Too many 14 hour flights

So over the span of a month (or less), I will have made 2.5 trips to the US...Which means FIVE 14 hour flights. It gets tiring to say the least. When you have watched 5 movies and you still have at least 4 hours to go, you know it is brutal...

Trips to NYC

So a couple of trips to NYC, whirlwind ones lasting less than a week each. It has meant that my body has no idea which way is up. But it is nice to be back in the US, seeing Michelle (and the occasional friend). The current one is to meet with companies for the current project (we’ll see if I can get some wedding stuff done as well. But I finally had it with the work computer. The battery literally lasts 10 minutes. 10!?! And we make computers. Mine is about 5 years old, weighs maybe 10 lbs, and with no battery. So everything goes through personal email (because we don’t have webmail for security reasons). It AMAZES me, truly ;) And this was impressive. The business trip approval (outside of the fact that there are portions in Korean, even within the “English version” of the travel system), it took approximately 30 minutes to complete it. Productivity? Maybe next year ;)

Image Conscious Society

With my cousin in town for a weekend, I did my best to show her around Seoul, from my favorite areas to the main tourist spots. We went out to Eden on Friday night, with my Ukrainian colleague, who had no problem dancing with his backpack on his chest and a pen in his pocket (gotta love someone who just doesn’t care!) But my cousin was highly amused by the dance floor (including a guy who could have been out of a model shoot, who was standing on the dance floor (not moving), with sunglasses, as a girl paid him a lot of attention. His movements were restricted to occasionally putting his arm around her. “Okay, so this is a slightly image conscious society” was the key take-away. This was fully confirmed when we went out shopping and Laura was looking at a dress and the owner came up and said “No. One size only” Yup, one size in most stores. (All of the anorexics of the world would be proud). We joked that when we went to the “plus size” area that this was where you could find a size 2 ;)

Overall the weekend was a lot of fun, we ate some great food, saw friends, had drinks at the Ritz (the Garden restaurant, which was beautiful), and got caught out in the rain. Sadly I had to leave before she did (a business trip to NYC), but one of her friends from Tucson came up from Busan to spend time with her. So in good hands in the end!

Hunting

So apparently in Busan there is this term called “Hunting” where you have thousands of people on the beach at night (women in heels of course) trying to “meet” each other. Ah Korea, the land where men and women meet in typically awkward ways (blind dates, booking clubs where the women are forced to sit down at tables and guys pour them drinks, and now “hunting”).

This is a new low

So I think one of the balances when you know you are leaving to try and find a balance between knowing that the company has little invested in you, and the hope that they will treat you well. I remember struggling with this before (for example, do you give someone a promotion on their way out if they are going to school, since it is little skin off your back, and it can create a lot of goodwill?)

I have perhaps fewer illusions in a Korean company, partially due to bigger difficulties in negotiations (and how often the excuse is used: "company policy" Now what is funny is that "company policy" is often selectively enforced, and often a local knows how to get around these policies, but I digress...) But the latest one I heard (thankfully not to me), was when a friend was dealing with an issue, and when something needed to be done (or should have been done), the response was "I don't want to stress out my baby" Wow. I am waiting to hear some priceless lines on my side. (Some of this stuff is so good you wish you had a video camera).

New model or new model?

So when Samsung announces is largest lineup of new models in China (see link), you have to wonder, it is the phone or the women on display? Definitely a double meaning of the word model ;)

Back to the Chinese

So on Saturday we went over to my friend Haes’ house for some drinks. What was meant to be a much more energetic night turned into a very lazy night, with literally 3 of the 5 people asleep while watching a documentary on Dubai (I am still not clear why it was chosen). But there was a crack made about one of their classmates marrying Chinese (with an apology thrown my way). I turned “none taken, after all, the odds are what, 1 in 5 that you will marry a Chinese?” Just think about that one for a second ;)