Occupational Hazard #1, #2 & #3

Have you ever been woken late in the afternoon by a single ray of blinding sunlight searing across your throbbing retinas, piercing your eyelids from a minute crack in an otherwise dark curtain ? As you flounder, helpless, in the total void where your brain used to be, you realise you have absolutely no idea how yesterday started, or finished, where you went or how you got home, where home is or where ‘this’ is....

In these moments you have only two prayers. The first is that you are alone; because if you're not, then you sure won't be able to remember her name no matter what she did for you last night - which means you definitely won't be getting it again. The second prayer is that you can still access your inbox to give you some sad clue as to who you were before this happened.

Of course, even when our brains periodically crash, our internal reboot procedure kicks in to perform a few basic self-diagnostics as we struggle to re-engage with the universe.
Firstly: sensory; are we laying in anything overly moist, damp or soggy ?
Secondly: locomotion; can we confirm full motor control of our limbs and can we still scratch all the body parts which need scratching ?
Thirdly: mental faculty; which of the Tracy brothers piloted Thunderbird 3 ? 
And for a bonus point which Malaysian hotty did he have a crush on ?

Being able to successfully complete this routine means that we probably have a sporting chance of finding the bathroom and then correctly knowing which part of the body discharges into which receptacle, if, indeed, we can actually get there on time. Wooah ! 

Thunderbird 3 was piloted by Alan Tracy, who had a crush on TinTin
(but could often be distracted by Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward)

In most cultures such total inebriation would be occasional, self-inflicted and normally done with friends. However in Korea this has to be taken as something of a regular occupational hazard - it is part of the job.

Want to know what she is whispering as you contemplate her navel ?

"Drink soju with me Friday night .... and wake up alone on Wednesday afternoon !"

In a society steeped in honour, tradition, overtly displayed deference and strict social hierarchy; soju is the ice breaker of choice and let’s face it; there’s a lot of ice to be broken.  Soju’s very success may be due to the fact that it is one of the very few social tools which cuts across people’s age, their social standing and for the most part, also their gender.

Soju is a semi-spirit made from rice, wheat, barley, etc. With a typical alcohol content of 25% it is 5 times stronger than beer, twice as strong as wine and about half the strength of vodka. You get a true feeling for its ‘popularity’ if you consider that domestic sales of the two top brands of soju match global sales of Smirnoff at a staggering ratio of 3:1.

SOJU

The Millionare’s Club statistics 2011

· World’s #1 best-selling liquor; Jinro Soju, sold 61.38 million cases in 2011

· World’s #2 best-selling liquor; Smirnoff vodka, sold 24.70 million  cases in 2011

· World’s #3 best-selling liquor; Lotte Liquor Soju, sold 23.90 million cases in 2011

· Basically 85 out of 110 million cases of the world’s 3 best selling liquors were soju
- consumed almost entirely in South Korea's domestic market

Although increasingly mixed into beer or taken as a shot with beer by the younger folks, soju is still mostly drunk neat from shot glasses which must always be filled by someone else, never yourself, and often downed in one by the whole table following a short speech or toast. The next person at the table then makes the next toast in quick order, making it quite feasible to drink a shot every 3 minutes; the equivalent of 10 shots of vodka per hour. And this goes on and on for hours.

Koreans now realise that they may have overindulged a tad in the past, in much the same way that Godzilla overindulges in skyscrapers when roaming about for a snack in New York. Today Koreans will tell you (with a little wink) of their new culture of moderation; a concept called ‘119’; which means limiting yourself to:
- 1 location (either restaurant, bar or karaoke, not all 3)
- 1 type of alcohol (beer, soju, wine, spirits, no mixing) and
- 9pm finish.

So good luck with that then !
http://travel.cnn.com/seoul/drink/soju-most-sold-drink-world-930177

Out and about in ..... Dubai

Just recently I was in Dubai for 48 hours which, on reflection, was about 36 hours longer than anyone really needs to be in such a place. It is quite simply a monopoly board made into reality; pornography for real-estate agents. Quite literally. Everywhere you look there are new offices and apartment towers, sprouting up ever-taller and more lavish in a deliberate effort to eclipse their neighbours. Last year people mortgaged their futures to buy an apartment in a prime, sunny location with commanding views. This year the same people are sitting in an overshadowed nameless backwater which everybody wants to move out of - if only they could find somebody to sell to. Ironically the oblique admission that something is wrong comes in the form of a huge, 30 storey awning bedecking an empty block. In bright post-office red, featuring a white HMG crown it states; “Keep Calm - There Is No Bubble”.

Keep Calm - There is no bubble !

Dubai being Dubai, the afternoons are punishingly hot, therefore everyone heads down to the mega-malls in the evenings. This month the biggest and best of these is the Dubai Mall, sprawling in the shadow of the great Burgh Al Kalifa tower. As expected the mall offers everything from boutiques by Tiffany's and De Beers, right through Burberry and Cartier down to H&M, M&S and Waitrose. Milling around are people of culture and taste from every corner of the world; all trim, well groomed and well dressed in suits, business casuals or nicely pressed flowing Arabian robes. Then of course there are the Brits; the only international contingent unshaven, unkempt, tottering around with beer bellies bursting from faded corporate t-shirts, cheap cut-off shorts, flabby hairy legs and untrimmed moustaches (even the women), plastic flip flops and uncut toenails. Not to mention their kids constantly running amok and their toddlers without shorts or skirts openly sporting full pampers for all the world to see.

