workity, work, work

Not too much has been going on besides work. I've been out on about 4 surveillances now so I am starting to get a feel for how they work and what all I need to look for. Especially for the Mechanical Tests (seems to be what I'll be doing most of the time). The tests themselves are pretty straight forward (Tensile, Drop Weight, and Impact) which is good. The guys in the lab are total professionals too, they know exactly what they're doing, how to do it, and what the code and Doosan requires of them for the test. That has helped make those observations easier. The only downside is that they don't speak English ... at all. So if I have questions I have to get someone who can translate to ask for me.

I have found that you can still have debates without fully understanding each other. We have had a few questions and issues about the way that something has been measured. So there has been a bit of a debate about geometry going on. I've found it really interesting how much you can communicate through math that you can't verbalize. It could be that we're engineers talking with engineers about numbers, but there's something that's kind of cool about it. That project has taken up a lot of the rest of my time this week too.

Life outside of work has been alright. I've mostly been sleeping and playing games on my iPod Touch (used to be an iPhone, you know when I could get cell service). I've also gotten a Korean cell phone, started working towards arranging language lessons, should have/get a car tomorrow, and am mostly set up at Doosan. Its all starting to come together, it just took about 2 weeks to get everything sorted out. The only thing that I'm waiting on is my official work Visa. I'm able to work in the country for 90 days without one, but I need it for all of my work benefits to kick in.

For anyone's who's wondering a PNC account will work in Korea (which is awesome) but the ATM charge is about $3.50 per withdrawal. Not too bad for pulling money out a few thousand miles away. I'm also up to 35,000 frequent flyer miles too.... I should have about 75,000 by the time that I get back home in November (you collect about 12000 miles each way). Maybe I'll take a few trips around the states when I get back.