It’s just the beginning.

naanushande.blogspot.com is one year old !!!!!


After every trip, I used to document my experiences in a piece of paper or in an ms-word document. There was a plan to share this with my friends and colleagues in blogosphere. The self consciousness about quality of my English, whether people who read my post would ridicule me for mistakes, prevented posting my experiences for long time.

Then how this self consciousness rooted out? The first trigger was the start of Ee Prapancha by Raveesh, he requested me to comment for his post. He also promised me that he we will also post comments when I too start blogging. Then on 24th June 2006, after coming back from Nandi Hills Bike Trip, as usual I documented my experiences in ms-word and wanted to share the same. The self consciousness came into picture again. But my friend Ande encouraged me go ahead and asked me not to take seriously what others say, human beings improve by committing mistakes. If Ande’s encouragement was not there naanushande.blogspot.com wouldn’t have seen the light of day. My experiences would have remained as ms-word documents.

Now, I am no more self conscious and sharing all my experiences with a press of button. In the process, my English has also improved, thanks to Sudhir for pointing out the mistakes, but still there is a lot scope for improvement.

The online posting made my life easy to communicate the experiences to my friends, who are geographically separated. I need not type each and every word in the chat window.
Starting with bike trip, I have posted on various other topics from movies, trekking, events and whatever happened to me personally. Also knowingly or unknowingly my blog benefited many people. The experiences of my stay at Indian Guest House, Gumi(South Korea) became a perfect reference for Indians who are planning to travel Gumi.

Favorite posts
Of all the 59 posts so far some are my favorites, the thoughts have come direct dil se. Here is the list in chronological order.
- 2 years of Software Engineer: blogged while watching thrilling football world cup semi-final Germany v/s Italy.
- Hypnotism without Hypnosis.
- Lakshmi v/s Saraswathi.
- Savandurga Trek n Bike Trip: still the experiences of this trek linger in my mind when I descend from the top of a mountain.
- I was hospitalized for first time.
- Is there a 2nd Chance in Life: Comeback of Saurav Ganguly inspired me to write about this.
- Are you sharing password at your workplace: because of this post I lost a sincere and creative commenter to my blog.
- Callback from KBC.
- First Day, First Show: It’s not about a movie.
- KTX journey: my cousin Krishna appreciated the construction of the concept in this post.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del: Post to log off from Korea.

Commenters
Initially I used to force my close friends to comment. Now, many people comment voluntarily. There are some regular silent visitors also. I hope they also comment one fine day, that’s why I have allowed anonymous comments.

Statistics
Thanks to google analytics, I able to monitor visitor statistics daily. Initially the maximum percentage to my blog used to be direct visitors, but for last 3 months the people directed from google search have gradually increased. At present (in June) maximum visitors are from search engines.

[Visitor Source %age (June)]

Keywords
The keyword report of the analytics says that Mungaaru Male has been the most visitor directing keyword to my blog. When I posted, the movie was just a technically good Kannada movie. Gradually with word of mouth the movie turned into biggest blockbuster of Sandalwood and hence increasing visitors to my blog.

[Top 10 keywords]

To conclude it’s just the beginning. There many stuffs to write and discuss. Please post your feedback and suggestions. Let me know the areas in which I make improvements.

Ctrl+Alt+Del

It’s time to log off from Korea, the business visit of 3 months came to premature end. When I look back, it was nice to stay in Korea for more than 80 days. When some people esp IFX guys from Linz used to ask “how long you are staying”. Our reply ‘3 months’, used to surprise them. One of the major reason the stay in Gumi City was comfortable because the facility at Indian Guest House was amazing, not even for a single moment we felt that we are staying away from home. It was indeed home away from home, thanks to hospitality of Samonim(Madam) and also Keshab’s food.



