-
High Drama at Lotte World Tower: Fear, Vanity, and Greed
Walking out on to the Sky Deck at Lotte World Tower was terrifying. I did it, but I did not look down. Our recent visit to the tower took us to dizzying heights, but also led us to explore how and why the tower was built and the soap-opera story of the Lotte tycoon and his family. Lotte (low-tay) World Tower is currently the world’s fifth tallest building. It stretches 556 meters (1823 feet) into the air and is the tallest building on the Korean peninsula. By comparison, its roof line is a bit higher than the pinnacle of One World Trade Center in NYC. Compared to other super-tall buildings,…
-
Food Delivery in Quarantine: The Devil is in the Details
Being confined to our small apartment in Seoul has presented a number of challenges. Not surprisingly, our primary concern before arriving was making sure we would have enough food to eat. Thus, before we arrived, we had done some online research and had a plan in place. Our Airbnb host Han kindly offered to stock our kitchen with some essentials to get us through the first couple of days. We also planned to use the Shuttle app (similar to GrubHub) for delivery from area restaurants and Gmarket.com for groceries. Upon our arrival at the apartment we found that Han indeed left us the staples that we requested as well as…