RFB: So where are you from, originally?
Ji: I was born in a city in mid-west China, called Xian.
RFB: Oh! I have just started reading a book ‘Shadow of the Silk Road’. It starts in Xian. China is amazing.

Some time before that…

Matt: So why aren’t you eating eel?
Saunvit: I am particular about certain fishes. I don’t eat mammals.
RFB: Eel is amazing.
Matt: But eel isn’t a mammal.
Saunvit: I am very particular about which fish to eat and which not to eat.
Matt: What has it got to do with being a mammal? But I would find it gross.
Saunvit: In Korea they offered me pork.
RFB: Pork is amazing.
Matt: I don’t even consider chicken as meat, its vegetables. In Kansas we eat steak.
Saunvit: I miss soju.
RFB: Soju is amazing.
Ji: Hey, everything is amazing for you!

Some time before that…

William: Tickets please.
RFB: I ran out of my 10-ride ticket.
William: So tomorrow morning you buy it. In the evening I will punch two holes in your card. Don’t buy a ticket today.
RFB: That’s amazing.

Some time before that…

SXR: Are you gonna travel by train?
RFB: Yeh.
SXR: It’s cold.
RFB: The cold is amazing.

Some time before that…

Guru: I am not gonna forgive you for bringing me to this cafeteria.
RFB: I am sorry, but is that all you’re gonna eat?
Joe: This fish is good.
RFB: Is it amazing?
Guru: It has lead and mercury.
RFB: Mercury? Amazing.
Joe: There is no mercury. This fish is good for heart and cholesterol.
Guru: It wont matter what you eat. One day a truck will just run over you.

Some time before that…

Lady: Can you toss the omelette like her?
RFB: Ofcourse. I do it all the time.
Lady: I can never do it. She is amazing.

The lady at the hot bar in the cafeteria was crestfallen when RFB said that he could toss the omelette as well as her. She did not thank him. If he could not appreciate it, I wish RFB had not said that.
I wish I wasn’t RFB.

[The characters and dialogues in this blog have not been altered to make it better to read. Though, permission has not been taken to publish any of these conversations. I hope they don't mind. Everyone I met today was amazing :)]

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Click to read more and see the pics…

Adam and Eve…

A pub?

Marvelous sunset by a lake… Do not try to look for the sun :)
It is on the other side…

Women…

Common people…

And Christ formed the subject of a really large number of paintings…

The contrast of darkness and light used in this painting, was more remarkable than it appears in the photograph…

Something sad is depicted here, but look at the details…

Out of the many photographs, this photograph from a market in Mumbai caught my eye…

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And now…
Perhaps the best or one of the best parts of the Institute…
These are houses… the most beautiful living places I have ever seen in my life… but…

But…

OMG lovely carpet… :) but…

Yes, all of this is amazing and excellent… but…

This is perfect, isn’t it? It sure is, but…

Ok, enough of “buts”, now look closely at the picture below to get an estimate of the size of these things :)

I hope you saw me, wondering about something, looking through the…

Glass windows…
—
Okay… now, its time for perhaps the most popular piece of art kept at this place in the world…
Here is something about it… Can you guess what it is? Have you seen it before?

This is about one of those few paintings that were in school textbooks while I was in school…

Isn’t this brilliant??

Have you seen this somewhere before?

Sure you have :)
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – Georges Seurat

Well, that is all I could capture… after that I did not feel like clicking pics anymore… It was too beautiful to capture in the camera… It sure was captured somewhere else…

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
- Albert Einstein

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Living in a place, ‘thousands’ of kilometers away from home, decades of degree Fahrenheit apart and half a day on the other side of the world, it is a feeling that does not go down so well, or may be it does but I cannot realise it. Things are different, very different from the way I see them in homeland or closer to homeland.

I always had this notion in my head, “I do not want to go to US” and I would tell it loud and clear to people. And they would ask me “why?”… I would go on and give them all reasons, whether they made sense or not, I went on… I have been fascinated by some places that are almost never on a person’s wishlist to travel. Places like Russia, China, Mongolia, Turkey, Georgia, Israel seemed more “calling” to me than the West.

Fortunate I was to travel to the magnificent and uber-cute land of Daehan Minguk, South Korea. I was there for a little under three months, and I traveled almost the whole of that little country, tasted almost all of its deliciously healthy cuisine, understood and appreciated the technology decades ahead of Indo, learnt and almost perfected the script, and totally enjoyed my first stay abroad. I maintained a good blog and filled it with a lot of photos of almost everything I saw, everyone I met and everywhere I went. People who saw it, loved it, and wondered how they never knew Korea was so wonderful!

