THAILAND J-1

Seoul Musical

Few weeks ago, I went to see a korean musical. Even if I really didn't get the entire purpose of the play, I found it quite funny anyway. I let you enjoy the final scene. In my opinion I thought it looked like a circus representation, with circus music and also circus dance. However it was quite enjoyable.

Pray for Japan




Picture from garancedore.fr

 

Yesterday, I saw on the korean TV news a report about little villages in Japan which were completly destroyed by the tsunami. I don't want to speak about these villages but about their inhabitants. I mean, the report was showing long list of names ... that was actually names of survivors, people who were registrered on lists and who are still alive now. Then, the TV report ends with pictures of families and people gathered again. These pictures where so meaningfull for me, because first people lived with such a big fear of having lost some of their relatives and now they know everything is ok for them, they're safe and I think showing such pictures instead of showing pictures of death and destroyed things are not much that a huge message of hope.

Seeing their happiness trough this report make me think about me ... I mean I really relativize about my own life, more over because I'm just 1 200 km from Fukushima.

Concerning the nuclear clouds and all that stuff I know lots of french medias were exagerating the phenomenon. The fact is that everything is completly normal, I mean everybody was at school, we continue to take parties, and despite of some french speeches asian world is still ok ...People still continue to travel, nobody is sheltering in his house, life must go on ... even in Japan, unversities are still openned, and students can continue to study !

For me the major problem is the economic problem : Since WW2, this is the biggest crisis for Japan and that crisis will have some impacts on the entire asian world. Japan exchange every year more than 40% of its total exchange with Korea, so basically I think Korea will be the first country to suffer from that crisis ... We cannot predict the future but I think the crisis impact will be huge in all the asian area.

Howver, asian countries get that crazy ability to reborn from nothing in few years, so I think asian countries will react quickly and find new ways to keep their grozth competitive on the international scene again

Getting a Chinese Visa : One of the toughest task in Korea

I planned to go to China at the end of April with my family, to visit Shanghai & Beijing, so exciteeeeeeeeeeeed,

But first I will tell you a little story about how to get a chinese visa when you're a french fresh incoming exchange student ... Let's begin !

Getting a chinese visa for a french student reveals of a real fight against the chinese machine (I accentuate it a little :) ...) But the fact is it's really hard to obtain. You need fisrt your plane tickets and your hotel reservation (but you have to think also about what would happen if your visa is refused by the embassy) so you have to take refundable plane tickets, but they're more expenssive than non-refundable ones.

So what I did is quite simple, I took so expensive non refundable plane tickets in a travel agency, then I booked a fake hotel (when I'll be in China I won't take that hotel but I already paid 10% of the entire price). Then I finally went to the chinese Embassy, with my alien registration card, my plane tickets, my hotel reservation, my passport, a certificate of incomes, the enrollment letter from Hanyang University, my application form and so on ...

After having been waiting something like 30 minutes, I finally reached the desk of the person who cares about the international applications forms. Then she just told me 'No, you cannot have it' wow .... problem : that was not in my plans to get my visa refused .... So that was over (for the moment) she told me that other people were waiting and I have to let them apply for their own visa. She added that anyway I had to fill another application form chinese/english whereas the one I gave to her was chinese/french (no difference actually but she wanted that)

So, I was so disappointed, because I really thought I couldn't go to China ... Then, I just tried again to see her, with the new application form. Then she finally explained me what the visa should be refused for me : Because my alien registration card (ARC) is only valid for 5 months and 28 days instead of being available for exactly 6 months ... So she told me I needed an extension of my ARC to get my visa. But the fact is I can't extend my ARC because I'm just a student ... so after lots of explanation concerning the fact that I was a student and lots of tears she told me she could make an exception for me (???) an exception concerning visa application ??? I said YES anyway ... So she told me that giving the visa was an exception and I just could get a 1 entry visa but that was fine for me !!!

So to conclude, all the students who already applied for a chinese visa were ALL exceptions, there are something like hundreds and hundreds of excpetions each year, but chinese embassy and chinese government still consider us as 'exceptions' and if you're just a normal studend, supposed to be here just for one semester you can just get a simple entry visa ...

Anyway, I received my visa, and I can now go to China... I also cancelled my refundable plane tickets and found other ones so much cheaper !!!

I think Chinese embassy just want to discourage lots of people going to china by process this way ...

Calendars are for careful people, not passionate ones.

