Rotiboy in South Korea

Rotiboy opened 6^th outlet in Seoul. Why choose Korea? I don’t know???!!!!

Rotiboy @ Jongro-Gu,
246-2, Kwanchul-Dong, Jongro-Gu
Jonggak Station Exit No. 5

http://www.rotiboy.com/

Trip to South Korea 大韓民國 and not North Korea 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國

I had again traveled to South Korea or Republic of Korea after the last visit two years ago. I still remember that I started this blog after coming back from that trip. A “three days two nights” trip was always too short and it likes going back to my hometown on weekend. My advice to those who would like to travel to Daejeon: Not to take any transit flight unless you have plenty of time to spend during the transit.

KLIA -> Shanghai Pudong -> Cheongju

We had only two hours for the arrival and departure procedures at Pudong airport before catching the flight to Cheongju. Luckily, I am able to speak Mandarin and immediately asked the official to let my colleagues use the special counter to avoid the crowd. Huh…. then, we also need to fill up the Immigration forms and Customs declaration forms. We should fill them in-flight but the flight attendant said that we are exempted. A mistake! My colleague lost her luggage at Cheongju Airport because the MAS official informed her that her luggage will transfer directly. Another mistake!

At Daejeon, I stayed in the Spapia Hotel, a 4-start hotel which was the accommodation for the Korean national football team during the match against Italy. See the picture. About 2.30 p.m., I met Poh Kit and then we traveled to Seoul. The KTX train which can operate at speed of ~300km/h took us approximately 1 hour time to reach Seoul. See the map for the distance between Daejeon and Seoul. My colleague used to say to me that “Daejeon is north of Seoul” because he turned the map upside down. Thanks to Poh Kit, I managed to spend sometime around Insa-dong (仁寺洞) and Deoksugung (德壽宮) Palace. Yes, Seoul is easy to travel around since there are 8 subway lines. The next day, I had my usual task to complete with a short visit to ETRI for meeting and discussion. Then, my colleagues and I travel from Daejeon to Seoul and stayed in the Itaewon (梨泰院洞). For those who are Muslim, you can find a number of Muslim restaurants there. But to my surprise, the price of a Kebab costs me around 10,000 Won, approximately RM38, more expensive than the Korean dish I had before. We spent 2 hours time at Namdaemun (南大門) market and I bought two umbrellas for my girlfriend. Wie viel kostet Sie? 10,000 Won per umbrella!

Here, some of my observations during my short stay in Daejeon and Seoul:

• Restaurants offer free plain water with no additional charge. I use to drink more than 10 cups of plain water in the Muslim restaurant.
• There are helpful peoples in Seoul. A middle-age man helps me to get a taxi after quite a number of them refuse to fetch us to Itaewon. Reason? I don’t know since they kept waving the hands!
• Cost of living is too high for Malaysian to live there unless you earn there.
• Daejeon is not so happening compared to Seoul.
• Raw crab is one of favorite dishes in Korea. I saw an advertisement promoting a sauce for raw crab and teaching you the method of eating the fresh crab.
• Snooker is one of the favorite sports for women in Korea. You can watch the games in ESPN channel.
• In Itaewon, you can see American soldiers and a lot of Korean police officials. There is an US military base nearby.
• Toothbrush and toothpaste are not provided free in the hotels.
• The security check in Incheon Airport is the strictest. Don’t bring any liquor more than 100ml per container. My colleagues said that he can bring out his peanut butter from KLIA and even Shanghai Pudong, but not Incheon Airport. He lost his peanut butter and canned drinks.
• [Extra] Rotiboy can be found in Seoul
  

Daejeon - A Clear Sky on Arrival Day

Deoksugung Palace

Deoksugung Palace

Namdaemun

Subway - PK

Mosque at Itaewon

Police Station at Itaewon

Signature of Player in Spapia Hotel: Hwang Sun-Hong

He scored the goal againts Poland. First match First goal in WC2002 for South Korea

Cheonggyecheon stream (淸溪川), Seoul

Cheonggyecheon stream

Namdaemun Market, Seoul

The Shopkeeper selling Ginseng who knows to speak a little Malay. You can find my business card in his shop.

Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to "the team that can soft land a craft on the Moon that roams for at least 500 meters and transmits a Mooncast back to Earth. The Grand Prize is $20M until December 31, 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15M until December 31, 2014, at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation."

Thinking of joining this competition?

Xenomai

Do you ever think of making your Linux system a real-time or deterministic system? I have done some works before with RTLinux and RTAI. But if you are looking to migrate your current real-time system such as vxWorks, pSOS, uITRON, to Linux, then you should consider Xenomai. It offers quite a number of OS skin. I have patched and tested the Xenomai on my AT91 board featuring ARM920T processor. I even tested a vxWorks application on it. But yes, you have to tolerate some latency delay compared to RTAI.

Tribute to our Baby-Faced Assassin

I went to see the fireworks at PutraJaya on Merdeka eve with my girlfriend and few of her friends. Travel as early as 7 p.m. to PutraJaya and reached there about 9.30 p.m. I though that the fireworks would start at around 10 p.m. but it was delayed till 12 midnight. The fireworks performance took around 25 minutes but it was pity that we couldn’t hear the music. It was a terrible traffic when trying to get out from PutraJaya and we stuck in the traffic for almost 2 hours. This was first time I experienced such a scenario in PutraJaya. As you know, there is not much traffic whenever I travel to PutraJaya for my badminton games.



Last week, one of my favorite players in ManU announced his retirement after battling so long against his knee injury. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer….. A moment of happiness keeps flashing back when he put the ball in the net at last minute of the European Cup final against Bayern. Good luck, Solskjaer!