Here I am today, on the other side of the globe… Trying to maintain a blog, busy work schedule means I cannot do this more often, trying to enjoy the cuisine, but… “________” and trying to be happy…

This is a great country. I must say so and I appreciate it when I say so. The roads are perfect, the buildings are exuberant and the cities are brilliant. Things are pretty good here, in the shops and showrooms, clothes, accessories, electronics, chocolates, drinks are cheap here and superior in quality. Water supply is almost unlimited and comes in two temperatures. Perfect. Period. Food is great! Yes, food is great. I keep going back to the tiny Korean restaurant JK Cafe on Clark in Evanston to have that great delicacy called ‘Bibimbap’ – do you remember? I keep going back to the Korean restaurant to have sushi rolls, to have kimchi, to have odeng, to have ramyeon! I keep going back for more reasons than the food. I go there to socialise. I am happy to meet and interact with the cute Korean couple that runs the restaurant. I asked them their names, ‘Handsome man’ and ‘Pretty Ooman’ (in the typical Korean accent came the reply). I was glad, and gladly wrote down my name Aditya in Korean script on my business card and handed it to them. They are more than happy to see me there almost everyday. This is not a story about the Great America, it is a story about a small Korean restaurant that I have come across right in front of my office.

I go there almost every other day and the things I love the most at their restaurant are not Bibimbap, rolls or coffee milkshake… but the love and the warmth they show and serve me with. They feel as if I am one of them. I started eating rolls out there with a certain customization. When I first went there, I told them I want california rolls, but no fish and only vegetarian ingredients. They kept asking me if “fish is ok”, “tofu is ok?”, “radish is ok” and I kept answering “yes” or “no” and at the end of it, I had a fully customised roll all for me… Since then, whenever I have been there, all I tell Hara (the Korean lady) is “Can I have a roll please” and she shouts back inside here kitchen “Adi-tta roll juseyeo” (Get him ‘Aditya Rolls’). With so much and more warmth, as I go and take my seat, her husband brings up a number of banchans (side dishes) like kimchi, yellow radish and soy sauce for me to enjoy… and makes sure that he himself comes and serves me my fully customised ‘Aditta Rolls’.

I am touched.

Last friday, I wasn’t very hungry and decided to go to JK Cafe and eat a california roll. These rolls are very delicious, very healthy, have almost zero fat and are not filling at all. So I thought, I would have them and I would be done. Given their generosity, warmth and liking for me, they would not let me eat just the rolls and within minutes of my taking a seat, my table was filled with more than the regular set of banchans.. and a sweet potato dish made in the shape of a fish… It was yummy, but by the end of my meal, I was full, more than full.

I was filled. I was filled with emotions, I was overwhelmed by their selfless attitude and care for my taste buds. Last afternoon I even got them a couple of Samosas from the local Indian restaurant in Evanston. It happened that the lady dint get any of it to taste as Mr Handsome Man loved and finished them himself. In the evening when I went there again, he told me “I loved your samosas… I have enjoyed it earlier in Indonesia with beer. Fantastic”. The smile on their faces and the smile on my face never seems to fade away. They work hard. It is perhaps the only restaurant in the Northwestern Univ area that stays open late till about 2 or 3 am every night. But the warmth with which the bells rings when I open the door and enter JK and the warmth with which Hara wishes me “Annyeong Haseyeo” and the warmth with which Handsome Man waves at me from inside the kitchen, touches me. Touches me more than anything else.

Things like these keep me going on. And on. Yes, I miss Korea to date. I miss my Korean friends, Yunseong, Daeseong, Jaejin and everyone else I met in Korea. I miss those cute girls moving around in the trains, on the streets and everywhere else. I miss those jingles the vendors used to shout at their street side bbq shops. I miss that smell of kimchi. I miss that language… I miss Korea.

But here I am in a totally different country. It is not much different from what I have seen it as in the movies, and the television. Perhaps it is much different and definitely better once you are here. Life is convenient. It is safe. It is the greatest country of the world. When I go back to India, I will tell people that my notion about this country was not completely correct. Now I am convinced about it. It was incomplete.

