Korea Life Blog - Mozilla's Firefox Browser


I love the Mozilla Firefox browser. Very sleek, simple and it's lightening fast. All I do is right click on my blog folder, which I've conveniently placed under the navigation bar, and choose "open in tabs," and all the blogs I read load up at once. Then I just click on the tabs to alternate between them. This sort of browsing has been around for awhile but Firefox has the nicest design and is simple to use.



I don't read all that many blogs actually. As a matter of fact, I went through the blog links I have listed and I was surprised to see how many people have stopped updating. I went ahead and deleted at least 10-15 links.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Domino's Pizza


One of the only things I miss about Nowhere-dong is the pizza shop next to my old place. See somewhere in this post. They made a really great pizza for only 10,000 won. Julie and I have tried three or four places near our office-tel and they have all been terrible. The other day we tried Pizza Hut and though we had a good time and enjoyed the salad-bar, the pizza, while better than the local shops, was as you'd expect it to be: not that bad, not that good. The last two times I've had Pizza Hut pizza I've been pretty disappointed actually.


Tonight we found out there's a Domino's not too far away that delivers in our area. Here's what we got:




I was about ready to eat my backpack coming home from work today. While I was on the bus, Julie called me up and told me she ordered Domino's. It arrived shortly after I got home.



Here it is in all it's greasy glory. I love this pizza. I love pickles now and the hot sauce and especially the dipping sauce. Julie sometimes asks my why Americans and other western countries have so many fat people, and now she's starting to figure out why. What a concept. A slice of greasy, cheesy pizza with pepperoni dipped in garlic sauce. But it tastes so damn good. It cost us 16,000 won (around $14.50) and came with a 1.25 liter of Coke. That's pretty cheap considering there's no tax or tipping. I'm giving the prices for people back home who may be wondering.

I still have never had a pizza as good as I had in Ulsan. I never thought I'd come to Korea and find a truly great pizza, but there's an Italian restaurant down there that serves many different kinds of Italian pizzas. And they were cheap - around $10 each. Whenever we went we would get the mushroom pizza and also the bianco pizza which was topped with sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, basil and Prosciutto ham with white sauce. They also served $5 pitchers of beer, which was nice. What could be better than delicious pizza and ice cold draft beer? Mmm...



After the pizza, Julie and I cuddled in front of the TV, watched a movie, and later we watched this spectacular sunset.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Discount Air Tickets!


Shouldn't this be be illegal: You need to make a trip abroad for a visa run and you open the newspapers and see these ads that say, Fukuoka 210,000 Won! Osaka 250,000 Won!, then when you call them up they quote the price at least 100,000 won higher. Why don't they just lie even more and say "free tickets!"

This is getting frustrating. I just want to fly there, zip! bang! boom! and get it over with, and not monkey around with the train and boat again. I was considering trying to do the whole trip in one day, but doing it that way would involve a great deal of stress if things don't go perfectly. Doing the visa run in that fashion can be risky and fail if there's even a long line at immigration/customs. Anyone done it that way lately? I'm trying to plan this trip for some time next week. Anyone else going then? I'm going to either Fukuoka or Osaka, possibly Taipei, whichever is the cheapest.

Hopefully I won't need to go through this hassle for a year now that I'm getting the E-2 visa again. This is the price I got today at one travel agency I popped into near Songnae Station: 410,000 won to Fukuoka. Add that with 50,000 for the visa, at least 50,000 for a hotel, plus all sorts of miscellaneous fees and that adds up. And I have to pay for it all because even though I'm getting a full time visa, I'm not technically working full time. I wonder how much money I've basically thrown away on these trips. It used to be something to look forward to, now it's just a nuisance.

Update: I booked a ticket for next Thursday for Fukuoka, return on Friday afternoon. They really did have a cheap ticket, but it was on JAL (Japan Airline), which would be fine if the return flight wasn't at 9:00 in the morning. I wouldn't have enough time to pick up my visa and get to the airport.

