Range goat
why I should get a purple heart
Korean fast foodBy the way, the answer to the first quiz was "empty containers of heating oil"
07 November 2007
Heading for the airport
Leaving today. I have a lot left to post so I will leave this blog up for a while and update when I get over jet lag. For the next few days please ponder these and leave a comment on any post.
Range goat
why I should get a purple heart
Korean fast food
By the way, the answer to the first quiz was "empty containers of heating oil"
Range goatwhy I should get a purple heartKorean fast foodBy the way, the answer to the first quiz was "empty containers of heating oil"
06 November 2007
Range Dog
Aparently there is a range dog at every range around the world. Here is the one at the range here near Taean.
His name is "Jindo" and he is a Jindo Dog, which is the famous dog of Korea.
His name is "Jindo" and he is a Jindo Dog, which is the famous dog of Korea.
05 November 2007
Ok, major update tonight (probably morning your time)
Lot of posts, clearing backlog, getting ready to head home.
What happens to all that dried fish
Well, it ends up in the back alley markets. At this stall you can have it al fresco or wrapped in plastic. 
Here's more in another market stall. I don't know how you choose.
Here's more in another market stall. I don't know how you choose.
fishing fleet
Here's the fishing fleet in the little town where we come down for lunch. I am told that tides in the yellow sea are second only to the bay of fundy as far as swing and the ports have these really steep walls visible at low tide. From the radar we are installing this can really be seen over the course of a day and they are very extreme tides.
I didn't ask about deep sea fishing expedition rates
I didn't ask about deep sea fishing expedition rates
Misleading Signs
According to the Koreans this sign, posted outside some of the restaurants in the area but not all, is not to be trusted. It was not outside the Chinese restaurant where we had the banquet.
Chinese Banquet in Korea
Here's the post of the food in the drunken banquet we had with our Korean customer last Thursday. This food reminded me of a Korean take on a Chinese multi-course wedding banquet I had had in Hell-A back in the 80's when Eric Bohley married Mary-Anne King.
Anyway the appetizer course was jellyfish salad, a slice of pickled pork, a prawn, and a slice of an aged duck egg usually called a "hundred year old" egg. The sauce in the top bowl was like a thin soy sauce, which is unusual in Korean restaurants, we had wooden chopsticks (Koreans almost always use stainless steel chopsticks, which in addition to being much slicker than wooden chopsticks are also not rotationally symmetric) and a typical chinese soup spoon. The jellyfish salad was on top of shredded cucumber that was not pickled, the only cucumber that hasn't been a pickle I've seen the whole trip so far.
The next course was shark fin 'soup' which was more of a noodle dish than a soup in this restaurant and only had two tiny bites of shark fin, it was mostly bamboo and noodles. I took this picture after I had eaten quite a bit of it. The koreans called it "shark flipper". The dish above it was sliced pieces of sirloin in a typical Korean spicy sauce. The only other beef I had in Korea was the shredded kind that is used in Bulgogi and even the butchers I've seen in the market places don't carry much beef (I later had beef bibimbap which was also shredded) and what they had doesn't resemble cuts I am used to seeing. Notice the green bottles of soju in the pictures.
The middle dish is fried shrimp in a korean sweet and sour sauce, very similar to what was in the beef dish but sweeter. To the right is a chicken thing, I think. Iwas beginning to loose track a little here. The clear glass at the top is the soju shot glass, the little white one is the scotch shot glass and the big cup was cold jasmine tea. The wooden cylinder next to the spoon rest has an egg drop soup with a surprise ingredient that I'll note in another picture, below. On the right edge is a cold wet napkin that they give you just before the meal starts in most of the restaurants around here.
The next one was something I never encountered before. On the right is a chinese bun, think of dim sum buns you might have had before, but this had nothing in it. It was like a dough-y chinese biscuit. I was supposed to pick off parts of it with chopsticks and eat it together with the sliced portk and vegetables dish to the left. I was having problems with the chopsticks by that point and didn't eat much of this. That might have been a mistake, because I still had to endure the line o' Koreans that I talk about in the soju post.
This is the final dish that came out, and I think something must of gone wrong because you usually get desert and/or fruit at the end of a chinese banquet, but then again the only desret course I've seen or heard of in Korea is something called cold noodles which I had the first night in Taean, but it wasn't sweet. Anyway back to this dish, it is noodles in typical chinese soup stock broth with more of the "surprise" I mentioned above. The bits in the soup (you might have to click and enlarge this picture to fully appreciate this) that look like mushrooms are not. They are sea slugs! Also known as sea cucumbers. They are poisonous! Well, anyway they were in this dish, plus the soup that came in the wooden cylinder at the top of this picture next to the soju glass. So I ate a good bit of sea slug. Because that soju glass is empty I think I took this picture just after I had dumped it into Burnsed's soup.
