The History of Marriage (An Elective Class)

I went back to the same palace (Changdeokgung) that I was at last week with a group of friends because we saw an announcement for a  reenactment of a royal wedding from 1866.  Last week, we also didn't get to tour the palace's secret garden (not the Hallmark made for TV movie, but more like the royal retreat back in the days when there were Korean emperors).  Also, it's not so secret because they just give out tours to anyone who pays ₩5,000 (about $5).

This tree was really interesting and was estimated to be 750 years old.

Now usually, I prefer not to go to weddings as a general rule.  Also, historical reenactments terrify me because I never want to be too enthusiastic about history.  This is a tangential point, but I don't understand why Swamp People and Pawn Stars are on the History Channel.  Anyway, I did go to the wedding reenactment, and it was pretty interesting!  People were dressed up in traditional Korean robes and they brought the guy playing the prince out on this chair.  The bride met him soon after that with a processional of maidservants.  We weren't terribly close to the actual ceremony, but it was interesting seeing all of the costumes and pageantry.  I felt like dragons should have been present, but sadly, there were none.

 

Electrical Expert

Today I got an email from a kid at my church asking questions about electricity for a school project.  I thought I would just post the letter, questions, and my responses.  I did lie to him a little bit though because I told him about how metals conduct electricity without using the words "magic" and "unicorn" at all...

Dear Mr. Coats,

I'm researching electricity for a project at school. My dad says you're an expert. Can you answer these questions, please? If you could respond by Sunday, I would be grateful. 

Sincerely,

Ethan

-Why did you decide to go into a career in electricity?

When I was maybe 10 years old, my dad was building a computer and asked me to help.  He taught me how to properly protect the components from static electricity (like when you get shocked by touching a door knob).  We installed all of the parts from the computer by ourselves, and then every time after that when we needed a new computer or to fix the computer that we had, my dad and I would look at the parts we needed and decide what we needed together.  I got interested from there in electronics and what it takes to build them!

-How do you use electricity in your job?

We create an electric signal and then send it down a coaxial cable (like what you use to connect your TV to the cable box).  When the signal goes all the way down the cable it bounces back and we can tell by the time the signal takes to return how long the cable is.  If the signal hits a part of the cable that is bad, it comes back sooner and we can measure where the bad spot is.  It's like bouncing a ball against a wall and then counting how long it takes the ball to return.  If someone gets in the way and you hit them instead, you know that you didn't make it all the way to the wall!

-What's the coolest thing you've done in your job?

One time I built a system to control a helicopter propeller.  It could push the plate underneath the propeller one way or another to change the direction of flight.  I have gotten to travel all over the United States and now all over the world, which has been really great!  

-Why does electricity flow through metal?

Metal is called a conductor, which means that electricity can flow through it.  Everything in the world is made up of tiny parts called atoms and in the way that metals arrange these small atoms they create a sheet of these atoms all in a line.  Then electrons, which carry electricity, can easily move from atom to another and form something called a "sea of electrons."  What we as humans do to use metals as conductors is create an electric field that guides the electrons the way we want them to go.  In computers or electronics, we often use something called semiconductors which let us control when electricity flows or doesn't flow and insulators (stuff that does not allow the flow of electricity).

-Do you think think that electricity is a type of energy we should keep using?

I sure do.  We can do a lot of great things with it like power hospitals that help so many people or simple things that we don't always think about like heating our homes and showers.

-How much electricity have you seen used at one time?

One time I toured a power plant, and I saw the furnace that they burn coal in to generate up to 600 Megawatts of power.  That is enough electricity to power several cities.  They let me put on a special face mask so that I could look inside the burning furnace and see how hot the coal was.  It was like looking inside of a volcano!  I also used a piece of equipment that went up to 50,000 volts one time.  To give you an idea of how much voltage that is, a typical AA battery like what you might have at home is 1.5 volts.

-Do you think electricity is essential or could we live without it?

People lived a long time before electricity was used like it is today, but I feel like it makes our lives much easier.  People used to go to bed almost as soon as it got dark, but now we can stay up a little bit later and get more done in the day.  We can fly to places all around the world, or I can talk to my family on the other side of the world.  

-Does electricity have any negative effects on our planet?

It does.  A lot of power comes from burning coal or diesel fuel (like gas that you use in your car).  This can cause pollution.  Now people can use what are called renewable resources like solar or wind power, and the effect on the planet is not as bad.   People are working to fix many of the problems that are caused by electricity.

Springtime in Seoul

It has been a later spring here than I was used to, and it's only now starting to heat up.  We've had a lot of April showers here and apparently the rain is very acidic so everyone uses umbrellas even if it's just a light drizzle.  Here's the hallway of offices in my building lined with umbrellas.

