Seoul!
Wow, these two days have been a rush..with little time for me to spare. From now on, I will just blog whatever that comes to my mind, so please pardon my haphazard thoughts, recollections and poor grammar. I will try to cover a day in this entry.

I left Singapore with many well wishes from my family and friends, thanks to all :0
At the airport,I was surprised to meet Pamela (VJ schoolmate) and my RI classmate, Xunming , didn’t know that they were a couple now. And they were sending off their friend who was also leaving for ….Korea. Haha, it’s a real small world.

It turns out that there were four other SMU students who were bound for the same flight as me, 3 were heading to Korean Uni (Yonsei’s friendly rival, think ACS vs RI) and another girl was going to Inha University for exchange.

The flight was pretty smooth. Although I couldn’t sleep well on the transit flight, even with the stormy weather, the dreamy silhouettes of the Thai stewardess, and an enlarged bedspace for me to lie down as my other seat was unoccupied) .

After arriving at Incheon airport,I very 厚脸皮的 tag along the Smu clique, haha. But moving along as a big group was more efficient. And they had a Korean friend from Inha Uni to welcome us..well actually just the Inha exchange student la. She was pretty…helpful, she provided me directions to get to Sinchon after dispatching the Smu people to Korea Uni (their time was tight as they had to rush for be on time for their orientation) I spent my limousine bus ride, weighing my loss of not exchanging contacts with Miss Inha..

Oh my entries are going to sound so bimbotic from now onwards.

It was a long and excruciating bus ride.. because I was worried if my Korean friend, Edward, would dua me and leave me wandering the streets of seoul. 七月 Qi’ Gue’ in seoul is not fun la.

I lugged my fuckingheavy luggage across a stretch of road to Sinchon subway to establish my contact with my Korean friend, Edward. There were four pay phones and only one worked. Korea is too advanced in telecommunications, they don’t bother to repair their payphones, cos only noobs use them,lol.

My fears were unfounded after I reached him on phone. And he took a short while from his house to get there. It was good to see a familiar face in an alien environment.

We decided to take a cab because my luggage was too hard and too uncool to be seen moving along the streets of happening seoul. It was a decent place to stay. Well most Korean students stayed in one-room apartments like these. Those poorer students stayed in haksuk-chips (boarding houses with thinwalls, where you can hear your neighbours having ‘funtime’), which thankfully I have been spared after I was moved up from the waiting list for international dorm).

I placed my luggage at his place and we went for lunch because our stomaches couldn’t take it anymore. My first meal in Korea was settled at a traditional Chinese restaurant and we ate chachangmyun at my request, haha.Chachangmyun
The real thing definitely owns the instant noodles that they sell in Sg. My plate was left with a puddle of watery sauce, cos apparently I lack skill and its something to do with my 'spit', saliva, thats what Edward told me.

After noodles, we both had an icecream because the heat was a little overbearing, their hottest month is August, which is around Sg’s temperature. I had a Jaws icecream (resembling a shark), gray coloured icecream with strawberry filling inside. Nicee. But got no picture because the weather was too hot so the icecream melted too fast. Haha.

We proceeded to settle some admin stuff: opening a bank account at Woori Bank in Yonsei campus. The campus is large and beautiful, its like a nature reserve, their buildings are sort of like those ang moh universities. I’ll do another entry about the campus another time. The girls are synonymous with the beautiful campus, rich with elegance and excellence. Lol.

We walked around the streets of Sinchon, with him as the tour-guide pointing out interesting sights and aspects of the Korean culture. Sinchon is like a yuppies area with lots of eateries, pubs and shops for people to chill, grab a drink, watch pretty stuff strut around, chit chat. There are lots of students around there because of the nearby universities like Yonsei, Ewha's Women, Sogang, Hongik, and Kyunggi. Its like SMU area multiplied by 5 times and a lot of more human traffic and lovely , quaint shops thrown in. Soon I forgot about Miss Inha and I was immediately assuaged when I looked at the throng of passerbys in Sinchon. O beautiful seoul ^-^

Btw my friend told me that he wanted to go Ewha women’s university to do a local exchange but subjects couldn’t match. Aww.
He told me in a serious tone: “Winston, Ewha students are the best.”
I was puzzled because I always thought that Seoul university students were the elites.
It took a while for me to realize what he was referring to. Their students were the cream of the crop. Korean beauties. Best that the nation has to offer. Lol.

We went for a quickie at Krispy Kreme after walking around for some time. That was a real sweet day. My eyes were satiated ffrom the eye candies and my mouth from the sugary coated glazed donuts.

After that, he invited me to join him for dinner at his best friend, Ricky’s place, also within the Sinchon area. Ricky is also from Yonsei and he just got back from a year exchange in Netherlands. And they were discussing relationships stuff (which was real funny) and they switched occasionally from Korean to English and back to facilitate my poor understanding of Korean. The original plan was to fix dinner at his place but they couldn’t decide what dish to whip up and they even consulted their mums lol.

Moments later, I fell asleep at Ricky’s place after watching TV from the computer about a competition of starcraft gamers (they were bubbling excitedly about that particular classic match which was screening but much to their disappointment, I wasn’t into starcraft..).

I woke up and they told me that they decided to go Sinchon because they couldn’t come up with a dish, so we went to eat tteokbokki(떡볶이. Then we went to grab some beer at a grocery store and Ricky suggested that we head to a forested area in Yonsei for our drinks. We sat there, talked, swatted mosquitoes and tried to interpret some funny looking sculpture. We hastily finished our beer as the mosquitoes started to congregate in numbers around us as if they were preparing for an orgy.

After light-drinking, we plodded back home and Edward tried to find some entertainment for me. “Let’s watch movie?” He recommended “Memories of Murder” and I recommended Bourne Ultimatum, “ok,let me go download” he replied . I was provided a demonstration of the sick downloading speed of their wired network. 5 mins for a 700mb+ movie on p2p. Another 5 mins for CD2. Ccb. Maxoline Ultimatum. No wonder they don’t need to go cinemas to watch shows.

But…I was damn shagged and I fell asleep shortly, 20 mins into the show..because of the sightseeing and lack of sleep on the flight.

And seoul…that was my first day in seoul.