ideometric

Article about Kaiser focusing on design to improve the health care experience.

Though hospitals will end up looking better, these efforts aren’t about decorating, they’re about outcomes. Numerous studies point to the benefits of the design strategies and environmental interventions KP has proposed and implemented. Factors like the quality and intensity of light, access to natural light, the noise level in a room, the privacy afforded by single-patient rooms — all of these affect patient health, satisfaction, soundness of sleep and speed of healing. Views of nature have been shown to decrease depression, pain, stress and even length of hospital stays.

I’ve visited a few hospitals in Seoul and designs vary – some feel very institutional, and look like something from the Soviet Union with dull steel, beige equipment, and dark green walls covered in dark stains. Others, like Severance hospital, feel more like a shopping mall or airport terminal with bright lights, modern design, comfortable waiting rooms, Starbucks cafes and other amenities that make the whole experience a lot more pleasant. I particularly liked the flower gift shop right outside the emergency room at the Gangnam Severance. That’s entrepreneurship.

Caffe Artigiano in Korea has a new location near Gwanghwamun  subway station on Line 5 (광화문역). Take exit 7 and head West (I think that’s a left). The tiny, unassuming espresso bar is a minute or two walking distance.

The space is dominated by a huge four group espresso machine. They have a grinder that automatically doses and tamps, which seems to ensure shot quality. Haven’t tried any milk drinks yet.  Sadly they only have paper cups, no demitasses for espresso. This is a tiny space for grabbing a drink to go, not for lounging.

See my post about their Gosok Terminal cafe here.

There’s an article in the Korea Times detailing some of the current issues in Korean internet policy. The government is expanding its regulation of internet use, mandating the collection of personal data (equivalent of social security ID) for sites with over 100,000 visitors and increasing the powers of law enforcement to intercept data and invade privacy. This is coming up against companies like Google that refuse to comply with demands for personal information gathering (actually the article states that Google is the only major site that refused…interesting). The end result being a counter-productive incentive to ditch restrictive native web services in favor of foreign competition. Good job.

I’m curious how this is being sold to the public. What rhetoric is being used? Or is it just unashamedly clamping down on political freedom of speech vis-a-vis anonymity online?

South Korea narrowly avoided falling into recession during the first quarter of this year, supporting hopes that the economy may at least be bottoming out as stimulus measures take hold.

The South Korean economy, among the biggest in the region, grew 0.1 from the previous three months, rebounding from a previous 5.1 percent quarter-on-quarter contraction, and surprising many analysts who had expected the recent quarter to show another, though slight, decline.

NYT

Here’s to hoping that this will start to boost the value of the Won, which has been depressingly low ever since I got here.

Here’re some more photos from wandering around alleyways in Seoul. Whenever I start taking pictures of a wall or texture, everyone walking by suddenly gets real curious why the foreigner is so interested in some crusty poster hahah. That’s kind of the point, though.

These were mostly taken around Kungook university (건대).

Enjoy the beauty in the mundane, find the art in the everyday :] for fun I think I’m gonna self-publish a little book of photos, using Lulu or something similar.

A few shots taken while wandering around Seoul. Drawing lots of attention from curious people while taking these. The pictures remind me of Kayo Dot’s music, which I love.

“Tell me why world, unfathomable and good,
The beauty of everything is infinite and cruel.”

www.myspace.com/kayodot

Good post on the problems with Korean cyberspace.

 http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2009/01/some-more-thoughts-on-the-korean-internet-and-cultural-barriers-to-content-production.html

For a while now, a Korean blogger under the name Minerva has drawn a lot of attention for his writing on the economic collapse going against the official line of the Korean government. Some speculated that he was an insider posting anonymously.

Now someone alleged to be Minerva has been arrested, and he turns out to be a 30-something with little more than a 2 year degree.  It’s part of a seemingly wider effort to curtail freedom of speech and press, as the major broadcasters are coming under threat of greater control and some officials advocate legislation to do away with anonymity on the Korean parts of the internet.

