Young Chang Piano Company of Seoul, Korea

Yesterday, we had an adventure getting a new piano. I went with Chris Chang and Jenny Han down to the Insadong Market to get the thing. Jenny did the negotiating and talked the guy down to W3.8 million and got it delivered and tuned that day. It sounds great, and there's nothing quite like a baby grand piano in your house. Julie has waited many years for this, and she deserves a nice piano. It's not a $30,000 Yamaha piano, but Korean workmanship to me sounds fine (my ear is untrained to know the difference). The guy tuned it manually and it was really cool to watch him work at it. He'd tune one and start working the octaves. I've talked to a piano tuner before (this is why camping at the KOA's is so fun if you're unabashed like me!) but he told me you have to tune them differently than you'd think or they'd all sound horrible. Because I asked him half-jokingly if he used 88 tuning forks to tune a piano, but they don't do that. In the States, they use a computer and it tells them what to set it to, this guy just did it all by ear. I never saw him use a tuning fork or anything. These people have mad skills at things.

We've been playing the currency market lately. We're trying to make a few bucks on the exchange rates to pay bills and stuff, but you really have to pay attention to it and you have to know where to get the things exchanged. Korea is going to strengthen the Won here soon, so it'll drop, but we'll try to make a few bonus bucks in the meantime.

Here's a palace guard changing- I had to shoot it from the car as we were looking for parking, and here's a lady in a Hanbok. You're supposed to ask permission around here to take people's pictures, but I had the window up and we were driving by so I didn't have time. It's a pretty dress anyway. We're going to take our family pictures in traditional Korean clothes for our Christmas card this year, so I guess we'd better get that done.

I'm going to sign the paper to get the Korea bonus pay. You get a few hundred bucks a month to stay another year. It saves the military money in moving expenses, and we have one less move in the career to have to make. Not like I'm fast-tracked to 4-star general anyway. Might as well let Mr (Air) Force keep me happy. And we're saving a lot of money, but as you can see, we're opening the door and allowing a lot of Won/Dollars to get away. Life's too short to let it all get you down. At least I ride my bike to work now so I don't get stressed about finding a parking place when I get to work, and I get a little exercise- it'll be even better when it cools off more around here.

It turns out our utility costs weren't too bad. Our gas bill for the stove was 3,500 Won and our electricity worked out to being about 1,000 Won a day, so being conservative and a total cheapskate was good for us. We're saving a few bucks there by living off-post. They'll give us all the extra utility money back when we leave here in 2011, so we'll use that for a car or something.