspots in town.  Hongdae, Sinchon and Daehak-ro make a name for themselves by being close to the major universities; Kangnam is a place for lavishing high-priced liquors and girls on clients; Itaewon is near the US Army base, so it's a haven for GIs and other English-speakers (who seem to have more money than brains sometimes, myself included) and Sincheon is a teen district as well, in the well-to-do area of Songpa-gu.  My latest foray was to Daehak-ro (daehak/daehak-kyo means college/university, ro means street).  We went to a ddak-kalbi (grilled chicken) place and saw a group of 3 guys whooping it up Korean style (copious amounts of soju and food and louder speaking).  One was pretty funny. I don't know if he was doing it for my benefit or to show-off to the Koreans around him (Koreans sometimes show that they know English as a form of one-up-man-ship...it shows they are educated and studied a lot, no matter how brutal the usage).  He was saying such things as 'Excuse me, could you calm down?' (actually, he said that A LOT) and 'I'm sorry' and 'Okay!'.  I think he was practicing to be a bar bouncer or something.  Anyways, these guys got pretty loaded.  When one of them was away from the table it looked like the other two were a little amorous (Korean men sometimes hold hands or put their arms around each other, especially after a gallon of soju).  I snapped the picture below before we left.       urlLink     2 guys who really like each other (but they are not gay).   Then when we finished walking nature was calling me...but not #1.  I took a look into the  urlLink hwa-jang-shil  (bathroom) in the restaurant, but it was a squat-type.  Then we came across this theatre (below...oh, and Koreans usually pronounce theatre and Seattle the similarly).  It was new so I took a look.  Man, that bathroom was spotless--maybe it looked so good because I figured that all of the ones in the area were squatters or brutally dirty affairs, as they usually are in smaller, older buildings (man, how do these women do it?).  Anyways, that's the tip.  Look for the newest, hippest building (especially ones with Western food or themes inside) to find the best W.C. (another way Koreans denote watercloset).   urlLink     Fantaseum   Since Korea has millions (ten of millions, likely) of cellphones (handphones, as they call them) you'll find public pay phones only in a few places: the airport, the train/bus stations, major hotels and the subways.  (Well, I've seen them on the street sometimes, but not that often, and not when you need one.)   urlLink     phones   Another instance of Korean marketing gone bonkers.   urlLink Red Mango  is a major bing-soo (shaved ice garnished with fruit and stuff and then topped with yogurt or ice cream).  But the tagline for the firm is a little....well, weird 'Start loving myself!'.  When I explain it to people they really get confused.   urlLink     Red Mango  Another thing here that's funny is girls wear shirts that say '69', it's a brand here but they are oblivious to the hidden meaning (if you don't know I can't explain it here, this site is family-friendly).  Or church-going girls will have a Playboy scrunchie in their hair...not knowing who 'The Hef' is.  Koreans also have no idea the multitude of words we have for a part of the male anatomy (so the scene in  urlLink Austin Powers  where they say 'woody, Johnston, boner, balls, willi...) goes over most of their heads.  They have one word here for it  urlLink go-choo  (hot pepper), and they're pretty surprised to learn that their word for 'ward' in a city (dong) is also another euphemism for gochoo.   urlLink     And, to cap it off, in the subway there was a guy taking a snooze right on the floor.
Some of you may remember my first article on oh-gyup-sal (five layers of fat pork). Oh-gyup-sal is a one-up on sam-gyup-sal (three layers of fat porl), so it only makes sense that this land of hyperbole would come up with chun-gyup-sal (1,000 layers of fat pork)--and it did.  As amazing as it may seem, someone got the great idea of leap-frogging all of the competition and calling what is basically pork chop a name that denotes something a little more superlative.  Why not trillion layers of fat pork (jo-gyup-sal)?  I have no idea.   urlLink     The sign says '1,000 layers of fat pork'...mmmmmmm.   Well, Korea isn't the only place where things get blown out of proportion sometimes, it's just that they do it so well here and we're not used to it.  Who can forget the launch of the  urlLink Gilette Mach 3 ?  Yes, that's what I need!  Three blades on my face!  (Of course they had 'Excel' versions of their Sensor, Mach 3 and ladies' razors, too, as if we needed that little white strip to save from cutting our faces open.)  Recently the  urlLink Schick Quattro  came out (for those of you who failed Latin, Italian, Audi or whatever language this is in: quattro means expensive).  Now Gillette has a 'power' version of its razor.  Now this is getting ridiculous!  Here in Korea I get 10 good razors for 2,000 won (USD 1.75).  (Yes, 17.5c each!)  They're so cheap I only use them twice then throw them away.  (Please no Greenpeace/eco-friendly group flamings.)  And you know what?  I get a pretty good shave out of it, too...similarly I only buy plain ol' pork chops at home.
Sometimes this place really makes me think.  So many things are so different here (language, expressions, people, culture, shopping, driving habits) but, yet, some things are just like home.  Take my building, for instance, there are a few guards (we call them 아저씨, ajeosshi, or 'mister') in the lobby...well, they're no so much guards as they are greeters, like at Wal-Mart (neat article  urlLink here ).  After they figured I was not a visitor, but a long term resident of Seoul they started saluting me, waving and saying 'Morning'.  Huh, morning?  Ok, I guess they learned that greeting somewhere. Many Koreans in lower-level jobs know absolutely no Eng
#print(corpus[0:90000])
# we could sue corpus.split() but that does nto handle things like words connected by elipsis well
corpus_word_tokenized = word_tokenize(corpus[:90000])

#does a greta job of pulling words away from punctuation, etc
corpus_word_tokenized[0:100]_____no_output_____import nltk
#nltk.download('wordnet')

english_stopwords = set(stopwords.words('english')+list(punctuation))
english_stopwords_____no_output_____stemmer = PorterStemmer()
stemmed = [stemmer.stem(x) for x in corpus_word_tokenized[:1000]]

# zip makes the two arrays into tuples so we can see what changed
list(zip(corpus_word_tokenized[:1000], stemmed))_____no_output_____# moving from stemming to lemmatization (which is better)
sample = "This is a sentence.  Also, this here is another sentence"

# ^ this is to set up the parts of speech mechanism
pos_tagged = [nltk.pos_tag(word_tokenize(sent)) for sent in sent_tokenize(sample)]
pos_tagged

# this helps us identify how a word is being used (noun, verb, etc for one word)_____no_output_____# lemmatizer understands the language and does not just change words by rule
lemmatizer = WordNetLemmatizer()
lemm = [lemmatizer.lemmatize(x) for x in corpus_word_tokenized[:1000] if x not in english_stopwords]
lemm

new_corpus=""
for word in lemm:
    new_corpus += ' '+word
new_corpus_____no_output_____tfidf_vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(use_idf=True)
tfidf_vectors = tfidf_vectorizer.fit_transform(new_corpus)
tfidf_vectors_____no_output_____from string import punctuation
stopped_corpus = [x for x in corpus if not x in english_stopwords]

_____no_output_____stopped_corpus = [x for x in corpus if not x in punctuation]
stopped_corpus_____no_output_____numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]

choice = ['yes' if x%3>0 else 'no' for x in numbers ]
choice_____no_output_____
</code>