Korea..As I first saw.

So its been more than two week here for me in korea, enough time to know atleast the basic of their culture and some intresting facts too which I want to share with you all.

Seoul has all the characterstics of being a super urban modern city that are sky high buildings, fast and furious cars, a super efficient and extremely simple metro service called 'Korail', wonderfull roads, huge shopping malls and not to mention clean and dust free environment which is the thing we cannot find in any Indian metro city. But the best thing which can make you love this city even more is the politeness and peace loving nature of the people here.

In the beginning when I used to roam around, no body seems to be intreractive except some elderly guys who used to give atleast a smile to me. Then In office I met some warm hearted and inteartive perosons and during the course of discussion I asked them about my experience of non-interactive koreans, then I come to know the reason. they told me that though koreans are really warm at heart and helping by nature but they will never start interaction with you as they are not good at english and most of them do not know english so they always hesitate to interact. And when I visited markets, malls and places , I found them right, language is a barrier is for sure but except that people here are more than willing to help and when you start talking to them , they are really sweet and make genuine efforts to help you as well they can. I can recall incidences as when I was trying to find the something in a shopping mart, two ladies put their shopping on hold and helped me to find that thing even with out me asking for it or a guy who knows english offered to help as he came to know that we were unable to understand korean language and try to find the way to certain place. so lots of small incidences and each one leave good impression about the people here. Its not that they are only good with us, but also with in themselves, I visited lots of crowded market places, metro stations and malls and I didn't find anybody involved in any kind of argument or spat with anybody else, the people generally are easygoing, cool and means their business kind of persons.

It really feels strange not to see any police man or security personnel around even in busy roads, markets and stations here, the reason behind is not only super automated electronic vigilence driven by CCTV cameras but also the general tendency here to follow rules. Unlike in India following rules and prescribed way of behaving in public comes naturally to koreans. Where as in India its just opposite to that, we are used to break rules anywhere and every where and to follow them requires some efforts. and That is the reason why inspite of the visible efforts of administration and high deployment of police, Nothing seems to be working the way it should be. Although I can give some benefit to us of the fact that we are quite larger than korea and population of only Delhi/NCR is close to that of whole korea. But still there is lot to improve for us on the attitude part about these things.

so before closing this entry I can say that I would like to see lots of things in my country as it is in korea, and for that I would like to play my part when I go back to India and I hope we all play our part so that difference can be made.

In the end I would like to share a intresting fact about korea which I didn't know earlier : In korea they calculate their age not from the day they had born but nine months prior to that.. I wonder when they celebrate their birthday then.. Though I will find out and let you know... :)