okay, the date is almost 99% settled.

Jan. 6th~ Jan. 16th:  Mongolia
Jan. 18th ~ Feb. 4th: California

I haven't yet bought the tickets for home yet, but it is reserved. 

Yes, I'm still taking pictures.  Yes, this blog was originally for pictures.


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I got up at 4 today.  I exercised, ate breakfast, read a little bit, had some time to think about economics, politics and life, took a shower, updated my blog, and I must say, I feel fantastic.  The only problem is that it's 6:30 and I feel like going back to bed now. 

Mongolia is a fascinating country, populated by fascinating people. 

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I will break this news to the bloggers first:  There is a good chance I will be going home this winter break.  The original plan was to only go to Mongolia but... my parents miss me a lot and I need the California sun (...and tacos and dimsum and pho) because I'm slightly depressed these days. 

I'll let everyone know if it happens!

I miss home.  A lot.

Why do I want more of what I hate?  Whenever I browse through facebook statuses, I cringe  and think, "why would you anyone post this?"  And then couple minutes later, I check back again and I'm a little disappointed that there are no new statuses.  I suppose I'm just like the guy who always complains that there's nothing to watch on TV, and flips through the channel for another 4 hours.


My favorite statuses are pictures, because no matter how bad they are, I can still appreciate them.  Unfortunately (?), I can't say the same for inanity.

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yes, the above comment was on fb as well as my blog as well.  I obviously did this because I liked what I had written, and I wanted to keep it as a record (because fb is lousy for keeping records).  But without doubt, I will hate the above paragraph next week, embarrassed that what I consider to be "good work" is... well, THAT. 

The best test for your work is time.  I hate everything that I've created at one point or another, from letters to photographs to music.  Sadly but necessarily, most of my creations stay that way, but there are few gems where I say, "hey, may be this isn't that bad after all." 

Shit is a necessary component of creative process.

Winter reading list

That is right.  Korean schools have longer winter vacation (winter + spring vacation, because they are together - total of 2 months) than summer vacation, so it makes more sense to make a winter reading list instead of summer list.  Here it is:

Naked Economics, Charles Wheelan:  This book is pretty much what you think.  The author explains economics, also known as the dismal science, in a witty and entertaining way.  You'll be surprised how insightful economics can be.  I suggest that you read Freakonomics before you read this though.  Freakonomics is an economist's take on seemingly banal and unrelated issues (what does sumo wrestlers and teachers have in common?  How influential are over zealous parents?), while Naked economics explains what economics is all about.

Moneyball, Michael Lewis:  The true story about the great Billie Beene of course.  (Also a major motion picture).

Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick:  Demick follows lives of 6 North Koreans for 15 years, and their realization that their country has betrayed them. 

False Economy, Alan Beattie:  I'm really interested in economics these days, can you tell?  But what I'm interested in is behavior economics, which is somewhat like a mixture between psychology and economics.

국가란 무엇인가?  유시민 (What is a government?): A book about the role of a government.

Playing our game; why China's rise doesn't threaten the west, Edward Steinfeld (in Korean):  Another economic book, but on China.

In the Jaws of the Dragon; America's fate in the coming era of Chinese hegemony, Fingleton (in Korean):  This book directly contradicts the book above. 

The Shack, WM. Paul Young:  Do I need to explain?  Here's an excerpt:  "In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question:  Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" 

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde. 

Norwegian Wood, Haruki: 

That's about it.  Feel free to make any recommendations!

An average person's day consists of work, house labor, and hobby (may be what I really mean is leisure instead of hobby).  Yes, the lion's share of our conscious time is spent doing these three things above, and then we die. 

But that depends on how you define hobby.  Well, how do you define hobby?  The authors of Freakonomics define it as "something you do without being told to do [outside of work]."  I have a slight problem with this definition, because no one tells me to brush my teeth but I wouldn't call it a hobby (may be house labor).  I guess you can refine it by saying, "something that you do for fun, relaxation, amusement or achievement, though you are not being told to."  By this definition, it's pretty much everything else besides sleep, work, and house labor. 

