I came around the corner of this grey looking Zagreb city block and the next minute these two huge towering cathedral spires hit me in the face from behind the buildings. It was my first day in Zagreb and such a lovely cool summers day that I took a long walk after work in the city centre. Was heading for the main square, Trg Jelacic, so I followed the spires up the hill behind the square. My first impression of Zagreb was that of a grey Eastern European city but my sighting of the spires changed that in an instant. En route I walked past a lovely green square with huge trees, flowers and old stately buildings. The main square, Trg Jelacic, has a buzz of its' own, like it's the heartbeat of the old city. Most of what was built here in the last 50 years is pretty miserable stuff but everything preceding that has a central European old charm to it. The cathedral itself is on a bit of a hill, part of the the high town. Zagreb is split between Upper Town (Gornji Grad) and Donji Grad (Lower Town), the higher town being the nicer, older part although the Lower Town has lovely spots too. Check the Zagreb Tourist Board website. I'm here for 10 days of work, then back in November for a few months perhaps.

The Croatian people are very friendly and most of them seem to speak quite good English. Their Croatian language has lovely sounds and tones though, re the upper and lower town references above. Reminds me of John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda trying to impress Jamie Curtis with his fake Russian.

In between I spent about 10 months in London then moved back home to South Africa, still working for Oracle on their retail software. Since then I have spent ten days in Dubai visiting various large retail clients, a week in Birmingham at a work conference and another week in London at Gap.

Since I had to use a plane to get here I thought I would get two pet plane hates off my back.Whenever I go into a plane toilet I curse under my breath and promise to comment on these little cubicles from hell on me blog so here goes. I am 6 foot 5, not too big a handicap except in planes. I'm sure they must have sent the first plane designers to a public place to measure a 1000 souls to get the average measurements for human beings. To decide where to go they spun a globe map around and stuck their finger on a spot with their eyes closed and it ended up being Tokyo where the average hight is 3 foot 6. So that's how they built the toilets and seats. Brushing teeth in the loo is the worst, trying to squeeze ones head in-between the gap between the tap and basin induces pressure on the brain and subsequent damage, getting the the stuff out of your mouth back into the basin is even worse, enough said. My second pet hate is eating meals on a plane, again there is only enough space for a 3 foot 6 body so I end up eating my food looking like a praying mantis, arms tucked in so that I doing bump my neighbours food out of their mouths. I cut my food up and pick the doggy tray up and feed myself baby style with a fork. I love it when they just dish out a nice roll instaed of the whole meal thing. I open the breakfast tray with trepidation each time as fake egg powder that is over-cooked becomes radioactive and my built-in geiger counter goes through the roof when it senses it.

Anyway, have to go hunting for more spires.........

My Asian hourglass seems to be slowly running out, more perhaps my Soju shotglass:-! I'm scheduled to finish the current project in mid August and go home for a few weeks and then start a new permanent job in the UK with Oracle. I will still be working on projects and because the group I will work for is pretty much global could end up in some funny corner of the globe again. But I will miss Asia a lot, it is so different and certain things do get under your skin, the food, culture, sights and smells, just the whole atmosphere.

I will NOT miss the Korean corporate lifestyle though, my theory of the country being better off if they could dump the whole 36+ year old management structure in the sea stills stands, even stronger. The handling of juniors by seniors to me borderlines on abuse. It's strange that Koreans will protest in the streets and burn flags and effigies for distant issues like G8 summits, trade agreements, etc. but when they step back into the office the boss is boss and to be revered. It's a bit of a false form of Confucianism that has been adapted to keep the bosses ensconced in comfort while their workers slave away, me thinks. The problem I have in addition to this is that it stifles initiative as workers are only concerned with keeping a cranky boss off their backs, it has to affect the Korean economy at some stage. Nowhere have I seen people hate their jobs and bosses more than I have seen it in Korea too. Deadlines are cast in concrete, one's sleeping pattern is variable so if you don't make the deadline just sleep less seems to be the general approach. My issue with that is that the human body is designed so that it needs rest to recuperate and if you overdo it the actual productive time on the job gets reduced dramatically, I have seen this in action too much. I have never had guys falling asleep on me while I talk to them like here or complain about being just totally exhausted. Lunchtimes, which fortunately are taken religiously, see sleeping bodies slumped over their desks everywhere. Us lazy expats have been fortunate, we get to go home at 7pm, even on Fridays, and boy, you gotta be on the job at 8.30 sharp or said boss will have your derior! I do really have huge sympathy with the regular Korean workers and most of them are very charming and sweet but just wish they would protect their interests as militantly as the Korean street protesters seeing as their government is seemingly incapable of doing so.

