Ramen Redemption

I've been visiting this convenience store, GS-25, in our office building occasionally since we moved here in February. I really don't shop there very often, but they gave me a point card to use. Furthermore, this point card is only good at this one store, not other GS-25 stores. Here in Seoul I have a variety of point cards, but in almost every case I have no idea how to use/redeem my points. Well, that changed yesterday.



I wasn't very hungry, so I went to the GS-25 to buy a sandwich. Turns out my card had collected enough points since February to earn me some ramen (the Korean spelling in English looks funny to me - ramyeon - so I'll use the more common English spelling). I thought the clerk and store owner were trying to tell me I could get 4 cups of ramen, but no.... I earned 4 cases of ramen! There are 40 packs per case, making a total of 160 ramen packs! You'll see in the photo there are only 3 cases - turns out they only had 3 cases in stock yesterday. I'm supposed to come back Monday to get my fourth box.

I'll have to chance my blog name to The Noodling Engineer if I eat all that!

Corn in a Box

One of my friends who has left Korea told me where I could buy some more canned tomatoes, which I used recently to make a Burrito. There is a small shop inside Hyundai Department Store which sells a selection of foreign foods. I found these cans of tomatoes, which includes "chilis and spices". Should be great for Burrito, I think.



Then nearby I saw this BOX of corn! I've never seen corn in a box before, so I'm going to try it. Inside a Burrito maybe?

Have Hibachi...

As a kid, I remember The Stumbling Parents had a couple of small cast iron grills called "HIBACI's". This drawing I scavanged from the web is as close as I can find to those long ago grills (unless The Stumbing Brother still has them collecting dust somewhere in his basement):



You couldn't cook a lot of food fast, but they were very portable. Which is just what my neighbor G and I were looking for the other evening. We have a grand plan of grilling some meat outside on the roof-top garden outside my door. And such an Hibachi would be easy to store for apartment dwellers.

Well, with a little assistance from my Korean language teacher, I have located and ordered the Korean equivalent of an Hibachi. In Korean they call this a Hwa-roh. They arrived this afternoon:



They even came with a pair of gloves (which probably won't fit my big hands). The ones I've seen over the years in America were from cast iron. This Korean one is made from clay - at least it looks and feels like a clay pot. All I need now is charcoal and a cool breeze....

[I'll have to ask one of my English teacher friends why I want to say "an Hibachi" versus "a Hwa-roh"...]

Socializing

I met a foreigner a couple weeks at at the sandwich shop where I sometimes eat breakfast. Turns out he is on a team staying here in Seoul, contracting to a large Korean company. Their office is just around the corner from my apartment. We made an appointment to meet at Trevor's bar Beer O'Clock last night. Honestly in the afternoon I was feeling so tired I almost wished I didn't have an appointment. In hindsight, I'm glad I went.

Usually I can count on meeting someone new at Trevor's bar, but last night was especially interesting. First, the gentlemen from my neighborhood arrived. One fellow came from Arizona, and turns out he had worked with a company that I had worked with as a contractor back in the 80's, and he knew the fellow I worked with! Another man was from Boston, and the third man was from Poland. We had an interesting time, shared some good stories about living in Korea and international travel.

After they left, I met a guy who started a software company here in Seoul, writing educational game software for cell phones. Really interesting situation, and I hope he and his partners succeed. But he does have a backup job as an English teacher. Finally I met an American guy who was in the radio broadcast industry for many years until recently. He lived a couple years in the countryside of Korea, and was exposed to a different lifestyle than here in Seoul.

Then finally, just when I was about to leave, I got a surprise phone call from our old friend and former housekeeper SY. She was just leaving the baseball game, and wondered if by chance I was at Trevor's bar (which is just across the street from the baseball stadium). She's heard me mention this place, but has never been there. Well, she dropped by, had a beer, and met Trevor.

So, it was a fun evening, filled with many new and interesting faces and stories. I'm glad I went after all.

