Halloween in Hae Bang Chon

As I mentioned previously, Koreans don’t really celebrate Halloween. But because of the foreign population in the country, there were several events going on across Seoul, mostly in areas with a heavy flow of Westerner traffic. A small group of us decided to spend Halloween in Hae Bang Chon, a cool little neighborhood close to Itaewon, in the shadows of Namsan/Seoul Tower. Head down the hill from Noksapyeong station towards Namsan tunnel 3, and hang a left at the giant wall of kimchi pots.

Hae Bang Chon is host to the HBC Festival a couple of times of year, offering live music at several bars and restaurants scattered along on the main drag. The organizer runs a small music store in HBC, and plays in a few bands around town. He claims that the festival is one of the largest foreign run festivals in South Korea. Music started early, around 2pm, and the last performance at most locations was around 10pm or 11pm, however I think there were a couple late performances starting at 12am or 12:30am. Two bars just up the hill in Itaewon participated as well.

Beyond the few pretentious Koreans, on their pedestal looking down upon the Westerners having a good time, I can see how this festival could be pretty fun, even if everyone wasn’t running around in costumes. And truthfully, the way some guests to Korea act, they may deserve to be looked down upon.

Some of the costumes were pretty funny. We saw Duff Beer guy, and later 3 different Duff Beer girls. There was the usual vampire, Spider Man, skeleton, sexy witch and sexy nun. Some were dressed as Mexican locs out of East L.A., and some as giant squid. Hats off to Gene Simmons, Macy Gray and Janis Joplin. My favorite…. bacon and eggs.

Oden is turning in to a BEAST

I was before, but especially after today’s game in Oklahoma City, I’m totally fine with the choice the Trail Blazers made in the ‘07 draft. I watched it live with excitement this morning before work, and reading Jason Quick’s article tonight after work gets me all pumped again:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindblazersbeat/2009/11/oden_sounds_off_and_his_newfou.html

Kevin Durant struggled bad in front of the home crowd, and Greg Oden took charge and handled business. Look out for this dude.

Halloween at the Hagwon

Koreans don’t really celebrate Halloween. The children do not trick or treat. I didn’t see any cartoon specials on TV like Charlie Brown’s The Great Pumpkin. Unlike the in your face consumer force feeding of every holiday back home, only a small handful of the stores even acknowledged the holiday with decorations… although I did find a donut shop selling orange, pumpkin flavored donuts and coffee drinks.

However, we did celebrate Halloween at work with the kids. The hagwons are full of Westerners, referred to as Native English Speakers, so for two days last week the children were encouraged to wear costumes, the staff dressed up, and we gave them candy and took lots of pictures. The most common costumes were wizards, Harry Potter, Scream mask and a princess. It was tons of fun, and between the Halloween parties and the level up testing that took place instead of the regular class schedule, the work load was lightened a bit as well.

He's an adjuma!

Consumer Warning: NBA.com and RayV

On the chance any other ex-pats stumble across this post… don’t give them any of your money.

RayV is the technology the NBA has selected for their online broadcasts, and it’s worthless.

I paid for the NBA International Premium Package. What is advertised is that you have live and 48 hour On Demand access to all the of the NBA games for the regular season, plus All-Star coverage and 15 classic games immediately available.

The season is only 2 days old, and %19 of the games are unavailable to view On Demand because of encoding issues. And of the 81% of the games that they say are available on the website, a good number are not once you click on them. And there are no classic games to watch, which I actually would because all of the real games I’m trying to watch are unavailable.

I’ve spent hours upon hours with their live chat tech support, which has been a complete waste of time. Their responses are cryptic, short, and provide you with zero information. Both RayV and the NBA do not respond to emails. Basically, you’re screwed if you buy the online package.

And finally, their solution to the problem… after I didn’t disconnect my chat function and let it sit idle for an hour… ask for a refund. I WANNA WATCH MY TRAIL BLAZERS! Just make the technology work as advertised!

Save yourself the headache and don’t even bother.

You are now chatting with ’support’

support: Hello. How may I assist you?

