March 25 "Fix this, please?"

I started the week by giving a presentation to an advanced management class of city employees. They were particularly interested in administrative systems, so I discussed the hiring, payroll, and budgeting processes in Seattle in rather excruciating detail. They actually seemed interested. Then I demonstrated some of the on-line systems Seattle has available for citizens, including the ineractive, map-based “My Neighborhood” application. They really liked that! My interpreter, Cho Jung Jae, pointed out that not many people in Daejeon were fluent enough in English or knew enough about Seattle to use this application. I tried to explain that I was showing it as an example of how a city government can leverage technology to deliver useful information to residents, and not because I expected a lot of Koreans to want to know where all the parks in northwest Seattle were located. I think the students were with me on that one.

Much of my work in Daejeon involves editing documents (brochures, surveys, speeches, presentations) so that they make sense to an English-speaking audience. This involves more than just copy-editing or even dealing with things like tone and nuance. Sometimes it drives some major discussions about purpose, organization, and overall content.

This week, however, I was given a catalog of products produced by Daejeon companies. The mayor wants to take it along and distribute it when he meets with Seattle area businesses in a couple of weeks. The woman who brought the 26 page draft to me said that the mayor was very concerned about it. “Fix this, please?” she asked.

Here are a couple of my favorites, verbatim from the catalog:

Organic Cotton Towel
Our Hanshin Towel co is producing LOHAS (Lifestyle Of Health and Sustainability) connection ability towel product that is becoming issue all over the world the latest as Republic of Korea towel company venture 1 specially, and has towel full text production know-how of 40 odd years and completes Italy and France computer automatic towel machine facilities in the world best and is producing world highest grade product with many patent and utility model

Solar Crystal Road Block
Features :
· Using solar modules interior LED lighting and EL Light. Implement the existing product as a color crystal greater durability Poet environmentally friendly products are very good night.
· My intensity of the exterior surface altitude geulhimeul minimize.
· To minimize contamination and discoloration caused by ultraviolet charge of increasing efficiency.
· No maintenance costs.

I’d probably buy one of each of these, just to find out what they are. Especially with no maintenance costs.

But no time for that now. I’m off to Seoul to meet Patti’s plane (hopefully, with Patti on it.) A few days in Seoul, a few days in Daejeon, a few days in Gyeongju (the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom) and then back to Seattle for her and five more weeks of loneliness for me.

March 22 There is no wrong way

On Friday, I wanted to go to the Geology Museum, which is across town in the middle of a sort of high tech industrial park. The whole area looks a little bit like the Microsoft campus and environs. The bus that I needed to take me there passes through my neighborhood in a sort of zig-zag route, according to the bus map, but I wasn’t sure where to catch it, since the map doesn’t actually have street names or landmarks on it. I found a bus stop with the right route number and eventually a bus came and I got on.

The bus went this way and that, turning again and again. I did not recognize any of the streets. Then the driver pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. He looked at me. I was the only person on the bus. He asked me something which I assumed meant where are you going? I told him where I wanted to go. He made me to understand that I had gotten on the bus going in the wrong direction. We both sort of laughed. He got off the bus to take his break but motioned for me to stay. After a while he got back on and drove the bus again. We retraced our path. We passed the place, across the street now, where I had gotten on. Eventually we came to the stop that I wanted, near the museum, and I got off. This led me to the realization that there is no wrong way. Some trips are longer and more random than others. But sooner or later we end up where we are going to go.

The next day I gave a lecture to a class of Daejeon Metropolitan City managers on Seattle city government and how it is similar to, and different from, city government in Daejeon. Many students stayed awake for the entire talk, which I illustrated with photos of Seattle—the Space Needle, the First Starbucks, the Alaska Way Viaduct (see it while it’s still standing!), etc. They were most interested in my perceptions of the differences between the two city governments and asked some thoughtful questions, including “What do citizens in Seattle complain the most about?” That was a good one.

On Sunday, Mr. Kang, who had taken me to Gongju last weekend, invited me to have lunch at his church. I could hardly refuse. The church occupies the sixth floor of a commercial building about a half mile from my apartment. It is apparently an unaffiliated evangelical congregation of about three hundred, and I got there just as the two-hour service was finishing. The “church basement” where we ate is of course on the same floor as everything else; I met many, many people, walked through the line, got my plate of rice, kimchi, and other assorted pickled vegetables from the ladies dishing up the food, passed on the “meat” dish, which appeared to be chunks of Spam and chunks of cheese in a spicy sauce, got a bowl of thick soup, and sat down between Mr. Kang and the minister on the floor (no cushions for these hard-core Christians) at one of the long tables. Mr. Kang’s wife even made a huge salad for us to share, because she was afraid that as a vegetarian, I would not get enough to eat.

