South Korea is an interesting place to try to do business. While I could easily fill 50 volumes with just the antics of a handful of trips to land of Yin and Yang, five particular hours I spent in Seoul are representative enough.
The corporate office had told me that “Mr. Kim” would meet me as I left customs at the airport in Korea. The chaos in the airport, with the shouting, yelling, shoving and confusion was right out of a movie scene. I walked, blurry eyed after my 12 hour flight, through the customs door into this incredible din. I then made the mistake a yelling out “Mr Kim?”
The noise seemed to diminish to a whisper for a few seconds. What had happened?
It seems that our vigilant corporate travel office neglected to point out that 25% of Koreans have the family name “Kim”. After everyone in the arrival lounge seemed to turn towards me, the volume picked up again, as did my travel headache.
After about 10 minutes I found a sign that said “Stvn Censer”. I figured that was a close approximation to my name and went with that “Mr Kim”.
Seoul Hilton
I was booked into the Seoul Hilton. This is a world class hotel, with many restaurants and five star rooms. At this point all I really wanted was about 8 hours of sleep, with some hope of starting my business meeting the next day in a semi-conscious state.
My room was on the 15th floor and so I went to the bank of elevators. The elevator had some version of classic rock playing. I pushed the “15” button and up I went. The elevator went past the 15th floor and stopped at 18, were a couple entered and pushed “L”. I then double pushed 15. The elevators next stop was the Lobby.
I then pushed “15” again and up I went. This time the elevator stopped on the 10th floor. The doors opened but no one was there! This was strange. The light was still lit on the “15”. The doors closed and the elevator headed back 
to the lobby. Sigh!
I went to another elevator and pushed all the number from 9 through 18. I stopped on 6, 8, 11, 12 and 15. Success!
What I learned through my week long stay at this hotel was that pushing a button on the elevator served merely as a suggestion, rather than a command to the elevator as to which floor it might actually stop.
Following my elevator ups and downs, I found my room. The room was an executive business suite with all the bells and whistles. After I got settled and unpacked, I was seriously ready from some shuteye. The room had a master control pad next to the bed. This touch screen device controlled the lights, the TV, the radio, a wake-up alarm, room service requests, turn down service, privacy lights and a few things that I still have no idea what they were.
After about 20 clicks, I managed to get everything turned off and was in a deep sleep in about 10 minutes.
I was awaken with a big startle when all the lights in the room started to flash, the TV turned on and the radio blared some Korean news station.
As I peeled myself off the ceiling of the hotel room, I began to regain my senses and started to evaluate what the heck was going on. After 20 more clicks and the room was quiet and dark once again. I figured I must have set some crazy wake-up alarm by mistake. I went back to sleep.
One hour later, I was again on the ceiling of my room with the lights flashing, TV blinking and the radio at its highest level.
This was really not going to be a restful night. After I settled the room back into its own “sleep” state, I had too much adrenaline running through my veins to fall back to sleep. Instead of sleeping, I stayed awake for the next hour. If the room was going to attack me once more in poltergeist style, I wanted to be awake and prepared.
An hour later the big, full size refrigerator (LG Brand, Of course) turned on. I heard the compressor motor start. A couple of seconds later my room came to life in all its noisy glory!
A’ ha! In a real “Dilbert” moment my engineering background kicked in. As the compressor on the frig turned on caused a voltage spike on the electrical line, which caused a glitch in the “room commander” system, which caused my heart to stop and me to leap to the ceiling.
Perfect Cause and Effect.
I unplugged the refrigerator and went to sleep.
Two hours later there was loud knocking at my door. My room service had arrived.
The room service that was in essence ordered by my room frig!
I tipped the waiter, took the platter and put it in the frig.
I did not have any issues with the room, or the frig, the rest of the week.
2 Comments
February 27, 2009 at 12:18 am
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March 9, 2009 at 8:27 pm
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