The Last World Cup Fan Fest at Kwanghwamun

In the night of the last world cup match with Swiss- actually on June 23 - I couldn't stay at home because of the fever I had felt at KwangHwaMun while I was dropped at for a moment to take the bus going to home. As a result, I came to the Fan Fest area with my son at almost midnight.

One thing funny was that the only red shirt we had was a traditional Swiss-made as you can see from the picture. Fortuantely nobody cared about it! Can you see the beautiful edelweiss flower prints ?

The match was held too late(actually too early at 3:30 am), we couldn't keep the seats at the place whole night, but it was a funny experiences. The seven-eleven(or family mart, I'm not sure) in the left corner of the above picture was reported to sell mineral waters more than 60Million KRW(60 K USD, roughly) at that night.

Helplessness.

I don't think everyone should know Logic, or logics for his job. I don't think everyone should be able to distinguish causes and effects from some complex works to simplify his job. And I am not an expert or specialist for Logic at all.

But I really don't want to spend my time for fixing none-of-my-business-works from wrong treatments... don't want to get involved in the fruitless jobs..

In many cases especially for these days, I'm confused at the logic, the tools, the methods and the way of what my colleagues was doing for their job. I know they're also experts in their field, but feel the serious mismatch with my thoughts. Need to take some courses or read books on conflict managements..

Days ago to one of my friends, I complained my current intangible situation at work and at home, hoped to die. He said simply, it would be my only and first success in my life if I had got to die without further problems.

Need a rest, really..

Reaping from the field

From time to time, I'm quite surprised at how much my parents made a special effort for years for their garden while walking around it. In fact, they had planted there various trees, vegitables and flowers for more than a decade and the long time is making it beautiful and enrich.

(My son seeking for strawberries)

In their garden(rather a farm, I think) on last sunday, we picked up wild strawberries, cherries, and japanese apricots. A little bit late season for strawberries, but quite well-riped strawberries were over there. The cherry trees and the linden trees-actually we called it a linden tree, but the dictionary says it's a cherry eleaegnus exactly, gave us a lots of red sweet and sour fruits, which my son and nephew really liked and had through the evening.

(A strawberry in the field and cherries on the tree)

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(Strawberries were not enough for all of us,

but we could enjoy cherries a lot. The round ones were from the cherry tree, but the long ones were from the cherry eleaegnus)

Picking up the japanese apricots from the highly upward branches was tough. Talking about apricot liquors and nectars, my mom and I had picked and gathered apricots till the late afternoon, but still many of them were on the branches.. I'll ask for some of it for liquor after she finish to reap..

(The japanese apricots.

Its origin is from china but I'm not sure why it is called japanese apricot)

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PS. On the way back to home, my wife commented to my silly question that we visited to my parents too often, and she said almost twice a month. Later I counted how many times we visited them and found 8 times during the past 6 months..

Reds Go Together

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Happy with France Draw.

Two matches(vs. Togo and vs. France) were too dramatic to keep seats quietly, and most of koreans were crazy for our national team's efforts and achievements. During the matches, the fans were hard to breathe to wait for goals and shouted we did it, we did it with strong emotions after goals we were loinging for so much.

By the way, there're also some concerns among people about the qualities- ruling force and the defense system our team had showed in the games, but the result - a win and a tie- was more important, I believe, the top in Group G. Hope another fantastic result with Swiss.

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(The 2006 slogan of the red devil: the national soccer team supporter)

Since we went up to semi-finals, the great fuss was going on almost a month in 2002 worldcup and it was a really vital and fabulaous memory. We couldn't do anything else except watching the games, talking about the games, and drinking while chatting about the plays at that time. It was great.

All the places over the country are the red waves again, and many fans are enjoying games together at street cheering parties, remembering the past 2002 worldcup, for midnight or early morning games.

Click the below arrow, you can listen to 2006 official cheering song of the red devil.

Where can I keep these big bottles ?

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I'd expected the size of a small general medicin bottle or a midium powdered milk can at last when I opened the pack, which might contained two bottles of the pure protein I'd ordered four days ago. Surpringly however, two really big plastic bottles were there, in which I might be able to put rices as much as my family could eat for more than a month. Even my little girl seems to be able to get in..

I knew each had protein powders of 2.27 kg, and planned to consume them for two months but never thought they would be so large. Actually the large size and the amount of them were not the matter, but my concern was where I could put and keep for so long period. In fact, alcohols in one of the kitchen units and beer cans in the fridge were already enough to make complains..

-- WHY I BOUGHT THIS THEN

Not losing the useful flesh with burning fat at the same time was the reason I bought these protein powders, even though I am usually against this kind of unnatural and artificial method. Clockwiz' recommendations and his recommend store's website were another temptations. It's really really very cheap - less than half of the usual prices.
As a result, I surrendered to the temptation with a greedy desire for the slim body. (You know, it's SUMMER!!)

-- FIRST THOUGHT AFTER I GOT THAT PACKAGE

Really true that the Internet makes the world smaller.
I could buy the powder(made in the USA) from the website, operated in the states but by koreans, at lower price. In addition, I paid only about 10$ for the delivery from the states to my home- cheaper than the cost Amazon offers. Four days for the delivery was quite short and quick- similar with the domestic deal cases(2-5 days)

- THE THOUGHT WAS CHANGED IN THE NEXT DAY

But problems- the price. Every site has a different prices. Usually when I want to buy something on-line, I spend a couple of hours to examine prices and free gifts.