Among governments struggling to contain the global financial crisis, South Korea set a rare and controversial example over the weekend by arresting a popular blogger who was accused of undermining the financial markets but worshipped by many Koreans as an online guru.

The man, known throughout South Korea by the pen name of Minerva – after the Roman goddess of wisdom – upset the government with his doomsayer’s forecasts for the economy and his satirical attacks on President Lee Myung Bak’s policies.

But when some of his predictions on the markets proved right, he gained a huge following among South Koreans fretting over an uncertain economic future.

Park Dae Sung’s arrest on Saturday on charges of spreading false online information with a harmful intent – a crime punishable by up to five years in prison – came as the South Korean government was escalating its efforts to fight the fallout of the global financial turmoil.

[...]

The government camp hopes that Park’s case will lend weight to the Lee government’s attempt to regulate the country’s vigorous and unruly online communities. But the main opposition Democratic Party has accused the government of gagging the Internet, a popular venue for anti-government criticism.

The story is less about the content of Minerva’s posts than the government response, which is a great embarrassment and disappointment. Korea is so advanced in many fields of IT development, yet displays such backwardness in action and policy.

IHT story here.

I bought a Sigma 10-20mm F4 wide angle zoom. Here’re a few shots. Haven’t had much time to do more than snap shots.

I wanted the Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 – low light performance would be much better, and the Sigma is deficient there. But because of the exchange rate, the going price was around 750,000KRW. More than I wanted to spend. Oh well.

Koreans work too many hours. Some jobs in Korea operate on a 6 day work week.

A few photos I took at school this week with the Sigma 30mm F1.4.

So I recently purchased a Sigma 30mm F1.4 lens for my D40X. I wanted a sharper lens, with a wide aperture to play around with bokeh. I’m still such a newb when it comes to photography, but I’m having a lot of fun messing around with it.

It’s so much sharper than my Tamron 18-200mm that I sold that lens today. I don’t really miss the zoom that much, and for longer range shots I can just crop and end up with an image that’s as sharp as the Tamron.

And the shallow depth of field is a lot of fun for isolating specific things in the image. Now I’m considering picking up a 10-20mm Sigma for wide-angle indoor shots, specifically for a cafe review project.

99% of the kids at my school are wearing the exact same black North Face parka. And the ones that can’t afford it have fakes, which other kids love to point out to me “TEACHA – HIS JACKET IS IMITATION.”

It reminds me of last summer, when literally every other person I saw on the street was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. Until it went out of fashion.

Photos taken at the 7th Annual Seoul Int’l Cafe Show

There were tons of people and lots of free samples at the Korea International Cafe Show and Barista Championship. I drank way too much coffee as anyone who saw me later that day can attest.

If you’re wondering what it’s like to see a barista championship, well, imagine going to a cafe and watching other people enjoy the drinks. It kind of sucks.

Luckily there was a concurrent Cafe Show and “Fancy Food Festival” to keep people occupied. These Japanese siphon brewers were quite popular. Big crowds enjoyed the spectacle and drama of coffee making that looks more like a science experiment. It’s too bad there aren’t any explosions involved. Someone should work on that.

Unfortunately none of the espresso really tasted that great. Nor did the coffee really stand out compared to what I’m used to in the States, or even from the better cafes in Korea. The water was always too hot, or the beans over-roasted, or the proportions wrong, etc. But at least they’re trying, and with this much interest one hopes that quality will spread as competitors up their games.

Best of all, everything was free. Either I walked past the ticket booth without realizing it, or they thought I was press because I put “writer” on my name badge and walked around with my camera.

Photo taken in Myeongdong (명동)

Dark alleys are my favorite places in Korea. The space between places where things are stored, stacked, pushed aside, strung up, hung out, layered and faded. Smoke breaks, back rooms, loitering, sketchy figures, trash piles and cabbage laid out to dry (this is Korea after all). The life sustaining exoskeletons of pipe and wire. The honest patina of street grime and peeling stickers advertising who-knows-what. I wonder how many people never let their eyes wander to the margins of the world they live in.

