설날

설날 (aka Seollal) is on the 1st day of the 1st month of the lunar calendar and is may be more recognizable as Lunar New Year in Korea. Like Chuseok, the pre and post days are also included in the holiday and all are family intensive days that drives every Korean to return home in a country wide mass migration. The celebrated ghost towns phenomenon is in full effect and so it's a great time to wander the streets and see some sites, provided they're open.

But it's also the day where all Koreans age a year:

Several East Asian cultures, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, share a traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age; this results in people being between 1–2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western version. Today this system is commonly used in Koreans' daily life, with exceptions to the legal system and newspaper.

So happy birthday, Korean people.

Incheon Airport to Mokpo Bus

If, after you're done escaping Mokpo, you actually want to get back here, the easiest way is to grab the same Korean Komfort Mokpo to Incheon Airport bus, except in the other direction. It's the same deal at ₩33,600 (plus ₩2,000 booking fee) per seat, except that now your two choices Mokpo choices leave Incheon Aiport at:

• 8:40 am
• 6:20 pm

And again, if you miss the Mokpo bus you can always catch the more frequent bus to Gwangju.

I thought that Kumho, the people responsible for the buses leaving Mokpo, would also be responsible for the buses leaving the airport. But there's no airport option on their website. Instead there's Airportbus where tickets can be bought in a pimp-like fashion that explains the extra ₩2,000 service charge.

The Airportbus site is only in Korean and the routes and fees table seems to only care about major routes, i.e. Mokpo is missing but the information for Gwangju (광주) is accurate. The color coded words at the top of the table (일반, 우등 and 심야 ) translate into general, superior, and late night services, and demand different prices. There is a schedule posted at the airport, photographed and included here for your planning pleasure:



Update: There is an English Schedule maintained by the Airport itself. It's simple to use and presents Mokpo is a nice little table & map combination.

Google Reader

I've had some questions about my blog roll, that list of blogs in the side column of the page. Mine is different and some people like it and want to use the same style. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the style since the blog roll is generated by my Google Reader account.

Since I set this blog up I've come to fully embrace our Google overlords. I search with Google, I blog with Google, I translate with Google, I even schedule, map, mail, and chat with Google,
and thanks to $1.65Bn I now use Google to watch naughty videos. I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem -- I mean with Google, not with watching naughty videos. And of course, I use Google Reader as my news reader to keep track of other blog-sandboxes that deal with with Mokpo, Seoul, and other parts of Korean life.

As a news reader in itself Google Reader is okay and has some faults. But it works well for me since I'm a big fan of thin client computing; I use the same application over multiple computers during the course of the day and don't want the hassle of re-synching (or re-installing) every time I log on. Another feature (and the one that connects Google Reader to my side panel) is the 'add a blogroll to your site' function that spits out code that you can add to a blank panel in your blog layout. The only extra work that I've done is to organize blogs into various categories by tagging them with labels, like Mokpo, Korea, Seoul, etc.

Happy Together

Ms Parker sums up all of the cliche elements of Korean TV perfectly. I've talked about some examples in the past but I good one is a show that I've been calling the The Five Stooges since it seems to always involve the same collection of wacky Korean men performing mild, jackass-light stunts. I finally watched enough of it today to catch a commercial break and learned its true name, Happy Together. Apparently it's gone through various incarnations over the years:

The hosts('MC's', called by Korean popular culture) of Season 1 were comedian Shin Dong-yeop (신동엽), once K-pop artist Yoo Sung-jun (유승준), who was quickly replaced by entertainer Lee Hyo-ri (이효리). Later in 2003, the two were replaced by comedian Kim Je-dong (김제동), and comedian Yu Jae-seok (유재석), who continued the run till the end.

In Season 2 (Happy Together Friends), it was hosted by Yoo Jae Suk, entertainer Tak Jae Hoon (탁재훈) and Kim Ah-joong (김아중). Tak Jae Hoon and Kim Ah Joong was replaced by Lee Hyo-ri, and comedian Lee Soo-geun (이수근, served as a joint panel) came along later. In 2007, Lee Hyo-ri was replaced by K-pop singer Eugene (유진), and Lee Soo-geun was replaced by comedian Shin Bong-seon (신봉선).

In Season 3 (Happy Together: Let's Go To School; which the name was changed to Happy Together Season 3), it was hosted by Yu Jae-seok, comedian Park Myeong-su (박명수, a long-time colleague of Yu Jae-seok since co-hosting the Muhan Dojeon), actor Park Joon-kyu (박준규), and Shin Bong-seon. Recently, Park Joon-kyu has left the show.

I actually found part of the episode that I was watching, where the five stooges and special guest friends play the game where they are trapped in a sauna and must karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they all are forced to where school girl uniforms and karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they are all forced to karaoke their way to freedom from the dreaded falling platters from the sky:

And of course there are fan sites.

BRB

Wow. There are people reading this blog from outside my circle of, well, me.

The public education teachers in Jeollanam-do province are in the middle of their winter break, something that looks like two weeks paid vacation on paper but is really one or two months depending on the individual school's discretionary usage of their native speaker. Fortunately I'm one of the lucky ones; I've been away in India, backpacking since the end of Christmas, and I'm back to fulfill my February commitment of three working days. Then the new terms starts in March.

I was contemplating a quick hop over to China, but the weather may put a hold on those plans.