Spring loaded contraptions of death

Apparently there is a mechanical engineering class at SNU where the final exam is to build something as dangerous as possible shoot a golf ball as far as possible. Its a mechanical engineering class so unfortunately no chemical energy source may be used ^^. The final exam was held near the amphitheater and ranges of 100 meter were common.  

Lassagne

I'm a big fan of lasagna, especially al forno. However most italian restaurants in korea offer only koreanised, so called 'oven spagetthi', which are eatable but nothing more.
You might understand how surprised i was when i found this instant Lasagna al Forno at Homeplus:

For around 5000 won you get 280g lasagna and an obscene amount of calories ^^. My expectations were not high because mostly pre made stuff is only convenient but not authentic. However this one blew me away. Good strong tomato sauce, much cheese which might even be mozzarella, al dente pasta plates in the middle and lo and behold: béchamel sauce under the cheese. Especially the Béchamel under the cheese was very unexpected (until now i only found one restaurant in seoul making their lasagna properly with béchamel).

In clonclusion i can say this one is well worth its price. Less then 300g doesn't sound like much but its very heavy and therefore enough for one person. The overall taste is very nice but of course not as good as a good fresh lasagna. However compared to the common oven spaghetti this dish is clearly better.

Try it out :)

Personalized Advertisement in Korea

We received an advertisement from the GS supermarket in seoul. I agree that that wold normally not warrant a blogpost, however this was quite special in the way that it was personalized. This advertisement contained 10% discount coupons for the items we most frequently brought at GS. In the order of frequency, so ham was on place one, followed by milk, eggs, laundry detergent, chicken meat, cornflakes, cheese, butter and kim. 

I didn't really decide yet if i like that (are they also saving which brand of condoms we prefer? when do they delete these data? do i want my landlord to know what we buy?), but I'm quite fascinated. The woes and wonders of modern technology....

Graduation Day at SNU

Monday, 29th of august was the graduation day at SNU. Congratulations to all graduates :)

Apparently most graduates want a picture with the front gate in the background. Also the remaining campus was crowded like hell.

Caffè Pascucci at SNU

We suffered for the last year...  i had to walk more than 100 meter to the next coffee shop. No, seriously, i think there are no people who complain about to few coffee shops in the SNU main campus, but more variety is always a good thing. So now we have also a Pascucci at SNU. While the prices are quite high, students get a 20% discount, which makes it still not a cheap coffee shop but at least acceptable.
The ice-cream is quite good, fluffy-creamy, not like the baskin robins ice-cream which is ice-.....  ahem yes just ice ^^
also do your self a favor and try the gelato honey toast... delicious :)

Gelato honey toast. Served with vanilla ice-cream and chocolate or caramel syrup 

I really like that building style :)

Cheer up

The perfect item for research students, authors etc.:

What would The Church do?

I like the song 'What would Brian Boitano do', from the old south park movie. The song is a parody of the phrase 'What Would Jesus Do'. So i decided to see where people look actually for guidance. Not only comparing this parody with the original saying but if possible with the various ranks in the church.

Now when i looked into the ranks of the church i found it very difficult to simplify. Therefore i compare only to ranks within the catholic church and even there i have to simplify. Interesting is also the wikipedia article on the hierarchy of the catholic church.

Figure 1: Google hits for the phrase 'what would * do'. Sorted roughly by ascending level within the hierarchy of the catholic church (from left to right). Articles were included in the search query when necessary.

Well... the winner is obviously 'What Would Jesus Do'. Now the next question which comes to my mind is where are people interesting in WWJD? The answer was obtained from google via regional interest search for the phrase 'What Would Jesus Do'

Figure 2: Darker color indicates higher search volume for WWJD

Obviously the regional search is not statistically relevant. Mainly due to search volume measured in english. So please refrain from citing this figure for anything than fun purposes ^^.

What really surprises me is the high position of Jamaica. Anybody an idea what they scored high?