I'm safe! Sample plastic dishes

With the relative difficulty of knowing what to eat and the price food will have in the restaurants here, one thing that helps me is banners with photos and prices that some restaurants have outside. Also, they always show the best food or the cheapest so it animates you to go inside and often I eat something of this if I go enter there for that reason (I'm an easy man). But the best, and that to me is the most useful, are the sample plastic dishes. I had read before about it in Japan and didn't know it existed here but there is and I love it.

Plastic food at Japan

Those dishes are a replica from the food made in the restaurant. They look very good, even sometimes exceeds the real (we know that propaganda always seems better than the real product, how good burgers at McDonalds ads on TV seems!) and it's great to be able to identify what has each plate (they try to make appear at the plastic food all the ingredients but then at the soup is all the deep jijijiji) and is usually indicated the price next to the plastic dish. Here you can see a couple of examples. 

 

A curious place I found and with something very useful, was at a mall where they had a full floor with restaurants in modules one next to each other. In the center there was a large showcases where there was a huge number of plastic dishes with the name, the price and classified by restaurants, so you can take a look at those showcases and choose what you want for eat and what restaurant does it.

You can read more on plastic dishes in Korea:
Plastic food

Left-luggage 2.0 (no coin, no key)

Today I've used the usual left-luggage (I don't know if that is correct in english, translator said) that you can see in Seoul to left your stuff in. I had seen several times, but since now I hadn't used it. I'm going to say how them works.

First you have to say if you want to 'deposit' your stuff or 'remove' (if you deposited before). When you say you want to deposit things the machine asks for your telephone number. Are you flirting with me, machine? When you write your telephone number you receive a message with 4 numbers code. You have to write it then it appears an scheme of all the free boxes and you chose one. Then you have to set a 'password' and repeat it (the machine laughs a bit at you for being human and not trusting you remembering it or writing it as you thought) and the box you selected gets open.

To get your stuff back you have to choose 'remove' at the starting screen. Then you select what box you had and insert the 'password'. If you insert the correct password the box gets open and you can get your things. If you don't insert the correct 'password' I don't know how to proceed and don't want to have to know never (I suppose it will send the password to your phone or something like this).

Before I had just seen that left-luggages in the subway. The one I've used today it was at the Seoul History Museum, as I had some free hours and wanting to visit it. After I've let my stuff there and entered the museum the entrance guardian has told me mondays museums are closed. Obvious, what day was going to choose Kilian if not the closed one... So, I've used that left-luggage as two minutes, lol. Luckily there were some statues and things to see around the museum and I could spend some time there...

Here people is always carrying the phone charger and some extra batteries. They are addicted to smartphones but also if for things like this is needed better not getting out of battery!

Smart Korea!

Since I've arrived to Korea I've seen some smart things, simple but usefull. Maybe not invented here, but I haven't seen them before.

In the upper holes the umbrella is placed (one hole for long umbrellas and another for short ones) and it gets inserted inside a plastic bag, so the umbrella does not going wetting all the way. This is something very usefull for someone as me because, as with my bad memory I've forgotten thousands of umbrellas in the boxes at the entrance of places. Anyway it is not everywhere, so I won't forget the experience of losing umbrellas... It is not much ecologic, but here it seems that doesn't minds too much (in general, because there is ecologist and commited people too), seeing the huge screens around all the city and running 24h, and the lights there is everywhere at night.

Some subway exits have this lane to upload the bicicle comfortably.

'I need to clean a gout of coffee fallen to the table. Oh! I have to waste an entire paper napkin for this? '. 'To wrap sandwich I need a paper napkin and a half . One is not enough and two is just too much!'. Here the paper napkin roll are divided by the half leaf. It has its usefullness, as cutting paper napkin leafs by the half its something impossible.

Before coming my phone was stolen (thanks Beneyto for borrow me one, still using it with my Yoigo SIM) so I bought one second hand here. It brought an accessory that seemed to support the phone and recharge it, but the hole to put the phone had no connection. It had the word 'open' written in the cover and when I opened it there was a battery inside. Phones here are sold with two batteries, so while one is charged in that accessory you can take out the phone anyway.

First time I went to a Coffee Shop, besides the coffee price (it was more expensive than the full meal I lunched) I was surprised because they give me this thing. 'I asked for a coffee, not a cyberfrisbee!' I thought. They told me to sit and after some minutes the cyberfrisbee started to light up and vibrate, and as I was taking a look what people was doing I knew that my order was ready. That way you don't have to be waiting standing for it. But sometime when I went to other floor to sit as soon as I sit I have to return back because it is ready...






   
The conical ice cream wrappers are divided into sections, so as you go forward eating it you go removing the paper with order andelegance, not with torn amorphous and difficult torns.

Subway stations are huge. Many have big malls or at least some stores (as I've been said in Tokyo is even more exaggerated). Something very useful are these maps in the stations to guide you and, also it has the exists numbered so you know where to exist and the buses near to each exit. When people meet or go somewhere they always say what station and what exit. Who has not ever experienced to meet in Barcelona at the subway exit and be twenty minutes waiting because the other person is in the subway exit in the other corner?

If you want to know more about Seoul subway look at:
http://bitsandbeats.blogspot.kr/2010/01/10-coses-sobre-el-metro-de-seul-10.html

But here it's missing wastebasket (I always have my pockets full of papers), containers (they left the garbage piled in the street at night amuntunada) and street names in the corners (it would be usefull to be oriented)!