Hello Kitty Cafe

While we were in Daegu this weekend for a little (read:  3-month supply of Western perishables) Costco shopping, we happened upon this little coffee shop, and I just HAD to share it with you.  Now I know that Hello Kitty has quite the following - in America and especially in Asia.  But I really had no idea...

Wow. It's just... so... PINK!


So much to poor Blake's chagrin, I couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to document (photographically speaking) this unique little twist on Starbucks.  I have since discovered that there are a few more of these located around the world, but c'mon, how many have you ever seen?


And I have to admit, while I'm not really a Hello Kitty fan myself, they really did an amazing job.  Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against her.  She's a cute little cat really, but I'm more of an Eeyore kind-of girl.  And before you go knocking Eeyore, let me just say that he is not a pessimist, he's a realist.  Besides, pink has never really been a driving color in my life - my favorite color is blue.  So it works.  But I digress...


It was hard not to be impressed with the myriad ways they managed to include her head and/or bow in their decor and even their beverage options.  I would imagine that any Hello Kitty enthusiast would be thrilled to enjoy an afternoon sitting in this shop, sipping a caramel macchiato flaunting that feminine, feline face in its foam.

I took several minutes for me to explore all of the areas, and really only one thing gave me pause...

The men's restroom.


Do men actually come in this place?  Even as I was snapping this shot, Blake stood on the curb outside waiting for me to finish.  He wouldn't even come in long enough for me to take pictures!  And the place was full of girls and women of all ages.


But then I remembered that this is a country where daters often wear matching outfits while out together (and not for Sadie Hawkins) on a random Saturday night.  Or Tuesday night.  Or Thursday.  And it's fairly obvious which gender chose the outfits on pretty much every occasion.  So, guys, the next time your significant other asks you to hold her purse while she's in the bathroom, quit you're griping, hold it like a man (between index finger and thumb at arm's length, like it might burn you with its powerful female magic), and be thankful you're not wearing her blouse.


And then I wondered how many poor guys have sat in this place wearing Hello Kitty t-shirts identical to their dates', while this little cat with a bow stared mockingly at them from their mugs.  Poor fellas.  No wonder Blake didn't want to come inside.


Anyway, I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I did.  It's amazing what a little imagination and a whole lot of pink plastic and pleather can do.

No Such Thing As Free Lunch

I'm sure you've all heard the old saying.  But it's been given a new meaning, at least for me, by my experiences here in Korea.

Because every workday our company provides lunch for all our employees, from the plant manager to the operators.  We're a fairly small operation right now, and we don't have our own cafeteria or anything like that.  In fact, until this summer we didn't even have a sink.  But now we do, in the small kitchen in our new "sea can land," as Blake likes to call it.  And we have the coffee maker, microwave, and small, dorm-style refrigerator, that we had at our initial site.  But those conveniences still obviously aren't enough to produce  the hearty meal that is provided each day.  Wait, did I say hearty?  Ok, that's probably a little too generous.  Well, it's a meal at least.  I think.

 

The lunches are provided by Cham-mat, a local catering company near the industrial complex.  They deliver the lunches each day directly to our sea cans.  They consist of smaller containers of food, larger containers of short, sticky, Korean white rice, and some sort of soup in large silver pails.  Sometimes they also bring rice water, which comes in the clear plastic pouches you see above.

My understanding is that there are different levels of meals from which a company can choose.  I believe they serve the different levels in specific colors.  Our lunches come every day in yellow containers.  Hence, we call them "yellow box" lunches.

I think the yellow box is the lowest level available.  I can't imagine anything worse being available anyway.

I'll start you off with one of the easier days.

That's some sort of pork cutlet with a kind of pasta salad.  Please notice the use of the terms "sort of" and "kind of" - I'm using them very loosely.  And kimchi.  There's pretty much always some kimchi.  And I think that's actually 2 different kinds this day.

These are pretty representative of our everyday meals.

And here are a couple soups. Mmmmmm.  And that's not a wow-this-is-really-yummy 'mmmmmm,' but more of an I'm-keeping-my-lips-pressed-tightly-together-so-I-don't-puke 'mmmmmm.' 

