incheon

I'm here in Incheon. 2:30 in the morning. went to bed at 11 pm and just woke straight up.
14 hours of sleeping/watching Mr. and Mr's Smith (same thing really) can do that to you, i guess.
Damn jet lag.
All I can say about Korea so far is that there are two channels devoted to video games in this country. and not just talking about them. kids, in front of hundreds of screaming fans, play video games against each other (with corporate sponsorship and play-by-play.) It's really fascinating. Well, at least at this hour of the night it is really fascinating.
My hotel is right next to the airport in what only I can describe as what would happen if you took Century Boulevard outside of LAX, removed everything else around it, and placed it on a man-made island off the Korean coast. There is basically a street of 12-story buildings, hotels and office buildings amongst them, that line one of the entrance roads into the airport. My hotel, the Best Western Premier Incheon, is one of them. I drove by the whole thing pretty late on a Sunday night but from what I can tell there was ground-floor retail and at least a few people walking around. Strange. Can't wait to see this place in the daylight.

My last day in Dallas was productive. I spent the morning driving around the Las Colinas development, located right next to DFW and one of the largest office/business parks in the US. For the most part, it was your average really really well landscaped business park, but it did have one really unique feature - the las colinas urban center. Seems the guy who developed it imagined he was not only creating a business park but a new center for the Metroplex.
Alright, fine, except his center consists of about ten 10-20-story buildings sitting around a lake. Not much urbanity really. But it does have the strangest thing I've ever seen in a suburban business park - a rapid transit system. Yep, the guy, who must have been richer than god, built a small single-car transit line between a series of the skyscrapers to make interactions more easy. It drives around every 10 minutes or so. Its actually kind of cute in a not-really-transit kind of way. There is also a small retail area around a canal off the lake. Not much retail activity anymore, but strange nonetheless. Basically, this thing must have been the bomb in 1985. Twenty years later, it looks a bit dated.

Nonetheless though Dallas' airport urbanism is basically a generation younger than Chicago's and, with that, a bit more planned. Not all that great on its own, but pretty interesting in the scheme of things.

I also went to see Dealy plaza in downtown chicago where Oliver Stone made one of his better movies. In case you were wondering, it looks just like it did in the movie. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back and to the left.

Also saw the Dallas Galleria which, I imagine, is a far cry from the Houston Galleria. But, in the end, it does have a skating rink on the ground floor of the mall, so who really can complain.

The flight to Incheon, all 14 hours of it, was a bit long. I'd really like to know why they don't offer to put people to sleep for flights like that ala Mr. T in the A-Team. I would probably be first in line. I did however get to fly into LAX today which means flying straight through the basin. I was dorking out identifying oil fields (or, at least there above-ground boundaries) as we descended. I wish I had more time so I could have stopped in LA and seen everybody there. Next time I guess.

Well, I'm going to try to get back to bed now...