Flight 5848 from Busan to Tokyo arrived at Narita Airport at 4:30pm JST. Elena got in touch with me through Facebook when I was in South Korea and wanted to meet in Tokyo during my 14 hour return layover. I was happy to oblige. I know Elena from Hojeong’s group of friends that she had when I hosted her in New York City in early 2011. I rented a phone for the day for only 300 yen (about $3.80USD) at the airport. It was a simple phone, but worked well for voice and email. Most importantly, I was no longer burdened with finding a rogue WiFi signal for communicating, which was a nice improvement over the situation in South Korea. I sent Elena my phone number over Facebook.

My connecting flight was from Haneda airport at 6:30AM, so I had the rest of the day and the whole night to explore Tokyo again. My first stop was the Tokyo Sky Tree, which had only recently opened it’s observation deck to the public. At the time of this writing, The Tokyo Sky Tree is the second tallest man-made structure in the world. For this reason, the Sky Tree is on my things I saw on Wikipedia that I want to see in real-life list.

The lobby for the Sky Tree hosts an unnecessarily large number of very polite and friendly ushers guiding people through the whole process. The elevator was massive and fast; it took only 30 seconds to lift our group to the 350 meter high observation deck. I was treated to an expansive night view of the city of Tokyo and surrounding areas. Clearly visible from this high up were the many lighted streets of the city and the endless urbanization that flowed far out into the horizon. I paid a little extra for admission to go the 450M high observation deck. The view was much the same higher up, but at times you could see ghost-like clouds blowing past just a few feet outside the window.

Just as I was about to board the subway towards Tokyo Station, I got a call from Elena. I met her near where she works at Yūrakuchō Station. We were both quite hungry, so Elena led me to a fantastic Okinawan restaurant around the corner. Highlights of the meal were the seared bonito sashimi served as a free appetizer, grape seaweed, and sweet potato ice cream. Elena’s eyes lit up when I told her that I planned to stay up all night and see as much of the city as possible. She said that she could join me for the adventure, so we headed out.

The first stop was the ward of Shibuya, another place on my Wikipedia list for being the inspiration of the cyberpunk aesthetic in Blade Runner. We boarded the last train of the evening, but when we arrived in Shibuya, I was sorely disappointed. None of the lights were on, and nobody was out on the street. It was late on Sunday night after all, but still, this was supposed to be Blade Runner town! Elena explained that after the 2011 earthquake that damaged the city’s nuclear power plant, it saves power by turning off the lights after the trains stop running.

We walked around for a bit and passed by a Karaoke establishment. Just as quick as I could say “Now there’s a crazy Japan vacation thing I could totally do.”, we were in a Karaoke booth and Elena was singing to her Japanese girl group, AKB 48. My prior encounters with Karaoke have been a mix of stage fright and absolute terror, but not this time. In Asia, Karaoke is kept much more private: you and your friends rent a sound proof (and embarrassment-proof) booth that comes equipped with a high-tech touch screen remote to choose the songs to which you will sing. The backdrop to the lyrics is often a music video that accompanies the song; or just some stock video of the streets of a random city around the world. The whole experience is much more like playing a video game with your friends than it is a performance for the entertainment of others. I sang to every classic american pop song in the directory. Elena had never heard any of them, so it didn’t matter if I made up the rhythm or tone of the songs that I didn’t know, and nobody else was there to say anything about it! Elena sang exclusively Japanese songs, I hadn’t heard most of them, but thoroughly enjoyed watching the videos of the AKB48 girls dancing to Elena’s singing. Two and a half hours of Karaoke went by way too quickly.

This was my 24th hour in Japan I still hadn’t had any sushi, so Elena took me to a nearby sushi restaurant. The eel sushi was awesome, as was the miso soup. The correct way to consume miso soup in Japan is to pick the bowl up to your mouth and slurp it. Elena gave me a confused look when I explained that in America, we eat miso soup with special Asian soup. The notable item at this place was the abalone sushi. I ordered it because I had never had it before. It was a bit tough; I prefer escargot. One thing I like about Asia, or at least the two countries I visited, is that it’s perfectly acceptable to yell at the waitstaff when you want something. Each time when we wanted to order something, Elena would yell out what we wanted, or she would tell me what to yell and I’d do it. It was great fun; and also a bit of a stress reliever!

We took a taxi to the nearby Meiji Shrine, but were only able to see what was visible from the outside at night because the park was closed. It was also getting close to the time I would have to leave the city, so we headed back to the train station to get my backpack, then took the monorail to Haneida Airport, where I returned my rented phone and boarded the plane. It was tough saying good-bye to Elena; we had such a good time together that I considered staying in Tokyo instead of flying back to the States. Some day soon I will.

I had to check my backpack in before boarding the flight because of the bottle of wine I bought at the gift shop in the DMZ. I left my sleeping pills in my backpack and began to panic when I realized this. There was no way I would be able to sleep packed into economy seating for 14 hours on the flight back to NYC. I was going to be a zombie when I arrived in NYC and would make a terrible first impression at my new job that I was expected to be at 3 hours after landing at JFK. I actually asked the flight staff, in vain, if they could rescue some “important medication” form my luggage. Thankfully for the rest of the passengers, the answer was a firm “no.” Resigned to 14 hours of not sleeping, and making a terrible impression on my first day at Kaplan, I began trying to find the most comfortable position in my economy seat.

The attractive all-female JAL staff for the flight from NYC to Tokyo had been replaced in flight AA 134 by a much more diverse, all-American staff for the flight back. The staff was, however, just as friendly in their own American way. One of the flight attendants noticed me struggling with my tiny airplane pillow, and suggested that if I wanted to sleep during the flight, I could fold the arm rests up in my row and lie down. Economy seating was only about 10% occupied, but I thought this was because passengers were still boarding. It turned out that the flight was severely undersold, and I would have all the space I needed to have a first-class night in Economy! I slept well and arrived at JFK refreshed and ready to start my new Job. The AirTrain JFK, Long Island Railroad, and NYC Subway A train all connected perfectly for my commute from the airport to my apartment. From aircraft to apartment, it took under and hour. I even had about an hour to sleep in my bed before I had to get ready to leave for my first day at Kaplan.

