Original, American Style Taste!

Happy American Independence Day! In honor of telling those Brits to bugger off, I did American things today. And yes, that does mean I ate at McDonalds. I had the Big Mac set, pictured below. In Korea, McDonalds does lunch specials! A Big Mac meal is only $2.95. Getting fat is cheap! Notice the Shrek the Third advertising on the cup. The people behind the counter were wearing Shrek ears, but unfortunately, would not let me take a picture.


All this being American was making me very tired, so I decided to do something else American: I went to Starbucks. For only $3.55, I got a grande coffee in this charming cup. The Hangul on the cup informs those using the cup that it is for store use only. I have one in my cupboard, so apparently they were wrong.


The worst thing about the 4th was that I had to go to work. I was very tired and so needed one more treat and, since I was going with the American theme, decided that I needed something with original, American style taste. And I got it, and you can see it below. Check out that marketing slogan on the top! Genius!

I finished off my day with a few too many Budweisers and some tequila. We had our own little fireworks show in the park and nobody lost any critical body parts. No BBQ, but close enough. Now I don't have to be American again for several months.

Welcome to Seoul!

After 20 miserable hours on a plane, countless bad meals, and rude flight attendents, I have arrived in Seoul! I got picked up at the airport by my recruiter and driven to my hotel. I will not have my apartment until tonight, so until then, I'm walking around in Korea like a bag lady, but a bag lady with 125lbs of bags.

As I do, I walked out of the hotel this morning and immediately found an ATM, a PC bang, and most importantly, a Starbucks. And you know what? I am jetlagged to high hell so I pad $3.56 for a grande coffee and thought nothing of it.

I'll have some pictures for y'all very soon.

Save Money, Go Native!

The Korea Times headline today, "Rising Living Costs Keep Foreigners Away," speaks mostly about business investment and business travelers, but general day-to-day living expenses in Seoul are among the highest in the world, especially for foreigners. Wikipedia's Most Expensive Cities for Expatriate Employees list (data from Mercer Human Resources) is helmed by Moscow, up from fourth place in 2005, followed closely by Seoul, up from fifth in the same year. I can testify that Moscow is an expensive place to live; I have paid $12 for a cappuccino and $24 for a cheeseburger. The problems with these lists is that they only take into account a fixed set of expenses, things that are imported or considered a luxury when purchased outside of Western countries. Of course that venti organic soy vanilla chai latte from Starbucks is going to be expensive in Moscow or Seoul, it's freaking expensive in Cleveland (110th on the list)!

My advice, and general observation, is that one should do as the locals do; they actually know how to survive in their cities. Give up the burgers, steaks, and lattes, forgo the imported clothing and American beer, and for Christ's sake, quite freakin' driving (you could use the exercise anyway, fatboy)! Go native, it's more fun anyway. And finally, the less you have them, the better the treats from home become!

(Update: The Economist Intelligence Unit has a similar survey from 2006 which lists, in order from most to least expensive, Oslo, Tokyo, Osaka, Reykjavik, and Paris. Seoul doesn't even make their top ten. However, the same observations/tips hold true, no matter where one resides.)