One thing puzzled me and I don’t know quite how to ask about it. We removed our shoes when going into one of the rooms where the high school youth group meets. And we removed our shoes again when going into the kitchen/dining area. But people inside the chapel itself keep their shoes on! That seems very strange, certainly contrary to the Buddhist tradition of removing shoes before entering a meditation hall, temple, or monastery. Maybe because in the chapel, people sit in regular pews, but in the other rooms, seating is on the floor? Every day is a new challenge to understand what’s going on.

March 18 IT in Daejeon

After more than four weeks in Daejeon, I finally got to meet the City IT director—or Information Policy Officer, as he is called. Kim Su Cheon seems like a pretty sharp guy. His crew of 40 takes care of the technology needs of more than 2800 city staff. That sounds pretty difficult except that as I understand it, Daejeon does not do any application development. They get their systems handed to them from the central government in Seoul. So their main focus is desktop and network support, security, troubleshooting, and the usual headaches associated with all of those. Their network extends to a number of outlying facilities and they are implementing a network monitoring system. I hope to get back together with him in the next week or two to show some of the web-based GIS applications Seattle has implemented as well as to explore what they are doing or planning in the area of e-government.

I also managed to discover Seattle Park, one of the legacies of the sister city program. It is located next to a school, just a ten minute walk from my apartment. The cherry trees in the park are beginning to blossom, and a group of small boys was playing baseball. So now I’ve been to Seattle Park in Daejeon; someday I’ll have to visit Daejeon Park in Seattle.
There are other cultural connections as well. Daejeon residents seem to have a pretty good idea of the American diet: chicken, pizza, and donuts, washed down with a delicious cup of expensive coffee.

March 15 "How old are you?"

I’ve noticed that it is very common for Koreans to ask me how old I am, a question I rarely get asked at home other than when filling out forms in the doctor’s office. I have gotten used to this question at work, but today two complete strangers asked me. I took the subway to the Noeun district to go to the prehistory museum there, and as I was charting my course in the subway station, a man asked me where I was trying to go. I told him and he said he would show me how to get there. He led me through various passageways and down winding alleys, which might have made me a little nervous anywhere but Korea, until we were within sight of the museum. On the way he asked me how old I was and I told him—sixty. He told me in return that he was seventy. He looked fifty.

Later, while sitting and soaking sore muscles in the spa at Yuseong, a man climbed into the tub next to me and asked me how old I was. This too might have made me a little nervous anywhere but Korea. I told him my age and he said that was how old he was too. He looked forty-five.

Speaking of age, the downtown area of Daejeon, where I live and work, is sometimes called “new downtown,” because it has all been built in the last 20 years or so. If there is a new downtown, there must be an old downtown, since new and old are relative terms. I discovered that the old downtown is near the train station, across town, and decided to pay it a visit.

Old is not that old. I have read that Daejeon was pretty well destroyed during the Korean War and was rebuilt afterwards. So old downtown was constructed in the 1950s, and some of it remodeled more recently. What makes it much more interesting than new downtown is the huge market there. For blocks and blocks people sell produce (some from China or Malaysia, but must locally grown), fish, spices, meat, and various snacks and household items. It is a loud, colorful, aromatic, bustling place with a mostly adult clientele.



Across the river from the market and the train station is a part of town that is the opposite: a long criss-cross of pedestrian malls lined with stores with English names. Some of them, like the "Sexy Cookie" lingerie shop, may have lost a bit in the translation.
Those who stroll through this reproduction of a generic Americanization appear to be young and hip, or are at least trying.

On Friday my friend Chon Byung Ick and I went to the Daejeon Culture and Arts Center (the performance hall) to hear a concert by the Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra. It was quite nice. Although the orchestra is almost entirely Korean, the conductor is Spanish. They did pieces by Shubert, Hayden, and Tchaikovsky. Unlike most concerts and performances in Seattle, it started exactly on time.

I had mentioned at work that on Saturday I wanted to go to Gongju, a town about 45 minutes from Daejeon. Gongju was the capital during parts of the Baekje Dynasty, from 18 BC to 660 AD. Severy people expressed concern that I intended to take the bus all the way to Gongju and then try to find the major tourist sites there all on my own. My friend Mr, Kang decided that he should take me and bring along his high-school aged daughter so that she could see Gongju and I could help her with her English on the way there and back. We had a good time exploring the burial mounds where the tomb of King Muryeong was discovered in 1971 and we were able to wander in and out of replicas of the burial chambers, always an adventure. There is a great museum in Gongju that has many of the treasures that were in the King’s tomb. Mr. Kang was able to get his car washed on the way. I am learning all kinds of new stuff every day.


