[GiftEconomy] Fun in The Sun in Seoul

[Robin Upton]

My wife and I wandered around a local park here in Seoul last weekend, 
and really enjoyed it - not because the weather was smashing, though it 
was, but because there were a lot of other people out as well, having 
fun, rollerskating, biking, playing with radio controlled cars/planes, 
family members, etc. Six year olds wandering around, a very relaxed 
feeling. Quite different from UK, with everyone pumped full of 
paedofear, warning signs and cameras everywhere, young things tied up 
with tendrils of anxiety, kind of a 'colloseum waiting room' atmosphere. 
It reminded me of Bangladesh, but with more stuff to play with. I was 
looking for, but didn't find, someone with a go board (=popular game 
here, c.f. chess in Europe). So we ended up fishing a rubbish sack out 
of one of the ponds and filling it up. That's another thing - no alcohol 
cans visible. In short, it felt like a really good place to try a 
give-and-take.

Are you and Vic getting anywhere with that Give-And-Take kit, Frank? 
It's looking like I could put it to good use.

Then I got home and tried Couchsurfing.org to look for people to meet in 
the local area. Early days yet, but the plan is to assemble a 'flash 
mob' to take part in gift economy style events with the locals. The most 
obvious one which springs to mind is English Teaching (very popular 
here, but expensive and generally not very good said an English teacher 
I met on CS). I'm also up for leading a go or pastel sketching class, or 
going with the flow. Wondering about a name, I didn't get any obvious 
candidates spring to mind. Then I thought, perhaps no name is good, so 
that people don't bring their own preconceptions, and so that they don't 
automatically put it in a box. Maybe it's just not formed enough yet (we 
haven't actually done anything much)! so let's see. There's also 
laptoppery, such as a live Skype link to somewhere else in the world 
(doing a similar event??).

Tereza, I don't know quite where you're at with UniverseCity as opposed 
to ScareCity, but we seem to be thinking in parallel, so I thought I'd 
add this to the mix.

Robin