Yesterday night: Friends, a barbeque and the proper amount of soju on the 24th floor of the Ramada hotel, looking over the ING building and the famous landmark of Seoul, the Namsan tower. What a nice goodbye party! Besides the ridiculous hat you guys made me wear all night, I want to thank everybody for their kindness, presents and fun. Because of you, I’m looking back at a nice year in Korea and… Continue reading... | 1 Comment

Those happy faces are me and my collegues from ING - just - before we started running our (half) marathon. Perhaps we were even happier when we finished - it would have been better to share a before / after picture I suppose. Continue reading... | 4 Comments

The highlight of the year for the Dutch community in Seoul would be the Dutch “Orange Ball”, held in the grand hyatt. It’s was true Dutch evening with “oranjebitter” and a Dutch band that was flown in to Seoul for the occasion.

The national football teams of North and South Korea have played a World Cup qualifier in Seoul today - which the South won by one goal to nil. Although the game was quite boring, there was a good atmosphere in the stadium, especially after Kim Chi Woo scored the first goal for South Korea. The crowd was not as enthusiastic as I expected, seeing the Korean football fans act… Continue reading... | 4 Comments

I like this city so much that I decided to upload some more pictures to give you first hand about what I think is beautiful around here. Hope you like it!
 
You can go up any skyscraper in Hong Kong, (which I almost did) but you can see the city best from the Victory Peak. Simply take the tram up the hill… Continue reading... | 5 Comments

After having lived outside my home country for almost 3 years, I can tell you that working abroad will always bring exciting experiences, reveal cultural challenges and –even though the rent, dishes and laundry– feel like a holiday. However, a foreigner has to comply to some basic rules. Most critical must be maintaining the proper visa for your stay, in my case a valid working visa, an administrative burden had to be completed outside South-Korea. This incentive made me come to Hong Kong for the week, combining the visa, business, meetups with friends and sightseeing in one trip.… Continue reading... | 3 Comments

The Korean government sends text messages to all mobile phones every once in a while. This way of informing the nation is new to me and proves to be rather effective. Sometimes it’s a simple request, asking to clean your porch from snow, but today I received a warning. “Tomorrow the yellow dust from China will reach Korea”. I wondered, what is yellow dust?

It turns out that yellow dust is… Continue reading... | 3 Comments

I haven’t participated in a sport event ever since the Funda run in 2008 - a fun and fulfilling event, but I had no incentive to continue my healthy habits afterwards. I put my running shoes back on later that year, to find out that I would never reach a peak of runners satisfaction again without a goal. Frankly, I am getting out of shape and the Korean… Continue reading... | 3 Comments

Hold your horses, the financial crisis actually has some positive effects too! In South Korea, criminality is on the rise - making people long back to happy times at home. This is good news because many weddings are failing here due to struggles related to work. You see, every downside has its upside!

The Samsung Economic Research Institute predicts that Familism will emerge in 2009. This expectation is based on… Continue reading...