Dustin: I am still unable to watch the Portland/Houston game On Demand, the initial 48 hours is up very soon. Why did I pay all this money if I can’t watch opening night? What can you all do about this? Thanks.

support: The games HOU @ GSW and PHX @ LAC had encoding errors and are unavailable,

support: Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dustin: I’m talking about Houston at Portland, on Tuesday night.

Dustin: Why am I paying money to watch what you advertise as all the games, if this is not true? What can you all do about this? It’s extremely frustrating.

support: Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dustin: Seriously, 19% of your games are unavailable. I paid $150 for them to all be available as was advertised. What can you do about this? Please answer me.

(15 minutes goes by)

Dustin: Help!? Please don’t ignore me. If you can’t help me, please let me know who I can talk to. Thanks.

support: you can send an e mail

Dustin: TO WHO

(Another 10 minutes goes by)

Dustin: please help me

support: to nbasupport@rayv.com

Dustin: it doesn’t work, I’ve sent two

support: you can try on the nba.com

Dustin: where?

(waiting for 10 minutes)

support: www.nba.com

Dustin: So the games that are not showing, are never showing up?

support: we don know yet

(after literally an hour of me not disconnecting the chat function)

support: Dear Dustin, we are very sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately right now we can not upload other version of the replay. You can forward your authentication email (the email you have received in the subscription process) with your refund request to nbasupport@rayv.com , it is very important to describe the reason for the request.

Heyri Artists’ Village

Heyri Artists’ Village is about an hour north of Seoul, closest to the city of Paju. Starting in 2001, the village is a place where over 500 painters, musicians, photographers, writers and sculptors all live and work together. It’s loaded with art galleries, little shops selling every artsy thing you can think of, restaurants, museums and coffee shops. Buildings are restricted to 3 stories in height to enhance the harmony between structure and nature. The buildings are spread out, in clusters along strange little roads. It seemed to be mostly concrete and steel square structures. Internet research reveals that some of Korea’s best-known architects collaborated on the project.

We wandered the village for most of an afternoon, stopping to look at art, buy a few gifts, eat delicious beef stir fry, sip on a really expensive latte and enjoy some chocolates. There were quite a few people out and about on this Saturday afternoon. Everyone seemed to have a camera. What I found a little annoying is that every other building seemed to be a toy museum or display of some sort. What’s the obsession with old toys?

This is the closest I’ve been to the DMZ, about 6 kilometers. We rode the 200 bus directly there from Ilsan, took less than an hour. Almost to the village, the barbed wire lining to river bank let us know that we were super close to the world’s most militarized border. Looking across the river, I was able to catch a glimpse of the mysterious North.

NBA International Online Tech Support

Preparing for the start of the NBA season tomorrow, I gave my NBA International Premium Package a test drive today. To follow is my chat with tech support, drifting in and out of professionalism.

support: Hello. How may I assist you?

Dustin: Hi. After I log in, where will I go to watch? Sorry for such an easy question, can’t figure it out, there is nothing there.

support: don’t worry about the question, the site is programmed as if the guy in charge was mentally retarded..

support: there’s just nothing there before the tipoff tomorrow..

Dustin: gotcha. thanks. it said something about instant classic games being available now.

support: you’ll have classic games on there too..

support: Thank you for visiting. Please contact us at anytime.

Mr. Pizza

I have never eaten at Mr. Pizza, and have no idea if it is good or not. Most Korean pizza is a bit odd, not quite what we’re used to at home. Regardless of how it may taste, Mr. Pizza has one of the weirdest slogans out there.

Mr. Pizza… Love for women.

Some of these commercials are good examples of what I call Korean food porn

War Memorials

I’ve seen a lot of Korean War memorials lately. The first pictures of are a painting on canvas that was displayed in Ilsan. The second group is of a statue monument found outside the giant War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan, which has a large military presence.

I thought my mom might like to see some of this, her dad was over here with the military.

