Saturday, December 10, 2005

oh the weather outside is frightful

blogging from my korea ski resort business center computer. the windows xp in korean sia. cannot understand a single word. even blogger homepage is in korean. have to rely on my memory to figure out which buttons to press.

anyway the trip, which was quite boring at first, was balanced out by skiing lessons today in the morning, followed by an afternoon of more practicing to get the basics right! the only minus point is that the bunny slope is full of people, (actually the whole mountain is full of people, koreans and tourists), because it's a saturday and it's nearly the winter break for the schools here.

so i fell the first time i went down the slope. and i fell wrongly, landing on my knee instead of my butt. so now i'm nursing a bruised knee. but subsequently it was fun! quite exhilirating as i ski down the quite gentle slope, but still could go quite fast and had to learn to brake! wouldn't mind doing it again. =)

back to the horrible weather. aside from today, where the exercise made me perspire even though the temperature was -3 degrees, the other days have been miserable because it was too cold! day temperatures average from -4 to about 2 degrees, while it drops to -10 to -7 at night. it's just so so so cold, i can't even bear to take my frozen hands out of my gloves to take nice pictures. either that or i can't stay still at one spot because that makes me about 10 times colder. i have to keep walking.

i love skiing!

anyway, service in korea is nothing like singapore. NOTHING. i'm proud to say that service in singapore is so much better. don't get me wrong. the koreans are nice people. they are warm and well-mannered and polite. just when it comes to like service in restaurants, our guide has to serve us, not the waitresses and waiters. and when i was out in the cold struggling with the locker that keeps our ski blades and that light-saber thingies (the darn key wouldn't turn so i can unlock it), i gestured to an old man who was sweeping rubbish off the snow to help me, but he walked behind me, swept a piece of paper into his dustpan and walked away.

so horrible! and no one offered to help me with it though i looked quite helpless there for some 2 mins.

i figured out how to unlock it later anyway. hmmpphh.

one very good thing about korea, all their toilets have tissue paper. every single toilet that i've been to has tissue paper. singapore should learn from them!

oh oh. and my asst. tour guide is this really cute 23-yr-old korean guy who is working during his uni holidays to take photos and assist our tour guide. he's very funny because he only can speak a little mandarin. so we all have been teaching him mandarin. and he's funny and he loves to flirt mildly and play with the children on our tour group, which by the way are the cutest kids around. i love playing with them too.

alright. tmr is a long day. going to visit some attractions. hopefully it's not boring. sigh. wished we could ski for one more day. but it's really expensive because such activities only happen once a year, so they can only profit for like 2 months. that's why it's ex.

anybody who wants anything? just email me. i'll see if my hotel in seoul has net access. it's gd here 'cos net access is free! hurhur. they have really fantastic seaweed and dried cuttlefish shreds and kimchi of course. yes the food is not too bad. everynight we have a different type of steamboat with different ingredients and soup base. we also had korean BBQ, much much much better than seoul garden. =)

i miss singapore's warm weather. it's such a hassle to wear so many layers of clothes and before that must put moisturizer all over your body. plus your hat, scarf, gloves and all. in singapore just a top and jeans/skirt will do.

okay dokey. time for bed. oh yeah, we sleep the korean style. on heated floors with thin mattresses and blankets (cos it's still cold). it's an interesting concept, just that the mattress not thick enough, my back is so sore. and it's made worse from skiing, so tonight my back's gonna be so so sore. hint hint to someone who can give me a massage when i get back. =)

This girl posted at 7:44 PM