So what is your hobby?  Unfortunately, mine is facebook and cyworld.  Yes, facebook and cyworld.  It's grim and pathetic, but it's true.  Friends, that is how I spend most of my leisure time, on facebook, nate.com (another name for cyworld), and skype.  There is a good reason why I haven't had any magnificent accomplishments lately.

If you haven't noticed already, my blog clearly lacks a theme.  One day I'm writing love letters, and suddenly I'm writing about porn and rape (not finished yet).  I started this thing as a photo blog, but it morphed into a hodgepodge of just about everything in my life, from a diary to viral video postings.  May be my blog will be better if I had a theme.  Then again, may be not. 

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I'm gonna start off with a question.  No, it's not a complicated philosophical one.  It's related to clothing.  Yes, clothing.  Isn't that weird, coming from me?  I wouldn't categorize myself as a fashion terrorist, but you can call me a fashion minimalist (I hope this phrase doesn't already have a designated definition).  This means, I try to get by with minimum amount of clothing possible, and I don't care about trends.  May be I am a fashion terrorist after all.

Anyways, I will be going to Mongolia this late January/ early February, and it just happens to be the coldest time of the year.  If you didn't know already, the temperature in Ulan Bataar is roughly about -20C ~ -40C.  That's about -13F to -40F.  When the temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit is equal, it means it's pretty damn cold.

The Hungarian goose down jacket that I'm looking into is about 690,000 won, or 600~700 dollars, depending on the exchange rate. 

The other jacket that I'm looking into, is 450,000 thousand won.




On a side note, the model for this brand, NEPA, is none other than nick khun (kun?)  I really couldn't care less, but some of my readers know him personally, and might be interested in such things.

Now that I've successfully and foolishly diverted the attention to some Korean pop star, I simply don't know what to buy.  The red one undoubtedly looks better, but I think my hiking boots will match well with the brown jacket. 

I have a hunch that most people stopped caring at this point, and is looking at the 2pm picture.  But anyways, My choices are: 1. red jacket, 2. brown jacket, 3. Something much cheaper but is made out of the same material (about 250,000 won, or 250 bucks), or 4. just wear a lot of layers and screw the jacket.  Any suggestions?

People aren't rational.  They just rationalize.

How would you translate "유채꽃과 문섬의 전경?"  A (panoramic) view of the Moon Island and rape?  Why would you name a flower "rape?"  Perhaps, the word "rape" as in sexual assault was coined after the flower.  But in that case, why is such an offensive act synonymous with a beautiful flower?

sigh, never mind.  I should just be thankful that it doesn't read "유채꽃과 자라돔의 아름다운 전경."  You know, "the beautiful view of rape and damselfish."

p.s.  fyi, the correct way to pronounce "damselfish" is not damn-selfish, but damsel-fish.  But I'm sure enough people will read it as damn-selfish, which is why the last line might be remotely humorous for some.

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This took me about 5 minutes to write and 10 minutes of debating whether I should post it on facebook or not.  I'm so self-conscious about my facebook statuses.  The writing was originally intended for facebook, but I decided that it wasn't worthy since it's not personal, important, or something profoundly interesting that ought to be shared with the world.  Treat your neighbor as you'd like to be treated right?  Why would I post boring statuses when I get annoyed by it?  Once, I confessed to my group of friends that I had blocked another mutual friend of ours and voila!  Just about everyone (4 people I think?) had blocked the same person.  I feel so guilty whenever I block people, but I must do it for my sanity. 

But some people tend to think that everything they say is well received by others, even when no one likes their statuses - consistently.  I applaud their courage.  Just kidding.  I damn their obtuseness and thank the facebook programmers for coming up with "subscribe to only important" option.

