BigHominid's Hairy Chasms: new studio: outside

I like how quiet my new neighborhood is. If Goyang/Ilsan is a satellite of Seoul, my neighborhood is a satellite of that satellite. I'm 15 minutes outside of downtown by bus (and am about to walk the bus route into downtown and back today); at night, my street has almost no cars, and there are almost no stray cats yowling in the alleys. We're still close enough to Seoul to get Seoul's nighttime light pollution, but some few stars are visible in the skies above Goyang/Ilsan.

Here are some exterior shots, taken on February 8, of my studio's building and its surroundings. I live in the shadow of two or three major apartment complexes; Goyang/Ilsan is still fairly empty at its edges, so a lot of this real estate has been seized by developers and is being developed at a rapid clip. As my friend Tom remarked, "Come back in ten years, and it'll be as crowded as Seoul." I think he's right. Construction projects are going on everywhere.

As always, hover your cursor over each image for its caption.

Thanks to what appear to be some fugly A/C units, the front of my building looks like the BACK of my building.

Thanks to what appear to be some fugly A/C units, the front of my building looks like the BACK of my building.

My building's main door. I think the mailbox is for outgoing mail, but it might be for incoming mail. I asked my landlady how I'm supposed to receive my mail; she said she distributes the post to each individual apartment by leaving envelopes stuck in our doors. Other buildings have individual post boxes for their residents.

Tunnel of mystery! Actually, it's not that mysterious: the tunnel leads to another tunnel, which debouches onto the main street of this part of town.

A look up my back street, with my building on the extreme right of the picture. Very quiet at night. It's a street that feels like an alleyway. At the far end of my street, not visible because of the slight curve, is a children's taekwondo academy. Behind me and to my right is a church, so this neighborhood's got its praying and fighting covered.

This is the 'Wi City' apartment complex—Complex 5, to be exact, so all the buildings in this cluster have numbers beginning with '5.' Whenever I take a cab back to my place—which isn't often unless I've done a Costco run—I tell the driver to take me to the back gate of Wi City Complex Number 5.

And another shot of the same complex. This is where the rich folks live. In Korea, even for the very rich, about the best you can aspire to is a nice, large apartment in a decent part of town. Free-standing houses, as in American suburbs, do exist in Korea, but those neighborhoods are for the FILTHY rich—celebrities, business leaders, politicians, etc. The rest of us, including high-level company executives, will never do better than living in a glorified box.

1 comment:

JohnFebruary 20, 2015 at 4:28:00 PM GMT+9
Not a yokwon in sight! Surely this can't be a Korean neighbourhood! This location sure looks a lot more comfortable than the previous location.

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Friday, February 20, 2015

new studio: outside

1 comment: