Jeju Island Day 3

Day three was volcano day...because there was a volcano involved.  I went to walk a mountain trail around Geomunoreum.  Oreum are lava tubes that go under the and through the entire Jeju island.  The trail was a hike up and around a series of mountains and valleys between the mountains.

From the midway point there was a Korean tour guide who pointed out some things along the trail like caves used by occupational Japanese soldiers and the openings to some of the lava tubes.  The scenery was quite beautiful and verdant, the walk pleasant.  There were a couple of areas that had air vents that let out cold air from the volcano system as well as some lava bombs, or random chunks of lava that ended up all over the mountain from eruptions.

As a side note, almost every time I go hiking in Korea a random stranger offers me a cucumber to give me energy and keep me hydrated.  And rice cakes.  I came out from the trails near a green tea field and had to fumble my way around to find a way back to the place I was supposed to be.  I wouldn't say I was lost, but I certainly didn't know where I was.  I was only one taxi ride away from being found.

After that I met back up with my coworker and we went to an interesting hedge maze, Kimnyoung Maze.  This maze also featured a large number of cats.  Apparently, a Dr Fredric H. Dustin was a professor of hospitality and tourism and he retired to start his own attraction with things he liked (mazes and cats).  There was a specific feeding hour also for the cats, but we just missed it.  They just wandered around the maze or slept in various places (standard cat procedure).  The maze was somewhat confusing (the last twist was easy to miss).  When you got to the end there was a bell that you could ring to brag to your still lost friends or family members.  Rarely do I find someone so specifically living my dream (creating an outdoor paradise for cats).  Mine would have more scratching posts though.

We then explored a nearby lava tube open to the public.  It was much colder than the rest of the island (which was extremely hot and sunny the whole time I visited) which was a welcome relief.  It was about a 1 km long stretch of underground tube formed by flowing lava.  The rock formations were interesting.

Jeju Island Day 2

In the morning I stopped in a botanical garden on Jeju Island in the Jungmun resort district.  It was near the motel/pension I was staying at and the gardens were very pretty.  They had representative gardens for Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, and Jeju Native plants and such.  Below are the Japanese stone garden and Korean water garden.  There was also an indoor greenhouse and a tower to look down on all of the gardens.

I then went to lunch and some of the power grid conference before heading out to wander along the coast.  The coast was beautiful, and I walked several miles towards a temple and some other nearby attractions.

I walked to the Yakcheonsa Temple and it was really interesting.  It was a Buddhist temple that was also host to some anti-Japanese occupation groups or gatherings.  There was also a very dark cave shrine that I went in mostly to cool off...

There was also this section of funny little monk statues including this one with the cat in his hand!

Last, I went to a raw fish restaurant.  It was expensive, but a cool experience.  They bring you out various types of raw and cooked seafood.  The island is known for a seafood delicacy of abalone (which is actually a sea snail).  There were several dishes they brought out (like the slug) that were still alive.  I was not having that and tried and failed to eat the live slug (settling finally on just scooping it out of it's shell, letting it die and then eating it).  

They bring you the raw fish and then make a fresh stew of the rest of the fish parts that they bring you out at the end of the meal.  They also had a kind of special white kimchi which was more like a pickled ginger and really good. It was actually pretty great (aside from the things that were still living!) and I enjoyed the experience.  

Jeju Island Day 1

I got to go to Jeju Island for a work conference.  It's a really pretty tourist destination and used to be one of the main honeymooning spots in all of South Korea.  Now couples seem to go outside of the country more, but it still has a huge "couples" vibe to it.  I went with my coworker Choon and we walked to the conference center through a series of waterfalls and a beautiful bridge.

Just as a quick aside so that it's apparent that I did something work-related on this trip.  Here's a picture of a circuit recloser. These help reset faults on the power lines.  ...Now back to fun...

We went to another set of cliff sides formed by volcanic cooling I think?  The whole island was a volcano and was distinctly beautiful.  Most things that are so deadly are also beautiful (at least in spy movies).

Towards the night time, I went to the beach.  It was extremely cold water, but tolerable.  The sand had an interesting texture and color that were completely foreign to me.  The overcast day ensured that I didn't get burnt and it didn't rain the whole time I was at Jeju Island.

I finished the night off with some food (black pork belly). It was pretty good.

All I got left is my bones...