I'm watching American Beauty.  In the beginning of the movie, a forty-something year old man masturbates inside a bathroom, confessing that it is the highlight of his day.  I hope that doesn't happen to me.  I have ten years.  fml.  When did I get so old.  I spent at least the half of my twenties droning - staring at a screen to be exact.  I hope I won't say the same thing about the next decade.

p.s.  Grammatically speaking, "fuck my life," is a command, which implies that the subject is you.  Hence, the real sentence reads, "you (the subject) fuck (the verb) my life."  It just doesn't sound the same.

Correlation vs. casuality, divorce rate, and so on

I'm having one of my "tutees" (the opposite of tutor.  Yes, I know that tutee is not a word) read Malcolm Gladwell.  Gladwell writes about interesting subjects and cites some fascinating studies, but his logic is often off, especially when it comes to correlation vs. causality.  I mean, I will probably buy his book again just because it's entertaining, but I'll take his conclusions with a grain of salt. 

For instance, he writes that the reason why Asian cultures tend to emphasize hard work and persistence is because of rice cultivation, since it takes significantly more effort to cultivate rice compared to wheat.  He connects this with higher scores in standardized math tests;  Students from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and China score higher on these tests because they work harder, or so he concludes. 

Now, I'm not arguing that Gladwell is necessarily wrong, but I can't help but to point out that all this is merely a correlation, and he has yet to show reasonable causality.  And to be even more honest, it isn't even a strong correlation.  Rice cultivation began in China and is practiced in many other cultures outside of East Asia.  Thailand, for example, is the number 1 rice exporter in the world and rice has been a major staple for years and years.  But do you ever hear about Thais and their above and beyond work ethic?  I haven't.  What about Filipinos and persistence?  They eat rice too.  Or was Gladwell just talking about short grain rice?

Plus, I can't help but to notice that Korea and Japan were heavily influenced by Sinic (Chinese) culture for thousands of years.  May be it's not rice but Confucianism - there is a strong correlation between East Asian cultures and its connection to Confucianism, isn't there?  May be it's the writing.  Koreans and Japanese all borrowed Chinese Characters and used them for thousands of years, and it takes significantly more effort to learn Chinese Characters compared to Western alphabet.  May be it's the fact that the three countries all used "standardized test" to pick government officials, so they had to memorize and study harder.  May be it's that they are all located near the Pacific Ocean (okay, probably not)...

I'm not completely ruling out the theory, but there are at least thousand other correlations besides rice cultivation between the countries, yet why would you just point to rice and only rice?  And connecting this to the standardized testing has its own problems.  Without doubt, more hours in school and more practice will definitely higher standardized test scores.  But is that the only reason?  Will all standardized test scores be statistically same if all the nations had the same amount of school hours?  Who knows, may be it also has to do with IQ.  Studies have shown, albeit with much controversy, that East Asians (Korean, Japanese, and Chinese) often have slightly higher IQs than other races and cultures.  Or may be it's due to the East Asian teaching methods, where teachers put zero emphasis on factors such as team work and creativity, and do nothing but drills and drills over and over again.  May be such methods are more efficient for standardized testing.  Both IQ and teaching methods have little to do with hard work and persistence, and even less to do with rice cultivation.  Although I can't completely rule out the possibility, I can't single it out as the main cause either.

Now, Steven Levitt shows how to determine causality in his book, Freakonomics.  During the 80's the crime rate was sharply rising and nearly all the experts in the country predicted that crime rates will continue to rise well into the 90's and so on.  But during the late 80's and 90's, the crime rate took an unexpected turn and fell sharply.  The experts scrambled to find the right reason, often citing factors such as tougher gun laws, strong economy, aging of the populations, and so on.  But none of them, not even a single one, cited the most important reason: abortion. 

Levitt argues in Freakonomics that crime rates in America fell during the 90's because of abortion and couple other factors.  Aborted babies tend to come from less fortunate families whose parents do not have the ability to properly care for the baby, and fewer neglected babies lead to less criminals of the future.  So the (unfortunate) conclusion from Levitt is, legalizing abortion lead to the drop in crime during the 90's in America. 

