levork.org

On a much needed vacation, climbing in Skaha or hanging around Vancouver. (If you’re in either area then, give me a ring!)

I’ve been meaning to write up last weekend’s trip, but the severe cold has made it a chore. Well, I’m mostly over that now, so here we go.

A week before going to LA I had planned on going to some theme parks, since I’ve never been to one in my life. So around noon on Friday, I found myself on the Metro to Universal Studios. It was an easy trip – the 7th and Figueroa stop was across the street from the Hotel, and there was a Universal City stop, which, I’ve been told, only opened last year – lucky me!

After the usual line up I handled over my discount coupon (all SIGGRAPH full attendees had one – I scammed Wayne’s). From then on, I wandered around the place with no real plan and managed to do quite a bit – the “Jurassic Park III Summer Splash” (just an excuse to get completely soaked – great start to a hot day), “Backdraft” (watch shit blow up from about 20 feet away – pyro is always good), “The Mummy Returns: Chamber Of Doom” (just a haunted house – extremely lame), the backlot tour (interesting glimpse of “Hollywood magic”, mixed in with some stupid contrived excitement – “Oh no, the mechanical Kong is attacking our tram!”), “Terminator 2: T3D” (footage of dated CG effects mixed in with Arnold Schwarzenegger, interspersed with live actors pretending to be Linda Hamilton and Arnie) and Waterworld (coolest of all – seemingly dangerous live stunts amidst explosions on a lagoon).

After the day of fun by myself my plans were to hook up with Jeff, and we were to meet at 8 by the Globe outside Universal. Around 8:30 I was concerned and called him up on his cell; it turned out his car had died, and he was picking up a rental at Long Beach. Poor Jeff – after that lousy episode, he was going to have a weekend of non stop miscellaneous and annoying car trouble.

I headed back to the hotel and after finally picking me up, we headed out to Roscoe’s House Of Chicken ‘N Waffles – a rather dingy dive in Hollywood with dark wood walls, formica covered tables. And yes, they serve fried chicken, and waffles, you order them at the same time. And the waffles come with butter and maple syrup. Oddest dinner combination I’ve ever seen, but it turned out to be the tastiest fried chicken I’ve eaten in a long while, and probably the best waffles ever.

On Saturday, after some wrangling (“Disneyland – nah, too crowded. Sea World – nah, too lame. San Diego zoo – been there, done that.”) Jeff suggested a trip to the J. Paul Getty Museum. Art? In LA? It turned out to be a good suggestion. The Getty is in the Santa Monical hills, right off the San Diego freeway. The parking structure is at street level, with a private monorail going up to the museum itself. Just looking around at the severe landscaping at the station at the base of the monorail Jeff and I were shaking our heads and thinking the same thing: Gattaca. “Modernist” hardly covers the architecture of the place – at first glance, the entire compound looks exactly like how a genetics research facility should look like – gleaming white walls, razor sharp lines, perfect geometric arcs, shining windows, not a speck of dirt anywhere. On close up though, there is an interesting twist: all the gleaming walls are made up of precisely cut blocks of travertine marble (the same stuff they used in the Coliseum in Rome, and apparently from the same quarry), with the outer surface rough hewn – the stuff looks ancient. From the immaculately landscaped grounds of the museum, you get a great view of what there is to see of L.A. And the contents of the museum itself were very good. They have a well rounded European pre-1900 art collection, including my favorite: some brilliantly preserved medieval illuminated manuscripts. There was also a wing of ancient Roman artifacts, which isn’t part of the permanent collection but is there temporarily due to the refurbishing of their permanent home in Malibu, the J. Paul Getty Villa – how much money did this Getty dude have anyways?

The evening was spent driving back through Bel Air and then wandering around near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood looking at stars in the pavement. When we got back to the parked car we discovered a guy in a beat up SUV in an awkward position, and we watched bemused as he scraped our rental car. Then there was some arguing and threats before all decided the damage was minimal and off we went to get some dinner. As it turned out, for the rest of the weekend the car signal lights were on the fritz – possible side effect result of the incident? Fortunately the rental agency hasn’t noticed to date.