Long time no see ....Time runs so fast, and I didn't write anything for such a long time ...So many things to talk about. Maybe I should probably begin by the very beginning, and the early days of March.

Hanyang

I began university courses on the 3rd of March, and I have to say that's quite interesting. I take 4 courses a week (basically spattered between Tuesday and Wednesday). So, concerning the courses that I decided to take, they are similar as the ones I used to have in France : Economics, International Business, Marketing ect ...

But the fact is that in Hanyang University, courses turn into something really interesting : professors get such a new way to speak about business, always talking about time as the precious thing that you can get in your all life. So in this way, no time to sleep, no time to eat, time should only be used to study and make korea a more powerful country ... wow

So I take courses of International Economics, Marketing Management  on Tuesday and then, on Wednesday I have International Business and Fashion Business. As you can see, courses seem to be sooooooooooo cool, but they're juste talking about normal things I already learned at school :

In International Economics, we're talking about the things we learned in high school. Then in Marketing Management w're for instance studying SWOT, BCG Matrix ect ....

But the fact is that's not boring at all because teachers are introducing their subject differently, with another approach, so that's still interesting. Also I cannot get boring of ONLY 2 days at school a week obviously ...

Hanyang Dormitories

I'm living in Hanyang Dormitories because it's really cheaper than living in an appartment in Seoul. That's also super good because that's basically ON the campus, so I thought time to go to school is reduced to the strict mimimum (but at that time I didn't figure the size of the campus out yet ...)

What's to say about the dormitories .... haha long story ...

First : no kitchen AT ALL, that means that you cannot cook at all. There's just on fridge for all the dorms and sometimes, when you put something in, next day you cannot find it again (people coming back from parties are usually starving to death and turn into good robbers) so basically you do not put something in that non sure fridge ...

Then, we also get two different dormitories, on ONLY for girls and one for boys. So, no boy is allowed in the girls dormitory but the fact is 4 japanese guys are living on the first floor of our dorms ... Also, there's a guard who is watching everything you can do in the public areas of the dorms through numerous cameras.

Also, there's something such as a curfew from 00:30 to 5:30. So for Hanyang, that should implies that students should NOT come in the dorms during that time ... hahaha is that a joke ??? so now, Hanyang students developed news ways to open the dorms doors : putting a flat paper between the 2 doors, then going up and up to reach the cell in order to activate it and open the doors. All that operation should be really quiet because in addition the guard is sleeping next door ... but that's fine, touch of spy games in the night ...

Concerning my roomate, in my application form I wrote NO FRENCH PLEASE in bold, red, underligned 3 times but the fact is despite of everything, my roomate is ... french ... but not just french, from MY business school. So basically I know her a little. And I think that's a little bit bad because I speak french all day and all night long.

English Lessons

I got plenty of empty time so I can do lots of stuff outside the University. I decided to give some english lessons to earn a little bit of money. So I found 2 people who were interested in learning english  with me. I was first really afraid (can I really handle it ?) because, well english is not my mother tongue. But anyway, I have to say that's good, I meet that people every sunday for 2 hours and we read newspapers and talk about recent world activities. Good for them, they learn english, good for me, I have to speak english and pay attention not to do any mistake.

Ballet lessons

Due to loooooooooots of empty time I also decided to take some ballet lessons, because I do not want to turn into a "thing" which spend her entire day in bed, geeking on facebook or doing any useless thing else. Just a waste of time here ... so to motivate myself I decided to take 4 ballet lessons a week in order to keep me awake and dynamic. Courses are really great, even if sometimes that's a little bit hard. I mean the professor is korean and all the other dancers are korean. So even if the teacher always shows us the gesture first sometimes I don't get the entire explanation ...

I take theses courses outside of the university because the university does not offer ballet lessons. I find the dance studio were I'm going on the internet and then, with the help of my Hanyang mentor, I went there to registrer myself.

Nutshell

Anyway, I enjoy so much Seoul, and life here is really so exiting. In the next few days I'll try to post some new articles because you should be aware of the crazy seoul day&night life

Ah, and at last but not least, not not not at all actually :) I'm going to Thailand in 3 days, to visit Bangkok and Krabi ... I cannot dream of a better life for now ...

Busan Fish Market

Busan Temples

Bicycle Tour / Han River

Boat Race on Han River

KBS TV report

Before yesterday, a guy from KBS (Korean Broadcasting system), a national TV channel went in my family in order to interview us about Home Stay Korea...

