Seoul Survivor

In case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t been posting on my blog for some time now.  I thought I’d be able to blog continuously last week but as it turned out, this was based on 2 erroneous assumptions arising from the fact that I was to read a paper at a conference on “Privacy in the Digital Age” in Seoul.

First wrong assumption:  that Internet bandwidth flows freely in Korea where according to the latest statistics more than 80% of households have broadband Internet connections — the highest in the world.  This factoid led me to believe that I would have no problem getting a fast connection from anywhere — the hotel, the venue, on the street, in the middle of a park. 

No such luck.

When I got to the hotel, I was not surprised to see the LAN connection but horrified to learn that they charged US$18 per day for access.  That’s what I pay for a month!  So, I figured I’ll just look for a friendly wireless network to log into.  My machine immediately detected 4 wireless networks but as fate would have it, they were all encrypted.

I figured I’ll try out their Internet cafes.  Looking for one proved more difficult than I thought.  All the signs are in Korean.  After wandering around for about half an hour and scanning the signs, I finally found one.  The cost: US$1.50 per hour.  Okay, it’s about twice what it costs in Manila and certainly a  lot cheaper than the hotel.  So, I went for it and struggled through Korean Windows.  (Thank God the URLs have to be in English!)

The only place where I got free Internet access was at the venue of the conference but even then, they didn’t have enough power outlets so I couldn’t stay on for more than 2 hours at a time without recharging.

Which leads me to my second erroneous assumption about this trip — that the conference would be boring (giving me time to prepare an exam and catch up on work).  I was pleasantly surprised that all of the sessions were interesting.   So, instead of getting some work done in the middle of this thing, I found myself listening to the speakers and even asking questions.  The bad part is that work started piling up and I still haven’t caught up with it yet.