The temperature last week was very...inconsistent and included a day where it randomly snowed for 2 minutes.  This week has been much warmer and my Korean coworkers were craving cold noodles.  They eat them a lot in the summer time as well as sometimes eating them as a finishing course right after really hot meals.  The rice noodles here are really great  and they also use them in a lot of other dishes.  Cold noodles kind of tasted like a sour slushie with vegetables, noodles, and eggs all mixed together:

Two Adventures Turned Into Four

I went on a multiplying adventure today!  I had wanted to go to this museum in my neighborhood that deals with the occupation of Korea by the Japanese and later a palace further away to see the blossoms of late spring.  Added into the mix was a hillside park right by my school campus at Yonsei University and a night of Mongolian food and visiting "Mongolian Town" and "Russian Town."  Here's a map of my main adventures, (1) An-San Park to (2) Seodaemun Prison to (3) Changdeokgung Palace:

The park had a pretty cool set of stepping stones in the river to get across before you got to a water wheel and then a hillside garden and trail.

My main goal today was to get some good pictures of Spring and the blossoms on all of the tree. Mission accomplished:

From there I went to the Seodaemun Prison History Hall.  It was an old prison that was used from 1908 until 1945 to house political prisoners and rebels who opposed the Japanese.  It was pretty neat and had a main museum part and bunch of side buildings with prison cells or recreations of the work factories prisoners were forced to work in.

They also had an exhibit displaying all the methods of Japanese torture (which were many).  There was a big group of kids going through the basement torture exhibit, and they seemed to have a blast playing in the different torture mechanisms!  I got in the uncomfortable holding cabinet and one of the kids' chaperons closed the door on me and laughed a lot!  Good times. I'm glad I'm not horribly and debilitatingly claustrophobic.

Then, I went from there to Changdeokgung Palace to see Cherry Blossoms and cool architecture followed by a surprise trip to eat Mongolian food.  They seem to really like meat (lamb and beef), potatoes, carrot, cabbage, gravy, and random bits of Asian influence like noodles...which I'm always down for (meat especially).  I'm pretty sure Mongolian grills are horribly, culturally inaccurate.  I had lamb and homemade noodles with some pretty good homemade bread. 

Work, work...

I thought I'd give a brief post about why I'm in South Korea and some brief general aspects of my research.  I came here to set up a laboratory to basically do the same things I do in America.  From there the goal was to publish a paper or three and use those to form the basis of my dissertation.  This is a picture of the lab set up here in Korea:

That's the equipment we use to test cables, and we received some samples from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which is a governing body on nuclear power for creation of standards.

A couple of days ago one of the project managers at my school in USC sent me an email saying that they were looking to dismantle my laboratory in the United States and wanted to know what equipment I still needed for my dissertation (great news! ...not really).  I'll have minimal space now (probably in a janitor's closet).

My first thought probably should have been to different projects that I had going on there...but in actuality, I thought about my collection of Goldfish boxes I started in 2008 to see how many Goldfish crackers I could eat by the end of my dissertation?  The answer was "a lot."  I've started a much more modest collection in Korea as well.

   

Bukhansan National Park

I went Saturday on a hike through Bukhansan National Park with some friends from my church and some of their students (most of the Americans I meet here my age are English teachers).  We had planned on taking a more challenging course, but ended up on the Uiam course which was pretty easy because some of the other hikers were more dainty.  The national park was about an hour away by subway, but really pretty fun to explore.  The base of the mountain has a huge number of vendors selling hiking gear (walking sticks, packs, hiking clothes), and all the way to the park and along the trails I saw older retirees who just love hiking and are extremely intense about.  They have all the gear and just head out every weekend to go hiking.

All along the trail on the way up are these neat little temples:

Once we finally got to the top, it was interesting to see the city of Seoul (which is massive) and have a different perspective on it.  Also, there was a cat.  I found out from one of my Korean coworkers that not as many people in Korea like cats (for various reasons), but I think cats have become a little more popular in recent years because of Hello Kitty.  ...So there's that.

Nemeses

Two friends of mine are getting married (to each other), and this is how I choose to celebrate:

Nightlife, Exploring, Captain N, and the tower of Babel

Here's a short list of some places I've explored:

I met up with a friend from high school teaching near Seoul to go to the Seoul National Museum.  It detailed some of the history and prehistory of Korea, Singaporean art, private collections, and Buddhist statues.

Made famous by the song, Gangnam is a pretty nice, expensive area with lots of shopping malls, stores, and restaurants.  There's much less dancing, fewer horses and stables, and less colorful attire than I was ever expecting.

I've also been to Itaewon, which is kind of the foreigner or American district.  There are lots of American restaurants there and shopping advertised for "Big Clothes" (aka anything above an Adult M).  I'm still working out whether I have to make a shift up in clothing sizes to compensate for general Korean smallness, but typically buy an XL just to be sure it'll fit.  This tower is on a mountain near Itaewon, and I'll try to explore there before I go home.