I have even learned a new strategy for parking my motorcycle when all the parking spaces are taken.

March 12 Office Casual

As I become more accustomed to Korean social traditions—removing my shoes when I enter a restaurant, sitting on the floor to eat, picking things out of communal platters and bowls with my chopsticks or my spoon—a new problem has arisen. Many people have reached out to me, taking me out to lunch or dinner, and I would like to reciprocate. That is, I want to continue to socialize, to take the initiative, and to carry my share of the expense. (There is, apparently, no “Dutch treat,” at least not at a visible level, in Korean socializing. Someone always picks up the tab.) The problem is that even after a month here I am still viewed as the guest, and whichever Korean I am with assumes the role of the host. For example, on Monday I stopped by the desk of Lee Lim Moo, a man who worked at the City of Seattle for a year back in the mid-90s and who took me out to dinner my first day of work in Daejeon. I like him and I invited him to have lunch with me. He seemed happy about that and readily agreed. Then he invited four or five of his fellow managers to join us and insisted that I would be his guest for lunch.

Now, in Seattle I could handle this kind of problem by simply outmaneuvering him for the bill or even arranging with the restaurant ahead of time to make sure that I got the check. But in a Korean restaurant, where my language skills are limited at best, that’s hard to do. I’m sure I’ll work something out eventually, but for now, it’s a little embarrassing.

I find that my co-workers are also still very interested in the details of my daily life. Some of that is, I think, out of concern. “What did you do this weekend? Really? You took the bus by yourself?” And some is just curiosity. “What did you have for breakfast today? What did you have for dinner last night? Really? You cook?” Stories of my fixing food for myself in my apartment always elicit shock and amazement (and maybe a little well-placed concern, too.) Some of the more progressive Korean men I have talked with will admit to “helping” their wives with the housework, but none, so far, has confided that he cooks. I try to encourage them, but I don’t see a lot of hope.

One thing that is not a problem for me so far is what to wear to the office. As you have probably seen from previous posts, Korean office-wear is pretty consistently formal, at least by current US standards. Men invariably wear dark suits (I brought three), dress shirts (I brought many) and ties (likewise.) Women wear dark slacks or skirts, a blouse, and usually a dark jacket or sweater. Formality, however, ends at the ankle. Many men remove their shoes after they are at their desks and slip into a pair of sandals. And the women—well, once inside the office, anything goes.

March 8 The Hike

I had a scare this weekend when I got a call from Patti saying that my father was in the hospital with pneumonia. In addition to worrying about him, it made me realize again how isolated and out of touch I am here. Fortunately, he is well attended by my brothers and sisters, who insist he is on the road to recovery. I called him at the hospital and he predicted that he would be home in a couple of days. He’s pretty tough for an old guy. Hang in there, Dad.

On Friday, needing a haircut, I stopped in at the City Hall barber shop, which you can only find by cutting through the City Hall “fitness room.” The barber shop is a two person operation. The barber cut my hair very quickly and meticulously, with no loss on my part of any portion of either ear. Then he shampooed my head in the sink. Afterwards the beautician blow-dried the stubble and applied various lotions, creams, and pomades. I look great! I should have taken before and after pictures.

Then I wandered around until I found an archeological ruin that I had been looking for. Apparently this is a place where excavations have found settlements from the Old Stone Age, New Stone Age, and Bronze Age, right in downtown Daejeon (the New Downtown, not to be confused with the Old Downtown, which is near the train station.) I think the huts on display there are reproductions. If they are really three to five thousand years old, we should find out what they are made of.

My friend Kim Sung Hoon, the manager of the section where I’m currently working and a resident of the 10th floor of my building, stopped by one evening to show me how to use my washing machine. That’s very helpful, because I’m tired of doing my laundry in the sink. It’s actually a pretty cool appliance—a combination washer and dryer. Just put in the clothes, set the cycles and drying time, and I’m good to go. In return, I’m editing a resume and application for him. Unlike the instructions on the washer/dryer, it is in English.

On Saturday I got my first real cell phone call, from Kim Chu Ja in the Office of International Relations and Education. She wanted to know if I could go hiking in the mountains with her and her husband. Hiking? Sure! But what they call mountains here, we would call hills. I was ready for a walk in the park.

