Arrival in Seoul
The long flight finally ended. While I was in the air, I didn’t want to write about the fact that I was in a middle seat between two huge men. They weren’t fat, but they each could have played linebacker on an NFL team I think. There were a lot of American military on the flight, and I remember thinking that I could easily imagine them in uniform with a machine gun, and they’d be exactly what I’d want as a US Marine. Turns out, I noticed one of them filling in his immigration paperwork and he wrote “military” as his occupation, and “official business” as his reason for travel.
During the latter half of the flight, I frequently checked the onboard video system for the flight status. It has an interactive map that will display where the plane is, how much distance has been traveled, how much is left to go, etc. I knew this already, but the maps were very illustrative of how this flight was over land almost the entire time. The flat maps we use most of the time when we look at the Earth do us a disservice by creating a false concept of the world…one where the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That is true, just not a straight line on a flat map.
Flight mapping system on the plane - our final approach to Seoul
Of course, when flying, you don’t always take the shortest path. For along time, coming down through Siberia, the computer was drawing a nice straight line from the plane’s position to Seoul which sliced right through North Korea. As we got closer, we ended up carving a nice wide arc around North Korea.
In the airport, I was being rushed about by two fellows from the host organization KERIS to be able to take some photos…but one of the first things I saw was Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. So far, it appears that US commercial interests, and global commercialism is alive and well here in Seoul. Lots of familiar fast food places like 7-11, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, McDonalds…and car dealerships of all sorts, clothing, eletronics…its all here. I guess I didn’t really expect anything other than that given Korea is working hard itself to become a player in that game.
The hotel is like any modern hotel except it shares a couple things with some of the Chinese hotels I stayed in last year. There are tons of electrical outlets. There are 3 different outlets at the desk I’m sitting at now. Once is the Korean standard 220. Another is for everyone else who wants 220 as it has way more holes in it in varying shapes and sizes then any single plug could have. I think even a standard two and three prong US plug will slide in if you rotate it right. And, there’s a standard US 110 three prong outlet. In addition, the bathroom is raised by about 4 inches. So, remember that when you are jet lagged, wandering in the dark in your room to the bathroom at night…or you just might stub your toe as you walk through the doorway of the bathroom! And finally, the bed is very firm.
What is different here is that I think I’ve found the hotel that MLTI can’t break. Those of you who travel with me to MLTI training events know that we often suffer from the reality that there isn’t a hotel network that we can’t take down when we arrive with dozens and sometimes hundreds of people with laptops. I haven’t been in the conference space, but if the room connection is any indication, this network is a screamer. Prior to arrival, I knew the South Korea is the fastest place on earth along with Japan. I hear reports of 100Mbps to the home for Internet connection speeds as compared to the luxury speeds of Time Warner Business Class, 10Mbps. The room has wireless and a wire. I plugged in just to “feel it”. Visited iTunes to pull some content. While I was flying I remembered that among other things I lost way back when was an Enya CD I bought once. So, I decided to re-buy it on iTunes. I downloaded the whole album in less then 45 seconds. OMG that is fast.
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When I checked in, I was told there was a reception for the conference up on the top floor of the hotel. I got myself cleaned up and presentable, and joined the group. I did catch up with my college classmate who invited me and met some of the other folks I had been exchanging emails with to arrange the trip. Overall, of the 30-40 people at the reception, most appeared to speak some English. They all spoke more English then I do their native languages, so hopefully my presentation will be understood. I’ll let you know if people laugh at the right times!