CheongGyeCheon Today

 

Errant Googly Eye

An Unusual Problem

This is my keyboard.

It's English/Korean convertible.  Or should I maybe say, QWERTY-to-KaNaDa convertible.  Roman alphabet characters at the upper left corner of each key, the Hangeul/한글 characters at the lower right corner.  You switch between languages by pressing the "alt" key.

I learned to type in middle school typing class all those years ago (do they still have those? it's been a long ride since then).  And once I mastered typing in English, I found myself automatically transliterating Korean words and sentences into English spelling and mentally typing them out in my head, using a personal system which I now know to be close to the Revised Romanization system for Korean-to-English transliteration, rather than the McCune-Reischauer system (although now I personally am of the opinion that the MR system is actually the superior of the two).  For example "사랑해요", or "I love you", would be spelled out as "sa-rang-hae-yo".  Mind you, I was doing this in my head constantly.  I came to be pretty good at this mental trick, but maybe a little too good -- now and then I would find myself mixing up the two languages and hitting the wrong keys here and there.  Which was a bit annoying but not really serious.  Fast forward a few decades, I move to Korea and have to learn to type Korean in earnest.  Actual Korean language sentences using the Hangeul alphabet, not Roman alphabet characters like I used to do;  it's entirely different from the Qwerty system and all the muscle memory I'd built up for English words is now confusing me!  And although I'm still not all that proficient at typing in Korean, I now find myself mixing up three entirely different ways to type two entirely different languages.  If I were to spell out "I love you" the English way using the Korean keyboard, it would come out like this: ㅑㅣㅐㅍㄷ ㅛㅐㅕ, which is gobbledygook in both languages.  Does anything like this happen to other people who are bi- or multilingual?  I'm curious to know.

Dragonfly Flying Through The Rain

I can't believe this wonderful image from the past summer was overlooked.  Correcting that mistake now.

Hallowe'en Special, 2026 Edition

Again, in the HongDae neighborhood.  Compared to the last time I checked out the scene (2024 -- check the sidebar or the labels below for the keyword), this time it looked to me like there was way less gore and more games and anime.  No zombies at all that I saw (unless the girl in #3 and #4 is playing a "seductive zombie"... does her makeup look sort of deadite-ish?).  I found myself wishing there were more horror and darkness themes -- there were some, but many of them passed by quickly and I didn't get a chance to shoot them in the surging crowd... ah well, at least there were still a bunch of cute girls in scanty attire posing for the crowd.

This is an actual traffic cop on crowd control 

Obviously this uncle is a big fan of Carmen Miranda

Could be he's living out a lifelong fantasy using Halloween as an excuse

This is not a street preacher proselytizing;  he's exhorting young people to "be brave and study hard" -- like the Buddha and Jesus did;  Halloween may be a Celtic tradition, but his message is pure Korean

The one on the left was shy;  maybe she thought if she couldn't see me, I couldn't see her

Errant Box Of Cute Stickers

 

Awesome Leaves

"Awesome Leaves" -- get it?  The fun evaporates if you have to explain a pun...

Ah well, anyway, these were taken just down the street from my place, on one of two alternative routes down to the subway.  You simply MUST expand the panoramic shot to full size!