8 November 2022
Super wolf blood eclipse moon
The Hyundai in Yeouido
Tonight is a full eclipse of the moon, at least it is in the USA and Australia, I do not know about here. However here the moon was full and bright red, and I also read that it is the first super blood wolf moon of the first half of November in 2022, so that's something.
Also, COVID cases are spiking in Korea again. I expected them to go down further before they started spiking again. The numbers have doubled in a week, and the official daily reports seem to have stopped. Actually they had a live count in Korea, you could literally watch it all day long and graph it minute by minute like watching the election results, for years now. However, I think that has stopped, I had to look hard to find actual numbers after reading that there has been a doubling of numbers and that the sudden spike was unexpected.
I know no one cares about COVID at all, but when Twitter pulls the plug in the next few days (maybe hours) and the Facebook metaverse bankrupts Zuck in a few weeks, mine will be the only account left online that COVID ever existed. Then presumably, profit.
Tonight I went to another part of Seoul I have never been to, perhaps the number 3 business district of Yeouido. I just looked it up, it is the main banking and finance district. After I completed my banking and financing, I found the reason I was there, literally it is called 'The Hyundai' and it is perhaps the greatest department store.... in the world.
I got off one station early to walk along the river at dusk.
Here is somewhere I SEOUL U still exists. Actually it still exists in lots of places, but I do believe it has been officially replaced. It was universally despised when they spent billions coming up with it. Blood moon makes first sneaky appearance.
There is my best shot of the moon. It is redder than it appears here. I suspect that is because of pollution smoke, not because of the eclipse, but who knows. My camera has no zoom, so I cropped a bit.
Banking AND finance.
There is a big park running along the edge of the buildings with no one in it. The path is starlit. Presumably for everybody, but possibly just for me.
I took a long exposure of the mini lake and cranked the exposure to see in the dark.
There is 'The Hyundai', their flagship store. It is much larger than it appears. Hyundai make much more than just cars in Korea, they have many department stores all over the country. But first I have to work out how to get over the road. If there was an underpass I never found it. I had to walk hundreds of metres to find a way across.
It is the whitest department store ever.
However, the basement is the new winner for best food area of any store I know of. This is not even 1/10th of the place.
They have even solved the food truck problem, well almost. I hate food trucks because there is nowhere to sit, there are flies everywhere, you eat with plastic or bamboo cutlery that snaps on first use, there is no running water for them to clean anything etc. Here They just lowered 22 food trucks permanently into the basement, wired them for real electricity and piped in real water.
Now I just said that basement food trucks were great. You order from a touch screen which selects from all the food trucks, I am fine with that. But you cannot pay by cash or card. At least I could not figure it out and it had an English menu option on the touch screens. It wanted a Korean phone number and an email address before you could find out how to pay. I think you had to sign up for a virtual store card? There was no way I was doing that so instead I went to one of the non food truck options also in the basement and had... bibimbap. It was a good bibimbap though, purple rice, the best of all rice!
And for the last pic of the evening, next door is another big mall, all underground, 3 levels, the IFC mall, which I think is a Hong Kong company.
Tomorrow may or may not be a hiking day, I will see if I have covid yet in the morning. Ever since reading that cases were spiking and seeing people sneezing and coughing everywhere I looked I have been trying to convince myself that I must surely have it.