Monthly Archives: July 2008

A week has passed very quickly.  Last night, we went out with Denke and Peter and a few other colleagues of theirs to a Korean restaurant next to Lotte.   They have both short tables where people sit on the floor to rooms you take off your shoes to dine around a regular height table.  We chose the latter.

The food was good.  Both Leo and I had fish and we shared a beef rib soup.  They came with the regular side dishes and a bowl of rice.  Peter ordered some barbeque beef intestines.  They cooked it in the barbeque right on the table.  It looks pretty good but tasted kind of bland.  In the middle of the meal, Denke left.  He was not feeling well and felt dizzy.  He went to the hospital the day before for the same thing.  I don’t think the doctor found anything even though they performed lots of tests.  I hope he is ok.  He thought it might be a middle ear infection.  Hope he’ll find the Korean student to go with him to the doctor’s and get some medicine today.  We leave tomorrow, so he needs to be well to travel.

He has been on the roard for a month now.  I don’t know how he could handle that.  It’s all business for him too, no slacking or touring.   The trips may sound good but not as glamorous as they seem.

We’ll be leaving Jeju tomorrow and go to Taipei to visit mom and do some sightseeing and eat some great food.  I am looking forward to the food and I’m sure mom would be glad to see us.  But I worry what kind of impact it will make on her this time after we leave.  She was not talking or eating for a couple of weeks last time I visited her.  It makes me worry a lot.  I also hope that I’ll be able to find the places Leo wants to go too.  I’m just like a tourist in Taiwan now.  I don’t know how to get around and have very poor sense of direction.  It’ll be an adventure I guess.

I’ll be happy when we get back home.  Other than traveling in the US, I feel very out of place and stuck.  Even in Taiepi where I grew up in and can speack the language,  I used to just stay in the hotel and watch tv when I was not visiting mom.  I don’t know how all of them handle the day to day life without a car and have to take buses or subways to go anywhere.   Every time I go back, I feel the body getting older each time.  It would take longer for me to get over the jetlag, my body would ache, and my legs can’t hold me for the long walks I have to take every day. 

Hmmm, and people like to travel!!!

This is the 5th day on the Jeju Island. Leo has been working his 2 hour shifts every day at the conference. And I have settled into kind of a routine. Working on my site, finally, and knitting while listening to the audio books.

The weather is not as we thought to be nice and warm. It’s actually kind of chilly and lots of days we woke up to heavy fog that lasted at least half a day. But when the fog disappeared, the scenary is pleasant. Our room has an ocean view which is very nice. I always like to look out to the sea and this 6th floor room didn’t disappoint me.

TV programs have their challenges. We can’t understand 95% of the shows cause they are in Korean. And there are lots of golf, baseball, and soap opera or korean drama shows. So the TV is usually on for sound effects than entertainment.

Food is very good and very, very expensive. The other day, we ordered two coffees in the lounge and the bill was $9.50 per cup. Wow. But we are kind of the prisoners of the highly priced meals since there aren’t very many eateries around here within walking distance. But we enjoyed every meal we had so far.

I went over to the ICC conference center with Leo yesterday and sat at the registration desk with him. I plugged my notebook in and got on the internet and worked while he wandered around a bit and sat at the desk a bit.

The only thing that is not perfect in the hotel is the lack of internet connection in the rooms. We have to haul our notebook down to the lounge to get on the internet. That presents another challenge, there is no outlets for us to plug our notebooks in. So we have to hurry up and do the internet stuff in a couple of hours while the battery lasts. If we have internet in the room, I would have a ball just browsing and working on the site all day. Note to self, have to have free internet connection in the hotel rooms when travelling. I can see that it’s essential for me to always have my notebook and the internet wherever I go now. The PC is my entertainment and where I work. I don’t need to go on the tours to man-made attractions or go to the Teddy Bear Museum or to walk around to look at big hotels. But I would be at a loss if I don’t have my PC and my connection to the world through it.