Catch-up

OK, so it's not Wednesday, but we have been off-line for a few days until they connected us to broadband, so here's a catch-up!

Getting from one place to another is relatively easy. Just take a taxi. There are lots of taxi ranks around the place, and with a little amount of walking you can reach these within minutes. Taxis are inexpensive by UK standards. As soon as you get into one, the meter is set at 1900KRW (Korean Won, the national currency here). Each kilometer or part thereafter is charged at a 100KRW. This means that a similar £10 UK fare which would get us just a few miles into town costs around £2 here. We almost called one taxi driver a rob-dog yesterday, as we had checked out of our hotel, and moved into the apartment. The meter showed up as 4100KRW (about £2.05) but as we got out he wanted another 1000KRW. His English was as good as my Korean, and he made a gesture of using a phone, which we took to be kind of threatening, as if to call the police, or at the very least, get his mates round to sort me out. Koreans are kind of small in stature, so I knew I could have taken him on, and probably a few of his mates too. Guess how stupid we felt, when relating the tale to our Canadian friends, and found that the extra is added on in all cases where a taxi is called to pick-up which is what we did at the hotel – Doh! As previously mentioned, taxis are paid by the KM, but they also have a timer which counts down at traffic lights, which are known to be a taxi drivers friend. Some drivers act like Lewis Hamilton, but other are positive snails, and like nothing better than to sit at lights all day long, and then saunter along to the next set. A phrase we are getting used to using is Kup-Eyo which means hurry up!

We dropped off the cases, and started to decant the goods into wardrobes, and drawers etc. I have never seen an apartment with so much storage space. Each room has built-in storage, then there is more storage around the living room, off the balcony areas, and a shed load more by the front door! The apartment is a bit Tardis-like, Doesn't look much from the outside, but step beyond the door and you could get lost. An apartment tour movie is on www.youtube.com Do a search for “ansan apartment” and you will find it pop up.

Home hardware shopping was next on the agenda, and off to Tesco's in the necessary taxi we went. This guy thought he was one of the Hamilton Lewis types mentioned earlier the way he careered through the traffic. Even I had to hang onto the roof handle! Collecting a trolley (100KRW which is 5 pence by the way, as opposed to the £1 coin need back in the UK) to release it from the grip of it's mates chain and we headed into territory unknown. Heading past bags of things which are best left unmentioned, live things which were still kicking on ice tray displays, past packets of dried whitebait, which the kids here eat like crisps for their lunch time break, and a mountain of dried seaweed, which is used in the making of sushi rolls. We found the aisles where the bedding was located. Koreans sleep mostly on the floor, relying on mats or palliases to get a nights kip. The reason for this, is the heating system, called Ondol, is based upon hot water pipes fed under the floor. Closer to the floor, means the warmer you are. Normal beds are unheard of except for us “Wayguks” (Foreigners) and better class hotels. We had bought a bed, so needed some bed linen and duvet covers. We had found a shop earlier which dealt only in bedding, but guess what, only mats and covers – no concept of what a duvet or fitted sheet was! We found a half decent duvet, which came complete with cover, and pooped it into the basket. We also found matching pillow cases, and a fitted sheet – I never thought I'd say this, but thank you Tesco! Piling in some more bits and pieces, including loo roll (very important!) milk, bottled water (Korea does have mains water, but it's not very good on the treatment aspects, so they recommend the bottled variety) pot noodles (lol) and rice we headed to the checkouts. Plastic bags are frowned upon here, and they supply a bench with rolls of tape, and encourage you to use their cardboard boxes the bulk items were supplied in to them. I guess this helps out on their waste recycling targets too. We had the forethought to bring our empty hold-alls with us to carry the goods back the apartment. Taxi for 2 please!

Back at the ranch, our Canadian friend offered to take Sue down to “Sang-Knock-Soo” it's probably not how you spell it, but it's how it sounds, and it works in a taxi to get you there. The mission? To get cutlery, dishes, knives, bowls, loo brushes etc. Oh, and flip top bins for the loo's too. Why? In Korea, they can't handle loo paper down the waste treatment plant, so into a bin and bag for disposal along with the general garbage (I don't envy the bin men round here). Mission completed, Sue returned victorious with the spoils of her crusade in plenty of bags. We now have a simple functioning kitchen and household. More items arriving in due course.

Korean Telly:

Korean TV, is, well, just that – Korean! Plenty of telly-selly channels, selling live molluscs to the usual ped-egg from JML! The cable channels installed in the apartment, is limited to say the least. Channel 32 is interesting however, in that the content would be taken straight off our screens in the UK. I know what you are thinking at this point, but you are completely wrong! Its a CCTV channel with a camera pointing directly at the kiddies playground, so that nervous parents can watch their kids play in safety without having to bear the elements, and actually watch them play. The reason this wouldn't make our screens over in the UK? Do-gooders worrying that a paedophile might be droolling over his TV set seeing the kids at play. In the UK, you cant even take pictures of your own kids at the annual sports-day, or Christmas nativity play any more. Makes another reason we got out of Britain when we did. Not that I'm a paedophile drooling over his telly you know! We did however catch the local “chavs” lighting up a sneaky one before heading home at dusk.

