Tales from Korea

You might have noticed that I have stopped posting Photo Fridays. I decided to stop because I found that looking for photos to match the themes was starting to feel more and more like a chore, rather than an interesting activity.

I guess I’ll have to find some other way to keep my blog alive.

In the meantime, I have yet to post about my trip to South Korea last month… I don’t feel like rushing it, so let’s start slow with some anecdotes.

On my very first day there, I heard announcements mentioning “police” and “culprit” while taking the Busan metro. (Being a huge fan of Korean crime dramas, these two words are very familiar to me :P ) Initially I thought that it was the news, and that they were announcing that the police had caught a culprit for a certain case.

But later when strolling (I say strolling, but it was probably more like trudging, since I was extremely tired by then after a long journey, and it was too early to check in to my hotel :P ) along the streets of Busan, I received an alert message on my phone.

You can see from the background of the message that my camera was on, and that is a street in Busan!

I translated it with Google Lens, and found out that the police were looking for someone! This should be the same as the announcement I heard in the metro earlier.
(“alerte d’urgence” means “emergency alert/announcement”)

The next day I received another alert, this time on my lock screen.

Isn't Pikachu cute? :P

The translation:

Wild boar alert!

I didn’t even know where that location was, but since it didn’t sound like anywhere nearby, I guess I was safe. :P

After that I did not receive any more alerts…so I don’t know what happened to the wild boar :P

(Anecdote in anecdote: Here we manage to see real-life use cases of iSDS, a feature on the Tetra radios I work on. The “i” there stands for “instant”, with SDS being the equivalent of SMS on our phones. Its purpose is to show a pop-up on the screen, that the user needs to acknowledge before the message is cleared away.)

Also, I saw sooo many Pokemon in Korea. I totally didn't expect that there would be such a lot of Pokemon merchandise there. The first day, I kept snapping photos of every Pokemon item I saw. After that I stopped...there were too many! Here’s a collage of the Pokemon photos that I snapped, since I’m not going to post each of them individually.

It was just as well that I didn't purchase any carry-on luggage on my budget flights...so it was not hard to decide NOT to buy any of them back. They were expensive too...the ones on the bottom-right cost 15k won each, which is around RM52. It was sad leaving some of those lovely toys behind though... :'(

A word for "mother"

Because this week's photo theme was mother...

I was looking out for a mother cat or dog. No such luck...

So does the word "Mama" count? :P

A walk on Gurney Bay

After our dessert on Gurney Drive, we decided to check out Gurney Bay which was nearby.

the playground in the middle

lots of children playing

a toilet...designed to look like Fort Cornwallis?

the other side looks kinda nicer

at the edge of the park, we saw that there was another place to walk below

so we went down

sea view

we can see Komtar in the distance

view from the northern end of the park as we were leaving

There were quite a lot of people at the park...but it wasn't really crowded since the park was so big. We were sweating quite a lot by the time we finished walking around.

Back to Ingolf...with crêpes for dessert

See previous posts on Ingolf here.

Snorlax wanted to go to Ingolf again for his birthday treat.

We ordered the day's special (again), and Snorlax went for his favourite mixed grill (again :P ).

grilled pork in red wine sauce, RM31.80

Julian's mixed grill, RM44.80

This time they had iced lemon tea which cost the same price as mineral water (RM4.80), so we ordered that instead of our usual mineral water.

Compared to our last visit two years ago, their salad portion has gone back to its normal size.

However, I felt that their pork (in both dishes) was a little dry and hard. The chicken as well... Only the lamb from Snorlax's platter was really to my taste. (Note: the mixed grill came with sauce that is not in the photo, and the sauce was tasty.)

After Ingolf, we went to Crêpe Cottage on Gurney Drive for dessert (recommended by Snorlax).

hot apple, RM16
Apple strips with cinnamon sautéed in hot pan.
Served with vanilla ice-cream.

mango cup, RM22
Oven-baked mango crêpe with fresh mango cubes.
Served with 2 scoops mango ice-cream.

(The descriptions above are copied from their menu, which we can find online, if they haven't changed/removed it.)

I liked the hot apple; it is similar to desserts we could find in France.

As for the mango cup, they baked the crepe into a bowl, and put the mango and the ice-cream inside. I didn’t like it as much, firstly because they kinda spoil the crêpe by baking it, and secondly because there were too many “other ingredients”. The crêpe is sidelined…

This is usually why I tend to go for a more “original” or “basic” flavour when ordering crêpes, waffles, or the like. If you need a load of tasty add-on ingredients to make your dessert tasty, then the basic is probably not good enough to begin with…

(I can see why they would put this on the menu too...it's a money-maker :P )

On their table, they had this which deserves a special mention:

Cute... But I'm not sure all pineapples are sweet on the inside; there are plenty of sour ones. :P

Bi-bicycle

This week's photo theme was bicycle.

It was hard to spot one when it was convenient to take a photo! (Most of the time I saw one while I was driving...either by the roadside or someone riding it)

So I was glad I spotted these this morning... Maybe they were always there in our company's parking lot, but I never noticed?

Waiting at a traffic light

Because the theme for this week was waiting.

A late discovery

Today I heard news of a historical building in Copenhagen being damaged in a fire.

Since I was in Copenhagen two years ago, I checked out which building it was. And yes, I did see it when I was there...it is in the last photo of this post.

At the time, I actually did not know what it was. Now I find out that it is called the Børsen, meaning "the bourse" aka the stock exchange building.

Dozing on a hot afternoon

This week's Photo Friday theme was afternoon.

Well, this dog is having a relaxing nap under the hot afternoon sun...

It's so cute!! ♥

It's unfortunate that the sunlight got in the way of a clear view...

Proving to Naver Maps that I am human

I tried to sign up for Naver Maps last week, in preparation for my trip to Korea.

I had already found out from my research that navigation with Google Maps doesn’t work as well in Korea as in other countries, because Korea doesn’t allow much information to be stored on international servers (for security reasons…due to the threat from North Korea). But I still planned to just use Google Maps, because I’m not someone who wants to just follow what my phone says when I want to go somewhere. I prefer to just explore the streets on my own, while having a map as a reference. (and Google does have the locations of all the tourist spots and subway stations)

But…last week when I tried to download Google’s offline maps for the areas that I will be visiting, Google told me that offline maps were not available for that area.

Now that was a deal-breaker. So I checked out Naver Maps, and it looks like they allow downloading offline maps. The maps are selected by region, though…we can’t really zoom in and select the boundaries of our map. So even if we only need the map for one small town in that region, we have to download the map for the whole region. (After I downloaded them, it still felt like the maps didn’t work offline…I’m not sure whether I need to actually access the maps online first or something. Still checking it out)

Anyway, this post is mainly to share how Naver Maps verified me when I signed up.

Last week it asked me the price of broth kelp.

I responded, but the server was down somehow (there was an error message saying “sign ups are not possible at this time”).

This week, I tried again and managed to sign up (on PC, without such questions...strange!), and when I signed in on the app, I received a different question, more mathematical this time!

Tell you what, if you can't read or can't count, you are prohibited from using Naver Maps. :P

A wet morning

After a spell of extremely hot weather, some rain was very welcome...

This photo was taken last Saturday when I went out to buy some breakfast. (No, not from the shop in the photo :P )