Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A Shanda Kind Of Weekend

The sucky thing about working in Korea is that your friends are constantly leaving! Rare is the waygook who sticks around for years on end- trust me, the kimchi isn't that good. After this weekend we are minus one BFF in Korea :(


We miss you already, Shanda!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

a cute gif made by my lovely cousin~grace XD XD


Photobucket
arent this cute????awesommeee..kekkee..grace and i took these shots with her webcam whole night in singapore..hehe the unknown woman and man popping out are her cute parents yeapp cann you see grace's saying"i love u"slow motion continuously and me wanting to cut her hair? she haa her fake highlights red and green eacch side and i had my ash brown ones..haha sweet memories^^

Thursday, August 26, 2010

sweet tooth wondermilk

Atlas~Annger and I have a chance to go seek for a nice brunch in Uptown, near One Utama.Kekee..Damn excited.We had not eat anything since 9.30am and its already 4 pm.I wanna try the well known Japanese buffet Umaiyah badly but when i drove around that area,still hestitating,Annger went insane shrieking in my car pointing madly at this cute delicate shop beside us..a little shop with warming decorations outside and cute pictures hanging on the walls..Wondermilk..a cupcake shop..and since the mad girl beside me kept telling me that she wanna try this since long time ago sooo badlyy and even begged me..lmao..we headed in..although i am not a fan of cupcakes==to me its just a too small cake with super sweet cream on top of it..hah and after i went in, cupcakes are STILL a too small cake with sweet cream on top.lol

We ordered 6 of them which cost us rm25.RM4.50 each..wow== just cupcakes==OKAY.......but i could see annger was damn excited lah~lol

i like those decorated delicately with soft tone colourful cream on top and they look damnn cute and adorable..and then by seeing the portion of the cream,its like 1:1, the ratio of the cream with the cake..now,pls imagine how fattening is it..== The warm cozy friendly environment..Its self service.You have to order at the counter and take ur own tray..I like the chocolate cupcake as it's chocolate taste is soooo thickkk..haha even annger kenot tahan..luv it ^^
















Those happy birthday 25 in 1 pack is soooooo cuteeee!!!!u can see elephants ones also..wow..but what hurt me was the price..RM60 each set== wow..just a cupcakes lah== their official website has a lot of designs to be chosed and we can order them online tooo..kekeeee....niceeee tryyyy^^ http://www.ilovecuppacakes.com/





Monday, August 23, 2010

Eurwangni Beach

On Saturday we went to Eurwangni Beach for the day. I'd been moaning about wanting to go to the beach for approximately a year now, so we jumped at the chance to go when we finally had a sunny weekend with no plans.

We took the subway to Incheon airport and then took a 20-minute bus ride to Eurwangni Beach. The beach was nothing special but a relaxing afternoon by the water was just what we needed. It was scorching out- over 40 degrees with the humidity- so we coughed up the 20,000 won (!!!) for an umbrella and ran into the water. I must have been a little too excited to get into the water because I ran in with my wallet in my pocket at first!!

Mel and I were happy to be beach bums.

There are a lot of things that people do at the beach in Korea that are a little bit different than you'd see at home. Firstly, 95% of the people were wearing clothes in the water. By clothes, I don't mean just a t-shirt and shorts. People were wearing hoodies, cardigans, visors, bandanas over their faces, protective arm sleeves, dress shirts and dress pants into the water! I felt like a tramp in my swimming trunks.

After we'd spent a few hours we decided that we were enjoying ourselves so much that we should spend the night. The beach had wifi so I was able to check the weather forecast on my ipod to see that it would be nice on Sunday as well, so our minds were made up. Check out the beautiful sunset.

The area around the beach is relatively undeveloped, with just one small strip of restaurants and motels surrounding it. When you walk past each restaurant an employee will try to stop you and convince you to eat there.

We learned a new word! The symbol above, pronounced "huhwee" means raw fish. If you enjoy huhwee than you'll love the restaurants at Eurwangni, because every single one seems to sell the same thing.

If you're like us and you'd rather suck on a lemon than eat huhwee then there's a couple of galbi restaurants and some convenience stores to eat at as well. We had an old favorite, samgyupsal and naengmyeon for supper and it was really good.

