Strewth mate...George Bush has got a few Kangaroos loose in the top paddock...

Five to be exact....(click to make the photo a little bigger - so you can actually see something)

I saw these planes and wondered if there were really five Qantas jumbos or if someone had put a huge mirror in the middle of LAX. Anyhow, a quick check of the Qantas website shows me that there are 6 daily flights forom Australia to LAX. Here we can see QF 175 from Brisbane, QF25 and QF93 from Melbourne and QF11 and QF148 from Sydney. Don't ask me which is which. The sixth flight was QF107 , also from Sydney, but she had flown on to New York at this time and wouldn't return until the evening.

I want to ride my bicycle...

Our reason for being in Chamsil was to head over to Olympic Park to ride bicycles (well a quadricycle to be precise). They have bikes that will sit three adults and two kids or six adults and two kids and so we rented one of the smaller ones. I think it was about KRW15,000 for an hour. Here are the kids sitting on the bike. We spent a happy hour riding around with me doing most of the work.....
Although as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, the cherry blossoms have been and gone, plenty of other blossoms were in full bloom... Finally, after wearing ourselves out chasing around, we took the subway home...

H.I.D. Hidden Intelligence Detachment

I thought it was illegal to display the North Korean flag or pictures of Kim Jong-Il in South Korea or maybe that law has been rescinded. Anyhow, while walking the streets of Chamsil a couple of weeks ago I cam across the following scene... What's that I hear you ask? Some missiles pointed at the North with Kim Jong-Il's name on them? Well, they're only inflatable missiles (in case it wasn't obvious from the photo) The chinese characters on the missile say 世界(World 세계) 平和 (Peace 평화) 威脅用 (Used to threaten 위협용).

So who is displaying such provocative items? Well, no less than the Hidden Intelligence Detachment (and also here) This sign says "What have I done for the Motherland today?" "Special Operations Against the North" and a review of their website shows that it is a group set up to commemorate agents sent to infiltrate the North on special ops that never came back. All I can say is that they're not doing a particularly good job of staying hidden here....

Butterfinger Pancakes...

Once upon a time they used to have Denny's in Seoul. It was in Myongdong until the Asian Financial Crisis of '97. At various times since then there have also been various other pancake restaurants but never have I seen anywhere where people would queue up for half an hour for a table. Never that is until last weekend.

I mentioned in a previous post about our aborted attempt to eat at Butterfinger Pancakes. Well, undeterred we set off a couple of hours earlier the following week although that proved to be only just in time to beat the mid-morning rush. The place has tried to style itself as an American style diner with an open kitchen... We weren't sure what to expect, after all some places in Seoul do mock-western food with a degree of incompetence unrivalled anywhere else in the world and thus it was with some trepidation that I ordered a pancake brunch and Sunme ordered a waffle brunch. Emily certainly enjoyed her orange juice... I didn't know Heinz made maple syrup..? Finally the food came but we were so hungry that wasn't any time to take any proper photos of it...Emily is looking satisfied having finished hers. An empty plate...you can't get a better restaurant recommendation than that!

Someone call Health and Safety...

You're probably aware of all the fuss recently as the olympic flame wends its away around the world. Originally there was concern about whether Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics is appropriate given alleged human rights abuses in China and this was compounded by recent events in Tibet. Well, I just thought I'd let you know how the Olympic logo for the Beijing Olympics was designed...

Kim Kong...

One of the great things about Seoul is all the really quirky things you come across. For example, at Hakdong Junction (학동 사거리), you can see a giant gorilla wearing a North Face backpack trying to climb a building.

Charity begins at home...

Anyone who has kids knows that they grow out of their clothes really quickly. When clothes get too small for Alex and Emily, we tend to pass them on to a friend of ours who also has a son and daughter, each approximately a year younger than ours. They are called Chanwoo and Chanbi.

Today at bedtime Sunme was supervising Alex and Emily brushing their teeth. She noticed that their toothbrushes were getting a little ragged and so she said to the kids that she would get them new ones tomorrow and that they should throw these ones out as soon as they brush their teeth tomorrow morning.

Quick as a flash, Emily replied, "I'm not going to throw it out, I'm going to give it to Chanbi". Such altruism, such charity...I only hope Chanbi will get good use from it!!

Cherry Blossom Season Update...

It's over for another year. All those petals that looked so pretty on the trees last week are now browning in the gutter like confetti...

Diversity in the workplace...

Recently in the elevator at work they've been playing a video sent over from global HQ in New York. In it the Global CEO sits down to chat with some employees about what a great place my company is to work. There are five employees, 3 men and two women, 2 white, 1 oriental, 1 south asian and 1 black and one of the men is camp enough to suggest to anyone (except the typical korean) that he is probably gay; all in all I think they're trying to show that it employs a diverse bunch of people although there was no sign of any disabled people in the film. But it all seems a bit crass to have got that perfect mix. I mean sure all these different groups do work for the company but the distribution is not as implied in the film.

Anyhow, it turns out that the Korean branch of the Firm is updating its publicity brochure (or possibly its annual report - I didn't get the full details) and they wanted a photo to show the diversity of the firm. Therefore they got on the phone to my department and asked us to take a photo "of koreans and foreigners working together". We duly set up a fake meeting and took some photos...again, you can see 5 employees, 3 men and 2 women, 2 koreans, 2 whites and a japanese. Don't be fooled, there are but a handful of foreigners at my company and you can see most of them here!

