The gate to the sea

It was another terrible day.

Even though I was sitting on the beautiful beach at Haewundae, Busan, watching the horizon far away as well as doves on the sand near, I was finally getting annoyed by a phone call from some of colleagues. It was for arguing for some communication mistakes I took. I'd missed some important procedure without an intention. Yes, it's true that it's my mistake, but I felt the unlimited, infinitive stupidity from... because I believed we shared its context.

Ah, the cloudy and foggy weather without the bright sun made me even sad.

(A gate to the sea)

Once I made a plan to visit to Busan with my family together in this week, my wife refused it due to SJ's picnic schedule on Saturday. Since we have good memories of weekend trips for Busan in the last year and the year before, I thought she would agree but it's determined to be wrong. I needed to consider kids' scheule now when planning something.

On this trip, I also wanted to go around Busan Biennale and George Lucas's STAR WAS exhibition at BEXCO while staying for three days. But I couldn't. I was trying to go there alone, but only about 5 hours were allowed in Busan today, and I had to spend almost of the time for the business.

Really a terrible short trip. The business result was not fine, too. While back to the office by KTX, I had quarrels with several colleagues for another lots of matters. Thus, I had to returned to my office at midnight and am writing this post at this hour.

I was too much annoyed or bothered these days, especially for the human-relationship at work and wondered if it's the time to find another job.

The Late Visit

OH, My GOD. This has been kept and stored as a draft for 5 days !

This is the last week story(Sept 24).

(6 kids from 3 families, Can you find who're brothers/sisters ? )

HR invited 5 families of college alumi to his house-warm up party at 6:00 pm on the last Friday. But due to the unexpected business trip to Daejon in that afternoon, I could arrive at his home at 9:00 pm. Terribly late and I couldn't take a picture for the luxurious dishes. Of course, I couldn't prepare a nice present, too.

My wife and kids went to there earlier(8:00pm, still late though) and fully fed when I got there.

All 6 kids were running, singing, shouting, and dancing together without a rest. It's really strange kids are getting close very quickly and very easily.

We left past 11:00 pm and got very tired when at home.

The Fall In the Country

There's a typhoon, and it's very windy and cold.

Since I was told mom had been sick last night, we went to my parents in the early morning. She looked not so fine but was getting better.

We stayed all the day, and enjoyed the fall there, especially its pretty colours.

(Believe they are chrysanthemums)

(Ground Cherry)

(Pumpkins in the Field)

(I found a tyny green frog at the porch)

(Bottle Gourd ?)

( Can you see the chestnuts on the tree? )

PAN Festival

When we had been to Heyri for the first time last summer, a cultural complex with arts and architects, we felt some sort of inconveniences. There were, of course, very nice modern buildings, fantastic cafes, and interesting bookstores, but they looked so polishing and refined- a little bit unnatural. Perhpase I didn't like the overcasted money here and there.

I've never thought we went there again so quickly. But KKK, visiting us in the last weekend, gave pretty nice concert tickets at Heyri. Cross-over music concerts with BBQ party at night as an event of PAN Festival.

Free admission tickets again!!

A jazz band and a mime. A modernized korean traditional band. And a famous jazz singer.
Nice musics!!

My little girl looked enjoying a lot. She was dancing on the chair all the time while the music went on.

We stayed there till late night even though my condition was terribly bad due to the overdrink of the day before.

(Nah, Youn Sun, A Famous Jazz Singer)

(I've never seen this kind of Moving Bank before)

A Little Bit Easier

I'm not a politician or a political guy and not interested in politics, but watching West Wing regulary these days. Interesting? I don't know. It was quite good at first, but now a little bit boring. It is because, instead of enjoying it, I'm studying it, I think.

One of friends once recommended it as a good text for the spoken english. According to him, a lot of phrases, implications, metaphors, satires and twists(?) were there, even though I'm not sure they really are. Moreover, conversations(actually quarrels) are too fast for non-native audience like me to be easily understood. So it takes quie long time and effort to watch one episode. Became somewhat a boring job.

