Piercing Day

Friday, The Stumbling Girls had a plan. We met for lunch, then took Young Stumbler #4 to get her ears pierced! I have never seen my other girls getting their ears pierced, so it was a very interesting event for me.






Here is the result. It seemed that the actual piercing didn't hurt very much, but the piercing machine didn't want to let go of the earing. It seemed that she hurt more from the machine than the piercing. But she was brave, and now has freshly pierced ears and new earrings:





Then Friday night, Young Stumbler #4 had a fun overnight birhday party with several of her friends. Swimming was planned, but thunder and lightning made them postpone swimming until the morning. Young Stumbler #3 and I bought some pizza, fed all the girls, then ate birthday cake. Get ready, make a wish, and blow out the candles:

Graduation!

Young Stumbler #3 graduated from High School this week! Congratulations!

Wednesday night we had a small dinner for her at The Stumbling Parents' house. Hamburgers with corn-on-the-cob, roasted garlic, red peppers, potatoes, and many more...

Big, red, peppers. In Korea, these are called 오이고추, or literally "cucumber pepper":


Here we roasted whole garlics with some olive oil in the oven. Really soft and delicious.


The Stumbling Dad preparing hamburgers:


and cleaning the grill:


Oven-roasted potatoes:


Here is the grill ready for the hamburgers, with the corn on the top shelf:


I made a fusion dish - kimchi burger!


Oh - yeah, this post was about Young Stumbler #3 graduation! I got distracted by the food...

Young Stumbers #1 and #3,


and Young Stumbler #4 (#2 was working this night)



After dinner, we were treated to a concert by Young Stumbler #4 - she has been practicing a song for several months now, and was ready to show off:


The graduate played for us a little on her new keyboard graduation gift:


The next night was the graduation ceremony itself. I was seated behind the band, with 9 tubas and 20+ Trombones! It was great:


Here is Young Stumbler #3 receiving her diploma:


After a final and unnecessarily long second speech of the night, the principal declared the class of 2010 officially graduated. And off came the hats:


Based on previous years' experiences trying to find a restaurant after graduation, this year I made a reservation. However, we arrived at the restaurant to find it mostly empty! Not quite sure what happened. Here is The Proud Stumbler and the nw graduate:

Handkerchiefs

Ever since discovering them in Japan years ago, I've always carried a "towel-style" handkerchief with me. They were especially useful in Japan, where they don't usually have towels in the bathrooms, to dry your hands. In Korea, too, bathrooms don't often have towels, but this style of handkerchief is not popular and I can't buy them in Seoul. So when I had a short layover at Tokyo's Narita airport on my flight to the USA on Monday, I stocked up on 6 new towel-style hankies:



Let's see, we have bicycles, goldfish (The Stumbling Mother had to explain that one to me), beer mugs, watermelons, elephants, and finally penguins! May I continue to have dry hands. And my pants legs will stay dry, too, since I won't be wiping my wet hands on them...

I had a trouble-free but long journey home. Flew Monday into Atlanta, and took an onward short flight to North Carolina for a meeting. Then flew back to Atlanta Tuesday morning, rented a car, and drove 4 hours back home. Whereupon we almost immediately attended the Baccalaureate Service for The Stumbling Daughter #3's High School graduating class, and finally ate dinnner at 9pm. Busy, yes, but in a good way. Plus, I didn't give in to the normal jet-lag-driven desire to fall asleep in the afternoon for two days straight.

The Stumbling Mom surprised me with two Korean foods on the table, kimchi and dried seaweed (Kim, or Laver). The latter she bought only for the free Lock-n-Lock storage container:

Logic

SUPER GEEK ALERT

I don't normally write such technical posts, but this is the exception.

Recently I had a problem with a circuit board here in my electronics lab. I needed a logic analyzer to troubleshoot. These are usually pretty large, expensive pieces of test equipment. If I had to guess, I would say $10K or more. I started thinking, from who could I borrow one? Finally, I decided to look on the internet, and see if there were any low-cost options. Well, there was:



This little box cost $500, plugs into your computer, thus turning it into a logic analyzer. It arrived Monday morning, and in 30 minutes I had it runnng, connected to my circuit, and found the problem. Even though I've used logic analyzers before, it was very simple to operate - I think a novice would learn quickly.

Note - thus I get in trouble with new regulations I've read about, I was NOT compensated for this post by the manufacturer in anyway. I'm just a satisfied customer excited about the product. But, if they WANT to compensate me, I would be happy...

