February 22nd 2009 - Dan MTB

February 22nd 2009

Eating out ...

Last weekends erratic weather continued into this week, so we had a bit of sunshine followed by rain followed by what looked like the beginning of spring, broken off by the last efforts of winter! It's confusing the heck out of me ... winter is supposed to be dry, sunny and with a cold wind from the north - predictable, in other words.

Paula and I are back into the yoga regime. Well, at least until Saturday morning, where Paula couldn't get up for the morning session. We had been out Friday evening/night and Paula had had a cappuchino then .... enough to keep her from falling asleep until 5am. So she bailed out and left me alone with our teacher.

But back to Friday. There were a few new faces in town, as Dan from Lauritzen Kosan in Copenhagen has come out here to have a taste of shipbuilding. His work is in the commercial part of the company, and at times they get a chance to get out and see the more technical side of the deal. So he will be here for two weeks and will fllow us around on a few of the inspections - get a hands-on experience with the ships that he will deal with once they leave the yard. My colleague Carlos has also lured his wife Cinthia out to Korea for a couple of weeks - Paula highjacked her on Tuesday for a shopping trip to Busan - and last "new" face in Ulsan is Ingo's girlfriend Sabine, also out here for two weeks. So after work Friday we went to Cafe Lime where we met up with Ingo and Sabine. A couple of drinks later we went down to Ballentines, where the rest of the gang were already digging in to the Friday Buffet. Ballentines is the local expat hangout and the closest we can get to home cooking without getting out hands dirty. Western food is not in easy to come by in our neighbourhood, so Ballentines is obviously popular. It didn't get very late, but the cappucino made Paula feel like she had a hangover the next morning.

MinJoo, our yoga teacher, gave Paula a new second hand mobile phone, as the one she has now has started to act up. So on Saturday our mission was to change the numbers around. Mission Impossible, it turned out. First of all there is the language barrier, then there is the different-phone-companies barrier and lastly there is the phone-is-not-in-my-name barrier. Each one in themselves difficult enough but in unison they proved insurmountable. We had to return home to gain strength for second round !!Time to hit the mountains ! Dan had accepted my invitation to show him the local mountains, so we borrowed Ingo's bike and hit Yeompo Mountain. Well, actually I think Dan felt it a bit like Yeompo Mountain hit him !! It's steep .... both uphill and downhill. But regardsless of the pain the mountain inflicted on him, I choose to think that he had fun!!

Saturday evening we went over for pre-dinner drinks at Jamie and Colin's. They moved in just two weeks ago, but have already made themselves comfortable in their new home. We brought a few of our surviving plants over there to see if they stood a better chance of survival with new hosts ! We still have tons of plants, and some of them are living a beggars life in the back rooms, and could really need a bit more attention than what they are getting with us.

For dinner we drove in to the Turkish restaurant in downtown. Good as always. And good company .. it's like meeting a clone of our friend Val !!

Sunday we picked up Dan from his hotel and went to the Whale Museum. It was a shitty day, so we struggled to find things to du. We had planned a trip to Busan, but in the rain it's not really worth the hassle. So we just walked around in the covered pedestrian street, had a god indian lunch and then returned home for a couple of movies and more food ! A real rainy Sunday. It was still raining when we brought him home 10 hours later .. this weather brings back memories of our time in Valdivia, Chile, where I think it rained for 5 months straight!