Smoking Ban in Korean Public Places

Smoking ban in billiard halls, indoor golf driving ranges, swimming pools and other small recreation areas in Korea. It's an interesting article from Korea Times about smoking ban. I just can't help to write my own reaction and idea after reading this.

Key points that took my attention. 

(1) There is a NEW law that bans smoking in billiard halls. I find playing billiard to be interesting specially when I was a kid but it has given me a bad picture of billiard halls as I was growing up. Why? Playing itself is not that bad but it is the place and the betting culture that accompanies it that bothers me. The main thing is actually the place where one would usually spot smokers in and around the billiard areas. It's not a place where I would want to hang out with even if I wanted to try to play billiards. 

On second thought, I am surprised that it is just now that rec rooms like these are included in the ban. 

(2) No food and drinks will NOT be allowed in restaurants' smoking rooms. That's a progressive one. Since smoking rooms now means a place where you can eat, drink and smoke. But not anymore. (This will start on January 1, 2015 next year.)

That is one good thing to look forward for the coming year for me. 

Technology and Me

My old laptop has been shelved for a while now that I have a new one. Well, not exactly shelved but I still use it at times that I need to use IE since my new one is a chromebook.

Hubby ordered it for me from Amazon in mid of November and it arrived more than a week later. Since shipping to ROK is tricky, he usually use a forwarding company Malltail. He got his own through that same route before paying about 30USD for shipping and extra 10% customs tax depending on the amount bought.

My new chromebook speed has been waay better and less complicated compared to the microsoft-run lappy before. It's good for basic computing, and streaming and everything online except IE sensitive sites like Korean online banking, government sites, and everything Korean related sites. For a country whose advance technology is touted for, it seems that their backbone is still Microsoft or windows related computers. I won't claim to be such a genius in technology coz I'm far from it but in cases like these, using a chromebook is charting a new territory. I, myself, has also been more familiar and comfortable with windows.

Going back to what prompted me to write this entry today is the printing aspect from chromebook. I was able to connect our classic printer to my hubby's account and shared it with mine. I had wanted to print something for a while but the printer is quite inaccessible for me before. Since chromebook cannot connect directly to printers (which is quite a downer for me) the alternative is to use the our windows-run turtle netbook (it's an old one and veeerryy slow) as the main one connected to the printer.

I just followed a few steps after googling how tos. First was connecting a google account from the turtle netbook to the printer, and sharing it with my own account. I accidentally connected the printer using my hubby's g. account so I still had to share it to my account so that I can use it. It could have been the other way but that's what you get when you don't read a bit more.

Here is what I followed for sharing. It might come in handy for me in the future. ;)

from chrome help site

trying out to print from chromebook from youtube

Enough suspense for me now. It's about time to find out for me how this cloud printing works for such a fancy name.