Some park. The trail we took up Mt. Gyeryong was steep and rocky, and Chu Ja and her husband Hee Dong are fit and trim. I had a hard time keeping up, but it felt good to be out in nature after weeks in the city. The trail led to a small pagoda, really just two towers of stone, high on the hillside. At the bottom of our trail down, we stopped at Donghaksa, a monastery for Buddhist nuns (I guess that’s a nunnery). I was surprised to see that the nuns, like traditional Buddhist monks, have their heads shaved.

Afterwards, of course, we had to stop at one of the many little restaurants outside the temple area for dinner. Hee Dong ordered an assortment of pajeon, a kind of fried pancake made with flour and egg. We had five different varieties: seafood and green onion, mushroom, kimchi, acorn jelly, and potato. The usual assortment of side dishes came with, and we washed it down with some Korean rice wine, which I had not had before and really liked.

Speaking of wine, I discovered a Korean red table wine at the grocery store. It’s quite a find—a little over a dollar for half a liter. I found it bursting with raspberry Kool-aid on the front palate, with strong hints of Smith Brothers Wild Cherry Cough Drops and a lingering Listerine finish.

March 4 Third Week at Work

I spent much of my third week in Korea editing and rewriting economic development documents—a booklet, a presentation to be delivered in Seattle, a welcoming speech to a delegation of investors from Finland (in English, fortunately.) I also found time to work on my own presentation to Daejeon city employees, which is scheduled for March 21. I’m told that every Korean who visits Seattle wants to see the original Starbucks, so I have included a slide of that in my presentation.

For dinner on Monday, I went to a Japanese restaurant down the street from my apartment. I didn’t feel like having sushi, so I pointed to a plate of tempura that was pictured on the menu. In case there might be a misunderstanding, I said in my most polished Japanese Korean, “Tempura.” The waiter looked at me and asked, “One?” His English was about as limited as my Korean (yes, I can say “one” in Korean) and I wasn’t sure if he was asking whether I was ordering only for one person (I was after all sitting alone, the only person at the counter) or if he wanted to know whether I wanted only one shrimp. The menu page that showed the picture of the tempura had quite a list of options, all in Korean, with a variety of prices. I decided to spin the wheel and take a chance, so I nodded and said “Ye.” That means yes. It was a good thing I didn’t say “I”. That means two (in Korean, not Roman numerals.) I got a salad, a bowl of miso soup, and a huge plate of tempura shrimp, fish, and vegetables. One large dinner.

This place, by the way, is not to be confused with the other Japanese restaurant, the one in the alley behind my building. I haven’t gone in there yet--I've been kind of afraid to.

On Wednesday Mr. Cho Jung Jae (aka J.J Cho) and I had lunch with Mr. Sung Gi-Moon, the manager of the International Relations Team working on staging the 60th International Astronautical Congress. This conference of up to 3,000 space and space technology specialists will be held in Daejeon for the first time, and it is a big deal. The city government and many universities and research institutes have loaned staff to work together to design and run the conference. They are well funded. Our lunch consisted of about 20 different dishes, many of which were delicious. Afterwards we went to the conference offices where one of Mr. Sung’s assistants spent a considerable amount of time providing me with every possible detail regarding the Congress.

On the way back to the office, Mr. Cho took a long detour so he could show me several of the universities and research institutes which are involved in the Congress, and also the Daejeon World Cup Stadium, which is not involved.

Respect for age is very big in Korea. It is a key concept, a cultural foundation. Age before beauty is not just a saying, it is a way of life. I had read that before coming here, so I was expecting it. I found out today that the mandatory retirement age in Daejeon city government is 60. That means that wherever I happen to go in City Hall, whatever group I’m working with or meeting I am attending, I am the oldest person. (It’s kind of like going to work every day to a Miley Cyrus concert.) (If Miley Cyrus only sang in Korean.) I always get to be the first person through the door, the first person on the elevator, the first person offered a chair or tea or a walker. At first I thought it was done in awe of my wisdom, style, and dashing good looks. Now I realize that it’s just because I’m regarded as one of the ancients.

If you were wondering about some things that might be set on your table that you can put on your rice, here is a typical selection.

March 1 Museum, Museum, Spa

Weekends in Daejeon are kind of lonely so far—and four days can be really lonely. I don’t know anybody here except people from work, and after they put in their insane five twelve-hour days, they naturally want to spend weekends with their families. So I try to get out and do something every day: go for a run, shop and cook, explore someplace I haven’t been before. Eventually I’ll run out of places.

