I confess my major motivation for this movie was the curiosity about the technology. I would have gone to watch the a 4DX movie independently of the title. Before today, I only had experienced 4D movies in Disneyland but no in a movie theatre. So let’s see.
As soon as I saw the theatre sit, it emerge a promising feeling. In the photo you can see metal supporter for your feet instead to leave them on the floor.
Sit in the movie theatre
The first encounter with the 4DX technology, for my surprised, was with an audi commercial (I did not find a vide0). The second advertisement was the one below:
During these commercials one realizes that one’s sit moves, no only as “rollercoaster” type of movement, but as a massage sit. Ok, it is not a massage, but the idea is that something exactly on your back moves in specific moments. Additionally, one is “shot” with injections of air or water from the front of the sit and from the sides of the sit. Also one can notice a strobe lighting in particular scenes. All these aim to be in synch with the movie.
In this particular film, there was not smell, no bubbles and no smoke. Nevertheless there was a full experience 😉
I am not a film critic, so I cannot say much about the film. In brief is a battle of human kind VS some aliens. As you can see in the trailer below:
My impression of Pacific Rim is: a typical Hollywood movie, despite to be directed by the Mexican, Guillermo del Toro.
The special effects are well done. I like the futuristic ideas, e.g. the computer screens, the robots are cool and some type of biotechnology concepts are interesting. However, the storyline is kind of typical. The movie did not move me. The special effects and technology capture my attention.
After the function, my thoughts have been into how will be the movie theatres in 5 or 10 years from now?What kind of movies we will be able to watch? Technology is AMAZING! but we need equally interesting plots knitting the interactive possibilities. I know we are starting….
Ok, one personal suggestion for 3D images, ensure that I will not get a headache afterwards. Somehow 3D gives me a headache after certain period of time.
I confess I wrote this post fast to thank Insung, who organised the going. Thank you for the opportunity to experience this just release movie in a 4DX experience. I had a good time!
By the end of the first week of lectures, I realise that most – if not all – of the students who stayed in my class are top quality students. On this day, they made their preliminary presentation of their projects. The topics selected are:
Electricity Generation
Hand dryers
Subway
Use of mobile phone
After listen to them and with the awareness on how they manage this week implicit challenges i.e. group size changing, demanding work load, trying to understand me. I feel please with my students. Now, it is also my turn to work! 😉
In addition in this Friday, AISS organise the korean cooking evening, in which the students learn to cook korean food. Teachers job: to vote for the dishes. It includes to taste them 🙂 and there were 3 categories for our votes: team work, presentation and taste. I like this job! 🙂
First let me introduce you a couple of photos from the chefs working:
on half of the chefs
other half of the chefs
Next some photos of the food they brought to the judges. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of the six dishes, as they were six teams. The dishes selected were: kimbap, ttokbokki and jeon. There were two teams preparing the same dish working independently. For this reason we have, for example, two versions of kimbap.
some of their dishes – Team A
some of their dishes
some of their dishes
some of their dishes
In my humble opinion, ALL dishes were DELICIOUS!!!! But overall, it was a great fun!
AISS organizes different activities with the aim to discover Korea. These activities take place on Wednesdays and are carefully planned to create an unforgetable time, as the trip we had to Jeju last week. Additionally, students also have an in-campus activity during the week, such as cooking or watch a movie.
The Folk Villageis as an open-air museum. The village is well set up and very interesting. To my surprised they did not have audio guides for rent, however they did offer an app. As you might imagine I must check this! (Side note: a lot of potential customers for ubium 🙂 )
Next, I want to share my impressions of the Folk Village. For this purpose I select some photos. Remember, I am not into photography. I am fine with this fact, but when it comes moments of sharing I feel certain level of shame that I am not into photography. For sure with good shots I could be able to share more. Nevertheless, I am sure you will get an insight of what I saw with the complete _non_expert_photos_ 😉
This is the main entrance, and I like the view with the “mountain” in the background.
Once one crosses the main door, you see like an access to an amusement park, kind of (photo below). It is word to mention that the place is full of little details, as for example the lamps or benches.
Just after one enter the folk’s village
On the right hand of the “entrance” is the section of restaurants.
restaurant section
Before looking at the houses, if one walks on the central path, one encounters the possibility to ask for a wish. As the instructions indicate below.
asking for a wish
Just in case, of course I tight my wish in here:
one of those papers is my wish
I was not careful enough to control from which houses I was taking which photos. The result is now I do not have a reliable track of the events. Consequently, here it goes only some impressions.
inside of one of the houses
The houses in the village are from different socio economical levels. So you kind find houses from the farmers to royalty.
