TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Wow, hard to believe I've been here two (2) full years. It was October 20, 2002 when our plane touched down at Incheon Airport for that fateful 2-3 weeks trip to Seoul. Little did I know my wife and I would have another baby boy (conceived in Seoul, no less) to keep our first boy company within a year and that I'd be here all this time. (Our whole story is here.)

Over the years (man, strange to say that) I've done a lot here. Met many people, had some good times and some not-so-good and managed to live through it all. One thing about being here in Seoul is it's a place that shreds your arrogance. I mean it: if you think you're hot shit wherever you come from you're nothing here. Maybe you have a great product or a sharp mind or a fantastic way with people: it all has little worth here unless you can adapt it to the local market and people. Lately I've done what seems in the West to be a crazy thing: I applied momentum theory and trend analysis to the hedge fund indices. This is preposterous, of course, because hedge funds (almost by definition) do not trend all that much, and to buy them based on those ideas makes little sense. But, here they like trend-watching and, to some degree, trend-following so I made a presentation based on it. The locals seem to have taken to it. Forget steady returns, non-correlation and all the other high-fallutin' talk, give 'em a trend!

Then there's the food here. You know, I really, really like Korean food. I like the variety, the (bottomless) sidedishes, the service (the smiles and the complimentary food) and the incredible speed at which it is served. It even makes a steak dinner (except the ones from my parents' wood-fueled backyard grill) pale in comparison. I've even learned to like a few foods I didn't warm up to much initially:

Chapchae/glass noodles,t hey just had a weird texture
오징어/oh-jing-eo (cuttle-fish), I love the stuff now
미역국/mi-yeok-gook (kelp soup), my wife had a ton of this after both kids (traditional post-natal meal) and now I like it too
삼 겹살/sam-gyup-sal (3-layer fat pork) and it's cousin from Jeju Island 오겹살 (5-layers!), it was just too fatty before, but now it's no problem
소주/soju, it used to make me puke, now it's like water.
폭탄주/pok-tan-joo, soju or whisky shot in a glass of beer, used to make me really drunk and get me sick...not as much at all now
양주/yang-joo (whiskey), it's still not my fav, but I can down it with the guys
산 낙지/san-nak-ji (living octopus), ya, I even had the swimming kind; the first time I had octopus was in Osaka in them little breaded balls...never all that enthused about a slab on sushi, but get them squirming around and I'm all over it.
hmmmmmm...lots of drinking examples there...

But some foods are still too much for me:

두부/doo-boo (tofu), miso soup is ok, but if the stuff is in chunks I still can't go near it
순대/soon-day, let's see...what's not to like about blood and noodles boiled in pig guts? Lots, I say.
냉면/naeng-myoun, those cold noodles put me off...I keep thinking they are old and spoiled.

Yusheng just asked me about how to dial here, so I thought it might make sense for travellers or newbies to Korea (I know I needed a lesson when I got here). Thus, here is the Directions on How to Phone People within/from Seoul, Korea:

To start, there are 2 kinds of phones, landline (starting with 02) and cell (starting with 010, 011, 016, 017, 018 and 019).

When calling 02 from an 02 phone you just dial the last 7 or 8 digits after the 02. E.g., 02-3775-1317 becomes 3775-1317.

When calling a cell from an 02 you have to dial the whole sequence: 019-385-1317 is 019-385-1317.

When calling an 02 from a cell you need to include the 02 as well: 02-3775-1317 is still 02-3775-1317.

When calling a cell of the same prefix as the originating cell you can just use the last digits: calling 019-385-1317 from 019-3775-1317 can be shortened to just 385-1317. But, if you put the 019/prefix on as well there is no problem at all.
When calling long distance from any line in Korea the easiest (albeit most expensive) way is 001- countrycode-blah-blah. There are other ways as well, but this is easiest.

UPDATE: Now that you have that...there are different profixes for outside Seoul as well: Kyunggi-do is 031, Koje-do is 055, Pusan is 051...just treat them as you would a cell phone call if you're dialing from out of town, and drop them (just like you do the '02' in Seoul) if you're in town calling a landline.

When calling Korea from elsewhere callers need to add the country code (82) and drop the first '0'...02-3775-1317 becomes 82-2-3775-1317.
The safest way is to call with all prefixes except landline=>landline where the 02 is dropped in all cases.

Simple, eh?

Pitter-patter, time to get at 'er. (Kind of cockney accent for time to work.)