Squeezy's Pink Bits

Moving moving

2009-05-12T19:04:00.001+09:00

So I haven't blogged much recently. This is partly due to my school blocking blogger - which is pretty darn frustrating.

This makes this post my last on this site.

All future blogging will be at squeezys.wordpress.com

Rajasthan Adventure Part 1 Video

2009-04-02T10:11:00.001+09:00

Rajasthan Adventure Part 1 from Squeezy on Vimeo.

The first 7 days of my trip to Rajasthan in January 2009. We did the GAP Adventures tour: Rajasthan Adventure.

This video covers: Old Delhi, Jodhpur, Ranakpur and Udaipur.

Chai Masala Recipe

2009-02-07T23:11:00.003+09:00

Ingredients
milk and water mixture (ratio 1:1. I'm guessing 2 cups of milk, 2 cups of water)
1 teaspoon of loose leaf tea (add more if the colour is too light, less if the colour is too dark)
1 to 2 teaspoons of sugar
1 small piece of cinnamon

Spices
2 or 3 Green cardamon
2 cloves
2 or 3 black pepper corns
1 small piece of ginger (1 cm in length approximately)

Method
1. Put the milk and water mixture in a saucepan on medium-high heat to boil for 5 to 10 minutes. Add in the tea. Do not cover.
2. Put all the spices in a mortar and pestle and pulverize. If you think it's done then smash for a minute longer. Look for the ginger to be broken down (not a single piece anymore).
3. Add the sugar and the cinnamon to the saucepan of boiling milk/water.
4. Then add the pulverized spices to the saucepan.
5. Stir occasionally.
6. When you judge it ready then strain into serving cups.

This is the recipe as taught to Kat, Megan and myself in Udaipur. We guessed the measurements while furiously recording everything as our teacher eyeballed everything.

Ugh

2009-02-04T11:09:00.001+09:00

Have a headache and it's a bit miserable weather wise outside. Wanting to stay in bed today but it's the last full day of vacation. So the big buddah is being delayed - hopefully the weather will cheer up a bit.

Hong Kong Rocks

2009-02-04T11:06:00.001+09:00

A day in Hongkers is a day that alternates between bliss and total sensory overload. We've taken the tram to Victoria Peak - so glad that the tram was there as it was really steep. We've wandered around Central on Hong Kong Island, which caters to Ferragamo fanatics, market maniacs and chain store chicas.

We tried some local specialties: milk tea (think over brewed tea with a big splash of milk with optional sugar), stir fried beef and rice noodles (there was a yummy hint of ginger), hot ribena (this was so good I almost stole it from Mike) and baked pork on rice (there was a plain tomato sauce which was surprisingly tasty). So all up I'd say that Hongkers is the culinary equal of Shanghai or Bangkok.

We stayed in our room to watch the laser show, with the radio broadcast and it was pretty darn spectacular! I'd love to video it all but I don't think I have enough time. I'll settle for capturing some flashing buildings and the finale lasers.

After dinner we walked to the temple market and saw lots of stuff but nothing we haven't seen online or in other markets. It was interesting to see and it was wonderfully hassle free.

There are two annoyances on the streets here: Indian tailors or fake watch sellers and foot massage pamphlet pushers. Mike has taken to asking for a suit made from crappy shiney material to deal with the former and I've taken to accepting every pamphlet as the simplest way to deal with the latter. Sadly I'd really love to have a foot massage but I'm yet to see a place that looks even a bit nice - they've all been dodge central. I guess that can be my mission for tomorrow after the big buddah.

Once More With Feeling

2009-02-03T11:21:00.002+09:00

Today I said goodbye to our new friends and hopped in a cab. During the 45 minute long trip I realized that I didn't feel sad to be leaving India. We saw some brilliant stuff, were visited by the evil bug Delhi Belly more times than was reasonable and made new friends. I just haven't been moved or touched by this country in a good way.

The photos will be stunning - even with my hideous über zit... I tried to avoid being in photos with good reason. My video should be an improvement on previous efforts. But I feel as though India didn't really like us.

So when will we return to India? Not anytime soon. We've been twice now to very different areas and I can't in all honesty say that I loved it. There are too many other cool and exciting places to go.

The flight. Oh Cathay Pacific may you rise up and conquer all inferior airlines so that they too may offer the wonderous economy service that you do. The plane we had was a new one with new seats that were very comfortable. Very, very, very comfy. The food was ok, neuter offensive nor sublime; except the cheesecake that wasn't. Poor Mike the not cheese cake was covered in passionfruit - not his thing really.

So now it's after midnight, local time, in Hong Kong and I'm watching a landscape of shiny twinkling buildings go by from the bus. It brilliant to be somewhere new and exciting again.

Day 2 Complete Bastard 19 Jan

2009-01-19T00:33:00.001+09:00

Delhi or Mumbai. Everything that I didn't like about Mumbai one year ago- I find that I don't like the same things in Delhi. Over crowded everything, dirty, polluted, over zealously persistent touts, sad street little urchins and beggars.
I'm looking forward to the overnight train ride tonight.

Fortunately I've already been through the massive culture shock so I'm quite blasé and accepting. I'm enjoying myself much more this time.

Today we went to Gurudwara Sisganj ( a Sikh temple) then Jama Masjid (a murgal Muslim Mosque ). Both were interesting and beautiful in their own ways.

Sadly our tour guide then wanted us to go to the same place for lunch that we'd been to dinner last night.

tbc... the story explaining the title will be added shortly

Day 1 New Delhi

2009-01-18T15:16:00.004+09:00

We were lucky to land this morning, a thick fog was covering Delhi airport. The pilot said the visibility was only 75 meters and that the taxiing into the terminal would be slow. He wasn't joking, it felt like we spent an hour or so creeping on the runway but was really only 30 minutes. I say we are lucky for 2 reasons. 1 when we alighted from the plane and the cabin door was open, we both looked out through the pilots windscreen and couldn't see much. So thanks to the pilot for a bumpy but safe landing. 2. The local news this morning is reporting that many planes were diverted or delayed. We must have just snuck in! The telling thing about the fog at 2am this morning was that even our taxi driver slowed down and drove with his hazards on. From this I take the fog was really bad.

We met a few people from our tour group over breakfast, which was nice. We get to meet everyone else tonight. Fingers crossed it's a good group.

Flying Airports 17 Jan

2009-01-17T00:33:00.000+09:00

Hilariously I managed to buy 2 brand new Samsung batteries for my camcorder for 15,000 won. They are normally 30,000 won and that's a price that I'm happy to pay! Mike & I had spent much of the previous day searching Seoul for these very batteries and couldn't find anyone who stocked them- let alone had a good price!

Hong Kong airport feels very expensive but really it's just more expensive than Incheon -like everywhere else. We really are so spoiled in Korea when it comes to price jacking up. It doesn't seem to happen often and when it does it's a laughable increase.

The food is delicious! We share a Ginger beef noodle soup, some wonderful wontons and some soy rice-noodle with goose. We pretty well burned through 100,000 won in the 4 and a half hours. Easy come, easy go.

I seem to have lost my new eye mask already - darn it. Obviously this is Mike's doing... I just don't know how yet.

Blogging from my iPod

2009-01-12T19:00:00.001+09:00

I'm getting ready for our trip to India and wanting to get back into regular blogging, so I'm testing out Blogwrite lite. So far so good :)

Hangeul Test

2008-11-30T20:03:00.006+09:00

There once was a supervisor and once upon a time she decreed that there would be a Hangeul (Korean written language) test. She made some books and she made a test. Then she made us take it. Here's the video made by the reporters that "may" be at the test. Two TV programs showed the video in slightly different versions, so here they both are.

If you've seen one... you've not seen Theresa :)

I teach Englisheee

2008-09-19T14:16:00.003+09:00

In the interest of this blog being somewhat understandable; I'll start with me! I'm an EPIK Teacher in Taebaek City, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

Being an English teacher in a small city (town really) means smaller schools and smaller classes. That's a big advantage, particularly as no-one in my school wants me to go anywhere, so I don't have another school to teach at. I was told the other day that the Principal gets "worried" anytime I leave the school. He must have had a heart attack when I came back from my one day visit to Kaeseong, North Korea and said "Guess where I went on the weekend!"

Today has been pretty typical, I have one scheduled class and one *bonus* conversation class. I just found out that my normal class is cancelled due to the province wide exams that will be happening next Thursday. I'm cool with that. None of my material is tested and there is enormous pressure on these kids (my students) to achieve 100% in the exams.

But there is an issue with cancelling my classes.. I get bored. Very bored. What to do? Well there's facebook to mess around on, then there are the wedding videos that I've been making (on pause until I complete my hard drive upgrade), Aussie newspapers to read, skype chat with Mike, games to play, oh and yes - lessons to plan. The trouble is that with being bored is that I'm just not motivated to prepare some lessons. So far today, I've made some photocopies of a lesson that's completely ready to go and started on making an answer sheet for the next picture story. I've also read the news, spent a little time on Facebook and played 5 games. What will happen when I move back to Australia? I'm currently not expected to work much and so have formed the expectation that I don't need to do much work at all.

Does this mean I'm lazy in the classroom? Heck NO! I love the time that I have with my students and I give it my all when I'm in the classroom. When I'm teaching I feel alive and I really feel that I'm doing something that's not just for my own financial gain. These students don't deserve a second rate education and it's programs like EPIK that can make a difference. At least I have the delusion that it's possible.

But the staffroom? Am I lazy in the staffroom? When the students are in their classes? I may as well bring in a pillow and have a sleep. I wonder if my toy Kangaroo would be comfortable?

I'm soooo ready for Sydney

2008-07-23T15:26:00.004+09:00

It's hot here. It's been hot for a while and.. I don't like it!

I'm prepared to make an exception for Thailand, which will have summer but, to compensate, there will be stunning beaches, showers (from the sky variety), wonderful thai food and glorious thai massages. Oh the massages..... Just rub my feet and smack me around with some mystery herb balls.

I'm really excited about the flight, thai airways YEAH! And the hotel sounds cool - the windows are in the shape of a L. Nearby there is a bar, where there are no chairs only beds. Sounds weird but cool. I hope Mike can get in, they might look at his hair and say "you've got to be kidding". I hope not though. I'm going to get the pink back in my hair before we travel - not that it lasts a long time but I like it.

After thailand and some very serious relaxing, we'll be in Sydney, for a day then on to Tassy! We realised that if we were going to do any touristy stuff in Australia then we should get out of Sydney. And at the beginning when Mike's family are away. I'm really looking forward to seeing my family and hugging them all. A few times each.

Tassy. The Gangwon-do of Australia. If that gives you any ideas of what Gangwon-do is like, you're probably right. Except that women are famed for their beauty.

Tassy will be great, Mike's found us a cafe in Hobart to visit. He got talking to the owner when he was watching the World Barista Championship. So we'll be paying a visit to Tasmania's Champion Barista. I'm really hoping that they'll be open for breakfast. The plan is Hobart for 2 days then we'll be heading up to Launceston to visit our friends there. Launceston was lovely last time we visited and we're hoping to chill out while exploring the area a bit further.

So I really should get back to packing & setting up my ipod. Enough procrastination!!

Speaking of procrastination.... here are the photos from the English Camp that Mike & I taught at on Sunday and Monday.

sixty ninnnnnnneeeeeeeee!

2008-06-26T20:43:00.005+09:00

Last november I started a diet. I have a traditional medicine doctor who monitors me, gives me some herbal tablets to take and has helped me keep on track. I check in with him twice a week, I get on the fancy super scales which give not just my weight & height but also my body fat percentage, hip to waist ratio, muscle percentage in limbs and torso, endermal fat number, some other fat number (which refers to fat on my organs - seems the darn stuff is everywhere!), a bunch of other readings, a comparison to the last 9 weigh ins, my fitness rating (?) and how much weight it says I still need to lose. So I'm getting a lot of information, which helps makes sense of what's going on with my body. We have a chat and he checks what I'm eating (that would be the diet part) and how much exercise I'm getting.

To begin with, I struggled. But stick to the diet I did - well 90% of the time. It really did help me to start losing weight, as opposed to putting it on! However, I did start to worry, what happens when I come off the diet. Will I turn into the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters? That would be horrible. So seeing as the diet does help, I taken a less strict approach with the herbal stuff and really used it to help me change some bad habits.

One of those bad habits has been intermittant to non-existant regular exercise. There's a podcast I've been using called yogamazing, it's free and the instructor is really good. I started by doing one yoga session, 25 to 30 minutes long, in the morning. I got up to 2 yoga sessions before realising I'd best get back to going to the gym. I was stuck above 70 kgs and really didn't want to be. So I plan out a weekdays the gym, weekend yoga or walking or tennis. I'm trying to do yoga at night to balance the gym in the morning, it's something I really need to proritise.

This week has been a yoga week, I've had trouble sleeping and felt that yoga was a better choice than the gym. I get up at 6:30 am for yoga, 5:30 am for the gym. Next week I'm going back to the gym, it could well mess with my weight and that's ok. So long as those body fat percentages keep going down.

So why blog about it? Because today for the first time since I started university, my weight was less than 70kgs!! To put this in perspective my final target weight is between 63 and 65 kgs (to be decided on as I get closer to it).

The first moment of excitment I had was, at the hospital having some health tests done (for my visa renewal), my blood pressure was 120/70 which was a good sign and then the scales had me at 69kgs. I pulled Mike over and said "look at that!!". Then proceeded to do a little jump for joy as there were lots of koreans watching us and I didn't want to be too weird (not that purple hair is...). After the initial elation cleared a little, I realised I couldn't really take the 69kgs as fact, I had my phone in my pocket, a bunch of coins and some other bits and pieces. Also this isn't the super scale that I've been hopping on and off with regularity. I had to have my normal weigh in.

