The past 2 weeks have been half as much fun as the first week, hence the delayed post…
Weekdays have been mostly work here. The people at work are very friendly. But what has been on my mind the most is the difference, on every level, between HQ and India office. A manager here is the most technically competent person in his team, unlike India where managers never even see C code, let alone have any other technical skills… Thats really unbelievable! And all the engineers here are really good at what they do, and are specialists in their respective domains… Thats another big difference.
Anyway, work here has been really satisfying. I am happy that I am making a difference now, however small.
Itaewon.
The 2nd weekend here, we decided to go to Seoul. To Itaewon specifically, coz we heard there are a lot of foreigners there, and it has a good night-life. So, on Saturday, after sleeping through almost the entire day, we left at around 7.30 to Itaewon. We went to a pub there, called Kings Pub.. Tasted Soju for the first and probably the last time… It was more like lemon flavored dilute alcohol solution. And I danced to some hip-hop music. which gets a little boring after a while. There were a lot of Americans in the pub. I think I saw 20$ worth of “50 Cent”s that day, if you know what I mean… 
As they say, What happens in Itaewon, stays in Itaewon. We did a night-out there and returned the next morning…
Free Pizza.
The coolest thing happened a few days back..
Once every month, we get to have free pizza and watch a dvd movie in a big screen in the auditorium…
I thought there would be a big crowd of people there…
but i found out that this is only for foreigners in korea…
So there were some 100 people, with about 20 indians, many chinese people and some Europeans and Americans….
They gave us all free pizzas, with special veg pizzas for indians… 
It was really good!!
After that, they screened the movie “Deja-Vu” dvd on a big screen…
It was a fun experience… the movie had a lot of time-travel bullshit sci-fi, but it was fun to watch.
I was wondering why this monthly meeting was only for foreigners…
I found out that the Koreans get a lot more, like musical nights, rock shows and such other events very often and that this initiative for foreigners is just so that we don’t feel left out!!!!
man, this Samsung office rocks!!
Here are some other quirks of our office…
>They play some pleasant music on loud speakers outdoors during the lunch break throughout the campus… (one day i heard “as long as u love me” ,bsb!!!!
>They not only water the plants and sprinkle the grass, they wash the trees!!!!!!!!! they sprinkle water on it using a tall weird machine…. so that the water falls from the top on to the trees, not from the ground….. ahem.
>They have a machine which pours water on the road when its hot! what for?? so that our shoes dont get hot when we cross the road??? i dont know…
Seoul Again.
I went to Seoul(Jong-gak station I think) one day from office to meet my senior.
I was alone, but I managed to get there easily. The place was like a business district. Very busy, lots of tall buildings around. I saw a beautiful stream there with benches on the sides all along the path, and small stones for crossing the river. It was a very nice place. I was told it was initially a road and had been converted into a river, part of a huge million$ government project! Ahem…
I also realized one thing. Dunkin’ Donuts makes great donuts!…
Beer.
I don’t really know whats so great about beer that people drink so much of it. But we went again, my friends drank, I watched, took pics. Isn’t that a lot of fun!
On Sunday, We went to the house of one Indian employee here, who is in our office. We made parathas and chatted a lot. The apartments here are Huge and the whole city is full of them. Its like a motif in urban Korea, you just can’t miss it. They all look similar from the outside. But apparently there are very different inside.
Thought for the week:
It seems to me that the reason India is nowhere near Korea has something to do with us siding with Russia during Cold War. Whatever prevented India from opening companies like Hyundai and Samsung must have been the cause, I figure.
If we had embraced the West more, maybe we could’ve been as advanced as Korea is today. More thoughts on this next week.
