We have about a week before school officially begins so GANATA!

Last day lunch with the Boss, who is in red on the right, Professor Paik. He is also a design tutor in our school.

These are crazy girls Jinny(left) and Lynn. They sit opposite us at work, and despite the language barrier, we did have some fun.

Farewell dinner with the colleagues with Chicken Bangi and beer.

This concludes the good times at Kyung Architecture

I must say, Singaporean food has an extremely great variety never to be found elsewhere. We were all very excited to be eating chicken rice and laksa again. But of course the ingredients were slightly different, Koreanised to be exact, so the Singaporean food turned out to be less authentic than desired. But it was all good fun, because we met many new and interesting Singaporeans, and it was nice to be in a familiar environment with the familiar accent. Not to mention this super pretty German mixed Chinese girl we met at the dinner. So Gorgeous!

NDP. Channel 5 and good old Mark Lee

Chefs very busy preparing Laksa.

Super pretty German Chinese Baby. So hyperactive too! We kept trying to get a nice photo of/with her but she kept running

So we kept trying

....and trying.....

Finally some close ups

So pretty, right?!

Towards the end of the evening she got real pissed and angsty.

Seoul Racecourse

Most of my male friends were visiting the Seoul racecourse today. I thought, since this place is big enough for a whole subway station to be named after it, it should be worth the trip, right?

Furthermore, I only had a short while to spare before I had to return to the dorm for an online project meeting with my project group in Singapore, and my female friends were going shopping again so the racecourse seemed like the better option.

After a long duration of observation and deliberation, I finally bought my ticket. There was so many things to learn! How the rates changed as we got closer to the race, what the numbers on the boards meant, it was so hard! Anyway, I chose my horse, number 4 and bought a 500 Won ticket.

My winning ticket

Horse 4 comes in SECOND!!!

Collect 1200 Won at the counter, which means I won 700 Won! Yay!!

700 Won makes for about 1 SGD. Cheap, but very thrilling! Haha!

Racecourse gallery. Packed with people!

Racecourse

So hot but still worth it cos we all got to wear the traditional costumes!

Then because we are good architecture students we visited Rem Koolhaas’ Transformer installation nearby.

Rem Koolhaas' Transformer

Inside the transformer there is this exhibition on a particular artist’s animation, which was a little too arty farty for most of us to appreciate.

Our Korean friend then took us to visit the nearby museum which had the whole of Seoul modelled out! It was amazing! We managed to find all the little places that we have visited so far. It was so intricately detailed! With lights and all. Amazing effort.

Model of Seoul

You can see how minute the details are, compared to the scale of the humans. So cool.

And this was still not the end of the day. Working in our department were 2 other interns who wanted to take us out too.  We were supposed to go for this Jimjilbang outing but the day was so long and hot that we forgot all about it during dinner. So mean! But that was how it happened. We were just so happy to be able to sit down in the cool room for dinner that we totally forgot about the outing and ended up about an hour late. Anyhow we managed to be there for our first Jimjilbang visit.

While we had read about Jimjilbangs online, we knew we would not be comfortable undressing totally and bathing with strangers so we did get our colleagues to commit that we did not have to be totally naked for this particular Jimbilbang. However when we got there, we were totally shocked because EVERYONE was naked! There was a female bathing section, a male bathing section and a unisex area where everyone can hang out afterwards. But this is a true blue Korean Jimjilbang where mothers daughters aunties grannies bath together in public completely naked. What were we thinking man.

Shower and bathing area. There are many different pools for you to soak yourself in at different temperatures.

Unisex sauna

Unisex Ice room. It is apparently good for your skin if you go into a hot environent and cold one interchangeably. *Hanskin*

After all the bathing, some people choose to lie in such cubicles to sleep

Others rest in open areas like these

The rest of us huddle in miniature rooms like this. Very cosy and with entertainment!

While it was shocking to us initially, we couldn’t help getting a little envious that the Koreans have such bonds with their female counterparts, whether mother, sister, grandmothers or friends, which allows them to get  so comfortable being naked around each other. It is a very cool tradition and culture, especially when its so affordable! Jimjilbangs are actually the cheapest overnight accommodation around,  costing about 8 000 to 10 000 Won per night. Thats just about 10SGD.

