Mish Mash

This is one of my favorite styles of road signs in Korea. This is not the most complicated, but it is a good example. You arrive at a crazy intersection, and are greeted by a crazier road sign trying to explain things. Surprisingly, the signs do a pretty good job, although they can look like a complex schematic drawing at times. Here is one I snapped from a taxi over near the Niagara Hotel a couple weeks ago - the focus is bad, but you get the idea.



Speaking of signs, I can't stop laughing at this Konglish sign (courtesy of, and shamelessly stolen from, Angelo Apostolakis' Facebook photo album). You can zoom in and read it yourself, but believe me when I tell you it says:

Please, Remove the color fork before taste the menu. (It might cause the safe problem)

Southern BBQ

During CH's visit, I introduced him to some true southern BBQ. It isn't Memphis, but this place is pretty good. We had the pork plate, complete with slaw, potatoes, and hush puppies. It was delicious, but filling.

Whiskey

After many years of just driving by, I finally scheduled a visit to the Jack Daniels Whiskey Distillery this week. My colleague CH was visiting for some business meetings, and we happened to be driving right by the factory. Here is CH in front of the visitor's center.



Here are some barrels of whiskey being aged:



It was a really interesting tour. Highly recommended. Now I need to find a bottle of Gentleman Jack...

It's A Breeze

I have made a temporary office in what used to be Young Stumber #2's room. One problem was the ceiling fan. On low speed, it vibrated. On medium speed, it shook the ceiling and made horrible sounds. High speed was forbidden. Well, we finally got a replacement fan and installed it.



The box advertised this fan would only take 5 minutes to install. It should be a breeze, right? Well, no breeze until almost 2 hours later (well, that did include a 1 hour nap while the battery power drill charged up). But finally there is a nice and QUIET breeze in the office.

Hyundai Sonata

We went used car shopping this weekend. Young Stumbler #3 needed a car, which she will share with me when I'm in town. We went to the "sell your own" car lot, and considered several models. There were Toyotas, Mazdas, Hyundais and something called a Ford Focus. We finally settled on this Hyundai Sonata. It was somewhat unusual, it had very low mileage for a good price. Either we got a good deal, or the car is a lemon. So far, so good.





Young Stumbler #3 reports that the car smells like an "old man" inside. Maybe I need some air freshner...

Scallops

We had a delicious dish last night, grilled scallops on the half shell. This was prepared "fushion" style - a spoon of sweet and sour sauce was put in each shell, then another spoon of shredded cheese was put over the top. Grill on a fire. Scoop it all on a spoon and eat. Delicious. I hope I can visit Young Stumbler #1 this month in New Orleans and have her cook this for me!

Odd Elevator

Literally. In the new office building, you see, there is an unusual elevator system. Going up from street level, or going down at all, you have to choose either the ODD or EVEN elevator car, depending on your destination or departure floor. There also is a third elevator shaft, serving the basement parking lots, which is really unusual. Coming UP from the basements, you can to directly to any desired floor, odd or even numbered. But going DOWN to the basement, you have to take the appropriate odd or even elevator to the first floor, then transfer to the basement elevator (the basement elevator serves ALL basement floors, whether odd or even). What a system!



Let's consider my colleague CH, and say he parks on the B4 level. Coming to work, he can just use one elevator, going from the basement directly to our office on the 5th floor. Going home, he must use the ODD elevator to take him to the first floor, then change to the basement elevator to go to B4. Got it?

At least the Korean words for ODD and EVEN have been forcibly driven into my brain now, after I unknowingly got on the wrong car. I'm pushing the 5-button, and wondering why it wouldn't light up. I was traveling well past my floor, when finally by pushing random buttons I got the elevator to stop. I got off, and had to take the stairs back down to the fifth floor.

Reminds me of a logic puzzle one of my friend's mother told us once in grade school. There is a man who takes the elevator from his 25th story apartment to the street level every day to go to work. But at night coming home, he takes the elevator to the 18th floor, gets off, and takes the stairs to the 25th floor. After a LONG session of asking only true/false questions to her, we learned that the apartment dweller was a midget who worked for a circus, and could only reach as high as the 18th floor button in the elevator.