Korean Food 102

Dishes, that is, not a course number. This week's Joongang Daily reported that Agriculture Ministry will unify the English names of 102 Korean dishes. Since I know everyone has been waiting for this, I wrote to the reporter, and was sent a list of these 102 foods and their new names.

I apologize for the poor formatting. I had hoped to get a link to the government's website, instead all I got was an MS Word file. I was going to format it myself into a simple HTML table, but I ran into problems. Normal text filtering and processing utilities (grep, sed, head, tail, sort, etc...) don't work well with Korean (unicode) text. At least the simple versions I have on my PC don't. I was able to convert "text to table" in Word, then after a little simple editing, save it as an HTML file. But it's ugly. Sorry.

I was too busy formatting, and haven't studied the list closely. A couple of things did jump out at me, however. Changing "Fermented Soy Bean Paste Soup" to just "Soy Bean Paste Soup" is a step in the right direction. I also noted that The Stumbling Mother's favorite Korean dish, "salted pollack intestines", didn't make the list.

BTW, I did search for this list on the Korean Agriculture Ministry's English Language website. Unlike some English language websites of Korean organizations, this one seemed reasonably up-to-date (Latest news was 2 Sep, less than 1 month old). While I didn't see the list of 102 foods, there were some interesting pages on a few main Korean foods (look under the "Seasoning & Style of Korean Food" tab).

Speaking of Korean foods, I've always relied on this webpage for a fairly comprehensive list of Korean dishes and a description of each. Many of the entries have accompanying photos, and there is an attempt to guage the spiciness of each dish. I don't think there are 100 dishes, but well over 50 it looks like (I'm too lazy to count them).

Elevator Corollary

Realed to the Taxi Theory of mine, I have developed the Elevator Corollary. Whenever The Stumbler arrives at the elevator on the 6th floor, wanting to go down to the main street level, there will always be someone on the elevator going UP to the very top of the building, say the 25th or 26th floor.

Mack The Knife

There's an ongoing shakeup of my Korean satellite TV these days. CH received a call this week, saying they were going to quit providing the HD channel. That in itself isn't such a great loss. They didn't have a lot of good programming on that channel. On the other hand, there are a LOT of satellite channels that are transmitting original HD progams in standard definition, so you think they would have plenty of HD programming material to make it an interesting channel. Well, their reported plan also includes adding two movie channels which I think were previously billed as extras, and also adding more childrens' channels. Ok, I guess I can live with that.

That is what they told CH. In practice, they've added the two movie channels (the reason for this post), the HD channel is still being transmitted, but unannounced to us, they have removed the National Geographic and most importantly The Discovery Channel! I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I watch Discovery very often. CH said he would call and see about it, he was surprised they removed it, too, since (a) they didn't mention that in their detailed report of changes, and (b) Discover Channel is VERY popular with Koreans, too.

So what is the point of this? And what does it have to do with Bobby Darin?



Well, I was watching one of these new movie channels last week while cooking dinner, and they were showing a movie Beyond The Sea. It's a movie based on the life of Bobby Darin, and it was fascinating. He was a really interesting character. So now these days I'm listening to his music, having discovered him only 40 years too late...

Freaky Fingers

The last time I went to the bar, I absolutely could NOT believe what I saw on the bar tender's hand. She had a metal letter "D" attached to her fingernail by a small chain which passed through a hole in her fingernail! I was told this was a new kind of "accessory" girls are wearing these days!



I asked her if it was any problem. I'm imagining a lady getting her "accessory" caught in the elevator door, closing a drawer, or just accidentally snagging something when moving your hand around. Yikes! It gives me the shivers just thinking about someone having a fingernail ripped off by one of these accessories. What the Korean ladies do "in the name of fashion" is sometimes crazy. I'll have to ask Young Stumbler #1 if she's seen this trend among her friends back home...

