2 days 1 night - Company Workshop

Tomorrow our company has its annual workshop / training / team building / talent show / staff party / forced overtime - 2 day event. It may be all, one or none of those things. And before you pass judgement on my language skills, no one else seems to know either! (even those that attended last year, the year before, and the year before that).

The most concrete pieces of information I have about last year and this years event is that this year the T-shirt is much better (photo to follow: compare last years wast corporate colours red and blue in some weird combination that no one liked) and that last year they provided breakfast and this year, they won't!

A few weeks ago we had to submit our t-shirt size and choose our preferred day events from uninspiring and seemingly random list; coffee, archery, music, and psychology - I chose coffee and archery!

Today we got the bus allocation, room allocation and team allocation lists.

All teams and departments have been separated (except 팀장 (team leader) has been placed with her husband - fluke?), so while no doubt someone will speak English, no one who has English as a job is in my group/bus/room... further more the rooms have been given contact/lead person and possibly key responsibility and this role as perhaps by virtue of random (or scientific) selection or just an ill conceived plan - been given to me, with my phone number as a contact... so Boys if you want to know where I am with the room key "영어로 말해요, 나는 한국어 몰라요!"

So, if I survive the coffee (Bean roasting - Apparently!), Archery, bus trip and room sharing I shall be able to tell you what a Korean company 2 day 1 night trip, is like ( I am hoping nothing like the Bus karaoke, forced Korean Night club and forced alcohol (I don't mind the alcohol (You don't need to force me) but was uncomfortable to watch the over 60's sipping unwanted glasses of beer) oh last years teachers training trip!

Oh I didn't mention the talent show - our proposal of Crayon pop dance routine was (thankfully) rejected and no one wanted to do anything except one person and their husband (who doesn't work here) who will now do a Jayzee (?) performance...

Soraksan - falling at the falls in fall!

Seoraksan National Park, Sokcho-si, Gangwon-do is beautiful anytime of the year but autumn is especially wonderful.

My parents had been before, and wanted to go back to see the turning of the Autumn colour and to stay again and the wonderfully located Kensington hotel.

However, this years trip was unexpectedly cut short, My mum fell whilst relaxing on a rock at a waterfall and broke her ankle in 3 places, there was quite an adventure following the accident to get back to Gyeonggi-do and to get some treatment... 12 hours to get back, 3 hospitals, 3 days wait for the operation and we are now looking at 2 weeks recovery and possibly 5 days longer in hospital than their expected time  remaining in Korea.

The operation (on Monday) seems to have been successful and physio has started.

Korean hospital are very different from those in the west,although the medical care and procedures are the same, buildings, methods and expectations are different...

One example is that nurses and medical staff will do the Medical care, relatives are supposed to take care of all other types of care, such as helping the patient to the bathroom, getting to the treatment rooms etc.

Buildings can be different, we first arrived at the SNU hospital in Bundang, the ER was much the same as anywhere in the world; busy, noisy, not enough beds, not enough doctors - although I can't say I have ever seen a dead body (covered) being pushed past a room full of people awaiting treatment, before.

The Suji Ho Hospital is quite different, a smaller specialist (bone / joint) hospital in a korean style square concrete retail building that houses the usual mix of car parking, pharmacy, restaurants, coffee shops and other mysterious outlets on floors B3 to 3 and the hospital wards, administration, reception, treatment, x-ray and scanning, operating theatres and a roof garden floors 4 to 7. I also saw a wonderfully grammatically incorrect sign warn patients preparing to undergo an MRI scan that they "...should be aware of the metallic in your pants".

Various rooms are available V.I.P., private room, 3 patient room, 5 patient room and as many patients as we can fit beds in rooms at a nightly cost of between 30,000 ~ 150,000 Won.  The patients are equally broad in their variety... 박, 성경 an elderly but famous actor, elderly men and women, middle aged men and women, foreign Asian and my parents adding to the mix and providing a no doubt unusual white foreign representation.

All hospitals and treatment in Korea is private and has to be paid for before being discharged.

I am happy to say that although uncomfortable, the patient is recovering well...

Amazing things # 14 Fox face patch

Amazing things # 14 Fox line face slimming patch

No idea how this works, but presumably it destroys the fat from under the skin...  Sounds scary stuff, but if you want a fox face this will help ...

Father and Childs trip

As you probably know, if you follow my facebook, I went on a father and child trip with Harvey. It is a program offered at my son's kindergarten to address the problem that most Korean fathers have with spending time with their children. 

We went to a forest / recreation park in Hongcheon, Gangwon-do. it was a fun and interesting day!

One thing made me sad - they had  quiz on the bus for dads and kids won some bubbles... But, I couldn't understand any of the questions, I could tell Harvey was disappointed, I asked him to translate, the question was "What is the sweetest Ramyen?" - I have no idea - Harvey gave me the answer so even though I didn't understand I raised my hand and everyone looked at me, it was the wrong answer...  Harvey didn't say anything until last night when we got home, he nearly cried and said "I wanted to get some bubbles, but daddy couldn't win them for me!" - 

We made a printed cloth using flowers we picked from the wild flower garden, folding them in a cloth and hitting them with a hammer - It was great - even the stalks were printed to the cloth.

Here is Harvey holding our design!

We also learnt about trees and even tasted some leaves that had a citrus taste.

and we found some fresh water shrimp in a stream - they look like little lobsters...

It was a great day out with my son!

Seongnam City Multicultural Families Walk-a-thon!

On Sunday I attended an event for multicultural families, run by Seongnam City Council.

The event featured around 40 stalls from churches and community groups representing various migrant communities many of which provided food and refreshments representative of their cultures.

Seongnam city provide a full day of entertainment with musicians from Africa, South America and (of course) South Korea.

There were activities and competitions for kids (and fathers (if their children were persuasive enough) - Yes I danced on stage and received a prize)

The day culminated in a walk-a-thon, a raffle (prizes included - Ipad mini's, Bluetooth Audio Speaker systems, and about 6 bicycles; one which was won by an overjoyed woman who must have been around 70 and a fantastic firework display which although far less grand, made up for missing the  Seoul international firework display on Saturday!

here are some pictures of this wonderful day out provided by Seongnam city...

Week(end) in Seoul...

Thursday was a public holiday, Military forces day, and we all went to Seoul.
It was nice to be tourists as we explored 여의도 Itaewon , Hangang park -  and 63 building / Aquarium / observation deck.  I chose to go up the tower at around 5:30pm this allowed us to see the city in daylight and then during sunset. The views were really great!

We left the kids with my parents and returned to Jukjeon as we both had to work on Friday.
We returned to Seoul on Friday evening, by Car.  We drove through Gangnam towards 이태원 (Itaewon)- . And stayed at the newly refurbished Namsan Hill hotel, which was pleasant enough - but seemed expensive for what it was! My parents stayed at the incredible Grand Hyatt.

Saturday, we explored 이태원 and  남산 tower, but we couldn't stay for the international firework festival as children were so tired.  The N tower boasts the worlds fastest elevator 25m per second (?). We returned home to Jukjeon to enjoy some well earned beers and fried chicken!

On Sunday we attended the Seongnam City Multicultural families festival and walk-a-thon, but I will write about that in a separate post...

Photos: -----

Amazing things #13 - Anti Bacterial Case for Tv Remote

Amazing Things #13 -Anti Bacterial Case for TV Remote

Most people dream of their TV remote mating and having multiple offspring so you would never worry about losing it again - This would prevent the impregnation of TV remotes...

Seriously this prevent bacteria on your remote, surely the bacteria now goes on the silicone cover... but hey... (the picture made me laugh... ok)