So as soon as the hospital stuff was done, we nipped over to the traditional medicine doctor's office and had my weigh in there. That's when I was happy then sad. You see I can understand some of the super scale's read outs but I always need to wait until we can compare the print out with the previous one. That's when it gives me something useful and understandable. So when I saw 69.8kgs I was thrilled but saddened when I saw something that usually indicates my muscle mass has dwindled and my body fat has increased. There was no little jump of joy here. I trudged into the doc's office and asked him "what's the story?" He looked at it and then double checked. He told me I'd not only broken the 70kg barrier but it was 80% fat reduction and 20% muscle. He gave me the papers to check and all my results, except for the fittness test were substantially better than the last weigh in. I jumped around and gave Mike a slap on the shoulder. It somehow seemed fitting!

I am totally thrilled to have gotten to this point and now I have a party to look forward to. The doctor and his family and friends had said one night that we'd have a party when I broke the 70kg barrier. It'll probably be next week but I don't care. I'm going to wear my pink dress - even if it is far too raunchy in Korea. It's going to be great - so long as there's a side salad to be had :)

If you read this far, I think you deserve a before and after photo.
I chose these photos because Mike (not his hair) is a constant.

Fiji Wedding

2008-06-20T21:03:00.002+09:00

This is the first video from Frankie & Steve's wedding in Fiji. It was a beautiful day, if a bit windy, matched only by the serenely stunning bride herself! 2 or 3 more videos will follow very very soon.

CSTV LIVE!!

2008-05-15T14:14:00.001+09:00

Free .TV show from Ustream

3 Days in Mumbai

2008-02-10T10:40:00.000+09:00

We flew in to Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on one of Thai Airway's pov pack planes. We were surprised to find ourselves in an airport (in fairness: under renovation) that closely resembled a large bomb shelter. We walked through, regaining the use of our limbs and hoping like hell we didn't get hit up for a bribe or as it is more quaintly referred to a Baksheesh. I located the baggage carousel and we were introduced to the Indian queuing system; a system where the least pushy is last. Then we walked outside, Mike to find an ATM and I to guard the bags. To say the heaving mass of people was a shock would be about right - I mean who brings their entire family to pick up one person at the airport at 1 in the morning? Fortunately Mike finds an ATM that is plugged in (the one in arrivals wasn't) and secures us a fixed price taxi.

We thought we'd gotten away without having to pay baksheesh. Or so we thought, it was just short of 500Rupees for the taxi to our hotel and the guy who got our taxi changed (so that we wouldn't have to wait) wanted a tip. First he said 100Rps then he saw Mike open his wallet (holding all the rupees that we had) and suddenly he wants 500Rps! Mike gave him 250Rps as we weren't about to tip more than the fare! While all this was going on, I was staggered by the yellow & black cabs (non-air conditioned) that were parked across from us and went on for as far as I could see. It was a sea of parked cabs!

Mumbai drivers are something else! It wasn't just that they are constantly on the horn, it was that I thought we would crash so many times. Playing chicken It seems that India drivers operate on a "if you don't crash it doesn't matter how much you miss by" mentality. I noticed that many taxis don't have side-view mirrors - no points for guessing how they got removed. Finally we arrived at the Hotel Manama. We had booked a deluxe room but ended up with a tiny room with a renovated bathroom. I was feeling ripped off and ready to do battle with the front desk but Mike checked out the other rooms that were available and he said we had the best of what was left. I mean Mike could almost touch the wall while laying on his bed. It was all too much but knowing that tomorrow was a new day gave me hope and helped me sleep.

We ventured upstairs to the Manama restaurant for breakfast. If last nights less than helpful service was a downer then the food and help from the solo waiter was a bit upper. Mike discovered his first favourite dish of the trip Aloo Chaat, it was full of potatoes, coriander and cumin - other spices too I'm sure. It was so delicious I completely forgot to take a photo of it - oops!

We walked out of the hotel with a spring in our step and a plan. A walking tour plan! We were armed with LP's Best of Mumbai and had found the walking tour called "Footsteps of the Raj"; seeing as we were staying next to the end point of this walking tour, we decided to do it in reverse! We saw some cool stuff and took plenty of photos! The photos miss out on one important thing: The Maiden Oval. There is an amazing number of boys & men playing cricket, some in whites, others wearing tees and shorts. There are batting nets - all in use and more games than I can count. This seems to go on all day long. Cricket rules Mumbai.

The end of our tour was the Gateway of India. It was massive! It stood looming over the harbour, surrounded by a multitude of people and barren cement. A few different people, all Indians, approached us to have their photo taken with us. It was very weird. It's not like we were the first tourists here, we'd seen plenty of tourists on our tour - some doing the tour in the correct order. I started to wonder if someone was going to pick our pockets or something. Fortunately that didn't happen. What did happen that as we were admiring the hazy view, there's a lot of pollution, a priest of some kind came up to us to give us a blessing, he put string on our wrists and a red dot on our foreheads. He then expected that we "re-imburse his time because he'd travelled so far to bless us" as was explained by a man who'd previously been trying to sell us a boat tour. Mike took care of it and we decided to vacate the area. I couldn't help feeling like we'd just been marked as easy marks.

So as we're walking along in the meagre shade, an Indian man walking towards us says something to Mike which neither of us understand. He seems to be saying Mike has something on him, so Mike stops but then he pulls out two long metal sticks and looks like he's about to put them in Mike's ear. So I yell at him No, No, No! and pull Mike away from him. He shouts something else after us but no way in hell am I going to let some weirdo put something in Mike's ear. Shortly afterwards I work out the trick, the man would have poked around in Mike's ear and then produced an ugly bug from up his sleeve. This would have led to insisting on Mike needing some special cleansing or something, probably at a price. Honestly this freaked us both out and we got away as fast as possible.

We venture back to CST to arrange train tickets to Goa and found we couldn't go through the ticket office if we wanted 1AC tickets (1AC means a sleeper compartment for 2 people only with AC). Fortunately we had some assistance in finding someone to book internet tickets - turns our they were emergency tickets! It cost extra - I think we had to pay a bribe to get the tickets and not be wait listed. So in trying to get to the coffee shop we'd spied earlier, we are caught by 2 small street urchin girls. They tried to attach themselves to us with cries of "ice cream". I clicked faster than Mike as to what was going on and freed myself much faster than Mike did.

We find ourselves a little café called café Coffee Day and we hide from the madness outside. In a surprising turn of events we get chatting to a couple of Korean University Students. It's really nice to swap stories and to agree that Mumbai is in your face. Walking around we find we can't even look at a stall without being harassed to buy whatever we looked near. The chillout does us good but we're not enjoying Mumbai, it's not a fun city but one overflowing with people & cars. We're glad that we'll be moving on soon - Goa can't be worse can it?

After the chillout, we grab our tickets and decide to walk to a mall. We've seen plenty of street stalls today but no actual malls. We end up at Chowpatty beach - near the mall we were heading for but we couldn't find it. It's late enough for dinner by now, so we try a vegetarian joint of Mike's choosing. While we're waiting the standard 30 mins for our food, Mike confesses that right now all he wants to do is hop on a plane and leave. I try to encourage him (quite the role reversal!). After all we have a plan for our second day in Mumbai and then the next day we're out of there!

Elephanta Island. That's our plan - we'll take a deluxe ferry out (apparently it just means larger seats) and hopefully have a better day. We get down to the Gateway of India by taxi and then we manage to find the grumpiest ticket seller to purchase our deluxe tickets from. Our "Luxury" boat took 50 mins to get out to the Island, we saw a few oil refineries and mega ships on the way. At the bottom entrance we are hit with our 5Rps entry tax. It's almost 12pm so we stop for lunch, after giggling over the mini-train on the pier. It's a non-veg thali with a view of a cow & a goat & the people streaming past. It's not brilliant but it's not bad either. Refreshed we start walking up the stairs and are amazed that you can pay to have 4 men carry you up! It's not just that the chair doesn't look comfortable, it doesn't, but surely it's not that hard to walk up. The stairs are lined with stalls, monkeys and trees. It's a lot cooler than Mumbai city and the stairs while long don't go on forever. We reach the top and have to pay an entry charge - this is somewhat more annoying as we don't even get to keep the ticket. While queuing, to pay, we watch the monkeys attack a girl holding a bottle of juice - she squeals and the monkey gets the juice. No one is hurt but these monkeys sure aren't scared.

We start in the main chamber, a cave temple. It's enormous and what remains of the wall sculptures are beautiful. When the Portuguese landed on Elephanta Island they systematically chopped off arms, heads, legs from the statues and wall carvings. It's such a shame as the detail in these carvings is incredible. We even come face to face with the Brahmi - the 3 headed dude and he's very very big! We spend the next 2.5 hours wandering through the smaller caves, taking photos and enjoying ourselves. The crowds aren't too bad as it's a Friday. We head back down the stairs, having decided that trekking to the top of the island just to see some old cannons is not for us. The Island isn't that much cooler! On the way down, Mike finds me a pretty pair of purple earrings and I find a pink bracelet. This price is very cheap and we barely haggle over the price. It's not until that afternoon that I notice that my pink bracelet has had the pink added and now it's transferring to my wrist.

The next day, Mike is feeling poorly, so we hide out in our room until it's time to hop on the train to Goa. I'll tell you all about the train ride in the next post :)

All the photos from this trip are online here.

Here's a map showing the main places that we visited over the 3 weeks.

View Larger Map

Quick Hotel Manama Review
If you are thinking about staying at Hotel Manama - don't bother paying for the deluxe room because deluxe is the one thing it won't be, the rooms are noisy (traffic & pigeons), the bathrooms are NOT spacious, there was no safe in our room - it wouldn't have fit! Also we saw no computers or internet access high speed or otherwise within the hotel.
We requested a double room and were given a twin, which I can accept, but then we were only given 1 towel and no soap - this was rectified quickly but shouldn't have required my complaint.
The rates, if you walk in, are cheaper than their Internet advertised rates and I saw people get given discounts purely for complaining about the first rate given.

Honestly they are convenient to CST and that is all.
The other plus to this hotel is the restaurant, it's delicious, cheap and the solo waiter is kind and helpful - he patiently explained many of the terms on the menu to me over the 3 days.

Having said all this; if I go back to Mumbai, I'll stay in Chowpatti next to the beach - I'll also be prepared to spend more money because Mumbai accommodation is disproportionately expensive.

Squeezy's Watched List 2008

2008-02-04T22:11:00.000+09:00

It's that time again... time for a new watched list! So in order of watching:

Movies

The Golden Compass (2007)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Waitress (2007)
Rocky IV (1985)
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Stardust (2007)
Crank (2006)
Asterix and the Vikings (2006)
Shoot 'em up (2007)

TV Series

Doctor Who (2005) completed.
Oz & James Big Wine Adventure (2007 ) started. Don't check imdb on this one as they don't have season 2 (which is the 07 vintage as opposed to the 06 vintage). BBC & Wikipedia have series 1 & 2 info.
Torchwood (2007) started.
Doctor Who (2006) obtaining.
5th Gear (2007) started.
Top Gear... waiting for the new season.
Brass Eye (1997) started.

Podcasts

(Cool) Shite on the Tube this show is linked because I'm a huge fan, they watcheth the crapeth so that we don't haveth to and they bring more entertainment than all my other podcasts put together! I heart CSoT!
Yogamazing - 20 to 30 mins of yoga
SModcast - this show I've queued to watch
Diggnation - watch it with Mike most mornings
Wine Library TV - watch it with or without Mike
The Totally Rad Show - I've only watched it once, not totally sold on it
Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food - found it recently, as I like Gordon's cooking philosophy I like this show
Ford Models How To - chucking on makeup & doing stuff with your hair - it's chick stuff :P

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

2007-12-29T21:45:00.000+09:00

This year Mike & I shared Christmas with a Korean family, Lee's family. Here are a few photos as taken by Mike or Lee on Christmas Eve (that's the party) and Christmas Day.

I've been away

2007-11-01T14:54:00.000+09:00

I've been away.. from my blog. There is so much that's happened since my last proper post that I'm not sure where to start. And not being sure where to start has given me the excuse to procrastinate. A lot.

So to bring you kind-of sort-of up to date; here goes.

I've been to Australia, caught up with some friends and family. Missed quite a few people and met other friends in person for the first time. I played the tourist in Tasmania and found it to be a beautiful place filled with absolute sweethearts. (Course can't tell the guys that they are the sweethearts probably ruining their macho rep.)

We went up to the blue mountains with family. Enjoyed the wood fires and the food, oh sigh the food!!! Finally got around to finishing the tennis grudge match against my brother, turns out he's quite good at sledging but not so good at finishing out a long game of tennis. I won by the way! Yeah me!!

We ate Galbi and Samgyeobsal with my Dad and brother. It wasn't all that bad for Korean food but the surprise on the waitress' face when Mike asked for Denjangjjigae was priceless!

I coloured my hair pink. It was going to be a hilarious surprise for Mike but he decided to visit me at the hairdressers - while I had black looking goo on my head. You win some, you lose some...

We got back to Taebaek, packed up our apartment and ran off to Orientation. We had a brilliant five days getting to know all the new people. Which concluded with our wedding anniversary. The ACs (Alex's Cronies) got together and organised a cake, a speech, some red wine. It was lovely. I almost cried but thankfully didn't! I made the video to show what Orientation was like. Everyone liked it. Or they told me they did...

We had major dramas with our new ~~massage parlour~~ apartment and ended up being moved into a second new apartment. Our new place has crappy water pressure and is an extra 10 minutes out of town and we can smell the pig farms when the wind blows the right way. However the new place is lovely, we have great big windows so we can see our view (across the valley and up the mountain), it's quiet in a way that is relaxing and I finally have my own desk!! Anyone who suggests that Mike & I could possibly share a desk doesn't know Mike very well!