I had a trip to the Uk recently for the job interview, spent four nights in London and then five nights in Hong Kong having my Korean visa renewed. London is London, unique, English but yet extremely cosmopolitan, regal, charming mix of ancient and new, amazing tourist destination as there's so much to see, etc. Yet it also is the homebase for the world's English diaspora of which I am a member. My grandfather on my dad's side was born in Scotland in 1863! So it has a homecoming atmosphere to me.

The first time I flew into London was about six years ago on a few weeks work assignment. It was my first trip out of Africa as well so I watched with amazement as the in-plane moving map crept over all these names on the map that I had only read about before. Isn't one's first overseas trip always memorable? The fact that it happened to me later in life perhaps made it even more so. When we came in to land the little English style houses flashed by underneath the plane as if they were coming of a production line conveyor belt, ching, ching ching, same house after same house, all joined together and built with red bricks and red roof tiles and little red chimneys, like the production line in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all produced by little duplicate Oompa Loompas! One thing London does seem to be reasonably successful at is to mix it's old and modern architecture quite nicely except for a few abortions. Lot's of new homes are built in the old style but with modern interiors. Korea has this amazing ancient architectural building style with the quaint roof structures for their palaces yet none of their modern buildings reflect this, it's all bali bali (quick quick) produced modern concrete, tiling and fake marble. I have a theory that the original Korean apartment block was designed by an architect and then he died and the same blueprint is being used for all their apartments ever since, very repetitive and dull, yet the interioirs are sparkling and modern on the new blocks. The standard question of 'Do you have a Korean reference?' that gets asked every time we expats want to introduce a new computer something (why have us then if it all has to be Korean anyway:-) must have been asked here too, 'Who else has built this like that?'.

My first night in London was spent in a small hotel right on the northern side of Hyde park, a Best Western. The building was old and charming, including the lounge and staircases but the room was tiny, poky and disappointing so I moved to a Holiday Inn Express in Docklands the next day. I did enjoy strolling through Hyde Park and the nearby shopping areas. The Holiday Inn is quite new and modern with nice rooms, familiar like a MacDonalds Bigmac, standard stuff. I wanted to be in the Docklands area as it's one of the areas that has always fascinated me and I wanted to check it out as a possible area to stay in. Anything near water and boats gets me going and Docklands is a re-development of the old London docks area. Huge old warehouse and factory buildings have been converted into apartments and office blocks and a raft of new buildings have sprung up to complement them. On the whole I found it very charming and retro yet with a nice lively vibe. There's a Docklands Light Railway that runs on suspended tracks and stations are dotted all over Docklands so its nice for sightseeing. I went and had a look at the poor old burnt out Cutty Sark tea clipper that had caught fire just before I arrived in Greenwich, sad sight. I also made a point of having most of my meals in old style London pubs, they are quintessential English and offer good value for money. I'm not a big bangers and mash type but had nice roast beef and veggies, fish and chips and good lamb, etc. I did do a train trip out to Brighton on a miserable rainy day to have a look, suffice it to say that beaches are not England's strong point, not after South African, Mozambique and Indonesian ones. Their inter city trains are nice though. There also ain't nothing like the London subway, cranky, creaky, slow, crowded, old, etc yet it's a huge part of the fascination that's London, like a set of old cholesterol damaged arteries feeding it all day with it's lifeblood. It's the original subway too. I love the way the tunnels meander left and right and up and down like some huge blind mole had tunneled them without thinking too much of where he was going. Then there's the ringing 'Mind the gap!' audio message.