Everything was going on fine; as per plan we were supposed travel back to India on June 17th. Suddenly on friday we got a phone call from Sean that “today is your last day in office”. It all happened because what was marketed and what was delivered were completely different. The Korean(Samsung) way of doing ‘dandha’ has put all our efforts in vain. Basically Samsung has 2-3 teams working on the same objective, and in turn each team will have 2-3 vendors for third party software. So there will be competition in many levels. In intermediate stage some one has to be victim sudden death situation. This time we were at the receiving end.

We got indication that this kind of thing may happen. The Samsung people were not talking to us properly from 2-3 days. On Tuesday we had one shock already as ten people of NXP staying at Indian Guest House were leaving suddenly as their project with LG LCD was scrapped overnight. We were had kept our fingers crossed worrying about fate of our project. Ultimately same happened to our project. The guesthouse is in crisis situation again. One week back Keshab had rejected 2-3 accomdation requests because all rooms were full. Now it is other way round, when we leave tomorrow more than 6-7 rooms in the guesthouse will be vacant.




During my stay, I got the enough time to travel many places across Korea from Seoul to Busan. Of all the trips, one to Jinhae for cherry blossom festival was memorable as we were at right place at right time. Initially some historical places looked good, but later we got saturated with same old green painted wood architecture. The traveling across the country was not difficult because Korea in size is as good as Karnataka. Further the infrastructure is too good; there won’t be even a single taxing journey. I will remember KTX travel, my first super fast train journey for long time.



Continuing discussion about infrastructure, the Internet connection here is very reliable, best in the world according to some people. We downloaded so many stuffs and ran out of harddisk space in our laptop, for further download we had to buy an external hard disk. Coming to power infrastructure, there wasn’t even a single power cut when we stayed here, thanks 8 nuclear reactors. Even in a small city of Gumi there are so many flashy things, which have very high power consumption.

This entire good infrastructure may be built due to aid of US. Some people say Korea as an ‘adopted baby’ of US, supporting politically, financially and militarily, to have regional advantage. This has made Koreans to ‘copy paste’ US in many fields from sports(baseball, golf), expressway system to way of dressing. However there are exceptions in which Koreans are still different from US, one is food habit(which includes chopstick and kimchi) and other one is language. Only a small percentage of people in Korea can communicate in English. Usually foreigners have to use sign language instead of verbal communication.



Shopping was also a good experience. We shopped(usually window shopoing) at many places such as Lotte Mart, E-Mart, dedicated markets such as Dongdaemun and Yongsan, traditional market such Namdaemun and Seoman. Calculator was extensively by shopkeepers to show prices. For us it helped us to cross check by converting the value into Indian Rupees.

One more feature of the stay was foreigner treatment for first time. Wherever we used to go out there was high possibility of weird curious glance. But there wasn’t even a racist remark at any place. Sometimes we were center of attraction which hardly possible for me in India. In office we used to have lunch at special table on which a plate was kept ‘for foreigners’. Last week there was a visit of school students to Samsung campus. Each student in cafeteria was coming towards us and was having a curious glance at the stuffs we were eating.

Sharing all these experiences here in my blog posting more than 15 times. This increased the visitor count and also the page rank of my blog, which was zero when I came to Gumi, but at present it is two. If one searches ‘India Guest House Gumi’ the first search result will be my blog.



To conclude I have to just leave disappointment in korea ... it’s a part parcel of today’s industry. I have learnt many things both personally and professionally during my stay and definitely it will be helpful to me in future endeavours. In India I will be missing so many things good infrastructure and people like ‘Samonim(madam)’, Keshab, Sean, ‘Babaji’, ‘Bakiri’, ‘Gogo Baba’, ‘Judwa Behne of cafeteria’.

Ctrl+Alt+Del ; Log off Gumi;
Ctrl+Alt+Del ; Log in Namma Bengaluru;

Daegu Trip

Wednesday 6th June was a National Holiday in Korea because of Memorial Day (Shahid Divas). We planned to have a trip to Daegu, fourth largest city in South Korea. The city will hosting 2011 world athletics meet. From Gumi it is just 40 minutes drive. Our plan was to go there for shopping and amusement park.