Actually, that one with sprouts is really one of the better soups.  Keep in mind "better" is entirely relative.

These are quail eggs, soaked in some kind of beef sauce.  But I don't think that "meat" it's sitting on is beef.  Blake claims that it is, but I don't think it looks like beef.  And it certainly doesn't look like beef that I eat.  'Cuz I don't eat that.

Of course, at least that was questionable meat.  There is also the wide variety of soy products that don't even have the decency to pretend.  And what is that pattern on the outer edges?  Ewww.

And normally I like fish.  In fact, in the States I love fish.  Seafood is a common choice of mine when eating out, and I also like to cook fish at home.  But fish here is another story.  They're tiny, and they taste very fishy.  Now I know what you're saying - it's fish, shouldn't it be fishy?  But trust me, "fishy" in the US and "fishy" in Korea are about as far apart as, well, the US and Korea.  Here is a lovely example of an often served dish.

You see, they like to fry the whole fish.  The WHOLE fish.  Skin, bones, head, eyeballs (even teeth, if you look really closely at that picture) and all.  And you can see from Jason holding it (he's one of the other Albemarle expats), that it's not very big.  So by the time you pick all the gross mess off the meat, you have maybe two bites of some pretty nasty tasting fish.  It's almost not even worth the effort.  Actually, I take that back - it's definitely not worth the effort.

I guess when I say I like fish, I mean like grilled fish covered with crawfish etouffee (and just for the record, that is the correct way to spell crawfish, I don't care what spell-check says.  and it doesn't even have etouffe.) from Harrington's in downtown Baton Rouge, or a fried catfish po-boy from Brewbachers (which also is not in the spell-check dictionary - man, what kind of Yankee wrote this stupid thing...), or even a Captain D's 2-piece meal (or 3-piece, you know, depending on how hungry I am).  I'm not into this whole "me caveman, me hunt fish, me cook fish on fire" thing.  Then again, who am I kidding?  When I cook fish, I go to WalMart and buy the frozen, 2-3 lb pkg of tilapia (no tilapia, are you kidding me?  c'mon, spell-check, now you're just being silly), pre-cleaned and fileted and ready to go.  But that just shows how refined I am.  Ha.  You can pretend you didn't notice that classy Captain D's reference a few sentences back.



Anyway, suffice it to say, this is the best part of the meal every day...

So this, ladies and gentlemen, is the free lunch they said didn't exist.  And you couldn't pay me to eat it.

Liars and Tigers and Boars, Oh My! - Day 2 cont.

So back to the tigers...

After we walked the medium-size tigers away from the pavilion, and Blake recovered from his near-death experience (ok, so maybe that's a little exaggerated...), we got to help "bathe" some of the larger tigers. Which basically means we rubbed a little soap on them and sprayed them with hoses while the volunteers distracted them with toys, milk, and/or chicken.  And interestingly enough, they smelled not unlike wet dog.

After the baths, they let us into a fenced play area.  In this area were trees and a rock formation with a small water feature.  They gave us all bamboo poles with different things tied to the ends, like empty dog food bags or colorful rags.  Then they let the tigers in!

I have to admit, it was a little unnerving.  Less because of the dozen or so tigers, and more because of all the people with poles, shaking them vigorously much too close to you and other people.  But there were so many volunteers in there with us, almost as many volunteers as tourists.  And they worked really hard to keep people from putting other people in the line of fire. 

And they were so much fun!  They ran and jumped and frolicked and flipped and plotted and tried to sneak up on their "prey."  There were so many people waving so many different things, it was actually harder than you would think to attract a tiger's attention.  Blake actually got pretty good at it.  Guess I shouldn't be surprised, since he's always able to do the same with our Mo cat and his toys, even though I can't ever seem to do it quite right.

After the playtime, we got an opportunity to take pictures with the biggest cats there.

And then we got to take turns "walking" (i.e., holding a leash attached to a very large tiger while he walks wherever he wants and you walk with him, unless he decides to run or chase something, in which case you let the leash go) a large tiger down to this old quarry, which they've turned into an exercise area for the tigers.  The workers took all of our pictures with our own cameras while we did this...

