Korean University MT – Membership Training

Ever heard of MT in Korea? it stands for Membership Training. First year university students either look forward to it or dread it. To explain it simply, it’s just a beginning of semester welcoming party for new university student, which is organised by their faculty seniors.

The above photo speaks a thousand words… We can see the chosen menu and beverages for the night. That’s a whole lot of soju!

Why is MT a tradition? Well, as you may or may not know, Korean society has a lot of Confucian values. Therefore, there is a clear hierarchy in university and it would be to your benefit, if you got to know your seniors. It is also just a nice thing to meet everyone in your faculty and make some friends… loosen up those first year jitters!

What do students do? What happens? Overnight accommodation is booked to fit everyone. It usually starts in the afternoon with some food…then…a bit of light drinking and talking.  Some speeches maybe.  Professors also attend and some stay the night too.  The exciting part is probably after dinner when everyone gets together and plays games, such as ‘alcoholic monopoly’ which is monopoly with the properties replaced with alcoholic challenges.  I have witnessed this one myself.. Hilarious to say the least, hahah! Though I didn’t have to play…so… There is also of course, lots of team challenges and performances.

Some are against this tradition, probably for the reason that some students have died in the past from an overconsumption of alcohol. I understand, it could be seen as some necessary foolishness… but I still feel – with proper supervision – it could be one of the most memorable and important moments for a university student.

For most, if all goes well, university life will be a breeze and you’ll graduate happily thanks to all the past papers and exam tricks you learn from your seniors.

What do you think about MT?

Maxibon Sausage Snack

One of the first things that ever caught my eye in the local Korean supermarket back in Sydney Australia, were these sausage like snacks called Maxibon that Korean kids seemed to love eating.  I noticed them because they don’twere always next to the register.  I was told it was a cheese stick. I never tried because they looked so awfully processed.. plus anything with cheese in it should be refrigerated in my opinion. I asked my boyfriend, now husband back then about them and he tried very hard to persuade me that they were great! And that I should try one….

Well…I finally tried one after 8 years hahaha!

This one is called Pak-Pak. The original is called Maxibon. It’s got a celebrity called 강호동 Kang Ho Dong’s face on it – I’m guessing he’s promoting this brand.

Pak-pak has 4.99% cheese in it! Woohoo!
So…here goes…

Hmmm….as I thought….not too palatable…  The texture is kind of like a Frankfurt but a bit spongy-springy? The yellow bits are cheese but they don’t really taste cheesy, sadly. PLUS! after looking at the ingredients more closely, I see that there’s pork in it!! PoRK?!…

Pork = 되지고기
Edit* just realised didn’t manage to take a photo showing pork as an ingredient. Check it out for yourselves anyway! It’s there.

Not my kind of snack anyway but… maybe it’s a good source or protein?

Coffee series: Maone (마오네) Dog/Cat Cafe

Animals not only provide us with unconditional love, they can teach us so much about life. That why I love dogs. I had two dogs back home, Foxy and Jock. I used to always cuddle with them in front of the TV or on the bed. It was great to come back home to them, they’d be so excited to see me and the long terrible day I had at work would just disappear from my thoughts.

I’d have a dog here too, except my place is too small for a dog to live happily in. So every now and then when I miss the company of having a dog, I head down to the dog cafe!

A popular one is Ma-One (마오네). They are a dog and cat cafe and also a dog and cat hotel. So if you don’t have a pet of your own, you can go for a coffee and sit or play with a resident dog. If you’ve got a dog, you can let it have a bit of social time with the resident dogs and also leave it here if you have to go away. The dogs and cats are separated, of course.

It’s good to see they’ve made a big open space for the dogs to run around in…although the floor is hard..and I’ve noticed the dogs don’t get their nails clipped. The hotel section is off to the side.

The cats have their own sectioned off space with plenty of nooks and crannies to sleep in. They all look very comfortable and happy.

The resident dogs all have names. I had the pleasure of meeting Diesel, a brown sausage dog. The burst thing ever! Very cuddly 🙂

The rule is that you have to purchase a beverage at the cafe, to cover costs of running the place. Drinks are a bit more expensive than usual, my coffee was 7000 won. Though I felt it was worth it cos I got to meet Diesel, and I’d like Diesel to have a good home.

Check out Maone, pronounced Ma oh nay, the next time you miss having a pup. They’re open until 11pm! There’s two branches, one not far from McDonalds near Pohang Sheway Bus Terminal and another up behind Yeonil Beach.