Guys from KBS first contacted Home Stay Korea, which find the family in which I live for me and this organism told them to contact my family.

The mother of my family wanted to make sure that I personally wanted to do that TV report about home stay in Korea. I was really interested in that, because that was an opportunity for me to be on TV, to speak about my own experience in Korea, but mainly in a korean family.

But what I took for a great experience finally turned into an unexpected experience. When the guy from KBS first came home, on wednesday night, me and my family had to go on a supposed traditional market to buy some stuff.

First thing : I've never been to that market before, but I had to swear that I came here with my family every day and that I liked it.

Secondly, the KBS guy wants some funny things to film, right, but was I supposed to play with apples, smell them as if they smell something good ? I actually don't know

Then, children want to buy some clothes, I have to say that I found them completely, incredibly awful but apparently they liked it. These clothes were actually shiny sequined leopard sport suits (just let you imagine the result ...) Anyway, the KBS guy told me that I had to say I found that really cute and that children look good with that. Right. I did it.


Then everything was just fake, and completely untrue : I was really confused because I thought that this report should be a good idea : that makes discover to every korean people the daily life of a host family and the foreigner hosted. And now, I was little by little discovering that unlike I thought I was just allowed to repeat what the guy from KBS told me to say.

I had to say that I gave english lessons to the older child, then that I also gave piano lessons to the younger one (whereas he's actually a better pianist than me). I also had to say that home stay was cheap whereas that's untrue (when I told the KBS guy that this affirmation was untrue he just answered me "well, okay, I understand but my boss just wants to hear that it's cheap" - " ok and does your boss ever experienced home stay ?" - "No" ....

Also, KBS wanted to film me at work, but apparently my current job was not funny enough for them, so the KBS guy brought me to the 5th floor, filmed me with other people talking about a building model whereas that was not my job. When I asked why I had to do that he just told me "oh, you know, in KBS we just want funny things, entertainment !" weeeeeeeeeeeeell .... You get it !

I mean, everything was so untrue ! I just had to repeat ideas of a boss who had ideas about home stay but who never experienced that !

Anyway, I let you see that by yourself ... Enjoy that thrilling, amazing, OUTSTANDING, FLABBERGASTING TV time

#9 : Garak Market

Main gate of Garak Market

I'm living really near to the biggest fruits, vegetables and marine products market of the ENTIRE country, so I thought that night that I really need to go there, before I'll leave the songpa neighborhood to settle in the Hanyang boring dormitories (in exactly 13 days).

So I went there for lunch and I was really surprised : big streets, scooters everywhere, this is not a market that's a hanthill ! full of busy hants...

So I decided to begin by ... the first sector that I found : fruits and vegetables ... That was really pleasant because it was really colorful, aesthetically beautiful to see. Concerning what is bought here, you find commonly the same fruits & vegetables that in france, broccolis, zucchinis, tomatoes, pineapples, bananas, oranges .... but you also find some special things such as different kinds of roots and spinach

Then I went to the dried pepper market and that was my favorite one, that smelt so goooood ! I liked the atmosphere here, and the colors. Also, pepper displays remind me moroccan markets

Finally, I wanted to see the fish market, but I didn't find it ... So, I asked a man who seemed to be a businessman (I said to myself that he was probably able to speak english) and yeaaaah I was right (for the english spoken and also for the businessman). He was really nice and he asked his personal driver to bring me to that fish market ... Korean people are so nice !! And the fish market was up to my expectations, exquisite smell, beautiful fishes and some weird things to ...

#8 : Introduction to korean markets

For the anecdote, I talked about how important are markets in Korea with a french businessman settled in Korea for 15 years now . He told me that markets in korea are kind of ubiquitous. 
Here you can still haggle for clothes, food ect ...
Also, in addition to traditional markets you can also in Korea buy everything in markets, I mean REALLY everything, from watchbands to electronic stuff (mainly cameras), from DIY tools to brooms, from animals to ...


Ok so now, I just want to show you how markets are taking an important place in Korea, even (and especially) on the internet. Korean browsers are kind of huuuuge market places where you can take some information. Even if you're not looking for something special you can find something : ads, news ... 

Let's compare korean browsers ....

To the probably most efficient occidental browser (google) 

.... Hum, do you see any difference?  On Google, you just get nothing, no ads, no news, I know that you can personalize your homepage, adding some information ect... but Google seems so purified and so clear compare to korean browsers !

