Stop hogging the duvet!!!

Football...

Last day of the Premier League season today and I've got two matches playing simultaneously on my computer. I shall be watching Chelsea v Bolton and Wigan V Man Ure to determine who wins the title and I shall be keeping up with other scores to see which two of Reading, Fulham and Birmingham will be relegated.

While the season is winding down in the UK, it's in full-swing here in Korea and today I took the kids to the Seoul World Cup Stadium to see FC Seoul v Incheon United.

There were around 29,000 fans there (probably a lot more since the number of fans is presumably based on tickets sold and they were letting in juniors for free if they had a special voucher and also all under-6s go for free without any ticket at all) so the atmosphere was quite good.

Before the match started the fans rolled out the ubiquitous giant banner...
Then some chanting and fireworks to get us underway...

The match was very open with opportunities for both sides (although the strikers for both teams were decidedly average so not as many goals as there might have been). The main striker for FC Seoul is Ju-Young Park (박주영), who I think is extremely over-rated. In some ways he is like Christiano Ronaldo (think the posing and the arrogance), while in others he is not (think talent). Nevertheless, he is very popular with the FC Seoul fans judging by the number of people who have his name and number on their shirts. The great thing about watching these games, as I've mentioned before, is that the kids go in for free and my ticket is just 8,000won and therefore it doesn't stress me out if they're not foucssing on the game all the time, or if they're even distracting me from watching the game. In actual fact they quite enjoyed today and watched most of the match. They clapped along to the chants at some points and danced a little when there was music...

A week in the States...

While some people get to take 3 months off to swan around the USA, the rest of us have to make do with a 5 day business trip and so it was that last Monday I jetted off to LA for a week.

It almost started with a disaster at check-in when the airline announced that the only row with three seats together was a row that they weren't planning on using cos the personal monitors were broken and one of our party said we'd take it anyway (what is it with the Korean obsession with doing everything together?). Luckily common sense prevailed and we were soon distributed through out the plane and ready for our flight.

It was a 10.5 hour flight to LA with a 16 hour time difference and consequently we got there 5.5 hours before we left, although personally, I'd prefer it if it wasn't a Monday that I had to live through twice. Mind you we lost most of that 5.5 hour gain waiting to dock at the terminal, waiting to get through immigration, waiting to get our luggage, waiting to get our rental car and then driving out to our hotel in Laguna Beach. The hotel was just one of the major chains but it was quite comfortable and each room had a jacuzzi although somewhat bizarrely it was in the room rather than in the bathroom.

Anyhow, after getting ourselves settled we took a walk along Laguna Beach...It was very pleasant after the hustle and bustle of Seoul. Of course, sometimes the Californian beach lifestyle is not all it's cracked up to be.... The next morning we were up bright and early and ready to start work. But first, breakfast on the terrace among the Birds of Paradise... After that it was a day of hard work and we only just got back to the hotel in time to catch the sunset...We made good progress with our work on Tuesday and therefore we'd finished our work soon after lunch on Wednesday. Of course if you're on a business trip with Koreans you have to go and play golf... and after that we just wondered around enjoying the OC. On Thursday we chose to go wine-tasting. (Well, I was driving and the others were wine-tasting). We went to the Ponte Family Estate Winery in Temecula... My colleagues were able to choose 6 wines to taste out of the many available and of course being Koreans those six mouthfuls completely wiped them out... The grapes were still very small so there wasn't that much to see...But it was a pleasant enough way to spend a day...Driving back to Laguna Beach we were thinking how it would be very easy to get accustomed to such a lifestyle... We had just enough time to take in one last sunset...


Before it was time to head off to the airport for our flight back to Seoul... Here we are taking off for the 13 hour flight back to Seoul (why does it take 2.5 hours longer to get back to Korea than to fly from Korea?)