A brief final reflection based on guidelines in the course syllabus: I had a pretty good idea of what to expect going into the South Korea trip in terms of the organization of cultural and professional visits and the assignments that would be due, and my expectations were correct. For this, I have to commend…
Tag: Rohit Velankar
South Korea 12: The Reflections Will Continue Until Enlightenment Occurs
Today (and it is actually today, since I’m writing this on the plane the night of the last day) was our last day in Korea. Rather than do the responsible thing of sleeping in, I did the alternately responsible thing of waking up early to get as much out of the trip as possible. Saltbread…
South Korea 10-11: Ulsan Plant and TOPIS
So I’ll be perfectly frank in saying that I’m writing this on the long haul flight back to the USA. Got a bit behind on the blogs, it happens. Also, no huge revelations or intellectual (as my peers have been calling it) ideas, so a bit more objective reporting here. Also, since most of day…
South Korea 09: Steel Factory and Pohang
Today we went to POSTECH in the morning for a tour of the campus, but I already discussed it in the blog post from yesterday. After lunch and a tour there, we visited the POSCO museum, called Park 1538. They had a few overstimulating and uninformative interactive videos/experiences followed by some honestly pretty good conventional…
South Korea 08: POSTECH
Today was our first full day in Pohang, and we started off the day with a visit to POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology). It’s a beautiful and modern suburban-style campus that stretches around 400 acres (about 2.5 times larger than Pitt). I really enjoyed walking around; the buildings are large and bright, the…
South Korea 06-07 Part 2: Is it authentic and should I care?
I already wrote about the itinerary for days 6 and 7 in the previous blog post, I won’t repeat them here. What I want to talk about is the idea of authenticity. So at the Golgulsa temple, there are a number of stone statues and structures all around the temple grounds. The most famous of…
South Korea 06-07 Part 1: Golgulsa Temple and My Take on Buddhism
So I’m writing days six and seven of this trip in two parts because half of each of them was our temple stay, which sort of deserves a post of its own, but I have a few things that I want to talk about regarding that, and some of the stuff we saw even after…
South Korea 05: Korean Christianity and the DMZ
Normally I blaze past the events of the day, but my morning activity today was one that I specifically chose to do independently. From the roof of the hotel, we get a pretty good view of the Myeong-Dong area, which is mostly high-rise hotels, shopping centers, and office buildings, and low-rise apartment buildings. However, in…
South Korea 04: Ancient Architecture
Today started with a visit to the Suwon Fortress, an 18th century fortress built in what is now a satellite city of Seoul. We did an archery activity, then took a walk around in another part of the fortress, where there is a palace. We then ate at a restaurant that sold exactly three items:…
South Korea 03: Water Infrastructure
Today started a bit more normally, i.e. without a scavenger hunt for our professor. We first visited the new Seoul City Hall, a flowing 12-floor glass building that houses the metropolitan government. I did a bit of sketching of the building from a few angles, and my sketches were pretty poor, but sketching is about…
South Korea 02: On Public Transit
Today started unexpectedly with a scavenger hunt, the target being the elusive Dr. Yun. After some bus and subway travel, we tracked him down to the National Museum of Korea, an architecturally striking complex with expansive open spaces and free galleries. We ate lunch there and walked around for a while before heading to a…
South Korea 01: On People-Moving
What I want to say is “I won’t bore you with the details”, but what I actually mean is “many of my tripmates have already written blog posts objectively describing what we saw and did, so I won’t beat a dead horse here.” In short, we landed in Incheon shortly after four in the morning…
South Korea 00.1: Pre-Departure Thank-You
As I prepare to depart for South Korea tomorrow morning (wheels up at 9:45!), I would like to take a moment to recognize that this trip was financed, in part, by a $1000 scholarship I received from the Pitt Asian Studies Center (ASC) and POSCO, a South Korean steel company that we will be visiting…
South Korea 00: So it begins
Hey! My name is Rohit Velankar, I’m a freshman in SSOE pursuing MSE with a minor in Architecture-Design. I’m from Pittsburgh, born and raised. I can get excited about almost anything, but my main interests right now are soft robotics, innovative manufacturing, and the intersection between materials and the built environment. All of these factors…