Exchange Day 72 - The day I get my superpowers

Despite only going to bed at an ungodly 3am yesterday, I woke up before 8 because the exchange students are going on a field trip to a nuclear power plant! This is it, I'm finally going to realise my destiny of being a superhero. I hope my powers don't make me look too abnormal, I would like to remain human thank you.

Breakfast was a red bean cake that my friends gave me the night before! They went to Gyeongju last weekend and brought back some local snacks to share. I didn't take a picture of the cake because we were running late and I had to eat breakfast while deftly running down the mountain, which was challenging enough, I can't handle having to juggle a camera too. The cake looked like a small traditional mooncake with red bean filling and was really delicious! The bean paste wasn't too sweet and for a small cake, the chef managed to squeeze in a lot of red bean paste.

Our first stop was to the Busan Cinema Studios where we learnt more about filmmaking in Busan and the Busan Film Commission. The BFC was established in 1999 to help budding local filmmakers through the provision of appropriate filming locations and equipment. To this day, it has helped produced more than 130 films and is continuing to be a strong support in making Busan a film city.

Our guide of the day (in blue) briefly introduced the BFC before moving on to the technologies they have that help filmmakers save resources during production.

The green screen is a technology that is heavily utilised in filmmaking today where animation is interjected into real footage, allowing for the production of exaggerated scenes at lowest cost. According to our guide, the screen doesn't have to be green, but they chose the colour as it is soothing the eyes, which is an important consideration for the workers who have to look at the screen all day during production.

Footage from cameras are directly sent from the outdoor cameras to the computers in the studio, allowing for images to be projected onto the green screen in real time.

Our guide then brought us to the set of an ongoing project by the director of Haeundae. As filming was still in progress and not ready for commercial release, we were not allowed to take photos. The set was huge and it was really interesting to see how different movie sets looked in reality as compared to onscreen. Looking at the messy studio brought back nostalgic memories of the days in 206 and 225 where my group mates and I scrambled to find suitable props and practically lived in the studio where we filmed.

Next, we went to the neighbouring Busan Post Lab where independent houses such as AZworks engaged in post-production work. AZworks is a company that specialises in animation and special effects, and has won many accolades over the years. We were brought into a comfortable theatre where the PR director briefed us about the operations of the company. Although we did not get to explore the work labs, we had the privilege to watch two of their short animations that have not yet been released.

To wrap up the film segment of the field trip, we visited the Busan Cinema Center, the world's largest theatre, where a guide showed us around their state-of-the-art facilities. The place was humongous but really empty, which made me wonder if sustaining the place was a problem. As much as Singapore would like to, I don't think we would ever be able to have such a spacious theatre in our small country. 

The Center is divided into the classical theatre and the modern cinematic theatre. As there was an ongoing rehearsal, we could not see what their classical theatre looked like.

The Center holds a Guinness World Record for having the largest ceiling possible with just one supporting pillar. According to our guide, in times of earthquakes or typhoons, temporary pillars protrudes from the ground to give the ceiling extra support. 

The Center also has a open theatre that can seat up to 5000 people, which is only used during BIFF.

For lunch, we went to a Korean restaurant in Centum Dream Center for 소불고기 (beef bulgogi). The restaurant's specialties are its bulgogi dishes and bibimbab, but I noticed that not many diners ordered those. They seemed to prefer the restaurant's wide array of other traditional dishes.

The food was already there waiting for us when we reached (perks of reserving the seats beforehand) and I was really grateful for that because I was so hungry. The beef was sweet and succulent and I loved the juicy mushrooms, but the rice was overcooked and too soft. The side dishes didn't appeal to me as they were too salty and spicy so lunch on the whole was quite boring, but I'm thankful that I didn't have to pay for it!

One thing that made this restaurant stand out over the others I've been to would be its self service counter where diners could fry eggs using the pans and cooking utensils provided. There's no limit on the number of eggs a diner can consume but I guess we should only take what we can finish.

We had five grain rice, which you could refill it for free at the self service counter.

We pushed all the beef into the boiling water so it could cook faster as we were really hungry. Apart from the beef, there were pickled cabbage, sweet potato noodles and mushrooms in the pot as well.

After the meal, we headed towards the supposed highlight of the day: KORI Nuclear Power Plants. I felt really sorry towards the guide as he couldn't speak English well and nobody could understand what he was saying so nobody really paid attention to him, but he was professional about it and stuck it out till the end. As much as I tried to listen, I have to admit that the tour was a painful experience, which I could not wait to get done with.

One of the first few machines used to generate hydroelectricity.

The very first model of a car by Mercedes Benz.

Our poor speaker trying his best to explain how nuclear energy is harvested by the machines.

Examples of a house in the village near the KORI Nuclear Plants.

I went shopping at Nampo with my room mate after the trip and we managed to spend some quality time together! She managed to get a bag that she really wanted and I finally bought red hair dye to colour my hair. We had a light dinner of bread from PB and street food.

Fish bread from the roadside stall near Hadan station! 2 for 500W! I like this version more than the Japanese taiyaki as it's crispier and the filling is chunkier.

Tiramisu pastry from Paris Baguette at 2,500W! It tastes more like chocolate and cream cheese instead of tiramisu but is yummy nevertheless! I tried my best to eat glamorously but it is near to impossible.

The best yakitori I've ever had oh my god! Totally worth the 2,500W I paid. The chicken kebab was 30cm long, soft and tender and glazed with sweet teriyaki sauce.

I feel so hungry typing this oh gosh but I'm so tired I'm gonna go sleep. Good night!

xoxo, ❀