Lotte World

Lotte World is and indoor/outdoor theme park that is connected with a Lotte Hotel and Lotte Department Store in Seoul. I read somewhere that Lotte World is the Korean recreation center most frequently visited by foreigners. I also read that at one time, it was the biggest indoor theme park. The facility has a sports complex including swimming pool, ice skating rink, bowling alley, gym and a health spa. There is also a movie theater, a folk museum and a monorail that connects the two theme park sections. And, not mentioned on any of the websites I looked at, it has an indoor shooting range. How do I know? One of the girls in our group paid a visit at the end of the day to let out aggression by poppen’ some caps.

Our group arrived early to avoid the inevitable chaos that would consume Lotte World on a Saturday afternoon. We entered from the Jamsil subway station, which seems like it’s directly under the complex. Walking in, I immediately got that Disney, fairy tale, is this music ever gonna stop kinda vibe. It might have been a little annoying, but it never really got that bad.

First off, we went to the outdoor section called Magic Island. We rode the Atlantis roller coaster, which might be my favorite of the day. It’s short, and never gets all that high up in the air, but it’s fast, twisty and turny.

After, we rode the Gyro Swing. The giant circular area where people sit, feet dangling, rotates as it swings back and forth like a pendulum, sending you way high up in the air. It looks scary but it’s actually really relaxing.

After the Gyro Swing we hit up the Gyro Drop, riding it 3 times in a row. Sitting circular again, it takes you 70 meters up (almost 230 feet), spins you around slowly for a really amazing view of Seoul and the surrounding mountains, and then drops you all the way down in like 2 seconds, leaving your stomach in your throat. It was here that we saw the coolest warning sticker of all times. My favorite… not allowed to pregnant

The rest of the outdoor section was so so, except for the ghost house 3D movie, which was the coolest 3D I’ve ever seen. The movie is from the perspective of a cat that walks into a haunted house, running around getting chased by snakes, ghost dogs, owls, mice and freaky dolls missing limbs. Piranhas almost bite you. Venus fly traps try to eat you. And in the end you die.

Satisfied with having beat the lines for the important attractions outside, we spent the rest of the afternoon indoors. The inside section, called Adventure, is a bit visually overwhelming at first. In the center is a pit looking down 2-3 floors to the ice skating rink in the center. The floors between the ice and the theme park have all kinds of shops and restaurants. Scattered all around the top level are various theme park attractions. The ceiling has a balloon ride, providing the bird’s eye view. We rode the monorail around the whole park, the French Revolution roller coaster, Pharaoh’s Fury and the balloon ride.

Later in the afternoon a Halo video game competition was held on the large performance stage, sponsored by xbox 360. It looked like team tattooed forearm whitey against team Korea. I think the competitors even had groupies. The screaming at the top of your lungs commentary on the speaker system was absolutely ridiculous and extremely annoying. Xbox consoles were scattered all over the main floor and xbox girls were available to pose for pictures. Also equipped with girls smiling for the camera was an orange Lamborghini looking car draped in car models. The stacked up photographers, pushing and shoving for that just right special picture was comedy.

When it was time to leave, we couldn’t find the exit. This was actually super frustrating, because we were pretty wiped out and my cold was starting to kick in big time. Turns out it wasn’t hard to find at all, but close to the center of the facility, some steps and an escalator back down into the mall area and subway station. Common sense? Maybe, but it was more fun to joke about having to stay the night inside Lotte World, unable to find the strategically placed exits, confusing foreigners into not being able to escape, forcing them to spend more and more money.

Over 8 million people visit this place a year... this is the only way out

Banana in a Bag

I’ve never seen this until I moved to Korea. Not all of the time, but most of the time, when buying bananas, they come in a giant bundle of 8-10. There is no way I’m eating that many bananas before they go bad. Produce goes bad very quickly here. But there is another option… the banana in a bag. I’m not sure why, but a banana in an individual plastic bag does not seem appealing to me.

2 for 990 at E-Mart. 1 for 1,200 at Starbucks. Luckily, there is a little produce stand not too far from my pad where I can get 4 for 1000, not pre-sealed in a plastic bag.