Living quarters

When housing is provided for you, you can't really complain -- especially if you're in a major city in Asia, where housing can be notoriously cramped. While there are situations where there would be cause to complain about housing, generally it's a good perk to have your rent paid for you.

With that said, I was not only pleasantly surprised that I didn't end up at the infamous Dongdaemun Stadium housing co-op, but also surprised that my place actually has wiggle room (if you don't think about the washroom). It's located near where Jung-gu, Yongsan-gu and Mapo-gu meet up, and close to the international district of Itaewon (a major meeting place for us teachers who got to know each other during orientation).



As you can see, there's a bit of room. Since this video was made, a new desk and chair were moved in (and I got the internet working). While the desk is rather large, there's still enough wiggle room. While it isn't exactly a penthouse, it's not a shoebox either.

The washroom is a bit amusing though:

Above: My cramped washroom.

The commute from my place to work is about a 7-minute stroll:



But this can be effectively cut down to 5-6 minutes if you take a shortcut (as I discovered by following some students the other day). This shortcut has a gentler slope and fewer cars, and features this fantastic view of the city:

Above: The view of Seoul and Namsan (with its famous Seoul Tower overlooking the city) from my new shortcut to work.

I wonder how that view would look like in snow.

I can also get this view from the cafeteria of the school I work at. It's nothing like the view from my apartment. My two windows open up to reveal the neighbor's roof or attic windows.

One of the cons about this apartment is that it has a slight ant problem. It's nowhere as bad as the problem my sister had at her place in California, but it's noticeable. Another issue is that the rooms aren't very noiseproof; if I play my radio too loud, you can hear it in the hallway. Likewise, I can usually hear whenever returns to their apartment because the doors in this building have very noisy locks.

Internet also requires a Megapass account but due to some holes in their authentication system (ie. you can use MSN Messenger and Vuze without a password), I managed to get around it using my still-active VPN account from my old university back home. So basically, I'm using high-speed internet for free. As another plus, because I'm using a Canadian-based VPN, websites are reading me as visiting from Canada instead of South Korea; this can be useful because I wouldn't have to repeatedly change some sites' default language from Korean to English. (Sites like Google, YouTube, Blogger, and Hotmail use your IP addresses to determine the default language.) Good times.