South Korea - Day 3

Our third day in Korea was Monday - the first day of the International Astronautical Congress. The day began with opening ceremonies at 10am. It seemed like the Korean delegation went all out putting it together. The ceremonies began and ended with a number of cultural performances, including drumming, singing, and dancing. One of the MCs for the event was Soyeon Yi, the Korean astronaut. highlight, however, was a speech by the President of South Korea. Showing off their technical prowess, each chair in the auditorium included a headset that translated the speeches into eight different languages.

The main event of the day was a panel by the heads of major world space organizations - USA, Russia, Canada, ESA, India, Japan, and Korea, which was pretty interesting. They all went over future plans and reinforced the importance of international collaboration.

In the evening there was another big opening ceremonies event - this time outdoors at the Deajeon Expo Park. There was a choir, a taekwondo performance, and the mayor of Daejeon came out dressed in a space suit and pronounced Daejeon a "Space Municipal City." This was all followed by fireworks. Quite an experience.

South Korea - Day 2

On Sunday morning, we started the day by getting a cup of coffee at ‘Angel-in-us’ a coffee house chain right by our hotel. The coffee was pretty good and the café was very cute.


At 10am, we met up with Susie again, and walked to the royal palace from the Joseon dynasty. It was very beautiful, with mountains on one side and the city sky-scrapers on the other. The complex is very big, with lots of different buildings and rooms. I think I took about a million pictures.
After seeing the castle, we headed to Dakdo Bluefin Tuna for a sushi lunch. The first dish that came out was very cold sashimi laid over rocks to keep it cold. It was a different style than I’d ever had before. We also had a dish to hold two dipping spices – one with sesame oil and salt and the other for soy sauce and wasabi. We were served a rice-porridge type dish and something like miso soup. They also brought out some tuna sushi more similar to the style I’m used to, which tasted very good. In our never-ending lunch, they then brought out a bowl of spicy rice, vegetable, and seafood along with a spicy seafood soup. There were sharing places of another type of cooked fish and a kind of sashimi salad. And there was kimchi. We weren’t able to finish everything, but it was a great meal. (And at the end, we found out it was less than $10 per person!)


After lunch, we walked back to the hotel, to get our bags, and decided to head to Daejeon so we would have time to settle in a get the lay of the land before the conference started on Monday. We had a bit of trouble finding our hotel, but did manage eventually. Technically it was a motel, not a hotel - with 3000 conference participants coming to Daejeon they basically booked conference participants in every available room. Ours was... interesting. One entire wall was covered in blue glitter and there were no closets. On the other hand, we had a nice flat screen TV, computer, fast internet, and surround sound.


Daejeon is known as a science and technology capital and has a famous hotspring spa, but otherwise it’s not a big tourist city. It was a bit difficult to find a café, so we ended up getting coffee (which wasn’t very good) at one of the hotels, only to find that it was almost $7 a cup!

From the hotel, we caught a shuttle bus to the Daejeon Convention Center where the conference was being held. They were having a young professionals reception, so Jeff and I thought we’d check it out. We ran into a few space policy people we knew from DC, which was nice. The reception had Korean drinks and food, which let us try some things and saved us from needing to find dinner. By the time the event ended at 8pm, Jeff and I were exhausted again, and were asleep shortly after getting home at 9pm.

South Korea - Day 1

Jeff and I caught our first flight in DC at 9am on Friday, but it wasn’t until 4:45pm on Saturday that we arrived in Seoul.


Since I stayed up until 3am doing last minute packing, I barely even remember the 9am flight to Atlanta – I was asleep before the plane took off. The flight from Atlanta to Seoul was about 15 hours – long enough for me to read the entire background section of our Lonely Planet Korea book, and to watch 3 movies – Sister’s Keeper, X-Men Origins – Wolverine, and the Soloist. (I was very happy when I saw that our flight would have the screen in the back of the seat that you can control – the trip is so much nicer when you can start and stop movies at will.) Since we were on Korea Air, we had our first Korean food of the trip – Bibimbop, a bowl of rice, veggies, spicy red pepper sauce, and sesame oil that you mix together yourself.


When we arrived in Seoul, we caught the airport but to City Hall downtown, and then started wandering around trying to find our hotel. We didn’t have exact directions, but we knew it was close-by. Luckily, we spotted the reflection of our hotel sign on another building and made our way there. As we passed through a park to get to the hotel we saw a stage featuring a group of guys performing dances set to Michael Jackson music. Pretty cool.


Shortly after we got to our hotel, our friend Susie came to meet us. Susie had been in Jeff’s econ program, and I had met her a few times. She lives in Seoul and offered to show us around.


She took us out to a restaurant called ‘Bulgogi Brothers’ which specializes in bulgogi – a traditional Korean food. It’s beef and some vegetables cooked at your table. Also, in Korea they served meals with lots of little side dishes, including kimchi – spicy, pickled cabbage. Susie ordered a feast, so we got to try lots of different things. We also had a raspberry wine, which was very tasty.


After dinner we walked along a stream that had recently been renovated and was very busy at night with families and friends walking along the sides. We also went to an area with two statues surrounded by a water fountain choreographed to music.


By the time we finished our walk (around 9:30pm) Jeff and I were both about to fall asleep on our feet. We went back to the hotel and I fell asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. Luckily I was able to sleep through the night (until almost 9am), but Jeff was wide awake starting at about 5am.

Yay, Twins!