Now the question is, how do you show that this isn't simply a correlation but a causality?  Levitt does this in an ingenious way.  He compares the crime data in the five states where abortion was made legal two years before Roe V. Wade (1973) and needless to say, the five states' crime rate begins to fall exactly two years before every other states.  But that alone, obviously, isn't enough to show causality.  Another way to go about this is by comparing abortion rates among states and their drop in crime.  Even after adjusted for many other factors, such as income levels, number of police, and level of incarceration, states with highest abortion rates experienced greatest dip in crime rates, and vice versa.  There are even more indicators.  A closer look at the data shows that crime rates amongst younger criminals fell drastically during the time period, while the crime rate among the older criminals did not change much.  Even studies from overseas have yielded similar results. 

This, to me at least, is a reasonable evidence.  There is a chance that all this is due to a sheer dumb luck and the true cause of the drop in crime rate is the lining of the stars.  But then again, there is also a chance that I might shag Kiera Knightley tomorrow night, here in Hong-Cheon, South Korea. 



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Cause of Divorce


All this reminds me of my friend in college, and the discussion that she had in her class.  She told me, in a matter-of-a-fact way, that higher income amongst women causes higher divorce rates.  When I asked her why she (or her professor) thought that way, she simply said, "Women in Orange County have higher income than the rest of the State, and they also have higher divorce rate." 

At this point, I just didn't say anything, because I was really annoyed, and I wanted to avoid confrontation.  I will give her credit - women with higher income might be the cause of higher divorce rates - but she obviously failed in providing enough evidences to show causality.  It feels right and seems right, obviously, to say that women with higher income are more independent and therefore are more free to divorce their husbands.  But you will need more than a simple correlation to convince me. 

Couple years ago, there was a period when I went around asking question about sustaining a marriage, in addition to attending church discussions abut marriage.  I guess watching Sharon and Albert get married, along with a few other couples, really sparked my interest.  But to my dismay, so many people just had "feel good" type of answers.  For instance, many people said that the trick to sustaining a marriage was patience.  But I couldn't help to point out that my father is one of the most impatient people that I know, yet my parents weren't divorced.  Plus, I highly doubt that all married people are patient, because I know that they are not.  What about caring?  Well, of course you want to care something about the person you're married to, even if it's just money.  Stating the obvious is like stating nothing and it's often insulting to the listener.  


I guess I got sick of people evaluating marriage in a qualitative way. 

"Yes, what you need in marriage is love, caring, sharing, patience, and respect for each other."

What does that mean?  Nothing, to me at least.  It's like saying, "My fantastic, marvelous car has an engine, with four black tires.  It's in a fabulous condition; overall a spectacular ride with windows."

Well, at least I know that it has tires.  Black tires.
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The "feel-good" type of answers are everywhere:  Why did the stock prices go down today?  because of the rising oil prices... even though there are at least hundred other probablecauses.  Such answers usually involve correlation pampered to look like science and qualitative words.

Yet another self-improvement scheme

This used to be my belief:  It's not that I don't have time, it's just that I can't manage it.  I can't manage my time well because I'm always too damn tired. 

So I made a little list of what I ought to be doing.  Why should I do these things?  I don't know, but I feel compelled to do them, to "improve" myself:

I want to...

   read a book a week (at least 1 hour a day)
   become a better writer (2 hours a day)
   learn Mongolian (2 hours a day)
   study for korean/english test (2 hours, either TOPIK, GRE or TOFEL/TEPs)
   become a better cook (1 hour a day - hey I gotta eat what I make)
   practice music (1 hour a day)
   take pictures/ edit pictures (1 hour a day)
   exercise (1 hour a day)

Total: 11 hours a day.  

Given that I have a full time job and two (sorta) part time jobs, this confirms that I literally don't have the time to do everything that I want.  It's 5 after work, and I go to sleep at 12.  And if you consider one hour of extra work at home (it's usually more) and two hours of skyping a day, this means I have 3~4 hours to myself, without even counting eating and housework.  This is quite depressing.

or is it?  let's see if I can come up with a solution.