I’d like to finish this series by saying thanks to everyone that I met for the friendship, food, and general exchange of culture exchange. To my couch-hosts especially; Tim, Hye Yoon, and Hojeong, for giving me a glimpse into your lives on the other side of the world. Come stay at my place in NYC whenever you like.

Before I caught the bus back to Pohang, I snapped this representative photo of a deluxe spam kit for sale in the Busan bus station. The price tag on the center one is 28,000₩, roughly $25 USD. Wikipedia informs me that Spam in South Korea is actually of higher quality than spam in other countries.

The bus ride back to Pohang went smoothly. I had enough time to shower and nap a bit before joining Hojeong and her group of about 20 eclectic friends for dinner. We had yummy Korean BBQ at a sit-on-the-floor restaurant, then took a city bus across town to a beach shot Roman candles. This beach had vendors down by the water that will sell you all the fireworks you want, regardless of your sobriety. I can only assume that most beaches in Korea also have fireworks vendors. The view of all the illuminated buildings and oil refineries lining the inward-curving coast was particularly stimulating.

We headed to a nearby bar / nightclub; some in our group engaged the beer pong facilities for a way too serious tournament, I was however, completely exhausted from my adventure in Busan. Amidst the loud dubstep remixes, boozy conversations, and beer pong splashings, I found myself fast asleep on a quite comfortable couch. I’m not sure how long I was out, but everyone was dancing and generally having a great time when I woke. I joined in the revelry for a bit, but it was apparent that I had missed the not-sober train. The evening eventually played out and a few of us made a stop at McDonalds before heading back to the dormitory at 6AM. The bulgogi burgers at Korean McDonalds’s are quite an improvement over their standard fare in the states.

The next day was something called “Member Training” for Hojeong’s dormatory and I was invited along. (It wasn’t actually training.) We took a charter bus to Geyongju and went to an amusement park, the 3rd of my week-long trip. Most of us, myself included, only managed to do two or three rides for the day since the park was so crowded. Honestly, I would have rather explored Geyongju, but since I was with a group and had no transportation, I just stuck with them and actually had a good time regardless. Before leaving the amusement park, the whole group decided to sing and dance to Gangnam Style. I made myself scarce during this time.

The next stop was a family owned traditional Korean restaurant. I don’t know the name of it, but you can find it right here, next to some Shilla hill tombs. This restaurant served the best traditional Korean food I’ve ever had. Shortly after we sat down, the waitstaff filled the table to the edges with all kinds of interesting things to eat. I tried to taste everything, but there were so many different things on the table that trying a bit everything was nearly impossible. The two most memorable tastes were: 1, thin lacto-fermented leaves; they tasted fresh, very spicy, and little stinky. I found them strangely addictive. And 2, some kind of rice-beer that had an interesting flavor. Google thinks that it might be called Makgeolli.

Our final stop in Gyeongju was Anapji, a pond area that was a resort for Korean royalty centuries ago, but is now a park. Parts of the park have been immaculately restored to their original glory. Three pavilions of the original resort have been rebuilt and are well illuminated at night. The pavilions are all on the edge of a pond with some small islands, which is also beautifully lit, and there is a trail that you can follow around the pond.

I woke the next morning and took a bus to Gimhae (Busan’s Airport) for my flight back home. My trip wasn’t over just yet; I had another 14 hour layover in Tokyo that I intended to exploit to the fullest.

Continue to Part 10 – Tokyo

My first waypoint in Busan was an island park called Taejongdae. Google Transit said it would take two hours to get there, so I opted to take a taxi instead. (Taxis are really cheap in Korea, by the way.) I was starving when I got there, so I had some lunch at a really dirty-looking restaurant where as far as I could tell, the only person working there was an old lady who was preoccupied with shucking some sort of onion on the sidewalk out front. The only customers were a party of old Korean guys eating and smoking up a storm. I got some kind of soup with a whole fish body in it… I discarded lots of bones and fish eyeballs, but the soup was actually really good.

Taejongdae park has a hop-on / hop-off train that shuttles people around to points of interest on a loop through the park. I had a lot to see, and the train was cheap, so I took it. I only made two stops: one at the observatory for a few minutes, and another at the lighthouse, where I hiked down to the rocky cliffs, took some pictures, and made a new friend.

I met Min Jeong (이민정) while she was attempting to take a photograph of herself on the steps of the lighthouse with the ocean in the background. I offered to take her photo (and did a darn good job) and we struck up a conversation. Min Jeong was traveling all by herself and was happy to converse in English even though she is still learning it. Her hometown is a city just south of Seoul. We exchanged stories about where we were coming from and where we were going to. She said that her friends would be amazed that she met an actual foreigner in her travels. I was just as amazed to have pulled a new Korean friend out of thin air… they are rare where I come from! The awesome thing about traveling to a far off place is that meeting people becomes just this easy; explaining what it’s like where you come from can immediately flourish into an interesting conversation.

Busan, like just about every city in South Korea, has an observation tower for Tourists. The Busan Tower was Min Jeong’s next stop, and she invited me to go with her. We took the bus from Taejongdae to Nampo-Dong, Busan’s central business district and site of the Busan International Film Festival. The area was full of shops, street food, yellow sneakers, and tourist-types. We stopped for some fish cakes at one of the restaurants, then began hunting down one thing I wanted to eat in particular; I think it’s called hotteok, and was something Hojeong recommended to me in an email. It’s a delicious sweet and salty bun thingy that’s usually sold out of a street cart. We found a cart selling them and got in line. Before I got the bun, I was shocked to see a pile of cash on the customer side of the street cart… apparently customers are trusted to make their own change‽ I could hardly believe it. Anyways, the hotteok was everything it was hyped up to be. One of my biggest regrets of this trip was that I didn’t go back for seconds … or sevenths for that matter!

Steps leading to the Busan Tower entrance were nearby, so we ascended them and took the elevator up for a lovely view of the city. I was especially mesmerized by the lights on the front of nearby Lotte department store. We took some photographs and headed down after we had seen everything.

