In just over one week I’ll be getting on a plane and flying to Ottawa. I’ve still got a couple of emails to send off – been procrastinating on a few things. In any case I think I really only need about two to two and a half days to get everything done when I’m there which is nice as I can go at a relaxed pace.
I’ve started trying to switch my sleeping schedule over to Canada time – about 11 hours different from Korea. Starting yesterday I’m now drinking coffee in the evening and moving my bed time about an hour a head each night until I leave. Not sure how well that’s going to work. I have a natural inclination to wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning no matter what time I go to bed.
The other day, I picked up a new suitcase for the trip and have pretty much everything I need prepared: Plane tickets, hotel in Toronto, dorm room at the University of Ottawa, car rental. I’ve also found where to buy a Drobo I still have to exchange money into Canadian funds, fortunately the exchange rate moved in my direction the last couple of days – will change on either Monday or Tuesday.
Things to do in Ottawa
cruise neighborhoods and talk to real estate agents
Meet The Ex Urban Pedestrian – author of the most interesting Ottawa based blog (a blogging gathering on Wednesday night)
Was hoping to meet one of my brother’s friends but he’s going to be out of town for 6 weeks on business
In other unrelated news my wife and I took our kids to Everland a local theme park yesterday which was a blast. Here’s a short video of our ride on the the worlds steepest (77 degrees) wooden roller coaster. Edited 240 pictures earlier today and started work on all the video we took – I might post some here later.
currently watching the pre game event here for the Korea vs Uraguay soccer match and the rain just started a major downpoor. All those fans out in the streets are getting drenched. – talk about a somewhat random and disconnected blog post.
World's Steepest Wooden Roller Coaster
The T-coaster at Everland in Korea is billed as the worlds steepest wooden roller coaster with the initial drop being 77 degrees. The entire structure is wooden and even the tracks are made of word with thin metal plate.
This morning I met one of my friends and colleagues for a coffee. Shelley lives nearby and we figured we’d go for the slightly long walk to the Hongdae area and try to find one of Chan’s Espresso Bar or Miz Moren in order to theoretically get a better cup of coffee than you do at the chain shops.
Shelley isn’t very good with directions and I have an anti-compass built into my brain so needless to say we didn’t end up finding either shop. We did find another coffeeshop that was pretty good, but unfortunately I forgot the name of it. We sat there for some time chatting before deciding to go to Itaewon for lunch – great selection of restaurants in that area plus Shelley wanted to go shopping there and I needed to buy a new suitcase for my trip to Ottawa on the 4th of July.
Lunch was good, we both had fish and chips as seen in the picture – I had an apple cider with mine which is something I haven’t had in ages. Was really good.
While we were wandering around lost looking for a coffeeshop we found the “Luxury Ho Bar” right next to the Hello Kitty Cafe. Now I’ve seen Ho bars before – they’re a very large chain here in Korea, but this is the first time I’ve seen a “luxury” Ho bar – better class of Ho? right next to the hello kitty cafe is just classic. My apologies for picture quality – done with my cell phone and not my regular camera.
Yesterday evening I went for a two hour walk with my wife along the river. The river is only about an eight minute walk from our house and has a nice walking path as well as a cycling path along the entire length of it on both sides. We walked about two subway stops along and then exited into the Hapjong/Hongdae area where we stopped at a nice dessert shop for some crepes and lemon ice.
Along the way I shot a couple of short clips of the river at night. I’m quite happy with how they turned out considering the camera was handheld at night.
One thing that I’m really looking forward to when I’m in Ottawa this July is buying a Drobo available at Carbon Computing There are only a few retail locations available and one of them is in Ottawa which is really convenient for me since they aren’t available in Korea yet.
What’s a Drobo you ask? It’s the ultimate backup system – it’s better than RAID and is simple to use. I’ve heard a lot about Drobo over the past 18 months or so and about a year ago decided I wanted one, however I didn’t have the spare money until recently (they are expensive) and I also didn’t want to ship it overseas.
Why do I need this? Well I’ve got around 12,000+ photos, several years worth of home video and all of my business information on my desktop with no auto back up option. I do manually back up once in a while, but not as often as I should. With a Drobo it’s all 100% done with reduntancy, you can even flip a switch for dual redundancy if you want. In any case, having that will make me feel better about having all my data secure.
Of course if I wanted to be really secure I would also set up an off-site backup system, but that’s a project for another day.
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