Sunday, September 20, 2015

It's after 6 am in San Francisco but I'm still awake in South Korea

Though I'm likely to go to sleep soon and I feel sort of otherworldly because I'm shifting time zones for a while (16 hour forward I believe). So, even though it is still today where I live near San Francisco, it is 6 am about there  it is about 10 pm the same day here in South Korea. At times it is like being on another planet, like tonight when we went to eat local food cooked in front of us with things like Pickled quail eggs while my friend told a funny story about the first year he lived here and was single then and decided to make scrambled eggs from 6 quail eggs that he bought at the market. He said as he laughed that 6 quail eggs isn't enough to even make scrambled eggs for one person. So, in many ways the world is like being on a different planet here. For example, cars generally are ONLY white, grey, silver or black. Pretty much all of them are like this. Buses or trucks can be any color including pink, orange purple etc. But not cars or trucks much. This is just normal for South Korea. There aren't any highway patrol cars at all just a GPS that shows the road you are on that rings if you go one mile above the speed limit. So, you have a few seconds of above your speed limit before a ticket is automatically generated and sent to your home. My friend and his wife bought a video camera system that looks front back and to the side  since my friend doesn't speak Korean well even though his wife does. But, if they don't unplug it when they stop it will drain their car battery completely if they don't drive the car a couple of days.

Mostly though for me, it is the time change. It was a lot like this traveling to India, Nepal and Thailand. But then, that was 30 years ago now. It's 10:20 pm Sunday night now (and 6:20 am) and I think I better go to sleep before I get a headache or something.

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