Chusok Re-Gift

The week leading up to Chusok, the Korean "Thanksgiving", many people, families and companies give Chusok presents. In the stores there are huge displays of various Chusok gift sets you can buy. These gifts can be many different items, honey, meat, SPAM, olive oil, etc. Or, if you are like my Canadian friend G, you might get fish. His boss gave him a package of special Jeju Island Mackerel. Unfortunately for G (fortunately for me), he is alergic to fish! As a result, he was able to re-gift these fish to ME!!!! It was a very timely gift. Whether at home, where I frequently cook Salmon steaks which I buy frozen at Costco, or at restaurants where they are served as a side dish, I've been enjoying fish more and more these days. Also, this gave me a chance to use the "grill" feature of my combination oven (that would be the "broil" setting for my American friends). If I understand it right, the combi-oven uses a special halogen light bulb and a fan when operating as a convection oven, the magnetron when in the microwave mode, and it has a set of conventioanal oven heating elements for the grill (broil) setting.



The mackerel fish grilled esily and was delicious. I didn't use any sauce, just plain fish. I served it with hash browned potatoes and zuchinni slices which are dipped in egg and flour then pan fried (this is a common Korean dish). The resulting plate was not very colorful, but it tasted great. Thanks G !!!!!!!

Treble Sauce

I was treated to this interesting sauce at lunch time recently at one of the restaurants here in our office building. You can see the obligatory dish of Kimchi on the left...

Dizzy Day

Today started off okay, until I went to the dentist office. I was supposed to have a final imprint of my teeth for the permanent bridge/crown. What I didn't realize that they were going to do some additional drilling and preparation of the two teeth which will hold the bridge. That in itself wasn't a problem, but what was a bit odd was the novocaine anesthetic. He told me that one of these teeth (canine tooth) has really deep roots, and he had to give me a lot of the medicine, and he gave it very deep into my gum. [Syringe image shamelessly borrowed from this NYTimes article]



The first odd thing was as he gave the first shot, I had a sudden but quick HOT sensation at one spot on my face. That went away, but just as he was about to start work on the teeth, I started feeling very light-headed and dizzy and hot. I told them to stop, and give me a few minutes rest. They brought in a small fan, which helped with the sweating somewhat. After a short break, I didn't feel much better, but told them to go ahead anyway. The procedure went well, with no problem. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that I felt dizzy the whole time. After about 1 hour, everything was done. The impression was made, my temporary bridge was re-installed and I was released until next week.

But for the rest of the day, I was completely worthless at doing work. I could not concentrate on anything more complicated than checking email. I tried some serious engineering work, and just had to give up. I did a few administrative things, and finally gave up around 5pm.

Got home, and decided to cook some chicken breast. I figured cooking wouldn't require too much deep thought. Surprisingly, what I prepared came out pretty good. I thawed out one of my frozen chicken breasts from Costco in the microwave, and peeled some potatoes to boil and mash. After a couple cycles of thawing the chicken breast, I decided to try the "combination" feature of my combination oven. If there is a detailed way to control the combi mode of operation, I haven't found it. Instead, there are a few choices, such as C-1, C-2, C-3, etc. I found one labeled for chicken legs, and used that. ( Chicken legs, chicken breasts, at least it was the same animal. ) Then the oven wanted to know how many kilograms my chicken was. I guessed at 1/2 Kg, then pressed start. The time popped up 20 something minutes, and I fired it up.

Then I decided to make something to put on the chicken - mixed up a big spoon of garlic, some butter, and a Japanese rice seasoning that my Hawaiian friends introduced me to for use on fish. ( I know, chicken, fish, but at least both animals live in the ocean... ) In Korea this product is called 친구밥, literally "rice friend". I brushed this mixture on the chicken and went on preparing the mashed potatoes and mixed frozen vegetables (also a Costco purchase).



