When I left SF I was ready for yet another 13 hour flight just like the one from LAX to IST. This time we are heading west which meant that loss of even more hours. Left SF at 1pm on Wed arriving to Seoul Thu night total of 30 hours loss with the time difference:)
After watching 3 movies and reading 4 chapters of Outliers, lunch and dinner I was a le to sleep for an hour before we started descending to Seoul. My first impression of the city was how clean everywhere was. Korean people didnt look as short as I thought they would be. They much taller than Chinese and Japanese. I'm excited about exploring about these hardworking and hardplaying people throughout the next week. Reading Malcolm Goldwell's Outliers made me look at them with another perspective: their value of respect. Whether they are doing business with you or relationships Koreans are all about respect with the capital R. Also they are a culture that have drinking as their part of their interaction. Soju, their national rice-made vodka-like drink is certainly bring me back memories of NYC, where I hung out with my buddy James in K-town in Manhattan. Let the party begin.
After checking in to our hotel, we all went out to explore our famous district, Gangnam. From what I heard it is one of the most happening parts of Seoul and a little hipstery. Went out to eat some Korean BBQ and got into one of the local ones. Kicking the night with soju and BBQ was great.none of us had any energy to party much yet with the jetlag.
Day 1 started bright and early. We had to Samsung supplier office where their Olympic Badminton players train. Badminton is a true Korean sport as every kid plays it as they grow up. We were in Samsung's main plant with a gym where Olympic medalist train. We were fortunate to meet them and play against them. I have to mention that there is no other sport that I found my self this much hopeless as I found in Badminton. As simple as it looked and all those years that I played tennis didn't help at all. I truly sucked at this sport. It was very enjoyable to watch everyone play and interact with Korean Badminton team.
Later on we were offered a very well prepared lunch for us at Samsung Cafeteria. We were very spoiled to say the least. Overall respect that the Mr. Choi had for us was quite incredible.
Our next stop of the day was MBC Sports TV. They are the up and coming sports tv network in Korea and we visited their operation/editing facility and their studio. It was quite interesting to witness the live editing that director was portraying on the screen for the boxing game that was on. Also, on the studio downstairs the live commentary was broadcasted by the famous sportscaster that we had a chance to meet later on. Also being Dr. Choi's Tweeter friend this gentleman gave a quick presentation about the operation and MBC Sports vision. The most popular sports in Korea are Baseball, Volleyball, Soccer (in that order) and Badminton is their most popular Olympic sport. Overall had a great time chatting with the sportscaster and asked him about the future of their company and social media.
Lastly we had a great visit to a start up company that provides stats to Korean and American sports fans. Sports 2i, hosted us in their facility and had a chance the marketing team. Their short and to the point presentation was very helpful to understand their vision and the current state of operations. They are big on providing pitch tracking stats to MLB and Korean baseball league teams. Also, they talked about the technology that they bring to soccer games where they follow each individual player and provide the most detailed data on them. There are 8 cameras that watch the 22 players on the pitch. Also, talked about the future of Social TV, where they partnered with Samsung and providing an app that sync with Samsung SmartTV. It is quite interesting to see the advanced technology by these Korean companies. I asked one of the guys about whether they provide any stats in the U.S besides baseball and they have NBA stats that they work with the league. At Kwarter we may need some of this data to be integrated to our app for the next version. I'll follow up with them to see if there would be any play. It would be great to work with Sports 2i as their technology is quite advanced.
Wow what a day! We visited three very cool venues and got to meet awesome people. Next we are off to meeting sport management students from Hangyang university where our own Dr. Choi is currently teaching. Couple of the TAs who have been helping us with logistics during this trip also belong to the same program. Of course we had to meet at a Korean BBQ place in Gangnam to kick the night off. There were 30+ of us in total and had a great chance to interact with the students. In the end, we had the similar career vision with the sport mgmt students in Korea and it was quite interesting how deep the conversations with the help of Soju :) After a delish pork bbq and soju our next stop was a korean/american bar where we played pool, beer pong, flip cup, some korean drinking game and you name any other game we had it. Cass beer is their national lager beer and tasted very close to Efes from Turkey. Some of us had to complete the trio and end the night at a karaoke place. I was chatting with the Koreans all night getting to know their lifestyles and what they were interested in doing in their sports career. Alcohol is in Korean DNA and they are all about living up to that.
It couldn't have been a better stop to really immerse to the Korean culture. At the end of the day, people make places interesting and more valuable. Hanging out with the locals is what I am interesting in when I travel to a new country and I made the most of that experience. Thanks to Dr. Choi and the TAs for organizing a great first day! When you are adrenaline-high from seeing new places and having new experiences, supposedly existing jetlag somehow disappears :)
Catch you later on!
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