My plan was to find one of the spas and stay the night for cheap in the communal sleeping room. Hojeong said that the spas were mostly by Haeundae beach. I explained to Min Jeong that’s where I had planned on staying for the night, so she hailed a cab and told the driver where to go. For some reason, I regret telling her this. We agreed to meet the next day.

The cab dropped me off at Haeundae beach, but I saw no sign of any spas. There was, however, an endless array of neon-glowing love motels occupying every block in the district. The photos I took don’t do it justice. Every building, some 15 stories tall, was going crazy with neon lights advertising itself. When you go into the lobby of one of these motels, you are presented with a menu of sorts that describes each room with a photo. If the room is available, the photo is illuminated. The rooms are all rather cheap, bottoming out at around 50,000 won per night. Most motels were full though, so I had to visit a few before I could find a vacancy. I don’t remember the name of the motel I stayed at, but it was somewhere right around here.

My room may as well have been designed by Quagmire from Family Guy. The bathroom door was veneered with an image of giant lips, the “art” for the window shades was straight off the flaps of an American freight truck, and my bed, as a commemorative tribute to Michael Jackson, somehow seemed to fit right in with the theme. The room had ‘his’ and ‘hers’ computers side-by-side, underneath a massive flat-screen TV. Unfortunately, the computer keyboard layouts were set to Hangul with no indication of how to change the layout back to English, so I couldn’t use them very effectively.

I met Min Jeong the next morning at the aquarium by the beach, and we took a taxi across the Gwangan Bridge to a restaurant that serves raw fish soup. It was nothing like sashimi and tasted a bit like mild pickled herring, but very delicious. Apparently Pohang is famous for this soup, but Busan’s was pretty good too. We then walked through a fish market where old women would do their best to try to convince you that you needed to buy their fresh catch right now! Somehow I genuinely felt guilty for not buying their giant octopuses, eels, and flounders.

I had to take the bus back to Pohang in about an hour so our choices were limited to attractions in the immediate area, so we went to a nearby amusement park called “Me World” and bought tickets good for three rides. Nobody seemed to be around, and the place had a bit of an eerie vibe to it. We made our way towards the roller coaster in the back. There was a single girl operating the entire ride; Min had to get her attention before she would let us on. We got in the first car and only halfway through the ride did I notice that our car was all by itself. I thought it was rather strange to ride a roller-coaster in a single car, but it was thankfully nowhere near as harrowing as the one in Lotte World since there were no close clearances, and no loops.

We used our next two rides on the ferris wheel and the flume ride respectively. I really wanted to stay in Busan for another few days, especially since I had a new friend with which to share the experience, but I had already promised Hojeong that I’d be back in Pohang for dinner with her and her friends. It was hard to say goodbye to Min Jeong, but we promised to keep in touch, and we have been doing just that in the past three weeks since I’ve been back.

Here is a photo of one of the many fish cake stands you can find in Busan. This one was at the bus station. Apparently, you can just walk up to this trough and start eating them. When you are finished, the attendant counts your sticks and charges you accordingly. Feel free to scoop up some broth and sip it to wash everything down. I stared at people eating out of this thing for about five minutes before I figured out how it all works. It’s actually a pretty efficient way to eat hot food on the go.

Here are some funny dried red mushrooms I found for sale outside the Busan bus station. I bought one but it somehow became wet and moldy by the time I got back to America despite my best efforts to keep it dry. Does anyone have any idea what this strain is called and what diseases it’s supposed to heal?

Continue on to part 9 – Pohang and Gyeongju

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-8-busan/feed/ 2 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-7-ktx-and-saemaul-to-pohang/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-7-ktx-and-saemaul-to-pohang/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2012 06:07:22 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=850 This post covers September 19th and 20th of my 2012 trip to Asia. Start with Part 1 if you want the whole story.

“포항 공대 여자 기숙사 앞으로 가주세요. 제 친구가 한국말을 잘 못합니다. 제가 데리러 나갈테니 조심히 데려다 주세요” — That’s the message Hojeong emailed me and said to show to the taxi driver once I arrived in Pohang. According to Google, it says something like “Please forward a female dorm Pohang University of Science and Technology. My friend can not speak Korean well, Please take careful I’ll get her.”

I got to the city via Korea Train Express (KTX) and transferring in Dongdaegu to the slightly slower but just as nice Saemaul train. Hojeong was my excuse for visiting Korea in the first place. I hosted her in my apartment in NYC a couple of times back in 2011; once on her way to live in Mexico for six months, and once on her way back to South Korea. She’s an amazingly eclectic and adaptive person, and always fun to be around. In fact, every time I’ve been around Hojeong, she always has an intensely diverse, interesting, and fun group of people around her, and this time was no exception. No sooner than I arrived did her Brazilian friends start giving a presentation on their country and its food, people, and culture.

I came to Korea giving Hojeong almost no prior notice, so I didn’t fault her for prioritizing her time for classes classes and tests. Since she would be in class all of Thursday, Hojeong recommended that I visit Busan overnight from Thursday to Friday. Busan is Korea’s second-largest city and is situated on the coast in the country’s southeast corner. It has lots to offer tourists: beaches, food, hiking, temples, spas and the like. Hojeong and her friends gave a few tips on how to get there and what to do. So, the next morning I took the non-stop bus directly from Pohang to the bus station that lies in the northern outskirts of Busan.

Continue to part 8 – Busan…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-7-ktx-and-saemaul-to-pohang/feed/ 0 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-6-surfing-itaewon-american-style/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-6-surfing-itaewon-american-style/#comments Sat, 06 Oct 2012 05:44:30 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=793 This post covers September 18 and 19th of my 2012 trip to Asia. Start with Part 1 if you want the whole story.

I got back to Seoul from the DMZ at about 5:30 on Tuesday, and it was time to get in contact with the next host from CouchSurfing. His name is Tim and he lives in Itaewon, Seoul’s official “international district.” I’ve also heard Itaewon referred to as a foreigner slum, a red light district for the nearby United States military base, and an easy place to meet attractive Korean women who prefer westerners. Tim, like just about anyone in Korea that speaks fluent English, teaches English to Koreans for a living. I was eager to get a first-hand perspective of the expatriate, English-teaching lifestyle, since at times I’ve considered doing it for a year just for the experience.