People hanging on my every word. What they are actually looking at is the details of my hotel for my trip to LA next week...
You mean it's right on the beach? Are you sure you're going there for work?

More Cherry Blossoms...

You don't necessarily have to go to one of the proliferation of cherry blossom festivals to see lots of pretty flowers. There are plenty of cherry blossom trees around...here you can see one of the roads in our apartment complex... View of a tree from the balcony of our apartment... I'm sure these would look better with a blue sky background... Of course, I already mentioned that I prefer magnolia blossoms so here are some pictures...please let me know which you prefer...

Match of the Day...

Some less reliable news organisations might have you believe that the Premier League clash between Man Utd and Arsenal is the big match of this weekend but any true football fan knows that today's match at Sangam between FC Seoul and Suwon Bluewings was a far bigger game.... :)

I went along with Sunme and the children plus my brother-in-law, his wife and a friend. Total cost for 5 adults and two children was KRW35,000 or approximately 17.5 quid, which is 4 quid cheaper than the cheapest ticket at Hillsboro. After an initial mix-up about which end of the ground we should meet each other, we got in just before kick-off.

Emily unimpressed by the atmosphere... It was Klan Day at the game today with a 30% discount on tickets for Klan members... The match itself was fairly entertaining and both sides had numerous chances to score... and the fans were in fine voice.... However, only one team took their chances and thus it was the Suwon fans that went home happy after their side won 2:0... However, judging by the reaction of the Seoul fans, they were a lot more satisfied with their team's performance than I would have been... After today's results, Suwon remain top and Seoul drop one place to third.
Team PtsW D L F A GD Played
수원 13 4 1 0 11 2 9 5
성남 11 3 2 0 12 3 9 5
서울 10 3 1 1 7 5 2 5
인천 10 3 1 1 5 3 2 5
대구 9 3 0 2 12 10 2 5
울산 8 2 2 1 8 6 2 5
광주 6 1 3 1 4 3 1 5
부산 5 1 2 2 5 7 -2 5
포항 5 1 2 2 4 7 -3 5
제주 5 1 2 2 4 7 -3 5
경남 4 1 1 3 5 9 -4 5
전남 4 1 1 3 3 8 -5 5
대전 3 0 3 2 1 5 -4 5
전북 1 0 1 4 4 10 -6 5

When we came out, it took about 45 minutes to get out of the car park and so I had to snap some photos of the stadium...

All Day Brunch...

After we finished filming last week we wandered through the back streets of Chongdam-Dong looking for somewhere to eat. We actually ended up eating at a nice coffee shop called Coffee Mihak (커피미학) where they had some really nice cake. However, on the way there we saw a pancake restaurant called Butter Finger Pancakes. They don't seem to have a proper website but there are plenty of blogs eulogising the place and photos like this of the food they serve and so we decided to go back this Saturday for brunch. Unfortunately, when we arrived there was a huge queue and so we ended up elsewhere. We will go back in the future and I'll blog about it then...

Instead we ended up in a place called All Day Brunch which is situated just off the main road opposite Galleria in Apkujeong pretty much opposite where Mrs Fields used to be (I'm looking forward to some Mrs Fields when I go to LA in a couple of weeks) It turned out to be a buffet of breakfast and lunch type things and cost 22,500 per adult and nothing for the children.

Alex tucking in.... Emily tucking in... Has Emily been hitting the red wine? Yours truly gets some pancakes after all... Some coffee to round off... After a big buffet brunch, what better than to go and aid your digestion with some light gymnastics... Of course, all that eating and playing is very tiring...

Who me?!?

Emily puts on her innocent face...

Viva L'Espana

I'm not sure if this shop has a spanish theme or whether it is just decorated like a giant Spanish flag....still it stands out on its street in Chongdam

The next David Bailey?

It's cherry blossom time...

In the past fortnight or so Seoul has started to come back to life from the brownness that is symptomatic of the dry Korean winter and the magnolias, forsythia and more famously the cherry blossoms are coming into bloom.

This past Wednesday was a holiday for a parliamentary election and although I wasn't entitled to vote, I still got the day off. My wife had come into some coupons entitling us to up to KRW400k worth of food at the Walker Hill Cherry Blossom festival and despite the fact that the weather was cloudy with rain predicted we decided to chance it.

I've never been to the Walker Hill before. It always seems well out of the way of anywhere but actually it was only 10 mins from Gangbyon (line 2) or 5 minutes from Gwangnaru (line 5) by hotel shuttlebus. We started off with some lunch and owing to the coupons we could pig out although the food was pretty expensive if you were paying (hotel prices I guess). It was pretty tasty especially since the chefs were effectively cooking out of garden sheds. After lunch, it was time to look at the cherry blossoms. Not much to say about them, so I'll just post some photos and let them speak for themselves. It was difficult to take decent photos because it was so cloudy which made the light was so flat and difficult to see the hues of the cherry blossoms. Plus my camera is quite a basic one. Of course there were other flowers around too. Here are some cherry blossoms framed by forsythia... And some magnolias...would it be blasphemous to say that I actually prefer magnolia to cherry blossom? Shortly after that it started raining and we headed home...