Both of them get their own advantages, I mean on Google you're not boring with useless ads which pollute your homepage, you just get what YOU want on it (meteo, news ...).

But with Naver or Daum, you can get like a continuous flow of information

#7 : Lotte World

Lotte world is actually the world's largest indoor theme park (registered in the  Guinness World Record) which is open all year around. There is also an outdoor amusement park called "Magic Island", an artificial island inside a lake linked by monorail.

This is exactly the same theme park that every Walt Disney park except the fact thant Mickey & Minnie are not here (oooh don't worry there are still characters like them : 2 foxes, Lotty & Lorry. So to sum up, this is a Walt Disney theme park (same attractions, same parades, same show, EXACTLY the same slogan (Lotte World : Where dreams come true) but in downtown Seoul. 

That was really really crowded and we had to wait for at least 90 minutes for each attraction. Concerning attractions themselves they were good, like a kind of tower of terror, some roller coasters so that was great.

There were also a lot of food stands so I have to say that the place reeked fried food. On these stands we could find fried pieces of octopus, burgers, sausages, hot dogs (everything except korean food).

And maybe you can find out how much the place was kitsch, everything pink, blue, gold blablabla ...

And I also actually forget to say the main similarity between a Walt Disney Park & Lotte World ... But may you can find by yourself ... The castle of Sleeping Beauty is absolutely, incredibly the same ....

Already 1 month in Seoul

I wanted to post some pics about Hanyang for a long time so here they're. Hanyang is so different from french universities ... Hanyang has its own subway station and owns tons of buildings, huuuuuge buildings.

And I didn't mentionned yet the 3 football fiels, the 'Olympic gymnasium' yeah yeah, the athletic stadium, the fitness room, the the numerous convenient stores and coffees ...
HAHA sounds goooood !

I took these pics by night but I will post some others with day light as soon as possible ...

Fabrics in Dongdaemun

Busan, here we are

BUSAN HERE WE ARE

I took like 10 minutes ago my train tickets to go to busan, from the 24/02 to the 27/02. Korea has TGV but the only thing that changes is actually the name, changed into KTX. It will take 2 hours and a half to go there. I also registered for an hostel really not expensive at all, located in the city, near to the beach !

I think I'll really enjoy that little trip ! 

People / Excellence / Creativity / Sustainability

I think I should probably talk about my internship and what are my missions / tasks. So let's begin by ... the beginning.

I would like to apologize before beginning this article because I know I got a lot of stuff to tell you so the article will not be as clear as I wanted it to be... I will speak about different subjects so you have to be really aware if you want to understand ... :)

The center of the city, where you can find bars, clubs, crowded streets in the night are far away from me (1 hour by metro). I actually live in the eastern part of Seoul, in a residential and pretty neighborhood where you can find houses (little 3 floors buildings). I think this map will be useful if you want to figure out how is seoul. I take a metro map because I think it's easier to explain on it than on a real satellite map 

So my internship company is located near to my house and it takes actually 20 minutes door to door to go there. I'm kind of lucky because the bulk of the employees are commuting like 2 hours every day to go to work and then come back home.

So I'm working from Monday to Friday, from 9 to 6. I get a break for lunch (from 12 to 1 PM), and usually I'm eating with some fellows in restaurants. Lunch time is very special because koreans are really shy and don't want to speak english in front of you even if they're actually speaking well english !!! so for lunch, fellows talk to me in English but 60% of the time is an only korean speaking time sooooo I try to understand what they say, I try to imagine their conversation but that's really hard ...

Korean people are also really strict concerning lunch time and time in general. I mean, they will never be late at work, they've to be there a 9, and they're ALL there at 9. Moreover, if employees are ahead, they will not take a coffee or spend some time with fellows. If they arrive at 8:46 they begin to work at 8:46 ...

Also, lunch time is at 12, so at 12:00 everybody take his coat and leave the office. This is like an automatism, maybe the asian automatism, it's hard to explain but they're so steady concerning hours !!!! They seem to have a developed intern alarm which tell them 'time to go, time to go'... One day, I  was on the phone at 12, and when I came back in the office, right it was 12:04, there was nobody in the office, so I needed to eat by myself because everybody has been leaving the building at 12.

Another example would be interesting : at home, every day we get EXACTLY the same scheme (with maybe 5 minutes difference) :

8 AM : Breakfast 

12 : Lunch

7 PM : Diner

so I don't want to generalize that because I don't get the hindsight to do that, but I really think that the majority of korean families are following the same scheme.

