I made it back to the conference in time for the robot demonstrations. There was a robot teddy bear (popular these days!)
These are hard to see, but were some cute little humanoid robots.
And there was a team of four keepon dancing robots. fun!
After the conference I spent a couple days in Seoul, for site seeing and visiting Samsung. There are no pictures of Samsung...very high security...but afterwards I did some touring around.
This was a quiet little neighborhood.
With winding narrow walkways
That led to a shamanist shrine.
This sign was at a bus stop near my hotel, and made me laugh out loud.
The next day some friends from the conference joined me in Seoul and we spent the day site-seeing.
We saw a huge number of shops with piles of things for sale, not organized at all...it was strange.
Then we stumbled upon the fashion district.
Where they had tons of very specific stores...like this one with every kind of button.
Or this one with a million kinds of zippers.
More shopping...this time at one of the mega malls, they are massive, and they stay open until 4am, it's the thing to do apparently.
This one had an american idol wannabe happening out front, called 'Making Star'
We had a great lunch, for really cheap. I really liked the food in Korea, its very flavorful and spicy...yum.
This thing that they sell in street stalls was one of the best. Here's the fellow roboticists I was touring around with: Sonia (our lovely host), Emily, and Marek in the back.
Seoul at night. We wandered around and stopped for an authentic Korean meal. Shoes off, sitting on the floor, the whole nine yards.
Afterwards we went for dessert at a green tea place. They had green tea everything...green tea ice cream, green tea tiramisu, green tea lattes, ....
