Wally Nes’ Blog

Let me explain.
Starcraft is a real time strategy computer game whereby you control your army and resources and fight off . . .  someone else. It’s got a rich story and intricate history, good aliens, bad aliens, ulgy aliens and ugly humans and you can fight all if you so please.

If, as a reader of this blog, you are not familiar with Starcraft I can understand. Real Time Strategy (RTS) games, or indeed computer games are not everyone’s forté.

If, however, you were to not be familiar with Starcraft as a Korean you might soon be visited by some serious gentlemen in white coats and you would never have to worry about hurting yourself on hard-surfaced furniture ever again.

Starcraft I released in 1998 and in the next decade sold 9.5 million copies worldwide. 4.5 million of these in South Korea. Since it’s release over a decade ago there has been a thriving gaming and tournament industry on this platform in Korea. Up to the release of the sequel SC II in 2010 there were quite a number of professionals making a living on this decade old game, where between sponsorships, prize money and television careers (yes) these players could live in relative luxury.

Last year the sequel was released. Starcraft II.

Pretty soon tournaments were planned. Actually there were active tournaments while the game was still in beta.
When the second season of the GSL (Global Starcraft League) had it’s final 20 minutes walk from my house I decided I must attend.

I looked long and hard, for this is all in Korean, and found . . . GomTV. I had to register at the website and mail someone my intention to attend.

Access was free

I did not have to stand in the queue

And we were escorted to our front row seats.

The stadium was massive, usually used for Korean wrestling matches (think a slimmer version of sumo)

And you can just see the poor Koreans having to sit on the bleachers while we had the same view as the sports reporters you see at the front of that picture.

This, of course, was actually a drawback. You see those two “cells” on the left hand side of the picture? That’s where they put the players, so we could see NesTea of BoXer furiously . . . . clicking

We did have a very good view of the screens showing the action fortunately.
And a good view of the commentators, sitting on center stage between the two massive screens screaming about . . . . Starcraft? anti-dandruff shampoo? North-South Korea political tensions? We don’t know.

In the end, in a close 4-3 victory, we saw NesTea emerge victorious over BoXer. Fraught with emotions, wiping away tears he came forth to accept the 100 million won (€70.000) prizemoney.

It’s not football level (yet), but together with his sponsorship, the money paid for interviews and all that . . . not a bad haul.

And not a bad way to spend an evening. Sitting amid a shouting, roaring mass of enthusiastic Koreans watching their game of choice.

More pictures here.

============================================================================

Quote of the day:

My butt does not deserve a website *12

- Bart Simpson

We built a piece of furniture.

But before I go and show you the fruits of our efforts I’ll put in a little background info.

Korea’s national past-times are: Hiking, rotting in-hot-sauce-covered pieces of cabbage and Starcraft.
Note the absence of DIY.

There is NO Home Depot here. There’s little family run stores which do sell a variety of tools, pans,chicken wire, heaters/fans, dustbins and other general . . . . stuff-things. Now, these little stores do a nice job of getting you settled with generic tools, but they can’t get you stuff to use tools on. If you live in Seoul you’ll have at least 1 in walking distance. Probably 2. We have 3.

We asked around, weigooks, Koreans, locals, out-of-town-ers. There is nowhere in Korean that you can buy wood.
You ask a carpenter who will magic wood out of his ass and 3 days later will show up with a piece of furniture. If, then, you feel like you could do with an extra screw in there you go to your local family thingy and buy 2 screws and a screwdriver.
If I’m not mistaken that is how it works here.

Problem is: I don’t know any carpenters. And I don’t speak any Korean to communicate with the carpenter what I want, or even where I can find his office.

Now, there was an area in Seoul of interest. We’d walked along a canal near Euljiro some time ago and noticed a collection of these little family shops side by side. They lined the canal for a good couple of city blocks. So we planned an afternoon to explore these shops and see if we could find our lumber supplier there.

We started at Jongno 1 ga. Top left. We found our lumber, 5 hours later, at the bottom right (isn’t that how it always goes?). As a reference btw, east to west that runs 850 meters.

Before we found our wood, we’d found:

• Metal
• Glass
• Plastic
• Engravers
• Cloth
• Haberdasheries
• Fish
• Cooking supplies
• Baking supplies
• Printers
• Packagers
• Lights
• Electronics
• Screws
• Sewing machines
• Chairs
• Paper
• and much, much more

Aelle made a small photo report of this area, but she’ll need a couple more to capture all of it.

If, after graduation, I find myself with a lot of time on my hands I’ll try and map all these things out on the map above, post it on the internet and save a LOT of foreigners a lot of frustration.
Maybe some locals as well even.

