My Time In the East

Field Trip

Well, the field trip went extremely well.

During lunch we were entertained by a number of performers, which included a Marimba (a type of xylophone) and traditional Korean drums. The Marimba was a solo that was an arrangement of the Hungarian Rhapsody #5. This is probably the closest that I have ever been to a drum performance here. It is definitely part drumming, and all show.

Listening to the music reminded me of a concert that I attended a few years back with in Japan. The concert was performed by a Japanese Army Band where they played familiar songs from around the world as well as traditional Japanese music. The highlight and the finale was them playing John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. All of us in attendance left with a much better feeling and tremendous degree of respect. Anyway, that was several years ago, but for some reason I thought back to that concert today.

On the way back to Seoul, I spotted two OINK’s (Only in Korea). Of course of the last couple of years we’ve noticed OINKs in other parts of the world and not just Korea.

OINK 1: A tow truck parked on the side of the expressway with a satellite TV dish mounted on the two-arm. I suspect this is for the tow-truck driver to watch TV while he waits for the tow that will eventually come.

OINK 2: Not long after seeing the one above. I spotted a “SlimSlide” mini-van (A SlimSlide is really a mini-mini van and is maybe about a third of the size of a standard US mini-van) being towed by the tow-truck (with the tow arm). Sounds normal, right? Well, the SlimSlide was complete on the back of the tow truck perpendicular. The funny part is that not that much of the truck was hanging off the side of the tow truck.


We arrived back at the office around 530pm. I needed to quickly changed and headed off to stand in line to see Star Wars Episode III. I got in line around 600pm, but by 610pm all the seats had been filled so I was right about not being able to see it today due to the field trip.



Racking the beer from the Primary to Secondary fermenter. 

The picture above is the glamorous part of beer making. Transferring the wort from the Primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter. I use glass for the secondary so I can see the wort clearing over the next couple of weeks. The beer is a Pale Ale and should be ready to bottle around the 1st weekend of June.

The not so glamorous part of beer making is sterilizing everything and then the unenviable task of cleaning the primary fermenter of the waste trub ( pronounced troob- "The sediment at the bottom of the fermenter consisting of Hot and Cold Break material and dead yeast")

posted by Unknown @ 10:12 PM