Wonderful World of Animation

I went to Seoul last weekend and saw an animation exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center. It was decent. I saw some previews in 3D for How to Train Your Dragon and the new Shrek Movie, and a bunch of artwork from various animated features and shows.

Apparently it's recently been Thomas the Tank Engine's 65th birthday, so the whole thing was pretty Thomas-centric. I would have preferred something a bit more exciting to be the theme of the exhibit. Oh, well.

Here is the wall where people put a bunch of birthday cards:



Most of them were in Korean, of course, but this one in English is hilarious:


Here's a suite model that was in the entry:




I took this video at first just for shits and giggles, but then I saw this little boy being mildly amusing, so I went to him. Then I saw his dad possibly suspecting me of videotaping his kid, so I stopped.




There was an animation workshop in which you got to choose two animation media. I could have spent all day there doing something good, but it was a pretty simple setup and I couldn't operate the controls, so I didn't really come up with anything major. I didn't want to make other people wait too long. They emailed me the files later that day.

Status

It's kind of quiet on the eastern front, folks.

In non-Korean news, I finally got my fourth and final offer letter for graduate studies, the one I decided to accept. So I'll be studying Linguistics for a year at the University of Brighton next year. It's near London.

Shanghai City Tour Part 3

Next we went to the People's Square, where there was a lot of celebration for the year of the tiger going on:








I didn't get a good shot, because there were so many people and umbrellas crashing into each other, but this is a tiger made entirely out of cans of Pepsi products:


I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a tiger. Maybe it's not a tiger.


Connected to the square are the Yuyan gardens:




















This is just a lot of people:


After this we went to the French Concession shopping district, but it was deserted and we just walked through quickly, so no photos. Earlier in the day, on the way to lunch, we were supposed to visit some famous Jade Buddha, but the line was so inconceivably long that we struck it from the itinerary. I actually wanted to take a picture of the miles of people standing in line at each corner of the block, but the guide was walking really fast, there were umbrellas everywhere, and it was all cold and wet, so not the best time to bust out the camera.

I think I got home around 3 or 4, and I was so tired from not sleeping the night before and being out all day in the rain that I took a nap when I got back. I then tried to go out and find a restaurant for supper in the evening, but had no luck. The next day I found out that if I had gone to the block parallel to my street, I would have found plenty of stuff, but from the look of the area surrounding it, there was nothing there. I had walked in one direction for a while, found nothing, and saw nothing on either side of me while walking, so I figured I just wasn't close to much. I ended up eating a very nice duck soup in the hotel restaurant, though, so it was fine. The rest of the night I spent watching movies and resting.

The next day I thought I wasn't going to be able to leave China that day, because I had no yuan left, and the hotel wouldn't change Korean money. I was told the bank adjacent to the hotel would change it for me, but when I went, I found that to be wrong. Then I went back to the hotel, and asked about another bank, but had been getting different stories from a number of people as to whether that bank, or any other banks, would even be open, because of the holiday over the weekend. I asked the concierge to help me, and after hearing my situation, he actually told me he had no ideas. I was shocked and dismayed, since I had at least a couple myself. He ended up having someone call the nearby Bank of China, which was open, but I was told I would have to make an appointment and might not get my money for two days or something, but that if I went to the bank and begged or something, maybe they could help. This was stupid advice. I went to the bank, prepared to have to explain myself fully and plead for help, but they just treated me like anyone else, gave me the form, and exchanged my money, no problem. Jeez.

All this took so long that I thought I was going to be late to the airport, but it all worked out in the end, and I went home and rested for the remainder of the day after I got back to Ulsan.

Shanghai City Tour Part 2

After the museum, we went to a pearl gallery, where I got to learn about the industry in Shanghai. I got a little lecture over this tank of oysters about the various pearl colors and how there isn't just one pearl in the oysters, but usually quite a number. The store guide had me guess how many were in one, and I guessed wrong, of course. I think there were like ten pearls in it, but none of them were good. She gave me two small ones to keep as a souvenir. I don't really know what to do with them now.



Next I had to guess which string of pearls out of three was fake, and I guessed right this time, but probably only out of luck. She showed me how to identify real pearls: if you rub them together, they will grind each other down a bit and produce dust, whereas plastic won't change. I did not get a free string of pearls for guessing right this time.

I looked around and ended up buying a couple nice looking pearl pendant necklaces for myself and my mother for not a lot of money. The saleslady was trying to get me to buy four and get one free, and in retrospect, I probably should have gone for it, given they were only $15 apiece, but I had already spent so much money getting to Shanghai that I felt buying a lot of souvenirs would be a bad idea.

After the pearls we went to a silk factory and gallery, where I saw the process of silk production.

Here are the little silkworm cocoons that they use for silk strands:


Ropes of silk strands:


More cocoons:


Silk work life cycle? Hard to see.


Machine:


You probably can't see the tiny strands, but the machine is unwinding them from the cocoons:


I got practical demonstrations on how the silk is stretched into thin layers for reasons I don't remember.




And another demonstration on a larger scale, for use in quilts and comforters. The silk comforters are only silk on the inside, apparently, with cotton covers. The silk is good for temperature control--warm in winter, cool in summer.


Finally, I got to look around the gallery. I considered getting silk sheets, since they were as low as $65, but I have so much stuff to bring home from Korea that I'm trying to reduce the amount of big things I buy. Plus I won't have my own bed for years to come, and I don't want to be traveling with a set of sheets all over the world.

Here are a couple bedding examples (much pricier than sheets):





The rest of the gallery was a lot of scarves, handkerchiefs, ties, and clothing. I was trying on some traditional dresses for a while, but had some trouble. The Large size was a bit too small, then the XL size fit on me, but I wouldn't be able to sit down in it. The saleslady found me a dress in XXL (here, my tour guide reminded me kindly that these are Chinese sizes, so it's really not that big), but there seemed to be a missing link between XL and XXL. The last dress was like a muumuu on me, and these are supposed to be form-fitting, so it was pretty unacceptable. I considered buying it anyway and taking it to the tailor, but only for about a half second. Considering it's silk and the amount of work that would have to be done on it to make it fit me, the tailor would probably cost more than the dress.

I ended up with a nice silk bag, which soon after I got it back to Korea, fell apart on the inside nylon lining and I've had to resew it twice. It was only $15, though, a good deal.