If neither of those dining options tickle your fancy, then why not eat a dog? After our meal we wandered around price-checking hotels and found this pen full of dozens of crying dogs. Sure enough, when we read the sign on the building it was a dog meat restaurant. We live behind a dog meat restaurant in Seoul but this was the first time I'd ever seen a pen of puppies waiting to be eaten. I don't know if I could eat beef if there were a bunch of cows behind each restaurant, so I'm not sure who this cage full of pathetic pups appeals to.

Hotel prices were ridiculous!! Small, no-name hotel rooms in outside of Seoul rarely cost more than 60,000 Won for a jacuzzi suite, but the prices for standard rooms were averaging around 80,000 Won a night and one was over 100,000 Won. That's what you get for a beach side hotel at high season, I guess. We thought we might be better off just heading home, but we found a place for 60,000 Won and decided to stay there. The room was small! It wouldn't have been worth half that price in any other location, but at least it was clean and the bed was comfortable. No jacuzzi, though :((((

The TV only featured a dozen channels and they all seemed to be trying to teach me English, so we decided it was time to go drink some beers on the beach.

When we got back down to the beach with our mat and some Cass we were surprised to find that it was just as busy, maybe busier, at 9pm than it was during the sunny afternoon. There were hundreds of people digging for clams (the tide had gone out quite far- I took the above picture of the strip from the edge of the tide), shooting fireworks and hanging out.

The beach was full of creatures at night time! Like I said, we were walking across the mud to the edge of the tide when all of a sudden I heard Mel scream and run away from me. When I looked down I saw a huge crab scampering away from us and then realized that I was walking barefoot on approximately one million mudfish (picture above). It didn't take me long to get out of there! Then, when we were walking back up to the sand, we realized the mud that we were walking on was covered in baby crabs running in and out of their little crab holes. It was time to return to the sandy part of the beach.

When we got back to the beach we started the difficult task of finding our beach mat again in the dark. It didn't help that there were hundreds of people on similar mats everywhere. When I finally found the carrying bag to our mat I looked up to see that the three boys in the above photo had taken our mat to use for themselves. They tried to save face by acting surprised that I would ask for it back and I didn't even get a "solly" out of them for their thievery! Also in the photo above you can see a 4-year old shooting off roman candles all by himself at midnight.

Everyone loves fireworks at the beach, and it really felt like the 4th of July that night with all the fireworks that were being shot off. However, most of the people shooting off fireworks were not really doing it in the most responsible way. Minutes after sitting back down on our mat a group of 50-something drunk adjoshis planted a half dozen fireworks in the ground about a meter behind our heads. We thought we were being bombed when they started going off, and quickly got choked out by all the smoke so we moved downwind a bit. A few minutes later they were ready for the next round, but by this time they must have had a few more shots of soju because they hadn't even bothered pointing the fireworks at the sky. They had some of them pointed
at us! As they started firing at our bodies we dove down, flat on the mat to minimize the imminent scarring. I was scared to look up because I was sure I'd get on in the face. I saw a guy a little bit down from us on the beach get hit. Then, a completely different group of guys bought some fireworks and just ran around on the beach shooting them at each other like they were guns. Somebody needs to show these fools a safety video.

The next morning we woke up to the sound of the crying dogs from the dog restaurant. Yep, it was time to start another day at the beach. We shelled out another 20,000 Won (!!!) for an umbrella and made ourselves comfortable. The sky started out even clearer and the water even warmer than the day before. Seoul felt a million miles away and we were happy.

It was fun to watch our neighbors cooking their meal. We noticed that most people had brought little burners and charcoal to make their own food and it all looked pretty good. Our neighbors, however, had a little trouble getting their fire going. The solution? One old man found a rusty old oil can and ripped it apart in total disregard of the tetanus he would certainly contract and decided to burn the charcoal in that. The other adjoshis thought that was brilliant and within minutes they had a rusty samgyupsal feast on the go that had us feeling very hungry. Luckily, Family Mart had just gotten a new shipment of ham and cheese sandwiches to tide us over.

After our neighbors saved face by pretending not to notice their granddaughter pulling at our umbrella and spitting up all over Mel's backpack, and another couple saved face by pretending that they didn't just step on my foot with their shoes, we decided to head into the water again, where were joined by a boy in a (what I hope was a rust proof) wheel chair, a million people in sweaters, too many tubes, some mudfish and a hovercraft! We spent hours going from relaxing under our umbrella to swimming in the water and it was a perfect, perfect afternoon.