You see, Korea is the country in East-Asia with the tallest people, but the furniture producers haven’t really picked up on this. My kitchen counter is 82 cm high. Working on that will get dishes washed and carrots chopped, but it also grows a mighty fine hernia. If you need any illustration of that, remember how you feel after a marathon dish-washing sessions and know that I’m a fair bit taller than you (If I’m not I really shouldn’t need to explain this problem, you live it every day).

Anyway, so the backstory is that I’m tall and wood is hard to find in Korea. Damn near took us 4 months to find the stuff. Damn. (2 days after purchasing wood I went back to the area for some specific tools and found that carpenter in a sidestreet off where we found our wood btw)

I’ve made furniture before so I was fairly confident in my abilities. Over this project I was to face 2 challenges. The first of my own choosing.

I wanted something pretty. NO screwholes and stuff. Smooth wood all the way.
This meant I worked with dowels and glue only. I suppose I could’ve cheated on the backboard, but who knows where that thing ends up, so I wanted to make sure it was pretty on all ends.

Here’s some of the pictures of the project.

The second challenge was inherent to the house we live in. Look at the last picture and see if you can spot it.
First, the distance at ground level between the wall and the cabinet is different. This is because the walls aren’t straight here. They’re about 3-4 degrees off level, they’re also warped (meaning curved), which will play a role when we put up shelves.
Second, note the gap between the cabinet and the table top on the right side. This is because the floors aren’t level either.

Have you ever tried making something straight when you can’t really trust your level? I stopped after the cabinet to get a mechanist square to try and contain all the little errors that had snuck into the design by using a spirit level on a non-level reference frame.

But there it is. 1000 mm high and a perfect height to do kitchen stuff on. We’re putting two shelves on that wall when we can get a [thingy which measures if there's current running through the wall, someone please tell me the name of this tool] to make sure I don’t screw up the wiring of the house putting these up.

For those of you that have really good memories may note a discrepancy between the second to last picture and one posted here.
For those of you that haven’t tasted our baked goods yet, we now have an oven. And about time it was, this keeps Raph out of trouble for hours at a time .

We combined the cabinet with solving a problem you might have noticed on an earlier reporting as well. This really is how wiring is done here. And the thing keeping the wires curled up like that are a hair-band and 2 clothing pins.

Before

After1

After2

Drilled a hole in the back of the cabinet, put the wifi box and the extension chord in the cabinet. Though I had to mount the router on the wall. It comes with a solid chord. The solid chord was, at some point presumably, pulled through the hole in the wall we have there and connected up on our roof to the city’s telecommunication grid. Obviously I wasn’t going to try that so with the help of two screws and some powertools that now hangs from the wall. There’s another extension chord behind the printer for easy access for the vacuum cleaner and my laptop

I still need to put the chord of the extension chord in a gutter of some kind. The cable swinging under the window there is for my laptop power. It’d be prettier if it was tucked away, but the nature of laptops is that they’re mobile. So I need something able to move more than something pretty.

Only serious problem remaining is that little rolled up chord on the printer there. Our printer came with a 1 meter USB cable. Didn’t quite cover all possibilities properly apparently. Easily fixed when next I go back to Euljiro though. I know exactly to go for a 3 meter A to B USB cable.

And if you’re lucky, I’ll draw it out and soon, so will you.

=========================================================================================

Quote of the Day:

Some tool-men say “Why? “, this tool-man says “Why not? “                                              – Tim “the Toolman” Taylor
This tool-man’s wife says “Why me?                                                                                       – Jill Taylor

The ABCC11 gene.

It tells us so many things and is of vital importance to our every-day life. It seems that based on race, location and some other factors this gene and it’s surroundings fluctuate.
There is, for instance, lots of LD around ABCC11.
But more importantly, there is some difference in rs17822931-G/A where Europeans mostly have G and Asians mostly have A.

Distribution of this difference is illustrated in figure 1

Figure 1: rs17822931 type distribution worldwide

If you don’t know how any of this is relevant to you (and I don’t see a reason why any of this should make sense to most of you)

• Europeans predominantly have wet earwax
• Asians have dry earwax

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/10/east-asians-dry-earwax-and-adaptation/

===============================================================================

Quote of the day:

Alas, earwax

- Professor A. Dumbledore

We interrupt this blog for a breaking story

Today, it rained in Seoul.

This, in it’s self, is not much to talk about. It rains frequently in Seoul during late summer.

Today’s rain was remarkable because it came with bits of Namsan park floating in it.

Soon after learning of the deluge by sticking my head out the window I went to see what caused this. Going right after that building in the back I found this:

Due to our inability to speak the language we are as of yet uncertain what body of water came down, but this is an exposé showing our brave adventurer unclogging drains to stop the water from coming down and examining the park above our house where the water must have come from.

More news when our Korean neighbour comes back from her trip to the beach and can ask the neighbours what the hell happened

For now, this is Wally signing off
And getting a nice warm blanket to crawl under

For the complete pictures go here.