...and Blake and I got lucky and got a bunch of shots...

 ...because the tiger had to go to the bathroom right as it was our turn.

I mean, c'mon, look at the face.  You know what he's doing.  Such concentration!  I almost want to get him a magazine or something.

And let's just look at that first shot of Blake and me with him again.

 Yeah... You see the red circle?  That's tiger poo.

Thankfully, we didn't step in any.

Eventually we all made it to the old quarry, where several of the larger tigers were chained up, waiting for their playtime.

 You see the worker giving water to that one tiger and kissing him on the head?  I wish!  Amazing!

The workers ushered us into a small area surrounded by about chest high chain link fence.  Which actually was pulled back in one corner.  I tried not to think about why that was.

And then they let the tigers off the chains and ushered them into the play area, which was dominated by a water feature large enough for them all to spread out in.  The workers all had bamboo poles, most of which had bags or other dangling, tiger-tempting objects attached to them, and they would wave the poles around just like we tourists had all done with the younger tigers earlier.

It was quite hot, even though it wasn't even noon yet, and some of the tigers simply enjoyed lying in the water.

And some tigers played with each other.

While others ran and jumped and tried to catch the objects on the workers' sticks.

And sometimes they succeeded...

And some of the workers were crazy enough to get the stick back!  If one of those guys had taken a stick and bag from me, I would have let him keep it!

This one guy was absolutely CRAZY!  He would get in the water and walk around in there with them, while the other workers at least kept some distance between them.  One time he even rode the back of one for a few seconds!

I think he probably knew about 10 English words.  And 4 of them were, "I am tiger man!"  He had a huge tiger tattoo on his chest, and yeah, he was pretty much nuts.  He made me think of the Disney cartoon I watched as a child, Jungle Book.  I imagine that's what Mowgli would have looked like all grown up.  And Shere Khan, come to think of it.

Anyway, after the playtime, sadly, our time at the Tiger Temple was over, and we had to leave.  It was such an amazing experience to get to spend just a few short hours with these magnificent animals.  I will always remember that extraordinary day.

Tiger Temple is so far from Bangkok that the tour companies encourage you to combine something else in the area for your tour.  You could choose from a few different places or experiences, including riding elephants or viewing wild monkeys, but we chose the Erawan Falls, which are a series of 7 different water falls.

The 6th and 7th falls were pretty high climbs, and by this point of the day we were fairly exhausted.  So we only made it to the first 5 falls.  But they were still beautiful.

And after the falls, we dropped the guide back off and headed straight back to Bangkok.  Well, we did make one stop at 7-11.  Thailand has fountain cokes in their convenience stores.  Fountain cokes!  With ice!  You just don't understand.  And I know you're not supposed to drink the water in Thailand, and ice is made from the water.  But we just drank our coke really, really fast before the ice could melt.  I mean, some things are just worth the risk.

And 3-1/2 to 4 hours later, through achingly slow traffic, we finally made it back to our hotel and passed out incredibly early after our truly spectacular day.

Rules for Elevators

When we first moved to Korea, our building was very new.  And the elevators weren't finished yet.  But when they were finally completed and the cardboard was removed - all the gleaming stainless steel unveiled and the lovely astrological floor tiles revealed (just wait, I'm saving that for the next post) - we noticed these wonderfully helpful rules for everyday elevator use.

Of course, we can't really read them.  Or rather, we can read them, sound out the syllables at least, but we have no idea what they mean.  So we have spent many a trip up or down theorizing as to what they might say, using the pictures for guidance.  And the following are what we've settled on...

1. Don't karate chop the buttons.

And especially not with your eyes closed.



2.  Call the Mitsibushi maintenance man if you're stuck.

On the apparently cordless phone that I still can't find anywhere in these elevators.

3.  Don't throw your cat at the door.  And jump up and down on the elevator.

Mo Cat particularly appreciates this one.  Although, we're not entirely sure if you're not supposed to throw him at the door AND you're not supposed to jump up and down on the elevator, or if you're just not supposed to throw him at the door WHILE you jump up and down.  Mo votes for the former, but some days, we vote for the latter.  Depends how many times he has bitten me on a given day.  Seriously, he bit me in the stomach yesterday.  The stomach.

