Adventures around Daegu, or the time in which I was not the only member of my family in Korea

So recently my Mum and my sister came over to Korea for a bit over a week. I managed to get a little time off work (two days) and we did some stuff in and around Daegu.

I met them in Seoul at the airport on a Sunday. My sister flew in early in the morning, so after storing her bags at the airport, we went into downtown Seoul and looked at one of the castles. We got there at a pretty good time, for just after we bought our tickets, a changing of the guard ceremony took place.

After a bit of wandering around, we had lunch at a food court and had one of the more Korean meals I've had for a long time. We then went back to the airport to pick up Mum. Then we caught the KTX back to Daegu and checked Mum and my sister into their hotel. The KTX was as always a smooth ride, and we got back to Daegu about 7ish. After checking into the hotel we got room service for dinner, which was quite pricey. About 80 bucks for two pizzas, a bottle of wine and a coke. I'm glad I wasn't pay.

I had to work the next day, so they did some exploring around Daegu on their own. The next day I spent the morning with them and we walked around the park near the hotel which has a few memorials, temples and a museum about a Japanese invasion from the late 1500s. Interesting, but not a lot of English.

Wednesday, like Monday, I didn't see them, but then on Thursday we went downtown and along with some sight seeing we went looking for new glasses for me. I'd needed to get new glasses for a while since on of the rims would occasionally have the screw holding it together come loose and the plastic bit that makes the shape of the legs (arms?) behind the ear was coming apart and if I took them off quickly would come off and stay behind my ear. I'd put it off because I really need a second opinion for these sorts of things as well as some prodding because otherwise there's a chance I'd have ended up commissioning some to make a replica of the old ones. I did however look through about three or four stores before finding a new pair that I liked. I'll tell more of that story and it's follow up in another post. After that, we walked around downtown for a bit until it was time for me to head back to work.

Friday I didn't see them in the morning, but they came over to Chilgok (the part of Daegu I live and work in) and we went to a galbi restaurant for dinner. We went to a place near my house where the staff know a few of us from work since we go there a bit, so we got pretty good service, as well as some service (in Korea, service means free stuff shops, bars and restaurants give to good customers, in this case we got three free bottles of coke). Everyone enjoyed the food, which is probably my favorite Korean dish.

Saturday we went to Palgong mountain, where I learnt that Koreans are part mountain goat. After the bus ride there we caught a cable car about halfway up the mountain. Mum decided she'd wait around the cable car where there was a restaurant, and my sister and I tried to climb the mountain. Let's just say we both failed. On our way back to the restaurant where Mum was waiting we passed an old man who had been sitting next to Mum on the bus. He'd climbed up from the bottom instead of taking the cable car and was keen to go the rest of the way. After getting some lunch we took the cable car down and walked around a temple which included a giant Buddha we could see from the restaurant.

Sunday was an easy day. We went downtown and walked around a bit. We had a look at what the tourist map called culture street, and were disappointed by the lack of culture there. Towel street had a ton of towels, and hardware street also had plenty of hardware. So culture street not having much culture was a surprise.

Monday we went to a village about an hour and a half away called Andong. This town has a lot of historical sites, a folk village museum where one of the guides followed us around for most of the museum adding extra bits of trivia along the way. The old folk village was interesting to look at but a bit samey after a while. And when most of the traditional houses had the traditional satellite dishes, it lost a little. Some nice sights though. The final stop was the Andong paper thingy which was a little too proud of the time the Queen visited. After getting back to Daegu we went for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse.

On Tuesday we were going to go to Hiansa temple, a world heritage listed temple that is the location of the Tripitaka Koreana, a famous Buddhist text. Indeed, we even went to the bus terminal and bought tickets there. While we were waiting for the bus though, we were reading the lonely planet and noticed that the whole place was closed on Tuesdays. So we spent a kind of easy day walking around not quite downtown Daegu. This included a hike up to Wubang tower, the highest building in Daegu, which is pretty easy when it's built on what seems like the highest hill in Daegu to start with, and the elevator reads 1 2 3 4 5 74 75 76 83, which makes me doubt if it's exactly that many stories high. From this vantage point I did notice the curious fact that all of the built up areas of Daegu are pretty much flat, and every hill of even modest height is not built upon, but has been left as a park.