So, let's just come back to my internship. I began to work in January, and I will stop it at the end of february, just a day before my university welcoming day.

I'm doing my internship in a korean company so things are a little bit more complicated than in another international company. I mean, even if the company is one of the most powerful international architect company, they're are doing lots of things exclusively in Korean... So that means that some days, I really got nothing to do, because people are just working in Korean .... I don't speak/read/write korean so I'm completely useless.

However the other days are really interesting. I don't get one special mission to achieve during this internship, but I got lots of tasks. Usually, employees come to see me, at my desk, asking me if I can do some researches for them. Here are the main tasks that I've done since I'm working here :

• Creating a brochure where were referenced all international architects awards (Heerim wants to improve his international influence and thus wanted to apply for different awards)
• Creating a presentation about major competitors (SOM, Gensler, HOK, Nikken Sekkei ...)
• Analyzing the 2011 financial statement and creating following the 2010 model the data basis for the Heerim website financial section (assets, liabilities, stock holder's equity and incomes)
• Creating a presentation and a document about Green architecture (more than 70% of the urban pollution comes from building pollution so architect companies have to find out new ways to build greener buildings, using new technologies, new materials ...)

So Heerim is today the 20th best architect company in the world so that means that the company is generating growing incomes. First, the company was only a korean-based company (just doing business in Korea) but these last 10 years have been marked by an increasing  openness to international markets.

Today, Heerim is mainly working in Asia (with works in Japan, China, Hong-kong, Malaysia, Singapore ...) but also in the USA.

Ah, and for the anecdote, even if I'm working in an architect company, even if the building itself and the ground floor are clearly reflected the idea of architecture with style, beautiful materials, colors and forms, when you go upstairs to the higher floors, the magnificent architectural building is moving into a completely standard office building without any effort to make it beautiful ... I mean, some places are really cold without any heating, we can hear the wind everywhere passing through the windows or I don't what, I' working in a noisy open space and I can't get how the 20th best architecture company which creates amazing building can build his own building this way ...

Oh and another funny thing by the way : I think that korean people are really involved in their job, they're really loyal to the company that hire them. To motivate Heerim employees, leaders decided to put some messages on hum ... let's say specials spaces ... So when you go to the restrooms, in front of you, I mean 50 cm in front of you, you got like an A3 sheet where you can read about Heerim :

Asia's n°1 & Global n°5 by 2015

Best Design & CM Service Provider by integrated corporate system

Enhance Marketing capability

Strenghten Design & CM Competency

Implement Quality insurance Program

Sistemize Project Management

Followed by these 4 words (Uppercase, bold, XXL) 

PEOPLE EXCELLENCE CREATIVITY SUSTAINABILITY

This message is really interesting because it's completely reflecting the way that korean people want to be the best, everywhere, in every sector, in every business. I think it's quite funny that employees are motivated in the restrooms ... This is actually like a big propaganda, like a brain storming, because, you're seeing this message like at least 4 times a day, 20 times a week, 80 times a month.... So, one day I really think you get the message, you know it by heart and you want to be part of that process.

#6 : Ski Session Korea

This week-end I went with my family to 2 of the most famous ski resorts of Korea.
The experience was great, well obviously, now I can say 'yeah I went skiing in Korea' haha !

Concerning the sport, the real one, ski, that's so different from all that I knew before !

Like slopes are huge streets and most of them have a low gradient. When it becomes harder there is immediately fewer people. I think I can really say that Korean people just come in ski resorts to have fun but they almost don't come there to make sport and to do hard slopes. However I don't want to generalize this phenomenon : even if 90% of korean skiers are really beginners, the last 10% are really good skiers and get an incredible style when they're skiing.

Friday : Yongpyong Ski resort

YongPyong is one of the biggest ski Resort in Korea with 18 slopes. Maybe 15 slopes are for absolute beginners, but these slopes are really appreciated here. 2 four-seats-chairlifts are bringing skiers to the "top" of these slopes and they're really crowded. I skied on harder slopes (similar to easy red slopes in france) but that not so crazy. I mean the experience was good but practicing ski was not incredible at all.

Sunday : Daemyung Ski resort

Vivaldi Ski resort was better than Yongpyong because there were more harder slopes. There were also lots of easy slopes but the resort was great. Moreover, winter in Korea (and especially in ski resorts) is really pleasant (almost always sunny and deep blue sky without any cloud).