Everything is perfect, but the warmth was left behind in Asia…

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Life sucks,
People suck,
Studies suck,
Mess food sucks,
Gravity sucks.

Lol.. poor joke. I only intended to magnify so many things that actually Suck! It has been a short semester.. so far.. I wish it was longer… I’ve slept so much. Ive slept more than I had ever slept in my life. I sleep and I eat. That is all I do these days. I wish I did something more fruitful.

What am I blogging about btw?

In 2007, I travelled a total of 37000 km. Now so many of you travelled to the US and back! That by itself would make so much :( So let me exclude the flying miles to and back from Korea. That leaves me with 26000 km. Now isn’t that a big number? Over twenty five thousand kilometers of domestic travel. I like it :) But the very unfortunate part of it was that I hardly visited any new city in these 26000 km. Nevermind, I predict 2008 to be a big year, and 2009 to be the year of Aditto!

And the one thing that I am still searching for in India, is a place where I can get to eat Bibimbap! Do you know what that is?

So go ahead and check it out!

At that moment I thought it to be just a banner placed in the country side, but that place is actually Pyeong Chang county itself! And I wondered what the construction work all around was about!

Gangneung and Pyeong Chang will be hosting the Winter Olympics 2014, if they are selected tomorrow. Lovely place and it deserves to host the games…

Here are the pics once again :) These are the slopes that are fully covered with snow during winter. This place receives the highest snowfall in entire South Korea, and is a natural ski resort.

Ganghwa island is known as a combat zone and has many old fortresses to protect the country from foreign attacks a few centuries ago.

This is Korea’s Lucky Bird
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The following pictures are from a Buddhist Temple in Ganghwa.
This is really how traditional Korea is…

We must put coins in this big bowl of water. If it hits the center, then our wish will be fulfilled. My coin landed many centimeters away from the center [:(]

But this was perhaps the sweetest water I have tasted so far in Korea… very pure and natural.

CHODING POWER

GODING POWER (goding: middle school students)

Construction underway: Incheon Airport – Incheon City Sea Link.
Once constructed, it will be around 12 kilometer long and will be amongst the three longest of its kind in the world.

And then we took this ferry to Wolmido… Yes our car went right inside :)

Korean cars, ready for export…

And in Incheon City: These are residential apartments.

Back to square one…

South Korea 대한민국 (Dae han min guk) is a very small nation, about half the size of Gujarat, and slightly bigger than Sri Lanka, in North Eastern Asia. In spite of having faced invasions from Japan, China and Russia, and many problems that any nation faces, this small nation emerged as a true leader. Despite a severe setback caused by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the country was able to re-emerge as a major economic power. In 2004, South Korea joined the “trillion dollar club” of world economies. The policies and decisions of the government from 1970-2000 saw South Korea transform from a troubled state facing problems like India is today, to a developed nation. The quality of life and level of happiness in its people is awesome. Technology is the center of attraction here apart from the vibrant colours and fashion. This place aims to become the hub of North East Asia, and I see all hints at it trying to achieve it hard!

Korea is one crazy nation, is the only country in the world probably, where you would find children, girls, guys, and even elder people wearing bright pink clothes! And it looks so good on them!! Major expenditure of Korean Youth is on Cosmetics!!!! If you are in Korea, you will realise it in no time. 20 percent of young girls have undergone cosmetic surgery to look more beautiful, but I bet they look better anyway! The average person looks much younger than what he or she may be… a very young looking modern girl may actually be mom of one or two kids! (You may see my post “Inha at Night” for an example.) The literacy is 98% and average life expectancy is 77 years~It has amongst the highest number of medals in Asian games and Olympics, (one question that all Koreans tend to ask me is why India never gets good results in any sport inspite of having such a huge population).
It beat India almost twice in recent times, one… during the election for the UN General Secretary and then next during the voting for the city to host Asian Games in 2014.

Also, Seoul is the most expensive city to live in the world, after Moscow!

Things I would recommend:
Try to speak some Korean, the locals will mix up better with you if you do so…
Make good friends, they will really make sure you have a good time…
Try to enjoy the food here, you wont get something like this back home…
Go for a walk rather than a drive, it will rejuvenate your body mind and soul…
Wear pink, it will perhaps look good on you here…
Drink with locals but don’t get drunk, else you will vomit…
Watch Korean movies, they are awesome…
Ogle at Korean girls, they are pretty and cute and most fashionable…
Do lots of shopping…He he…. And have a nice time… :)