One of life’s quirks in Korea is no hot water. Nope, no wonderfully warm water to come rushing out of the faucet the minute you turn it on. No warm water for your bath, to wash your face, do some quick dishes, nada.

Here you have to push a button.

They don’t use hot water heaters – although I’m not exactly sure what the process is called. All I know is that it takes oil. Oil we just paid $216 US for last week that’s supposed to last us 6 months.

So in order to take my morning shower I had to walk downstairs & push the little button our real estate agent labeled in English for us. (I don’t know what the other buttons are for – I don’t think she ever told us.) I’m sure they’ll be important come winter because if I remember right this place has heated floors – our only source of heat.

Then it’s walk back upstairs, wait for the water to get warm & climb in the shower.

The problem with this process is remembering to go back downstairs immediately afterward to push that little red button. I just noticed (at 2:30pm) that we never turned it off this morning. Crap!

Maybe I should put a sign in the bathroom to remind us, or at the bottom of the stairs.

The irony to all of this is that when we do turn the faucet on & realize there’s hot water coming out of it, we immediately remember we should’ve turned it off before.

Korean Life Lesson #1: Always turn the hot water off.

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The Design Studio has officially been relocated to Anjung-Ri, South Korea! As far as how successfully, well…that’s another story.

But first, I cannot begin to thank everyone enough for all their understanding, well wishes & support of my decision to join my husband at USAG Humphreys.

Shortly before the move to Korea, my laptop died…with no apparent hope of salvage. And with no time to either address the issue or replace the machine before the long flight, I was left dead in the water & could only hope that I would be able to revive it after my arrival.

While I was able to retrieve all the SittingBoo client files, it would appear I’ve lost all my Outlook & project management files.

The hard drive has been sent to a clean-room in Seoul where they can pull apart the hardware to attempt to retrive the data.

The blessing in this is that while this would have been an expense of hundreds, if not a thousand or two, in the States – here in Korea it will only run $200 US. So I should receive the final verdict on the file retrieval early next week.

In the meantime, I’ve ordered a new laptop & I’m using my husband’s computer to access email. I’ve also replaced the software I need to create graphics & HTML code and installed it on his machine so there will be no further interruption for client work.

I believe I have reached out to every active client prior to sending this announcement – but if you have not heard from me, please contact me as soon as possible so that I can review your current project status with you!

Be sure to stick around – this blog will allow me to share the more interesting aspects of life in Korea, our dog Maggie Moo’s latest antic – as well as information about design, branding, contests & giveaways, client spotlights – not to mention tips on how to prevent a computer crash of your own!

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