By the way, I found a very interesting scene yesterday in episode 1/season 4. . Josh and Tobby met a normal mid-age gentleman at a pub, who was travelling with his daughter to look around the university she would go now. The gentlemen said, he never thought his and his wife's money would be short for supporting their kids. He said, the life should be a little bit easier. Easier to support kids to go university, and easier to enjoy life itself.

I totally agreed it. It was not a complain. It was not a grumble. It was a sort of inconvenience or missing, I felt. And we need to try to make it easier. ..

The last summer was not helpful for making my life a little bit easier. The weather was not helpful at all.



The hammer was broken by the heat, I thought, while I was trying to pull off nails from the wall for repapering. The joint of the tripod was broken by the heat,too, I though, while I was trying to adjust it for making a nice angle for photos at Vivaldi Park.

The season is changing right now anyway. The cool breeze in the morning, and the chilly night air say so.

I'm waiting, no, longing for much more colder days now.. And hope a little bit easier life.

The First Guest in Many Years

Yes, it's true.
It's true that we couldn't invite any guest to home for many years. No way.

Having two cute but little kids, we had no rooms for any other things except caring about kids so far. Hospitality for kids only. Recent successive parties with 4x4 members, however, gave some hints for how starting social activities with little kids, but we were not sure still it would work well. Anyway we were considering at the moment a mini-party at home in near future.

By the way in one day of the last week, one of my best friends, KKK called me and said suddenly he would like to visit to me on this Sunday. We couldn't meet each other for quite a long time, he would be a father in this Novemeber, and we were discussing about some future business in months, so it would be very nice to meet and talk at this time.

(The Lovely Cookies and Muffins Ms.KKK prepared for us)

So we invited them without a thought. That's fine to me, but to my wife it meant she had to prepare meals and drinks, which she had not tried for many years. As worried, it was determined later as a difficult thing.

At first, we had a mistake in time assumptions and scheduling. They arrived while I was cleaning home and trying to find proper places for laundries. Then, they had to wait almost an hour for lunch. The food was not so bad, but many of them was remained.. (I had to confess: actually my wife had prepared everything alone, and I didn't do anything. If I had helped, it would've been better. And if we finished the preparations in time, I could have got some photos for them. But it looked bad to take photo for late lunch, so I didn't take any.)


Instead, this was the photo on what KKK and his wife gave us as a present. Choco muffins and assorted cookies they made till the late night of the day before. Very delicious and fantastic. Bakery business looked to be possible for them. My two kids ate them greedily, forgetting to express thanks. We enjoyed a lot.

-

After the rain at the day before, the weather was incredibly clear and wonderful. It tempted me to go out with saying:what were you doing here at home in this lovely weather. But we had a guest, and it was not bad at all. We had also a great time with them. But no nice pictures. So, I took the moon pictures again.

This was today's moon, a little bit disappeared at the right top. The time I took this was about one-hour earlier than the photo in yesterday.

-

I don't know why I did this silly job again. Possibly for a fun. The bright moonlights on the living room and the bed room led me to the balcony to watch the big moon when we switched off all the lights to go sleep.

-

Yup. Trimming and resizing was done, too, for this moon picture.

(The Moon's view from the city of Seoul, 2006.9.10. around 11 pm)

A Chill Day.

The temperature was dropping down pretty much for a couple of days. Looked like the summer went away. The rain in the morning made the temperature get down further, and I'd felt a chill for all the day.
-
Due to the rain, I couldn't keep an appointment with a number of colleagues at work to go to Changkyung Place for taking photos, even though I got a message at 7 am the plan would be kept regardless of the weather condition. Of course, I said yesterday I couldn't be there if rained. Actually it would be impossible to do anything in the rain with my little girl anyway, and I didn't like to go to somewhere only for taking pictures, but they'd suggested to join in their picnic after they knew I 'd bought a sony alpha-100 and for me hard to refuse.. One more good bait. One of their members promised to rent his film-scanner for my test-purpose.
-

( My Son in the youth's pool was trying to do something..)