Also one could see small fields:
also fields
Ah! the following pots are important. The pots, picture in the preceding pictures, were used for the fermentation of Korean foods like Kimchi.
In the patio of another house you can see more pots. During our visit we have periods of time with rain, and actually it looks nice, but it was trickier to take photos.
In the patio of a wealthy house, more pots!
Also I saw a house with several statues of “gods” ? .
Inside the house was an altar.
The view of another house:
Inside of one of its rooms ( from the house pictured above):
The kitchen of this house, if I recall properly.
The following construction was on the path outside the houses. The cloth hanging from the tree it seems related to “luck”. Need to research about this at some point.
Ah! The next photo I took it to show the “resting” places for the visitors. For example, in the photo below there are persons sitting inside a construction, enjoying the moment. One could sit in any of authorise constructions.
As in this one:
resting area
But one should take their shoes out.
Another resting area where one can see the individuals resting and the shoes below.
resting area
I like those resting areas, even though I had not chance to actually use them.
In my time at the Folk Village I entered the inside museum. The exposition is actually interesting, illustrating the activities that the villagers had during the year from the perspective of different age groups and genders.
I have several photos, as you can imagine, including the location of traditional games ;). But for this post I will only give the glimpse of tow topics: the patterns to make rice cakes ….
and of course the section of “children’s play” 🙂
We were lucky and we could see a traditional dance. This was briefly because it started to rain at function time, but I could get very brief shots of it.
Some hats are interesting, right?
It called my attention that at the end of the Folk Village is a small amusement park. This section was, somehow, unusual. Specially if we take into account that the amusement parks got inspired from open-air museums. After this, I REALLY have to read the book from Sten Rentzhog, Open Air Museums. The history and future of a visionary idea……
amusement park inside the village
Even a building for video games! Shame I did not have more time in here!
On the other hand, I liked more the “traditional” houses, but this fact give good space for discussion and thinking.
amusement park inside the village
One can be in the Village the whole day. Specially if one wants to explore it and experience in depth.
On the other hand, we are fortunate that AISS organises for us the possibility to have different experiences of Korea. So after have a taste of the village we drove to Hyundai’s factory. As far as I understood, apparently, to visit to the plant is not easy. However the AISS team manage to get us a visit.
The next photo is arriving to the plant:
entrance to the plant
In the hall of the building where the personnel of Hyundai received us:
inside a building
Next it is my last photo of this post, as one cannot take photos of the plant. The device I am showing is for the guided tour. The speaker has a mic and all of us have this speakers. Again, I could not avoid analysing the guiding system. In my personal opinion, it can be improved, for example technically, there is a lot of noise that could be filtered to listen properly to the speaker, additionally if one gets delayed from the group the connectivity of the speaker is broken. Unquestionably, it requires a contextual design 😉
for the “guided” tour
Independently of the radio-frequency device to support the explanation to the factory visit, I recognise the trip to the factory was enjoyable.
As you might already perceive, when in a post I mention that I will write tomorrow it might not mean 24 hrs later. It seems this time was a week later, OMG! . Nevertheless, sooner or later I will show up 😉 Let’s summarise, because I confess there is much happening here, and I am a bit slow processing.
On Wednesday July 3rd, which was my third day in Korea, we start our trip to Jeju island. The purpose of the trip is to integrate the group, and it worked. For me, this trip was remarkable fast and interesting. Here a brief summary.
Take the flight with Asian Airlines. First time in my life I travel in such a BIG group! 🙂
All the group flying together
After almost an hour, one lands in Jeju.
At Jeju’s airport
Next it is to take our busses, which will drive us to a ferry that will take us to Udo island.
Towards our busses
Inside our bus
How life changes, now I sit at front instead of the back…. oh well! 🙂
Inside our bus part 2
We went by foot to the ferry from Jeju to Udo.
The ferry towards Udo Island
Reaching Udo island
Once in Udo, which is a really small island, I can proudly state that I bike it all around! 🙂 Here some prove, some sights from Udo:
Biking around the island. This is one of the “common” island “sculptures” or statues.
My bike parking at the important stops for looking the landscape 🙂
Another view of the island
More view
Honestly I could have stayed there for a weekend. An interesting island to discover. Nevertheless, let’s the trip to continue. We needed to take the last ferry back to Jeju, for dinner.
view on our way back to Jeju
For dinner the organisers took us to a very nice traditional restaurant! You will see.
entrance to the restaurant
The teachers’ corner
this was the food
happy with the food
The colour of the ocean is beautiful in Jeju.
beautiful ocean
While we were leaving the owner of the place – ok, I assume he was the owner – left a traditional paper balloon free. Very beautiful.
traditional paper balloon
So, after an intense and fun day, finally we went to our hotel. This is the view from my room, and I couldn’t go out anymore. I had energy, I confess but I needed to do some “real” work.
my rooms view part 1/2
my rooms view part 2/2
On Wednesday July 4th the agenda was as follows:
Breakfast at the hotel, and as our guide told us, Koreans eat rice at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In the middle the rice cooker
different dishes, e.g. fish, meat, french fries and eggs.