4. Don't crowd the elevator when they need to carry the pig out on a stretcher.

"They" apparently being the Mitsibushi maintenance man and a ghost?  Who is somehow also crowding the elevator with everyone else at the same time.

 Anyway, these are our best guesses.  If you have better ideas, let me know.

When we arrived back this weekend from our latest home leave trip, we found one of the elevator buttons broken.  I guess you really can't karate chop them after all.

To Each His Own

When I checked my hotmail this morning, I found an email from Zales.  It was a sales promotion for "Beautiful Previously Owned Jewelry - Gently Restored to Its Original Luster."  My curiousity got the better of me, and I decided to waste a little of my precious free time perusing some used jewelry.  And even though I know we all have varying taste - one man's trash is another man's treasure and all that - I was still amazed at some of the pieces I saw.  Because not only did some design team think it was a good idea to produce these pieces at some point, but this is USED jewelry.  That means somebody actually felt like it was worth their hard-earned money and bought this stuff.  Amazing.

I'll start with my mildest objection.  These pendants, in and of themselves, are not really so bad.  I myself had one half of a set very much like this as a child.  Only I was probably about 8, and as I recall the set was less than $10 from Walmart.  It probably wasn't even sterling silver.

 My confusion here is really about the market segment this was intended for.  What grown adult would still want to wear it?  And what 8-year-old can afford a FOUR HUNDRED DOLLAR best friend necklace?  Seriously?  And I know gold prices have been at record highs lately, but who's going to spend this much money for a kid's necklace?  I think you'd be better off melting it down and selling the gold.  And the real diamond accents...  Don't get me started.

I suppose the next two items really follow the same line of thought.

SpongeBob.  Wow.  Unbelievable.  At least they kept it to crystal and left the diamonds for real jewelry this time, like this next piece.  Ha!

This next one was at least worth quite a good laugh.

I wouldn't wear this with a bad Halloween costume.  Retail value $150?  Are you kidding me?  150 Won maybe.  Although I wouldn't even pay that for it.

And this last one was Blake's "favorite." 

I think I might buy it for him for Christmas.  What do you think?

Liars and Tigers and Boars, oh my!

8/17/11
We just got back from Bangkok last night. And really, we just got back to Yeosu today. So this is incredibly early for me to be even thinking about a post, even if I don't get to finish it tonight. But this trip was so incredibly amazing, I can't wait to start deciding which pictures to post.

We weren't planning to go on anymore trips for a while. Except for home leave. We've already been everywhere we had planned, and we are actually trying to save for our next home, despite how it may seem. But when we got back from our July home leave, we found out that we had some summer holidays, and we needed to use 'em or lose 'em. A little time on the Continental website, and I had figured out flights we could book with all the miles we've earned over the last year or so.

So off to Bangkok we went, with a quick night in Seoul on the way. We were flying Thai Air because they're Star Alliance and had flights available to use our mileage on the dates we needed. It was direct on the way, and economy, but the only seats available on the way back were business class. Fortunately, it still didn't take that many miles, and we had enough. We'd flown Thai Air last year to Taipei, and I don't remember it being particularly spectacular. So this time, when we had individual televisions with a really good selection of shows and movies, pretty good food (they served us a full meal and then sandwiches later on a 5-1/2 hour flight), and ice in the drinks, I was pretty impressed. I mean, I know that may not sound like much to you, but ice in the drinks on an Asian airline...  I'm tired of drinking tepid soft drinks on planes. I miss ice. And icees and sno cones and fountain drinks at gas stations and Sonic Happy Hour and... Well, you get the idea. Anyway, trust me, it's a big deal.