Instead, in the afternoon, I went to an indoor swimming pool in neighbor with my son after his hate once-a-week english class on every Saturday. ( Ah, before going to swim, I dropped a Sony shop for a moment and got angry for their insincere manners. I'll write about this story later.)

The pool was not crowded at all but it's not so good day for swimming. If I went there alone, it would be nice. But the water was cold, the air in the pool was also cold, and I found it's really a cold day for my kid to swim. I was afraid if my son would catch a cold.

At least it's not in the summer, I thought. It's a little bit early to talk about the fall, because many of trees are still green, and I'd not seen or heard of this year's harvest- for example, rice or apples, yet.

-

I took this for a fun.

Recently I saw a lot of the moon pictures at a website I've frequently visited to, and thought I'd try to some day. Looked they took the moon's pictures to show/check the performance of lenses, especially telescope ones. I didn't know such specific things but I did it tonight and I'd like to say it's not so an easy job and not so successful at all.

I could get this from a couple of dozens, and trimmed/resized it.

(The moon from the city of Seoul, around the midnight, 2006.09.10)

Hard-Boiled Peaches

Picking peaches from mom's field was fantastic, but there's some problem. Worms, I'm not sure the species still, but worms had nibbled the fruits too much, and it's hard to eat in normal way, though it smelled wonderful, and it tasted very sweet. Thus we decided to make HARD-BOILED PEACHES!!
-

It's the peaches

After peeling and chopping them in proper size(yup, the korean measure, proper or any size you want), put them into a big pot, pour water till rougly they are sinking, and put sugar as you want.

Boiling the pot

Enjoy them after cooling.

You can make of sherbet, or pudding with them as alternatives, of course.

I read some different recipe in the Interet, in which that's just fine to cook in a double boiler, instead of direct heating. I'll try it later.

Recent Pictures

Well, I recently took these pictures, and all of them were original without post-adjustments except resizing. Please give me advices..


2006/09/03 Sunday

Frankly speaking, I had surrendered to Everland's marketing trick again. We went to the last summer splash party to get FREE water pistols. Two pictures are During-Water-Pouring and After-the-party, respectively. By the way, can you find my two kids and wife in those two pictures ? Have fun!

2006/09/02 Saturday

Yes, Picasso Exhibition. I'm not sure you can remember my old posting about SEMA, and the second picture is very similar to the photo in that posting.

The last one was taken at the rooftop of S departent store.

A little bit older pictures at 2006/08/05 at Vivaldi Park.

Hmm.. more than 13 pics at one posting. It's my new record, I think.

Have fun with this pictures

Picasso in Seoul

I was not sure my little kids could think about or feel any of something special from Picasso's works. But we'd got free admission tickets from KIA motors' promotion weeks ago and it's the last weekend of the exhibition-The Great Century Picasso, so we went to SEMA without a hesitation in the last Saturday afternoon.

( Exhibition-The Great Century Picasso - at Seoul Museum of Art)

More than a hundred works there, and my son was impressed on the ceramic plate(dish) with the title of Composition of Sausage and Egg Fries, wondering what would happen if the sausage and egg-fries were spoiled. My little girl, she went asleep in an hour in her baby carriage.

The exhibition was quite crowded, but we could enjoy it enough.

(Took this picture at the lobby of SEMA.
Trimming and color adjustment was done)

Leaving the museum, I took this picture of outside view at the entrance/exit..

伐草 or 禁草: Cutting Weeds Around Graves

1.
Since a heavy rainshower was expected in the last weekend, I'd thought the planned Beolcho(伐草: to mow grasses/weeds around ancestors' graves) would be delayed. But the expectation was totally wrong and I had to work in the rain. Fortunately the rain was not pouring so much during the work and I think it was far better than to work under the hot sun.