Nightlife doesn't get too crazy because my dorm has a 1 or 2am to 5am lockout/curfew period because it's actually a Christian college complete with an on campus chapel right by the student center.  I haven't really touched that curfew yet, but maybe someday!

Seoul Searching

Here's a little walk-through of my days here in South Korea.  I wake up and check for any belligerent craziness coming from the North...  There always seems to be something new!  Then sometimes my day starts here (swollz, left) on the bottom floor of my apartment/dorm complex (right)...

Then on to my office at Yonsei University.  My whole goal in coming here was to keep a good working relationship with my academic advisor, set up a laboratory with funding he received from the Korean National Science Foundation, and then maybe (maybe) get some work done on my dissertation.  

From there, depending on the day and what's going on in my personal workload (doing research, writing papers about research), I'll head to our lab facility where I'm setting up an experiment to measure the health of cables.  The building that houses our lab was funded by the Korean Electric Power Company (KEPCO) and is established for future power grid research because, like it or not, the infrastructure of power companies is super old (think Thomas Edison, General Electric) and will shortly face some serious renovations.  

That was a side note, but essentially the story I want to tell is that to access the building after about 6pm, you have to put your hand inside a blood vessel reader to measure the unique patterns of (back of) palm blood vessels.  Apparently the width of vessels will change with things like excessive drunkenness, so I try to avoid that (or avoid working late/coming back to work late I guess).  I usually end the day by going out to eat with coworkers and then walking back up a pretty steep hill to my dorms.  Church here doesn't have many night time activities due to the fact that everyone seems to work late and people are spread out all over the huge city of Seoul and outskirts.

That's really all I have to say about that.

Galbi (간비), Delicious Grilled Meats

Many of you are aware of my love of grilled meats.  In Korea, they do a whole lot of that.  One of the big traditional types of Korean restaurants you run into is called a galbi (간비)  or ribs restaurant.  It's a really general term along with gui (구이) or grilled meats for any meat like beef (probably my favorite), chicken, pork, or various seafoods cooked on a grill in front of you at your table with a whole bunch of sides.  They bring the meat out to you raw and then depending on the type of meat you cook it yourself or they cook it for you.  Here's how it starts (this time with octopus, which is the weirdest one I've had so far in Korea):

This place brought us bibs to wear:

...and the final product...

This is the same story with chicken:

With the culture here, you end up going out to eat with your coworkers for most every meal.  People do a lot of working.  I try to get my adventuring and exploring in on the weekends!   Sorry most of the "adventures" everyone has seen so far have been adventures in food, but I've only had about 3 weekends here and lots more opportunities to go out and eat with coworkers!

Easter Nostalgia

Hristos a Inviat!  (Christ was resurrected or Happy Easter in Romanian)

This came up in one of my newsfeeds and has some details about one of the places in Bucuresti, Romania I visited with my family (and Stefan) in 2007 after my mission there!  I walked past it on the mission maybe once or twice, but I don't think I managed to tour it while I was there!

http://io9.com/strange-architecture-of-the-tito-and-ceausescu-regime-463206623

This is a little late, but I wasn't quite ready to celebrate Easter this year because in Romania it's always later (because the Orthodox church goes off of the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar).  I think it's on May 5th this year in Romania.  Some of my favorite Easter memories were of times I spent on my mission!  

The first year I was an extremely fresh (not fresh with the ladies, but new in the mission) missionary in a city called Galați near the Danube river by the Moldovan/Ukrainian border.  I think we had two separate families feed us 5 course Easter dinner/lunches, and I have never been more full in my entire life (including that one time Will Erskine and I stopped in the Combination KFC/Taco Bell and doubled down on dinner).

Easter is a three day celebration there (in Romania not at the Combination KFC/Taco Bell), and we would always take off our name tags and go to the Saturday night mass of the Orthodox church!  One of my favorite things that they did in that mass was the lighting of candles by Orthodox priests.  They normally wore all black robes, all year round but would wear these sweet white robes with gold inlay and elegant embroidery on Easter only (a day of victory).   They had this huge candle that they would light to symbolize the light, life, example, and Resurrection of Christ and would then pass that light to the congregation (a room packed so tight with humans).  Each member would then pass it on from person to person until everyone had light and the whole room was bright (from being previously kind of dim).  It was one of my favorite symbols of Christ.

My second year I was in Constanța, by the border of the Black Sea, with five of my favorite mission companions/favorite people (Step-M-wolf came later and was also a favorite).  We had heard that if you made it all the way back to your house with your candle still lit the Virgin Mary would grant your wish/prayer.  I'm pretty sure I didn't make it very far (the wind off of the sea was killer), but it was fun trying!

Easter in Korea was great too; I just wanted to share some nostalgia. I hope it was a great holiday for everyone and your respective families!

Much Love,

David Lee Coats