Photos taken around Samcheongdong (삼청동)

It’s almost winter in Korea. It’s a bit odd seeing the seasons change, and living without daylight savings time. The days are noticeably shorter, daylight recedes further each day, the trees have changed color and then shed their leaves, the temperature is dropping in sudden waves of harsh cold fronts.

Growing up in LA’s artificially perfect climes, it’s like realizing you live on Earth for the first time. Hi Earth. Nice to meet you. Nature? What’s that? Find the irony in having that revelation here in one of the world’s largest metropolises.

I like it.

So, I really wanted a pizza delivered and I called Pizza Hut.

“Hello! do you speak english?”
“…..no!”
“uh…”
“Will you call again? Pizzzaaaaaa huuuuuuutttt!!!!” *click*

Now, I know enough Korean to place an order with no stress. The problem is that I can’t understand half of what they say back to me.

I finally ordered my pizza through a friend that’s fluent. It took 45 minutes to get it right, hahah.

“Brown clouds” made up of toxic chemicals are blotting out the sun in large parts of Asia, a U.N. report said.

Awesome! 

Picture above I found online, it’s Korea when the yellow dust & pollution from China blows in.

It was raining when I went shopping. So they gave my bag a jacket. Makes sense in a pedestrian friendly public-transit city.

Walking around one of my classes today, a girl stopped me to say that she visited her uncle in New York last winter break. Then, in broken English, “We are all neighbors, everyone in the world.”

12 year olds randomly dropping wisdom on you, gives you hope. If only they’d pay attention in class haha.

Some photos from yesterday. Walked around the Han river near Yongsan before heading over to Hyewa for dinner. 63 Building was once the tallest building in Seoul. It’s got a popular observation floor up top with a view of the river.

I wonder what life is like for these guys who sit in a box all day. Especially the ones in the subway stations. That must suck.

This one is even spacious and open compared to some of the boxes that have only a tiny window.

The convenience man…living life in a box.

I went to the the Seoul Media Art Biennial at the Seoul Museum of Art yesterday. There were a lot of interesting pieces, and with three full floors for the show, it was almost overwhelming. Here are a few pictures I took during my visit. Maybe I’ll add descriptions when I have more time.

One of quite a few pieces using projectors. This was a bit surreal, as the light had the feeling of daylight, but without any window.

For this piece, air was circulating in a pipe as the storage medium for the data displayed on the screen.

You could upload data from your mobile devices via Bluetooth to incorporate it into the dialog between these two heads.

Korean fashion is full of nonsensical English and references to Western culture. One particular strain is the Hitler/Nazi reference. I’ve seen some guys with full on Third Reich eagles and Swastikas on their t-shirts (no, not the Buddhist symbol). The other morning I was walking to work and saw a girl wearing a tote-bag with “Eva Braun” in big block letters on the side.

People here have no clue of the significance. Talk about lost in translation.  There’s even a Wikipedia article on “Nazi Chic in Asia.“

I was wandering around Yongsan, spending money on gadgets and drinking Vita500 with my friend Chris when we ran across these dudes. They were wearing helmets covered in LEDs, sitting next to what looked like heavy equipment of some kind, like some kind of special construction crew ready to do one of those obscure but essential tasks that keeps the city’s pulse steady.

Alas, no. Their awesomeness went several orders of magnitude beyond that. They were ajusshis from the future. The equipment turned out to be a sort of motorized skateboard, as best as I can describe it. See for yourself in the pictures.

One guy called himself Bulldozer. He customized their gear with with LED lights and other electronics. I asked if they ride in traffic, he says “No problem.” Another guy called himself Superman, and pointed to the lit-up superman shield on his backpack.

The best part: they let us ride them around. It felt like it could get up to 25-30mph easily. Something I’d consider trying to import back to the states. The used ones only cost ~$600.

Click any picture to see more shots on my Flickr page.

Above: Bulldozer