Good Joy "Western Ice Bar Texas Palm"

(Seoul, Korea) - Have spent the last 5 days 80km off the S. coast
of Korea. Gave 2 talks which were pretty well received, but
unfortunately was so jetlagged and sick from a cold I picked up
enroute that I couldnt really take full advantage of the islands
amenities.

Jeju-do island is billed as "semi-tropical" and indeed there were
palm trees, but the temperature was not so much greater than
Geneva (9 C). Anyway, despite my illin' one day my friend
Changyoung Kim (who I worked with at Stanford and is now a prof as
Yonsei Univ. in Seoul) went hiking with his students towards the
top of this formerly volcanic island. It is the highest point is
S. Korea and while only 1900m gets ALOT of snow in the winter
because of ocean moisture. Again, so much for tropical. We left
the palms at the coast and spent 3 h. tromping around in the snow
on the final approach to the volcano cone.

We were only at 1200m and there was about 1.5 meters of snow on
the ground. I am sure there is alot more on top. Pretty cool day
messing around in the snow on top of an island in the middle of
the South China Sea.

Now I 'm in Seoul for 4 days. Luckily, part of the post meeting
workshop was canned, so I will have more time for site seeing...

...and speaking of palm trees. We got beers tonite at the 'Western
Ice Bar Texas Palm'. It's a bar and why it is called what it is...
I have no idea. Pictures of cowboys on the rough hewn walls.
Johnny Cash playing on the Juke box and random neon signs splashed
on the walls with bits of Americana geography. "Atlanta" "Indiana"
"Santa Barbara". As in Japan, it seems to be sufficient marketing
statement to just put up random American words and figure that a
non discerning public will find it cool. The cognitive disconnect
between it all was overwhelming. Seoul has changed I think from
when my Texas grandfather was fighting here in '52.