Week 6

Songdo 송도 was featured in the NY Times Real Estate section December 30, 2007 and I just saw it this past week.

It compares the development of the section of Incheon 인천 where I live and work to a design produced by a SimCity video game, which is not totally inaccurate. The article was written strictly from the perspective of Gale, the developers of the huge project I discussed earlier in this blog. My biggest concern about the article is it makes it sound like no one lives or works here yet and that is obviously not the case. I write this blog from 송도! I suspect the NY Times did not contact the PR teams for IFEZ or the 인천 2009 World City Expo. I'll be having lunch with one or more of them later this week and will find out more.

Speaking of meeting people, I encountered a group of Pakistani men at E-mart on Sunday night and had a great conversation in English. There are lots of foreign workers in the factories of South Incheon 남동구 including, Filipinos, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians and perhaps others. Where we met at E-mart is close to where many of these workers live, which is also near my home. I asked the Pakistani men if they liked Korean food and the answer was a definite "no". They make their own meals at home because the only Pakistani restaurant is in Seoul Itaewon 이태원. I guess I need to take these guys out for 딹갈비 sometime and show them what they've been missing. One effort I will campaign for is government support to establish international food shops here in 송도 국재 Songdo International City. Right now, there's only Korean, Japanese and one Chinese restaurant here in 송도 국재. If the Korean government wants Incheon 인천 to compete with Shanghai, we need this to be a truly international place to include people and food.

Last Saturday night, 병길 and I went to Incheon Chinatown 인천 차이나타운 to a place called Won Bo 원보 and had several dishes including mandu 만두 that was the closest thing I've had to authentic Shanghai dumplings, outside of Shanghai. This is only my second trip to 인천 차이나타운 and I need to go more often.

After dinner, we went to a bar one of our coworkers had taken me to before. The previous visit, my coworker bought the drinks. This time I was buying. When you walk into the bar, the female bartenders come over, sit and have a beer with you. It turns out, the customer is buying them drinks! I did not realize this the time before and the bartenders do not ask the buyer permission. They just start cracking open beers they may or may not even finish. You are essentially paying to have a conversation with the female bartenders. I now know this is a common Korean custom.

My Korean language school at Talk House began last week and it's great! Our small class of foreigners is international: folks from New Zealand, Canada, UK, US, Japan and China. I'm the most junior arrival in Korea in the class, but thanks to previous Korean study in California I'm keeping up.

An interesting fact I've recently learned about 인천 is that the neighborhood Bupyeong 부병 has the only large-scale automobile-producing plant in the Seoul area, and produces the Daewoo, Matiz, Labo and Damas cars. Matiz cars are notable because they are so small, they almost look like golf carts!
This plant in 부병 also houses the company’s head office, as well as the GM Daewoo design and development center.

A less interesting fact that is a bit upsetting is that China has raised the cost of US visas to $13o!
Koreans pay about $40 I think and that was about how much it cost when I went to China last year.

A final note for this post: it may sound strange but bananas taste better in Korea than in the US. They tend to have more banana flavor. Even big bananas taste like the baby banana variety.