Last month I had to teach a demo class, which means I get to be watched and scrutinized. However many of the teachers that should have been there didn't turn up so it was less of an event for me. The teachers that were there thought I did a wonderful job with my co-teacher and that we had actually demonstrated team teaching. Which was fantastic as I wasn't all that worried if we showed a good example, I was trying to show different activities that could be used successfully in the classroom.

Last weekend was the Kotesol conference, it was full of books, lectures, publishers, writers and English teachers. Mike & I ended up with some heavy bags and I'm hoping that we'll be able to put these new materials to good use. I can but hope.

Being in Seoul means there's always a party to go to and last Saturday night was no exception. Mike & I enjoyed a spot of decent thai food before joining up with everyone at Geckos in Itaewon, Seoul. While walking over, I slipped on my pink angel wings as I figured I may as well dress up for a Halloween party. I'd already applied the glitter so I was ready to go. We found the bar and just before we headed upstairs, we stopped to watch a sneaky spiderman scaring people with his web (a piece of netting). I was amazed that people kept walking past a tree where large group of people were standing around laughing. It was all in good fun and the scarees seemed to think it funny too. So we joined up with approximately 35 EPIKers from Gangwon-do and had a great time. I chatted with people, met some gorgeous Korean women, took a bunch of photos then surrendered my camera to Mike and myself to the dance floor. There are quite a few photos that I was surprised (to say the least) to see when I downloaded the contents of the memory card. I'm sure you can work out which is which!

That's as much as I'm willing to talk about now :)

Orientation 2007

2007-09-21T15:53:00.000+09:00

Skype me!

2007-07-31T08:43:00.000+09:00

The other weekend I bought a new USB memory key because my 1G was too small and it seems to be lost (not even buying a new one has made it turn up!). I got a nice little freebie in with the new USB memory key which was 1 months free voicemail on skype!

So if you have skype and you'd like to leave me a message then click away on the skype icon on my blog.

I really don't know how useful this will be but I'd like to give it a chance.

Well I'm off to see if my students like Happy Feet, I can but hope :)

sucky weekend

2007-07-29T19:05:00.000+09:00

It's been a sucky weekend. It started badly with me developing rashes, blister & worse. It was depressing to be all patchy and red. And itchy!! Turns out most of it was "Sun rash" which I took to be heat rash. It only got up to the low thirties this week. It's an uncomfortable way to find out that I really have acclimatized to Taebaek.

Next there was a fight with Mike. All over a stupid email address.

Then we went to watch Spider-man 3 at our outdoor cinema festival. The festival was great, the chairs were comfy enough, I got to make sunscreen and we had some nice food. We'd been warned to arrive early and we managed to get a few seats together in the fourth row. The view was great! The weather was perfect, cool but not cold, for an outdoor movie. Sadly Spider-man 3 was a terrible movie... not worth the $2 festival entrance fee. Too many bad guys, awful dialogue and some super gross dancing (why oh why???). Why was MJ made to be whiny and needy? Her part made me wonder what happened to the girl in Spidey 2? The sandman could have had this movie to himself (as bad guy)! The cg work was gorgeous and that's the best praise I have for this movie. Thoroughly disappointing.

At least the remaining movies that will be shown can not be worse than Spidey 3 - they really can't!

6am is not a nice time to be woken by strange noises. Neither is before 6am. Tell that to my wardrobe! For some unknown reason, the main wardrobe hanging pole fell down this morning at ten to six. It's strange because that was where all our winter coats and dry cleaning was hanging and it hadn't been touched for four days (or so). So why did it fall down? Staples. Instead of using metal fittings for the hanging pole in the wardrobe plastic fittings had been stapled in. No surprise that it fell down. I just wonder why it had to be when I was trying to sleep??

So Sunday morning, later Sunday morning, - time to finish the worksheets that Mike & I agreed to do together. However, as usual, this means I'm doing all the work and he's ignoring it all until he says I'm snapping at him. I get it all done and sent in by 12. Mike did assist on the worksheets, it's just frustrating when he's playing xbox and I'm desperately trying to make a good worksheet for students that I haven't taught for a semester! ARG!!

We decide to get out of the house and head to Samcheok. At least we might be able to go swimming and buy a new fitting for the wardrobe. The skies are clear so off we drive and in less than 20 minutes it's pouring with rain! The rain is the heaving kind that has us watching the river level - trying to see if it will get higher, it doesn't that we can tell. But the beach is out. Oh so out. The rain does lighten up so that we are only mildly wet in our search for lunch. At least lunch was nice, omu rice (fried rice wrapped in an omelet) for me and kim chi jiggye (kim chi soup) for Mike. So we search through home plus and can't find anything that will help the wardrobe situation out - short of buying a new one. I do manage to find a super cute Barbie hot metallic pink & silver bag, Mike poo-hoos it and so I don't buy it. There's not much else to do so we head to Donghae and there in Emart we strike gold! New fittings for the wardrobe. At least that got sorted.

Right, well I think that's what you call a vent. I'm vented so I'm going to get this week over with (it doesn't help that I'm over it before it's even started). And continue the countdown until I get home and see everyone. It's strange that the closer I get to the trip home, the more homesick I am.

I'm going to be more positive tomorrow. As in Monday the 30th of July. I really truely am.

i heart icanhascheezburger

2007-07-27T19:54:00.000+09:00

This is THE cutest photo from icanhascheezburger - if you don't believe me then click on the image and see for yourself! Be warned sometimes there are bunnies there too..

Vietnam Travel Tips

2007-07-19T22:30:00.000+09:00

Here are a few of my tips on travel in Vietnam.

Hanoi

Need cash? Head to the ANZ bank & ATM on the edge of the lake in the centre of Hanoi.

For tours in and around Hanoi go to Handspan Travel. To find Handspan go to 80 Ma May Street or email them at info@handspan.com Why do I recommend them? Well, Mike and I bought 2 tours with Handspan, the first a sea kayaking trip to Halong Bay and the second an overnight trip to the mountain tribes in Sapa. The first trip was great! We swam in the buoyant waters, kayaked together and ate some great Vietnamese food (the variety was tastily impressive!). Unfortunately Mike developed a migraine on the way back to Hanoi and he was not in shape to go anywhere. So even though it was less than an hour until the tour left (by the time we made the decision), we were given a 75% refund and they assisted us with making our plans for the next day - by which time Mike managed to recover :) So we were thrilled that they helped us out when we would expect to receive no refund in Australia.
Also of note is the Handspan cafe - very tasty, if memory serves!
If I were to go back to Halong Bay, I'd recommend a 1 or 2 day trip because while it's lovely, you see all there is to see in 1 day. Though there is something to be said for knocking back a few beers on a junk at sunset.

Hanoi is a lovely city, the cafés are delicious and so cheap, you can't go wrong just walking around.

There are many interesting and worthwhile museums to visit but don't miss out on seeing Ho Chi Minh's preserved corpse in the Mausoleum. It's a strange experience - you have to surrender your camera seperately to your bag, then it's into the super cold air to gaze upon the old man himself. I really thought it looked like he was about to wake up and say "Chau!". I'm not sure how you can check ahead of time but I do know that Uncle Ho makes a regular trip to Russia for re-preserving.

Between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City

There are many beautiful cities to explore and while the train is an option -it's very slow. The buses are very regular and cheap. If you've got less time than money then a couple of flights are a good way to cover a bit of ground.

Another option is hiring an Easy Rider - they are easiest to find in cool Dalat. They aren't the cheapest way to get around but these guys speak good english and will take you wherever you want to go for as long as you want to go. Mike and I did a 3 day easy rider trip and it was a real highlight of our trip to Vietnam. They took us to fantastic places for food and rarely did we pay anything over $US10 for the four of us - including the beers! These guys pack ponchos so no need to worry about the weather! Worried about the size of your backpack? Don't be - the normal thing is to strap in on the bike and make a back rest for you.

Ho Chi Minh City

Whereas Hanoi is beautiful, boulvardy, leafy and tranquil (so long as you foget the traffic), Ho Chi Minh City is not! This is the big city - here you get the polution, worse traffic than Hanoi, beggars and a faster pace of life. The markets in HCMC are impressive and well worth the wander and think twice about that "reproduction" watch!

Vietnam

Most importantly when catching a taxi in from the airport to anywhere centre always say that you have a reservation at a hotel (even if you don't) and have an address you want to be taken to. We have been caught out even though we know better and there are some strange parts of Hanoi, that are very inconvenient to be dumped in. Previously we'd stayed in the French quarter and it's a really good choice.

Don't forget your bug spray - the mozzies or sandflies are particularly nasty and hungry! Don't forget your sunscreen!! There is little choice in the supermarkets as to what you can buy if you forget it.

The chemist's are pretty helpful and will sell drugs to you over the counter - it's best if you know what you need.

Other than that relax and enjoy yourself - I promise it won't be hard to do!

Hello Kitty Air

2007-07-19T09:41:00.000+09:00

It wouldn't be fair to say I'm anti Hello Kitty more that I'm amused by it. For instance if I had to choose between a black umbrella and a Hello Kitty umbrella well I'd choose Hello Kitty every time.

But would the same hold true for an airplane?

YES!!!

I've just read a post about the plane I saw when I spent far too much time at the Taipei airport. So now I'm decided, I have to fly on the EVA Hello Kitty plane to somewhere sometime soon, be served by Hello Kitty attired stewardesses, be entertained by the Hello Kitty show and eat Hello Kitty food too! Mike might hate it but that's too bad!!!

(Cool) Shite on the Tube makes TV!

2007-07-10T16:20:00.000+09:00

www.coolshite.net

I've put this video here because I really like it and it's got Transformers - what's not to love?

Congratulations to the Shiters for a fine first episode!

Fun & Catastrophe

2007-07-03T15:01:00.000+09:00

Last week was a terrible week. It was so bad that by Tuesday I was desperately wishing it over and done with! The only thing that kept me going was the eagerly anticipated Ladies Weekend.

So what happened on the Ladies Weekend? Girls stuff!! haha

As I'd decided to be a bit cheap, I had to get up at 5.30 to catch my train to Seoul. The trip went by sadly without my gameboy... *sob* but thankfully with both my ipods. (Ok, yes I'm a geek) Then I made my way to Noksapyeong, a subway station that was hiding very conveniently next to Itaewon (the haven in Seoul for foreigners), caught a taxi to the Hyatt Hotel and waited for my friends to meet me. It was really very hot and muggy in Seoul, so I was grateful that the Hyatt had some lovely shadey trees in their entrance.

Kat & Meaghan met me and we strolled back to Cris' palace. That's right palace, it was so big that her couch would not even fit in my apartment, it was so big her fridge had two doors!!, it was so big that she had a Jacuzzi in her ensuite!!! I was extremely jealous but I hate to think how much it cost. We kicked back and chatted for a while until I realised just how much quality shopping time we were wasting kicking back in the apartment. So Kat, Meaghan, Suzy & I made our way to Myeongdong shopping centre of Seoul, where we spent a few hours pushing through the crowds and buying silly and sensible things.

When we'd had enough shopping and realised that there was not enough time for the jimjilbang (hot spa), we headed back for a Kat nap (she did) and to prepare for the nights' entertainment. Suzy insisted on taking photos of all of us, so here is how we looked.

Kat, Meaghan, Squeezy & Suzy (left to right)

We had a fun night out. We ate at the Aussie Shop - which was delicious!! Meaghan took photos of the US soldiers, much to their amusement. Kat forgot about the "I can't believe it's not Coach" shop in Itaewon due to the rain, the time and the rum & cokes she'd been knocking back! We partied at the Wolfhound then changed to the cool Bungalow. Bungalow had an outdoor Jacuzzi (which Kat, Meags & Suzy still wanted to hop in despite the rain - but I wasn't prepared to strip to my knickers just to so I could drink cocktails in a jacuzzi in the rain!) and rooms with sand floors. I'm definitely going back to the Bungalow! Then it was time to shake our groove thang so we changed bars until we found a song we liked. We danced for a while, having lost our other/new friends but we still had Wade's Canuck hat!

That was pretty well it. The next day we put Suzy on the bus to Incheon Airport and it was a sad moment, particularly for Kat (as they are cousins).

So we split up and started heading home, each of us going in such different directions.

I neglected to mention that I had had a phone call from Mike during a waffle stop (you need serious sustenance for girls only shopping!). Sadly it was bad news. While I was shopping and indulging in some girls time, Mike was on Samcheok beach swimming and doing beachy things. Here comes the sad bit, Mike lost his wedding ring on that beach and even with a bunch of friends helping him to look for the ring it just wasn't to be found. Then the beach was bulldozed - sealing this rings fate. Mike called me to tell me about the loss and I felt my stomach drop to my knees. Then I thought it's just a piece of jewellery, it's not the basis of our relationship and it's completely replaceable. Mike sounded so distressed that I just wanted to comfort him, a bit tricky to do when we were so far apart.

So I hatched a cunning plan! After splitting up from the girls, I raced over to Nam San Tower, round and round, a 350m steep climb and up an elevator, down some stairs and I was at the gift shop. The very gift shop from which Mike had bought a couple ring for me. I picked out a ring for Mike - hoping that I was making a good guess at his finger size, and had it stamped with the very appropriate " Susie heart Mike". I had a nice chat to the lady at the gift shop, I think it helped that I was wearing my couple ring and had obviously been there before. She was a bit stunned that I'd come all the way to Nam San Tower just for the couple ring. But the thing was, I didn't know where else I could go and I couldn't afford to take much time on this because I had my train to catch. By noon on Sunday all I could think of was getting home to Mike.

Our couple rings

With my mission accomplished all that remained was to obtain some reading material (damn my forgetting my gameboy!!), some lunch for on the train and to get myself to Cheongyangni station. I picked up Matilda by Roald Dahl and a magazine at Bandi & Luni which had the benefit of being 1 minutes walk from the subway station that I needed. So with a super speedy subway ride to Cheongyangni subway station, I had some time to kill. I checked my ticket and I had the 2.25 to catch. This gave me about 45 minutes to while away, so I wandered around Lotte, testing lipglosses and buying some munchies, before walking up to the train station (above ground).