Drop outs: As usual there many dropouts. Madhu for the obvious reasons as he had some high level discussion with Litte Force. Harsha didn’t agree as he wanted to take rest. Finally Santoshi also dropped for the obvious reason being paranoid about fate of project. I and Subhajit were only two person on board.

From guest house we took Taxi to Gongdan Express Bus Stop. All the buses to Daegu which start form Gumi Bus Terminus stop at Gongdan. The ticket price was 2700 won. The buses to Daegu are in the frequency of 10-15 minutes. In 5 minutes we got the bus and reached Daegu at 1 pm.

Woobang Towerland



We took taxi from Bus Terminus to Woobang Towerland. There are many stuffs in the amusement park from Ghost House to Roller Coaster. One can enter in two ways one by entrance ticket and other one day pass. Since it would be irritating to buy tickets individually for each and every ride, we opted for one day pass of 24000 Won. First we took the ride of Space Viking.

There is a 230m high tower in the middle of park. Using elevator one can go till observation deck. From the deck one can witness bird’s eye view of the park. One can do SkyJump from the deck which costs 60000 won. We didn’t opt for it. Later we came down till level 4 by elevator and to ground by ropeway.

view from observation deck

As it was a holiday there were many events going on in the park. There was a performance by American dancers, which was similar to salsa dance. Then we opted for Boomerang Roller Coaster and Camel Back Roller Coaster. This was my first experience of Roller Coaster. I liked it a lot, especially the free fall section.

Seoman Market



From Woobang Towerland we walked till Duryu Station. From there we took subway to Seoman Market. The market was similar to Namdaemun Market. We reached there around 6 pm. Many shop were getting closed. Subhajit had a plan of buying umbrellas. We had a 45 minutes discussion at one shop, there were many varieties of umbrellas. The cost was too much. It was 8000 won aluminum ‘made in china’ umbrella, which didn’t even a proper finishing. Finally we didn’t buy anything as shop keeper didn’t agree to reduce price.

Time was 7.30 pm, we took city bus from Seoman to Seobu Bus Terminus. Before boarding the bus we roamed around the bus terminus and did some window shopping. By 10 pm we were back in Gumi, concluding Daegu Trip, would have been more exciting and enjoyable if there were more people on board.

More photos are shared in my picasa album.

Seoul Trip Again

People on board: Subhajit, Harsha, santoshi and me.

Purpose: To see places which were missed in previous trips and to guide Santoshi and Harsha how to explore Seoul.

We took 7.50 am Samaeul train from Gumi Station, as my previous Seoul Trip we took KTX transfer. For me the journey was not so exciting as my maiden KTX journey last month. At 10.30 am we reached Seoul. This time unlike previous KTX journey there were two stops between Daejeon and Seoul, so it took more time to reach Seoul.

Seoul forest



First we decided to go Seoul Forest, this place was recommended by Hussu. We took subway from Seoul Station to Tukseom station. From there entrace of park is 600m+. Frankly speaking the park was not so exciting, our lalbagh is much better than this. The only pro is that we can rent bicycle on per hour basis. Me and subhajit decided to hire doubles cycle as we haven’t ride such a kind of cycle before. Later when riding doubles with Santoshi the cycle chain came off. It took 10 minutes to fix it, in the process we lost our enthusiasm. After spending half an hour more we decided to move to another place.

Itaewon

This place is known as America in seoul. We just went to explore the place and for window shopping. We went into Hamilton Shopping Centre and ended by buying T-shirt purse etc. Later we had lunch at New Delhi Restaurant, by getting information from from Tourist Information center. There we opted for buffet lunch for 13000 won. Frankly speaking the food was not so good. I feel the dishes which were kept for buffet might have been prepared 2 days back. I hope the food have been better if we had opted individual items.

