Busy, Busy Day.

Today, like so many others was a day of work, broken up by my (usually daily) walk to the 산업은행/san-eop-eun-haeng (Korea Development Bank, or KDB) cafeteria in its basement. The place is like a museum and is an architectual testament to government spending: 80-foot (25 metre) ceilings in the massive foyer, dispersed offices and many, many staff. The cafeteria is large, too. Airy, bright, clean and incredibly cheap. Usually meals are 3,000 won (2.50USD) and the max is 5,000 won (about 4.25USD) as it was today. But look what I got for that (there's so much it didn't even fit in the picture!):


Kalbi-tang, whole fish, rice, noodles, octopus, 2 kinds of kimchi and some orange...soooo full.

Afterward I had my first shoeshine. (I have shined my shoes, but this is the first that wasn't a side-effect of a repair or something.) This couple worked so hard at spit-and-polishing them I felt a little guilty at the 2,000 won pricetag...then I saw their backlog of work. Wow, they must make a mint here in Yeouido.


Look at that! Her hand is a blur!

After work I met Yusheng at Technomart to look for a new camera, the Sony T-3. Andrea just got the T-11 (for some reason they named them T-1, T-11 and T-3) a couple of weeks ago from Yongsan, but the T-3 has a lens cover and is not sold in North America at all (I think they get by with just the T-1 there) so Yusheng wanted to get one here (or in Tokyo, but the price was ok here too). It took a while (had to ask tons of sellers) but he found one and picked it up.

After that we went to the Hyatt Hotel to meet a friend (another Andrea) who works at an insurance company in Seoul. Andrea is pretty good at English and Yusheng (opportunistically) seems to have a fetish for Korean gals this week, so it made for a good start to the night.

We were going to go to JJ's (review here and my blog posting on it here) but it was about 6:30 when we got there...a little early, and the restaurants and lounge there are great for entertaining for business, but for us it was a little sedate. We got in a cab and went to Treins in Seoul Station (review here) and had some food and beers...then it was off to a noraebang for some offkey (that was mine) singing. Bunny from Saturday night was in the neighborhood and joined us for a couple of songs and then we took the train to Daehangro.

Once there we met up with Kelvin and Yen from Saturday and hit Kkoon bar. It was quiet in there, but pretty fun. Yusheng was quite hungry at the end of it all so we went to 이남장/E-nam-jang which apparently is a nationally-famous restaurant for 설렁탕/seol-leong-tang (beef boiled for 24 hours and served with rice and noodles in the mixture). It was good. Yusheng said it's the same as NY 설렁탕 (albeit a lot cheaper)--seems the #1 place to go in the wee hours of the night in NY is the Korean restaurants as they are ALL open 24 hours. (The # is 02-3675-8888 if you want to go there.) Speaking of wee...for some reason Yusheng can't hold over a beer in his bladder...man, did he ever have to whiz a lot.


Yoosh dives into his bowl of Seol-leong-tang as Yen stares down the camera.


I go crazy with my Seol-leong-tang as Kelvin strikes a pose.


The boys and their soup...where's Bunny? Oh, behind the camera.

After that we decided to call it a night and broke up....until next time.

Oh, how can I forget...you know my favourite thing to take a pic of when out on the town: no-shame Korean bathrooms...here's another one (near the noraebang). It's not too bad, but not up to North American standards.


You guessed it...another wide-open lavatory shot.