The first night I had a nice big ol steak in a steakhouse and a charming English couple plonked down next to me after having watched a musical show and we were chatting away like old acquaintances after a while, very homely on me foirst night. The offices I went to for the interview were near Liverpool Street station in a nice office area of the city. I explored around a lot, rode the Thames river boats a bit and did tons of walking.

Hong Kong was cool, a familiar face, one of the places I will miss a lot. I like the mix of Chinese Asian and the elements of colonial English that still remain. I watched England play Brazil in a soccer friendly at 3am in a pub and also South Africa play England in a rugby game, also late at night, many Poms were in attendance too!

So for now I am winding down slowly, D-47 at the moment. I miss home and family, would rather have gone home instead of to London but business is business, me supposes.

Traversing the expat world tends to lull one into a sense of isolation, being away from home and family on your own for long spells. I often maintain that at some stage on the long flight to Korea I morph from planet earth to planet Korea. When I get off the plane I'm in another world, can't read hardly anything, people, trains, neon signs, fax machines, photo copiers, washing machines, etc all speak a different language, like one had had a stroke and everything is mumbo-jumbled.

So it was with great anticipation that I headed home for a 'flyback', the company's term for our periodic home visits, more or less once every two months, nice company! It was my big five-oh birthday and Done` and I were going to have a combined birthday bash as she is my junior by only twenty days but junior she is, in that respect at least. Lots of family and friends were coming down to Cape Town too. The mother-in-law firstly, of course, along with two sisters-in-law were staying at a friends place while she was away. My brother Ian and family and me own mom also traveled down as did Melinde, the oldest, and appendage, dad-speak for daughter's boyfriend, whom we had not met before. Suffice it to say that she has good tastes! Then two sets of friends from our previous Gauteng home province also flew down. We had planned a big birthday bash for the Saturday when most would be there.

On the Friday night, however, we had an impromptu lobster braai (Safrican for barbeque) and some other delicious dishes and copious amounts of wine and other stuff. We were in a nice relaxed festive mood and festive we got. I can't remember my youngest, Lauren, ever being so friendly and telling us all how much she loved us, 'you are the best dad!!'. Now I would have believed that had I not been around when she lurched through her teens! The lobster was gob-smackingly delicious.

The main do was great too. South Africans do not know New England Clam Chowder soup which Done` and I have come to love in Korea, American though it is. Korea mimics America in most of its attempts at being Western and one of their better adoptees is Clam Chowder. The worst must be their adoption of the US accent, they walk around with little electronic dictionaries that get whipped out all day long and that even provide phonetics in American speech, claaass instead of stiff upper lip English class, in computer simulated American but made in Korea or China. Anyway, feeling that I should be the first to introduce this finest of American dishes to ex-colonial South Africa I hunted for a recipe on the Internet. Lo and behold all required tins of you guess what, New England Clam Chowder soup, and knowing that none such merchandise is to be found on our shelves I obtained fresh cleaned and de-shelled clams and proceeded to hack the recipe a bit. The bottom line is that it was declared delicious by my guests and emptied in no time at all, the fresh clams having done the trick, me thinks. The other stuff was good too, just can't remember what else we had!

I missed my dad though, first big family occasion without him lumbering around with a big stick as a walking stick, perusing the horizons and mumbling wisecracks and wise words and enjoying his family. Home was nice too, have not been there since October. The mountains and sea and wide open spaces do contrast a bit with Korea's 800 pair of feet per square kilometre!

We did a spring mountain climb yesterday with the people from our expat apartments, the done thing to do in Korea in Spring. We had looked a sorry sigh in our worst baggies and sneakers versus the immaculately dressed Korean mountaineers. We had the regulation Makoli drink and pjaon afterwards which was nice, in the newly landscaped Citizens Forest. The ubiquitous Asian cherry blossoms have come, blessed us with their blooms, and gone already too.

