Wally Nes’ Blog

First one of the “other stuff”
Some people I’ve been in contact with know that I’ve been bitching a lot about the lack of air conditioning in this house. This has been rectified.

We have A/C. Glorious A/C!
I can work in our office with a shirt on (to much relief of our neighbours I should think) and can now wake up/go to sleep dry. Going outside daily still means I go through 2 shirts a day, but inside our house is now as much a haven as the subway, 7/11 or any number of random other places here.

The reason I like the A/C isn’t the temperature difference. Really, between on and off is 3-4 degrees difference. No, what makes the difference is the humidity decrease.
Now, when I lived in the Netherlands I always assumed we had humid summers. I survived a 2 month assignment on a Queensland farm after all and working in 45 degrees (in the non-existent shade) was no exception. Make sure you cover up your fragile skin as much as possible, lather up on the exposed bits and hydrate. Don’t get me wrong, it was hot. But, as I hear my friend from New Mexico echoing in my mind now “It’s a DRY heat”. The Netherlands may, at one point in the last century, actually have gotten above 40 degrees. Perhaps even twice. Mostly though we have mid 30s in our summers. But it’s a lot harder being productive in that heat than it ever was in Oz. It was the humidity.

Then I came to Korea, installed A/C and after 4 hours of running the damn thing this was what our condensation run-off looked like:

That’s a 18.9 liter container. 4 hours of running it and it took that much water out of our air. I still have to empty the thing every 2-3 days now.
Usually people have the run-off outside, but the positioning didn’t allow for that, so we have this. My initial idea was to put a plant under it. I don’t think waterlilies could withstand that much water.

Another notable difference in the weather here and back home is that the heart of summer will sometimes last as long as 3 weeks there. Then the weather gets crappy again. It’s been 3 months here, and we’ve only just reached the worst part of the summer I’ve been told. Oh man.

Next on the list: The time capsule village.

It was a hot and lazy Sunday afternoon when I concluded I hadn’t really done anything touristy in a month. There wasn’t enough time left in the day to go to the area with the palaces, but on the other side of the mountain/park we live on is the Namsangol Hanok Village, featuring “Timecapsule square” which I’m sure gives you more of an idea what the village is about.

Let me first point out the deep, deep sense of authenticity they strive for:

popcorn ₩1,000. Hell yeah

The park was pretty good. It reminded me of a park we visited in Tokyo, it was with the vulcanus crew, before we took the boat to Asakusa, maybe someone remembers and has pictures of it online. Despite that I draw your attention to it, I don’t actually have any pictures to substantiate this claim. It is surrounded by city, but obviously distant, and that makes for a nice sanctuary feeling

Nice relaxing greeneries if you don’t look beyond the treeline though

And the village itself offered workshops in straw braiding


fan decoration

and many other things.

A different aspect of Korean culture, and one anyone that has ever experienced will agree with, is that rules in Korea are guidelines. Traffic lights are suggestions, striping and lanes are hardly adhered to, and signs are . . . . well, pretty.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

The last major subject of interest is Orion.

There’s not a lot of good pictures of him yet, but we proudly present the newest addition to our family:

Orion is a Shetland Sheepdog/Sheltie of about 1 year old. We’ve had him for a week now and as an anniversary present we took him back to the vet to have his nuts removed. Lucky dog, getting adopted by us. But it’s the reason for the cone around his head. He’s not allowed to lick/chew/scratch/mouth his stitches.

He’s a sweet dog, obviously been trained before as you can see by the following exchange:

Wally: Sit
Wally: Sit
Wally: Sit!
Wally: SIT!
Wally: Ancheyou
*Orion sits*

Because why would a Korean dog be trained in English. Duh. He is a smart dog and has started adapting to English commands. He still has some weird shit left over from living in a cage for 1-2 months being walked once a week, but he’s getting along. He’s obviously a smart dog, knows when you want something, though he’s not always sure what you mean(Seriously, our Korean sucks). Wouldn’t leave the room when we got him, which I think was trained in his last life and: Poops against trees. In a country where you have to pick up after your dog if they poop on the street that’s not a minor thing. Also, I never removed any of his surgery gauze, but he got his cone of when we were out for a bit and did it himself. Gotta keep an eye on him till those stitches are removed it seems.

Pretty much all things have been positive except the early morning walks in the rain; the so called Dark side of dog ownership, the pooping in the room during his post-anesthesia recovery and the baby talk Raphaelle uses to addresses him.

We’ll get more pictures of him over time, some in more natural environments and hopefully soon enough pictures of him without a cone around his neck as well. In some future blogpost I’ll post more pictures and explain why we got this one in more detail.

And I’ll end this blogpost with a picture of one of the other animals Orion shares this house with. Bugs are kinda numerous here I’m afraid.

And in an unrelated matter. If you were to look at the picture numbering in the folders you’ll see it’s gone from 99XX to 00XX. This is the 2nd time it’s done that. 20.000 pictures taken . The camera still performs well, with the exception that it now chugs batteries.

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Quote of the day:

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am

- Anonymous