Yongsan

KTX-II model at Yongsan

Itaewon to Yongsan by subway needs 2 tranfer, so we took a Deluxe Taxi. When we got down in front of Yongsan station, we saw a model of KTX. Initially we thought whats the big deal, we have already traveled by KTX in morning. But the next moment we came to know that it is model of KTX-II, which is going to be operational in 2010. The coaches have been freshly designed, the interiors have been improved compared to present. Passenger comfort has been given importance. All these were explained one representative standing next to the model. When he realized that we are Indians, he also mentioned KTX is designed by Rotem Company(Hyundai Motor Group), the same company has designed coaches of 'Delhi Metro'.

After having photo session outside station, we entered into electronics market. Subhajit was very much desperate to reach this place as he had buy Nikon D80 after doing R&D for 1 month.

Han River Cruise

I was very much interested to take ride of this. We terminated our shopping at 8.45 pm, hurried to Yeouinaru Station after gathering information from tourist information center at Yongsan. We used to subway to reach Yeouinaru Station. There two kinds of trips round trip Yeoudio-Yeouido and one way trip Yeouido-Jamsil. The last round trip ferry scheduled at 9.30 pm had already left. The last and the only remaining trip was one way trip to Jamsil at 9.40 pm. The cost of tickets was 9900 won. The journey was amazing, going under bridges of Han River was a different experience. Enroute to Jamsil, the ferry went under more than 10 bridges. Each bridge had a different structure and was lit up in a different way.

Jamsil

The ferry reached Jamsil at 10.45 pm. We made dynamic decision, if we find accomdation (of decent cost) in this area, we will stay here itself, instead of going to downtown Seoul for accomdation hunting. We walked till nearest metro station Simcheon, there we found a motel buiding few blocks away. In the process of reaching the motel we entered into a street which was full of motels. There we checked into Xian Hotel. The rooms of hotel were made for couples. The door of bathroom was transparent, reminded us of bathroom sequences showed in many movies.

Tequila Mama

After freshing up at in an hour, we(me and subhajit) went out for a walk to witness night life at Jamsil which we had partially experienced enroute to hotel. There were nights clubs at every footstep. The At night 1.30 am there were so many people on the street. Subhajit said "this kind of enviroment can be witnessed in Bangalore only on new year eve". Of all the night clubs a club by name 'Tequila Mama’ had a nice attention getter.

Sooner we realized that 'Tu Hi Meri Shab' song of Gangster was shot in one of the clubs of Jamsil.

Coex Mall



Next day we took subway from Simcheon to Samseong station for exploring Coex Mall .. biggest shopping mall in Asia. The area around Coex Mall is the poshest area in Seoul. There is a world trade center building adjacent to the mall.


We just roamed in the mall clicking photographs.

Yongsan again
Previous day we had terminated our shopping in Yongsan as we were getting late for Han River Cruise(Ferry). We continued shopping for the stuffs which we have not bought on previous day. Later Hussu joined us at Yongsan Station.

Dongdaemun



Along with Hussu, we decided to explore Dongdaemun. First we went inside Doota Tower, I had seen this building while waking in Cheongyecheon path in my previous trip. It was an amazing place.



The first two floors ladies clothes. Third floor was for men’s clothing. There are so many varities of clothes all were fresh and latest design. In fact price tag were also like that. We wanted to take photograph but many shopkeepers requested us not to take photos.

Return journey

We came back to Seoul station at 7.30 pm and booked tickets for 8.15 pm Samaeul train to Gumi. The train reached Gumi on time at 11.12 pm. Later we had stand in a queue for Taxi outside Gumi sation for more than 20 minutes. It was longest wait we had experienced so far.

To conclude, probably this might be my last trip to Seoul as my current onsite assignment is going to end in two weeks. So Annyongi Kyeseyo Seoul !!!!!!

More snaps are shared in my picasa album.