Wesley's Tool-Box - Travel:Tabibito

The Victoria Peak

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:13:27 +0900

Windy? You bet.

This is the picture I took with my lovely girlfriend around the time I posted that July 20 entry. So... there you go.

Greetings from Hong Kong

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:17:50 +0900

I'm currently at Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, typing this at a web terminal in a Pacific Coffee premise. The terminal doesn't have a USB port, so I can't upload any photos, unfortunately. It's also the first time I was able to connect to internet after leaving the country yesterday morning, so I'm sort of starved for internet. Hah.

Bound for Nagoya, Japan

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:18:14 +0900

I think the KAL Lounge is great

Taking advantage of the holiday bracket provided by Buddha's Birthday (8th day of the 4th lunar month, which was yesterday - a designated Korean holiday) I took a day off today to take a break from the flow and get out of the country for a while. The destination is... Nagoya, Japan. I was looking to visit some other places, but the tickets were booked. Oh well.

On the road to Chingdao

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:21:00 +0900

"Yeah, I'm getting there..."

Choose two, and only two of the following: clothes, cellphone, and car. Apparently, this dude chose the clothes and cellphone. This is a slice of the way of life in the booming China - you might not have a car, but you gotta have a cellphone.

(From my dad's photo album of the last week's business trip to China)

Business trip to Ulsan

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:31:00 +0900

The rolling scenery

I'm writing this in a train with my notebook and an HSDPA internet modem as I cruise down from Suwon to Ulsan in a 4-and-a-half-hour trip. As always, it's good to live in a wired (wireless?) country.

K-EMS project is progressing one step further as a monthly meeting is held to gather all parties from the project. This month happens to take place in Ulsan, my hometown, and I've been called to join the senior staffs. I would have time to visit my parents, of course.
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On flight to San Francisco!

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 19:47:36 +0900

This plane's got internet

For the first time in 12 years I'm going to be stepping on American soil. It's about freakin' time! I'll be staying in United States for about a week, devoting half the time to San Francisco and Los Angeles each.

The flight features free (for now) wireless internet. The photo's just been taken a few minutes ago, in fact. Good thing I brought my laptop with me.

Rendezvous with Nuclear (Part 2)

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:45:00 +0900

The first thing that came into view as we entered the exhibition room was a map of the world showing where the nuclear reactors have been built. The guide explained that, with 20 reactors, Korea ranked 6th in nuclear power generation capacity, trailing Germany. United States came out on top but they haven't really built new ones in about 3 decades. Two things were evident about Korea regarding this ranking: its reliance on nuclear power is significant, and its overall energy consumption is quite large as well.
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Rendezvous with Nuclear (Part 1)

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:41:00 +0900

After passing by multitudes of shops prominently featuring gulbi in front for a few minutes, we drove through rice fields that featured transmission towers scattered here and there. Then we noticed employee apartments for Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) and Korea Plant Service & Engineering (KPS), a sure sign that there's a power plant nearby. Eventually, a familiar dome-shaped building started appearing at the edge of the horizon.
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Rendezvous with Nuclear (Prologue)

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:20:00 +0900

As a part of the three-week training camp for the new interns at Korea Power Exchange (KPX), we were taken to actual power plant sites. I'm guessing that this was designed let us get the feeling of the real hardware behind the machineries that produce electricity for the nation. It would also double as a reviewing process for all the studies we did in the training sessions during the past week. Last week, we went to the Taean thermal power plant, conveniently located next to the training center we're staying for the second and third week of the training, Korea Power Learning Institute (KPLI). This week, we went to a place tad farther away. A place that shares a lot of similarities with a thermal power plant but also quite different in many aspects - a nuclear power plant.
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First day at work...

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 22:48:22 +0900

Well, I'm writing this at a training center in Icheon. This is my first day at work in Korea Power Exchange, as the first 3 weeks of training is held at training centers in faraway location. I had much fun today with my teammates and all, but sadly the internet connection wasn't working on this computer I'm using at the lounge. So I'm using my cellphone as a temporary internet connection. Slow, but better than nothing.

I hope to tell more about the training as time and circumstances permit.

Getting a U.S. visa

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 02:54:00 +0900

The Korean passport

I had been thinking of visiting United States for a while. There were relatives and friends I could visit. I might also attend some trade shows. Alas, my U.S. visa expired over a decade ago, and Korea still isn't under the visa exemption program for United States. After all those years of missing out, I decided to get it over with and get a U.S. visa recently. It was a bit of work, but I decided to do this on my own instead of letting an agency take care of it.
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AMD Mania Day 2005 #2

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:35:43 +0900

The backstage

Continuing on, the eight finalists for the FarCry tournaments were summoned to the alley leading to the backstage. The tech demo was still in progress, and we had to wait about ten minutes for that to finish.
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AMD Mania Day 2005 #1

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:37:21 +0900

Sungkyunkwan University: Oldest in Korea

AMD held its second ever AMD Mania Day at the New Millennium Hall in Sungkyunkwan University. Last year, it was held at Ewha Womans University. That one was a bit hectic and stuff didn't go along as smoothly as planned, so I was looking forward to a more polished one this year.
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Remnants of Colonial Japan in Google Earth

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:46:08 +0900

"Rakuto-ho" and "Kainrai-ho"?

While looking back at the confluence region I visited with Google Earth, some disturbing things caught my eyes again.

Kanrai-ho, Rakuto-ho

Something was amiss, I thought... and then I realized these were what Japanese would call the areas.
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11th South Korean Degree Confluence

wesley96@gmail.com (Wesley) — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:34:00 +0900

The 35N 129E degree confluence on Google Map.
Dadaepo area on the north and Namuseom on the south.
Image (C) 2005 DigitalGlobe.

It has been more than three years since my last South Korean confluence visit. I had completed visiting all 10 of the ground confluences here, so I had considered the mission largely complete. But about a year later the country page would list 13 additional water confluences that were classified as 'in the view of the land' and thus added to the primary confluences. Since then there were two foreigner-led attempts to visit these water confluences (one near Mokpo and one near Incheon), all without success.

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