Coffee series: dal.komm Coffee

This long weekend has almost all been spent at the beach for me. After sleeping in till 11am, my husband made me a bacon and egg sandwich! Which was awesome.. exactly what I wanted, with a fragrant hazelnut black coffee. Breakfast for a queen!

After that we decided to head toward Yeonil Beach for a coffee and a bit of a read. We’ve tried a lot of the coffee shops in Pohang, so today we headed to a new place that opened not far down the road from Arabica Coffee Roasters. It’s a chain called dal.komm coffee.

Today is actually Children’s Day in Korea, so it was packed. The location is nice though, with a good view of the ocean ( if only the factories weren’t in the distance).

Black coffee and custard cream churros.

The coffee is good. Sometimes they burn the coffee and you’re left with some terrible sour, bitter, black water, but dal.komm got their black coffee right! The churros were a bit below expectation.. Kinda soft… and we initially actually did not know that they were cream filled churros, so we thought they were under cooked. Anyway, not a taste sensation.

What WAS really good was the raspberry, white chocolate cheese cake Brûlée. I would come back here just for that! Not too sweet, quite light and creamy but not sickly creamy. Somewhere between a New York cheese cake and a traditional French cheese cake.

It looked so good we started eating it before I remembered to take a photo.. oops haha

Dal.komm is up north of Yeonil Beach, not far from Arabica Roasters and Curry and Coffee, which is a great Indian restaurant I’ll blog on next time.

How Korean Girls Stay Slim

I have to say that health and fitness has come a long way in Korea. Ten years ago, silly diets such as One Food diets; only eating bananas, tomatoes or sweet potatoes or the Hoola Hoop diet was the craze. There are still people who rely on these methods but it’s good to see that more sustainable methods have become popular.

I stayed up watching TV the other night and a beauty show came up at 11pm. They were talking about weightloss, as usual, introducing a new diet called the 369 diet. It incorporates meals recommended by three celebrities in Korea who are famous for the beauty and their beautiful bodies.

So here is the diet.

Breakfast: tomato and broccoli stir fry, maybe with a small serving of steamed sweet potato
Morning tea: vegetable juice with the pulp! They call it Haedok Juice here. It seems they put very fibrous vegetables in it, in addition to regular ingredients such as carrots, tomato, such as cabbage Lunch: home made Korean meal – brown rice, some side dishes and a bit of protein
Afternoon snack: some almonds or walnuts
Dinner: chicken breast and broccoli or some other kind of green vegetable
Before bed: multivitamins, vitamin c

All of this is to be done in conjunction with exercise of course. They recommended at least 30 minutes a day but I think you could easily do an hour. From personal experience, exercising for 20 minutes in the morning on an empty stomach works wonders. It kick starts the metabolism and gets things moving! Then you could just do another 30 or 40 minutes of cardio in the afternoon and you’re done!

The diet is called the 369 diet because they recommend 3 hrs of no food between each meal, 6 small meals a day and 9 hours of sleep, which sounds like a good plan to follow.

I think this is worth trying and would be a good diet to follow not just for weight loss but as a life style change. It doesn’t restrict too many foods so there’s more chance of sticking to this, though obviously there isn’t anything oily or sugary.

… I guess you could have a naughty day once a week 🙂 .. Just to stay sane.

Coffee series: Arabica Coffee Roaster

I was first introduced to this place by a friend last year. We came for take away coffee and at first, I was only shocked by how expensive it was for a coffee; 4,500 won for a Cappacino! Then I noticed, they roast their own beans.. and after that, I noticed they have several kinds of drip coffee, dutch coffee ..and whatever else coffee – which is actually beyond the level of my coffee appreciation, but I know it’s something fancy and probably coffee lovers would be happy about discovering in little Pohang. Anyway, the coffee is really good and they make good froth, which is something I always use to judge how good the coffee is. Sorry, I can’t stand froth that has big, empty air bubbles in it, which is what you get at a lot of coffee chains here.

It’s right next to the water, up north of Yeonil Beach, next to some kind of national park. It has a lovely view, pity the local people don’t seem to appreciate it.

I love the interior, I’d love my house to look this way. Very clean, natural textures, easy on the eye. A few rugs on the floor and you’re set. The furniture is comfortable too, I happen to be blogging from there right now.

The weathers getting warmer, so time to come out, get a bit of a tan and check place place out!

