KGSP - Desert Delays and Branching Blogs

So I skipped a week of posts and am making this one a bit late too. There's a reason for this though. Last week I went to Dubai for the Dubai Design Week and so as a result I straight up just wasn't really around to make a blog post.

The trip to Dubai was actually really awesome. I got invited to present some work at the event so it was extremely tiring but overall a really good experience to get some feedback on my work as well as to meet new people and see new things.

Deserts, technically one of the oldest things, but super new for me.

I really want to go more into depth on my experience there, but I don't think this blog is appropriate for that anymore. For the past few years I've essentially been using this blog as a weekly diary for the things I do when I'm abroad.

That's fine and all, but I wanna write in a different style and it doesn't seem like that would fit here anymore. So I've decided that I wanna start a new blog. I'll keep this one going for weekly entries, but I'll have a "cleaner" blog that will be posting more in depth stuff.

It'll finally let me dive into more detail into events too.

For that blog, I'll be using my own domain. It'll be at blog.garykcng.com which is currently super under construction. But when I have posts, they'll be there. I'll try to get a few posts in there soon about Dubai and I might even do some retroactive posts about my previous travels too.

I essentially see it as less of a diary and more of a real blog. So I'll talk about my travels, events, life, etc. But I'll do posts less frequently as compared to this and just go more into detail since I've been glossing over details sometimes on this blog. Should be a fun way to write I think.

More fun than carrying fish onto trains.

Anyways, since I just got back from Dubai, that project is pretty much over for now. There was a lot of positive feedback so I might go back to it sometime, but right now I have to focus on my thesis project and lab project. 

KGSP - Brief Busan Visit

So work has been piling up as usual. I had two presentations last week but one of them got delayed to this week so now I have three presentations this week. Wonderful. In addition to that I still have a lot of work to do for my project by the end of the coming week, so I just have a lot to do.

You'd think with the amount of work I have I'd essentially just be living in the lab again. But you'd be wrong. My parents came to visit again so naturally that means that I had to spend time with them instead. This was good because working sucks and spending time with family is great.

But spending time in Daejeon though.

They came to visit on Thursday so we spent Thursday and Friday just hanging out in Daejeon after I finished with my lab work for the day. To be honest there really is nothing to do in Daejeon so we didn't do that much those two days.

However over the weekend we decided to go to Busan. My dad went to Busan once before but my mom hasn't been before. Plus it's just more fun that Daejeon anyways so I figured it was a good idea. Would be a lot better than Daejeon anyways.

What would also be a good idea is giving that PacMan eyes so it doesn't just look like a moon.

So we went on Saturday morning and went to check out the skywalk by Oryukdo. The weather was ok actually, but it was a really windy by the water. The view was ok but there wasn't much to do there. The actual skywatch was a bit unspectacular. Kinda small, but ok.

Afterwards we went to Gwangalli to check out the beach and have some dinner. Gwangalli is still one of the best places to visit in Busan imo, but after having been to Busan so many times it's finally kinda hit me how long it takes to get there.

Also, the rationale for why it's called five-six island is kinda lame once you see the islands.

Unfortunately, it was raining a lot today. It was like pouring the entire day so we couldn't explore more outdoors. Which was a shame because Busan is like, 90% outdoors. There's not much to do inside, but I guess that's kinda true for all of Korea.

We went to do some shopping at Shinsegae before we decided to hit up Busan Sea Life, the aquarium they have in Busan. I've never been there before and aquariums are kinda neat too. It seemed like a good idea anyways cause it's indoors.

Aw yea, sharks.

The aquarium itself was ok. Pretty average I think. They had a big tank with sharks and stuff with a walk-through tunnel, which is always kinda neat, but I don't think I'd go again. But yea, it was a short trip and we returned to Daejeon today.

They're heading back to Seoul tomorrow morning before leaving Korea so our time together is up. Always a bittersweet moment, but now it's back to work.

KGSP - The Fake Holiday Season

So last weekend was a long weekend because it was a Korean holiday. As a result we had a shorter week this week. Today is also a holiday, but it's not really a holiday because it's a weekend and apparently Korea doesn't believe in making up public holidays if they fall on a weekend.

Whatever, it doesn't matter that much. Even if they did make up the holiday it only means that I skip an extra class and go to the lab later. And it's not like I do much in that class anyways so work wise it's pretty much the same.

My desk right now is just a mess.

As far as lab work goes, I had to do a workshop on my lab project on Friday so I had to make sure the application was relatively working well. I was really worried actually because there was a lot of issues with it, but the workshop went surprisingly well.

The last workshop we did in June was really rough so I needed to make sure this one was better. Thankfully it was. Still not that great, but progress is really showing. This is good because it means I get to spend time on a different project now.

And trust me, that's a mess of a project right now.

I still have to work on my lab project, but I have a demo for a different project in two weeks and I really need to start working on getting that ready. So now it's back to actually balancing two projects. It's work, but I also have a lot of random other things to deal with too.

For one I totally forgot but a friend of mine came down to Daejeon from Seoul today. He's here until Thursday for a conference. Forgot he was around really. Plus, my parents are coming to Korea again too. They'll be in Daejeon on Thursday for a few days.

Speaking of dealing with random things. Check out how this bar dealt with a lack of electricity in the bathroom.

So a few more social obligations on top of my existing workload. Fun times really. I'm really glad that people are visiting though. If you really think about it there really isn't a great time for people to visit anyways, so anytime is good.

Oh also I managed to secure One OK Rock tickets for their concert in Korea. That was actually a pretty cool thing because I really like that band and so when I found out that they were going to be in Korea for a show, I had to make sure I had tickets.

I also managed to secure a recipe to fry spaghetti. It's actually not that hard.

They had two sites that you could use to buy tickets. I've used one before to buy something else so I already had an account so I decided to use that. I was refreshing the page like mad when ticketing opened but the site was incredibly dumb.

You couldn't "reserve" seats until you actually went through the payment page. So you were essentially trying to select seats, and then raced other people to fill in your information. If you were slow, too bad, back to the beginning.

If only everything was as easy as frying spaghetti.

So after about 2 minutes the standing tickets were all sold. And at that point I just wanted anything. Unfortunately it wasn't looking very good. After about half an hour of fighting with the system, I didn't have any tickets.

But I just couldn't give up. I went to the other site, signed up, and they had literally four seats remaining. Managed to refresh a few times and I got myself tickets cause that system didn't suck as much. Wasn't the tickets I wanted, but hey, something is better than nothing.

KGSP - Blackout Long Weekends

So normally when you have the words "blackout" and "long weekend" together, the image it invokes is probably a weekend of excessive drinking and partying. This was not the case. It was literally just a long weekend that also involved an actual blackout of electricity.

Not that exciting really, but it's given me some forced time off from the lab. The department is under renovation and this weekend they decided to turn off the electricity, so no computers. It's good cause I get to rest, and thus the Monday post cause I forgot what day it was.

We got the wood in for one of my projects though. Pretty hype.

Overall the week was pretty standard as far as weeks go. The long weekend was probably the biggest deviation from the standard. Just more working in the lab and doing stuff for class really. Nothing too special.

On the other hand, I tried to cook different types of food this week. I don't really cook as much anymore because I typically spend most of my weekday nights in the lab so I just eat in the cafeteria. But man I'm seriously getting sick of cafeteria food.

So I went and cooked this spaghetti dish with some weird Japanese sauce I acquired.

I miss home cooked food.