I would be arriving at Tim’s apartment while he was at work. He said the door to the building was open and gave me the code to his digital door lock. Every residence in South Korea has a digital door lock; nobody uses keys. Often people don’t even lock the door to their apartment. It took a long while to find his apartment; I circled his block several times trying to figure out what I misunderstood in the directions and address he gave. I found his street, and I found the apartment with the number he gave, but the people inside didn’t know anything about “Tim” or anything about “Couchsurfing”. After several messages sent back and forth through Kakotalk over a random WiFi signal around the corner, Tim described in detail the façade of his apartment building. I correctly identified the building, but it was most certainly not at the address he gave. It turns out that Seoul will occasionally rename streets and renumber buildings in its chaotic network of streets, and Tim’s apartment fell victim to this practice just a week prior. How is that supposed to be okay, Seoul‽ I’m still appalled two weeks later.

I was completely exhausted by the time I entered Tim’s apartment, so I passed out on his couch for several hours. I woke startled when Tim came home and the two of us experienced a classic CouchSurfing moment: a guy comes home to his apartment to find a semi-stranger passed out on his couch, and while initially confused and startled, the two immediately strike up a conversation about everything ranging from living abroad to the virtues of eating enough protein.

Tim was a great host. He took me to a local outdoor Korean BBQ joint around the corner, where we ate korean bacon and talked about all sorts of things. My take-away was that teaching English abroad would have been an awesome thing to do right out of college, but the opportunity cost of doing so now would be too high… besides, I suspect that web application developers are going to become increasingly in-demand in South Korea over the next few years.

On the way back to his apartment, Tim introduced me to the mind-blowing selection of frozen ice cream cones that are available at every bodega in the country. I should have taken a picture.

On Tim’s recommendation, the next day I went for a hike up the hill neighboring Itaewon to get to N Seoul Tower. The tower offered an amazing 360 degree view of the entire city of Seoul. Here’s a photo of a photo of some of the wildlife I might have seen on the hike, had I been more observant:

This would be my last day in Seoul. A few hours later, I would be riding the KTX to Pohang to visit my friend Sirena / Hojeong Yun, whom I hosted in my apartment in NYC a couple of times last year.

On my way to the train station in Itaewon, I came across the tallest pair of size 32 jeans I’ve ever seen: they had a size 38 inseam! I never thought I would see that in Korea of all places. The shopkeeper let me photograph the label, but insisted that she cover up her shop’s name in Hangul on the tag.

Continue to part 7…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-6-surfing-itaewon-american-style/feed/ 2 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-5-dmz-tour-of-the-north-south-korean-border/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-5-dmz-tour-of-the-north-south-korean-border/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:50:57 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=779 This post covers September 18th of my 2012 trip to Asia. Start with Part 1 if you want the whole story.

On Tuesday, I took a tour of the DMZ area between North and South Korea through the PanmunJom Travel Center. I found the tour enjoyable and educational, and was overall surprised at how hopeful South Korea’s attitude is towards the possibility of uniting again with North Korea. I recommend taking the tour if you ever visit Seoul and have a day for it.

The bus ride from Seoul to the DMZ was down a large highway that got more and more vacant the farther we went. The DMZ area is known for its quality ginseng crops as well as an abundance of natural wildlife because of the unusually low human population.

The tour included several historical sites that you can read more about on Wikipedia, so I’ll just list them here, along with some photos I took.

• Imjingak, a “resort” / museum for people who can not return to their home town because of border issues. It was a bit eerie to see an amusement park so close to an “active” war zone.
  
  It is on the south end of the Freedom Bridge:
  
  
  There’s a shot-up locomotive from the Korean War on display:
  
  
  …and some funny-looking South Korean soldier cartoon statues:
  
• The Third Tunnel. Yeah, I managed to go caving! One of 4 known, and possibly up to 20 still undiscovered tunnels that North Korea dug under the border as part of a plan to invade Seoul.
• Dorsan Station. A fully functional modern train station that is the last stop on the railroad that connects to North Korea.
  
  
• Dora Observatory You can see farm fields and a “city” in North Korea from this terrestrial observatory. The “city” is Kijŏng-dong, a Potemkin village that was built to lure South Koreans over to North Korea in the 1960s as part of their propaganda campaign. North Korea apparently still broadcasts propaganda from loudspeakers here that can be heard across the border.
• Panmunjom village, I still can’t quite figure this place out; there is a ten foot section where there is a gap in fence between the two Koreas, and the best-looking soldiers from North and South Korea stare at each other all day.
  
  
  I actually crossed over the border into North Korea for a few minutes. Through the window you can see the demarcation line that separates the south from the north. The Korean soldier is in South Korea while I am in North Korea.
  

I try to avoid souvenirs since like to travel light, but I couldn’t resist getting some things as the gift shop, since they are so unique.

That’s ginseng wine made in Pyongyang. There is an actual ginseng root in the wine. I don’t think I’ll ever drink it, but it looks pretty cool.

The 1978 series set of North Korean banknotes, totals 166KPW, I paid 26000₩ (about $23 US). Total cash value on the black market would be about $0.16 US. In other words, the gift shop exchange rate is 143 times higher than the black market exchange rate. Someone out there must be making a killing with this kind of arbitrage.

Continue to part 6, “Surfing Itaewon, American style”

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-5-dmz-tour-of-the-north-south-korean-border/feed/ 1 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-4-exploring-seoul-in-the-rain/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-4-exploring-seoul-in-the-rain/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:01:57 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=731 COEX is Asia’s largest underground shopping mall. I got there early Monday morning, just as the shops were just starting to open. I had no intention of buying anything, I just wanted to see what it was like as I had never been in any underground shopping mall at this scale. Along with hundreds of shops, there is also a Kimchi museum, but unfortunately it is closed Mondays. I wandered around, playing with the newest line of 3D Samsung and LG TV sets, eating at the bakeries and restaurants, and feeling hopelessly underdressed. Gangnam is often described as the beverly hills of South Korea; several establishments advertise plastic surgery.