Finally on Wednesday Mum and my sister caught the KTX back to Seoul, where they were going to stay until their flights on Friday. Thus ended their trip for me. More photos can be found here.

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Writing time: 59 minutes
Time since last post: a while
Current media: The Hollowmen

There's Potential There

A number of creative types I enjoy the work of are behind this experiment. It looks like it'll be worth checking out.

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Writing time: 1 minute
Time since last post: half a day or so
Current media: None

Just How Useless is the Security Council?

A few days ago the UN Security Council considered a resolution applying sanctions to Zimbabwe including an arms embargo and personal restrictions on Mugabe and a number of his cronies. This sounds like a very sensible thing considering the shit that went down during the last election. Indeed the resolution got nine votes for compared to four against with one country, Indonesia, abstaining.

Notice I didn't say the resolution passed nine votes to four. That's because it didn't pass. Two of the four countries that voted against the idea were Russia and China, both of which are permanent members of the security council with the power of veto. And because of them, international pressure on Mugabe to actually stop being a dickwad has been greatly reduced.

The justification the Chinese and Russians gave for the decision not to support sanctions against Zimbabwe in the wake of their so-called elections is that so far it has been a domestic issue, and so a Security Council resolution, which is meant to deal with international issues, is inappropriate.

While the matter is certainly so far a purely domestic issue, I still think the Security Council is within it's jurisdiction to apply pressure in this situation. Firstly, it is one of the few international organizations with some teeth that is able to do so. This is not a particularly great reason, but it does place some responsibility on the council, and particularly the permanent members to be responsible members of the community of nations.

Secondly, action needs to be taken against Mugabe to prevent the precedent he appears to be setting. If other tin-pot dictators see that they can use such tactics to ensure that they retain power with little or no real consequence, they will be much more willing to do so. And then when we have a bunch of countries run by power mad crazies with little or no concern for anything or anyone but themselves, I can almost guarantee there will be international problems. Action needs to be taken against Mugabe to show that his antics are not acceptable in the modern world.

China's track record on such matters is particularly poor. Their position of non-interference in internal affairs means that a number of less than savory administrations have gotten a lot of necessary support when it would have been better for everyone concerned if they were under pressure to change their ways.

Combine this with the Security Council's somewhat outdated voting system and China is causing a lot of hassles for those of us who want to encourage unpleasant governments to change their ways. If someone is giving away carrots for free and stopping others from using the stick, it's a lot harder to have a positive effect.

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Writing time: 45 minutes
Time since last post: a while
Current media: Arrested Development

You've just got to feel sorry for them.

The latest group to be suffering due to the declining US dollar has just been revealed: the Catholic Church. Apparently, of all the countries in the world, America is the largest overall donor to the Catholic Church, and due to the fall in the value of the US dollar against the Euro, these donations aren't quite what they used to be (although America still donated almost ten times as much as number 2 Italy. Interestingly, South Korea is number 8). In fact, the church actually made a loss of about 9 million euros in 2007.

Now, I don't think the Catholic church is really going to suffer from this. They are indeed the masters of playing the long game (how many other organizations except for the Illuminati have such a long track record?), and I'm pretty sure they've got enough saved up to last them through this dip in income. They won't exactly be mortgaging the Sistine Chapel or anything to make ends meet.

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Writing time: 8 minutes
Time since last post: I can't be bothered working it out
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Cracking Up

Will someone please think of the crackers.

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Current media: iTunes shuffle

I mean, really?

A rather depressing case from England. Some guy called up the emergency number to report a strange bright object in the sky slowly rising. Someone was sent out to investigate what it was this gentleman had seen.

What was this mysterious object in the sky.

The Moon.

I have no further comment.

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Writing time: 1 minute
Time since last post: some arbitrary amount of time, and isn't it all relative anyway.
Current media: None, although I did just finish watching the Doctor Who finale.

One Step Too Far

A rather worrying report from England today about a religious education class where the teacher pushed things a little too far.

