Events

Photos from this afternoon. First, a traditional house (Hanok) in the Bukchon district: And a traditional set of steamed dumplings not far away: And, finally, a traditional faux-Irish bar in Itaewon, the expatriate district: Tonight, I am in search of galbi, and then I hope to stay awake until 10pm. Tomorrow, Panmunjom.

Remember how I said prices are pretty good in Korea? And remember how I said I forgot my Lonely Planet guide? Yeah, you can connect the dots here. Lonely Planet: Seoul, December 2012 edition. On Amazon, $17.86. In Seoul, $28.40. That, folks, is a tax on my stupidity. Especially since the Kindle edition is $2.99 because I purchased the print edition. It might have made sense to buy that in Dallas, don't you think? Also, Guinness is not cheap here at $10 per Imperial pint. That, folks, is an actual tax....

In no particular order: These are the politest people I've ever met, and they all really want to speak English. It's like an Asian Toronto. A single LED by the door with a motion sensor makes a lot of sense. A 5 cm step up just inside the door does not. You can't turn off the automatic bidet; best find out how to turn its heater on ASAP. Why get a hotel room when you can get a little studio apartment, complete with British-style washer-dryer by the sink, for $50 a night less? Across from a 7-11, even? I...

Yesterday, on the Siberia side of the Bering Sea: Our flight path yesterday followed the terminator as the earth turned. The sun stayed right on the tip of the left wing for about 90 minutes before we jogged slightly west over Kamchatka.

First, housekeeping. After my last entry I managed to stay up for about 30 minutes, then slept for almost 7 hours. If you do the math you see that means I was up before 3am. So, even thought it's 1pm on Thanksgiving back home, I did some client work to clear it off my agenda for the rest of the week. Now the point of this post: Toronto’s plan to save Bixi transfers the bike-sharing program to the Toronto Parking Authority, turns over management to a Portland-based firm and uses money from Astral Media...

I've been awake for about 22 hours now, and it's starting to show. But yes, I'm in Seoul. I'm going to bet I'll wake up really early tomorrow as my body has no clue what day or time it is. My experience with really huge time shifts makes me optimistic that I'll adapt in a day or two. I have not adapted yet, however. I just need to make it until 8pm... Oh, and sometime after regaining consciousness I'll correct the time stamp on my previous entry.

At this writing I'm just west of the Alexander Archipelago, with 7,093 km left from Dallas to Seoul. We started out at 10,999 km, so this is serious progress. It turns out, this is the longest flight I've ever been on. I didn't realize that when I booked it; I thought Shanghai to O'Hare was longer. Well, it's farther: PVG-ORD is 11,355 km; DFW-ICN is "only" 11,005 km. But because I'm flying west, this flight will be nearly two hours longer than the one from Shanghai. Fortunately for me (if not for the...

"Short" in geologic times. I'm at Dallas-Fort Worth, with about half an hour to start diagnosing a production issue. Then I'll be on a plane for about 14 hours. Here's the plane: You know how you always forget something when you travel? This time it was my guidebook. Lonely Planet Seoul does no good back home on my bookshelf.

Oh, you betcha: On a year-over-year basis, average connection speeds grew by 25 percent. South Korea had an average speed of 14 Mbps while Japan came in second with 10.8 Mbps and the U.S. came in the eighth spot with 7.4 Mbps. Year-over-year, global average peak connection speeds once again demonstrated significant improvement, rising 35 percent. Hong Kong came in first with peak speed of 57.5 Mbps while South Korea came in at 49.3 Mbps. The United States came in 13th at 31.5 Mbps. Yes, South Korea has...

With only a few hours to go before I jet out of Chicago, I'm squeezing in client work and organizing my apartment while on conference calls. Also, I'm sending these to my Kindle: Chinese airlines are chipping away at United. Israel is freaking out about our Iran deal. California's high-speed rail project is in trouble. The Republican Party is lying about the ACA, again. Apparently you can use Azure storage on a Windows phone. Commuters in France can learn English on the train, which sounds like a great...