If only I hadn't missed my train!! Yep, that's not a typo. I had confused my seat number 2 25 with the departure time of 2pm!!! So instead of waiting 2 hours for the next train, I waited less than an hour for a train to get me 2 hours closer to Taebaek and then changed for a bus. This with no credit on my phone too :( The train man in the terminal helped me to change my ticket and I was given a refund of the difference in price! Seeing as it was my mistake I would normally expect to buy a new ticket at full price, so it was nice to have some help sorting it out. I needed to take a moment because I knew I was about to start crying, unfortunately I couldn't use the ladies toilets to have a private sob because they were packed with people and were squatties. So I grabbed a random chair and tried to compose myself. The curious looks from the Ajumas weren't helping. I had to let Mike know, so I emailed him and after a while I located the pay phones and told him what had happened. Yesterday I had wanted to comfort him and here the tables were turned and I needed a little comfort. So he told me not to stress out, my reply was to sob back at him, he said give me a call and I said I had no credit. Disaster!

I hate buses. And bus drivers!!!!

It was supposed to be an express bus but the driver kept detouring into these teeny tiny villages to drop people off. Then when I was finally in the town just before Taebaek - he changes buses and has a 10 minute break!!!! ARG!!!
So I got home at 9pm - 7 bloody hours of waiting and travelling and all my fault.

It all felt like such a catastrophe! Mike losing his wedding ring and me missing my train.
But I must've had some luck because when Mike tried on his new couple ring it fit even better than his wedding ring had! But it was a lot of fun, hanging out with the girls - I'm glad I went. Next time I'm not going to miss my stupid train!!

Happy Birthday Marcella

2007-06-20T09:45:00.001+09:00

love Auntie Susie

I'VE BEEN TO NORTH KOREA!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-06-11T12:56:00.000+09:00

I've had a pretty exciting weekend and no, I wasn't captured by Kim Jong Il and forced to star in his movies. Mike & I went on a tour group to visit Geumgangsan - which is the famous Diamond Mountain in North Korea. I'll tell you all about it but for now here are my photos.

Maggie & Steve's visit

2007-06-07T11:33:00.000+09:00

In the hopes of not forgetting the last ten days adventures, I'm going to document our itinerary & food. I'm too tired for anecdotes...

27th May: Busan After lunch, picked Maggie & Steve up from Busan airport (took them 10 minutes to get their bags and go!!).
Meandered around Haeundae Beach, saw the beginnings of the Christian beach convention - mind boggling how many people were there.
Dinner: Galbi (pork) in downtown - meandered around downtown.
Hotel: love motel in Haeundae

28th May: Busan > Uljin > Gyeongju
Breakfast: Bagels at Dunkin' Donuts, then a walk along the now deserted Haeundae Beach. Hopped in the car and drove the coastal road, stopped for a seaside coffee then on to Uljin, took a few photos of the massive ship yards and stopped for;
Lunch: Kim Bap Cheon Guk - had mandu, bibimbap and udong. Back in the car, drove on to Gyeongju. Stopped at Bulguksa, heaps of school children around, Maggie & Steve were kicked out of a temple building for not wearing socks, enjoyed the rock garden.
Hotel: Tourist hotel in Gyeongju downtown Steve & I checked out the rooms - it was ok, nothing special. I was about to haggle the room rate (seeing as we wanted 2 rooms) but I realised the concierge had a plastic arm and I lost the hart to haggle.
Dinner: Beers at the downstairs brewery (very noisy), Samgyeobsal cooked on a rock :) We chose the restaurant because we found 3 together that looked good but the lady at the musical instrument shop said we should go to her sister's place. We were the only ones there but the food was very good.

29th May: Gyeongju > Daegu > Taebaek
Breakfast: McDonalds - oh the shame of it.
We drove round and round in circles trying to find anything open and maccas was one of the few places. Explored historical Gyeongju - a fort, an ice room, an observatory and a lake (I will fill in the correct names). Primary school children were everywhere - Mike got a shock when one of the girls was from Melbourne and had a great accent! I got a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over. Hi! Where are you from? What's your name? It was quite hot all day! Jumped in the car, escaped Gyeongju for the express way to Daegu.
Lunch: Express way rest stop, everyone had mandu except me - I had mystery kim bap & tentacles.
We stopped in Daegu only to buy a couple of things; we ended up buying a couple more than intended :) We finished the drive to Taebaek and started looking for somewhere appropriate for Maggie & Steve to stay. Sadly most of the accommodation options were not very good. Finally we tried the Ewha motel and it was the best of the bunch. Mike and I got to go home to our apartment - yeah! Dinner: New York Grill and Bar - Mike & Steve had massive steaks, while Maggie had the ample chicken steak and I had humungo ribs. We ran into Mike's co-teacher Mrs Yun, her children were very determined to ignore us, it was very amusing watching them march past our table a couple of times.

30th May: Taebaek & Samcheok
Breakfast: cereal oh sweet ordinary cereal!
Mike & I headed to work, while Maggie and Steve caught the bus to Samcheok. In Samcheok Maggie & Steve checked out the brown wedding cake museum, the fish markets and had a raw fish banquet lunch - for 4 people! After work we introduced Maggie & Steve to a couple of our kiddie neighbours then we went out to dinner. Dinner:

31st May: Taebaek & Gohan
Breakfast: cereal. Mike & I at work and Maggie & Steve took off with our car to Gohan to spy on the golf course: High 1. As usual they landed on their feet and were treated like royalty at both the golf course and ski resort.
Dinner: Taebaek Style Dakgalbi - chickeny noodly goodness.
We were joined by Rachael, James, Dean and Sunny, all elementary teachers in Taebaek. Also Lotu another EPIK Teacher and her son Kobe. It was a fun night with lots of Soju!

1st June: Taebaek
Breakfast: cereal.
My Principal decided to take Maggie & Steve to lunch, so Mike's and my schedules were adjusted so we could go out to a hidden restaurant in Taebaek.
Lunch: Many traditional dishes.
The meal was superb and we finished off with five flavour tea. Mike was given the afternoon off, so we headed to his school to make sure and ended up having tea with Mike's Principal. A few of Mike's students got to meet Steve and Maggie - most gave themselves whip lash trying to check out who was in Mike's office! Most of the afternoon was gone so we took some time to plan what to do for the next few days.
Dinner:

2nd June: Taebaek > Donghae > Gangneung > Samcheok > Taebaek
Breakfast: proper cookup :)
We drove to Donghae to check out the Gangwon Comphrensive Museum, which was quite an experience. We were all a bit mystified as to why the collection existed and just why so many artefacts/reproductions thereof were under this very large roof. Having said that I enjoyed the outdoor cave and the robot dinosaurs (with sound effects). By the time we were ready for a coffee break, we were all ready to move on and so we drove to Gangneung downtown for lunch.
Lunch: Terrarosa in Gangneung.
It was really nice to have some tasty Italian food and coffees. A brief walk around downtown and a touch of window shopping later, we jumped back in the car and headed to the Reunification Park. The North Korean submarine still had that burny burny smell and the land-locked South Korean warship still had plenty of buttons to push and nobs to twiddle! I might have regressed into my childhood a bit but I had fun! When we'd had our fill of nauticalness, we continued along the coastal road. This turned out to be a great idea as we found a massive sun dial and this.

We checked out the sun dial and Maggie was taken by the strange fur fashion of one ladies dog - it had pigtails on it's ears! Next we decided on checking out the bizarre site of the ships on land. When we read the sign asking for an entrance fee just to look around these motel ships, we said "Bugger that!" and hit the road again. Time was getting away from us, so we stopped at Samcheok for dinner.
Dinner: Pizza! with some very ordinary wine - what did we expect when they said there was no white, only red and then confused us about the cola situation!
For a bit of fun we checked out the Homeplus at Samcheok after dinner.
We were late getting into Taebaek and so we all went straight home to bed.

3rd June: Taebaek > Seoul
Breakfast: cereal.
We all packed up our bags and jumped on an 11am train to Seoul. It was a much quieter day due to the train trip taking almost 5 hours (it was inexplicable longer than our normal train).
Lunch: kim bap and triangles as appropriated before boarding the train.
We hit the jackpot on our arrival to downtown (Jongno 3-ga area), the very first love motel we tried gave us a fair price and agreed that we could keep the rooms for 3 days! And most importantly, Maggie & Steve felt they would be comfortable at the Samseong motel. To celebrate we all enjoyed a coffee at the marvellous café themselves and come cake :) I had the dangerous dark chocolate and it was at that! Good thing it was a tiny little square - or I'd never have finished it. Freshly refuelled, Mike led us on a walk to and through Myeongdong. On the way we organised tickets to Nanta - thanks to the lovely woman at the Information desk at the Cheonggyecheon.
Dinner:

4th June: Seoul
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: pepper rice - Mike was happy!
Dinner: Brazillian meat on swords cooked to perfection - churrasc.. (sp?)
Nanta

5th June: Seoul
tourist bus
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: gorgeous little in café Itawon - super surprising this was!!
Dinner: Todai - buffet of delicious fish things; from okonomiaki to tempura to personally sliced sashimi to sushi rolls to blazingly hot stir-frys to mountains of crab legs and cooked to order crepes.
We all enjoyed a bit or a lot of the wine which was too sweet for me but ok all the same. Ha demanded we all eat our way through 5 plates, I only just got there - you can see what Mike did with the offered crab leg!
Seeing as we all needed to stroll and some way to repay Ha for his generosity, we walked on into the Intercontinental and had an Irish whisky or a glass of champagne. There must have been a wedding there because we had a rainbow like procession of hanbok attired women with suited men. Sadly Korean men prefer to wear a suit to a formal occasion.

6th June: Seoul
Goodbye at the bus stop.

This is almost finished but I'm going to publish it and finish it on Monday! So check back soon,
love
Squeezy

The next bit in pictures

2007-06-03T10:05:00.000+09:00

Or you can go straight to the photos at MaggieNSteveInSK

It's HOT in the city

2007-05-30T22:47:00.000+09:00

The hottest day we have had was last Saturday when we drove from Taebaek to Busan. Some 300 kilometres later in a car with deadski air conditioning. I was not happy. In fact by the time that we had driven around and around Busan looking for Haeundae (a big beach), I would happily have bought some of the plentiful raw fish and covered myself in it. Fortunately, a raw fish Squeezy was not on the menu. I think that it would have been a bit on the nose! We managed to weave and dodge the car through the heavy traffic (hey, I'm used to 3 cars and a bus - big city driving is not much fun!) and into a parking lot.

I had to peel myself out of the car - I think Mike fell out on his side, I don't know I wasn't paying attention. Then we found the beach. Hallelujah - literally. It seems that Busan was about to have a massive Christian Revival meeting on the beach. This is somewhat a deterrent from breaking out the cossie and jumping in to the sea. I was getting enough double takes while being fully dressed.

We found a cosy love hotel with the help of the information people and Mike was thrilled when we got to the room. It had a round bed. TICK. Mike's convinced that we must stay in each kind of love hotel this year. I thought the round bed was somewhat impractical but it wasn't too bad as it turned out.

So after a rotation or two in front of the fan and air conditioner, we headed out to explore the shopping and night life of Busan. The subway was good, it took 20 minutes to get halfway across town. The strange thing on the subway was the announcement of certain stops with the lilting strains of seagulls. It turns out that they are the beach-side stops.

We meander around the downtown area and enjoy the multitudes of shops and people. It seems to be a tropical version of Seoul. If Seoul had a little less money. I guess it was totally reasonable that the only places we saw other foreigners was at the beach. If I lived there, I'd be spending my weekends at the beach.

The next day we have a quiet walk around Haeundae, which while the weather was warming up, it was nice to do. The time to drive off to the airport rolls around quickly - unlike our lunch. The slowest Thai food ever. We actually had to point out that waiting over 20 minutes for 2 simple Thai dishes was inappropriate. It was such a shame, as the quality of the thai food was excellent. The flavours were spot on and the servings weren't too large. The slow lunch adds a small amount of stress to the drive to Gimhae airport but after dodging through more traffic and enjoying the 1.7km tunnel (it was cool!!), we make it to the conveniently located parking lot.

A few minutes later we get to have a wonderful reunion but I'll tell you about that next time :)

My Birthday & catch up

2007-05-18T09:28:00.000+09:00

Ok, I've been a bit slack - I haven't posted anything new in ages. I've been dreading writing this post as it is my post 30th birthday post.

So what's been happening? Quite a lot really! Let's start with my birthday.

Thanks to everyone who sent me cards, emails, videos & presents! It really made my birthday special this year! Particularly after my party plans fell through - we were too tired to travel as I'd planned.

The 21st of April was an interesting day, it started with a phone call from my co-teacher asking if I could come in to school (it was a Saturday & I don't work 'em!) I said sure - I'd run into a parent the night before and I thought they would buy me flowers. So we got ready in a rush and headed into school. I didn't have time to dry my hair, a small regret of mine. We walked into my staffroom and I could see 2 boys hiding (badly) behind a desk. I knew what was coming... My co-teacher, Mrs Sohn said "Now" and suddenly twenty boys jumped out from hiding and started singing happy birthday to me. Of course the only reasonable reaction to this is to cry, so I did. A little. I was sat down and Mike took photos & a little video. They gave me a big box of Ferrero Rochere, a bunch of flowers and a sweet potato cake. I was told that the sweet potato cake is a big favourite here - it had so much cream in it, I wondered where was the sweet potato??? Mrs Sohn gave me a letter, as she hadn't known it would be my birthday and I hadn't wanted to talk about it. I shared the cake with a couple of teacher's and my sweet students. It didn't take long before the cake was going on their faces instead of into their mouths!