I don't really remember anything tasting objectionable and the sea slug apart from it's not being a mushroom wasn't really bad. It's just when you expect to chop down on a nice portobello and instead you bite into a sea slug the mouth feel and consitency gives one pause. The "hundred year old" egg was much more tasteless that it would have appeared. The jellyfish salad tasted just the same as it did at the wedding where I first had it and just like at the Japanese restaurant on Eglin Blvd back home.
Anyway the appetizer course was jellyfish salad, a slice of pickled pork, a prawn, and a slice of an aged duck egg usually called a "hundred year old" egg. The sauce in the top bowl was like a thin soy sauce, which is unusual in Korean restaurants, we had wooden chopsticks (Koreans almost always use stainless steel chopsticks, which in addition to being much slicker than wooden chopsticks are also not rotationally symmetric) and a typical chinese soup spoon. The jellyfish salad was on top of shredded cucumber that was not pickled, the only cucumber that hasn't been a pickle I've seen the whole trip so far.
The next course was shark fin 'soup' which was more of a noodle dish than a soup in this restaurant and only had two tiny bites of shark fin, it was mostly bamboo and noodles. I took this picture after I had eaten quite a bit of it. The koreans called it "shark flipper". The dish above it was sliced pieces of sirloin in a typical Korean spicy sauce. The only other beef I had in Korea was the shredded kind that is used in Bulgogi and even the butchers I've seen in the market places don't carry much beef (I later had beef bibimbap which was also shredded) and what they had doesn't resemble cuts I am used to seeing. Notice the green bottles of soju in the pictures.
The middle dish is fried shrimp in a korean sweet and sour sauce, very similar to what was in the beef dish but sweeter. To the right is a chicken thing, I think. Iwas beginning to loose track a little here. The clear glass at the top is the soju shot glass, the little white one is the scotch shot glass and the big cup was cold jasmine tea. The wooden cylinder next to the spoon rest has an egg drop soup with a surprise ingredient that I'll note in another picture, below. On the right edge is a cold wet napkin that they give you just before the meal starts in most of the restaurants around here.
The next one was something I never encountered before. On the right is a chinese bun, think of dim sum buns you might have had before, but this had nothing in it. It was like a dough-y chinese biscuit. I was supposed to pick off parts of it with chopsticks and eat it together with the sliced portk and vegetables dish to the left. I was having problems with the chopsticks by that point and didn't eat much of this. That might have been a mistake, because I still had to endure the line o' Koreans that I talk about in the soju post.
This is the final dish that came out, and I think something must of gone wrong because you usually get desert and/or fruit at the end of a chinese banquet, but then again the only desret course I've seen or heard of in Korea is something called cold noodles which I had the first night in Taean, but it wasn't sweet. Anyway back to this dish, it is noodles in typical chinese soup stock broth with more of the "surprise" I mentioned above. The bits in the soup (you might have to click and enlarge this picture to fully appreciate this) that look like mushrooms are not. They are sea slugs! Also known as sea cucumbers. They are poisonous! Well, anyway they were in this dish, plus the soup that came in the wooden cylinder at the top of this picture next to the soju glass. So I ate a good bit of sea slug. Because that soju glass is empty I think I took this picture just after I had dumped it into Burnsed's soup.
I don't really remember anything tasting objectionable and the sea slug apart from it's not being a mushroom wasn't really bad. It's just when you expect to chop down on a nice portobello and instead you bite into a sea slug the mouth feel and consitency gives one pause. The "hundred year old" egg was much more tasteless that it would have appeared. The jellyfish salad tasted just the same as it did at the wedding where I first had it and just like at the Japanese restaurant on Eglin Blvd back home.
Soju, or, if you ain't cheating you ain't trying.
Last Thursday we had the traditional dinner that we do with our Korean customers during a successful installation. This usually consists of a feast at a restaurant nearby to the range paid for and hosted by my company but directed and chosen by the Koreans.
This installation we went to a Chinese restaurant, mostly because one of the guys is quite old and the Koreans wanted to find a place with tables and chairs. The feast was great and I'll have a separate post on the food (which you may have already seen), but this is about the drinking, which is an integral part to a Korean dinner.
Dinner drinking starts with one of the engineers breaking out the two bottles of Johnny Walker Black that one of my engineers bought in duty-free and toasts all around. Then begins the low level individual drinking.
In this phase there are shot glasses placed on the table, but fewer glasses than people. These are strategically placed along with a couple of bottles of soju in the midst of about 6 people. There are about 3 shot glasses and the rule at this point is that you never pour your own drink, you can only poor a drink for someone else. So someone pours you a shot and you down it. But then you have to pass the glass to someone else in your local group and then they take a shot. The only real requirement is that just about everyone gets a shot at this point and the senior people from my company make sure and toast the senior Korean. He is only drinking scotch at this point and when you exchange a toast with him you just pour him a sliver.