This was almost as good as something I would get in a restaurant! And pretty easy to prepare, also. The combination mode worked really well. I checked the chicken breast with my meat thermometer when it was done, and the temperature was at the correct value. The outer surface was a little crispy with the garlic crust, and the inside was moist. I'm not sure how much cooking time was saved using the combination mode versus using the ordinary oven mode. I would guess it only saved about 10 or 15 minutes. Regardless of the cooking time, I'm proud of myself. I'll make this again.

And as I write this, my dizziness has almost subsited. I should say I'm very happy with this dentist, despite this odd reaction. The Stumbling Mother says I'm developing an allergy to the -caine family of anesthetics, like she has. I hope not. Next week they will install the permanent bridge (fortunately no anesthetic is involved with that procedure), and that will end this particular dental experience.

Pancakes

I was listening to some Canadian friends describe the hotel breakfast buffet at their vacation in the Philippines. Suddenly we realized there weren't any pancake restaurants in Seoul (feel free to correct me if anyone knows of any). And since then I've been craving pancakes. Turns out I had all the indgreients except syrup. I quick trip to the store solved that problem last night, and this morning I made a pancake and bacon breakfast. The pancakes were good, although I had the heat a little too high. The maple syrup I found comes from Vermont, but I'll bet the Canadians only eat maple syrup from their homeland (which makes 80% of the world's supply of maple syrup).

Olympic Observations

A few random observations from 2 weeks of on and off summer Olympic watching from Seoul.

This ain't my father's handball

When I was a kid, I was introduced to racquetball and handball at the place where my Father worked. To me, handball is just like racquetball, except played with a slightly smaller ball (not unlike a squash ball) and the players just use their hands, not racquets (they do wear padded gloves as I recall). I turn on the Olympic games to see a handball game one evening, and they're not playing in a small room. They're playing on an indoor field (looked like wet Astroturf). It was kind of like soccer, but using a ball in your hands instead of kicking. Accoring to Wikipedia, this Handball is played in Europe (and I presume Asia, since there were several Asian Handball teams on TV). The handball I know is called - please sit down for this - American Handball. This reminds me of the Soccer / Football / American Football name confusion. Can't we at least agree on the names of the games???

They're playing hockey on GRASS!

I need to consult my Canadian friends about this, but one night I turned on the TV and they were playing Hockey on grass! Field Hockey it seems. I guess this is poor-man's hockey? Or perhaps "warm-weather" hockey? The stick looked different from regular ice hockey, and come to think of it, maybe it was THIS sport that looked to be played on wet Astroturf.

Game coverage in a foreign country

I really enjoyed watching the games from another country. I get to see new (to me) sports that aren't popular in the USA, which was quite interesting.

Olympics + HD = Good Match

Despite my Korean satellite service advertising they would be covering the 2008 Olympic games on their HD channel, I never once saw a single event. However, I can pick up most of the over-the-air HD broadcasts. I let me say, HD video is a great match for sporting events. The only slight problem is that usually all the broadcasters would be covering the same event, so if you wanted HD quality, you were stuck with one sport. My other method was watching NBC's coverage of the Olympics using my USA Sling Box installed at The Stumbling Parents home. That was a big contrast between internet video and HD. But at least I could understand the narration of the announcers over the NBC station. They also had a great website devoted to the games, the only problem for me is that all video (live and replays) was blocked for anyone outside the USA.

Archery; how on Earth do they even hit the target?

Archery is very popular here in Korea. Their archery teams (mens and womens) have long winning streaks at the Olympics, as do their individual archers. As you can imagine, I saw a lot of archery. I suddenly gained a huge admiration for the sport when I saw a high speed camera played back in slow motion. When the arrow leaves the bow, it isn't straight. It is like a rubber snake! Oscillating back and forth. I can't imainge how they can hit anything, especially when you also consider the lofted trajectory the arrow follows.

Absent Athlete?

