We woke up early and went to Postech for the second day. It was rumored to be an industrial engineering and data science tour, but it turned out to be a campus tour. We got split up into different groups than normal and were shown around by students of the campus. They reminded me of Pitt’s pathfinders. They have this really cool building called the CHANGeUP and if you take away the e it says something different and inspiring but short-term memory loss betrayed me, so I don’t know what it is. It is their area for students to work on startups. It has offices, a relaxing area, and a dining area. I think my friend Rujuta, who has a startup, would really like it here. Then we went to lunch.
We ordered online lunch before we got to Korea. I ordered grilled chicken. It was really good, see the picture below. I really loved the soup though. The chicken’s sauce was spicy, but the soup was sweet and salty. Speaking of salty, I cannot eat any chips in Korea because they all have milk and I am really missing salt and vinegar chips. Anyway, one person in our group wasn’t feeling well so I stayed with her the rest of the trip. Then we got back on the bus to go to the steel company Posco. I enjoyed Postech. They have an option for engineers to study aboard there. I don’t know if it applies to CS though. It is such a beautiful campus and has so much free greenery.
It was a drive to the steel plant when we got there it was raining. We went inside and they had us take a group photo and go into this room. There it was like this 3D theater there was a screen on almost every wall and the floor. It showed the history of how steel was made. And it started with space. Then went to the blast furnace where you could jump on the floor and the lava would follow you. Then it went to water and wind, and it was the same interaction with the floor. Then it showed the finished steel, and it had this moving huge ship on the wall. It was just an incredible video. Then we went to see another one and it played the video over a diorama of the steel plant to explain how it worked. We walked and she showed us this plate that looked like wood but was actually steel which was really cool. Then we left to see the plant.
The steel plant was massive in area and just building sizes. The blast furnaces were like skyscrapers. Our tour guide went over some of the functions of all the buildings and cars that we saw. We also couldn’t take any pictures which was really sad. From there we went inside to see them making blades. Which is like a long thing of steel. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! Like the droid factory in Attack of the Clones, I loved it! The metal came out of this thing in a thick red square, and you could feel the heat coming off it from 50 feet away, and it lit up the room. Then it went into this machine to cool it down and the steam just blasted out of it! It was awesome! Then it went into this roller to make it thinner and longer. And you could see one that had already been in the roll for a while. And it went from like a 10 feet thick sheet of orange burning metal to a 40 feet long line of fading orange. It looked like a tongue coming out of the machine. We had to leave but I really wanted to see it again. We took the bus back to the hotel. That was the coolest sight visit of the trip though. I cannot describe the magnitude of it.
Before going to the hotel, we went and got rice cakes from the market. I’ve been getting them every day. Sophie bought a container and gave it to me. Thank you Sophie!!! Well, we walked through the market I gave one to me, one to Manav, and one to Rohit. Back at the hotel I spent about 3 hours working on the video for our final project. We decided it would be easier if one person worked on the video and the others did the presentation. So, the video is now my job. I got the rough draft of it down and will work on it more tomorrow. But at the time I wanted to go get food and go to the beach. It was about 8ish and Sophie also wanted to go to olive young.
We stopped at Olive Young first because it closes at 10. I got some face masks for my neighbor and then Rohit, who was also with us, got some gifts for his family. And Sophie got a ton of stuff. Then we went to the beach! But I was still hungry but none of the stuff in the convenience stores are dairy free so I got a banana and that was good enough. So, we walked along the sand for a bit. I found a really cool shell. Then we went up to this dock that had a pavilion on it to look out at the ocean. I will miss it so much! I’ve gone to the beach every day well in Poyang. It is just beautiful. I have always gone when the sun went down so the pictures I get are blurry.
P.S. the feature image was taken by I believe Dom, but it is the same place we went to this night.