My favourite part of my trip to Korea last week has got to be the tour of the printing labs at Samsung Electronics’ HQ in Suwon, hosted by the amiable Brian and Eunbin. Forget the grand strategy announcements and sexy home entertainment systems, the demonstration of the durability of its cardboard boxes was the gem. For five minutes we stood transfixed as a single box was loaded onto an impossibly large metal machine and then dropped, and dropped again, and yet again. But you can never see a cardboard box being dropped from a great height too many times in my book.

And I bet you’ve never been in a pulverised toner pilot lab. How about a chemical toner synthesis lab? No? Jealous yet? Alright, it may not float your particular boat, but I could go on for hours about the fascinating, labour-intensive processes that go into making this kit. Actually I couldn't - it's during these tours that the nine hour time difference really starts to kick in.

Suffice as to say we witnessed the men and women in white coats, yes literally, doing important looking things with test tubes and pipettes. Actually I reckoned some of them were students – you can tell by the ill-fitting clothes (beneath the white coats), bad haircuts and vacant expressions, god bless ‘em. Either way, the next time I run off a few hundred copies from the IT Week printer, I’ll certainly not be taking for granted the man hours and meticulous testing that goes into the production of these unremarkable looking lumps of plastic and metal.