Where was Mark Spitz? He was snubbed?? What's this about? There must be more to this story. I wanna know more... Does everyone remember this famous poster? I think ever girl had it hanging on the wall that year

Fusion Ramyun

Or as we spell it in the USA, Ramen. Actually, I think what we ordinarily buy in the states as Ramen is a Japanese product. The Korean product, Ramyun, is basically the same food modified to suit Korean tastes. For all I know the Chinese have the same dish as well. I was watching some Olympic coverage tonight from home, and decided to prepare some Ramyun. As I've posted before, my Korean friends have repeatedly warned me just how bad a food Ramyun is, and not to eat it often. While all of it is probably not the best food, I think they are particularly concerned about the "instant" style that is sold in all the convenience stores (usually in a styrofoam or thick cardboard package). I've heeded the warning about Ramyon so well, the small 5-pack I have in the kitchen is past the expiration date by 4 months! Given that there's nothing really to go bad in the package, I ate it anyway.

I had been planning to make SPAM Ramyun (thus making it even more unhealthy), and decided to make another variety in addition - cheese Ramyun. Here are the simple steps to making a delicious fusion Cheese-SPAM-Ramyun dish.

Boil the water, get out the Ramyon package:


Prepare the extra ingredients. You're supposed to use green onions, but all I had was regular onion (tasted pretty good to me). You're supposed to only use 1 egg, but I used 3. I didn't have cheddar cheese, so I used some pepper-cheese instead.


Put the noodles and spice packets into the boiling water:


When it's all boiled for 4 minutes,


Add the extra and boil a couple more minutes.


Serve and eat:


This could serve two people, or three thin people. Even The (Large) Stumbler couldn't eat all this, and had some left over for breakfast.

EDIT: Nothing goes better after a Ramyun dinner than a chilled Choco-Pie (see earlier post here).

The Games Begin

Our friend from a few years ago, SC, had moved to Busan a few years ago, opening a successful Curry Restaurant. SC used to work with us, and served as a part-time travel guide during a family visit back in 2005. He came to Seoul this month to visit, so we all got together Friday night for dinner and to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics at a sports bar.



(You will notice SC is wearing a Curry-colored shirt, which we teased him about all night). Another reason for our gathering that night was another friend JI was departing for a week long vacation in Italy. JI is the fuzzy guy on the right (these photos were taken with the cell phone camera, which doesn't have the best quality optics)



The opening ceremonies were really great. I ended up seeing the whole program in about three sittings. We watched most of the entertainment portion Friday night live. Then Saturday morning, I was able to see the parade of countries portion on NBC using my Slingbox. Then Saturday night I caught a repeat of the entertainment portion on local Korean broadcast. At the sports bar, you couldn't hear any audio, so I got a little bit more out of it the second time around.

Wash Day

Sunday is my wash day, but today was special. After some confusion at the store, I finally found an 8 meter long clothesline which I can temporarily stretch across my apartment. So today I washed my blankets (Korean-style sheets), and now my place looks like a tent.

Choco Pie

Choco Pies, a Korean favorite snack food. For folks back home, think Moon Pie. Chocolate Moon Pie.



So tell me readers, which is more pathetic.... (a) that one of the local networks produced a 30 minute program devoted to the history and development of the Choco Pie? or (b) that The Stumbler actually WATCHED a 30 minute program devoted to the history and development of the Choco Pie?

Speaking of Choco Pies, I found this interesting (but 3 years old) article on the Arirang website while searching (unsuccessfully) for a link to the above-mentioned show:

Korean Confectionary Firm Produces a Choco-Pie Index to Gauge Consumer Prices

You may have heard the terms like "the Big Mac index" and the Starbuck's Tall Latte index. By tracking the prices of those popular foods around the world industry watchers compare exchange rates and prices in different countries.