In this case, I'd heard from clockwiz that the site had really low and reasonable price. I believed that simly and then just bought it. For a day after I received it, I was really happy and satisfied with the price because I checked its price was roughly half of the general internet shopping mall or open market.

But in the next day, one of colleagues recommended another site he used to go when I told my lucky shopping story, so I checked the site.

Oh, no. It offers a 35% cheaper price and even no delivery cost!! In the site, I could have bought one more bottle with the money I'd spent.

Now it's a firm thought : It's too hard to buy something in the Internet..

Well done, Guys.

-

Recent qualification matches were quite unstable, so some of us were not sure victories in this world cup. But they did it tonight, showed it tonight and restored to us the firm belief that we can do it again!

Maintenant a France! Nous venons !
(he, I'm not sure this french :) )

(The wrapping ad from one department store)

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(Player scluptuers at the Kwang Hwa Moon street. The guy at the center, Lee C.S presented the first goal.)

A Crazy Friday Night

I was hungry all the day, the last Friday. In the morning, I'd had to skip all food and drink for the physical checkup. (But I drunk relatively too much the unknown white fluid and bubbling powder for my stomach photo during the checkup..)In the afternoon, I didn't have enough time for lunch, and I had to make-do a small sandwitch on the street while going back to the office.
That was fine, because I had an appointment with three guys- clockwiz, stone, and mcchae- at night and thought there might be a FEAST of meat and various alcohols...

Unluckily, however, I was late for one and half hour, and they had already enough food and beer without me and wanted to go the 2nd round at another bar when I arrived there! No! I ordered some beer and another sidedish and put them into my stomach as fast as I could. Three pints of beer and some meat before I got down into their chat.

And then we went to another places to drink more, and more. To sum up, we went to three rounds of beer bars and cafe. A lot of beer and strong whiskey. I was drunken too much, very much.

I didn't remember all of what we had talked about, but reviews for the trip to Seungbongdo, the naming of the meeting - 4 by 4, current interests, and the so called leadership, friendship, and volunteership. At that discussion or dispute, I thought about a book recently read, which was very boring and long, King Arthur's Round Table(by David Perkins). It's subtitle was maybe how collaborative conversations creat smart organizations even though I didn't mention it at that time..

Anyway the meeting was quite unusual. Too much chats. Too much drinks. And I lost the following weekend as a result.

New Face (Still Under Constructions)

Right. My expectation was perfectly correct.

One of two would be an answer.
- This site is not a user-freindly. Or
- I'm too stupid to understand HTML codes.

I'll try to go on modifications of this page bit by bit, instead of
showing a new face at once..

Huh.. too lazy ?

Suzumiya Haruhi ?

The storyboard is attractive. An alien, a girl from the future, and a super power. Interesting enough. So far 9 episodes were appeared and it seems to be quite popular in animation communities.

But thought it's not usual for me to watch some tv series or soap operas: giggling/snievelling and waiting, giggling/snivelling and waiting again, and so on. Quite stupid! Beside, it is the stories about childish high school boys and girls. Don't misundertand please, this is a complain to me, not to the above animation.

One of my colleagues had quitted the company recently, and he recommended this series- The melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi- at dinner after he had handed in his resignation. It was a surprising, but could be expected. I envied his situation to leave a job so easily.

The Last Week of May 2006

(1) The Saddiest Thing in the last week

My little daughter had cut her index finger by my disposable razor blade. My wife called me from the emergency center, and told me it had taken more than an hour to stop bleeding. I was really startled when she told the doctor had recomended to burn out the wound with an electric tool, but luckly the bleeding had stopped before doing it. No functional problems but a deep scar would be expected. I shoud have brought back the razor immediately to the gym, which I had brought home for the last weekend trip. I'm really sorry. - Last Tuesday Afternoon.

(2) The Happiest Thing in the week

I got a hand-made paper camcorder from my son as a birthday gift. He had made it with his mother, which had the lens, the view finder, as well as the LCD monitor like my old camcorder. A really nice job. (Maybe it was a sort of pressures from my wife.. no HC3 yet..) Apart from the daughter's accident, the birthday itself was not enjoyable at all. I had not counted my age any more. - The same day with the above.

(3) A Serious(?) or Heavy thing..

I don't know exact words for the feeling when I saw my future resting place and tombstone. I visited the recently built family graveyard with my wife and son. Since the traditional korean tombs was occupying the space too much, the family graveyard could be an alternative and our family had decided to build it in the meeting a few years ago, and it was completed in May, but I missed the opening rite due to the back pain. My wife said it's too narrow to sleep together and we might quarrel everyday for the space after death. My son was murmuring something but he was too young to understand the death. As for me, I was worrying about the cremation.. - Wednesday Afternoon

(4) Other Things

The local elections on Wednesday. Basically I was not interested in the politics and the voting, but I'd a day off for it, so I had done it. I saw a full-bloom-rose while going to vote. A rose.. -Wednesday Morning

The soccer season came back even though we lost the match with Ghana last night. Most of streets in Seoul was already decorated with the red flag and ADs for victories. Sleepless nights would be.. - Friday Afternoon

* I failed to upload more photos again...