The class was about Islam, and started out telling the year seven class about the history of Islam and then about the way Muslims pray. This is all good and sensible and in no way problematic. Indeed, there should be more education about all the important faiths of the world and what they believe.

Then the teacher said that they would all have to pray to Allah as Muslims do. This did not go down so well. In fact two of the students refused and were given detention.

I'm completely with the students on this one. Being forced to pray to something you don't believe in is wrong. I too would refuse to do this, regardless of if I was being made to pray to Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, Krishna, Shiva, Zeus, Odin (although you have to respect a god who hung himself to gain knowledge), Gaia, Xenu or anything else.

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Writing time: 22 minutes
Time since last post: 21 hours?
Current media: Stargate SG-1 1x02 The Enemy Within

An Invitation for Trouble

In a case of correctness gone wrong in Sweden, an eight year old boy's birthday party is the latest battlefront in the fight against discrimination.

The boy handed out invitations to his birthday party in class. However, he did not invite two of his classmates to his party. When his teacher noticed this they confiscated all the invitations. Apparently, since they were handed out in class time the teacher had to ensure there was no discrimination.

This is quite ridiculous. It's an eight year old boys birthday party. Young children are notoriously undiscriminating in the usual sense. Indeed the reasons for the two students not getting an invitation is that one did not invite the boy to his party (presumably those invitations weren't distributed in class) and the other was fighting with the boy. Both of those seem entirely legitimate bases for not inviting someone, if a little petty in the first case.

The school says the boy violated the children's rights by not inviting them to his party. Quite frankly I think the school doesn't have a leg to stand on. They can't control the children's activities away from school and shouldn't try to pretend that they can. They also should not be trying to pretend that they're being noble and protecting the children's rights. There are a right to many things (free speech, liberty, protection from unwarranted government intrusion, privacy, etc), but nowhere among the rights of man is the right to be invited to a party held by someone who doesn't like you.

Legal proceedings have been initiated regarding the matter, and should be resolved by September. Unless the boy is very forward thinking, I presume this will be after the party in question is held.

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Writing time: 19 minutes
Time since last post: 1 dayish
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Too Much Information

A while ago Viacom sued Google (well YouTube, which Google owns) over a bunch of clips that were posted which Viacom claims violated its copyrights¹.

As part of the case they want to know how popular the clips of their material are compared to other non-infringing material. To do this they asked for, and the judge has ordered Google to provide them with a log of user IP addresses, login names and videos watched. These logs will include everyone who has ever watched a YouTube video².

This is way too much information. And not just because it's about 12 terabytes worth of data. It's information that isn't needed by Viacom to prove it's claim. If they want to show that their content posted inappropriately is more popular than non-infringing content, they just need to compare the number of times each video was watched. They don't need to know who watched it. They don't need the IP address of who watched it. They just need the clip name and the number of times it was watched.

Another problem is that if Google hands over this information, they may violate privacy laws by giving people's personal information away.

The judge in this case should be doing a better job. He should realize that the information he ordered Google to provide is unnecessary for Viacom to make their claim, and should have given them only the information they need, not what they want. And he should know better to make an order that could require Google to break the law. This decision is bad and it sets a dangerous precedent for future cases.

Edit: Just after hitting post, the question came to me, why has YouTube been storing all this information? It would make life a lot easier for us if they could tell the judge "Well, we never really needed that detailed information so we never kept it. We might be able to get the last 24 hours worth for you if we try." The best way to keep information like this safe is to not store it.

1) I'm sure that there are many clips that violate Viacom (and others) copyrights on YouTube. However, under American law (the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA specifically) YouTube's liability is negligible if they rapidly respond to properly sent take down notices.

Also, I don't think companies should be getting upset by people liking their stuff so much that they want to share it with the world. Especially when said company isn't sharing it with the rest of the world.

2) I think that my definition of the civilized world could be those who have watched a YouTube video.

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Writing time: 21 minutes
Time since last post: 4 days
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A Choice

Yesterday my mother and sister arrived in Korea for a stay of a little over a week. That will probably be discussed later, but for the moment I'm grappling with a choice that was opened to me due to this fact.