We took the bus back to the airport, where we hoped to get something to eat before heading home. We had to go with Kraze Burgers because, unfortunately, the hangover soup was all sold out. Guess everyone else had a good time on Saturday night too!

A new work week has started but I can't stop thinking about the beach and planning out when I'll have my next chance to go. Luckily, Korea has summer-like weather in September as well so maybe in 2 weeks we'll be able to go. I don't want this summer to end!!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Robot Museum and Olympic Park

"Welcome to Seoul, Korea" a sweaty jogger said to us as we stared at a map of Olympic Park. We've been here for close to 2 years but we accepted the greeting. This self-appointed tour guide wanted to point out a few sites at the park worth visiting, so we took his advice and walked around the attractions. Koreans are nothing if not friendly.

Olympic Park was built when Seoul hosted the Olympics way back in 1988. The building of this park is what forced thousands of poor people from their homes and into a slum of the edge of Gangnam, so we thought we'd check it out one night last week when we were feeling bored.

There is a lot of green space and some hiking trails in the park, but the most impressive area was probably this main gate which has a small torch lit beneath it.

There was a large pond in front of an amphitheater surrounded by trees and fake (!) rocks where we sat and enjoyed a band that was playing. I'd recommend Olympic Park as a place to take a picnic, or to stroll around for a few hours some day.

Last Saturday I had a dream with robots at the Robot Museum in Hyewha. The Robot Museum could be more accurately renamed "Robot Toy Museum" as that was all that was on display over two floors in a building near Hyewha Station. While we enjoyed looking at the old toys (some of them were really ancient), the admission price was 8,000 Won so it probably isn't a place that's worth making a special trip to see. Regardless, here are some pictures that I feel are definitely worth seeing:

There were shelves and shelves of old toy robots like these. The campy old ones from the 40s and 50s were my favorites.

This handheld Batman video game was on display for some reason. I remember playing this game with my brother as a kid. We weren't allowed to have Nintendos so this was my sad replacement for a Game Boy.

Ho ho ho-bot.

Of course there was a display of Astroboy toys. There was even a bag of Astroboy Cheetos on display too.

I vaguely remember owning a Poo Chi (from the makers of Furby, according to the packaging) at some point in my life.

Not sure why these Teletubbies shoes needed to be on display, but maybe you're starting to get the idea why I thought the 8,000 Won admission was a little overpriced.

'nuff said.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Todai Restaurant

For several hours on Thursday night we ate at the Todai (pronounced either "today" or "to die" depending on how you look at it) Restaurant in Mok-dong. This was certainly the most extensive buffet I've ever been to. The scale of the restaurant is absolutely enormous, with every type of food imaginable on offer. I thought about taking pictures of the dishes but photos wouldn't do justice to the scale of the place, so I took a video:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMCHsUindfA

Granted, by the time I took the video a lot of the food had been picked over but it was really impressive for most of the time we were there and most of the dishes I tried tasted really good. I mean, they had almost anything you'd want to eat: pizza, chicken pot pie, made to order spaghetti, curry and naan bread, samgyupsal, sweet and sour chicken, lots of stir fry dishes, escargot, bacon-wrapped this and that, a dozen choices of salad (including jellyfish salad), sushi, crab legs, tempura, bulgogi, meatballs, fresh fruit, about 2 dozen cakes to choose from for dessert and so much more. The price was just a little under $30 so it's not the kind of place you're going to visit everyday, but we'll certainly go back to treat ourselves from time to time.

By the time we were done, we felt about the same as this little guy that we spotted passed out near the entrance:
...and it was time to waddle home for another night.

Know Your Body

In Korea, the toilet paper is often kept outside the stall which means you have to choose your number of squares wisely. It brings new meaning to "knowing your body"...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Jumping Into English

Why don't we just quit our jobs right now to become full-time advertising models? We've already made the newspaper, been featured in an infomercial (check out the magician costume!) for our last school, unofficially been made mascots for a rock festival campaign, and now check out the latest addition to Melodie's school, an ad for their summer camp:

Recognize anybody on the sign? Look closer...

Still squinting? Let's zoom in a little more...

Let's jump into English, everyone!