Ski season has just about departed us already. Winter has not been as cold as anticipated although we had a few cold dips. Currently we are seeing of the remainder of quite an severe cold spell. We had another ski at Ganchon. Mid February was Chinese New Year, a bit of a long weekend. I had enough Singapore Air miles accumulated to earn meself a free business class ticket to Bali so I treated myself to a Chinese New Year on the the island of the 'Dawning of the World'. The main idea was to catch up on some scuba diving as the last time was in Manado in the beginning of 2006. I stayed a night in Singpapore too, flown through there many times but never ventured out of the airport. It's a nice place to live and work but not really a big holiday destination, nice is the operative word. It was always a haven of civilization and a bit of Westernization after a stint in Indonesia or Korea on my way home.

I never realised how much I missed South East Asia, it does just have an air of relaxation and the bit of a familiar feel of Africa's aging infrastructure and mellow decay. I stayed in the Legian Beach Hotel in Kuta, having avoided Kuta before due to it's propensity for attracting angry bombers. This time I thought I would brave the threats. I was not disappointed. Balinese people are so friendly and inviting, the culture is also so steeped in Hindu and ancient traditions that it makes a fascinating change from our mundane modern existence. The hotel is in lovely green grounds on the wide, sandy Kuta beach, which is renowned for surfing as it has nice surfy waves.

Diving was at Tulamben and Padangbai. I have been to these places before but it was just nice to get back into the warm water. Tulamben never disappoints with its fish life. There was a Napoloen Wrasse gliding around that I had not seen before. I have always like Padangbai's quaint harbour.  The pubs and eateries around the Kuta blast site have just been rebuilt and life goes on. Bali is a women's place, myriads of shops and stalls, I missed not having Done` there as on the last trip we stayed near diving places a bit away from all the shops.

Next week I am going home and we are having our big five oh birthday bash, me being Done`s senior by twenty days.
 I have not been home since October last year so looking forward to it immensely. We have a lot of family and friends coming to visit too. It's hot summer back home still so back to warmer climates. I will miss the Korean winter, it's cold but not too severe, I am a bit of a winter baby, me thinks.

So into 2007 we are charging at a mean rate. And down or rather up to the ski slopes too. Tis ski season in Korea and there are slopes to be explored, rather to be tumbled down. Our first excursion was to Yong Pyong, the prince of Korean ski resorts near Gangneung on the east coast. The gang of expats on the project headed down on a Saturday evening by car, self driven, and got there in good time, roads not too busy. Only two basic slopes were open but to the ski-deprived masses even hazarding long queues was not going to keep them off the man-made snow. Some of our gang had never seen skis before so I was the instructor, consisting of 'This is how you put the stuff on and when you fall this is how you get your skis off, this is how you stop and turn, buzzofff!'. At the end of the day most were managing. It is a beautiful place though, worth at least one visit but wait till the season is in full swing and take the gondola to the top, about 3 kilometres then ski the long track back, about 5.7 kilometres. It is intermediate level and more like a winding mountain road that you ski with lovely views. The road back to Seoul was super busy, a Korean once referred to the Seoul motorways on Sunday afternoons as parking lots, all 12 million Seoul escapees are returning at once.

After digging around on the Internet (http://english.tour2korea.com/03Sightseeing/SKI/ski01_01.asp?kosm=m3_7&konum=subm1_1 is a good start) for a closer ski resort than Damian Vivaldi where I learnt to ski in 2004 (Bibaldi in Konglish:-) that is reachable by train (no traffic queues) I discovered LG Gangchon near Gangchon near Chuncheon, the capital of dakgalbi, a delightful rendition of spicy chicken, vegetables and dok (large rice noodles, huge things) fried in a huge heavy metal pan, hmm. Back to skiing though, but the dakgalbi is great, to be had once at least in Korea.  Done` was here and we decided to shoot out one day and see what LG Ganchon was like. The train ride is an hour and a half and then there are regular free shuttles to the resort. The ski side is not huge but the slopes are not busy at all, unusual for Korea, and they have fast lifts. We spent a delightful afternoon wizzing up and down, Done` being a reluctant newbie but at the end of the day she was managing quite nicely.

