Gee

Girls Generation.

That's all that needs to be said.

3 Day Weekend

Psy performed a concert at Samsung a couple of weeks ago. Everyone went crazy for him. He released his new album recently and this is a song from it. Psy co-wrote the song in my previous post, "I'm a Guy Like This" by DJ DOC. He is also a comedian, because this video is just off the wall. Enjoy.

My 3 day weekend just ended. Monday was Samsung's anniversary=day off. 

I flew in a helicopter last week to go to one of our factories.

Friday night was club night in Hongdae. This happens on the last Friday of every month. 20 bucks will get you into all the clubs in the area. EVERYONE comes out for this.

I climbed one of the peaks at Mt. Bukhansan, the world's most visited national mountain park. It is on the north side of Seoul and overlooks the city. Excellent day.

I didn't see anyone celebrate Halloween except for the rare decorations in some stores.

That is the wrap up of my weekend. The second session of Korean classes start this week.

Global Gathering 2010 Seoul

I'm starting to get into some K-pop and rap. I am currently addicted to this song. Notice how they dance in front of Mercedes Benz Semi trucks, that's how Koreans ball out.





On October 9th, my friend JP and I headed to Nanji Han River Park in Seoul to attend Global Gathering 2010. Global Gathering is a huge annual electronics music festival and the headliners in Seoul were Justice, Fatboy Slim, and Armin Van Buuren.A ton of local DJ's played too. The concert started around 2pm and lasted until 5am or so. JP and I didn't get there 'til about 7pm, but it was just in time to catch the headliners. We left Suwon around 1pm and found a legit burger place for lunch. Closest thing that resembles something from America burger wise. Kinda pricey, but I thought it was well worth it for the quality of food you're getting. Nothing beats a Coke and a burger before raging all night. 

So after getting our energy for the day, we grabbed a bus to Seoul from Suwon. GG had a shuttle to ferry people over from the subway station. Once we got to the designated subway station we made our way to the shuttle area. This was not for us. The line for the shuttle bus extended all the way down the block and around the corner. There were at least 6-7 buses worth of people in front of us, so that's at least a 2 hour wait right there. The weather was warm without a cloud in the sky, so JP and I decided to take our chances and see if we could walk to the venue. Apparently, we heard it was only a 15 minute shuttle ride from the subway so we figured it would take us about an hour at most on foot. We later found out this was not the smartest idea. 

We started walking towards the Han River in Seoul without a care in the world because we were going to see some sick DJs and have a fun night. Except we started walking to the wrong side of the river...We finally reached a bridge that crossed the Han River, but we didn't hear any music or see huge crowds. We asked a couple of people walking along the bridge where Nanji Park was, but most of them didn't know. One guy finally told us it was across the bridge. So we decided to trek across the bridge in hopes to find the land of glowsticks and techno.

45 minutes later, we had finished crossing the bridge. We had spotted a huge tent that could hold thousands of people from the bridge and started walking towards it. It was a bit strange not to hear any music, but whatever. We made our way to the giant white tent and were severely disappointed. The tent was for a huge annual fireworks festival happening that night in Seoul. We did not come to Seoul for this. So now we are lost in Seoul with no real direction. We headed to a cafe to steal their wifi with my iPod Touch so we can look up the address for Global Gathering. We found the address and wrote it down in Korean in JP's pocketbook so we can show a cab driver. 

We hailed down a cab and proceeded to show him the address and then were on our way! Except this was only a false hope. I found out the Han River Park ran alongside the Han River for kilometers (gettin my metric on) and Nanji park was a small part of the overall park. By the time the cab driver got us to the Han river park, night had fallen. We stepped out of the cab and couldn't exactly figure out where the concert was. We walked along the street for a few minutes then we heard thousands of people screaming and crowds of people walking towards a common destination. Finally, we thought we had found the venue, but life isn't always that easy. We made our way towards the noise of thousands of Koreans. Except, this led us to the World Cup stadium in Seoul. There was a FC Seoul soccer game going on that night. Pretty much a fail on our part. We asked a couple more people around the stadium if they could direct us towards Nanji Park and they kept saying it was too far away to walk. This didn't make any sense since the cab driver dropped us off very close by, so either the cab driver screwed us over or the people we asked didn't know what they were talking about. With our confidence in the dumps, we started making our way back to the spot the cabbie dropped us off at and what do we find...a sign for Global Gathering!

We found ourselves walking with tons of other foreigners towards Nanji Park. Nanji park is located right next to the river so you have to walk in a good bit. 3 hours after getting out of the subway, we had taken the scenic  route around Han River and reached Global Gathering 2010. We appreciated the music much much more after working pretty hard for it. I spent a couple of hours in Photoshop putting this detailed, color-coded map together of where we went. 