My solution:

sleep at 11:30, wake up at 6:30 instead, and exercise for an hour. 
screw music and pictures, do them during the weekend
study Mongolian while skyping.  My girlfriend is Mongolian anyways. (wait, did I say girlfriend?)
I usually have two hours of prep period during school (it's not much.  Korean schools have 0~7 periods, sometimes 8).  Practice writing at school.

So this pretty much solves everything, on paper at least.  Now, I'll have some fried chicken and beer to celebrate the successful creation and solution of the self-improvement list.  All this will start tomorrow, after my nap.  It always starts tomorrow.

I haven't taken many pictures lately.  But for some reason, the motivation is coming back.  May be it's because of the Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford (more on this later).  I dunno, but anyways, I want to take pictures again. 

The problem is, I'm really sick of my current camera & lens, but I really can't afford a new camera right now.  The Nikon D7000 + couple lenses will easily be about $3,500.  I mean, I do have the money, but I don't think I should spend it.  What should I do?

Am I a writer?

Four months ago, my co-worker pointed to an ad indicating a job opening for The Korea Herald, and suggested that I apply as a journalist.  She felt that I had a significant edge since the job required gathering information in Korean and writing in English.

I contemplated about the job.  I honestly felt insecure because I never considered writing as my forte but a hobby in which I had no talent.  Growing up, not only was English my second language but I had to compete against all the Honors/AP students, which squandered my self-esteem.  I learned to dislike writing because I thought I was incompetent and all the teachers seemed to agree.  But in retrospect, it wasn't that I was talentless.  It was just that I started the race a bit later.  8 years later, to be exact, which is a significant disadvantage for a 14 year old starting high school.  What I didn't realize was, if you added my knowledge of Korean into the equation, I wasn't "linguistically" challenged, as I identified myself.  In fact, I would've been above average in my opinion.
 
It wasn't until college that people began to compliment my writing and speech.  I especially enjoyed writing and planning for presentations because it felt so free.  I didn't have to worry about the number of paragraphs and whether each of them had enough CD's and CM's, and all this allowed me to be creative with a purpose.  In addition, the vast amount of reading as a history major significantly improved my English.  I slowly began to enjoy writing, despite still feeling a bit insecure.  In fact, after graduation, I worked as a part time writing tutor at a community college and eventually ended up as an English teacher in Korea.  It seemed as my fear of the English language was resolved.

But the job ad made me wonder quite a bit.  Do I really like writing?  Do I like English?  Enough for it to be a career?

The answer was no.

Even though I thought I had grown to like writing, I realized that I didn't like writing itself.

This should've became apparent when I was working as a translator.  Translating is a job where you try to limit your own opinion and concentrate only on the languages themselves.  Inevitably, there is  always decision making and opinions involved, but they are limited.  What I realized was that I was an artist with a need to express myself.  I thought I liked writing but I realized that writing was merely a medium of expression, just like photography and music - what I love are expressions and the ideas that are in my head - not the medium itself. 

Take for example, John Steinbeck's East of Eden, where he uses beautiful poetry to describe the Salinas Valley.  Without doubt, I appreciate the writing but I am not drawn to the language itself.  Poetic language to me is like a ballet.  I respect the time and effort, I recognize it as an art form, but personally, I have no interest in it whatsoever. 

Then what kind of writing am I interested in?  Writing similar to Orwell's Animal Farm.  The book, hardly 150 pages, spends very little time being descriptive and beautiful.  It is terse, witty, and clever.  The only element of style I'm concerned with is pace and succinctness.  After that, I only care about the content. 

May be you can argue that pace and succinctness is exactly what a reporter needs.  That may be true, but keep in mind that I used to hate assigned writing in high school due to its immense restrictions.  I may succeed as a columnist someday, but never as a reporter.  Their job is incredibly important, but it seems dull writing about facts while showing least amount of opinion possible. I need the freedom to express myself.

