Another Busan Entry---now 24 hours behind!

I am now slightly more than 24 hours behind on chronicling my trip. The two related reasons for this is that my hosts have done such a good job keeping my schedule full with visiting the marvelous historical sights that any spare time I have left is devoted to, well, sleeping. Finally, I had to say that I really needed some rest (which made me feel old!). So, right now it’s about 4:30pm on Saturday in Bloomington. Here in Busan it is about 5:30am on Sunday morning. Last night we arrived back from a full day of sightseeing around 5pm and I made arrangements to eat dinner on my own and not meet Professor Kwon until noon today. Dinner on my own was supposed to be right after I had a much-needed nap. I woke up at 1am local time. Guess I was even more tired than I thought!

But, as I said, it is now 5:30 in the morning and, well, I didn’t have dinner. I’ll write a blog entry ( I think that I’ll keep it chronological; even though that means I’m still a day behind, I don’t want to miss chronicling anything of my trip) and then walk down from the campus guest house to find a place for breakfast.

So, right, let’s start there. I’ve changed where I’m staying from the beach-front Hotel Homers to the Kyungsung University Guest House. Here’s a picture of it.
It’s a huge building, really. Not quite as big as the IMU and is much more reminiscent of Campus View House or Tulip Tree on the IU campus. But it is newer. Plenty comfortable and certainly more affordable for my hosts than the Homer. And, it is likely that there were no more rooms even available at the Homer because over the weekend it is the destination beach for Koreans trying to beat the 87-degree heat with really high humidity. In fact, I’m sure that my touring around in it is one of the reasons I just lost steam last night.

Here’s a few pictures taken from my room on the 15th floor of the guest house. Beautiful Korean hills---which are everywhere. Also, in the second picture you can see the bridge which was right outside my room at the Homer.


So, what happened on my Friday? First, Professor Kwon and I toured an area of Busan called the Dalmaji Hill which is where many English-speaking foreigners live. Interestingly, the value of real-estate in Busan is opposite of what it is in the States: it costs less to live on the water than inland toward the mountains. Apparently this is due to havoc of the salty breezes and fog that blow in off the ocean every morning.

My understanding from the tourist signs is that Dalmaji translates as “moon-viewing” and here is a pagoda dedicated to doing just that (although, when we were there in the daytime it seemed dedicated to a couple families having picnics and older men hoping that the higher altitude would bring breezes to relieve the heat.


After this we had lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant overlooking the water. The place was called the Opera and I would recommend it if you ever find yourself in Busan.

The only drawback to the lunch was that the courses were slow in being served [every restaurant…even the Italian one…serves meals in multiple courses. I mean, like 6 or 7 courses. Not only does it take forever…but there is SO MUCH FOOD and it’s all delicious…that by the time you get to the 4th or 5th course you WANT them to take their time serving you the next course so that you can digest. They, of course, oblige.

So, we were later than we had hoped getting out of the restaurant and needed to proceed straight back to Kyungsung University for me to meet Professor Taik Sup Auh who was Professor Kwon’s dissertation advisor at Korea University. Professor Auh came down to see my talk, which was a very big honor.

The talk went fine. It was a basic primmer on psychophysiological methods and the audience was very interested. Even had some students ask questions, which I found out later is something that culturally they find very difficult to do since in the Korean classroom they only dutifully take notes on every word the professor says. [This is something I need to keep in mind in my own graduate classes when Korean students are in attendance.]

After the talk, Kwon, Auh and Soyung took me to sashimi dinner. Later, Soyung went home and the two gentlemen showed me a Korean night of wine drinking. Although I have a health condition where drinking is contra-indicated, and I had told my hosts that from the moment I accepted their invitation, it is such a part of the bonding/friendship building in this culture that I eventually relented this evening and had a little bit with dinner and at the bar we went to. Sacrifices for international relations.

Well, now I’m starving. I have to go find food…even if a convenience store is the only thing open at 6am. I’ll try to blog about my Saturday before the day is through. For now, let me leave you with a final picture. Although I have enjoyed my trip immensely, and found Korea to be a safe, friendly, interesting, and beautiful country…there are things about there culture that I would take a LONG time to get used to. For example, here’s a vending machine outside the bathrooms at Dalmaji Hill pagodoa:



Aneyong-hi gamseo.

Traveling is not vacation

It's my first full day in Busan. And when I say full I mean it.

I was able to get some exercise on Gwangalli beach, as I blogged to you just afterwards.

Then, after a nice breakfast at the hotel I was picked up by Dean Mahn-woo Kwon who took me on a tour of the Departments of Digital Contents and the separate Departments of Digital Design. Although they are separate entitites, it is slightly unclear to me the true differences...although there certainly are some as he was always able to verbalize something...I just didn't fully follow the distinctions.