The best news of the week is that Patti bought her ticket to come and visit. She arrives on Thursday, March 26. We’ll spend a few days in Seoul, a few days in Daejeon, and probably a few days not knowing or caring where we are.

This Friday I went to the Municipal Arts Complex. It is a new, modern facility just this side of the Expo Park. There is a large performing arts center there (the Daejeon Culture and Arts

Center), the Municipal Museum of Art, and a second, smaller museum dedicated to the works of Ungno Lee. Lee was a Daejeon artist who is apparently well known in France. Both museums are human-scale (meaning not the Louvre.) It is amazing how much faster you can get through an

art museum when you can’t read any of the signage. When I got home, I discovered that I have a mailbox in the lobby and that it contained three pieces of mail: an ad for some kind of quilted

luggage, an offer for credit if I want to buy a house or car, and something that looks suspiciously like a bill. I’ll have to take that into work to find out what it’s for.

Late Friday afternoon JJ Cho from the International Affairs and Education Office dropped by to deliver a cell phone that the City is providing me. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I suppose it is good that people can get in touch with me if they need to, especially since I’m only in the office three days a week. And it’s nice to have something I can use in an emergency, such as if I get lost or lose the key to my apartment (a rather constant worry.) On the other hand, I rather liked the feeling of being untethered. Now, even when I’m out walking around, people can get in touch with me. Of course, that may end my weekend isolation. Perhaps my phone will be ringing non-stop: “Want to go hiking? Bicycling? A baseball game? How about some sushi?” So far, though, I have only received annoying spam text messages in Korean.

On Saturday I took the bus to the Asia Museum, which is in the Daedeok Valley on the far side of town. When I got on the bus I showed the driver a map and told him where I wanted to get off—the Daedeok Valley IC, whatever that is. Fortunately, he seemed to know. It was a long ride, about forty minutes, and then he stopped at a bus stop and indicated for me to get off. I crossed the highway and sure enough, there was a sign for the Asia Museum, 1000 meters up a winding

dirt road. The museum is featuring an exhibit of the works of Cho Young Nam, an artist and singer who, in some of his pictures, bears a disturbing resemblance to Kim Jong Il. I actually liked his work, which was abstract, playful, and varied. I wandered through all of the galleries, taking my time—the only other visitors were two police officers who were either off duty or looking for art thieves. When I was finished, a young museum guide who spoke virtually no English insisted on giving me a tour of the exhibit. So we revisited everything I had just seen, this time with a thorough Korean explanation. Occasionally she would type a word into her cell phone/camera/dictionary and show it to me to read: “Flower.” “Firecracker.” “Loess.” On the way home I saw what I think might be a bowling alley.

Then I walked around my neighborhood and found a place where people were baking toast.

Sunday I tried the subway. There is a stop less than a block from my building, so I figured I needed to learn how to ride it. (Unfortunately, there is only one line—east and west—but if it goes where you want to go, it’s the way to go.) It turns out that taking the subway is easier than taking the bus. There are maps with all the stops marked in Korean and English, and even little tv monitors on the subway that announce in written and spoken Korean and English what the next stop will be. In between the tv displays advice on good subway behavior.

So I took the subway to Yuseong, the spa district. One of the guide books I read said that going to Korea and not visiting a spa is like going to Korea and not eating kimchi. Unthinkable! (Another similarity—they both make you sweat.) Anyway, Yuseong is apparently built above some hot springs. All the hotels there (and there are many) have spas that the general public can access for a small fee. I picked one at random, went into the lobby, and asked the desk clerk (who conveniently spoke a little English) what to do. He guided me to the counter where I paid the spa entrance fee and got my ticket. The spa for men at this particular hotel was on the second floor; the women’s spa on the fourth floor. (This is Korea, after all. No naked mingling.) I hiked up the stairs to the second floor, went into the spa lobby, took off my shoes, put them in a little shoe locker, took the key from the shoe locker and handed it, along with my receipt, to the spa attendant. He took them and handed me a key to a big locker. I took off my clothes and locked them up. Then I headed into the spa room itself.

This particular one featured shower stalls where everybody rubs and scrubs; rows of little squat down washing stations where everybody scrubs and rubs some more; and four pools: cold, warm, hot, and dangerous. I tried them all, passed up the sauna rooms, and just hung out for about an hour and a half, relaxing and perspiring. It’s not a bad way to spend part of an afternoon, especially after a long morning run. Sorry, no pictures from inside the spa.