So I paid 300,000 for an Asiana Air ticket plus a whopping 43,000 airport tax. Oh well, that is about average, I guess. I had planned on about $500 US total for the trip, anyway, and looks like that's about will I'll be paying. If anything interesting happens, I'll be sure to update my Japan page.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Great Theater, Bad Movies




This theater in Save Zone is great because it's nice and new and never crowded. As you can see, it's empty now. The entire upstairs is always dead, and not just during holidays. That Popeye's Chicken gets a few customers but the Subway Sandwich down the hall is always empty. We're worried it will go out of business. It's the only one around here.




Here's Julie looking over a selection of movie promotional fliers. We were considering seeing a movie last night, but as usual nothing good is playing. I am picky about movies, though.




This may be an old movie because this billboard has been here forever, but this is why I'm picky and don't go to see many movies these days. What is this crap they're making in Hollywood? As I said in the previous post, we ended up getting beer and anju instead.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Songnae Night


Here's a few shots from last night. It's been a pretty slow holiday. After walking around aimlessly for awhile, John, Julie and I did at least go out and have some good food at an anju (food served with beer) bar and a pitcher of ice cold beer. By that time we were sick of taking photos and left the camera at home. Oh well, just imagine the three of us laughing and eating food and drinking beer.



This ajumma and ajushi night club has a lot of lights. When I first saw "7.8F" I thought, wow, they're pretty exact as to where they are in the building. Now I'm guessing that means it's on two floors.



Here it is from another angle. This whole area down the road from us is flooded with lights, music and entertainment.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - On the Roof


Here's a bunch of shots I took up on the roof last night. I've had my Minolta camera for nearly two years now and just finally realized there are night settings on it. I always just thought my camera is a piece of junk that can't take photos at night. I didn't bother to look at the manual (who does?) and I didn't bother to push the setting button with the night icon right there in plain view. Anyway, I still have no idea exactly who to work the settings, but here's what I ended up with:



Julie actually posed for the camera for a change and is only making a meek protest at the moment I type this.



Such an innocent face. Hmm, almost has me fooled too.







Now this is what I came out with on the night setting and with a few brilliant adjustments (pushing random buttons).



After fiddling with the settings even more (more pushing of random buttons and cursing), I took this shot. Not too bad. To think of all the night photos I could have taken over the past years. Oh, well. Better late than never.



I also didn't know I had this trail-effect setting, or maybe I just changed the speed of the shutter...I have no idea but I kind of like the effect.



A artistic shot including the moon above Hyundai Department Store. More on Chuseok (pronounced like Chew-suck) here:


The full harvest moon festival occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, and is similar to the American Thanksgiving holidays. The day before 14th and 16th of the 8th lunar month are also holidays, giving a total of three days off to allow people time to visit their home towns. As the most important of all Korean holidays, during this period people jam the highways to visit their home towns and family members. Similar to the lunar new year holidays, family members pay respect to their living relatives and visit the graves of their ancestors. Family members exchange gifts and play special games.

Though it won't actually be Chuseok until the moon is full, we got a head start yesterday by feasting on Nachos, Cheese-dip and Salsa, and John made up some Spaghetti for dinner.



John and I hung around up there taking pictures for ages and fiddling with the effects and taking bizarre photos such as this one. He had his camera with him, too. Check out his website. He's made a hundred updates in the past two hours.

written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Prostitution Crackdown


The government is clamping down once again on prositution. They changed the laws and will no longer prosecute the prositutes themselves, as many of the girls have been forced into the business and have no escape. They had risked being arrested before if they tried to go to the police for help. Now only the brothel operators and the clients will be prosecuted. Hopefully this will enable some of those women who are victims to get out.



I really don't understand prostitution in Korea anyway. It's technically illegal, yet it exists everywhere here in every shape and form and usually the businesses are blatantly obvious about the services they provide. But when they do a crack down on it, you end up with protests such as these. As if the owners of these shady places didn't know what they were doing is illegal. They made the decision to open that kind of business. How can they protest and expect to find any sympathy? I guess they are thinking that the government usually looks the other way, vaguely implying permission, perhaps the police take some bribe money in return, and now suddenly it isn't OK...again. I know I don't feel sorry for these unscrupulous brothel owners.

written by shawn matthews    -|link