So am I a writer?  Hardly.  And it's ironic how I emphasized pace and succinctness yet the entry itself is so slow and verbose.  But despite my ineptitude, I do enjoy expressing myself through writing; it's just that I'm not concerned with pampering it.  I would hate to be in an English class, analyzing every line of a poem.

People say that long distances relationships usually don't work out, but what they fail to mention is that most relationships don't work out.  I mean, what is the definition of "working out?"  Is it marriage?  then the statement about long distance virtually means nothing because according to this definition, most relationships don't work out period.  How many relationships have you had that ended up "working out?"  Yeah, I thought so.  And if you add divorce to the equation, then the percentage of "working out" would be drastically small.  So long distance, short distance, you miniscule chance either way.

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When I was in Mongolia last time, someone asked, "where are you from?"

I said, I don't know.  Was he asking for my birthplace?  Korea.  Was he asking where I grew up?  America.  Was he asking for my current permanent address?  Korea.  Was he asking for my "true" permanent address?  America.  Was he asking for my heritage?  Korea.  Was he asking for my nationality?  America.  Was he asking where my heart truly lies?  Mongolia.  Was he asking me where I just came from?  13th district, Mongolia. 

I'm not criticizing him for asking me the question.  After all, I ask the same question all the time.  But what I realized was, asking where they're eventually registers as a partial (as in biased) information in my brain.  I must admit that I can't help but to ask because it's such a tempting question, but may be I should refrain from it because I'm afraid that their answer will make me biased. 

But besides all the political correctness aside, and that what I'm about to say might bite me later if I want to be a presidential candidate, I don't think it's possible to be completely free of prejudice. 

I mean, how many people do you meet everyday?  At coffee shops, restaurants, etc.  I mean, do you really have time to conduct a psychoanalysis of everyone that you meet every single day?  Of course not.  So we depend on quick clues to form an opinion.  And honestly, I don't think it's possible NOT to form a quick opinion, for I think this instantaneous opinion occurs in your subconscious.  To analyze another human is a natural tendency, a trait passed on from prehistoric times as a defensive mechanism.  Will that person try to steal my food?  Will he be my ally?




So my solution is, ironically, not to care about small prejudices, but be aware of them if they come into my head.  My reaction to a man wearing rags would be to assume that he is poor, but hopefully my awareness will help me treat him the same way as I would with a man in a suit.  I initial reaction to a teenager with gazillion piercings would be that he's a weirdo, but hopefully my awareness will help me treat him the same way as I would with a... well, man in a suit. 


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excuse me for pointlessly rambling.  I sometimes regurgitate whatever is in my head, and refuse to organize it later.

Remind me not to post my first drafts next time.

Food Wishes Recipes

OMG this is so great. 




Not exactly a good idea to watch "Food Wishes Recipes" at 12'o clock.  I was just trying to make crispy french fries (have you ever tried making french fries?  It's really difficult to make them crispy) when I ran into this guy and I just had to watch his onion rings and other videos. 

Anyways, I never understood why so many women had a thing for chefs but I think I get it now, especially after living alone for such a long time.  If I were gay, I would probably be in love with this guy.  Actually, I think I'm in love with him already, just not in a gay way.  Inside out grilled cheese, what a genius.  What a genius.

*"check the ingredient label, you wanna make sure there's no fiber."  haha, I don't know why I get a kick out of that. I guess it just makes sense because if you're eating grilled cheese at 12, you're screwed anyways.  Might as well enjoy the damn thing. 

"I love to watch movies, but I am not interested in the actor or actress`s names or trying to know more about them.  I just enjoy movies themselves."

By golly you are perfect.  I'd give you a hug right now if you weren't so far away.

I still tear up because I want to be with you guys.

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많은 사람들이, 제가 왜 몽골에 가냐고 물어봐요.  거기에 뭐가 있냐고.  그러면 저는 대답해요, 몽골에는 아무것도 없다고.  파리의 낭만, 뉴욕의 웅장함, 서울의 북적거림, 이런거 하나도 없어요.  다른 대도시들과 비교하자면 사막과 같아요.