Luckily, we had made it about an hour before the headliners came on, so we drank some party water and started raging. First up was the French duo, Justice. 

I didn't think the DJ set was all that impressive as there were some mixing errors early on here and there and some better songs could have been picked. Still a good warmup to my favorite, Fatboy Slim! I even made it up to the front row for Fatboy.

Then Armin Van Buuren finished off the night with a 2 hour set. I had to fight my way up to the front row for this too. He was pretty good, but it was typical AVB. Personally, I don't think he topped Fatboy Slim, who just killed it.

All in all, it was a spectacular night. Met a lot of cool people and had a ton of fun since everyone is just so friendly at a concert. This picture pretty much sums up my night.

And this picture sums up the aftermath of the concert on the subway back home the next morning: PTFO.

One thing I did learn from this trip is that there is always something happening in Seoul. If you can't find anything to do one weekend, then you're not looking hard enough. Rest of my GG 2010 pics are on my website, www.joelmathew.net

Eva Eva Eva EVERLAND

Sick new Deadmau5 song. Deadmau5 was in ATL last week and I missed them =( I wished I coulda been there.


I've been talking a lot about what I do outside of work lately, so I'll dedicate this post to what I actually do at work.

I've been working close to 60 hour weeks lately and it's not that bad. I work in a clean room working with lasers and optics conducting some experiments and junk. The cool thing is I get to wear a bunny suit and burn holes in paper among other things with lasers. The not so cool part is when you have to go to the bathroom in a bunny suit. You have to go through an air lock which blows air at you to clean you, take off your footies, take off the suit, go outside the room and put your shoes back on, then up a flight of stairs to take a piss. Then you do it in reverse to go back to work. It isn't the greatest system in the world. Here is what a bunny suit looks like if you don't know what it is...and that is not me, we can't take pictures inside the complex remember.

Anyway, work is fun and I'm learning a ton like a good little intern should... I drink a lot of Pocari Sweat to get me through the day. What's Pocari Sweat you ask? 

I'm not really sure what a Pocari is and the deal with its sweat, but I do need my supply of ions for the day. Apparently, it's from Japan. I would classify it as a Gatorade/Powerade competitor. Kinda tastes like a mild Fresca and blue Powerade mixed together.

One day last week while I was sippin' on my Pocari Sweat, I was notified that it was GWP day. GWP day pretty much means team workshop day aka a free day. We do some community service event then something fun for the rest of the afternoon. So after lunch, our whole department (~100 people) went to the river next to our complex and picked up some trash for about 30 minutes. Then we made mud balls for the river for the next 30 minutes. The mud balls are some sort of phenomenon sweeping Southeast Asia. They are called EM Mudballs from Japan. So you take a bunch of dirt, add a molasses type liquid (its like molasses, except not as thick), then you add the "bacteria." The bacteria are microorganisms that make the river clean. Once you have the mud mixture, you use your hands to knead the mud like dough. Then you make balls out of the mud about the size of a baseball. After all that, you throw it in the river and as the river erodes away the balls, the bacteria is released into the river to clean it. It was an experience to say the least, and my hands smelled like molasses for a good two days afterwards after washing off the mud. I guess it's the cost of saving the world one river at a time.

After we finished our community service, the whole group went to EVERLAND!

Everland is the equivalent to Disneyland and Korea's largest theme park. Samsung also owns it so we got the hookup. We were placed in groups of 10 to do a scavenger hunt to continue our team building. One of our events was to take a picture with a foreigner haha. I don't understand, but this is a big thing here. I've had my picture taken with Koreans randomly on the streets of Seoul before because I am a foreigner. Apparently, it's more common in Japan. 

We had the whole afternoon at Everland and it was epic. The T Express made the whole afternoon though. The T Express is a landmark wooden roller coaster. Here are some facts I wiki'd: 

• South Korea's first wooden roller coaster
• World's steepest wooden roller coaster (77 degrees)
• Drop : 57m (7th in the world)
• Attraction time : 3min 00sec (the longest in Asia, 7th in the world)
• Air time : 12 times (the most air times in South Korea)
• Altitude : 56m (the highest in Asia, 3rd in the world)
• Maximum Speed : 104km/h (the fastest in Asia, 8th in the world)

This ride was redonkulous. I'm not gonna lie, but an almost vertical drop is exhilarating. 

We also saw tigers and Jackass Penguins!