I have asked our local guy in the plant to arrange satellite TV for us, or rather Sue, as she misses Eastenders, along with other such “quality” programming. We are expecting to get broadband within the next few days too. Our DVD player and HDD disk in currently on the high seas, and we expect this to land around the 19th March. DVD's of current cinema blockbusters with a dubious copyright agreement can be found at most subway stations. 4 for 10,000KRW (around £5). I think we might pay them a visit soon.

Thursday: More shopping!

Are we shopped out yet? I feel like I couldn't look at another shop, but we have forced ourselves to do yet another trip into Dongjan-Do, where the upmarket shops are based along with a few prized “pound shop” places. These are great for bargains like cheese graters, tupperware, shoe horns, washing liquids etc. Another taxi required please! Back home, dump the stuff off, and then back to Tesco's for the big Grocery shop now we have the fridge/freezer. We found baked beans! Lovely on a bit of toast. We looked at the meat counter, and found what we reckoned was a beef joint, so we should be OK for traditional Sunday roast. We even found a Yorkshire pud mix. Shower gel can be bought here too, but the price? Wow – around £3 for a bottle. Deodorant is also scarce and very expensive. It seems that about 50% of Koreans don't have some kind of gland that produces body odour (Cronin gland I think) so don't need it like us sweaty Westerners.

What's with the towels here?

We have two showers here in the apartment, one en-suite and one in the main bath over the tub. Like anyone, I like to get a good soak under the shower, then rub down with a huge bath sheet until dry. Towels in the shops here including Tesco and E-mart are minuscule! I mean, I have seen bigger postage stamps. OK, not quite, but the biggest towel I have seen is about the size of a hand towel you find in the wash-room. Don't the Koreans get as wet as we do under the spray like us? I reckon they must get out of the shower and run round the room until dry, because they don't buy the towels. We are going to venture over to Costco at the weekend where the American military do their shop. That's got to be a good bet for my size of towel.

Friday: Introduction visit and tour of plant.

Today was a visit to the plant, and meeting with my co-workers, and reports. Big impressive plant some new, some old, but all in very clean condition, and well looked after. About all of the space is used for some machinery or another. There is a cap-ex plan in place, and on the Agenda is a new Dragon AOI machine. We need to shoehorn it in somewhere. The plant works on 2 x12 hour per day shifts, with blue collars pulling around 60+ hours per week. Weekends are usually worked to catch up on backlogs (no difference there then!) The one thing I will be changing with urgency, is the fact the whole place comes to a halt during lunchtime, and tea breaks. All 250 staff take lunches at the same time. This equates to a huge 22.5 hours downtime per week over the 2 shifts. Rotating breaks will get a a major part of this time back at no cost to the company! Let's see how the staff react to that. Most of my time today was taken up with HR, filling in several forms for alien cards, work visa's, bank accounts, dependant's etc. I also arranged the broadband and satellite TV for the apartment which will please Sue. We hope to have this all installed by Tuesday latest. I also met the COO and CFO, board directors of the plant and took a leaf out of the etiquette book, by bringing along a couple of boxes of Walker's shortbread for them. This is probably brown-nosing at it's worst in the UK, but is considered quite polite here, and shows that I have considered the local culture. I'm off out tonight with my team along with our Canadian Ops guy – should be quite a night, if I believe all I'm told!

Norae Bangs, and cats choir!

We met up around 7:30 and headed to town. The favourite restaurant is a Korean BBQ place, which required the removal of shoes at the door, and tables close to the floor. I was quite happy to find that there was a pit in which you could swing round and place your feet into. I didn't think my back or chunky Western frame could handle the sitting cross-legged for long! The usual practice of necking Soju with an accompanying toast was the order of the night. I was accosted several times by what I thought was street vendors plying their wares, but it turns out that they are giving out little gifts along with a business card to entice you into the hostess bars located by the barbers poles. Little sachets of mouth wash, or boiled sweets are the usual things to get. After dinner, we all headed up stairs to a bar, and more beers and Soju's later, we headed back out to the street. Next up was a Norae-Bang, which is a little Karaoke room, complete with tacky disco lights, and large screen projector. One of the Koreans was most apologetic, because he had brought us to an expensive one, where the service comes complete with hostesses for the evening. We ended up with 6 hostesses to the 10 of us. Our Canadian guy opened up with Hotel California by the Eagles, and I was soon coaxed into a dreadful rendition of Wonderwall by Oasis. I could feel the cat's in the back alley covering their ears! As soon as time was up, the room cleared, and we made our way the WA Bar, which is an ice bar, where all the beers are in a central ice box, and you just help yourselves. A barmaid notes down your consumption, and sticks it on your tab next the bar. We rolled out of there at about 3:00am. I smelt like a chimney, because EVERYONE smokes like one.