Seoul Driving in a $400 car
One of Dave Ramsey's favorite things to say to people trying to get out of debt is to sell their car (among other things) and get a $400 car. The reason is because the original car probably has a monthly payment attached to it. Anyway, the $400 car is paid for with cash. No additionally monthly payments, of course insurance can drop because don't need to carry comprehensive/collision insurance.
Okay, they other thing is that Dave doesn't necessarily want you to drive a $400 car forever. I've been driving mine for 20 months now. While I do have to make repairs from time to time and I have put $400 into it over those 20 months, it is still cheaper to maintain and repair that car than to make payments on a new car.
Where am I going with all of this - good question, and as soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know. No really, I recently had the car winterized as it is really starting to get cold here in Korea.
In those 20 months that I had the car, most of my driving has been to the south of Seoul. Well, today, for the first time ever I drove UP (aka NORTH) to Uijongbu. My main reason was to attend a graduation. It took about 45 minutes to drive the total 20km (or so straight line distance). Of course to get there we had to take a detour around the Express Bus terminal before getting on the correct expressway. On the way back had to detour another 5 kms to get back home.
In all, it was a good trip and the car... well, it ran extremely well. Glad I had it tuned up!
Namsan/Seoul Tower as how it looked over the last few weeks. From left to right - three weeks ago, two weeks ago, last week and finally today. Comparing todays photo with last week, it looks like last week was definitely had the best colors. The remodel of the tower itself is almost done and is supposed to open by the end of the month.
The "monster" from Monster's Inc. out for a little sun in the afternoon.
Winter?
Having (almost) been in Korea for three winters (and the first, at 8 years ago is almost a blur), this one seems to be extremely mild, so far. While the really cold periods don't show up until January/February, to date it has been relatively nice. Today was partially overcast, but running around on the moped wasn't bad - of course I did have a heavy jacket on, which got me hot when I was off the moped.
Tomorrow, I should get my third or fourth shot of a Namsan/Seoul Tower collage that I will post that shows the change in the foilage. Oddly, this year the foilage is right at the peak of color (hence my thought that it is a milder winter). Last year at this time we headed over to Soraksan (Mt Sorak) National Park, and pretty much missed the change of foilage color.
Also tomorrow, I'll try to hit the big three - Namdaemum, Dongdaemum and Isa-dong shopping areas looking for various this to take on my trip back to the states
Veterans Day
Today is (and was) Veterans Day. Please take the time to thank a Vet for their service to the United States. Many of the freedoms and liberties we all enjoy we have because of the men and women that have served (or are still serving) in the US Armed Forces.
Korea Census
It is official - I will be counted in the numbers of two countries (I think). A couple of days ago, I had a nice and extremely polite Korea woman (didn't speak much English, if any, but pointed to a sheet to determine my language).
Anyway, the survey was quite facinating. There had to be at least a dozen different languages (in addition to Hangul {written Korean}) that the survey was printed. The questions were pretty straight forward and basic; number of people living in the house, ages, citizenship, why in Korea, etc.
Random Musings of the Day
Okay, so I know that I haven't posted since the last update about three weeks ago. I have been busy, but that is really no excuse.
I have been cleaning the apartment and preparing to pack for a trip that I will be taking later to see DVN2RCKR, rnrB, and trkr. Part of that preparing involves collecting up several of the items that have been left here over the last year as a result of the various trips that they have made. But, it also involves searching for those "one-of-a-kind" items to take back to them in the states.
The first involves cucumber soap. Yes, for some it does sound odd, but we bought three bars of it in China last April (the soap itself was from Korea). DVN2RCKR wasn't sure about it initially, but once she used it, she loved it. The problem is that most (or all) US stores don't carry it. She could go to the Korean market stores, but end up paying twice the price. So I have a few bars of that to take home.
The second involves electronics. I am the certified electronics (aka computer guru) of the family. I usually travel with several different types of systems to store data or access it, or whatever. Since the big push to digital cameras a few years ago, we have all been subject to data loss of pictures. Believe me, I my job, I have seen my fair share of data lost due to hard drive failure. In about 75% of the cases we can recover the data internally. Anyway, the question becomes where do you store this data separate from the computer and how do you get it there? The quick (and short) answer is DVD-R disks.
The problem is that I have the DVD burner in Korea. Oops (Well, not really). Okay, next solution - pull the data over the Internet. Well, setting up a VPN between systems is possible (and used from time to time), but when we start looking at pulling 5Gb of data over a flaky wireless connection... Anyway, you get the idea. TRKEE must go to data. In the end, I have a 250Gb external HDD assembly for backing up all these digital photos, which I will then burn onto DVDs which will eventually be stored in a safe deposit box (somewhere, eventually).
