First week is almost done and I’ve just come home from my Korean language class. I’m enrolled in an evening class at the university language center to brush up on my language. I have class twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, both from 18:30 to 21:20. But more on that later.
Daily routines are falling in place quite quickly. I have an office where I can work in peace and quiet, but we’re also starting to work on joint topics with my collaborators here. Our apartment also has a small office corner where I can set up my laptop, get connected, and keep on doing things. Showing a considerable amount of foresight, I had purchased Apple’s Airport Express, so that I can connect it to the wired network of the building and share the WiFi with all of our phones, laptops, and tablets. It works quite well and in case of problems, all the rooms in the apartment also have an Ethernet port. I only have one cable, but getting one more should not be too tricky.
The campus is rather large, but not too large for walking from A to B. The only problem relating to walking is that it’s built on a hill, well, a mountain actually. Seoul is pretty much surrounded by relatively high mountains, so almost anywhere you go, you need to go up or down. (Our home being towards the second entrance of the campus means we’re “low”, so every day starts by going “up”.) Then again, weather has cooled from the sweltering 30+ degrees to a much nicer 25 degrees, so walking is actually quite pleasant. And going up and down is obviously good exercise. The campus used to be a golf course, but, amazing as it may sound, given Korean fondness for golf, the light of knowledge triumphed over money. Then again, that happened in the 70’s, so maybe that explains it…
This is my home office, taken when we had just moved in, so that explains why it’s still empty.
Here’s my real office, which I share with another person, but as I’ve understood, “he might show up on some Tuesdays” in practice means it’s mine to use. Yes, I play Angry Birds and The Better Half bought me that bird.
And the view from my office is to a small field, where every late afternoon, kids come for football training.
I can’t help but think of Ron Manager’s comments about kids in the park, jumpers for goalposts, marvelous, isn’t it? And on the topic of Ron Manager, I just can’t resist posting his comments about Gary Lineker… 😉