2.
Once the well-cared graves or tombs were the missions of offsprings in Korea. Especially before Chuseok(秋夕, Korean Thanksgiving Day), all the graves should be kept clean and clear for the upcoming memorial services or rites, Charey, 茶禮. Really hard labors were the gardening works for graves in the middle or higher place in hills, I think.

3.
The recently built family graveyard had saved great amounts of workloads. (Refer to the previous posting if interested) Even though I don't have any grave to care about officially, I'd used to join in the hard daily labor two or three times in every hot summer till the last year with the name of the family business. Really strong reason of family businesses in this 21st century! That meant anyway I had to spend two or three weekends and it had been really annoying thing.. Of course some of relatives(old gentlemen) looked to be very happy and be willing to join in..

This year, however, thanks to the graveyard, the number of graves for Beolcho was definitely reduced, definitely. It was possible since we had made a big grave for more than 18 graves' souls. In addition, the graveyard was so new, and not so much to do there. Much more people were gathered for a less job! The work had been finished in the morning, which I'd never imagined before. Such an early mission completion!

(The picture is the one I tried to post in May! One of the stone is for my wife and me...)


4.
I couldn't avoid some extra job for close relatives after lunch. That was fine. Only two I had to work for. That was really fine. While working, we had talked about the reducing number of families, and the increasing age gap between generations.


5.
I was late in that morning, and forgot to bring my camera, so I couldn't take pictures for the above works as well as for another reaping in mommy's field. Grapes and pears were the products of the last week.

( I took this after back to home)

met a friend on a train, by chance

I was sipping at the platform the hot coffee bought just few minutes ago at Dunkin Donuts while waiting for KTX train for Daejon departing at 8 o'clock in the morning, when I found a man who was looking at me, holding a cup of DD coffee like me.

Hmm, a stange gentleman, I thought taking another sip.

But soon, I felt he was still looking at me as if he had some business on me, and I had to look at him like he did wondering if I had taken any mistakes in the place in that morning.

Oh, man. I see.

I could recognize what the serious eye-sight was, which had been quite familiar in the very old past.. It was Y.

He was one of college alumni who had been quite close each other even though in different majors and was thought to be in NYC right now as a prosperous professor. I didn't know why but we didn't meet or keep in touch each other about more than 10 years so far. The last news about him I heard of was from the newspapers several years ago, appraising his successful carrier in his field. I met him on an early-morning train by chance yesterday. Almost impossible probability!


We studied each other in short after rearranging seats, which were in different compartments, and began to talk about some past memories and about what we were doing at the moment. What I learned was:

Oh, yes, he is still the prosperous professor in the state, researching the light/color-emmitting materials.

The most exciting fact was that it's his sabbatical year and he dropped here before visiting to Singapore for 6 months in Sept.( I really envy his sabbatical!! ) The funniest thing was the fact I talked too much explaining the IT industry trends and market stuffs even though it was he that gave always lessons/classes/speeches to public as a professor. Any of explanation, prospects of something should be his role, I thought. But it was because of his simple question :

You wanna listen to Chemistry things ?

It tooks only 50 minutes to Daejon and it's too short to talk about everything in the past 10 years or more, but anyway I was really happy to meet him and to chat with. Since his destination was similar to me, we got off together and said goodbye after exchanging e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Last episode. I felt he was almost a foreigner now in that he was keeping the city map in his bag, and throwing away his Dunkin paper cup into a trash can without thinkning about its refund ( as much as 50 won) if returned to any Dunkin's store instead of the trash can.

(Actually no related with the story.

Took this Mondrian-style cow in the last year at a hotel in Schipol/Amsterdam)

Another Banquet

I'm afraid guys who're reading my blog would think that I have always parties or short trips in weekends and I am a sort of lavish or prodigal... which is really not true..