Somewhere during my visit I wandered through the Lotte Duty Free store and into the attached COEX Convention and Exhibition center, which was hosting some kind of digital media conference with presentations on topics ranging from setting up Hadoop clusters to designing content for mobile devices, in other words, the sort of conference you might find me at if I went to conferences. I thought about crashing some of the presentations, but then retreated back into the mall after my better judgement kicked in.

Next indoor stop for the day was the Lotte World Adventure Theme park, an giant indoor theme park all inside a large building complete with a flume ride, indoor roller-coaster, ice skating rink, year-round haunted house, monorail, fake hot air balloon rides, and a waterpark.

All alone, I felt very awkward going to a theme park, but all of this normally outdoors-stuff being indoors just seemed too weird to me, and I had to see what it was like, so I bought admission and went on most of the aforementioned rides. The roller-coaster was genuinely terrifying because I found myself having duck to avoid decapitation by overhead obstacles. I was probably the tallest person to have ever ridden it (and survived.)

Admission to the park also included access to the “folk museum”, which told the story of human history in the Korean Peninsula from the dawn of man to what I’m guessing was some time in the late 1800s. I did not know how big the museum was, but as I progressed through it, the displays kept getting bigger; little dioramas of palaces in one room became full-sized in the next room. Going further, the rooms kept getting bigger until I found myself in a massive space the size of a large aircraft hanger full of what was a palace and a city surrounding it, all in about 1/5th scale.

The girl tending the gift shop in this room was eager to practice her English, so I spent the next two hours chatting with her with heavy help from her translator. She kept asking about some movie called something like “No Sleep in Seattle” starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, and I kept responding with “do you mean ‘Sleepless in Seattle‘?” and she would say ‘no, it’s something else… I just can’t remember the name of the movie!’ This went on for quite a while and I finally told her I would email her a link after I did some research.

The day at Lotte World closed an with indoor fireworks display and a laser light show straight out of the early 90s.

My phone died before I got home, and it contained directions for getting back to my couch-host’s house, so I spent the next four hours retracing my steps and finally made it back at around midnight. I went to sleep quickly because I had to get up early for a tour of the DMZ along the North / South Korean border the next day.

Continue to Part 5…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-4-exploring-seoul-in-the-rain/feed/ 2 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-3-seoul/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-3-seoul/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:01:30 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=699 This is part three of my Asia 2012 trip report. This post covers September 16th. Start with Part 1 if you want the whole story.

The flight to Seoul was about two hours; a quick hop compared to my flight from NYC. I didn’t have much time to plan and research for this trip, and one of the false assumptions that I made about Korea was that getting a prepaid wireless voice and data 3G sim card would be a non-issue. You see, everybody knows that South Korea is the most wired country in the world because they skipped the whole plain old telephone service thing and went straight to broadband internet and smartphones. However, the Korean government requires that everyone in the country accessing the internet be associated with a resident registration number, which is fine if you are a citizen, but if you are a clueless tourist, you are kind of out of luck. There are ways to get cellphone service if you are a foreigner, but those ways take a bit of preparation and paperwork, and the processing time takes longer the duration of my visit…. so lesson learned. I’ll be prepared for this next time I visit Korea. For the meantime, I relied on accessing random open WiFi signals, of which there are many, so I wasn’t completely out of luck.

The first order of business was to get in contact with my host, whom I met through Couchsurfing.org. Using the free WiFi at Incheon Airport, we communicated over email, and arranged to meet at the coffee shop outside of the train station in her neighborhood. Her name is Hye Yoon (or “Hellen” for westerners), and she lives with her sister and her sister’s husband. It was great to finally meet a local of the area that could explain how things work, and take me places without getting lost somewhere in-between point A and B.

As much as I wanted to be able to start exploring the city, I was completely exhausted after my intercontinental flight and pulling an all-nighter in Tokyo, so the only thing I wanted to do was to sleep for about a solid day, so she took me to her house and there I slept for the rest of the day, and the rest of the night, with the exception of waking for an hour at about midnight to visit with Hye Yoon and her sister. I had some of their left over rice with sweet potato and pork bellies for a midnight snack. This was my first experience Couchsurfing even though I’ve been hosting people at my apartment for almost two years. I felt bad that I wasn’t able to visit more with them, as they were so welcoming and eager to share and talk about anything American or Korean. Hye Yoon proudly showed me that she had read the complete set of Mark Twain’s travelogues, all in Korean, and had plotted the whole thing on a map of the USA. I was blown away and in my tired stooper, might have responded with something about how much I like the fried chicken from Kyo-Chon in a vein attempt to reciprocate the cultural courtesy.

I woke refreshed the next morning and was ready to see Seoul. It was Monday and a monsoon would be sweeping through the city for the entire day. I met Hye Yoon in the kitchen as she was leaving for work and we headed out together to the bus stop. A Korean friend / coworker back in NYC suggested that with all the rain I explore the giant COEX shopping mall in Gangnam, so that would be my first destination of the day.

Continue to part 4…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-3-seoul/feed/ 0 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-2-a-night-in-tokyo/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-2-a-night-in-tokyo/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 06:00:13 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=684 This is part two of my Asia 2012 trip report. This post covers September 15 – September 16th. Start with Part 1 if you want the whole story.

I used the trains.jp iPhone app to figure out how to get to Haneda, which included a transfer in Tokyo Station, a endless multi-story complex that might as well be a subterranean city.

Tokyo station hosts an impressive array of quality noodle restaurants as well as the Grand Central Oyster Bar, an establishment that I’m almost certain is located somewhere far far away.

It was very humid in Tokyo so I had to change into shorts quickly to stay comfortable. Consulting my map, I saw that the Tokyo Imperial Palace was nearby, so I decided to walk over to it. The palace was closed, so I only got to see the outside. Looking at my map again, I saw that the Tokyo Tower was a few subway stops south, so I decided to go have a look. The subways only accept cash, so I had to re-surface and get some cash from an ATM first so I could buy my ticket. On the subway car, I was impressed that the seats are upholstered with porous cloth, and they were actually clean. If you live in NYC, you’ll understand how impressive this actually is.