On Tuesdays I have class from 4pm to 7pm, so it was while browsing the internet (during a break) that I realized the twins were playing their tie-breaker game against Detroit. I monitored the game online, but class ended in the 6th inning, with the twins down by two. I packed up my stuff, and headed to the metro to get back home, figuring I'd probably miss the rest of the game.

After getting off the metro at U Street, I was chatting with Jeff on the phone and walked by a sports bar - MoMo's, surprised to see the game was still going - it was only the top of the eighth, and the Twins were up by one! Then, as I was standing there, Detroit hit a homerun and tied it up again. I told Jeff to come up and meet me at the sports bar - it seemed harmless to put off work for two innings so I could catch the end of the game.

I ordered a couple New Castles and some BBQ Wings, which I decided would count for dinner. Also, the wings there are amazing - the menu says they're ranked in the top 5 best wings in DC, and I can definitely see why. The game stayed tied, so it went into extra innings. We thought it might be over when Detroit got a run in the top of the 10th, but the Twins got a run also, so the game went on. Jeff was a bit anxious to get home and finish his work, but I kept insisting, "Just one more inning! ...unless they're still tied." Finally, at the top of the twelfth inning, Jeff said he was headed home in the middle of this inning - luckily he was convinced (again) to stay, and he saw the twins get a run in the bottom of the 12th to win it!

One of the coolest things was that in this random bar in DC that I wandered into was filled with Twins fans! So there was lots of cheering and clapping throughout the game. Also, I had told Jeff earlier about the twins song that goes, "We're gonna win twins, we're gonna score," etc. and after the Twins won the game, all the people in the bar randomly started singing it - so Jeff knew it wasn't something I just made up. ;)

We ended up being at MoMo's for 2 hours instead of the 30 min. or so I'd expected, but it was a pretty fun way to spend the evening.

Never use freecreditreport.com!

I just had one of the most frustrating experiences. A few weeks ago, Jeff and I decided to check our credit reports - you're allowed to check them for free once a year. So, I headed to freecreditreport.com, which I thought seemed like a logical place to get access - it's a big, well known company. There's a big button on the first page that says "Click here to see your free credit report and score." You have to enter some information, including your credit card number, which is tells you is "required to establish your account," but the site also said that my "credit card will not be charged during the free trial period." Once you get through that section, a shopping cart receipt indicated that the total was $0.00. I viewed my credit reports and moved on. About a week later, I saw a $15 charge on my credit card! So, I did some internet investigating, and it turns out there are a ton of people who have gotten caught by this scam. When you check your report, it automatically signs you up for a 'credit monitoring service' that is $15 per month - and it continues to bill you each month until you cancel. You can't cancel online and you can't cancel using the automated system. You need to call during business hours when to cancel your account. I really would have thought that a big company like Experion (who runs freecreditreport.com) would not be able to continue operating like this - it's clearly set up to mislead people and then make it very difficult for them to cancel and/or get their money back.

The moral of the story is: don't use freecreditreport.com. It's awful. According to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) annualcreditreport.com is the one to use - it actually is free and not just a trick.

**Update** I called today and was able to cancel my account, and get a refund (though they say that it is not their policy to provide refunds). To their credit, the person on the phone was nice and reasonable and I spent very little time on hold. Not an excuse for the questionable methods of getting people signed up, but at least it wasn't as difficult to reverse as I thought it might be.

Neera and Shreyas Visit DC

Last Saturday, my friend, Neera, and her boyfriend, Shreyas, visited Jeff and I in DC for the day. Neera and I have been very good friends since the first few days at college (we lived next door in the same suite), but now that she lives in Urbana-Champagne, IL, I don't see her very often. In fact, in two years, I had never had the chance to meet her boyfriend.

Now Shreyas is doing a postdoc in Philadelphia, and Neera was in town visiting, so a visit finally seemed possible. They came in to Union Station around 9am, and we started the day by getting some coffee. We talked about the research each of us are doing (we're all in PhD programs, except Shreyas, who just finished his PhD). It was awesome to have time to just sit and chat!

From there we headed down to the Mall - it was the National Book Festival, so there were stands all over, author's speaking, and books for sale. We didn't stay to watch any of the speeches, but just wandered around.

We ended up walking all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial, when it started raining. Luckily for us it was just a light sprinkle.

We then walked to the White House, and from there to Gallery Place. Having put in quite a few miles on foot, we were ready to sit and eat lunch. We had pizza at Ella's, which Jeff's cousin had recommended we try. The food was great - we had a really tasty salad and shared a couple pizzas.

After a long lunch, we walked back to Jeff's and my apartment. Each year, Neera, Janet (another college friend), and I get together, just to make sure we see each other even though we live in different cities. This year, we decided to expand the trip to include our significant others, so that all six of us can hang out for the first time ever! We decided to do a long-weekend trip over New Year's Eve. We got Janet on the phone and decided on a location - Austin, TX - that we could all find reasonable flights to from our various cities. We bought tickets, so the plan is now set.

By the time we got that all figured out and drank some tea, it was time to go to dinner. We headed up to U Street. We ate at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant - Dukem. Neera's friend, Jason, met up with us there. As always, the food was amazing. (So much so, that we ate it all before we remembered to ask for a photo.)

With only a little more than an hour before Neera and Shreyas needed to catch their train, we headed a couple blocks over to Tabaq, which has a cute atrium bar and good mojitoes. Time flew by, and before long the day was over!

My White Paper

For the past year or so, I've been working on a white paper at work, and it was just released the other day. Yay!

Here's the press release.

And here's where to find the full paper!