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, ❀

Exchange Day 70 - Shopping at Centum City

I nearly missed breakfast this morning as I woke up just ten minutes before the dormitory cafeteria stopped its service. Thankfully, I'm not the sort to primp myself before meeting the world so I rushed straight down after I brushed my teeth and I made it with five minutes to spare!

Breakfast was mung bean sprouts and ketchup hotdogs with a mountain of rice and potatoes-flour dumpling soup. It's so annoying when breakfast is carbo-loaded because I feel like finishing all the dishes yet if I do, I wouldn't be able to have lunch and I'll get constipation again. The mung bean sprouts were very salty today but the ketchup hotdogs were good as usual. I think the thing I'll miss most after I leave Korea would be the fluffy white rice. I'm so tempted to buy one bag of rice back to Singapore, but that would be crazy.

My cash book ran out of space and I refuse to use any other books except for this particular one so I had to go down to Kyobo Bookstore in Centum City to get it today! Not that I'm very fond of travelling so far out but I checked other bookstores and Kyobo's other outlets and none of them carry this book, which leaves me with no choice.

I left the room at around 1pm and I decided that I would have lunch at Shinsegae since Daddy said to eat better food and not always scrimp and save. I was kind of hungry as I had breakfast really early and it would take at least an hour before I could reach the place, so I bought a sweet potato puff from PB to snack on the bus. I ended up finishing the pastry even before I reached the bus stop.

The sweet potato paste was fragrant and delectable, but the puff was a little hard. Still, not bad for 1,500W!

I wanted to be less of a scrooge and try one of the restaurants in Shinsegae but I walked the entire floor at least twice and I just can't bring myself to walk into any of them. The meals were really expensive and I'm not sure if they are loners-friendly because the restaurants were really crowded. Somehow everyone decided to have their lunch much later today. So I gave up and decided that I would go to the food court.

But before I could go, a huge dinosaur caught my eye. I knew that Shinsegae had a rooftop dinosaur park but I never know it's free of charge and open to the public. I always thought that visitors had to get a ticket to view the exhibition. The park is located on 9F right in between the Japanese restaurant and the grill bar. Most of the visitors there, like with the other sky parks, were families with young children, who were really adorable as they all started growling as soon as they saw the dinosaur sculptures.

This is a Stegosaurus. I still remember some dinosaur terms from young when my brother and I used to memorise names of dinosaurs for fun.

Map of the park.

This is a Triceratops.

Velociraptors are small but fiesty and they normally come in packs so they can take down dinosaurs larger than them.

The diplodocus used to be my favourite dinosaur because it's a vegetarian and seemed nice. 

Of course everyone knows this big guy with the tiny hands - Tyrannosarus Rex.

This tree reminds me of Singapore's Gardens by the Bay although I have never been there.

Pesky kids trying to steal Pterodactyl's eggs.

There are lots of huts like this in the park for tired parents to rest. Other than dinosaurs, this park features various metallic robot animals as well.

And there are also rides for little kids to enjoy! I'm not sure if they are charged though. 

Naughty Elephant Sprays Water.

I regret not updating my iOS to the latest one, which allows my iPhone to take panoramic photographs.

Little kids fold paper in paper boats and try to float their boat down a river into this pond.

At the end of the park is a pirate ship. I have no idea what's a pirate ship doing in a dino park.

After much deliberation in front of the electronic menu, I decided to get 부대찌개 (army stew) for 6,500W. The stone pot was really heavy and I almost didn't manage to make it back safely to my seat. I was so hungry I finished all my food except half a bowl of rice and the kimchi. The side dishes were delicious and so was the stew even though it was a little too spicy for me. Inside the stew there were luncheon meat, hotdogs, rice cake, sweet potato noodles, cabbage and even baked beans, which merged wonderfully to give a rich flavourful taste. I wished there was cheese in the stew!

Dinner was fried chicken and pumpkin from the basement food hall, which I snuck up into my room. (smirks) The chicken had no bones so there's no evidence to destroy. I wished I could have warmed it up though so that it'd taste better. The pumpkin was too cold.

xoxo, ❀