I got off at the Shibakoen Station and walked to the tower just in time for it to be closed when I arrived. It was still a nice sight to see it from the ground. It was already 22:30, and I heard that the Roppongi district had some nightlife and it was nearnby, so I decided to walk over and see what the scene was like. On my way I walked by a bike parking garage, accessible by from the sidewalk, and was appalled by what I saw.

I was not disappointed by the scene in Roppongi. I was initially drawn to the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower complex. Club-goers were everywhere, some drunk, some not. I was an odd-looking guy wearing a huge packpack and comfortable travel shorts so I stood out like a sore thumb, but I didn’t care. Each block had an African guy who tried to hustle me with “you like topless?”, “I hook you up with am amazing woman, all you can drink for 5000 yen,” “You’d like a little rub, a little friction, wouldn’t you?.” Tempting as it sounded, I didn’t take any of them up on their offers. It was all very strange, and though I felt like I was the only person they were soliciting, I’m positive that I’m the only person that every one of them solicited.

I walked every single block in the district, at least twice, with my giant backpack and shorts until 5am. Inside each block was a fractal-like maze of surprisingly clean alleys, full of hidden sake bars and restaurants, and little zen gardens. I loved this experience.

I did go into a few bars. I thought it would be fun to dance for a little bit, since that’s about the only thing that made any sense to do other than just walking around the streets all night waiting for my flight to Seoul. Strangely, every single establishment in Roppongi had a sign posted outside that prohibited dancing inside. I asked around why this was so, and nobody could give me an answer.

As the night ended, I caught a taxi back to Tokyo Station, then took the Subway and monorail to Haneda Airport for an early morning flight to Seoul. Before boarding, I was questioned by the airline staff about my itinerary, as it appeared to them that I had a one-way ticket into Seoul. I explained that I would be taking the KTX high speed rail across South Korea and flying back to Tokyo from Busan, a city in the southwest region of the country.

Continue to part 3…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-part-2-a-night-in-tokyo/feed/ 0 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-bikes/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-bikes/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:59:33 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=696 I took all of the following photos in a small sidewalk-accessible and visible bike parking garage in the Roppongi shopping district in Tokyo.

Look closely at this one and you’ll notice that the lock on this bike isn’t actually locking anything. With the right maneuver, you can just slide the lock over the bike and wheel:

This bike’s owner realized that people don’t steal bikes here and didn’t even bother with a lock:

Here are some quick-release classics:

Tokyo would be a bike thief’s paradise…. if only it had any bike thiefs. Coming from the bike theft capital of the world, I’ll admit to being somewhat jaded, but the lock-jobs I witnessed were simply illogical. I guess people here are just decent trustworthy citizens.

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/10/asia-2012-bikes/feed/ 0 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/09/asia2012-part-1/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/09/asia2012-part-1/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2012 04:41:12 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=663 I’ll be publishing posts from this trip in digestible installments at a rate of one per day, roughly in latent real-time with the actual trip. This post covers 14-September through 15-September.

I only had a week, weekends inclusive, for vacationing between my old job at Roubini Global Economics, and Kaplan. I structured my itinerary so I would leave my old job three hours before my outgoing flight, and would arrive back in NYC 3 hours before starting my new job at Kaplan at 9:30am Monday. I would need to maximize the amount of sleep I got on the 14 hour flight to Tokyo, so the day before my flight, I visited a doctor to see if he could do anything about the symptoms of chronic insomnia I would tell him I was experiencing. After learning a little from the doctor about how to maintain good “sleep hygiene”, I got what I came for: a prescription for Ambien.

The first leg of my trip was between JFK and Narita airport for Tokyo in a Boeing 777. I’d never been on a 14 hour flight before, and fearing that the seats in economy would be too small for my tall Texan legs, I upgraded to premium economy at the airport. The aircraft was so big inside that I could comfortably stand up in the aisle. Service from the attractive japanese stewardesses was top-notch, and the in-flight entertainment system had some version of Tetris. I slept, ate, and played. It was a good flight.

I would have 14 hours on layover to transfer through Tokyō to Haneda airport to catch my flight to Seoul, which would be a sufficient amount of time to get out and see a couple of the districts in Tokyō, at night. I got some funny looks from the immigration officials when I told them that I had no hotel arranged and would be wandering the city all night. They let me in anyway. Since the Tokyo subways stop running at about midnight, I would be getting around the city by foot and taxi, with a preference for being on foot since I was traveling light and the taxis in Tokyo are rather expensive.

Continue to part two…

]]> http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/09/asia2012-part-1/feed/ 0 http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/07/fractio/ http://thomashallock.com/blog/2012/07/fractio/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:17:00 +0000 admin http://thomashallock.com/blog/?p=649

Fractio: a socket-based distributed Mandelbrot calculator

Fractio is a refinement of my distributed mandelbrot calculator from a few years ago. This version uses sockets to manage the communication between the browser and the server so polling can be avoided altogether.

Links:

• demo – Click “Make a worker” a few times to get it going. The more workers you make the faster it will render.
• source on github

(It may be down since I haven’t daemonized the process yet)

Showcases the image, title, description, and link for a set of featured content. Status indicators on the upper-right indicate how many pieces are featured, where in the featured set the currently displayed piece is, and how much time the current piece will be shown before switching to the next piece.

Technology

Image that are at most one click away are pre-fetched. Written as a jQuery plug-in. Functional all the way down to IE6+.

Overflowing content is ellipsed using my ellipsis plug-in for jQuery.

Link: Feature Rotator

Infinity scrolling on the main page keeps the page loading quickly white allowing seamless access to older posts.

The forum harbors a community of staff economists, strategists, and clients. Economists and strategists make posts, and anyone with access can read the forum. RGE staff and certain clients are able to submit comments to the original post as well as to comments on the original post.

Main post can be edited inline.

E-mail notifications are sent as requested to interested parties when a reply is received on a post or comment.

Technology:

PHP and couchDB run on the back-end to store and fetch the data. The front-end code leverages jQuery. The notification system runs on node.js as a daemon listening the the _changes feed in couchDB.

