Articles by mgedwards

A whole lotta Lotte

Yesterday my family decided to get out and see a little more of Seoul.  We read up on some of the sites we could visit, and we finally decided to go to Lotte World, a famous family-friendly site in the suburbs of Seoul.  Lotte World is one part Mall of America, one part Disneyland.  Lotte is one of Korea’s chaebol, or conglomerates, best known as a retailing giant.  It is quite the place.  We wanted to take our young son to someplace indoor where he could run around and play.  We were happy to find out that Lotte World, a mega-mall/entertainment complex, has a place for babies and toddlers called "Baby World."  We spent a lot of time in "Baby World" letting our son play on the jungle gyms and slide down the slides.  They were just the right level of complexity and size for him.  He literally wore himself out playing hard on the equipment and with other children playing at "Baby World."  It’s one of the few times when we were able to sit back and watch him without having to chase after him.

We didn’t visit the Lotte World Adventure theme park, which is more appropriate for older children, but we enjoyed looking up at some of the sights and sounds of the theme park situated above us.  The mall portion of Lotte World features an indoor ice skating rink and a carousel.  One floor above the mall, surrounding the ice rink, is the theme park.  It includes fantastic buildings, cute creatures, a monorail train, and trams shaped like hot-air balloons that run along the roof of the building.  We only explored a small portion of Lotte World, including the mall and Lotte Mart, the supersized grocery store.  We ate lunch at the large Lotte Mart food court.  The food is carefully orchestrated so that after you pay for your food you head to the appropriate food counter for a variety of Korean dishes.  We ate kimbap, Korean sushi, along with chicken katsu and a curry chicken dish, topped off by a green tea ice cream cone.  Not bad for mall food.  My son especially enjoyed watching the fish in the Lotte Mart aquarium.  The Lotte World help in turn really enjoyed watching him.

Congratulations to the University of Washington Men’s Basketball team for beating Arizona 81-72 to win the Pac-10 tournament title!  Arizona won the conference title, but Washington beat Arizona to become the Pac-10’s official representative at the Big Dance, the NCAA Tournament.  It’s the first time the Huskies have won the Pac-10 tournament title.  Congratulations!  Go Huskies.

The end of a funny week

This week witnessed a cornucopia of interesting news events.  Martha Stewart got out of jail and landed on Forbe’s list of the world’s richest people.  (Congratulations, Martha–was the insider sale worth spending time in Camp Cupcake just to add a few more thousands to your net worth?)  Michael Jackson’s defense team scored points against the prosecution by backing the plaintiff into a proverbial corner after they got the child to admit that he lied about being shown pornography.  Then Jacko turns around and hurts his case by nearly being thrown in jail for showing up one hour late to trail wearing pajamas.  (Note to Michael–do not show up to a molestation trial wearing pajamas–it just does not look good to the jury.)  Wall Street reminisced over the 5th anniversary of the the peak of the NASDAQ at 5,048 (it now stands at 2,059), and the rest of us who lost money remember when we all thought we were investing genuises.  We have since been humbled.  Yes, it was a strange week indeed, and that’s not even including all the strangeness in the world today.  One year after 3/11/04, the date of the train bombings in Madrid, we remember that the world is still an insecure place. 

I had lunch today with a Korean lady who works at our office.  I volunteered to help her practice her English, and we met to discuss a variety of conversations–family, Korea, the U.S., work.  She is the first local I’ve had a chance to get acquainted with since I arrived in Seoul.  Her English is already very, very good (she majored in English literature), but as I know from personal experience with the Korean language, practice makes perfect.  While I’m here in Korea I also want to look up a couple of old friends I knew back in the United States.  I met them while pursuing my MBA, and I haven’t seen them since we graduated and they returned to Korea.  I’ve located two of them; the third I haven’t been able to connect with yet.  Meeting and spending time with Koreans while I am here is one of my personal priorities.  I find at work that Americans and Koreans tend to remain somewhat aloof from each other.  It’s natural for people to have an affinity for others of their own culture.  Language differences also hinder inter-cultural communication.  Breaking down culture and language barriers is important, especially if you live and work overseas.  The conversation partner program at work I joined is a convenient way to help break down that barrier.  Having married into a Chinese family, I relate well to Asians.  Language is a much bigger barrier for me than is culture.

I’ve been nursing a head cold all week.  I’m feeling better, but now my family is sick again.  My wife isn’t feeling well and hasn’t found the rest she needs, and tonight I noticed that my son has a runny nose.  Darn, this one is my fault.  I was hoping we could finally move past these nagging illnesses and enjoy the weekend, but we may have to stay home and rest again.  Drats.  I just hope and pray that we can all heal and start feeling like we’re past the move transition period.

Spanish in Korea?

We will be in Korea for two years, and we don’t know where we will be heading after we leave Seoul.  I just spent many months studying Korean, and I’m now living and working in Korea, so you would think that I am busy studying more Korean.  Au contraire!  I’m busy studying another foreign language.  "Why?" you might ask.  Well, here’s why.  Korean is primarily spoken in the two Koreas.  I won’t be heading to North Korea anytime soon, and really there’s no other place I can really use my Korean unless I head to northeastern China or Los Angeles.  Thus, I have to look ahead to the next two years when I know I’ll be heading to a place where another foreign language, perhaps English, is spoken. 

Early next year I will bid on assignments around the world.  I can bid on jobs that require English or Chinese, my second language, or I can tackle learning another language.  To maximize my chances of landing a good assignment, I’ve decided to polish two other languages I’ve previously studied, Spanish and German.  If I can improve my speaking and reading in both languages, I will qualify for additional training in those languages should I be chosen for an assignment that requires Spanish or German.  I decided to focus first on Spanish because the number of Spanish-required assignments worldwide exceed German-required assignments.  Moreover, German-speaking locations such as Germany and Switzerland tend to be highly competitive (who doesn’t want to work in Zurich or Berlin?).  Should I be successful in improving both Spanish and German I may also try to improve my French.  I took all three European languages years ago in high school and college, but I have not used them in years.  I have not studied Spanish for over 15 years.  Still, the level I am required to speak and read Spanish to receive additional training is not much higher than where my level is now.  Learning Korean, one of the world’s most difficult languages for English speakers, has emboldened me to tackle Spanish and German, languages I consider far easier to learn.  My challenge now is to find adequate resources to polish these languages before I retest.  Spanish and German resources in English, not Korean, may be a bit difficult to find.  I have about one year to improve both of them and retest in each language before I bid on my next assignment.

While I want to continue improving (or at least keep from backsliding) my Korean, I believe that I now need to place higher priority on learning another language for my next assignment.  I will continue to take Korean classes one hour per day at work and try to study other languages at home.  That is one of the unfortunate aspects of working in a job that moves you often.  You sometimes have to focus more on where you’re going than on where you are now.