Well most recently Korea's confectionary manufacturer Orion came up with an index of its own based on the prices of its all-time favorite product Choco-Pie a chocolate-covered snack. The company says as with the Big Mac the Choco-Pie is a standardized product selling well around the world. The regular box of 12 pies costs 1 U.S. dollar and 99 cents in Korea. New Zealand had the highest Choco-Pie index of 3-point-34 dollars. China, Vietnam and Russia were the three countries where the product was the cheapest costing as little as a dollar 39 cents for a box.

MAY 04, 2005

I had no luck finding a chart of the Choco Pie index behavior over the past three years, but then again, I am not familiar with financial data websites.

e-Lock

At the office, I have repeatedly forgotten to bring my key. If CH was out at a meeting, I would have to go back home and get it. This week our colleague WT decided on his own to install an electronic door lock (CH and I were out all day at the factory). It's great! It is the same style that I've had on the apartments here.





A few years ago, Mrs. Stumbler bought a similar electronic lock for the front door. She installed it on her own, but I remember helping at some point aligning the lock's bolt with the hole in the door frame. What I like about this lock that WT bought is that it looks much easier to install. Since it's bolted to the outside of the door, I think the latch and bolt would be much easier to align than were it mounted inside the door. So, unless one of us forgets and locks the door the old style with the key, I don't need to worry about forgetting my office key in the future.

Corn Silk

The Stumbling Mom reported that she had found a Korean "pure corn silk" tea, which was said to be delicious. I was suspicious, and asked my Korean teacher about this. After a few problems trying to translate "corn silk", it turns out that indeed there is such a tea. In fact, I've seen it advertised often, and just didn't know it. It is popular as a bottled drink, though they might sell tea bags. In the grocery store, I see all kinds of various teas. I only know how to find the brand of green tea that I like, and of course I can find regular english tea (they call it "black tea").

Here is a photo of a bottle of corn silk tea I bought to give The Stumbling Mom...

Toothless

UPDATE: The procedure went very well yesterday. Everything was very familiar to me - that is, the Korean dentist's tools and techniques seemed the same to me as my dentist back home. Only one difference - they have cable TV at this place. During a couple of short breaks while the technician was working on the temporary crown, I was allowed to watch the Discovery Channel! Of course, the part I was most afraid of, pulling the old tooth's root, was not done until the very end of the appointment, thus building up my anticipation (and fear). It didn't really hurt at all, but it was a real strange feeling. Especially the sound - I guess because all this is connected to my jaw bones, it seemed that I could hear even the smallest sound as the tooth was being pulled. With the tooth out, he put in a couple stitches and then the technician cemented in the temporary crown. I'm supposed to go back in this morning for a few minutes - for what, I'm not sure. But it isn't a problem - this dentist is located in my office building, so it's very close. Let me conclude by saying this procedure went much better than I was anticipating. They did a good job and I was far more comfortable than I imagined. If anyone want's a dentist recommendation here in Seoul, let me know.



I was out for dinner and some light drinking with JI on Tuesday night, and ended up breaking off one of teeth almost completely! I wish I could report an exciting story, say, I was in a big street fight defending the reputation of American beef. Or at least I tripped on my own feet (don't laugh, it's happened even when no drinking was inolved) and stumbled down two flights of stairs. Alas, the truth is so dull. I was simply eating from a small bowl of peanuts, when one particular peanut happened to snap off the tooth! Fortunately, the tooth didn't hurt, although I've had a strong, dull headache since then.

In hindsight, the tooth had been repaired a long time back, I think it was in the 1980's with a root canal. It was already weakened, and the peanut just happened to press on it the wrong way. After visiting the dentist, and confering with my USA dentist, I'm going to have a crown installed. I had a mold made yesterday, and today they will extract the remaining root and install a temporary crown. After two months, they will install a permanent crown. Even though I don't normally enjoy dental work, surprisingly I'm able to tolerate most procedures pretty well. But I remember having my wisdom teeth pulled many years ago, and it wan't too pleasant. Hopefully this will be better.