Afterwards, we headed to Mike's school and witnessed the Wonders of Science day. There were water rocket competitions, model plane competitions, coloured water layering, bridge building, the mystery of the chicken foot (?) - all, as you guessed, a competition! Everything was competitive if it wasn't the fastest then it was the furthest or the best. The only non-competitive thing for the students to do was watch a video and I got the feeling they were doing all they could to get out of that too.
What is the Mystery of the Chicken Foot? Apparently you get a bunch of students to take a cooked chicken foot, remove all the flesh (by hand) then they glue it all back together and give it a manicure with their choice of nail polish! This was the grossest scientific endeavour of the day! So I chose to hang outside watching the water rockets - they were really cool. It was nice that I was sung Happy Birthday three more times by Mike's students and given a hair clip - Super Korean Cutey Pink Bow!

Then we had to rush off as my Principal had decided to shout us lunch. So we met most of my school's teachers at the White House - a white restaurant in Taebaek. We had Galbi Tang - beef soup. It was nice but seeing as it was such a warm day a salad would have been better. It was very sweet of all my teachers to delay their trips home to their families to celebrate my birthday. (Many teachers live apart from their families Monday to Friday or Saturday and only go home on the weekend.)

Then we dashed home to cool down and rest before trying to find the birthday party we'd promised to attend. Which was interesting because, well, we couldn't find it. So I called Mr Kim (he is the father of the birthday baby) and of course he didn't answer. I'm sure he was busy with his guests. Then after walking around for 15 minutes and feeling remarkable lost, I saw the music teacher from my school. Fortunately she put 2 + 2 together and came up with 4! So she dragged us upstairs into a fish restaurant and then we found Mr & Mrs Kim and their gorgeous children. His daughter is a hello kitty style princess and his son was very cute - even asleep.

So we were fed a second lunch of fish, sushi, mystery fish and mystery fish bits. I'm telling you some of that stuff was awful!!! Sadly while raw fish is popular here, it is served in a somewhat heavy handed style both in flavours and in cuts. So it's not sushi, it's cho bap. We chatted with some children who were dragged to us to practise their english and then there was a little boy. He came over to us and we had a conversation. He was quite amazing - given he was 7 or 8 years old! He was so fluent that when he dropped some fish he said "oops!" - which was very funny at the time.

When we got home we were feeling very fat. Mike failed to deliver on the icecream birthday cake that I'd told him I wanted. Oh well, next time we're in Seoul, he's going to get me an incredibly cute icecream cake! With a bit of luck we'll have a few friends to share it with.

What did Mike get me?? Well a pair of children's earrings, they are very cute little gold cats and apparently a place holder for my proper birthday present. Shame he wasn't feeling overly generous when I found the Tiffany's white gold and diamond earrings in Seoul...

Oh and my favourite podcast (Cool) Shite on the Tube they sent me a happy birthday message! It was really sweet of them and makes me love them more. Thanks guys!!

We've been down to Daegu mainly for shopping and seeing some culture. We've taken it easy and been to the car show in Seoul. If you follow the car show link, you'll see my comments with all the booth babes draped across the cars. We played which is the ugliest car and the prettiest booth babe. It was fun even if it was a bit surreal.

With any luck, this weekend we'll see a movie at a cinema. I had hoped to watch Spiderman 3 but now I'm thinking 300 or Teenage Mutant Turtles would be better.

have a great weekend,
Squeezy

Balloons KPop Style

2007-03-15T12:50:00.000+09:00

This is the music video clip for Balloons, or Pung Seong, by Dong Bang Shin Ki.

I just love all the animal costumes and the I-can't-believe-they-aren't Backstreet boys moves!!

Happy Birthday to Mike

2007-03-02T11:54:00.000+09:00

Today is Mike's Birthday. Someone told him it's unlucky to be 29, so he's made the change to using his Korean age. So here's my birthday card for Mike.

Congratulations to Georgia & Ty

2007-02-21T16:51:00.000+09:00

I did it!!

2007-02-20T11:30:00.000+09:00

I have finally skied an intermediate run without freaking out!! Yeah for me.
Yesterday Mike and I skied A2 or Athena 2 about four times and it was lots of fun.
I'm hoping next time we'll give Hera 1 or Hera 2 a crack.
I'm still not sure about skiing the advanced stuff - it looks awfully steep! But we'll see how I go.
Yesterday I fell over four times - twice right on the end slushy bit of Zeus the second fall was maybe 5 meters on from the first, but I got up and skied to the end and that's what matters.

I've been invited to go cross-country skiing on Thursday and downhill on the same day - so I'm not sure what will happen there. Could be an exhausting day... good for the thighs though!

Below is the map of my convenient ski resort, High 1.
So far I've skied all of Zeus and most of Athena.
Mike's skied H1, V2, all of Zeus and most of Athena.

Happy Valentines Day

2007-02-14T10:33:00.000+09:00

Happy Valentines Day

Well Valentines Day seems to be celebrated with the gifting gusto that I am becoming accustomed to here. I've received 3 Ferrero Rochers and it sounds like Mike is being given boxes full of chocolates at school! I'm also watching a steady procession of flowers being carried into the school.

This will be a Valentines Day to remember because Mike's gift to me was to shave off the horrible 5 week beard he had grown. I seriously thought that he was not going to get rid of it. He'd even started conditioning it with MY conditioner!! He managed to surprise me. Last night he shaved off his beard but kept his sanchez-esk moustache and triangle hair thing. I thought he kept these bits just to annoy me...
Then this morning, suddenly, even the last irky hairs have been shaved away! Finally - I get my husband back!

Good thing too or he might not have received the cute "Love Chocolate" box that I got for him.

so;
Happy Valentines Day everyone

Airports, Airplanes and Layovers

2007-02-13T14:27:00.000+09:00

Our first flight is with China Airlines from Incheon to Taipei and only takes 3 hours. The flight is packed but the service is excellent. Shame about the lunch - we ate the different options and both were terribly bland.

My first thoughts, once inside, Taipei airport are "oh crap", it was a dump! A horribly dated sevice-less dump!! But what can we do? We have 7 hours to kill and the last city tour left almost 30 minutes ago.

So we go do the transit thing; turns out it's just a security check and up an escalator and suddenly we're in departures. This dump of an airport isn't looking any better.

Determined, as we are, to get through the 7 hours with our sanity inact and to find the transit hotel, we begin walking. After 20 minutes we have found the end of the terminal and seen the tantilising view of what appears to be a much newer part of the airport. We gaze longingly through the windows, both of us transfixed by the promise of time killing diversions in a building where salmon floor tiles would be scorned...

So we keep walking, we hit more dead ends but we keep going.

After over an hour of teasing glances and depressing facilities, we happen upon a ramp with grey (!!) carpet. Mike is close to a run to see what is around the corner and up the ramp... it's salvation!! We have found the new building! Yeah!!

We pass the remainder of our time using free massage chairs (oooh yeah), free internet (and if we'd been dishonest free laptops too!), walking and then we succumb to the transit hotel. Due to the price, we just hire a room for 3 hours; we wanted the sauna but it costs just as much as the room again! The transit hotel room was $39 (US) for 3 hours and for that we had our own bathroom, TV, queen bed and floor to ceiling view of cars driving around the airport.
A bath and a Van-Damme movie and it was time to go.

On the way to our gate, we found the blind massage place and as they kindly suggested we have the 30 min upper body, we went for it. It was one of the most painful and hard massages I've ever had! Good though.

The flight to Bangkok has better food but sadly the service was abismal! (China Airlines) Considering the flight was almost empty - that's pretty bad! I watched "The Last Kiss" which while it was very good, I found it disturbing (probably because it didn't have a saccharine ending).

At last we're in Bangkok and the new airport, Suvarnabhumi, is massive ugly. Not massively ugly. Clearly the designer either has a thing for glass and steel beams or he has an interesting stock portfolio. Sadly most likely the second. Mike's been reading about the problems at this new airport and seems determined to blame anything going wrong on the airport. Granted cracks in the runway are a terrible problem. Narrow walkways are an annoyance - no wonder this airport can only handle 5,000 more people a year that good old Don Muang. We get through immigration, clear customs and find the downstairs public taxi rank quite quickly.

Mike feels its just not the same to arrive at this new airport - even the taxi ride is different. It's 2am so long as I'm in a relatively comfortable taxi, I really don't care. It feels cooler than on other visits and I am hoping that it's the night. I guess we'll see tomorrow. At least the worst travel day is over.

What I have learnt about South Korea

2007-01-29T11:44:00.000+09:00

Everything is last minute.

Soju is good.
Beer and Soju is bad.
Makoli is an acquired taste - if you're into something that tastes like dirty water.

Ginseng has many names but it always tastes like dirt.

Banana milk is the best.

The colder the weather gets, the shorter the girl's skirts are on Saturday night.

It doesn't take much to get on TV.

People spend just as much time taking photos of a festival as they will of you at the festival.

Forget Taekwondo, shopping is the national pastime.

All TV ads must be shot in Sydney.

Department store ads should avoid having Korea people in them.

Korean people are some of the kindest and most generous people I've ever met.

Friends and family are only a phone call away but its not the same as a hug.

Frankie & Steve visit South Korea (video)

2007-01-25T19:20:00.000+09:00

This video is a compilation of video shot by Mike & I when we were visited by Frankie & Steve.

Locations
Seoul
Cheonggye Stream, Nam San & N Seoul Tower, Gyeongbokgung (Palace) & a restaurant in Dongdaemun.
Taebaek
Coal Museum (the Snow Fight!)

Footage shot by Micro & Squeezy
All production & editting by Squeezy

2007 Movies & TV Series Watched list

2007-01-07T09:21:00.000+09:00

So here goes my Movies and TV Series watched list - this should (could) be interesting!
I've decided to link to the imdb page for each movie.

2007

Movies

The Hogfather
Thunderball (007)
You Only Live Twice (007)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (007)
Diamonds Are Forever (007)
The Devil Wears Prada
The Man with the Golden Gun (007)
The Last Kiss
King Naresuan aka Tamnaan somdet phra naresuan maharat phaak ong prakan hongsaa - is this the longest movie title ever??
Titan AE
The Prestige
Jopog Manura aka My Wife is a Gangster

Eragon
Live and Let Die (007)
Idiocracy
The Holiday
Confetti
Infernal Affairs aka Mou gaan dou
Holes
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
For Your Eyes Only (007)
Hot Fuzz
Octopussy (007)
Never Say Never Again (007) - the most terrible Bond movie... EVER!!! Mike likes it though??? Weirdness!!
A View to a Kill (007)
Shrek 3
Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
I, Robot
Spider-man 3 - it needed a fez
Alex & Emma
300
Die Hard 4.0
The Simpsons Movie
Blades of Glory
TMNT
This movie is not yet rated
Transformers
Blood diamond
The Living Daylights (007)
License to Kill (007)
Ratatouille
The Mummy Returns
Flushed Away
The Golden Compass
Leon (the professional)

TV Series

Heroes (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3 started - cliffhanger) - love it, love it, LOVE IT!! must. not. hyperventilate...

Prison Break (Season 1 started '06 - still haven't finished this one)
Canada's Next Top Model
America's Next Top Model (Cycle 7 & 8)
Hotel Babylon (Season 2)
Australia's Next Top Model (Cycle 3)
Men in Trees (Season 1, 2 started - waiting for more episodes to air)
Torchwood (Season 1)
Firefly
Doctor Who
Bionic Woman

Happy New Year!!

2006-12-29T15:28:00.000+09:00

If I don't get the chance to say this to you in person - then Happy New Year!!

I hope 2007 brings fun & laughter to you all.

love
Squeezy

Accident at work

2006-12-29T15:15:00.000+09:00

For anyone I've spoken to lately, you'd know I've had an accident at work. I slipped with a knife while cutting paper and sliced off part of my left index finger. I now have three stiches through my fingernail - which I'm not looking forward to having removed.

So just for fun (?) I took a couple of pics of said finger while I was waiting for the doctor to look at it today. If morbid curiosity has the best of you then click on the photo below.

The Claw

Hwangji Jung School Concert

2006-12-28T14:06:00.001+09:00


This is the video of the 2 Christmas Carols as sung by my conversation club and I. We sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Claus is coming to town". Watch out for the silly dancing!

Merry Christmas

2006-12-24T18:56:00.000+09:00

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

As I watch Mike skiing tomorrow, I'll be missing all my friends and family in Australia and Japan terribly! (We're going skiing then off to the casino buffet for Christmas dinner.
)

Much love to you all - I will call as many of you as I can :)

Happy Birthday Granny for today! The card is probably still in the post.

love
Squeezy

Happy Birthday Tim

2006-12-13T12:41:00.000+09:00

Thank you & quick catch up

2006-12-06T17:35:00.000+09:00

Heeeeelllllllloooooooooooooooooooooo,

So since it has been a while since I posted, time for some thank youes!

First, Thank you Granny for crocheting a scarf and beret for me!!
I wore the beret all day at school today and my students seemed to approve - which means a couple of extra "I love you teacher" were called out today. Also the beret and scarf are super comfy!

You can see me in the beret here.

Next, Thank you to Maggie for sending Mike & I an advent calendar! It really brought home that Christmas is coming soon. Also the thai curry sauces - YUM!! Total lifesaver!

Ok, so we've been travelling around ( I think I lost my fave mascara and eyeshadow doh!!), we visited our local casino (the casino part was rubbish BUT the VR games were great, the Russian dancing girls had an interesting take on the Can Can and the seafood buffet was sensational!) and we've had a little time at home.

My regular conversation classes with a group of 3rd grade boys has sadly come to an end - so I chucked them a New Year Eve party complete with party poppers! I have added as many names in as I could manage.

I took some photos from our flat to show off the view. Thrilling stuff, eh?