So of course I am participating at this point, but I'm getting a little more attention than everyone else at my group. This is because I am the "target", the new project manager, and my 'staff' and the Koreans are conspiring to make this my worst nightmare. But they are backing off and as the food comes the pouring slows down and it is only between course that more shots are foisted on me. Also the rules begin to change. Now when someone brings you a glass, you have to down it and immediately pour them a shot and they down it. It looks like this:
Random Korean staff pours me a shot of soju. I am bound to accept gracefully from the Koreans, but at the end of the dinner (and I'm not sure we got to the end because the last course was noodles, when I think it should have been fruit).
Once I've taken the shot, I hand him the glass and pour for him. I have to pur with my right hand only and only with my left hand over my heart as in the picture.
Nice custom, unless you are the target and there are 13 Koreans trying to exchange shots with you and only one of me. As the courses wound down they were lining up and Koreans I hadn't even met were insisting on pouring me a shot. At this point I made them tell me their name and what system they were working on in English before I would let the pour. Here's what the table looked like near me before the serious drinking started. All the bottles in this picture are empty, brown is beer bottle, green is soju bottle and tupperware is tea.
The dishes in the bottle line are the typical korean meal accompaniements; kimshee, raw onions and garlic, more kimshee made of stuff other than cabbage and the really hot kimshee.
I don't know how much I drank, more than 30 shots. But I cheated. I did drink every one of the shots poured for me, but one (I put that one in Burnsed's soup), but I made sure that I would walk out under my own power without ralphing. I did manage to carry that off as I walked the 6 or 7 blocks back to the hotel under my own power to the amazement of all. I didn't barf until after I got back to my room (probably saved me from alcohol poisoning) and tried to drink a bottle of gatorade. I hate to say it, but as I've gotten older I have to resort to tricks that I would never have tried when I was younger if I want to keep up with foolish drinking. Extra points to anyone who can guess what tricks I used.
This installation we went to a Chinese restaurant, mostly because one of the guys is quite old and the Koreans wanted to find a place with tables and chairs. The feast was great and I'll have a separate post on the food (which you may have already seen), but this is about the drinking, which is an integral part to a Korean dinner.
Dinner drinking starts with one of the engineers breaking out the two bottles of Johnny Walker Black that one of my engineers bought in duty-free and toasts all around. Then begins the low level individual drinking.
In this phase there are shot glasses placed on the table, but fewer glasses than people. These are strategically placed along with a couple of bottles of soju in the midst of about 6 people. There are about 3 shot glasses and the rule at this point is that you never pour your own drink, you can only poor a drink for someone else. So someone pours you a shot and you down it. But then you have to pass the glass to someone else in your local group and then they take a shot. The only real requirement is that just about everyone gets a shot at this point and the senior people from my company make sure and toast the senior Korean. He is only drinking scotch at this point and when you exchange a toast with him you just pour him a sliver.
So of course I am participating at this point, but I'm getting a little more attention than everyone else at my group. This is because I am the "target", the new project manager, and my 'staff' and the Koreans are conspiring to make this my worst nightmare. But they are backing off and as the food comes the pouring slows down and it is only between course that more shots are foisted on me. Also the rules begin to change. Now when someone brings you a glass, you have to down it and immediately pour them a shot and they down it. It looks like this:
Random Korean staff pours me a shot of soju. I am bound to accept gracefully from the Koreans, but at the end of the dinner (and I'm not sure we got to the end because the last course was noodles, when I think it should have been fruit).
Once I've taken the shot, I hand him the glass and pour for him. I have to pur with my right hand only and only with my left hand over my heart as in the picture.Nice custom, unless you are the target and there are 13 Koreans trying to exchange shots with you and only one of me. As the courses wound down they were lining up and Koreans I hadn't even met were insisting on pouring me a shot. At this point I made them tell me their name and what system they were working on in English before I would let the pour. Here's what the table looked like near me before the serious drinking started. All the bottles in this picture are empty, brown is beer bottle, green is soju bottle and tupperware is tea.
The dishes in the bottle line are the typical korean meal accompaniements; kimshee, raw onions and garlic, more kimshee made of stuff other than cabbage and the really hot kimshee.I don't know how much I drank, more than 30 shots. But I cheated. I did drink every one of the shots poured for me, but one (I put that one in Burnsed's soup), but I made sure that I would walk out under my own power without ralphing. I did manage to carry that off as I walked the 6 or 7 blocks back to the hotel under my own power to the amazement of all. I didn't barf until after I got back to my room (probably saved me from alcohol poisoning) and tried to drink a bottle of gatorade. I hate to say it, but as I've gotten older I have to resort to tricks that I would never have tried when I was younger if I want to keep up with foolish drinking. Extra points to anyone who can guess what tricks I used.
ready to post
OK just finished watch Battlestar Galactica Razor, got Radio Margaritaville playing. It's time to start clearing the backlog of posts.
Worked and went to Osan this past weekend
Now it is Monday evening and the weekend did not yield any post worthy material. That said, I have quite a backlog and I'm heading back on Wednesday. So late tonight I will be posting the mother of all blog updates. Hang on.
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