June 2004 Archives

so while i think i've told most of you that i'm here in korea working for samsung, i don't think i've gone into much detail as to what i'm doing here. so, here i go!

in the beginning of january, i asked a colleague of mine who was offered a job at samsung (but later declined it) to shoot an e-mail to his contact over there to get an internship. pretty much just five months later, i got an e-mail back from them saying that they wanted me to come work at samsung's advanced institute of technology (sait) as an intern. sait is basically a separate campus (next to their semiconductor research center) where all of samsung's research is done. it includes seven technology groups, ranging from MEMS to human-computer interaction to digital bio-labs. the group that i work under is MEMS division, under the microfluidics section.

the internship program consists of about 40 interns all together. most are korean, half of whom have gone to the united states for undergrad and/or grad school, the other half whom have studied in korea. there are maybe about 4 or 5 foreigners, and i'm really the only american-born korean among them. it's a paid internship, so on top of paying for my flight over here, they give me about 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 W (about $1000) per month. also, all the meals are taken care of; they have a pretty good cafeteria here that serves both western and korean food, seven days a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner... pretty sweet deal, huh?? so pretty much all the money i'm making is play money ^^

the only downside is that SAIT is to the south of seoul, outside the city. it takes about 30 minutes by bus to get to the south part of seoul, and another hour or so by subway to make it above the han river (which divides seoul in half). so i pretty much spend the weekday confined in SAIT, and on the weekends go play in seoul. since i've only been here for two weeks or so, i've only been a couple places: gangnam station (ritzy area, in the south), apgujung (trendy area, also in the south), ilsan (north), coex mall (next to the world trade center), and briefly, sinchon (yonsei university).

the dorms here are pretty much low-end type college dorms. there are three dorms, and i'm in the one where there's only one large public shower in the basement (which, surprisingly, i'm already used to). but it isn't even that great. last week i went to a real public-bath place in bundang (where my cousin lives), complete with the three different types of sauna and ten different baths... nearly fell asleep in one of 'em

anyway, that's pretty much the situation here... i've already gotten comfortable here, and other than the difficulty of communicating with people in detail, i'm having a blast!

this past weekend i went down to the min suk chon (민속촌), or the korean folk village. it's one of the obligatory things to do when you visit korea, where you can see the recreation of how life was in korea during the chosun period. it's a pretty cool place to visit; they have everything from live performances of the old martial arts to authentic tradition food they make within the village. i, of course, had a bottle of their soju (rice wine) ^^ called dong-dong-something (동동-모모? ). since i only brought my manual (analog) camera, i won't have those pictures until i return to the states and develop them. i'll probably visit min suk chon again when i take my friend who's visiting korea out there in the next couple weeks.

i also went to apgujung-dong (apgujung is the name, the -dong means district) to meet my girlfriend's brother for dinner. it's a pretty nice place, just south of the han river, where a lot of young adults go. they had a pretty large and trendy shopping mall there and of course a zillion places to eat. i keep meaning to take pictures of these places, but keep forgetting! i'll try to do better next time...

i went to coex mall the other day to drop by the 18th annual solutions & contents exhibition. from their website:


SEK brings together nearly 200,000 visitors and 250 exhibitors from Korea and around the world. SEK 2004 is recognized as the most attractive and profitable IT market place in Korea, attracting more than 149,000 visitors in 2003. SEK 2004 offers IT specialists, distributors, dealers, resellers, wholesalers and buyers the opportunity to trade products and engage in market surveys.


here are some photos! (i apologize if there's some bluriness; because it's a pain in the butt to take out my canon g5, i had to use the camera on my pda to take pictures...)

lots of lcd and plasma tv's

on the right, a pretty awesome video play, that will sell around $400

iriver's mp3 players... not very impressive since it's nothing new; just their current models

on the right, these girls were actually explaining an extremely boring topic, but the crowd was huge, for obvious reasons

the innards of the lg video player...


on the left, me, and on the right my roommate with the typical korean pose

on the left, lg's tablet pc, with a really good touch sensitive screen. on the right, a video-enabled cell phone, which was playing a jun jihyun ad (i think samsung ad) at 30fps!

a really huge tower of 42" LCD screens... i'll take just one please!

this past weekend i stayed at my cousin's house again in bundang. he showed me our chokbo (family tree) for the paik family, which at this point is ten volumes long, each about 300 pages or so thick. it's a bit awkward because my cousin is actually 47 years old, and my father (who's 57) is his uncle. that puts me on an equal level with him, so i actually call him "brother" rather than "uncle". i'll try to explain:

my father's father was the youngest of three boys. the eldest of those three had several sons. the eldest of those sons is my cousin's father's father. that means my cousin's father is on an equal level with my father, making me equal level with my cousin.

in korean tradition, it is the responsibility of the first son of every generation to take care of the chokbo (family tree). since my cousin is the first of three son, and his father also the first of three sons, and his father's father also the eldest, that makes my cousin responsibile for keeping all the names in our family up to date. me and my brother's names are already in them, as it was last updated in 1982.

i met up with my aunt and my cousins for the first time in about nine and seventeen years, respectively, this weekend. they all live in the northwest part of seoul, ilsan. it was kind of trippy to seen them after so long, and i'm sure it was especially weird for them to see me since the last time i met most of them was when i was seven. i was very happy to see them all in good health, and doing very well in their respective jobs. my cousin so-young's husband was especially interesting to meet since he grew up in england and now teaches poetry at yonsei university (with a specialty in milton). so, naturally, he's quite connected with most of the professors there, giving me an easy ticket into attending yonsei in the future for short-course language programs ^^ his brother also is a venture-capitalist type who does a lot of consulting work for the big guns here: lg, samsung, and hyundai... he has a particular interest in advanced biotechnology, and after discussing briefly with him the work that i'm involved in with our startup company, we're planning on meeting up for an informal session. it's all about the connections...

anyway, it's the start of another week of work. i'll post up photos as soon as i get a chance...

the first week of work is officially over... i've finally found a somewhat decent way of carrying pictures over from my laptop to my webserver, so at long last i'll be able to post pictures!

i went to gangnam on wednesday to eat dinner and soak up the night life. while the streets themselves are crowded and somewhat dirty, every single shop and resteraunt is kept super-clean and trendy; i dropped by at a cafe with a friend over there and it felt like a scene straight out of a movie. i walked a round bit (and ran into that giordano ad), and bought a few things for my room. too tired to go out drinking, i settled for buying some dukbukgi from a street vendor and headed home.

i can't believe how cheap food is over here... you can get a really good dinner for about 10,000W (less than $10). and i love the fact that there's no concept of tax here (as it's already included in prices), and there's really no concept of tip. the price you see is what you pay. coolness score: usa 0, korea 1

paul would probably be delighted to know that as i strolled by a giordano shop near gangnam stop, they had this large plasma tv playing a 30 second spot with jun ji-hyun (actress from my sassy girl) dancing sweaty in a night club with the techno remix of "i can't get no satisfaction" playing over and over and over again as a huge crowd of koreans backed up the sidewalks.

it didn't really suit her though. jeez, that girl is plastered everywhere over here...

(and of course shu, you already know of won bin's face (who played han tae-suk in autumn tale) all over woori bank)

hey, doods! greetings from korea! i'm sure a lot of people have been wondering what's been up since i left, so here's a short update. it's a bit difficult for me to update my blog and get online with msn or aim due to extremely strict security conditions here at work.

i'll start off by saying that i'm pleasantly surprised at the fact that i've felt nothing but comfortable since coming here. my only worry before coming here was any difficulty i'd face due to communication and cultural barriers, but that hasn't been the case at all. my forty-seven year old cousin and his family has been extremely nice to me, and even though we met for the first time on saturday, i felt this immediate sense of family with them.

(btw, i have to apologize if my english gets bad from time to time... i've done nothing but speak and think in korean since i landed here).

the next thing i want to say is how awesome everything here looks. the design of apartments, electronics, trashcans, toilets, malls, coffee shops, whatever... looks like they're straight out of a swank movie. nothing here looks cheap, and let me tell you how mind-blowing shopping for a cell phone was on sunday... literally hundreds and hundreds of phones to choose from, and even though i got pretty much the cheapest one, it beats the hell out of any u.s. model to date.

my dorm is a dump. it's an on-campus dorm, and my room is a seventeen year old hole with a bed and a desk, and a public shower in the basement. it actually doesn't bother me at all though, since i'm so tired anyway coming back from work. the one thing i will complain about is that there is no internet, due to security reasons...

i joined the on-campus korean language program here, which meets thrice a week. most of the teachers were quite surprised how well i could speak (i think i improved tremendously in the past 3 days alone), so they want me to join the intermediate class, and sit in on the advanced class as well... it's amazing how well the intermediate students can speak. they've been at the company for only 18 months, but speak easily on a conversational level. i have to add that it's trippy to see a french-born korean colleague, and even trippier to speak french with him...

i've already made a handful of friends here, and will probably head into the city this weekend for the first time since i was three feet tall... man, there's too much to say, but i gotta head to dinner now...

just wrapped up my conference here in las vegas, and writing to you from the mccarran airport waiting for my flight which leaves in an hour... in fact, i'm sitting in the middle of the hallway because it's the only power outlet i could find to charge my laptop for a four hour work session on the airplane. wireless (internet) is so nice, especially when it's free! if only they had wireless power... i took over a hundred pictures on my canon g5, so hopefully *one* of them will come out nice.