Well, summer is in Seoul, and that means that a number of my coworkers and friends are leaving for home or different things.  I went home for two weeks to see family and friends and take a break where I hadn't had that opportunity since around Thanksgiving of last year.  A lot of really great things happened while I was home!  It makes me regret signing a six month contract at Yonsei in Korean (harder to negotiate when you don't understand the exact terms of said contract).

My office mates and I went out to eat pork bone stew, gamjatang ( 감자탕) because one of our coworkers, Yizhuo from China was leaving.  My French/Moroccan  office mate, Erwan, left for home while I was gone. My fellow USC student, Patrick, will leave next week!  Koreans refer to gamjatang more as "drinking food" or what you eat when you're getting tipsy.  It's a pretty hardy stew and had a lot of pork bones (spine, rib, neck, etc), sesame or perrilla leaves, onions, pepper and spices, and rice cakes in a heavy broth.  I imagine it soothes hangovers quite well.  They cook the stew on your table.

You just kind of nibble on the bones and pick meat off with chop sticks and spoons.  Then you eat the stew and some ramen-type noodles you can cook in with it.

After that, even though we were mostly full, we went to get ice flakes or patbingsu (milk that is the consistency of snow with sweet red beans and rice cakes mixed in).  They're pretty delicious.  They have a lot of different variations on the dessert across Asia. 

Baseball

I made it to a Korean baseball game!  I have liked baseball from a young age (and played probably 5-6 years of little league).  I'm usually not that vocal about it.  Korean baseball games are much noisier, with everybody making chants for each player that comes up to bat.  They strike together noise makers and sing songs.  I think they have a fervor about the sport that Americans have lost a little bit over time.  It was fun to be reminded.  It was also interesting to see dried squid as a staple of Korean tradition at sporting events (also movie theaters).

They have cheerleaders dance about once or twice an inning, but it was always really confusing to me.  They weren't really baseball themed.  It was more like, "Hey, let's dress them up in high heels and let them dance to K-pop music."   They wore high heels while dancing also, which I imagine takes some skill.

I went with a friend named Kim Jun Il (but he goes by Joe when around Americans).  We met at my church, though he isn't actually a member of my church, and the LG Twins were his favorite team from childhood.  He used to call into hotlines to find out the baseball scores...until he ran up a large phone bill and his mother forbade him.  I told him I was looking to see a baseball game while I was in Korea and didn't mind ditching some work deadlines to see it either (which I did).  He hadn't been to one in a while and was happy to help me find tickets and go with me.

In about the third inning, the opposing team (Hanwha Eagles) scored 3 runs thanks to this guy who was a really good hitter.  He got at least a single each at bat and seemed to be carrying the team.

In the eighth inning, the LG Twins (all teams have a corporate sponsor, Samsung Lions, etc.) Scored five runs and it was pretty impressive to see.  They won the game, and hopefully seeing baseball in South Korea will prepare me to see the Gamecocks back home.

Kim Jong Eel

This last Friday I went on a field trip for work.  I love field trips!  Unless they are lame or otherwise terrible.  We went to a coastal/port city called Gochang (about 5 hours from Seoul) to tour a power systems research facility.  They had test centers for ultra high voltage power lines (up to about 800kV).  We got this really expensive delicacy of marinated eel (장어) by the coast.  They brought the eel out to the grill and then cooked it over coals and added random eel parts to the mix.  There were eel spines and livers and internals in the mix.  I thought the eel liver was actually squid, which granted to some would seem out of the typical, but here is pretty normal. Anyway, it wasn't squid and tasted okay.  The eel just tasted like a fish fillet to me which is fine and well by me.  Eel spine was shockingly similar to bacon (but less savory and flavorful).  Texture-wise it was spot on.  Bacon is a delightful meat.

    

This is a picture by the coast.  It wasn't the best looking coastline because it's a port town, but it was still fun to see!  I hope to make it to a Korean beach sometime soon.

This is a model overview of the lab facilities with testing for photovoltaics (solar power), high temperature superconducting cables, underground cable testing facilities, UHV transmission towers, and other interesting upcoming technologies.

This is some high temperature superconducting cable which we may or may not test with KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Company) in the future.  High temperature means cooled by liquid nitrogen (or around minus 196 C) instead of liquid helium (much colder).  They pump liquid nitrogen through the entire length of the cable and regulate a really low temperature that maintains superconducting properties (very low losses of energy).  The picture on the left shows the actual cable (which is pretty massive) and the right shows the line feeding to an underground tunnel.

 The trip was a little bit boring because nothing was in English, but I did at least manage to play it safe around electricity!

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: