Pictures for my Mommy
Howdy Mother (and anyone else who reads this),
Since you wanted me to send pictures, and since it would take forever to send them over e-mail, I decided instead to start this webpage where I can post them a lot easier. If you want to pass the address to anyone else, it's easy...
judgeholden.blogspot.com (And if you don't know who Judge Holden is, go into my library and read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.)
***Nobody reading this besides my mother has permission to go into my bedroom while I'm gone***
Anyways. Here's a fancy stream that runs through Seoul. I'm not going to spell out the name because it's about 20 letters long, but here's a webpage related to it, if you're interested.
Apparently this stream used to be covered by a highway through the city. In the past decade, they decided to clean it up and turn it into a "city beautification" exercise... As you can see, it's still covered by a highway, but in Seoul, this is what passes for "beautiful," and trust me, this is the best I've seen so far. (At least they're trying! I only saw two or three garbage bags in the water.)
When I have a few hours to kill on a weekend, I'll probably head further down than this. I imagine it continues for miles in each direction. Yesterday, when I took these pictures, there was some sort of demonstration going on... I hoped it wasn't an anti-foreigner demonstration, but how would I know, so I walked through anyway.
DISCLAIMER: Re-looking at these pictures, they make everything in Seoul look a lot clearer than usual... For clarification, this was easily the best day for weather since I've been here. You could actually see the blue sky through the clouds, which has been rare.
Below are two pictures of my hilariously ugly building. This seems to be a curse for me, first at UofT and then now - I'm always in the ugliest building in the city.
Welcome to the Sundgong Charmant Officetel. Apparently "officetel" means "residence for people who have decent jobs but don't yet have nice apartments because they aren't married or rich." According to my one source on the subject, it isn't uncommon for workers my age to live in company-supplied apartments, even living with roomates.
You've already seen the inside of my apartment. I'm not taking more pictures today because I'm hardly wearing any clothes and my room is a mess.
Oh yeah, I'm on the 10th floor, 5th unit from the right side of the picture with the window open and the blinds shut!
(In the picture above, notice that every single car is either black, grey or white? They can't have multi-coloured people, so I guess they can't have multi-coloured cars either. The green, blue and yellow buses have more personality.)
The pictures below are for Dad who asked me if I knew where the industrial parts of the city are... Well, they're sort of everywhere. The first picture is a block north of me, and the second is right across the street, which I just noticed today. They seem to pack in small metal, glass and woodworking shops wherever they can.
The next three pictures are just funny... The first picture is of mannequins I like... The second picture is a common sight here, obviously. South Korea is about 60% Buddhist, and Buddhists have no sense of shame about the Nazi's use of the symbol they've been using for centuries... The last picture is a pizza franchise with a good slogan.
(Also, the leftover Koreans are all Christians, I think, and the sight of a church is a lot more common in Seoul itself - something about that Protestant Work Ethic I suppose. If I had a good picture of the creepy red crosses they have all over the city, I would have included them. They only show well in the night though, when they look their creepiest, all lit up.)
Here's a contrast of the different shape that city streets can take. The first picture is only a block West of the second picture, but look at the difference
And yes, motorcycles on the streets are a common sight. They're pretty annoying, and a lot are driven by jackass teenagers. On Saturday night, a whole gang of them drive around honking their horns and swirving around all other cars on the road... The parade usually passes my building about 1:30 p.m. and continues with a heavy flow of bikes for about 5 minutes.
Another contrast. The first two pictures below are from one of the back-alley neighbourhoods you find if you stray off the main multiple-lane roads. As you can see, this is about the most confusing place in the world, especially if you can't read Korean.
In the background of the first picture is the neighbourhood in the second set of pictures - one of the newer condo campuses, where no buildings are shorter than 15 or 20 stories. These are everywhere, and I imagine they're slowly erasing the older neighbourhoods from the first set of pictures... With hundreds or thousands of these buildings, each with a thousand or so people, it isn't surprising that the population density here is third in the world. I believe Tokyo and Mexico City are at the top.
And that's it. I'll post more pictures another day.
Since you wanted me to send pictures, and since it would take forever to send them over e-mail, I decided instead to start this webpage where I can post them a lot easier. If you want to pass the address to anyone else, it's easy...
judgeholden.blogspot.com (And if you don't know who Judge Holden is, go into my library and read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.)