Anyway, here I am in one of their fully digital control rooms...with a crooked tie.

One of their majors is animation, of which they do stop-action animation as a pedagogical compenent. Although I have seen movies using it, I have never seen a setup up close.

I had a huge and delicious lunch at a Japanese restaraunt with Mahn-woo, Soyoung, and two gentlemen from the Busan mayor's office who Mahn-woo is working with on the International Contents Creator's Convention

Later, it was off to the Busan Aquarium at Haeundae Beach. I love aquariums, and this one had creatures in it that I have never seen in facilities in the states (for obvious reasons, as they are pulling from different oceans. Check out some of these:

After that, the Jagalchi Fish Market, a place like none other that I've ever been to. Although similar to Pike Place Market in Seattle, this place is huge...with many vendors outside in the more traditional setting...where the price of the fish goes down as the day gets longer, as they must sell what they've got before the close of business.

Unless, of course, the fish is dried....


There is also a more modern (and air conditioned !) facility where the fish are kept live in open-air tanks for people to select the best...or friskiest...or whatever...I've never bought live fish.

Then they either eat it right there raw or they can take it to restaraunts on the upper floors and have it prepared.

Anyway, these fish often jump right out of their tanks and flop around on the floor. Here I am spreading my goofiness internationally with one of the escapees and a vendor

The Haedong Yongkung Temple was the last sightseeing stop for the day. An incredible place, while most temples are located in the mountains...this is one of the rare ones on the coastline. Here is a sign at the entrance that I'm told reads something like "the mountains are beautiful, the ocean is beautiful, together they are heaven."

At the front are 12 statues representing the animals for which years are named after. My birthyear means I'm a sheep (no laughing). Here's my statue

And, because I've got to go get ready for today, I'll leave you with a picture of me and Budha

Busan morning on the beach

Annyeong haseo.

Had a good night last night, which for me, in a strange place, is rather unusual. I woke up once at about 3am local time but was able to read until relaxing enough to go back to sleep.

Woke up for good at 6am...the room was too light and I longed for either pair of those darn eyepatches. But, I figured I was burning daylight, so I got up and went for a walk along a nice walking trail they have set up along the beach. Here are some pictures I took. First, here's a daytime shot of the same view from the room in the Hotel Homer:

It is, as you can predict from the haze, very humid here. Much tougher than even in Indiana. In fact, thanks to the 23-degree Celsius reading of the AC in the Homer, my camera lense kept fogging up for the first part of the walk until it warmed up.

Here's an outside shot of the hotel, which is (in case I did not mention it) very nice.

Last night, as Soyoung and her sister drove me in, she pointed out that the buildings in the distance housed floor upon floor of raw-fish restaraunts...although I'm sure that there are differences in each of the establishments, to me it seemed like having a McDonalds stacked on a Wendy's atop of a Burger King and then a Hardee's. That wouldn't happen in the States, and I had never realized how much our views on marketing & competition are due to the fact that we have plenty of real-estate to put space between our competitors. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Oh, and as if there was any doubt, Starbucks is here too. I was quite surprised by another difference between Busan and the States, though. It was 7am and this Starbucks was locked up tight. [Of course, I've since been back for a double-tall iced latte].

There were a lot of people out exercising along the walkway: runners, walkers, several people on bikes. So, I did not feel out of place by picking up the pace to get a little bit of a cardio workout in. Here's a nice ocean-front scene:

And a shot I like to call "Baywatch Busan" as the lifegaurds get ready for a day on the beach:

I did, of course, eventually get off the walking path and get on the beach myself. Here's proof:

One of the men who was out exercising eventually introduced some baseball swings in his workout as he hit rocks from the beach back into the South Sea:

Today, it's off to tour Kyungsung University, if I understand correctly. More later.

Aneyung-hi gaseo.

Enroute to Busan

Hello from slightly less than 34,000 feet. I’m on the Northwest flight from Detroit to Tokyo…with about 9.5 hours remaining. It is currently 6:14 pm EST. I don’t know what time zone I am currently in…although the video screen about 15 yards in front of me shows a little stick-figure picture of a plane north of Minneapolis/St. Paul…somewhere in Canada---to the northeast of the strangely-named city of Regina. It’s -34 degrees Fahrenheit outside and we’re going about 555 miles per hour.

So far, it’s been a nice trip. Although I had very little time to make my Detroit connection. Basically, I had time to get to the gate, find the nearest bathroom, and then they were boarding. No time to grab a bite to eat. I’m thankful that the gate for the Tokyo flight was close to the arrival gate from Indy…otherwise there would not have even been time for the pit stop.

