Sep 14, 2007

Korea: Experiences continues....

I am finally returning on 22nd september to Bangalore. It will be 2 & 1/2 month by then. Though most probably it remains the same as it was when I came over here, apart for that my enthu for CAT doesn't remains the same.

Over the time, I made some good friends over here. I felt every moment that Koreans are by far good people at heart. Most importantly "Kid" at both heart and mind. And their hospitality has been the best. The worst part is they work too hard and expect same from others. Anyways, thats the reason for where they are Now. And most interestingly, girls over here always look much younger than they actually are.

Some beliefs that I had about the place before coming here got changed with time - girls still hesitate in talking about the relationship status; they are no longer senti with their own languauge; SAMASUNG,though being a Korean private company, its like "Sarkari company" for them but with more devotion towards work; India is not very popular over here in general public though better than most of the Asian Countries; people dont care or know much about other than their own place; commmunication is much more difficult than I thought of, etc. In fact if one lives here for long time, one will forget the use of verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and will only talk in terms of subjects and key words.

The most interesting incident that I will remember forever will be the one that I had on my first trip to Seoul. You never expects anyone to call you in this ChinkiLand in your familior tongue. Though I dont remember his name(their first names are anyway very difficult to remember and last name will always be one of the four guesses that you can make) but the way he was speaking Hindi was even shameful for one of my friends (who is from kerela and speaks a little Hindi). He was there organizing the youth film festival and invited us to watch films. The way he started it looked to me as he was trying to catch attraction of our group for the films. But in the next moment he was speaking though not very fluent but appreciable hindi. And guess what?He was able to write as well. My disgraced friend in no time tried to get lost in crowd before I could start teasing him. We could not refuse his request for watching films and that also for free in the multiplex. At last it turned out to be a nice Romanian film. The most astonishing fact is he was upto that level in 6 months during his stay in India. He tried to contact us later also. But in my busy schedule over here I was not able to contact him back. May be will meet him someday in my own country.

There are many more things to cover. I will try to continue with such posts.

Sep 6, 2007

Experiences & Realization

So I have completed 60 days outside my homeland today. When I look back at these 60 days which went by at the speed of light for me I, it reminds me of the experiences and realizations that I had at some point of times within this period. Most of them happened only on weekends because of the kind of work that kept me engaged for weekdays (abt 12-13 hrs a day) and sometimes on weekends too. And I am writing the blog, I dont why, on the day when I came to know my final day of returning which has been postponed thrice and will be making my stay here for about 2 and a half months. The visit to so many places can be seen over here(http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/tej.nishant.shekhar).

This has been for the first time that two of the festivals (out of millions in INDIA) Rakshabandhan and Janmashtami went by without myself knowing that half of it is already over. But then I do realized the importance of so many festivals back at home. Here in Korea they have a some kind of celebration (thanksgiving) in the last week of sep., the biggest for them after Christmas and people out here with an excitement in their eyes asked me about any such thing clebrations happening in India. When I told them about some or the other things happening almost every month they were quite amazed to know more about it.

And along with it INDEPENDENCE DAY was also during this period, though kinda the mood here was same, with Korean Independance Day falling on the same day. Infact attended a function for joint celebration of Indian and Korean Indepeneance Day which was quite a unique experience (http://picasaweb.google.com/arunsdevine/IndependenceDayJointCelebration).

Along with these there have been many other things to talk about which I will do in my next post.