River Habit

I've started a new habit - walking and resting along the Han River on Sunday. Yesterday I brought my new lightweight folding director's chair with side table to the park:



First I took a one hour long walk along the riverside, listening to my Car Talk podcast along the way. Then I settled into my chair for 3 or so hours of reading, sleeping, reading, sleeping, etc. Here are some views from my chair.



I sad directly under the Dangsan Railway Bridge, moving my chair about every hour to stay in the shade!



This photo has three points of interest. First, in the foreground, you can see a tandem bicycle. I saw several of these going by. Next, way out near the riverside, you can see a dark square on the concrete. I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but some old lady took a large package down to the river, laid out a small bamboo mat, and proceeded to spread something over the mat. I'm guessing she was drying something in the sun, but I don't know what. Finally, also near the river, you can see a couple of fishing poles. I spent 4 hours at the park, there were numerous fishermen, and I didn't see one single fish!



I was a little nervous when I left my chair to go to the toilet and buy some water bottle and fishcake soup - fortunately my fellow park-goers were honest and nothnig was stolen.

This was so enjoyable and relaxing, I think I'll try it one evening this week. But I need to consult the internet and find when sunset, or else reading my book will be difficult in the dark. Which reminds me of this quote from Groucho Marx: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read".

Football Match Not

Today I went to the World Cup Stadium in Mapo-gu to meet Tuttle to watch the FC Seoul football match. In all this time here in Seoul, I've never gone to a football game. And I still haven't. We met outside the subway station exit, where my friend JI and Tuttle's friend J joined us.

A problem was soon evident. The place was JAM PACKED. Today is Children's Day in Korea, so public places, especially parks (and apparently ball parks, too) are very crowded. Further thwarting our efforts was that today children were being admitted free to the stadium.

We started out trying to find the end of the line to buy tickets. It wrapped over half way around the World Cup stadium! Along the way, J gave up and left us (in hindsight, he was the smart one). We decided at this point to give up on getting in the stadium on time, and came up with an alternate plan. Go eat lunch, wait for the crowds to thin out, and join the ball game in progress.

Alas, we weren't the only ones with this idea. We walked around the underground of the stadium, in what must be the largest Home Plus I've ever seen. Both the food court and other restaurants were so crowded we gave up, and returned to the GS25 where we originally met! Even the GS25 had a long line just go get inside. We found a table, had a simple lunch listening to the crowds yelling from the stadium. The game was about halfway over, and we could still see a long line to buy tickets, so I just gave up and came home around 4pm.





However, I'm going to try again. I'll be out of town the home game, but I can catch the one after that. I'm looking foward to it.

EDIT: I heard on the radio station this morning that the attendance was nearly 61,000 fans at the game, smashing a 2007 record of 55,000. Considering that the stadium only holds about 68,000, it was indeed a crowded day at the soccer field. Well, it probably wasn't too crowded ON THE FIELD, just the rest of the stadium!

Sunday Stroll

The weather was perfect for a long walk along the Han river Sunday. Lot's of people were out, flying kites, fishing, picnicing, just enjoying the weather.





This fellow had a bicycle attached to floats, and the pedals were attached to flippers which propelled it in the water. Sorry, but my finger got in the way on the last photo.

Ten of One

I ran out of rice this week. I always hate buying rice, because there are over two dozen brands to choose from. I asked a friend for advice, and ended up ordering rice online! I ordered the usual 10kg of rice, but to my surprise when it arrived, there were ten each one kilogram bags!!!



I guess it doesn't matter, I'll dump them all in the same rice storage box. Just seemed strange. And boy I can better appreciate losing 10kg, after lifting that box full of rice!

Electronics Market

Well, I neededto buy a very small, inexpensive audio connector this week. I knew I could get it at Yongsan, but didn't want to go that far. On a whim, I decided to go to the nearby Wholesale Electronics Market. I've been there several times before, and have been amazed at the size and wide variety of available products. In my haste, what I forgot was that this huge complex suffers from a complete lack of organization. Unless you know exactly which shop(s) to visit, AND WHERE THEY ARE LOCATED, you might as well be shopping for electronics at flower shop.