First activity to swim 🙂 I was a fish in the tank with this heat! Love the water and as I was swimming no photographic proof of the event. (side note: next present a camera which can be used in the ocean 😉 )
After swimming we need energy so we should eat. In this occasion was seafood.
sea food
Second activity to climb the Seongsan Sunrise peak, which is an UNESCO world heritage.
at the entrance, our guys. I recall that one represents scholarly and other warrior. Notice also the gate to the right. The number of wood sticks also have a message to those who look at them.
going up there
reaching the top
view to the sea from the top
proof of to be at the top
In the same location was a demonstration of the fisher-woman.
fisher woman
If you think that our day finalised here, you are mistaken. Next stop after hiking, riding a horse. Another of the attractions of Jeju island.
the picture is bad, but it gives the idea of our riding adventure 🙂
Next, 30 min refreshment at our hotel before dinner time! So just time for a fast shower then we walked to the dinner location.
the restaurant had this view
Understanding how dinner works…
for dinner a good bbq
As it was 4th of July, the students from USA got some fireworks and we gather at the beach before going back and recharge for the next day.
On Friday July 5th, our last day in Jeju island, we had also a busy agenda. After breakfast, we went to a Mazeland, very nice!
like the illumination system for the cave was very interesting and well done, although my photo is blurry
back to the surface. Honestly the feeling to getting out of the fresh cave was as immersing myself to sauna. My glasses and camera got steam. Korea is hot at the moment and very humid.
After our full agenda in Jeju, the guide told us we saw just a little bit of the island. Unquestionably, the let us craving for more. Finally, we head to the airport to go back to Korea mainland. This is the first airport were the X-rays to get inside the waiting area are divided between national and foreigners.
flying back to mainland Korea
Bye bye Jeju, there is much I could tell about each one of these locations. It is a beautiful place, but as I said at the beginning of this post, life is busy and/or I am not that fast reporting :/ nevertheless doing my best. Now, to catch up with my course, company, papers, surveys, talking…. wish there was more time!
Orientation day was on Monday July 2nd and for me, unquestionably, was interesting. The Office of International Affairs at Ajou University (AISS, photo below) has put a considerable effort into organising this summer school. Below is the photo of AISS team.
At the time of the speeches I was touched by the following facts:
How Korea has transformed itself in a short period of time (more on this later)
AISS goal to have personalized attention (100% accurate!)
AISS goal to support learning, networking and an unforgettable summer together
AISS is looking forward to support the tomorrow leaders. All this increases the honour that I have to teach in this summer school!
The building where we had our orientation session, Jonghap Hall, besides to be pleasant, it has a new furniture system for me. Pay attention to the photos below:
The chairs are secure to the floor, and you can only pull them backwards, as due to springs the chairs are pushed forward automatically. New system for me.
Today I had my first korean food in Korea. The photo was taken once we all have our serving and it was delicious!
Also we tour the University Campus, and in this post I want to stress particularly on the Ajou University Hospital.
Today has been raining and before getting into the hospital those who have umbrellas should wrap them with plastic bags. In the next photo a student is placing the umbrella inside a device and then pull it so that the umbrella is wrapped with plastic. There are two sizes as umbrellas, concequently the device handles both: small or large umbrellas.
Next photo you can see the student’s umbrella perfectly wrap. No dropping water from umbrellas inside the building!
It was interesting to notice that the student who was giving us the tour got surprised that all of us, international guests, were amazed with the this new umbrella system for our eyes.
There are more new things for me in here. In this hospital patients can shop! There are stores, as if it is a small mall at the underground level of the hospital. In the following photo, which unfortunately is blurry, one can even find a Burger King (in the photo is the store on the far left with the sign in red).
The following photos are at the lobby of the hospital. There is a cafeteria and you can see patients with their serum walking around. I try to highlight that with a read circle in these blurry photos.
On the right is the “front” desk or informs.
Outside the hospital are considerable amount of wheelchairs. What a contrast with other locations where infrastructure is lacking, as I remember on some of my previous hospital adventures.
Summarising, the facilities of the hospital are impressive.
And no all is digital! 😉 but still impressive.
One cannot read the next photo, but it was taken to illustrate the different facilities inside the hospital building, including restaurants.
Inside the campus all have a name, and that is how one offer directions.