We have been back there about half a dozen times this season already with our expat gang and have had good fun. It is a nice mix of easy accessibility, ultra short lift queues, good rental stuff and fun slopes. We discovered that they have free shuttle busses to and from various locations in Seoul as well although the Gangchon train ride is nice and scenic too. Our two girls were here for Christmas and New Year and we were out there twice. They had never skied before either so I had my teaching hat on, again. I think they enjoyed it, Lauren's shrieks and screams and groans on the last day when we went down a bit of an intermediate slope attesting to that, I believe. She did do some ploughing into the snow en-route as well, not snow ploughing. Melinde had a bit of a bad fall on her last run and we had the tobogan take her down but she has recovered in the meantime.

It was thir first time in Seoul and felt very surreal, I don't connect my kids with being here. We explored a lot, all the usual touristy Seoul type things. They were a bit numbed after I dragged them through Namdaemun and Meoyngdong on the first day. The downtown Christmas lights were stunning. It was good an cold too, being winter here and the family is not used to Korean extremes. It snowed a week before and a week after they left, a pity, but nature is like a grumpy w*f*, unpredictable at best. I was in a state of bombshock when they left but fortunately Done` got delayed for a week so that eased it a bit. I was at Yong Pyong again last weekend skiing and I could here Lauren's shrieks reverberating off the mountain walls, was a bit sad. One thinks you hatch, match and dispatch your kids and when they are grownup they depart but mine are 21 and 25 and still a huge part of one's life.

My mom has been going through a tough depression phase after my dad passed away but is strongly on the recovery path for which we are thankful but she suffered quite a bit. She had my Canadian sister, Mandy visiting for a few weeks and now her own sister from the US is with her. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of my Aunt Beth and American Uncle Gerry visiting on the farm. We would collect them at Bethlehem station. The reunions were something to behold, huge screams of delight and cryings and huggings. I was fascinated by my American family. My uncle and I built up a cool relationship, lots of hunting and exploring on our farm. The fact that he was an airline pilot and Vietnam vet added to the fascination.

Coming weekend we are skiing at Vivaldi again, going with the residents in our apartments, hoping there are no newbies again.

This is a bit of a catch-up post. The year has flown by at such a mean rate, nearly done in already. In-between the World Cup and my dad’s passing a bunch of stuff happened and since then another bunch as well.

 

My youngest sister Mandy lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and her oldest son, Timothy, got married in July so I decided to go. It’s about a ten hour flight from Seoul to Vancouver and then a few to Edmonton. The flight in was on a nice clear day and the splendid Canadian scenery was on splendid display. Suffice it to say that Vancouver is one of the places I could see myself living, all the elements I need are there, mountains, water, snow, scenic city, etc. Edmonton is nice too but too bloody flat. We grew up on a farm in the North Eastern Freestate mountains so they are ingrained into us a bit. I can see that  my sis Mandy likes to escape the Edmonton flatness to the Rockies every now and then, my visit being one of them excuses to do so. Needless to say their majesty is splendid.

 

When I arrived the guys said ‘We are having Timothy’s stag party tomorrow’, ok, I thought, interesting, always a reason for a good party but their idea of a stag party was a bit different, a day shooting clay pigeons and an array of other death inflicting devices. Did I mention Mandy is married to a minister and Timothy has just completed his ministry training too. It started reminding me of Texas, having had a Texan on a few of my recent projects who was forever extolling the virtues of different types of weaponry and George Bush. The connection got even stronger when all the participants started arriving in various 4 wheel drive vehicular variants non which had an engine capacity of less than 4 litres, keeping in mind that back home we have two 1.6 litre VWs. While we were driving to the shooting range I remarked that Canadians drive the same big vehicles and shoot the same big guns as Texans and the only difference was that Canadians could not vote for George Bush. ‘And if we could we would!’ blurted out the driver, stroking the barrel of his 12 gauge shotgun lovingly while he depressed the accelerator a bit and the big V8 roared in approval. Welcome to Texan Canada! The shooting was fun though. Timothy, the geek, did not keep his head far enough from the scope of a hunting rifle and got a deepish gash between the eyes which had to be doctored up and covered in makeup for the wedding. The wedding was cool, poor Timothy managing to survive till then as he received an endless stream of abuse from myself and his dad’s brother who was there too. It was a nice trip.

