Lohas

Near our apartment is the Lohas PC bang, our favorite place to check email (we don’t have an internet connection in our apartment). Their a “frequent user” program is nice, but I particularly like their fantastically huge 20-inch 16:9 ratio widescreen flatpanel monitors. It makes blogging much more fun.

Unfortunately, in other respects they are very much like every other PC room. Their PCs are mostly for gamers who play Starcraft, World of Warcraft, or some other online game, so basic software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader is entirely absent.

Plus, every time I spend an hour there I invariably come out smelling like cigarette smoke.

It’s ironic, too, because their motto is “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability” and a lot of their customers are children. In spite of the recent law that there be a wall to separate smoking and non-smoking sections, there’s no door between them. What good is that?

So you can't smoke at a Seoul city bus stop, but you can smoke in a crowded, poorly ventilated PC room filled with children where the term "smoking section" is utterly meaningless.

*sigh*