Sunday, we got up bright and early and by 8:30 were lining up for tickets to Disneyland. When we got in, it was “Indiana Jones” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” in quick succession, and then: “Space Mountain”. The first roller coaster I’ve ever been on in my sheltered life, and hopefully – the last. After that horribly nauseating experience it was the Jungle Cruise with the snarky guide (preprogrammed – sorry if I shattered any illusions, Mimi!), and then another assault on the inner ear with Star Tours which left me in fairly bad shape. I vaguely remember that we went on the Haunted Mansion trip (lame), then it was lunch at the Blue Bayou. After that the crowds were pretty thick and the lines were long, so we only braved one more ride. I always thought that the Simpsons episode where the family goes to Duff Gardens was an exaggeration – in particular, the part where Lisa goes on the boat ride and hallucinates after drinking the “water”, all while Animatronic ™ creations sing, dance, and go nuts. Well, now I know better. The “it’s a small world” ride is so EXACTLY like that. Dragged Jeff through the 20 minute line up, and got into the atmosphere, happily singing all the way through the mind warping caverns full of evil Animatronic dancing automatons.

After that, it was back to LAX, and that was the end of my LA trip. Next year, it’ll be San Antonio and the Alamo.

Got up at 6 am today, grabbed breakfast from the buffet, checked out of the hotel, and was on the #2 Seoul subway line heading towards Kyongbokkung by 7:30 am.

On the way out of the subway I noticed a couple of young men standing on the same step in the middle of the stairway, scrutinizing all passerby carefully. I wondered at this freakishness until I realised they were plainclothes policemen and stifled any smirking I was about to do.

This time while wandering around the Kyongbokkung grounds I realized there was indeed an entry into the palace and that it wasn’t completely closed off like I had thought on Tuesday. So I paid my 700 won (around 50 US cents – Korea is cheap for tourists!) and wandered around the grounds.

The first step was the throne hall – Geonjeongjeon – which was annoyingly enough under scaffolding. It was probably the most impressive building given the height (3 stories, at least), but there was barely anything to be seen under the construction, so the only thing to do was take a panorama shot of the courtyard in front of the hall. I wandered around the rest of the place and took random pictures of things – Manchunjeon (“Hall of Ten Thousand Springs”) (the King’s bedroom), Cheonchujeon (“Hall of a Thousand Autumns”) (used as an geek office – “the cradle of the nation’s scientific development”), Gyonghoeru Pavilion (the “floating pavilion”), and Hywangwonjeong (“Pavilion of Far Reaching Fragrance”).

The Folk Museum of Korea was also on the Koyngbokkung palace grounds so I dropped in for a “this is how Koreans lived in the Paleolithic/Chosun Dynasty/Modern eras!” history lesson that lasted an hour. Then it was off to Insadong-gil, which is a street close to the old palaces packed with stores selling calligraphy materials, paper supplies, ceramics, wooden masks, and other antiques and art goods. I ended buying a set of nice ceramic tea cups as gifts for various coworkers and relatives, and was able to practice a bit of Korean – olmayeyo? – “how much?” – although I didn’t feel like haggling with pisaeyo – “too expensive!”.

It was then off to Tapkol (“Pagoda”) Park. Unfortunately it was closed off – I couldn’t tell whether it was for construction purposes. However there were a crowd of people outside demonstrating against Japan, carrying placards urging the boycotting of Japanese-made products. Anti-Japanese sentiment does seem to pretty high here, and given the history I was trying to immerse myself in, it was at least somewhat understandable (if hatred against any group of people can ever be understandable). Nearly every palace building I went to indicated that it was a replica, rebuilt after being burned down multiple times in the past by Japanese invasions and in particular, the Japanese occupation between 1910-1935. For example, of the over 200 buildings once at Kyongbokkung, only 10 were left by the end of the Japanese occupation. One gets the feeling that a large part of their cultural heritage has been irrevocably eliminated, and that the Koreans aren’t too happy about it.

I left Tapkol Park and headed over to the second palace of the day, Deoksugung (also spelled Toksugung). Here, I looked around the Royal Museum at the Sokchojon hall, again on the palace grounds, where artifacts of the Korean dynasties were stored. Again, the history of the palace and the museum drove home the long history of invasions – it was originally a manor of a King’s brother, but was turned into a royal residence after all the palaces of Seoul were destroyed in the Japanese invasion of 1593. And many of the museum artifacts were in fact things which were from the belongings of the last Kings of Korea, while they were held hostage in Japan; it seems that most of the cultural treasures from the palaces were shipped to Japan during the occupation and are still in private collections.

The picture tour wrapped up at Nandaemun (literally, “South Big Gate” – it sounds the same in Chinese as in Korean). I also ventured into Nandaemun market, but it was the same as any other Asian outdoor market, i.e. strong smells, loud, lots of pushy people, and counterfeit goods. So I packed it in and headed to the airport for the flight back which sucked – it was full and my neighbour was obnoxious.

And that was the Korea trip. I had fun, ultimately, but next year I think I’m choosing to go to Annecy instead, no matter what.