Current state is stored in the URI hash as JSON for link-ability.

Inline editor uses contenteditable for wysiwyg awesomeness. Edits to the main post are submitted through an AJAX post to a webserver at /json/thoughtedit.

Front-end is functional all the way down to IE6

Link: The Forum

• username: demo
• password: abc123

Immediately after my jury duty is complete, I have a trial of my own at NYC housing court defending my lease at 310 W. 47th Street against my landlord’s holdover petition aimed at evicting me upon false grounds. I’ll probably do a write-up on this soon as well; it is a long and funny story.

UPDATE: 19-Aug-2012

Jury duty lasted just three days; it was over by the afternoon of 30-March. The trial was for a kid who was accused of :

1. carrying a firearm
2. intent to use a firearm
3. possessing a stolen credit card

We found him guilty on all three accounts. I held up the jury a bit because I wasn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he possessed the firearm. His defense made the case that he was framed by the police that had originally patted him down and found nothing. On the second pat-down they found the firearm underneath his rotting, smelly colostomy bag. The defense’s explanation was that the firearm was dropped by one of the defendant’s accomplices who fled the police after him and three others were stopped for questioning, then the firearm was then planted on the defendant. That seemed like a possible scenario, but there was no conclusive evidence suggesting that is what happened. My decision came down to the definition of “reasonable doubt,” which I had to stretch a bit. Nobody else on the jury seemed to struggle with this issue, which I found a little disturbing. It was interesting to have a debate over this sort of an issue with a very well-rounded cross section of the population with whom I would otherwise never have had this sort of interaction. I do feel bad for causing the judge to sentence this kid to at least several years in prison. Well, I did my civic duty, that’s what counts, I suppose.

I worked out a time with them for the phone screening and a few days later it took place. Amazon’s protocol is to have you write code down, then recite it back to them over the phone. This seemed silly, so I fired up a public Google doc and shared the URL with them; made the process much simpler. The task was rather simple, and while I can’t share the details, I will say that even a simple solution runs in O(n) time (and oh yes, they certainly did ask me about that.)

I received an e-mail invitation a few days later for an on-site interview in Seattle, airfare (from NYC) and hotel (four stars) courtesy of Amazon. I scheduled time off from work, and made the trip out to Seattle for the interview. Flight was direct and took about 6.5 hours. Light rail trip into downtown Seattle took about 45 minutes. Amazon also offered to pay for all cab fare, but I really don’t like riding in cars unless I’m driving.

After I checked in to the Grand Hyatt, I went out to find some food. Found a place around the corner that made a pretty good lamb burger. The waitress suggested I sit at the bar because it’s more fun. Glad I did because I met a very attractive model who just flew in from LA to do a shoot for nordstrom.com. :) I told her to give me a call if she ever finds herself in New York City.

Friday was the day of the interview. I made my way to the Amazon campus and after a brief tour of the building adjacent to the Kindle building, had a chat with th erecruiter about the position and benefits. Seemed pretty good honestly. Options, relocation, usual healthcare, etc…

The first interview was with the product director for Kindle Cloud Reader. His portion was conducted over lunch and we discussed topics of personality, team dynamics, and career motivation. The remaining interviews were purely technical. I was asked for details on past projects that I found challenging or interesting, and had to whiteboard code solutions to a handful of theory-heavy challenges generalizing state machines, computing lists of prime numbers, using and making a hash table, and implementing LSB encoding. Of note, I was not asked anything relating to web applications, e.g. Javascript, server-side programming, HTTP, framework design, shell scripting, building and using frameworks both client and server-side, the nuances of working with the document object model, client-side and server-side performance optimization, and database design, i.e. In other words, the skills that I suspect I would actually be using on the job.

The interview was entirely theory, and I have to admit that I was a bit rusty on some topics, like the formal definition of a state machine, or how to properly add elements into a hash-table.

In total I had four technical interviews, plus the first interview with the product director. With the exception of one of the interviewers, they all seemed a bit tired and annoyed before I actually said anything, and I can’t help but think this might have influenced their perceptions.

I received a call from Amazon the day after I returned to NYC and was told that I would not be moving forward in their hiring process. No big loss. I suspect that Amazon’s expenses for my travel and hotel were around $800, which I suppose is just a drop in the bucket for them. Before I left for Seattle, I had a four hour interview with Couchsurfing that seemed to go much better. I’m still waiting to hear back from them, and honestly, while perhaps not as technically diverse, it sounds like it would be a much more fun environment in which to work.

• The Seattle space needle has a giant inflatable angry bird on it. Crazy times we live in!
• It is legal to ride bicycles on the sidewalk and their citizens take full advantage of it:
  

  Every person operating a bicycle upon any sidewalk or public path shall
  operate the same in a careful and prudent manner and at a rate of speed no
  greater than is reasonable and proper under the conditions existing at the
  point of operation, taking into account the amount and character of
  pedestrian traffic, grade and width of sidewalk or public path, and
  condition of surface, and shall obey all traffic-control devices. Every
  person operating a bicycle upon a sidewalk or public path shall yield the
  right-of-way to any pedestrian thereon, and shall give an audible signal
  before overtaking and passing any pedestrian. (source)

• Half the people on the streets and sidewalks are on skateboards, and they can actually land tricks, which was something I’ve never seen before in person. I appreciated how skateboarding was more of a practical mode of transportation than an affirmation of belonging to an obnoxious subculture. Also, skateboarding seems like a practical way to get around since most of the city (that I saw) is on a perfect incline for skateboarding.
• Seattle takes public transportation seriously. So does San Francisco. Both cities are geographically bounded on the sides, and I suspect that this plays a role in influencing better city planning.
• There are lots of good places to eat. Food seemed about as expensive as that in New York City.
• Roller Girls are pretty popular in Austin, but the scene in Seattle is on a whole other level. The announcers said that there were more than 5000 people in the arena.
• Since my visit in 1998, the Gum Wall has transformed from a nuisance into a world-famous tourist attraction.

Oh, and it never rained for the four days I was in the city.

