Saturday 30 January 2010

The Black Smoke Over Yongsan-gu





I thought the blue winter sky last Wednesday morning would remain serene, cold and...well, blue all day. But as I was taking a break away from my computer, and tried to look out the office window, I saw black smoke a few blocks away was rising above some buildings.


Well, as they say, when there's smoke, there's FIRE! SUNOG!


It was an unusual, unnerving scene seeing a black smoke streaking across the blue sky, slowly rising, slowly growing and slowly getting you to think that somewhere in that area, occupants of that building are being thrown into chaos and trying to save whatever they can. Later though, I learned from the news that it was a model unit for an apartment that went up in smoke -- that black smoke ruining an otherwise bright and blue Wednesday winter sky.


I took consecutive snapshots of the smoke. I observed that it was not able to rise up to the higher atmosphere perhaps because the freezing temperatures were forcing it to stay down. It just dissipated across the Yongsan-gu area, streaking across the horizon up to the Seoul Tower in the Nam-san area.


Although these photos were interesting in a way, I'd rather not take photos of fire and burning buildings next time.


Ciao.

Sunday 24 January 2010

A Snowed Neighborhood








Having spent my Christmas holidays in the tropics, I was just glad I was away when Seoul was suddenly blanketed with thick snow on the last week of December.


And then....vacation's over. :-(


I had to return to Seoul and sympathize with my frozen neighborhood.


And on my first morning in Seoul, in early January, this is how my Hannam-dong neiborhood looked like: snow on sides, slush in the middle and slippery ice all over!


But even with the inconvenience, people still had to get on with their daily routines...