I arrived, walked around about 15 minutes, and decided to eat lunch first before doing further serious searching. I ate some soup and rice in the numerous small restaurants in the basement, then went back to search. I decided to just start in a random building and walk systematially through the shops. Well, after 15 more minutes, realized this wouldn't work either. There are probably 40 or 50 "wings", each one wih 3 floors! Finally someone suggested I look on the main floor (basically outside on street level), so I spent another 30 minutes walking around looking without result.

Don't get me wrong, I had a GREAT time. This is the perfect place for an engineer to go window shopping. There are so many different things concentrated in one place (random though they may be). Unfortunately, finding a specific item is a challenge unless you have a skilled guide with you. Eventually, I ended up going to Technomart where I found the connector in less than 5 minutes, efficient but boring.

Here are some random shots of my "walk"

View down the main, center street.


Wire and cable, anyone:


Steel Cabinets for your next project?


Copper bars?


Or perhaps an industrial sized can of WD-40:


It was lunch time, and the waitresses were scurrying everywhere with carts full of lunches for all the shop owners:


Air compressors:


and LOTS of screws, every size imaginable:


Finally, as I was leaving, I saw this store, where you can buy fireproof clothing (or are these alien costumes?)

Mexican Feast

Even though I'm eating almost entirely Korean food these days, I've made a new habit to cook something "Western" on every Thursday night. This week, I had a craving for Mexican food, and began preparing the ingredients and searching some recipes online. Here is the resulting meal, enough for six people:



The dishes were made entirely from food I can get locally, with one exception - a package of taco seasoning mix which The Stumbling Mom sent me, which it probably way past its expiration date. I don't think I've ever made Spanish Rice nor Refried Beans before, it was both fun and tasty, if I do say so myself.

I wasn't entirely happy with frying the tortillas to make taco shells and a few nacho chips. While they tasted good, they weren't quite as crisp as you would get in a restaurant. I think this means my temperature wasn't quite right. I read in one recipe to fry them at 175 deg C, which I checked with my thermometer. However, I'll try a diffrent temperature if I do this again. Not to mention all the newspaper and paper towels I needed to drain off all the grease - not something I'll do often.

My only real complaint is there was too much cheese. In the past, I would always say "you can never have too much cheese", but for some reason these days I prefer to eat smaller quantities of cheese and other dairy products.

By the way, mashing the beans was really fun! Test for my Spanish speaking friends - what does "refried beans" mean? I discovered, while searching for recipes, it does NOT mean twice-fried beans.

Is Spanish Rice from Spain? I prepared the rice in the skillet as instructed in the recipe. Interesting fact - hot rice in the skillet will start to jump, similar to popcorn! Then I actually cooked the rice in my rice cooker. It worked just great:



And finally, out of curiosity, I tried a little Korean-Mexican fusion. I ate some kimchi along with the enchillada. It was DELICIOUS! Also with the refried beans! I might be onto something. These days we have the Taco Truck folks in California with their bulgogi tacos. How about a kimchi chicken enchilada anyone?

Fountain

I've been walking at lunch time these days, along a "street park" in front of my ofice. Last week, I noticed they dug a huge rectangular hole about 4 or 5 feet deep, lined with concrete. I thought, this must be a fountain, although it seemed pretty deep for a fountain. Over the next couple of days, they filled in the "pool" with a steel lattice work, completely baffling me. I was about to give up on my guess that this was a fountain, when suddenly they posted this large sign. It will indeed be a fountain, completely with a light show!

K-Popular

The Stumbler Meets As One


Through a bizarre set of circumstances last week, I was invited to a phone interview on a local radio program K-Popular hosted by the K-Pop duo As One. Shortly after that phone call, I was invited to come to the studio today for a live segment at lunch time. I was asked to present three of my favorite K-Pop songs, and explain the story behind each selection. It was really tough to choose only three songs. But I finally selected these, becuase they had the most interesting stories.

채연 / Chaeyeon: "위험한 연출" / "Dangerous Presentation"
(1) It's My Time (Aug 2003)

나얼 / Naul (Browneyes): "귀로" / "The Road Back"
Back To The Soul Flight - Remake Album (Jan 2005)

마야 / Maya: "친달래꽃" / "Azaleas"
(1) Born To Do It (Feb 2003)

Here is a CD I had from 2004 that they signed for me:



After the interview, I met a couple of friends who work there at the station, then headed back to the office. But, I stopped along the way at a small place which served pork soup (되지국밥). I didn't take any photos, but found these pictures on someone's blog which is exactly what I had for lunch! (I just had to sneak something about food into the post).