Sunday we left for South Korea. Pretty much our entire trip to Seoul was work-focused and the only part of the culture we were able to experience was the business culture and some food. People work LONG hours in Seoul and do a lot of entertaining and business meals as part of their job. Then they often have an hour commute home after a long day of work as it is quite expensive to live in the city so many live out of town a ways.

This last weekend a typhoon went between China and Japan to hit South Korea. I was getting concerned about Alecia because she was going to be flying from Taiwan to Japan near that time. We were looking on the web together (how nerdy of us) to see the predicted path of the typhoon, when Alecia said “Hey, there is some other tropical storm too.” Well, that tropical storm has turned into Super Typhoon Wipha and it is heading for Shanghai.

77. You cannot say a number without making the appropriate hand sign
78. You like the taste of Green Tea and Chivas
79. You start recognising the chinese songs on the radio and sing along to them with the taxi driver
80. You feel insulted when you enter a restaurant and only three waiters welcome you

On the trip to the Yellow Mountains, a discussion came up about the KTV karaoke bars that are all over China (over 40,000 locations.) Apparently they serve a larger purpose than just karaoke. You can order women to come into your private room and sing to you or do much more than that… All of us American expats at HP were completely clueless and people could not believe that we didn’t know. Here we were thinking that karaoke at KTV was good, wholesome fun. I guess it can be…basically you can specify if you want a G-rated or R-rated room. CRAZY! We were so naive.