I have spent the last 2 days showing my lesson plans and trying to give our brand new english teacher, Jeff, a bit of a clue. For some reason he was dumped on me, as opposed to someone with a clue. It became a little frustrating, in that there seemed to be no plan for Jeff and after four days in Taebaek he still had not met his co-teacher! He's a pretty cool cat, so I think he'll be just fine.

Gohan's ski resort, Gangwonland, opens on Friday which is exciting! I have been told that they have snow, which until I can confirm with my mate in Gohan, I won't believe. As I understand it, the resorts here do end up manufacturing most of their snow. So if they're organised (Hah!) then it could be beautiful from day 1.

Anyhoos must run,
love
Squeezy

I ordered pizza in Korean over the phone!

2006-12-01T19:15:00.000+09:00

Wooo Hoooo for me!! This is not to say I can speak Korean but I can manage basic conversations now - Yeah!

When I called up, I introduced myself and said I'm from Australia. We had been to Let's Pizza before, so I hoped the pizza man might recognize me by telling him I'm from the land of Oz. There are only 2 Aussies in Taebaek and that's Mike & I.

Sooooo, I ask for 1 pijja, pe-pe-ro-ni pijja (I don't think this really needs translation). Then he asks me something and I'm like uh..., then he says sije (relief!) larg-e!

Ok, so now I start talking him through our address bit by bit and that goes well. Good thing I translated the numbers before I picked up the phone.

We're almost finished and he starts saying cola. huh? So I say ney which means yes. Agreeing is definetly the path of least resistance...

So 25 minutes later we have fresh peperoni pizza!

:)
Squeezy

Time to Catch Up

2006-11-29T18:06:00.000+09:00

Ok it's been a little while since I posted. So I think a photo will best bring everyone up to date.

However there have been spurious movember related jokes going on, so I'm setting the record straight here.love
Squeezy

It's Snowed!!

2006-11-07T10:40:00.000+09:00

Last night it snowed - not that I saw it and sadly I missed the light snow that fell just after lunch yesterday. However I did not miss the chance to take a couple of photos this morning - mainly of our car covered in Snow. It looks like the snow tires will be required very very soon!

Taebaek looks so beautiful with the snow covering the trees up high and the lower altitude trees are still showing their autumn colours.

I'll link in the photos here tonight :)

excitedly
Squeezy

I've been published in print!!!

2006-11-04T20:06:00.000+09:00

It's true! I have been published in the Gangstar - a magazine for English teachers in Gangwon-do. Seeing as I couldn't nab an extra copy to send home to my Mum, I'm re-publishing the same article below. Mike also wrote an article, and since he read mine before writing his own - lets say you can tell; so I'm not re-publishing Mike's! Ha! He really should start his own blog :)

First Impressions

I arrived in South Korea on the evening of the 21st of August 2006. I arrived with high hopes and much anticipation of the adventure that I had left behind my family to pursue with my husband, Mike Rowe. After two laps of Incheon International Airport, we found the EPIK desk and were met by the perpetually cheerful Mr Kim. He promptly sent us off for dinner, which was delicious! That night we were delivered to Korea National University of Education for 10 days of orientation; preparation for our entrance into our own Korean cities and jobs. Orientation was a whirl of lectures on teaching techniques, Hangul and Korean culture. I found the course was well planned and well run. I enjoyed orientation immensely. I made many friends in my spare time, who I talk to and meet up with whenever I can!

All too quickly orientation was over and we were packed into a bus, destination Chuncheon, Gangwon-do. I was nervous about meeting my co-teacher; would he or she like me? After our presentation I met Mr Jo and Mrs Yun, who were both very welcoming and kind. But neither were my co-teacher, so I would have to wait. It was also my first chance to meet Lotu Fuli, who was also bound for the mountain city of Taebaek. It wasn’t until the next day that I was finally able to meet my co-teacher, Mrs Sohn; I was so excited to meet her and find out that my school is Hwangji Middle School - a boys only school! I had a good feeling about this.

My first day of school and I had a number of questions to face that I wasn’t expecting, “We go out for coffee?”, “What is your mobile number?” and (my favourite) “Could you pull out your hair?”. I had been warned that the questions from the students would be personal, so I was ready to smile, laugh and say no! The thing I wasn’t prepared for was the welcome screams and yells – as soon as the students realised that I would be teaching their class. At first this made me nervous but the students have gotten a little quieter and I have gotten used to their excitement. Having blonde hair has certainly been interesting for me; my neighbour’s children came over to visit me one afternoon and started patting my hair! I felt a bit like a pony. I’ve learned just to go with it, people are just naturally curious about someone as different looking as I am. My bright blonde hair, my blue eyes and curvy figure makes me strange and I have come to think that part of my job is to be strange, to be different. I’m cool with that.

Just before Chuseok, Mike and I headed north to Chuncheon for the weekend. It was a decision that we would have been better off planning but we knew the bus service would get us there. So after 6 hours on some slow buses, we arrived in Chuncheon and met with our friend, a fellow Aussie, Albina Lee. We wandered around Chuncheon, amazed to be in such a big city and compared stories. Albina’s family had kindly offered us a room for the night, which turned into dinner, breakfast, sightseeing, some fabulous Chuncheon BBQ Chicken and being taken back to the bus terminal. It was just an amazing weekend and I was blown away by the hospitality so freely given.

I have been in South Korea for 8 weeks now and I can happily say I have no regrets for becoming an EPIK ELI. I’m still learning which food I like and which I don’t. I’m finding that last minute changes are the norm and an easy-going attitude makes all the difference. Being here with my husband really is a great help – we blow off steam together and share lesson ideas. The students are fun to teach and my co-teacher is great to work with. I have found Korean people, by and large, to be kind, generous and happy. I love my small mountain city, returning from a trip to Seoul showed me how much I think of Taebaek as home.

Squeezy

I Need Cheesy Pick-up Lines

2006-11-04T09:46:00.000+09:00

I have discovered an interesting cultural phenemon here in South Korea. Guys don't know how to talk to Girls. OK so that's nothing new... Well the new bit is that here, you don't need to.

Here's the scene, you're in a bar with your mates and you see some hot chickies.
What do you do?
A) Buy them a drink, so that they come over to you?
B) Start singing "You've lost that loving feeling" a la Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
C) Ask the bartender to talk to them and send them over?

hmmm Well the correct answer is C! Which may be ok here in South Korea but would not work elsewhere.

So, I'm going to do a "cultural differences" class, which will be the pretense for teaching my students pick-up lines.

Any suggestion of cheesy (I want them to be funny) pick-up lines, would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Squeezy

Mike's Bells, Thailand

2006-11-03T22:00:00.000+09:00

A silly short by Susie :)

My visit to the N Seoul Tower Video

2006-10-25T13:21:00.000+09:00

Credits
Cinematography.....Squeezy
Editing.................Squeezy
Production............Squeezy

This last weekend we grabbed our stuff, chucked it in the car & drove off to the coast!

2006-10-23T17:10:00.000+09:00

Since this was our first chance to do more than a lap of Taebaek (Mike made that last 30 mins! - only because we got lost.), we decided to head to larger cities with larger shopping facilities and historical sites of importance. So Saturday morning, we drove to Samcheok and decided that we should go further on to Donghae for lunch. We had a little trouble recognising which part of Donghae would have some interesting things to check out or food to eat and accidentally (!?) ended up on the tollway direct to Gangneung.

Two and a half thousand won later (cheap toll-road!!) and we are at the outskirts of Gangneung. Seeing as my directions and Mike's driving had done sooooo well to this point - we headed to the nearest Tourist Info desk. There we met a charming woman, (who apologised for not being in uniform on a Saturday!) and were loaded up with maps and a couple of tips for where to go and what to do. We already knew the Unification Park was a must see, but looking at the map, quickly decided we could do that on Sunday on the way home.

Next, it was time for lunch and seeing as Mike didn't fancy the local speciality of Tofu made with seawater; we sought out more carnivorous friendly options. By aiming at the clearly marked tourist areas, in front of the beach, we hoped to find a lunch that was both tasty and reasonably cheap. Maybe we should have stopped at the E-Mart and had lunch there? Due to the amazing looking fish tanks filled with fantastic varieties of soon-to-be-dinner fish, we chose a spot and immediately chocked on the menu prices! We wanted to run, but there was a man standing by the fish tanks and we felt it would be a bit gutless. Fortunately our kind waitress was able to translate the cheaper end of the menu (nothing under $15 Aussie) and we ended up ordering Raw Fish Bibimbap. The Bibimbap was ok, but it was the side dishes that made this lunch really tasty - a really small pasta salad, a hot calamari and green onion pancake (the most delicious thing there), some nicely pickled vegetables and; you'll never guess; kimchi! The good thing we took from this - the calamari & green onion pancake does seem to be a coastal speciality and we love it!!

That afternoon we end up at the EMart and found ourselves enjoying the shopping opportunities there. A couple of dinner plates, a measuring cup & yoga matts (I didn't buy one - yet). We had planned to walk around Gangneung but seeing as it started to rain, we felt it was time to check in to our Love Motel. This time we had the red & white room - it's all too funny being asked to choose the decor for your room - and it was magical to have a spa bath. Oh yes a spa bath... sigh.

Fortunately the rain cleared as quickly as it had started, so we were able to walk around town, but with the time being after 5pm, not all that much was open. Still I found a stunning bright orange organza-mesh wedding dress, for my good friend Georgie, sadly I was thwarted from taking a photo of this stunning piece of "fashion" by the people working very late hours! We meandered for a while before attempting dinner.

Sunday morning and even with sleeping in until 9am, there still isn't anything open when we emerge. We walk and walk and I'm close to collapsing from hunger (missing breakfast really doesn't agree with me). We find a coffee shop that is open and well, with the shop owner roasting his own beans, we have to try it! The coffee is great but they didn't serve food. So we continue the breakfast search. In fact I was about to bet Mike W10,000 that he couldn't find us a bakery to have breakfast in and what do you know, we turn a corner and find a little Tous Les Jous (local chain bakery). Good thing I didn't open make that bet...

After breakfast, We hop back in the car and leave Gangneug for the Unification Park. We know there is a North Korean Submarine on display and a South Korean Destroyer. When we arrive, we are a little surprised at the obvious military lookouts positioned regularly and the large barbwire fence along the coast. It is quiet clear that there is no intention to allow the North Koreans to use the rocky beach as a landing point ever again. The cool point was donning a hard hat and walking through the NK submarine - I hope the guys who manned this vessel were my height or shorted and very skinny! The sub is 35m long, 3.5m wide and 6.7m long and somehow it carried 26 men! We struggled to have 12 tourists walking through taking photos! I imagine this was a very uncomfortable submarine. The destroyer is fun and I get to move around the anti-aircraft gun (the gun was, of course, removed). Not so fun was Mike trying to put my handbag on the end of the aiming guidance - which I had no way of reaching whether on the deck or in the control seat!

We drive on through the back-again rain to Samcheok and have a fabulous lunch at the Home Mart. It's just food court food, but we are entertained by an enourmous projector (showing Korean drama - the Older Man always crys, the young men always fight and the women are always scheming). We listen to my favourite podcast ((Cool) Shite on the Tube) for the last of the drive home and have a good giggle. In this podcast my email was read out at the end - I don't know if it's a good thing to be impersonated by a guy with a beard and a breathy voice but it made Mike & I laugh. A lot!

We've bought a CAR!!

2006-10-19T13:41:00.000+09:00

Well the exciting news for today is.... we've bought a CAR!

I'll give you a minute to take in this spectacularly exciting piece of news...

dum-de-dum

Oh - What kind of car? It is a Hyundai Avante, commonly referred to as
an Elantra in Australia. Before anyone asks - yes it has cup holders, Mike assures me that not only does it have plenty of cup holders but they are a good size too. Silly me to ask about engine noises (as I wasn't there for the test drive) and instead I am reassured on the cup holder front!

Do you want to see it??? Well you can't, at least not yet. Mike has the car parked in the car park at school, so instead how about a photo off the web?

Mwahahahaha - Ok guess my Mum isn't laughing.

Seriously, it should look like this;

I think this is the kind of car you'd describe as nifty or comfy, its much larger than we'd intended to buy. But the small car market was repeatedly referred to as "You drive, You die!". So I feel Mike has done a good thing is obtaining a medium sized car.

more to come soon - such as actual photos of the car!
Squeezy

So just what work am I doing??

2006-10-16T10:35:00.000+09:00

To give you an idea of what I'm teaching in class, here is a short story I wrote. Then I blanked out key words, so that the students had to ask each other for the missing information (hopefully in english!!). The students are still really interested in Mike & I, so I thought I could use this to capture their attention. If you'd like to see the worksheet (its a pdf), leave a comment at the end of this post.

Susie and Mike's Holiday

Susie and Mike went on
holiday to Thailand last
month. They flew from
Sydney to Bangkok. 
When they arrived
it was 2:00am!

Firstly, Susie and Mike,
stayed in Bangkok.  They went to the temple, Wat Pho,
and had a massage.  "Ow! It was very hard." said Susie.
"Just the way I like it!" said Mike.

Next they travelled north to Chaing Mai by plane.  Susie and
Mike were very busy in Chiang Mai!  They went on an Elephant
Trek, did a cooking course and went shopping at the Night
Market.  Susie had a bad case of food poisoning and had to
stay in bed all day.

After Chiang Mai, Susie and Mike,
flew to Bangkok and caught a taxi
to Kanchanaburi.  The next day they
joined a group to go to the Tiger
Temple.  Mike was the last person
to pat the Tigers that day.  So he
was the first person to walk with the
Monk, to take the Tigers to bed.

On the flight home to Sydney, they were both very tired.
"It was a fantastic trip!" said Susie.  "Yes, it was." said Mike
and then he fell asleep.

Catch up & Happy Birthday!!