My Mum brought me a lot of stuff (more than I expected) and in this bounty was included a Rubik's cube. I can see three possible options with how to keep this object. They are as follows:
1) Keep it in it's original pristine form as a shining beacon of order in a realm of chaos.
2) Mess it up and leave it in an unsolved position as a reflection of the chaos that exists around me
3) Swap two of the stickers and mess up the cube and leave it as an exercise in frustration for any who dare to try it.

What should I do? The poll is on the right.

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Writing time: a little bit of time.
Current media: None

The Third Devil

Blizzard has announced that they will be releasing Diablo 3. The only downside is that even more of my time will be sacrificed to Blizzard.

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Writing time: 2 minutes
Current media: Bullshit! 6x02

God Damn It

I was wandering around Seoul today and walked past a music store with a giant poster for a tour by the Blue Man Group in Seoul. I was quite excited about this until I saw the dates: June 14 - June 20. Then I was pissed off. I keep missing out on these sort of things.

I did see in a newspaper today that the Daegu International Music Festival starts soon. I might try and go to some part of it.

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Writing time: 6 minutes
Current media: Bullshit! 6x02

Those Wacky Chinese

If you're Chinese and want to party on the opening day of the Olympics, but can't get a ticket to the opening ceremony (which is probably most Chinese, since there is an awful lot of them), there's another way to jump on the bandwagon.

Get married.

That's right. Scores of Chinese couples are applying to get married on the 8th of August to celebrate not just their love (I hope their celebrating their love), but also the Olympics. This is a novel approach which I have not seen in other countries which have hosted the Olympics. It certainly didn't happen in Sydney.

Anyway, here's my best wishes to all the lucky Chinese couples getting married on the 8th of August, because there's really no better way to celebrate a two week sporting event than with a life long commitment.

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Writing time: 6 minutes
Time since last post: some time.
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This is Why This Sort of Junk is a Problem

Some people suggest that flim-flammery like psychics and spiritualists don't really cause any harm and that those who aggressively rail against them are misanthropic types who want to take some of the fun out of life.

But this is not the case. These frauds do cause harm. In many different ways they do cause harm. This is one example.

An educational assistant (EA) (I presume this is like a teacher's aide) at a Canadian school visited a psychic and the psychic told them that a student whose name started with a "V" was being sexually abused. Based on this the EA reported the family of a student named Victoria to the relevant authorities.

This has obviously caused much distress to the students family. It has wasted tax payer money on an unnecessary investigation. It has opened up the school to ridicule.

All because the vague guesses of a so-called psychic were given more than the iota of credence they should have been given. Psychics play guessing games and watch the gullible client for a response. They should never be a basis for any sort of investigation.

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Writing time: 27 minutes
Current media: Yes Minister

History Time

What notable event occurred on April 16, 1178 BC?

It turns out that this date is believed to be the day Odysseus returned home and slew the suitors of his wife Penelope.

Some researchers used a series of astronomical references in the Odyssey to narrow down the date. After analysis of the clues they came back with just one possible date.

This also seems to make it plausible that there is at least some basis in fact to the story. The consistency of the events adds credibility to the story, and it seems unlikely Homer was a great enough astronomer to get such details in his story correct. Of course, this is not to say that the story should be taken as entirely true (I'm pretty sure there aren't cyclops and witches who turn men into pigs), but certainly that someone had a big adventure on his way home from the Trojan War.

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Writing time: 28 minutes
Current media: Yes Minister

Gotcha

After not being seen since early to mid 2007, Nozumu Sahashi has been found.

Why do I care about this guy being found? He was the president of NOVA, and the one most feel is responsible for the collapse of NOVA. He is the guy who appears to have embezzled significant quantities of cash, and done some rather irregular share trading in the lead up to the collapse.

And today he was talking to the police in Osaka. Justice may not be swift, but it is sure.

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Writing time: 9 minutes
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Just What is Their Malfunction?

I've just read this rather harrowing tale of an unfortunate 14 year old girl in Poland.

This young girl is currently pregnant. She is pregnant because she was raped. This is a terrible thing in and of itself. With her family she decided to get an abortion, which is allowed in cases like this under an exception to Poland's strict anti-abortion laws.