So after spending the day looking at animals and riding the rides, we had a group dinner at Holland Land inside Everland. Each group shared their pictures from the scavenger hunt over German food and German beer. Great way to end an exceptional day. Rest of my pics from the Everland trip are in the South Korea album on my webpage (sea otters...)

coworkers on water ride

Everland

I'm also on the OSU webpage. One of my friends over the summer interned with me at Motorola and put up some pictures of us. I just made OSU about 5 times more appealing. Check it out, pictures 30 and 33 on the slideshow.

http://www.osu.edu/features/2010/summerbreak

추석 in Busan: Part Trois

Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe?

I've been practicing my French skills with my fellow French interns :)


On the last day in Busan, we woke up late after raging the night before and checked out some touristy things. We went to central Busan. We grabbed some pastries and coffee at Paris Baguette cafe for breakfast (or lunch actually...) and headed to the subway to make our way down to central Busan. First stop: Jagalchi Fish Market. 

Busan would have fish markets of course since it is a port city. The streets leading up to the market had plenty of people selling fish.

fresh octopus

This stuff was definitely fresh. So fresh, the fish were still jumping in the buckets.

sweet jumping fish action shot, right?

like shooting fish in a barrel...

I have plenty of more fish pictures at www.joelmathew.net/photo.html if that's your thing. We finally made our way into the fish market...and this place was gigantic. The whole first floor was just like what we saw outside on the street, tons of people selling fish. The smell...was pretty revolting. The premise is that you can buy your fish on the first floor then go up to the second floor to eat the fish you bought. You can even cook it at your table. The whole second floor has tables for eating and people selling dried fish.

first floor

dried fish on second floor

buy your fish, cook it, eat with soju. sounds like a good lunch

cook the fish right at your table!

So after we had our fun at the fish market, we made our way to Busan tower. It was quite the view. Check out the pics.

Busan tower

You see that huge building right there? That is the Lotte Department store. This place is for ballers only. I walked in and immediately saw Armani on my left, Omega watches on my right, and a Salvatore Ferragamo store in front of me. This prompted me to think about how much I get paid per month and then proceeded to walk out the store.

the Jagalchi fish market is the building on the right with the glider looking roof

The structure with the columns in the mountains is the UN memorial cemetery honoring the lives lost during the Korean war. 

dragon action

So after the tower, we began to make our way to PIFF square, but there was a traditional play going on in honor of the Chuseok holiday.

I wasn't too sure what was going on because my Korean isn't up to par, but it was still cool to see and the music was pretty lively.

doin the stanky leg

We watched the play for a little bit then continued on our way to PIFF Square. PIFF actually stands for Pusan (same as Busan, b and p sounds are the same in Korean) International Film Festival. The film festival is actually taking place in mid-October, I wish I had enough time and money to go to Busan again and check it out. It was a really nice area as it had been renovated recently.

i really like this pic, it looks like the statue is trying to touch the sun

We actually strayed off the path to PIFF square as we had found the equivalent to NYC's Chinatown.

Alleyways full of knockoff items!!! It's always a fun trip to go to these kinds of places. It is actually better than NYC's Chinatown because the street vendors are out in full force since the Police doesn't really hassle them. The knockoffs looked pretty legit, but cheap quality of course. You can even get your dog a jacket here.

We wasted a good amount of our day here making our way from one end of the alley to another, but I can see a lot of people doing that. They even have full service restaurants on carts. 

The sun was starting to set so we decided to end our sightseeing at this temple nearby. Oh how I love stairs...

We made our way back to the motel and took an afternoon nap after walking all day. It was much needed. We woke up just in time to rage our last night in Busan. Since the weather felt great outside, we wanted to hit up the beach again. We went to Matt's other bar in Songjeong beach called the Blowfish.

They served American burgers! It has been such a long time since I had a legit burger. Props to Matt and the Blowfish. The Blowfish is actually in a prime location. Songjeong beach is actually north of Haeundae beach. Since Haeundae beach is a touristy beach, Songjeong doesn't get as much love. Better for us, since mostly surfers and locals come to Songjeong. Blowfish sits right by the beach with an outdoor patio. We had some Belgian beers and watched people shoot fireworks on the beach. Matt even put on the Falcons game for me on the TV. It was a chill night.

one of those lights is the Blowfish

After we hung out at Songjeong for a bit, we made our way back to the University area to rage once more. All the students were returning from their hometown since Chuseok holiday was ending. Koreans are very friendly and social so we met a ton of people. Another awesome night to add to the list. We made our way back to Suwon the next morning and our Chuseok holiday came to close since I slept all day Sunday. All of my pics from the trip can be found on my site.

Stay classy, San Diego.