Honey Water

Koreans have several things that they consume to rid a hangover. Usually its HaeJangGuk 해장국 which is a spicy soup with vegetables and sometimes meat in a hot stone pot.  Another is Honey water 꿀물. Now I’m not hangover on a weekday, I’m just freezing because it seems winter is back!

So what does it taste like? well, like honey mixed with water…but this one here has added Chrysanthamum extract, which gives is a nice floral fragrance.

One thing I’ve realised with Korean beverages though, is that they’re super, sickly sweet! So I had to buy cups at the convenience store too and dilute it. So I look even more like I’m hangover on a weekday, seeing as the cup is supposed to be for beer..

The Best Italian in Pohang – 뚝배기 이탈리아

I’ve always been disappointed by foreign food in Korea. It’s usually very far from what I expect it to taste like and in some instances, absolutely horrible! but finally the day has come! I’ve discovered a gem in Pohang.  If you’re ever craving Italian, Dduk bae gi italia will cure it! The name can be translated as Hot Stone Pot Italy. You’ll see why it has its name soon.

The menu isn’t too vast but it has enough to suit all tastes. There’s Pasta, pizza, risotto, steak and salads. Everything actually looks good from what I’ve seen but the most popular menu has to be the tomato based marinara spaghetti. 

I guess you can call this place a semi fusion restaurant.  Because to be honest, the first thing I thought of when I saw this was that it looked like Kimchi stew.. and since when does pasta come out in a stone pot?? But as soon as I tasted it, I didn’t care what it was served it.

The sauce tastes like really good napolitana sauce – made with actual tomatoes – but with some chilli, which actually is a refreshing touch as it cuts any greasyness. It’s packed with a lot of seafood, even some crab and the pasta is al dente! They must have experimented a lot to get the timing right. I thoroughly enjoyed this, wishing they had bread for me to dip in the sauce.

The maragrita pizza is to die for. Really…to die for.. especially the base, which has the texture of a soft, slightly chewy yet crunchy turkish bread.  I could easily polish off one of these myself. The best part, it only costs ￦10 000!

Pair everything with a salad with balsamic dressing and you’ve got one awesome meal for two. Loved this place. Will be going back for sure!

It’s located at Bukbu Beach, officially renamed Yeonil Beach last year.

House Hunting

It’s been almost a year and a half since moving to Pohang.  My husband and I have been living in company apartments so far, which costs us close to nothing but the suburb isn’t the best. We’re in Indeok Dong, which is right next to POSCO. The air is heavily polluted by the factories, so we can’t open the windows and half of the time it smells pretty bad.  So it’s about time we moved.

We’re looking to move to Jigok Dong, which is probably the cleanest suburb in Pohang. It also happens to be right next to POSTECH University, the best elementary, middle and highschool in Pohang, a massive fitness complex run by POSCO is in the centre of the suburb and it’s quiet and leafy.

The suburb used to be closed to POSCO employees until a few years ago. When they opened ownership to the general public, the prices shot up and have almost doubled. We’re trying to get in before the prices become ridiculous.

Most of the properties are highrise apartments, but there is the Steel House area which is super expensive (as shown in the photos) It reminds me of home. I guess it’s not that expensive. You can get a free standing 3 or 4 bedroom house for about $600,000. That’s beyond our budget though, so I’m happy with an apartment.

If you’re thinking about staying here long term and having a family. Jigok is a good investment.  I hope we find our place soon – Fingers crossed!

iHerb – Salt and Vinegar Chips!

I ordered from iherb a couple days ago.  If you haven’t heard of them yet, it’s the next best place to go – besides Itaewon in Seoul -for anything that you miss from home.  Although there aren’t any aussie products on the site, it’s good enough ^^ … I also got hot chiracha(?) sauce …and a million other goodies from bath n body to supplements!! They are a life saver.

Postage is cheap (￦4000) to Korea, as long as it stays under a certain weight and you have an alien card. They post all over the world though!

They had a weekend special on – extra 10% off – and I thought ‘what a great chance to get more Salt and Vinegar chips!!’ That’s one thing that you can’t buy in Korea and it boggles my mind. I love Salt and Vinegar! Can’t say it enough! And seeing as Korean food uses quite a lot of salt…and vinegar …and they eat a ton of snacks..  I don’t get why they haven’t gotten into these chips …?

For new users, you can get an extra 10% discount!! if you use my code at checkout: MFK972