Unfortunately she has been unable to undergo the procedure. Originally, she had wanted to have the abortion done in her home town, but a priest barged in on the family while they were discussing the matter with the hospital director, telling her she should give birth. There has also been pressure from various anti-abortion groups on the family and hospitals as well. Both hospitals in her home town refused to perform the procedure.

When the family tried to discretely organise an abortion at a hospital in Warsaw, her harassers somehow found out (a privacy violation worth investigating) and turned up to intrude upon the family once more. They swarmed on the hospital, attacked staff and occupied the office.

These people have continued to harass this unfortunate family, even to the point of submitting a request to police to investigate the coercion of a minor to have an abortion, which is a crime in Poland, and trying to take her away from her mother and put in emergency foster care.

Now is where I get all righteous about this. Just who the hell do these people think they are? This is an extremely traumatic time for this unfortunate young girl, and all they are doing is making things worse. Do they really think that taking this girl away from her family is going to help this girl? Do they really think that persecuting her and following her around telling her what to do will make her feel better?

There is only one person who gets to decide what this girl should do, and only a few people who are allowed to advise her. The ultimate decision is the girls, and only the family, her doctor and those they ask to be involved (this could include a priest, pro-life or pro-choice supporters or whoever else they choose to ask) should be talking to this girl about things¹. For everyone else, it's none of their business and they should leave the poor girl alone.

The involvement of all these anti-abortionists in this case has been despicable. It is harassment plain and simple, and the family should be able to get protection from it.

I think it also shows which side on this debate has the crazies and the nut jobs. I've never seen pro-choice activists harassing someone saying they should have an abortion. They agree that the decision lies with the woman, they just want her to have the freedom to decide what they want to do and the ability to carry out their decision. This is a position which is a lot harder to get very fundamentalist about, since it's essentially "You choose", compared to the anti-abortionists "You can't".

The people in this story really got to me because they have caused a lot of grief for this unfortunate girl who has already had a terrible experience and doesn't deserve this. Have they no decency? Are they so self-righteous that they have to further traumatize this young girl? Can't they let her have some peace?

1) In general, two people get to make the decision about abortion. These two people are the couple involved. A doctor should of course be involved for medical advice. Family, friends or others such as a priest may get involved if asked to by the couple, although in the case of minors the family should be more involved. For anyone else it's none of their business and they have no business telling the couple what they should do. In cases like this one, the father obviously does not get a say in the matter.

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Writing time: 45 minutes
Current media: George Carlin's Class Clown

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits

Noted comedian George Carlin has died due to heart failure at the age of 71. This is a loss for the world.

I think I first saw Carlin in this role in Dogma, but as I later learned that was but a mere footnote to what he had earlier in his career.

As it turns out, the most significant part of his career ended up in the Supreme Court in one of the most significant first amendment cases of last century. His seven dirty words caused a shit ton of controversy when they were first aired. Although time has changed the impact of some of them, it's still a harsh list. At any rate, I think these guys can explain the whole mess better.

To conclude, Rest in Peace George Carlin.

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Writing time: 16 minutes
Current media: None

This Sucks

It likes Robert Mugabe has bullied his way to the top again. Morgan Tsvangirai (I almost got the spelling right before checking) has declared he will not contest the presidential run-off as it is blatantly controlled by Mugabe.

I remember being optimistic about the whole Zimbabwe thing when I first read about the elections on Pappus' Plane, but it seems I have again misjudged the capacity for dictators to serve their own interests over those of the people.

Given some of the stuff Mugabe has pulled since the first stage of the presidential election and the run-off, I have to admire Tsvangirai's bravery for sticking around in Zimbabwe. He certainly has a significant amount of testicular fortitude.

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Writing time: 16 minutes
Current media: iTunes shuffle, currently Beelzeboss by Tenacious D

This is Nifty

I found this over on Neil Gaiman's blog. It's a tool that takes a given text and creates a tag cloud sort of thing out of it. I decided to see what it would make of this site. Here is the result.

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Writing time: 5 minutes
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