=========================================================================================

Quote of the day:

At least now it’s merely hot, instead of humid hell

- Raphaëlle

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.

====================================================================================

Quote of the day:

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

- Anonymous

So, I’ve been writing for a while. But mostly about things worth mentioning. Well, mostly about things worth mentioning and worthy of the effort to write down.

Unfortunately, my life isn’t filled with just things that are worth mentioning/writing down. There’s also a whole bunch of other stuff. But as this blog isn’t so much about me saying funny shit, getting a book deal and cruising to easy-town, and more about my life so I thought I’d mention some of the less mention-worthy stuff.

There’s Ultimate Frisbee. Now, it’s hard to combine a word like Frisbee, the plastic disc we’ve all chucked around as some part in our life with Ultimate. So to give you an idea of how much I run during these events here are a few videos.
Though I’d like to add I’m nowhere that fit and usually only run that fast during the first 2-3 points. But it’s a nice game and even though we play in the heat of Seoul summer I enjoy it. We play on the shore of the Han, which means we have a nice view while playing.

There’s my Thesis. You know . . .  the thing at the end of my academic career? The thing I’m here to finish? The thing that’ll guarantee me a fantastic job in Europe/America (though is as yet of no help getting me something here). I spend a large part of my waking moments thinking/writing/reading/theorizing about this thing. I’d say it’s quite an important part of my life here. Though . . . not something I can put in a humorous light easily. Or an interesting light for that matter. So . . . mentioning it here. Still working on that. Recently got the final go-ahead so unless I screw up royally I should be done by October.

I’m running a D&D game. OK, this is worthy of mention, but not yet. I am planning to do a bit of writing about it, but at the very least I’ll put a blogpost up about it pretty soon. I started the game with 1 fellow veteran (actually far more veteran than me) and 4 noobs. Of those 4, there are now 2 left. It just wasn’t for them. I actually lost one to Warhammer . After the summer break we’re getting reinforcements though. All people who have played it, though sparsely (And like 15 years ago. And boy have things changed since AD&DII) . This sunday we’re finishing the introduction chapter of the campaign and I can throw my little nooblets to the wolves/demons/beholders/ettercaps/devils. I won’t bore you with their adventures yet, but know that the murdering bastards have been in Jail since the last session. And I think it speaks well for my players that I’ve gotten them to the point where they murder ‘innocents’ so soon.

Raph has a language exchange partner. She teaches her partner French and in turn she gets tutored on Korean. Which is sorely needed as we’re very very lazy on our own studies. I wonder if I can find some Korean silly enough to want to learn Dutch. . . Why not, found a Japanese girl while living in Tokyo that wanted to do that.

We’re looking into getting a dog. This is proving to be tricky. First, dogs in Korea are small. Very small. There’s not really a lot of social acceptance of big dogs. People will cross the street if a golden retriever approaches them, big dogs can’t be transported in the city public transport system and their owners aren’t always treated nicely.
It’s tricky for other reasons as well, first is the language. We’ve been able to identify 2 shelters that handle adoptable dogs. There’s things like cafe.naver.kr/dogpalza(No, that’s no spelling error on my end) but we can’t really identify what we need from that.
The last bit of trickiness comes from the big dog popularity issue . . . We went to visit the shelter and were told there were 3 medium sized dogs. There were 2, the other one really was in a smaller size category. One was a cocker spaniel. Then there was 1 of interest left.
There were 13 small sized dogs in there, of which only some were available for adoption, the rest were there for veterinary procedures. And 2 medium size dogs. 0 big dogs. You’d think that with the problems regarding big dogs some people would try it and then dump the dog somewhere, but there’s just small dogs. We might be able to find something with breeders, but . . . something something principle of the thing something something. Besides, we don’t care one fig if we get a purebred. Mutts tend to have less genetic problems and gentler temperaments anyway.

We’ve got friends. Save 2, all of them are non-Korean(Yes, we have a token black guy. Though he’s really from the Dominican republic making him . . . latino??). All of them. We suck submerging ourselves in the local culture . I can’t even tell the Koreans at ultimate apart(Though in my defence 4 out of the 9 Korean players are Kims). The other two consist of the before mentioned language partner and the other is the partner of/neighbour. We have yet to make friends with a Korean we met through non-waeguk interaction. I’m pretty sure we need to do that some day. Maybe get back to that language course so we can actually talk to them . . . .

Anyway, that combined with all of the other stuff you read in these two blogs should give you all the basics you need to imagine what a day for us is like.

=====================================================================================

Bonus Quote of the day:

I pity the fool

- Token Black friend

=====================================================================================

Quote of the day:

Nobody reads these anymore.

- Springfield Elementary Blackboard