***Nobody reading this besides my mother has permission to go into my bedroom while I'm gone***
Anyways. Here's a fancy stream that runs through Seoul. I'm not going to spell out the name because it's about 20 letters long, but here's a webpage related to it, if you're interested.
Apparently this stream used to be covered by a highway through the city. In the past decade, they decided to clean it up and turn it into a "city beautification" exercise... As you can see, it's still covered by a highway, but in Seoul, this is what passes for "beautiful," and trust me, this is the best I've seen so far. (At least they're trying! I only saw two or three garbage bags in the water.)
When I have a few hours to kill on a weekend, I'll probably head further down than this. I imagine it continues for miles in each direction. Yesterday, when I took these pictures, there was some sort of demonstration going on... I hoped it wasn't an anti-foreigner demonstration, but how would I know, so I walked through anyway.
DISCLAIMER: Re-looking at these pictures, they make everything in Seoul look a lot clearer than usual... For clarification, this was easily the best day for weather since I've been here. You could actually see the blue sky through the clouds, which has been rare.
Below are two pictures of my hilariously ugly building. This seems to be a curse for me, first at UofT and then now - I'm always in the ugliest building in the city.
Welcome to the Sundgong Charmant Officetel. Apparently "officetel" means "residence for people who have decent jobs but don't yet have nice apartments because they aren't married or rich." According to my one source on the subject, it isn't uncommon for workers my age to live in company-supplied apartments, even living with roomates.
You've already seen the inside of my apartment. I'm not taking more pictures today because I'm hardly wearing any clothes and my room is a mess.
Oh yeah, I'm on the 10th floor, 5th unit from the right side of the picture with the window open and the blinds shut!
(In the picture above, notice that every single car is either black, grey or white? They can't have multi-coloured people, so I guess they can't have multi-coloured cars either. The green, blue and yellow buses have more personality.)
The pictures below are for Dad who asked me if I knew where the industrial parts of the city are... Well, they're sort of everywhere. The first picture is a block north of me, and the second is right across the street, which I just noticed today. They seem to pack in small metal, glass and woodworking shops wherever they can.
The next three pictures are just funny... The first picture is of mannequins I like... The second picture is a common sight here, obviously. South Korea is about 60% Buddhist, and Buddhists have no sense of shame about the Nazi's use of the symbol they've been using for centuries... The last picture is a pizza franchise with a good slogan.
(Also, the leftover Koreans are all Christians, I think, and the sight of a church is a lot more common in Seoul itself - something about that Protestant Work Ethic I suppose. If I had a good picture of the creepy red crosses they have all over the city, I would have included them. They only show well in the night though, when they look their creepiest, all lit up.)
Here's a contrast of the different shape that city streets can take. The first picture is only a block West of the second picture, but look at the difference
And yes, motorcycles on the streets are a common sight. They're pretty annoying, and a lot are driven by jackass teenagers. On Saturday night, a whole gang of them drive around honking their horns and swirving around all other cars on the road... The parade usually passes my building about 1:30 p.m. and continues with a heavy flow of bikes for about 5 minutes.
Another contrast. The first two pictures below are from one of the back-alley neighbourhoods you find if you stray off the main multiple-lane roads. As you can see, this is about the most confusing place in the world, especially if you can't read Korean.
In the background of the first picture is the neighbourhood in the second set of pictures - one of the newer condo campuses, where no buildings are shorter than 15 or 20 stories. These are everywhere, and I imagine they're slowly erasing the older neighbourhoods from the first set of pictures... With hundreds or thousands of these buildings, each with a thousand or so people, it isn't surprising that the population density here is third in the world. I believe Tokyo and Mexico City are at the top.
And that's it. I'll post more pictures another day.
posted by Timothy Holden at
4:19 AM
1 Comments:
Howdy again.
If you're going to post a message, PLEASE DON'T USE MY REAL NAME, whatever it is.
If I ever plan to get a real job in Canada, they're going to google the crap out of my real name, whatever it is, and just in case I ever write something remotely offensive (otherwise known as Tim-speak), I probably shouldn't be using my real name.
By
Timothy Holden, at 5:38 AM
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