Update 24-April-2012
I got the attachments installed along with my first set of trays today. The attachments are installed using a set of template trays that have placeholders for the attachments. The attachments are placed into the template trays, which are then set onto my teeth, at which point the attachments are bonded using a UV light.

The attachments are the little white rectangles on my top teeth. This was taken after installing attachments on my top teeth, but before installing attachments on my lower teeth. Some teeth need the attachments because their current position isn't optimal for the forces that the trays will exert.

After putting on a set of trays for the first time, I have to bite down on these little "chewies" for a few minutes to push everything into place.

Here are the actual trays in my mouth. I have to wear them for 20-22 hours a day. I can only drink water when wearing them, so casual snacking is going to be difficult.

Burning Man was a crazy and amazing event; words aren’t the best way to relate the experience, but I’ll do my best here.  Also, I was separated from my phone almost as soon as I got there, so I wasn’t able to take any pictures myself, so I’ll link to whatever I can find from searching on Google as I write this.

One person in our camp suggested that we were actually on another planet for the week in reference to the fact that we were completely cut off from the outside world with respect to communication, power, and trash, and the environment was so different than what most of are used to. (The Black Rock desert does not support any form of life during the summer.) There were porta-potties though, and lots of light to collect with the solar panel that someone brought to our camp. I brought 12.5 gallons of water from Reno but only used 8 of them.

Despite the remote and primitive conditions of the desert, I witnessed some of the most amazing and extravagant events and interactive sculpture art installations I’ve ever seen. There were many “mutant vehicles”, as they are called: one was a three story a luxury yacht that had been mounted on wheels and had a staircase extending down to the desert ground so people like myself could hop on and off as it drove around the desert at about 4 miles per hour. Another was a giant steampunk / junkyard-esque metal octopus called “El Pulpo Mecanico” that shot fire from all eight of its tentacles as well as its head. There were dozens more: several neon-lit full-size pirate ships, a soul train, and a three-story playground on wheels complete with a sliding board and a merry-go-round. One of the more elaborate installations was a giant ferris wheel-looking thing, but was actually a human-powered three dimensional persistence of vision illusion of a life-size skeleton rowing a boat. Here is it under construction. Oh, there was also a really big trojan horse (burned on Friday). Every day, a handful of skydivers would descend onto the Playa. On Friday, some did a night-jump and lit their paths with flames; it looked like a group of large comets were burning through the sky. All of these things were performed / sponsored by other people participating in and attending the event just like me.

I was camped with a group of people called “Orphan III”, a group of people that self-assembled on Facebook with no commonality other than that they weren’t already associated with another group of people. Things came together very nicely, and I got there late enough that they had already put the camp together. Someone in our camp named Cosmo brought a three-story scaffolding set in his truck, which made a nice shade structure as well as a lookout perch to see the entire camp as well as a few amazing sunsets (and a sunrise). Another person in our group brought a full-sized hot air balloon. We attempted a launch on Wednesday night. We got as far as inflating the balloon with hot air, but the wind picked up and became too strong for a controlled launch. Helping to put the launch together was still quite an experience, especially as we switched from using the cold fan to blowing flame-heated air into the balloon and letting a curious crowd gather around our flame-illuminated balloon in the middle of the night, far, far away from everything else at the event.

This was the most populated incarnation of Black Rock City yet; according to the census (yes, they take a census of everyone in attendance,) over 55,000 people were present at peak population. Although completely unsustainable, for a week this was a real city, complete with streets, neighborhoods, a post-office, a coffee shop, and even an airport. It feels like utopian community since everyone is in great spirits for the most part, but there is also a shared feeling of “the end is near” which is not limited to the event itself. Money is replaced by a no-strings-attached gift economy. There is no advertising, no dollar-signs, very little social stigma with respect to sex, sexuality, and going around naked (if you are wondering about me and these things the answers are “no”, “no”, and “no”), and no expectations (unless you are with a group of people putting on an event of some sort.) The remote location and lack of any utilities make the whole community completely unsustainable, but it works rather well for a week! Speaking only from my experiences, the whole event was much less debaucherous than what is often portrayed in photographs and documentaries. Walking around the city was in a way just as interesting and distracting, if not more so, than walking around Manhattan at day or night. Many of the camps invite passers-by in for some sort of crazy happening or activity. For example, I came upon one camp that had a central tower with an array of wires stretched down to the ground with glow sticks attached to the wires. At the end of each wire was a sling-shot that you could use to shoot the glow stick up to the tower. If the glow stick hit the top of the tower, a large explosion / flame would shoot out of the top. Another camp had a nice collection of unicycles that you could just pick up and ride around for a while. Many camps had trampolines. I didn’t drink (much) alcohol while I was there, but it was available for free and in large amounts to those that wanted it. Make-shift bars lined most streets, and it was not uncommon to see a stilt bar that catered specifically to people that were walking on stilts (or Powerisers.) One of my favorites was the roller disco camp that had a half-sized plywood roller skating rink with skates in all sizes.

I left right after the man burned on Saturday night, and was regretful that I couldn’t stay to see the temple burn on Sunday night, but plane tickets were outrageously expensive for flying out of Reno on Monday so I left a day early. I got a ride to and from the event from a guy that lives in Reno. We stopped at his friend’s property in a town called Gerlach and took a dip in the 105°F hot springs that he had in his front yard. Having not showered for the entire week and with dry cracked skin due to the extreme climate of the desert, this was the most refreshing bath I’ve ever had. The rest of the trip back to Manhattan was rather uneventful. Thanks Enid for asking how it went, I was debating on wether or not to do a write-up :)

I’m sure I missed much of what the event had to offer, but so did everyone else; it is simply too big for one person take in over the course of a week.

On the heels of last week’s post of my implementation of Tonobeb for the web, I bring you another board game blast from my past: back in 2001, I wrote a simple minimax AI in Haskell for a board game called Octi for Kids, a simplified version of Don Green‘s OCTI board game.

I finally had some time this morning to recompile the Haskell code into a binary that runs on my webhost, so now you can play against it while it thinks:

• three moves in advance
• four moves in advance
• five moves in advance

Inspection of the url in the links above will reveal how to arbitrarily increase the look-ahead level.

The code is available here on github.