Perhaps it’s me but after delivering the 2012 Olympics with such resounding success and closing with a ceremony that showcased Britain’s cutting edge contributions to the modern era, I somehow thought that the Brits had rediscovered a modest sense of national pride. They seemed to have worked themselves out of that decades-old hole of “it’s-not-the-losing-it’s-the-taking-part” Surely, now, Brits around the world can come out of the closet, stand tall, proud and ride the wave of 2012 ? Sadly not. The Brits in Dubai are a social demographic alone, apart and adrift. There are Indian shop staff, Pakistani taxi drivers, Bangladeshi waiters, North African sanitary workers and Filipino nannies, but none of them are wombling around the Dubai Mall like they’re out for an ice cream on Clacton seafront.

So after ordering my food in a stiff, humourless German accent and saluting the waiters with “Danke schoen” and “Aufwiedersehen” I promptly marched out before my credit card betrayed my true nationality.

Going Underground

If any megacity is going to function properly then it clearly requires affordable, integrated public transport.  In South Korea this is built around the Seoul subway system. Started in 1974 it now claims to be the worlds largest network with approx 987km of operational track in 2015, serving 2.5bn passengers per year.  By comparison the London Underground (started 111 years earlier, in 1863) totals about 402km of track, carrying only 1.17bn passengers annually.
http://www.railway-technology.com/features/featurethe-worlds-longest-metro-and-subway-systems-4144725/

But statistics aside, the differences become dazzlingly obvious when riding the systems; the Seoul subway has been planned like a mini-Metropolis; albeit leaning more towards Fritz Lange's vision than that of Siegel & Schuster. The larger stations are not just transport hubs, they are also mini-malls featuring the same shops, restaurants, banks and services that you find in the high streets above.  Moreover, many stations in downtown Seoul are linked by endless warrens of pedestrian galleries featuring everything from bars to bakeries and nachos to knickers. It is perfectly possible to roam for kilometres, haunting for hours from one station to the next, snapping up everything from blood pudding to bat food without ever having to surface into the sunlight above.  It is surely what every socially challenged Transylvanian count has been dreaming of for centuries !   

The Seoul subway - a metropolis in its own right

Not surprisingly, the infrastructure required to support this infrastructure is equally sophisticated.  There are escalators and elevators everywhere, including wheelchair lifts and and bicycle ramps on the stairs.  There are bright, clean, constantly serviced public toilets at all levels where you might be caught short.  The stations and the trains are all fully air conditioned.  Train seats are heated in winter and also steam cleaned during the summer so that as you sit down you don't soak up the ooze of damp sweat collectively deposited by the 300 passengers who sat there before you.  The concourses and carriage floors are so bright and clean that that they wouldn't look out of place in an operating theatre.  In fact if Korean men could only muster enough stubble they would doubtless be able to gaze at the floor to shave in their own reflections.

Cosy, dark and intimate - sitting toe to toe on the London Underground.
By comparison the bright, airy, spacious Seoul subway

Station platforms feature huge LCD screens which engage commuters with an endless cycle of commercials, local area information and previews of impending film releases. The downside is the somewhat lobotomising deluge of public service videos showing how to use the subway responsibly.  These are not only limited to safety tips such as how to fit a gas mask, use a fire extinguisher or evacuate through the tunnels but also rather condescending instructions on how to position your arms and legs so as not to inconvenience other passengers or how to use the escalators or your cell phone considerately.  Cynics may infer that if the state has the time to attend to such minutia then all the country's major problems must have been solved long ago........well, sadly this cannot be confirmed at the time of writing ;)

Given the huge number of daily commuters, it follows that no small number of people are needed to maintain such a large system in pristine conditions.  This is done by a mostly unseen ninja army of little old ladies and little old men who discretely pop into and out of unmarked doors and cubicles fiendishly secreted into the station walls.  The men generally fix things like ticket machines and elevators while the women attend to the cleaning.  It is a rare sight, but during off-peak hours a trained observer may spot a pair of ninjing cleaning ladies surreptitiously surfing up and down the escalators together polishing scuffs from the stainless steel bodywork, smudges from the glass partitions and hand prints from the rubber belts.  

And just to show that every idea can be improved, Seoul's ticket barrier system concept is quite possibly a new trend waiting to go global.  Aside from some older stations which still feature traditional turnstiles, most stations now feature ticket barriers which remain open by default, ie; they only snap shut in the rare event that a commuter does not have a valid ticket.  Basically this means that the barriers hardly ever operate and therefore require almost no maintenance compared with conventional barriers which open and close for every single commuter, requiring regular and costly servicing.   

Gangnam Style - ticket barriers at most subway stations remain open by default

Clearly there is a cost for such state-of-the-art infrastructure but astonishingly Seoul's commuters are not paying this via their daily fares. With few exceptions, most journeys, even from one side of town to the other (25m, 40km), are covered by a flat fee of only KRW1,350 or about $1:19 or £0:78. In fact, bus rides taken together with subway rides (as part of the same journey) are even free.

Given all of the above, it is not surprising that so many people use the subway daily. What is astonishing is how many people still insist on commuting by car.  However, that's another story .....