So long, Seoul!
Hard to believe it's already time to leave - three weeks have gone by pretty darn quickly. And I've seen a ton of new places and tried out a ton of new things and met some really awesome people - on the whole, my trip's been rather a success.
Visited the Samsung offices today to make a presentation to the development team there - I think that went off pretty well - the dev lead was really friendly and had a ton of questions during and after my talk, which made the whole thing a whole lot more interesting than if I were the only one speaking for the whole hour. Greg later told me that he's normally very tough and he isn't always so nice, but I thought he was awfully sweet. The rest of the team was rather shy, but I was pretty impressed at the turnout - there were more than 40 developers in that room. I have to admit it was slightly intimidating at first, but then I kinda switched into TA mode and pretended I was back at UT facing my students, and it was ok after that. There was still definitely a thread in my brain going "ok, you're just blabbering - move on to the next slide" and I was also pretty worried about my throat - it's still a bit sore since my cold over the weekend, and when I'd done a dry run of the talk with the Microsoft team onTuesday, I'd had quite a bit of trouble - I could barely speak halfway into the talk and had to stop several times to let my throat recover. Gotta hate colds! Fortunately, everything behaved today, so it all went off well.
Got back to the Microsoft building around 4-ish or so - the team had planned a "graduation party" for me, so we went out to this totally amazing Korean barbecue place for dinner - Korean barbecue rocks! And I think it's a fitting end to my cuisinary adventures in Seoul. I don't think I've eaten so much in ages.
Pics:
Here's all of us at work before heading out:
Visited the Samsung offices today to make a presentation to the development team there - I think that went off pretty well - the dev lead was really friendly and had a ton of questions during and after my talk, which made the whole thing a whole lot more interesting than if I were the only one speaking for the whole hour. Greg later told me that he's normally very tough and he isn't always so nice, but I thought he was awfully sweet. The rest of the team was rather shy, but I was pretty impressed at the turnout - there were more than 40 developers in that room. I have to admit it was slightly intimidating at first, but then I kinda switched into TA mode and pretended I was back at UT facing my students, and it was ok after that. There was still definitely a thread in my brain going "ok, you're just blabbering - move on to the next slide" and I was also pretty worried about my throat - it's still a bit sore since my cold over the weekend, and when I'd done a dry run of the talk with the Microsoft team onTuesday, I'd had quite a bit of trouble - I could barely speak halfway into the talk and had to stop several times to let my throat recover. Gotta hate colds! Fortunately, everything behaved today, so it all went off well.
Got back to the Microsoft building around 4-ish or so - the team had planned a "graduation party" for me, so we went out to this totally amazing Korean barbecue place for dinner - Korean barbecue rocks! And I think it's a fitting end to my cuisinary adventures in Seoul. I don't think I've eaten so much in ages.
Pics:
Here's all of us at work before heading out:
And here we are at dinner - I love how we sat on cushions on the floor and cooked everything on grills built into the table. And after spending the whole day in 5.5 inch heels (I had to dress formal for the talk) it was such a joy to take those darned shoes off and just sit down. For sure everybody said they looked great, but why does looking nice have to come at such a painful price - my feet aren't going to forgive me for weeks! The agony!!!
Anyway, here we are at dinner:
Ok, my mom's buzzing me online, so I'm going to scuttle for now. Tomorrow's my last day here at work, and then it's off to Tokyo!
More later...
posted by Ritu at 5:44 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, Ritu.
I found a familiar name and followed the link to this blog on the WM Shell Blog.
You probably don't know me but I was at your talk on Thursday.
It was very interesting to know more about the development process at MSFT.
You did a good job and I don't think you were blabbering at all :)
People seemed generally shy because for one thing they actually are and another big thing is that the talk is done in English. Many do listen and understand but are very shy about talking in English because most don't speak very well.
I usually hear more questions asked if the talk is done in Korean.
Anyways, I'm glad to hear you had a good time here in Korea. If you do miss the food, I'm sure you could find what you want in Korean grocery stores and restaurants in Seattle. I know there are lots of Koreans living in the area.
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