 

After that it was back to work. We have an interesting gang of expats on the project. There are two Texans, another American lady who grew up in China and is Chinese and happens to live in Texas too, an American Chinese guy whose family originate from Taiwan, A Malaysian Chinese now living in Australia and a Pakistani guy living out of Australia too and a Pilipino guy as well as myself from Nam-Africa. It makes very non-cosmopolitan Korea a bit more interesting. We hang out a bit together. It’s interesting to see the foreign Asian component’s perspective and impressions of Seoul. They are in-between, foreign but still passable as local Koreans. They love their Asian foods and therefore much more adventurous at trying various Korean foods. My Korean diet has expanded quite a bit on my first project’s here before.

 

About a month after my dad passed away I went home for a week on a flyback. It was nice to be back again as I last was home when I left in April, having used up a work sponsored flyback to go to Canada of which I only have fond memories. There are lots of disadvantages associated with working away from home so one has to work the advantages real hard and the major one is the travel and exploration side. This I have nearly neglected a bit apart from some major trips but weekend getaways can make a huge difference to one’s psyche. Throughout the hot humid summer days we tended to stay indoors and get out at night and I regret that a bit, should have headed for the beaches. I suppose after a year of scuba diving in Indonesia and exploring islands the Korean beaches seemed a bit bland. The onset of autumn and winter has made us get out more often. A few weekends ago we rented a SUV and drove up to Chuncheon, a town in the North East on a bit of a lake and famous for dakgalbi, a spicy chicken and veg stirfry. We enjoyed the mountains. The Sunday afternoon traffic back into Seoul was hectic, I now know why I have overheard Koreans referring to the expressways as parking lots.

 

Two weekends ago I booked a trip to Tokyo just to get away a bit. I have two Korean friends from a previous project working and studying there as well. I stayed in a hotel in Daiba, one of the islands in the Tokyo harbour. The trip was most enjoyable. I walked my feet to stumps on Saturday, exploring various areas of the city. Japanese and Korean culture has a lot of similarities but I found Tokyo very different, perhaps as it has had more Western exposure. Along with Vancouver it gets classified as a city I could live in.

 

Last weekend we caught the train to Suwon, just south of Seoul, to go and explore Hwaseong, the old Korean fortress in the city. It is a world heritage site and well worth the visit. There is an old palace and about 5 kilomtres worth of old fortress walls to explore. http://eng.suwon.ne.kr/sub_frame.asp?parent_id=sub_04_01&page_id=sub_04_01&root_id=sub_main4 Travel is easy, there is a subway to Suwon from Seoul but we preferred the comfortable regular train just as a treat. Outside the new station is an Information booth with excellent maps and they can give directions, a short bus or taxi ride away, taxi is preferable, me thinks. A very worthwhile day trip from Seoul, I must add. The autumn leaves blended lovely with the very impressive old walls, a pity about the pretty drab Suwon surroundings resplendent with the regulation spread of standard Korean apartment blocks. I think an architect in the sixties or so drew up a plan for an apartment block, got it rubber stamped by the Korean government, was then shot as a North Korean spy and since then all the blocks have been built off this plan. The old style Korean building looks so lovely and full of ancient character, why don’t they design new ones to have similar looks? I love the intricate roof designs.

 

So that brings me up to date with the present, more or less. My mom has been going through a tough mental time since my dad passed away and we are all concerned about her but she is receiving some good treatment. I do think about my dad a bit. He was so larger than life, always cracking jokes about stuff and just commenting on life and things. At one stage I could just imagine him rumbling down the ramparts of Hwaseong and staring over the Korean plains around it. It’s strange that one can anticipate his passing as we did, due to his illness, but yet it can still leave such a huge void.