Still, they have given us dinner. I chose a really tasty Beef Stew which included a small salad and good sized shrimp with cocktail sauce. Now, I’m stuffed---

Two things have bummed me out so far. The first was that I had hoped to be able to listen to some podcasts on my ipod during the flight. When I went to turn it on I found that it had glitched on itself…remaining frozen WITH THE POWER ON. Once I reset it, you guessed it, the battery was dead. So now I’m blogging with the dual purpose being to charge my ipod up off the battery of the laptop. Which, is a risky thing because I’m really not sure whether I’ll be able to charge up my laptop once in Busan. It’s the whole 110v/220v difference that I was never able to truly understand—will I be able to plug in while I’m there or not. Korean grad students contacted all separately concluded about the same thing: “Yes, they are different systems…you should be able to buy an adapter…but I’m not positive….” But, the music in the NWA Air Tunes system has already looped on me and I’m gonna take the risk of charging up the nano.

The second thing that was a minor annoyance was the movie selection on the plane. Three dogs that I have never heard of. But, that’s not truly a big deal because I’ve brought plenty to read and as is always the case when I fly, the moment the plane takes off I’m ready to fall asleep. I’ve napped clear through the first time the drink cart came by. Thank goodness the flight attendant left the pretzels on my extended tray table.

Oh, I can’t believe it’s taken me five paragraphs to describe my complete joy with the long-awaited purchase I used this trip as an excuse to make. I am listening to music with my Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones. I bought them about 4 days ago and have really enjoyed them in the office and working at home. BUT ON THE PLANE THEY ARE FANTASTIC! Usually I would put earplugs in and that would cut down on the barrage of jet turbine whine…but these really cut it down to unbelievably low levels. So much so that when I take them off it is so loud I almost instantly put them back on again. Delicious.

Well, I just checked the status of the ipod charging and we’re moving along nicely. It won’t take as long as I thought. Gonna get back to the reading of the Lonely Planet book on Korea. Hwanjun, a graduate student of mine with a similar interest in music processing, let me borrow it for the trip. I probably should have read more of it BEFORE I left. Well, more as I did read much about Busan and its surroundings I should have read more about general Korean culture. Less than an hour ago I came across this gem: “Casual clothing is fine in most situations as long as it is conservative in tone [no problem there, I think to myself]….In the hot and humid summer months men almost never wear shorts.” What?! Oh no. I can pretty much remember 4-5 pairs of shorts that I packed. After all, they are having 87-degree temperatures and thunderstorms so I figured that made sense. Can’t quite remember how many slacks I packed….


It’s now 2:35am my body time. It has been a little harder for me to sleep than I expected. Luckily, not impossible. It’s just that it is lighter in the cabin than I wish it was. I just keep thinking of the two pair of eye blinders that I have at home. The second pair I had to buy because I forgot to bring the first one with me the last time I traveled! Looks like I’ll have to get a third.

Here comes breakfast. Oh, turns out one of the movies was actually pretty funny. Wild Hogs. Nothing you haven't seen before, but worth the time.
------------------------

The connection in Tokyo was incredibly close. I had to go through security checkpoints again, which was a slow process considering hundreds of people came off the 747. One interesting thing I noticed is that the Tokyo security line was much quieter than those in the states. No officials barking at you to "take your laptops outta the bag" or "take your shoes off." All those instructions are told to you quietly by the one official at the head of the line.

After sweating whether or not I would make my connection (how WOULD I have gotten ahold of people in Busan if I had missed that flight? I have no idea)...we waited for them to load the luggage. Here's a picture of mine getting loaded on, in fact.

Then we waited in line to take off for at least 45 minutes. I got bored. Here's a picture of another plane in the cue with us.

But, the 90 minute flight to Busan was uneventful. A graduate student of mine, Soyung, met me at the airport. She actually grew up in Busan, got her masters degree at Kyungsung and is back here this summer working on some research projects.

Anyway, I'm pretty bushed, so I'm off to find some bottled water, something to eat, and get some sleep. But, let me show you the views from my hotel (the Hotel Homer, believe it or not) which is right on the beach.

Korean Adventure--Day 1

Well I'm only a handful of hours before I depart from Indianapolis to begin my trip to Kyungsung University in Busan. I'm pretty excited about the adventure and will try to keep you all up to date here via TAPblog.

One thing that makes me sad, though, is that because I won't return before the end of the month, I had to say some early goodbyes to graduate students in the ICR who are moving onto new adventures of their own.

Last night as I left the lab I bid farewell to James Angelini, who will begin his new position as a visiting professor at University of Delaware. Also I said best of luck to Gayle Nadorff. Gayle has been working tremendously hard this month collecting her dissertation data before going off to a post-doc position at University of Connecticut. She's run almost 75 subjects in 30 days, I believe. Incredible.

Korea Bound

I have not blogged about this yet because it hasn't been finalized. But, now it is...I just got the e-ticket mailed to me and so next Tuesday I'm off to Busan Korea! I've been invited to speak at the School of Digital Content at Kyungsung University. They have an interactive media laboratory in the School, and I'll be talking with them about the usefulness of psychophysiological research methods on answering questions about psychological processing of messages.

I have never been to East Asia. The farthest I've travelled is to Germany and Western Europe. I am looking forward to the trip, seeing a new culture, seeing a new lab, and interacting with the grad students and faculty of Kyungsung!

I'll hopefully find time to blog (with pictures) while I'm on the road.

A peak behind the curtain--audio editing makes us sound better

Okay, first of all, there is nothing worse than being sick in the summer time.
I have strep throat!!

I'm really bugged about it...because not only can't I swallow or eat...but it's gorgeous outside and I'd much rather be doing things with my family than stuck inside wondering how long I can wait until my next nap.

GRRRRR. I haven't had this since I got my tonsils out at age 7.

Anyway, being mostly stuck inside has allowed me to do some podcast listening, and that reminded me of a piece I heard recently on ON THE MEDIA, a show out of WNYC in New York.

The piece was called "Pulling back the Cutain" and was produced by John Solomon. It's all about how much editing occurs on the audio obtained via interviews for a show like OTM...or any radio news show for that matter. To give you a sense of what I'm talking about, listen to this exerpt from the story which gives an example of how OTM/Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield sounds during the taping of an interview compared to how he sounds afterwards.

Part of the reason why this story fascinated me is because I always thought I was pretty good at noticing edits in audio stories. Local radio news doesn't try to hide when an edit takes place. The ambient sound doesn't match, the speaker's inflections are going in different directions at the point of the edit, etc. But with OTM, I never even THOUGHT about it. That's largely to the credit of the show's editor (and co-host) Brooke Gladstone. But, it's also due to increased sophistication in technology. When I first started editing audio it was done using magnetic tape as the source material...not digital bits. Edits were done by finding the beginning and ending point of where you wanted to cut out, marking it on the back-side of the tape with a grease pencil, and then cutting it with a razor blade...only to tape the two ends back together. If you messed up...you guessed it...you had to tape the whole thing back together and start again. Almost as much a pain in the neck as strep throat.

These days, editing is all done electronically using programs like Pro Tools or Saw or the one we use in the ICR Lab, Adobe Audition. These programs make editing downright fun. Try an edit...if it doesn't work, Ctrl-Z gets you right back where you were! I remember when working on the Double-Units clutter study I needed to edit down commercials from 60-seconds to 30-seconds in length while still keeping the original meaning and information. If I had to do that with a razor blade and splicing tape, forget it. With Audition, it was actually something I looked forward to doing.

ICR student gets published

In the IU Dept. of Telecommunications there is a graduate course called T540. It is an "independent study" course designed to allow students to get course credit for either doing in-depth literature review in an area of personal interest or to perhaps conduct original research. In order to sign up for such a course the student must find a faculty member to supervise this. It can be a big time commitment for the faculty member, as often the study turns out to be much less "independent" as hoped for.

That was not the case with doctoral candidate James Angelini (read his blog here), who did a T540 under my supervision about a year ago...or maybe it was even two years ago...the days just all merge together really...Anyway, as you can tell from his blog title, James is interested in gender-issues and the psychological constructs of gender as they are perpetuated by the media. He is also interested in sports broadcasts. He combined the two interests into a programatic series of studies, of which the T540 project was an early piece. Last week, James was kind enough to tell me that the study I helped him with was published in the journal Sex Roles. You may be able to access it here. Or, it's possible that I have access to that link due to my IU server account. In which case, you should look for it soon on the journal's website.

Congratulations to James. Good work.

Life Changes on 4th of July

So, in all honesty I saw it coming.

My wife, kids, and I took a drive on the 4th of July.

We were just going to drive down through the city of Frenck Lick .

You know, just get out and have a nice drive...

Oh, and my wife just happened to come across a website for a dog breeder of a breed that we (okay...I mean she...and the kids....) have been interested in. The breed is the Goldendoodle.

Yes, that's right...the Goldendoodle.

Not a very macho name for a breed.

A friend of mine said it sounded like an Austin Powers movie.

But, we went. We saw the several puppies they had available...and I knew I was toast.

After taking time for lunch...at a casino...what a great dad, huh?...

Allow me to introduce Darcy: