Today is the beginning of the biggest, most important holiday in Korea – Chusoek. On this holiday everyone drives to visit their family. We usually go the week before or after in order to avoid the traffic, but this year we want to go since it will be our last Chuseok in Korea and the last opportunity for my wife to see all of her family (she has a very large family). We were going to go yesterday afternoon, but a couple of my students didn’t want to cancel class because they wanted some extra help with their essays so I went to school for my 3pm class.
By the time I got home traffic was already intense so we decided to get up at 5am and drive out. Well overnight the traffic didn’t get any better. And a 2 hour drive from the toll booth to Daejon (about halfway to where we need to go) was now 4.5 hours, but that doesn’t include the drive to the toll booth which normally takes about 30 minutes but would probably be closer to 2 or 2.5 hours, which it did take us one time we drove out.
We may be heading out late afternoon depending on news reports or else getting up very early again tomorrow. Tomorrow should be better because typically on the second day of the holiday traffic is light due to everyone already having gotten to where they’re going.
Earlier this week I bought a new DSLR – The Canon Kiss X4, also known as the 550D or in North America as the Rebel T2i. It’s been about four years since I last owned an SLR camera and even longer since I used one. I’ve been thinking about getting a DSLR for the past several months and finally did it.
I got the Kiss X4, which in Korea is grey market and consequently about $180 cheaper. I also got a after market battery grip, a second battery, a remote control (great for low light photography and self portraits), the 28-105mm f3.5/4.5 lens and the 50mm f1.8 prime lens. I already own a good tripod so didn’t need to buy one of those. In the future I would like to get a nice wide angle lens and a macro lens and possibly a flash, but I already spent way too much money so that’ll have to wait.
I started a” flickr account where I’ll post some of my best pictures”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/createsean/. I heard it’s a great place to get critiques and advice. I will of course continue to post some pictures here and when i find some time will add new features here more related to photography including the display of exif data directly from the photo.
In any case here is a selection of six photos I’ve taken since Tuesday that I like.
Bibimbap
There's more, keep reading
The past few days my wife has become more vocal about her dislike of moving to Ottawa. At first I thought it was just because the city was smaller than Seoul, but she’s been doing some research online and reading some Korean blogs about Ottawa and has raised some valid points.
- not very many Koreans, only 2,000 versus 70,000+ in Toronto. I understand this as most of my long term friends in Korea have been other expats. So the potential for her to be lonely due to lack of other Koreans is there.
- it’s cold, really freaking cold. My answer to that is that all of Canada is freaking cold. She wants to live in Vancouver, but there is no way I’m going to move back to Vancouver. Bonus for Toronto according to what she has read is that due to the subway there is a lot of underground shopping/tunnels to avoid the cold.
- jobs – will be more difficult to get work due to French being a requirement for many jobs in Ottawa. This is true and something I guess I had kind of ignored, but I really do need to think about that since my web development business isn’t doing to well and between the two of we can count to 5 in French and say do you speak English. Definitely doesn’t bode well when French language skills are a requirement.
- small town. My wife is not really interested in living in a small town and Ottawa is effectively a small town compared to all of the major cities here in Korea. I personally like the size of Ottawa, but also recognize that a bigger city is more interesting and will afford more opportunities.
The result, now I need to do some research into Toronto before making a final decision. I’m positive that we won’t be living in Toronto proper but rather one of the suburbs that makes up the greater Toronto region. Things to look at are the costs of housing, both rental and owning, good neighborhoods, good schools etcetera. If we go to Toronto then it seems like my trip to Ottawa this past summer was in vain, though I did meet some good people and enjoyed my time there very much.
Time to rethink my repatriation.
Yesterday my wife and I arranged a babysitter and went out for dinner at Mad for Garlic followed by a movie – Killers. Killers was a throw away brain candy kind of movie, fun but nothing special.
Mad for Garlic was awesome. It was garlic on top of garlic with garlic sauce. We ordered the garlicky salad which you can see below. Basically it was spiniach with pickled garlic, garlic cloves, garlic cloves soaked in garlic sauce, topped with thin slices of parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar/garlic dressing. Yummy.
My wife ordered a pasta which was also very tasty, but the picture is a little washed out. I ordered a chicken and pasta combo. The chicken was covered in garlic with a dark garlic sauce and came with a side of pasta with garlic and some pea like things with a garlic sauce. There was also a small salad with garlic dressing. Mmmm tasty.
Mad for Garlic, hell yes – I’ll be going back and trying out the pizza which looked really really great.
Delicious
Last.Fm
Library Thing
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
Comments(5)
Tweet
