Korea trip

In contrast to my spring trip to the extremely underdeveloped country of Belize, I visited the extremely OVERdeveloped country of Korea in early June. The purpose of the trip was to attend the 8th bi-annual Metabolic Engineering conference. This was an excellent opportunity for me to network with the big names in my research area and get a feel for what other groups are doing. I also had the great fortune of traveling with two of my good friends from graduate school - Katy Kao and Ganesh Sriram, both of whom are also Assistant Professors.We arrived in Seoul 4 days before the conference started, with gracious hosting from three friends from UCLA who are now professors in Korea. This provided us with the opportunity to present brief research seminars at Korea University and Busan University, as well as tour these two cities. These guys were saints to endure the endless questions from three very curious visitors.
I hadn't previously realized that Seoul is the 2nd most densely populated city in the world - 2nd only to Tokyo. But I certainly believe it. It was a very crowded city, but more than anything, it reminded me of Los Angeles, with difficult-to-read signs. I was constantly amused to spot American chain restaurants that aren't available in Ames: TGI Friday's, Outback, and Baskin Robbins, just to name a few. I was also very embarrassed to spot a Hooter's (sigh). Ganesh and I had a fun contest going to see who would we could find first - another blond (like me) or another Indian (like him). Ganesh claimed to see a gaggle of blonds at one of the tourist spots in Seoul, but it was clear that the game was over in Busan, which had a large Indian student population.
One of our hosts had earned his PhD at UCLA, and thus he and his wife lived in Los Angeles for several years. At dinner, I asked her what she missed most about LA, and was astonished when she mentioned a "really great Korean restaurant in Korea town". Seriously? You live in Seoul and the thing you miss most about LA is the good Korean food?
We lucked out in Busan - apparently it is very popular to eat live squid in some places on the coast. They bring a live octopus to your table, cut off a leg and you eat it while it's still squirming. It's even suggested to dip it in sesame oil so that it can't use its suckers to attach to your tongue. I don't like my food to look at me (think of cooked fish served whole), much less for my food to actively WATCH me eat it. Thank goodness we never got into the situation of having to deal with this type of meal.
After having a good time touring Seoul and Busan, we flew to Jeju Island, the site of the conference. Jeju is the Hawaii of Korea, with many people going there for their honeymoon. There is also a volcano in the middle of the island, but it was obscured by clouds during our stay.
The flight from Busan to Jeju was very short, but something quite embarrassing happened. Katy and I were sitting next to each other and talking and laughing. This woman in front of us kept giving us that "look", you know, when you halfway look over your shoulder at people who are annoying you? Everytime she did that, we tried to pipe down, but would inevitably start talking again, but then the woman turned around and said "quiet!". I was so taken aback - it was only an hour long flight and it was 10 in the morning. Other people were talking normally and I don't think we were behaving inappropriately. It was the only time I have been happy to have a crying baby on my flight. She could shush me, but good luck trying to shush the crying baby. Humph. I just wonder if she found us especially annoying because we were speaking English.
The conference was great and I won't go into much detail. On the last evening there was a closing dinner with some excellent performers. It reminded me of the Korean dances that my friend Kristine arranged for a zoo dinner years ago. Here are some videos:




After all of the performances, they had all of us engineers join in for one dance. I was horrified, but grudgingly admit that it was fun. I think it helped that alcohol had been served with dinner.
Perhaps the greatest adventure of all was getting home. I had made a terrible mistake when booking my flights - I was to fly from Jeju Island on the first flight of the morning to Seoul, then after 2-hour layover I was to fly from Seoul to Tokyo then to Detroit, then to Des Moines. The problem was that the 2-hour layover in Seoul involved not just changing planes, but changing AIRPORTS. People who were familiar with both airports agreed that this was feasible, but tight. Once I realized the problem, I tried for several days to find a viable solution. It was possible to fly from Jeju to Tokyo and catch my connecting flight to Detroit, but if I missed my Seoul -> Tokyo flight, Delta was going to charge me $2,000 to rebook the Tokyo -> Detroit -> Des Moines flights. ARGH! So I made a mad dash through two airports with all of my luggage in tow. Finally I made it to my gate, and collapsed in relief in my bulkhead (yeah!) seat, only to see to my growing horror that I was seated next to a young couple that had twin toddlers, one of who was already crying. And she cried and kicked (and kicked me!) for the next two hours, before I finally begged the flight attendant to find me another seat, practically clutching at her sleeve out of desperation. Things got even more interesting in Tokyo, when I bumped into an old college friend that I hadn't seen in at least 10 years. He was on his way home from a trip to Guam. Crazy.
Finally I made it home. Overall the long flights were not nearly as bad as I had anticipated and the jet lag wasn't so bad either. I'm looking forward to more travel experiences in the future. There are pictures from the trip here.