2006-10-10T12:51:00.000+09:00

Ok, I've been away due to the wonderful public holiday system here in South Korea.

So I have a very overdue Happy Birthday to shoutout to my Dad.

While I'm shouting out; My brother just turned 18!!

Happy Birthday Michael!!

Now to catch up!

I last wrote about the mountain of doom - well that was followed by a very quiet weekend. I was tired, sore and cranky. It did bring home that Taebaek really is a small town, as we were bored out of our teenies! So we had a fresh and firm resolution to spend the minimum number of weekends stuck in our flat.

This brings us to the 23rd & 24th of September, a normal weekend - with no actual plan, we packed up and headed to the bus terminal (5 minutes away). We decided to head to Chuncheon ( the capital city of Kangwon-do), considering it had been a 4 hour trip with our supervisor, we thought it wouldn't take too much out of us. Well 6 hours later, we arrive in Chuncheon, weary but with a friend to visit. This weekend deserves its own post (so it shall have one). In short we had a lovely time in Chuncheon being looked after by our friends family - which means fed a lot of food!

The following weekend, we had a plan! On Friday the 22nd of September we caught the train to Gangneung - in order to reduce our travelling time on Saturday. Gangneung was interesting, we found a brilliant Love Hotel - choose your room; red and white, pine, dark, bright.. It was quiet funny but we will definetly return to that particular Love Hotel. It had a spa bath... I need say no more!
Saturday, we get up early (that would be 9am-ish) and make our way to the bus terminal. There is no train to Sokcho and we knew this trip should take 2 to 3 hours.

The bus route is along the coast for a long time, so I enjoy the beautiful scenery while listening to my favourite podcast CSoT.

We arrive at the beach in Sokcho and meet up with other English Teachers from around our province. To my utter surprise, someone has brought a cricket bat and proper stumps! So we entertain ourselves teaching a couple of Canadians cricket, while discovering just who all the Aussie's and Kiwi's are! That night we all have a couple of beverages together, the photos are here!
Sunday, there are a few sore heads and a few tired ones! We catch the local bus to nearby Soraksan - a beautiful national park, and enjoy an easy walk to lunch. Lunch turns out to be pankcakes with spring onion and/or marine products! We all giggle over the menu. The marine products turn out to be baby octopus! After a few brief farewells, we catch a "direct" bus home to Taebaek. It really wasn't direct but we were just looking forward to getting home, so it all worked out well.

Last week, both Mike and I had the terribly heavy workload of 1 day of work! Tuesday was Korean Foundation Day, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were Chuseok; all public holidays! We were lucky that our schools felt it was just to hard to make any students or teachers come to school on Wednesday. So with this happy news, our mini-holiday, we set off for Seoul on Wednesday. In brief, we went shopping, site seeing, met up with EPIK friends and tried to eat non-Korean food. Click here for Chuseok photos!

We planned to eat the following;

A Steak
Thai food
Indian food
Italian food (other than pizza)

We didn't eat a Steak or Thai food, because we ate the Indian food and were sick for a day.

I had planned to get my hair cut and coloured - I managed to get it cut, so I'm happy with that. Mike wanted geek toys - he bought plenty in the end!

I will post more on the Chuncheon trip very soon!
love
Squeezy

School Excursion: Mountain Climb... of DOOOOOOM!

2006-09-20T16:17:00.000+09:00

Did I tell you that on friday I was on a hike? My school's teachers called it a Mountain Climb! So I was envisioning ropes and stairs and rocks and foot-holds. Damn if I was wrong about the whole thing. (before I left for the excursion; Mike said "too many kids - it will be easy"; which shows he's learnt nothing in 4/5 weeks, its always possible because things are done differently in Taebaek to, well, anywhere!) I was with the 3rd grade boys (about 16/17 years old, the oldest boys in school); this meant I was on the HARDEST hike.

We started on a path (a good start), and I could see it would be uphill for a while - so I was tough and kept going up. Then we had a break - at the bottom of the mountain (only I didn't know it yet)! All the way up, if the boys aren't posing for my photo's then they are trying to give me chocolates - "I'm thinking what, are you trying to turn me into a beach ball??"

After break the boys showed me a little snake and they were impressed when I wasn't scared. It was barely bigger than an earthworm (We did see a small earthworm further up the mountain and it was my co-teacher who freaked)! So we kept on hiking, and soon afterwards we are walking on a dirt track. It's a bit rocky but I did wear my Trusty Hiking Boots - yes they are that good - so all is ok. By this point, I have my own bodyguard, Dong Mi, and he's trying to teach me Korean. Which helps take my mind off the climb but leaves me very little breath to use! Our guide takes a wrong turn, fortunately for me, I'm at the back of the group; so I have very little ground to back-track. Another 30 minutes (I guess) and we reach a large flat high grassy area, we have a short break before our assault on the peak.

The path is so narrow, it's single file only and we all have to cover up due to the scratching and stinging plants ahead. We plod on and on, and the boys are starting to complain they want lunch. Which is fair enough as the time is almost 1pm. When we are almost at the summit, the boys from the front have to push back past us - so the last few meters are very crowded and busy. At last! We reach the top and I take a photo, then I am rushed back down the mountain to the last break area where we are to have lunch.

I arrive with my co-teacher and we all unpack the food we have brought and that our students have brought for us. It's pretty good being a teacher in Korea! We eat vegetable sushi rolls, something that looks suspiciously like chicken feet Korean style and pickles. After the last teacher joins us, they break out the Soju! AND BEERS!!! I find it funny how everyone is just howing into the food and the booze, then they break out coffee and desert! Until I had lived here, I really didn't understand how much Korean's love their food!

As we are preparing to re-commence the hike, I ask the guide (with my hands) if the hike will be steeply up or steeply down? She tells me up for a bit, then along a bit, then steeply down a bit. I'm not re-assured and I am tired already. At least I've saved the four chocolates I have been given and I use them for motivation to keep me going: later on I say to myself, many times over, 'I can have a chocolate in the bus'.

We set off, in the middle of the group and as she said it was up a bit. Every time I thought there can not be anymore uphill parts, there were more. For every uphill we hiked there was a downhill to match and at some point it started to rain - lightly but constantly. With the rain and already being tired, I wasn't really enjoying this hike anymore. My bodyguard gave up his attempts to teach me Korean and decided to finish the hike with his friends - who all have longer legs than I do! I realised that the kind-of flat part was our flat bit; even though it inbetween more mountains. I would say the view was lovely but we couldn't see very far on account of the rain. I was going slowly but ok.

After more trudging, we reached the downhill proper. Of course by this stage I was mumbling like a loon, something about chocolates, while trying to catch the students who were sliding out of control past me (I saved three!) and trying to keep myself vertical. Due to the rain, the ground because steadily more slippery and this was exacerbated by the students all wearing sneakers - so their downward options included running, slipping, sliding, screaming and yelling. In any particular order. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, my legs were shaking, my knees were screaming pain at me, my ankles sore (but saved from any injury by the Boots) and my toes were crying. I was proud of myself for reaching the bottom and not crying out loud on the way down - even when I fell over four or five times. I was just so exhausted.

So when I couldn't see the bus but could see a proper road I was almost happy. When we (my co-teacher - read personal translater/minder - and I) finally caught up with everyone else, we received a round of applause and one of the teachers took a photo of us walking to the bus! I was tempted to say "Paparazzi NO!". But felt no one was going to expect me to look picture perfect after a mountain climb in the rain. A couple of the teachers came up to me to say "you did good" - at least that's what I thought they meant.

I was never so happy to see the inside of a big old bus in my life!! I did eat that chocolate bar, however I waited until I got home - so the Korean mars bar and I could be... alone.

I'm a Blonde Freak HERE!!!

2006-09-05T15:34:00.000+09:00

Ok, so I've moved into my little teeny tiny town called Taebaek. It is a totally charming place to live - very quiet, mountains in every direction, a clean river runs through town and it even has a bowling alley. I'm starting to get used to our small flat - which has an electronic lock on the front door. Mike raised the question of what if the battery goes flat - I'm guessing that why we were given lots of mobile numbers on a laminated page.

I'm in an all Boys middle school and am teaching 1st, 2nd and 3rd
years. My 3rd year students I have twice a week. Which means more work for me!

Today I tried an interview & name card exercise - apart from the fact no-one
interviewed anyone else - they ALL did their own name cards!!!! I think that's
my bad direction. One of the boys (whg is very outgoing) wrote his name and his phone number and "Call me please". He was supposed to be drawing/writing about things he likes eg. sports or colours. I had to laugh. I didn't think they'd
grasp a Rove style; What the..???

I have spent the rest of the day fielding "you're beautiful" and trying to wrestle the students back to practising speaking English with me. After all, I'm basically just here to talk with them. The weirdest one was one student asking for me to pull out a hair for him.

Apart from that, I haven't had any autograph requests but am hoping
that my overall oddness here will increase the size of my conversation
classes.

The teachers here are all keen to throw any english words at me -
which is sweet. I'm a little intimidated by the Teacher class I will
have on Thursday's.

Yesterday was my second wedding anniversary and we went out to dinner to mark the occasion. We had BBQ Beef Taebaek style - which translates as extremely expensive! It was delicious though!!!

Must run, everyone now wants my photo!
Susie

I'm gonna be a hillbilly!

2006-08-29T22:54:00.000+09:00

Today we had a meeting to find out where we are going to live for the next 12 months.

AND I'm going to a small city (50,000 Pop.) called Taebaek.

I'm really excited as we now know where we'll be headed to because we move in on Friday! This week.
I have been told that we should have a larger than normal apartment - on account of there being two of us. So the news is really positive.

I met my Supervisor (who's name I'm not sure how to spell) and she was really nice and helpful. Also I met Alex - who is a liason guy. He was telling us as much as he could about our city, what to expect (as in some people will not have air conditioning - I hope that's not us!!) and that while we'll be in a rural area; we should not expect cows wandering down the street.

_______

Since Monday the 21st of August, I have been in Cheongju, South Korea. I have met lots of people from Australia, Britan, Canada, Ireland, Korean (!!) and the United States. Everyone has been really friendly and the time had been very enjoyable. Even the cultural musical component! Must say I'm not a fan of Korean Orchestral music but it's fair to say that I'm not a fan of the Australian Orchestra either. Just not my cup of tea.

Last weekend we explored Seoul in our own group - which meant no CURFEW!! We travelled with Katarina, Hugh, Jae & Gabe. We visited Seoul Tower - which showed us how amazingly LARGE Seoul is!, we went shopping in a couple of areas including Itawon. It was fun checking Seoul out! We stayed in a Love Motel and had to laugh at all the UV lighting. Otherwise is was comfortable & cheap! When we checked in, we were given a toothbrush pack that included a couple of amusing toiletries!!!

I'll update more shortly :)
love
Susie

Terrific Tigers in Thailand!!

2006-08-12T11:50:00.000+09:00

We finally saw Tigers! Great big powerful roaring Tigers! And we patted them!!!!!!
It was just brilliant!

Thailand Holiday

Aug 8, 2006 - 24 Photos

ok starting from where I left you last...

Chiangmai
Tuesday
We checkout an IT mall here and decide it doesn't have much to offer. So we do the next best (?) thing - go sunglasses shopping. ARG!! Mike knows kindof what he likes, but then checks over each pair with his optomically trained eye. I get a cute little pair of red sunglasses customised with darker lens' and Mike goes a pair of mean looking grey sunglasses. Exhausted by pursuits of a shopping nature, we head off for some site seeing.
Wat Doi Suthep
It's a steep uphill winding climb and its starting to rain but our taxi driver just keeps overtaking anyone and everything else on the road. We dodge the (seemingly) neccessary hawkers of tat at the entry and ascend via the cable car. Once we see the staircase the cable car becomes a mystery as to why it was built - it doesn't go very far!
We have to take our shoes off immediately - which is probably a good thing because the rain is extremely heavy! We walk up to the top level and Mike takes a million photos of the golden stupa. We get to see a really well kept Wat where there has been careful restoration of all the paintings, buildings and buddhas. We make a small donation in one of the Buddha houses (?) and the monk ties some string around my wrist and says "for good luck". Mike sneaks a photo of him for me. After a little coffee, we find the view of Chiangmai. Its lovely. We can see and hear more rain to come, so we leave.
That night I come down with a terrible case of gastro - probably caused by the spicy salad I'd had that afternoon.
Wednesday
felt sick, stayed in bed until 4pm.
We went off to see a movie at the local cinema and saw Miami Vice. Couldn't recommend it as overall I didn't like it. It doesn't say much for a movie when the audience only laughs twice during the whole movie and one of the time is someone being shot in the head!
Thursday
still feeling sick but wanting to see Tigers more than wallow in bed! So we fly to Bangkok and catch a taxi to Kanchanaburi.
We get there ok and that night Mike comes down with gastro!! ARG!!
Friday
We have booked in to go to the Tiger Temple this afternoon and I'm hoping Mike can make it. We take it easy all morning - do nothing at all and wait for our 3.30 bus.
Mike manages to hold it together and we are on a truck taxi with an Intrepid tour group off to the Tiger Temple. I'm so excited at this point I'm grinning all the
way in the bus!
We walk up through these massive gates and follow the sounds of the occasional roars!
There are so many tourists here that we have to queue to go pat the Tigers and we find out later that the volume of people through is why they now chain down the Tigers. They didn't use to. It is an amazing experience patting the Tigers. I am guided from Tiger to Tiger. Mike is the last person allowed in for the day and we have heaps of photos to show for it!!! They show us all the other animals they keep by feeding them pumpkins and surrounding us with Ox, Cows, Pigs, Pony's, Chickens and Peacocks.
We bus back to Bangkok and find our way to Wendy House (Which is really good!).

Saturday The Queen's Birthday
I get to see all the photos and write this post while Mike has an extra sleep. Fingers crossed he'll be feeling better soon.

