30 July 2012 ~ Seoul, South Korea

Listening to: Allman Brothers ~ Wasted Words (Dreams)
I had no original interest in going to Seoul, South Korea, but I am really glad the work opportunity presented itself. I wish had longer to stay and explore.

The flight got in late and it's an hour long bus ride from the airport to the hotel. Since I didn't get into my room until after 10pm I didn't want to order a full, heavy room service meal, so in typical fashion I sampled the local beers.

I had a good view of part of the city from hotel room in the morning. It's a huge, sprawling city (233.7 square miles), with a population of over 10 million.

Additionally I had a view of the customer office I had a meeting in that afternoon.

But the morning meeting was going to be held across town, a 50 minute taxi ride. The roads are congested, despite it being an 8 lane highway through the city proper.

The first building I noticed was the Cowon building.

As some of you may know, Cowon is the brand of music player I use, because it is one of the few on the market that plays .flac files. I now own 2 different players (a D2 and a C3), because right before I left for Chicago my original one wouldn't play, so I had a new one express delivered. But miraculously, the original works again. I think I will devote one to Grateful Dead music exclusively and the other can be my juke box.

We had the address of the office in Korean, but the taxi driver didn't seem to know where we were going, despite gps. When we got nearby, he sort of shoo-ed us out of the taxi, waving his hand "over there". So my co-worker and I get out, but the buildings don't have any building numbers and we couldn't read the street signs.

We asked the first building security guard we could find, but he didn't know. My co-worker tried to call our contact, but his phone wouldn't let the call go through.

So we walked around a bit, and then asked another security guard. He had a map and told us we had to walk to blocks ahead and the building would be on our left.

We did that, but the building didn't look like an office space, so we checked out the street map. Then a nice local man came up to help us, turned us around, and pointed that it was right behind us!

We were so happy to make it (and we weren't even late for the meeting!). Here is my happy co-worker that we found the office.