Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Uncategorized category.
Seoul Subway Line Map
- Seoul Subway Line Map
Above is a map of the Seoul Subway system, including line #9 that just started operating this year(2009). The interactive versions in English as well as Korean can be viewed here: http://www.seoulmetro.co.kr/station/eng/linemap.action
day 4 in Seoul (ice skating and apartment clusters)
Seoul is still hot and damp, and my shirt is sticking to my back. I am used to the heat by now, and have accepted the feeling of the extra layer of sweat coating my body.
Just like yesterday, I woke up at 5:30 am and went swimming with my grandmother. Again, my grandmother seemed popular among the regulars at the sports center. She chatted with other women who were soaking themselves in the bathtub filled with medium hot water (39 degrees Celcius). Those ladies, who my grandma has been seeing regularly at the center for ten years, complimented me, sitting next to my grandma in the tub, for my beauty. Don’t get me wrong. That’s what you’re supposed to do here in Korea when you are introduced to someone’s daughter or grand daughter.
I swam a kilometer and felt good about it. I swam freestyle, breathing every three strokes most of the time, so that I could be comfortable breathing to the left as I am to the right.
18-year old Korean figure skating sensation, Yuna Kim
Immediately after coming back home with my grandmother, I left again for the first of a series of figure skating lessons at the Lotte World ice rink, which is an indoor rink connected to an indoor theme park. Ice skating at Lotte World has always been popular among couples, because it’s a typical dating course for teenagers, college students, and older couples who want to feel young again. Recently, Korean figure skater Yu-Na (pronounced Yeon- Ah) Kim has been a sensation in Korea because she’s young, incredibly talented, and pretty. I thought the rink would be more crowded than ever because of Yuna Kim’s nation-wide influence on children, but it turns out that the rink wasn’t yet open to public during the time of my skating lesson.
Within the 50-minute lesson, I practiced forward and backward crossovers, the waltz jump, and a basic spin. When I become able to put weight and balance on each of the four edges of the skates’ blades, my crossovers would be stable. There are parallels between figure skating and snowboarding, for, in snowboarding, you control the toe edge and the heel edge of your board to move. Also, as in snowboarding,I learned that your whole body and arms should turn first, not your feet, when moving on a curved path. At least this is what I found interesting as a complete beginner in both sports.
For me, it’s easier to criss-cross and lean on the left leg and foot, but difficult to control my right foot. The other day I tried to remedy my weak right foot by remembering methods and anatomical details used to align the body in Iyengar style yoga. For balancing on the right foot and gliding on that skate, I found that keeping the pelvis horizontal, not tilted up to the right, helped me achieve balance. Today, I wasn’t able to improve my crossovers as much as I wished. But my expectations were probably too much.
After realizing how much practice and dedication it takes to become good at figure skating, I feel tremendous respect for all the skaters in the world, as well as embarrassed for thinking that I could be good without putting in the work.
On my way back home, I saw a massive cluster of high rise apartment buildings and remembered passing by the construction site two years ago.
Here’s the site in 2006, when the uncoated concrete buildings looked like bee hives with rectangular cells.
apartment construction site at Jamsil, Seoul, Korea in 2006
Here it is now, the same in shape but with windows, railings, and painted with colors that I’m sure were chosen with design in mind. According to a friend, the units are partially occupied. Imagine how congested this whole area would be when each apartment goes for lease!
the same apartment construction site in Jamsil, Seoul , Korea at present, 2008
day 3 in Seoul (sports club and public bathhouse)
The wonderful jet lag still in effect, I woke up at 5:30 am to go exercise with my grandmother. The day was already bright out. The weather is balmy in the morning before it gets sticky and hot.
Once we checked in at the front counter and received locker keys to wear as bracelets, we went into the changing room.
At the gym, I warmed up on the treadmill for 5 minutes, did 25 crunches and 25 leg raises for the abs, and lifted weights to work out the back, chest, triceps, and biceps. Then I changed into a swimsuit and swam laps for 20 minutes.
The sports club is an integrated facility that occupies floors 3 through 7 in a spacious building. There are separate elevators for men and for women, because people would dress down and wear only a robe provided by the center, to move between the shower/sauna/bath area and the pool and weight training room.
The public bath within the facility is typical in Korean bathhouses and saunas, where people sit chest-deep in a pools of water that are 23 degrees, 39 degrees, or 43 Celcius (corrected 7/20/08). The rectangular pool at today’s bath could probably fit ten people with room. On one side of the pool wall, a series of jet streams were installed and people sat in front of each to massage their backs with the water pressure. I also massaged my lower back because bad posture at the inclined bench press I think gave me a slightly sore back which I exaggerated into thinking could lead to a disk hernia. The water jet pushed that disk back in place. A fully equipped Korean bathhouse is something like Inspa World that opened in Brooklyn, NY and featured in the New York Times.
Going to this sports club was like getting my body a deluxe carwash — workout, soaking, and washing all included in one visit.
thesis presentations
The beginning of the thesis presentations of the graduating students in the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University
The product design students completing the masters program at Stanford presented their theses today. The presentations were engaging and really interesting. What was interesting was not only the things that they made, which ranged from salt shakers to bicycles, but the way they presented them and talked about them. Multiple projects belonged to a bigger stream of thought, and each creation was made in order to solve a specific problem. The students generally were so eloquent on stage that I became a fan. I would really love to see what they do in the next couple of years.