Enjoy the photos - some taken by Mike, some by our guides (Tiger Temple) and some by me.

kisses
Susie

Thailand Holiday

Aug 8, 2006 - 24 Photos

Thailand Holiday: Bangkok & Chiangmai

2006-08-07T20:26:00.000+09:00

Sydney >> Bangkok

We left Sydney on Wednesday evening with Emirates (brilliant service, seats, entertainment & food!)
arrived into warm Bangkok morning at 2am and saw the least amount of traffic I have seen in this crazy city.
Thursday morning was kicked off with a sky high breakfast :) on the 76th floor of the Baiyoke Sky Tower. The highlight - fresh cooked roti! YUM!!
lots of wandering around Bangkok and Mike taking lots of photos of mangy, diseased, half-blind, starving cats (??? He's clearly CAT MAD)

Friday we headed out to the ancient capital Ayathaya and hired bicycles to get around - Mike's idea! He's cleary more mad than i thought!
It was a nice day - I even overtook a tuktuk full of school children!
The crazy thing was to get out there we took the train - no choice 2nd class only 245 B each, to get back no choice 3rd class only 20 B each.
I think I did well volunteering to pay for the leg home! hehe

Saturday, we scored a reasonable deal of flight-accomodation-trek to get out to Chiang Mai, by walking into the airport! It was really easy and so far has proven a good choice. Chiang Mai is lovely but very dry in its heat! Good thing the guesthouse has a pool :)

Chiangmai

Sunday, The elephants were great - a bit bumpy though. The ox cart was bumpy too.. the bamboo raft wasn't though :) I had the first go at "poling" (?) and everyone else seemed happy to leave me to it. Our adventuring was followed by a passable buffet, which was followed by offers to go see Monkey & Snake shows. hmm we passed.
Instead we went onto the thrilling Orchid & Butterfly farm. IT WAS THRILLING!!!
so much so Mike & I both passed out on the bus ride back to Chiangmai.

Seeing as it was still Sunday, we went out to the Sunday market. And oh what a market. Very little in the way of tat! I bought earings, a black cotton top, a pink bag and matching head-band. I am soooo cool now!! lol
We wandered around until we needed dinner. Mike had chosen a small venue that was enclosed in a small garden. It was pretty romantic & was going really well (helpful waiter who assisted us in ordering from the yummerific menu) when the power cut out. So we had a candle light dinner :) It was lovely.

Monday, we did a cookery course, they had a good number of people there but we were the only people on course 2. So we had a private lesson!!! We can now make a mean yellow chicken curry, papaya salad, red curry stirfry and basil & pepper stir fry! We have 3 containers full of food in our fridge - so dinner will be very cheap tonight! Great value less than $30 aus each for the whole day including transport!

I'm now looking over a spanky imac at a little shop called Le Chocolat - no prizes for what I'll be doing after my coffee is finished!

kisses
Squeezy

Ping Update

2006-07-26T22:17:00.000+09:00

I haven't pinged for over a week now :P

Moving House Sux!

2006-07-26T20:02:00.000+09:00

Well I've just endured the most horrendous week! Moving out of my 2 bedroom house, in which I have lived for four and a half years. If you could imagine two people who have a tendancy to be messy, an inbuilt loathing of throwing anything away and a general distaste for cleaning - then you could have an idea of the magnitude of the job that we attempted to complete in 7 days.

To properly explain, I'll start with the weather. Sydney is in a drought. So the week we moved out, it rained. Not a solid soaking useful rain. Not even a helpful rain over the catchment areas. It rained in a stupid on again, off again, bloody pooring down fashion. We realised that the weather would not be on our side, so we organised two blokes and a truck. By this point we were half way through the week and the only thing moved by this point was the scuba gear. feeling positive at this point..

So the two blokes turn up, late but with a really big Ute (it deserves capitals for the size of the tray alone!). Then they ask us twice what needs to go on the Ute (once for each bloke), over an hour later the load on the Ute is looking precarious. A total of 9 Mac +es, 5 Ikea bookcases, 3 shelving units, 1 mattress, 1 fridge, 1 filing cabinet, a cubic meter of books plus many boxes have all gone on. And I'm really wondering, just how much will fall off in transit. I'm also wondering how much I really care - not much as the day is getting on and we haven't left yet. The blokes are securing the load with multiple ropes and a careful selection of knots - at this point Mike & I bolt!

And down comes the rain spectacularly! So much for a non-moldy mattress! oh well, at least we have a nice lunch cooked for us (cheesy pasta! yum!) and we can play with the cat (The Vomitron - he vomits a lot). we're entertained. we're fed and we're warm. But importantly after a 40 minute drive, we've been waiting almost another 40 minutes for our two blokes in the Ute. I make some phone calls, leave some messages and they turn up. It took them 70 minutes to drive the distance because they opted to turn right on Parramatta road (head East) instead of left (head West). hmmm, whoever said women can't navigate hadn't met these two prime orienteerers!

Right so we've moved the bulky items, been rained on and on and returned to the scene of the crime. And I really can't say I can see much of a difference. Because we are moving overseas, we are much more viscious in throwing out/recycling our posessions rather than moving them - as what good will they be in 12-18 months time? So after borrowing 2 council bins, we have filled 2 and 1/2 bins and our recycle bin is chockas! We decide to hire a ute (much smaller with a cage) and drive off to the local tip. This turns into its own challenge as my little inner-west Sydney suburb does not have a tip of any kind - they refer you to inquire of other suburbs! The Cheek!!
Chullora council comes to our aid - they have a tip and its open all weekend! Yeah! So we do the nasty (including 3 monitors) we dispose of over 300kgs of rubbish. Which in itself is shocking! The weekend has passed in a blur of packing things into boxes and moving said boxes. I'm now officially sick of boxes and now using plastic bags as an alternative! I'm recycling :)

I did have the good sense to organise a cleaner - there is just no way I was going to pack up a house and then clean it until it sparkled! The cleaners turn up - two smiling ladies - and after promising them an empty house to clean, I have two curtains to change over and I've piled everything left in the living room. So they set to work and I waited for Mike to turn up.. and eventually he arrived, then left pursuing coffee! ARG! He did have the good grace to bring me a coffee, but when he started gardening over finished the removal of remaining items from the Lounge - I could bear no more and started ordering him around. I didn't want to be bossy but we did need to complete the inside before considering the outside!!!

Anyhow after all the boxing, moving of boxes, bags, rugs, bookshelves and books. Its all done.
We've had the final inspection and the landlord was pleased. I was relieved!

So I went and had an hour massage. I swear I'll never have that much crap again!

Online Shopping Bliss

2006-07-08T18:51:00.000+09:00

I have found a little patch of shopping Nirvana - online!

As preparation for moving overseas, I've been looking into what indepsensible

items I can buy online and have delivered. And good skin care is top of the list. My reading into South Korea indicates that pollution can be a problem - I'm hoping it won't be but planning that it will! So all this has led me to find a great little online store called Absolutely Gorgeous. You gotta love a stylin' chick like this one!

They have a great range of Australian products - I couldn't leave home (let alone the country) without my Shizen lipgloss. Shizen is the most amazing stuff - nice gloss, nice smell and it prevents cold sores. Its just soooo yummy!

I'm not just raving in a lunatic style fashion because of the balm or because they have many cool lip balms/glosses, and really cute eye shadow colours (see>>).
But because I've exchanged emails with the Absolutely Gorgeous Lady - and she's fast answering my questions (ie. do you have that in pink??) and she's been really nice when I did place an order ... eventually! Lastly she's just fabulous because everything I ordered arrived really quickly and was exactly as good or better than I was expecting!

Now I'm just waiting to see what my new skin care is like.. But unlike on eBay - where you have to wait and hope; I'm looking forward to my next package with no trepidation!

All the images in this post have been used without the authority or knowledge of the sites they came from. Seeing as I'm saying nice things - I'm hoping its ok.

sigh..

2006-07-07T08:42:00.000+09:00

I'm feeling a bit sad and a bit tired today.

Yesterday, I had a lovely lunch out at North Sydney's Prasit Restaurant. Which does lovely thai food. There were prawns in coconut and scallops on the shell. Then we had a devine deep fried whole barramundi in tamarind sauce YUM! It was very very relaxing. The lunch was a mini goodbye from one of my boss' who will be away when i finish work next week. It was really sweet that they took the time to talk with me and treat me to such a lovely lunch out.

Seeing as that all went so well, I ended up over at a good friends place for dinner. I'm a god parent to their twin daughters - and it was great to spend some time fussing over the little toddlers. They are just so cute now! Both kids walk around and talk a little - mainly following their older sister - she's 5 and they're almost 2. It was also great to spend some time having grown up conversations - that was until Mirryn discovered I can be easily tickled. I don't think its a good thing that i can be seriously chased by a 5 year old who has found my weakness!

So now I'm back at work today - only 5 more days to go!!! Given that I can't count Saturday - as it will hopefully be terribly dull and non-eventful.

I'm tired because last night felt late and well with World Cup winding up now - its a lethargic kind of day. I think I'll go sigh..

Ubuntu yourself!

2006-07-04T13:51:00.000+09:00

Ubuntu seems to be a really easy way to install a good linux os.

However it seems to have made the non-geeky amoung us, suddenly believe that they are now card carrying geeks. And yes, I am talking about someone inparticular - lets call him Redfern Princess.

I'm sorry to be harsh but installing Ubuntu does not make you any more computer saavy than you were before. It also does not bequeath you with technical know-how; RP word isn't hard!

Come back to me when you actually know something about your install or your computer or where it all fits in, in the scheme of things. Or if that's too hard - get yourself a podcast that isn't some techno dance dude pumping doof-doof-dooof down the internet. Or put in some effort and watch an all nighter of orignal Star Trek followed up by some Walker Texas Ranger. I think that should mess with your mind appropiately.

In the mean time stop with the Bloody UBUNTU!!!!!!

Work & Pinging!!!!

2006-06-14T13:11:00.000+09:00

ARG!! I feel like Dilbert - only perhaps I really mean the pointy haired woman. What is it with co-workers who tease you? Hmm?

And Pinging. Pinging is not a word! Two of the girls (D&G) here keep accusing me of Pinging. WTF?
Apparantly to Ping is to change the content of the conversation with no apparent logical link.
An example;
This morning while talking to my boss about his upcoming ski trip, we were discussing ski attire. Gloves, ski pants, goggles, stocks, poles etc.
I mentioned how quite a few shops have sales on in Sydney (York St) even though we are at the beginning of our winter. I happened to find a gorgeous pair of pink ski pants on the weekend and I told my boss so. I'm quite excited about these pants as they will co-ordinate with my ski jacket better than my current ski pants (boo hoo black). No more than a moment passes before D&G start agreeing that I have Pinged! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

Beautiful Sydney

2006-06-13T14:33:00.000+09:00

IMGP0946
Originally uploaded by Squeezysk.

Ah, Beautiful Sydney. I'll be leaving it behind soon. It makes me want to go do all the touristy things you forget about. Like Taronga Zoo and going to the AFL.
Speaking of the AFL, I went to the Sydney Swans game on Saturday night. And it poured with rain the whole time! Well until I gave up and went home (in the final quarter). Sadly the Swans lost by two points after a gallant comback of fifteen points down!!
It was a brilliant weekend for sport -even with my favourite team losing :(
I saw Australia v England in the Rugby Union, and really enjoyed the smashing victory posted by the Wallabies!!! It would have helped England if they hadn't given away so very many penalties - however they still would have lost the game. Yeah Wallabies!
To finish this fine weekend of sport - was the first game of the World Cup for Australia and we won!! WoooT So proud of our socceroos! Not sure about the mascot though...
Tired now after reliving that weekend.
kisses
Squeezy

Somthing Pink!

2006-06-09T16:49:00.000+09:00

This beautiful hibiscus flower was blooming on a terribly hot day, next to the Mekong River in Luang Prabang. It was so lovely I had to take a photo!

A couple of images from Laos

2006-06-09T16:13:00.000+09:00

Luang Prabang: Part of a Wat

The morning procession for alms by the Monks of Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang: Wat Mai Suwannaphumaham (not sure that I have the correct temple name).

Vientiane: The Patuxai

Vientiane: Pha That Luang - the icon of Vientiane

Vientiane: Mike walking out to board the far to early flight to Pakse.

2006-06-09T12:47:00.000+09:00

Last year, I went on holiday to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos!
It was a brilliant trip - just not long enough.
In Laos, we started in Luang Prabang then travelled to Vientienne and on to Pakse.

We braved ordering this dish in Luang Prabang in a restaurant that hung over the river. It's a beef and chilli stir fry.
I thought we'd have no trouble with those huge chilli's...
They're hot, oh so Hot! Just like the whole trip really.

Squeezy

2006-06-06T12:52:00.000+09:00

I'm going to South Korea!

2006-06-06T12:19:00.000+09:00

Whooo Hoooo!
Fantastic News for me!!!
I'm moving to South Korea to teach English!
I've quit my job and am looking forward to exploring South Korea - ski field by ski field!
This is how I plan to be for the next 12 months.

This is all so exciting while being a bit sad. I've been in my current job for seven years and I am quite attached to the familar people, work and place.
So now for something completely different!

Intro

2006-06-01T14:56:00.000+09:00

Hi,

I'm Squeezy and I'm starting this blog so that I can chart my travelling adventures!

Currently top of the travel to list is

India
South Korea
Japan
Antartica
Peru
Mongolia

I'm 29 years old, married to a wonderful man and living in Sydney, Australia.

Most recently viewed movies are The DaVinci Code and X3. I enjoyed both movies for different reasons.
Most recently viewed TV shows are America's Next Top Model (Cycle 6) and Top Gear.

Anyhoos, will post again soon, as I'm trying to get this all set up. So that I can further discuss fashion, food, movies, travelling and the colour Pink (my favourite).

kisses
Squeezy