NUS MBA Business Study Trip To Korea - Tuesday Part 1

I should tell you that the arrangement for our Korea trip was very kindly made by the NUS MBA office. My allotted roommate was one Joel Teo, another Legal Eagle and an ex-colleague at Lee & Lee.

We got along quite well and spoke to each other before we went to sleep on Monday night...

"Goodnight, Joel. We meet downstairs at 7.30am so that we can take the bus early to Gimpo airport for our domestic flight to Yesosu ya?

"Yup. Morning call's around 6.30am. 'Night"

Tuesday Morning In The Hotel Room
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***Slight ringing on the hotel phone which abruptly tails off***

"...mphh... Joel....that's prrbly arr wake up coll... I go beth fust...."

*** 20 minutes later***

"Hey... Singapore time's one hour earlier than Korean right... I don't remember changing the time on my watch so...

"Me neither and it says here on mine 6.50am and so..."

"Fuck... Fucking Fuck!!!!

Half An Hour Later In A Cab Whose Driver Had Obligingly Broken Traffic Rules
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"We're here?.... Here get down?... Ok.. 17 thousand Won? Ok... 20....No, no need.. You keep--- Hey Joel, wait for me. I've got a busted leg and can't run!!!

15 Minutes Later In The Plane After The Applause Died Down
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"You mean you called us like three thousand times? We didn't hear a thing? What are the odds?

"You guys just sleep like pigs is all..."

"No, but seriously--"

"No... Seriously!"

*sigh*

Visit To Posco Steel
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Posco is actually an abbreviation for Pohang Steel Company. As the name suggests, it is based in Pohang but also has another steel factory in Gwangyang, which was where we were headed via domestic flight...



After the mad morning rush, I had regained enough composure to take a picture of the scenery surrounding the airport....



"Not bad..." I told myself, as I readied to snap more pictures of the Korean countryside. But the next thing I remember, somebody was waking me up to tell me that we had arrived at the main lobby of the Posco Steel plant...



What followed next was a tour of an awesome steel factory... A big pity then, that pictures were prohibited, which meant that all I am limited to are pictures that I took on the sly. I'll see if I can get some better one's from my friends, though...





This, I think, is the input harbour where raw materials from all over the world come for onward processing....



That was all I was able to take from the factory... The surrounding town, which housed all of Posco's employees on the other hand, they were quite happy for us to snap away at... It was neat and nice and had all the amenities one could expect - schools, restaurants, shopping centres, stadia, gymasiums etc... But compared to the factory, this was boring....But oh well...







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Hey, you know what? I'm so sorry I've to stop here again as one of my classmates has just called to discuss the Managerial Economics project... The second half of the semester is turning out to be much more challenging than the first....

NUS MBA Business Study Trip To Korea - Monday Part 2

As this was our first real free and easy night in Korea, Jong Hee decided to bring us to a Lotte (one of the few big supermarket chains in Korea) mall to have a look-see and guess what... It looks very much like a mall in Singapore...




I naturally gravitated to the food section while the girls when to get their nth pair of shoes (n being a positive integer more than 100) which, despite its similarity to Singapore had a number of unique gastronomical offerings...







I even bought some seaweed, coaxed by a promoter who was quite good at English (oh, all right, she was cute too)... Pity she didn't get my joke...

"Could I barbecue it?"

"No sir, no need to cook. Just eat like this..."

"I know, but I like to smoke my weed..."



After that, I had a decision to make - either go with one group drinking, or another to Dongdaemun to shop. I'm no lover of alcohol or shopping but at least I do not have to pay to window shop so I opted to go with the Dongdaemun group.

Dongdaemun is actually Korean for the Chinese Dong Da Men, which means Big East Gate, which means that this place was actually the Eastern Gate to Seoul in days gone by. Again, you can see how the traditional blends with the modern...

Big East Gate....



And even bigger shopping complexes...




Which the girls in my group did not want to go to... For they believed all the best bargains were found on the street. So this is where we went in search of dinner...



These stalls generally sold stuff fried in batter - sausages, eggs, squid... Very unspectacular, ordinary stuff... Which was cold to boot...




At least that walk brought us by the Cheongye Stream... You may have seen what it looked like in the day in an earlier post. It's pretty in the night too...





As you could tell, we weren't that satisfied with our first round of nutrition so we went in search of more grub... Once again spurning the upmarket...



For the... umm... downmarket....



But really, this time the food wasn't half bad.... Traditional Korean rice cake in spicy sauce...



Seafood pancake...



Pig intestines mixed with rice rolls which looked like intestines (yeah, I know...)



Fried octopus...



All of which came with fish cake broth which was on the house...



And so it should have been, because by the time the bill came the girls felt as if we had been fleeced....

And then it was shopping.... And so we journeyed on (the girls forging forth, I tagging behind), shunning the complexes....



For the streets...






I followed dutifully for a while, but when the girls wanted to extend their activity by another, I told them I'd rather go drinking - and so I went, to one of the upmarket malls, to drink, in a Coffee Bean, stuff which I you can get in Singapore, which I did not photgraph. So there...

This is a curiosity though... You take it with you after your order is taken and when it beeps, you can go and collect it. Not really new to me though... I had written about a similar contraption in one of my earlier Hong Kong posts but still, for the uninitiated and those who -sniff- do not read my blog often... Have a -beeping- good day....



For I'm now going to try and get some revision for my -beeping- MBA course ...

NUS MBA Business Study Trip To Korea - Monday Part 1

Sorry for the delay, I have been caught up with projects and mid-terms... And of course work...
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Monday was when we all embarked on our first company visit so we were all dressed to the nines... At least most of them were. I was...decent, but bleary eyed for I had snuck out late in the night to search in vain for a pub where I could watch Manchester United v Chelsea. That explains why I do not have any photos... My friends do though, so I may put them in later...

Mirrae Asset
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The first company we visited was Mirrae Asset, a progressive asset management firm which was born out of the ashes of the 1997 financial crisis.

They have gone from strength to strength and recently acquired their own building...





As well as some very cute young male executives who, obviously educated overseas, spoke in crisp, flawless English. As I said, we were still very nervous about visiting companies so I did not take that many pictures - of the building and surroundings, that is. Why would I want to take pictures of young male executives?

I did managed to snap a shot of the view from the conference room though...



All in all, it was a great way to start of our tour companies for the presenters were articulate, sharp and knowledgeable. We could also see why Mirrae Asset has grown from strength to strength...

Korean Development Bank
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Our next stop was KDB, which is actually the governments policy bank. It was set up in the 1950s to help the government build up strategic core industries in the aftermath of the devastating Korean War. It is looking to be fully commercialised in the next couple of years though, and it is currently in a transition period, with its policy functions set to be taken over by another entity.



You can see how warm a welcome they gave us just by the banner they put up...



I would say they have a cool building. I would like a workplace environment like this...




After a very comprehensive briefing, during which we were given an enormous amount of material (which I feel will come in really handy for some of my projects in future), we were quite pleased to be able to visit the bank's trading floor....




The visits for the day done, we were back to the hotel for some rest and free and easy. I could have sworn I had more photos of the companies we visited though, but like magic they all just disappeared. Which is just as well for again, I have some MBA assignments to do.