So we got to Bangkok mid-afternoon. And let's just say the airport was not as impressive as their major airline. But our baggage arrived just fine, and we found our way to the airport train into town. They had an express train that only took 17 minutes, which was nice. We rode the train in, transferred to the BTS line, which is their above ground metro system, and drug our suitcases down a few dirty streets with broken sidewalks to our hotel. But it was pretty close to the station, and it was really nice. The location turned out to be pretty convenient. When we checked in, we were informed we'd been upgraded to a "Royal Club" room, which was pretty big and very nice. We had access to the lounge, with a variety of beverages all day and cocktails and hors d'oeuvres in the evenings, breakfast daily in our choice of 3 restaurants or the lounge, and 30% off dinner and lunch at four of the hotel restaurants for the duration of our stay.

9/2/11
So much for getting this posted quickly...  Oh well, I tried, right?  That should be worth something.

Anyway, where did I leave off?  Oh, yeah...

The first day was pretty simple.  We walked to a small temple nearby the hotel, and had a late afternoon snack at Central World, a HUMONGOUS mall right next to the temple. 

We had looked up a few things to see in Bangkok, but we also wanted to relax.  Our schedule has gotten pretty hectic lately.  Blake's pilot plant is being built right now, and he's preparing to run a project for a customer and to commission the new plant.  But I have to say a huge thanks to Claude Younger, a Sunday school teacher I had in high school.  He noticed a facebook post I had made that mentioned Bangkok.  And he gave some good suggestions.  GREAT suggestions, actually.

Because the experience we had on this trip was truly one of the most amazing in my life!  If you're on facebook, you might have already seen the couple pics I've posted.  Or the several that Blake has.  But trust me, pictures cannot even begin to show you how awesome Tiger Temple was.

This temple is in a rural area about 2 1/2 hours outside of Bangkok (ex traffic).  Having learned our lesson from the Great Wall in Beijing, we actually booked a tour online ahead of time.  We got picked up by a driver our second day in Bangkok at 5:00am.  We rode about 2 hours to a small town near the temple, where our guide met up with us.  After a quick stop at 7-11 to pick up food to take to the monks and a coffee for our tour guide, we made our way another 30-45 minutes to the temple.

We spent about 4 hours at Tiger Temple.  I wish you could all do this some time in your lives!  It was UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING!  I must admit, I was nervous leading up to the actual day.  I mean, tigers are huge, powerful creatures with dangerous, carnivorous instincts.  But we'd read a lot of reviews, and we felt like it was a reasonably safe adventure.  Outside of our usually risk averse comfort zone, perhaps, but it was such an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we thought it worth the risk.  Even though the site manager at work teased us before we left that we should have warned him sooner so he could have posted our soon-to-be job openings already.

Ok, so enough with the rambling, here are the long-awaited pictures.  I wish I could post them all, but here are some of my favorites.

Of course I made friends with their puppy dog.  She was a sweetie, and I shared my blueberry muffin with her.  And then there was Priscilla the goat.  Who tried to share everyone's breakfast.

They also had wild boars and ponies.  I love how the baby boars look like little brown watermelons with legs.

First we gave breakfast to the monks.  They're in the burnt orange robes.  The guys in the burgundy shirts are the workers for the temple.  They work with the tigers and the people who come to see them.

Then we got to see the baby tigers!
We got to bottle feed one that was a little older.  Ours was very messy!

And just pet and love on the two little guys that were just a couple weeks old.

Ok, tell me that precious baby is not the cutest thing you have ever seen?

And we could pet and take pictures with some of the adolescent tigers.

Then we got to walk the medium-sized ones over to a play area.

This was our buddy.  He did really well.  At first.  He didn't lie down or refuse to walk.  In fact, he was the leader of the pack, so to speak.

But when he saw some of the wild boars, he got a little excited.  And he wasn't too happy that we wouldn't let him chase them.

And after that, the swinging shoe laces when Blake walked in front of him were just a little too tempting.

Poor Blake.  It all happened so quickly.
But he was ok.  I think it scared us all more than anything.  But fortunately, the tiger was just playing, and he didn't really bite hard.  And now Blake can say he's been bitten by a tiger.  C'mon - how many people can say that?

Ok, that's enough for tonight.  I'll try to post the rest tomorrow.  But you know me.  I wouldn't hold my breath.