Anyway on Sunday, Clockwiz invited all 4X4 members, and we all had a lot of delicious, luxurious dishes. My kids really loved Galbi-Jim(Boiled Ribs with sweet soy source) and Jabchae. Fantastic meals. Thanks to Ms. Clockwiz.. And I saw his cute fish and aquarium, and surprising woodworks.

(The Dishes Clockwiz's wife prepared for us)

It was 11 pm when we were back home , and I couldn't sleep well. I seemed to eat and drink too much, maybe. Lots of fun and full of delicious foods, the weekend was..

Scandinabian food ?

M, one of my high school friends had his daughter's first birthday party at Scamdinabian Club, Euljiro, Seoul. Since my only memory for the north's food was the reindeer steak, I was wondering what kind of foods would be serving there..

(The restaurant's signboard)

As expected, a lot of fish and sea food. Salmon salad, herring salad, somked salmon and eel , and pen shell alaking. Actually a lot of herring based dishes..

Liver paste was also special with red beets. Smoked bacon and ducks were nice, too.

I enjoyed a lot the food with old friends..

till night..(of course, other pubs, 4 rounds)

(My dish..)

Independence day - City Hall's Decoration

Someone had decorated Seoul City Hall building for celebrating Independence Day with koren traditional lamps-called it ChongsaChorong, while we were decorating our home..

(I took this at the front end of the Plaza, Aug 15)

(My wife took this in the front seat of the moving car)

Yes, the changes are these.

Basically, we are very satisfied with the results. Especially considering the costs for it.

My kids chose wallpapers with CARs' characters. How fast the market works ! We can find a lot of its characters' goods like toys and wallpapers already.


(My kids room before and after. He need to reduce his belongings..)



Big green flowers pattern for kitchen walls. It's quite modern and graceful, but we hesitated, worring about its tone and color if it would be too dark.

(The kitchen wall changes from ivory to green flowers patterns)

Another Holiday with works

I saw this morning zinco leaves which was beginning to change its leave's color to a little bit orange(not to yellow yet) at last at Namsan sowol-gil(road) while drivining to work after another 5-days holiday. Oh, the fall would be coming soon, exclaimed joyfully.

Since we had spent nice days in a nice resort in the previous holidays(it's just in the last weekend ! see the previous two posts: (1) and ( 2)), on this time, I'd like to do something that had been delayed so long by the lack of the time. Could you guess what it was?

Yes, repapering. My son had been longing for decorating his room with fashionable and new-style wallpapers quite a long time and I promised we would do it in his summer vacation. 5-days-holiday was quite a long one and I could make time for doing it. Moreover, we didn't have enough money to plan another trip. Yes, so repapering.

From previous surveys at shops in town, we'd learned it would be really expensive if inviting a couple of experts and repapering whole the house. No need to spend so much! So, made mind to minimize the work only to the boy's room, and two walls of the kitchen, and decided to do it by ourselves.

Guessed it would be hard and it's really so. For the repapering itself, only 12 hours by clumsy and unskilled guys were enough, but we had to spend in real 4 days for shopping, preparing, repapering, and cleaning- the whole things. There's some mistakes like pattern mismatch, but no problems. Rather, very satisfied with the works.

(Bangsan Market, Prints and Papers market)

One episode. We went to Bangsan market to choose wall papers, where we could buy every papers and interior stuffs in the world. After shopping with time-cosuming negotiations, we had naengmyun(Korean Cold Noodel) for dinner at the near-by famous restaurant(like MCCHAE and Clockwiz a couple of weeks ago), but we found later the little girl had some terrible alergy for it and has suffered still, in almost a week. Doctor said the buckwheat might be the reason and it would last more than a week.

Another episode. Fitting and pasting papers(silky papers) were not easy job and at least two adults should co-work for them. My mom and nephew came to us for taking care of the little girl during the work in the evening and thanks to them we could do it whole night. We went to Everland with them in the next morning and enjoyed the park's Summer Splash party. Really cool and funny. We all were totally wet.