The movie is quite typical of Korean dramas, very very exaggerated and some insertion of humour at most points. For me it was just alright.

However, being in the enclosed space of the Cinema made me feel really foreign. I could only understand everything from the images and subtitles, from the ads to the movie itself. Around me, everyone was speaking in a foreign language too.

On the way to Yongsan, the important place with subtitles for Korean movies. That is Teddy driving and Dave in the passenger seat.

This is the first time we rode in a Korean’s private car. Being on the road made us suddenly aware of how underground our life in Seoul has been. It seems like we have been part of this underground community, like roaches or something.

Ah… light and fresh air.

The subway from the high parking area

Popeye!

Language barrier

Back to our underground subway life =D

The LG Ice cream, image courtesy of http://bbykaren.livejournal.com/36853.html

But the rest of us couldn’t bear to part with that money to get such a nice phone, since it cannot be used in Singapore anyway. Though really pretty, no LG Ice Cream for us. Instead, we got second hand phones that look ANCIENT in comparison.

10 000 won per phone!

10 000 Won could come to about 12 SGD. Haha.. We are really holding the most ancient phones available. Gotta hide them in our bags if we SMS in public! Completely Uncool!

We have a very nice colleague called Dave who attends to our every need in the office from software to daily meals.

One day he offered to take us to this temple which is located quite far from our workplace to watch a performance. We were all quite interested because we have never watched classical performances in a temple before. So we made our way to the temple after work to catch this performance.

When we reached there, we were all so awe-struck by the beauty of the scenery. The temple is located on a hillside and it overlooks the city. There are also mountains in the background, making the view completely like one plucked out from a painting.

It is just too bad that I did not have my DSLR with me. This is the best that my dear Olympus Handycam and myself can do .

The temple entrance

You would think that monks would be still when they sat. Actually they swayed along with the music and really had a good time!

View framing by the door from the inside

At the end of it all, we came to realise that the 2 performers were actually Dave’s mother and sister. Cool!

For one of our lunch breaks, our colleagues took us to this restaurant that sells Duck meat at a very reasonable price. It was so delicious that went back to tell all our Singaporean friends about it. For the whole time, there is only Beef and Pork for all our meals. So with the availability of Duck meat, all our Singaporean friends were so excited and did not mind travelling the distance to our workplace to have it.

So here we are, having dinner at this restaurant after work. Our friends have travelled by subway for about half an hour to forty-five minutes just for this. Actually the pricing for this food is extorbitant during dinner hours. It is only for lunch sets that it is reasonable. Fortunately the waitress was nice to give us a better rate since we were all exchange students. It is funny how out of the way Singaporeans are willing to go for good food.

From left: Caroline, Tracy, myself, Jenny, Geraldine Chng, Shuyi, Geraldine Ho, Dave

This is called Tongkasu which is just fried meat with flour/breaded coating. This one in particular is special because it has stuffing like sweet potato and cheese + kimchi. The one stuffed with sweet potato was amazingly good!

This guy is doing some wire craft

Very unique shopping building! It is open-aired and people walk along ramps as they are shpping so all floors are ramped. Shoppers dont need to climb stairs to reach the top. The summer heat made it a little uncomfortable though.

From left: Me, Tracy and Jihye. Jihye is our savior for this trip. She helped us with all admin stuff!

I didn't expect to see this toilet bowl in Korea! It has functions like a water sprout to spurt water from inside the bowl if you need to clean up, and fake flushing sounds in case you need to make some embarrassing noises. It was everywhere in Japan but apparently Koreans are not really comfortable with what it does.

The black building at the back is Korea's first skyscraper. As for the debris in front, we thought this was a part of the demolished highway that is now Cheongyecheon, but we were wrong!

It is actually a part of the Berlin Wall! Cool!

After walking around Insa-Dong, we went up to Namsan where the famed Seoul N-Tower stands. Apart from the N-Tower, there is also a famed wall of locks that has been accumulated over the years by couples who visit this mountain and leave behind locks with the hope of everlasting love.

It is too bad that my camera was running low on energy that day.

Image courtesy of Flickr

Image Courtesy of Flickr. This love seat leaves people with no choice but to cuddle in the middle.