It's not that cold

All things being relative, it is apparently not that cold in Seoul. Relative to me, it is cold enough, with the temperature quite obviously dropping below zero (freezing puddles) one night and playing with it dangerously the rest of the time. Heated flooring makes the inside of places comfortable enough, but makes the selection of an appropriate amount of clothing a difficult operation.
The first week here has been spent quietly, little excursions in the neighborhood and with a chaperone have been enjoyable. The Koreans put an emphasis on service which is a refreshing change from Colombia. A few little tours of the shopping centres and of Sumin's University have been interesting and the sheer number of people is diluted somewhat but the efficiency of the transportation systems.

Now for some of the things that have appealed to the geek in me:
The card technology for the use of the public transport (yes all of it) is unlicenced, meaning that anyone can make the cards that you use. This means that you can buy a metro card from anywhere, charge it with money at the station then use it. What it also means is that the "cards" have been integrated into everything including key chains, mobile phone fobs, other cards(ID cards) giving people a huge amount of convenience. There are no weekly , monthly or seasonal passes. Just charge up your card, or mobile phone sticker and away you go ... you can charge the cards with a large amount too so that you only have to worry about running out every now and then. No paper, no free rides no fuss. The transport system can also track the usage of the network so that it can respond to the quantity of people moving between transport nodes.

I had to buy a mobile phone, but the one that I got (quite cheaply too) has tv, internet, video conferencing and a whole host of other things aswell, apparently the phone is capable of the next generation in high speed mobile internet aswell, which is 7.2 Mbps. All that aside, it looks nice and has decent sized buttons for non-korean fingers.

Talking of fast internet, I had always wondered what the internet would be like in the world leading country .... I downloaded something the other night at 450mbit/sec ... so the 80Mb Chaser episode downloaded in under 5 minutes. This is just a standard domestic connection too !

Good food here aswell, but .... erm I have to leave something for the next post cause ... well ... I want to go out now :)