하지만 어떤 프랑스 사람이 이랬죠, 사막이 특별한 이유는 어딘가 우물을 감추고 있기 때문이라고.  몽골에는 한 아이가 있어요.  당신들에게는 그냥 평범한 몽골인, 즉 3백만의 1이겠죠.  하지만 저에게는 특별해요.  그 아이는 저를 보면 전속력으로 뛰어와서 껴안아주는 지구상의 유일한 사람이에요.  제가 몽골에 가면 언제나 몇시간씩을 투자해서 손으로 만든 선물을 줘요.  그리고 제가 떠날때마다 우는 모습을 보이기 싫어서 입술을 깨물어요.  하지만 저는 알아요, 제가 갈때마다 혼자서 소리없이 운다는 것을. 

아직, 저는 그녀를 이성적으로 보고 있지 않아요.  하지만 한없이 사랑해요.  감사해요.  그리고 미안해요. 

Love letters

"People in America spend countless hours working miserable jobs to buy themselves a nice car, only to talk about how they hate being in that car for 3 hours a day during traffic.


If it were up to me, I'd rather spend the time walking, holding your hand."


"I am a teacher because I simply had the chance to acquire certain knowledge before others, and had the honor of sharing it.  Therefore, being a teacher does not make me smarter or better than others.  This is why I respect my students.  After all, we are all teachers and students, aren't we?"


"I don't need the help of a language to know what a kind and gentle soul you possess."




"May be it's a good thing that I was only here for 3 weeks.  Because it was so short, I cherished every second I spent with you."




"Every time I come to church, the first thing I do is look for you.  But come this Thursday, when I leave for Korea - no matter how hard I look, I will not be able to see you.  No matter how much I want to see you, I will not be able to.  This will bring me great sorrow, and all I will be able to do is to close my eyes and bite my lower lip to ease the pain."




"The day we had dinner and rode the bike, I had so much fun.  The day you found out that I had lied, I was so scared - scared of losing our relationship.  But when I saw you that night, when I saw your face, I was overcome with such joy that I didn't know what else to do but hug you and say, 'I'm sorry.'


Only a person I love can bring out such wide array of emotions in such a short period of time."


and the untold:

"Do I have any regrets?  Yes I do.  I regret not holding your hand harder and longer that day."

"I love how we communicate through hugs.  Words are a source of misunderstandings."

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written and spoken to various people

A letter to Mongolia

Last week I wasn't prepared to share how I really felt about my coming to Mongolia, so I wrote a short letter today.  Before I begin, I would like to thank the pastor for giving me this opportunity.  And I would also like to apologize to him.  I lied and said that I would talk for 5 minutes because I was afraid that he would refuse if I said I would talk for 10.  But it's actually 10.  I'm sorry.


My favorite book is called "the Little Prince," written by a Frenchman with a long name - Antoine de Saint Exepury.  He once said, "if you give your all, you will receive more than what you gave."


I didn't really understand this quote until I came to Mongolia.


You see, I had to sell almost all my possessions to volunteer in Mongolia, and everyone thought I was crazy.  Even an elder questioned my decision and asked why I was going to Mongolia.  I replied I was going to Mongolia because I love Mongolia.  And he asked me again, "why do you love Mongolia?"  After much contemplation, I could not answer his question.  I said, "I don't know," and he looked at me like a fool and replied, "but that doesn't make any sense."  After a long time, I replied:


"Well, why do you love your children?  Is there a reason, or do you just love them?  Why do you love your mother?  Because she cooks for you?  Then would you not love her when she's sick?  You see, we love our moms for who they are, not what they do.  True love is unconditional.  I have no idea why I love Mongolia.  I just know that I do."


So I came to Mongolia, and experienced the most amazing 6 months of my life.  Before I left, many young adults came over to my apartment and we had a small party.  After they left, I held the little gift that small Nandia gave me, thought about my time in Mongolia, and I began to cry.  At that moment, I understood the Frenchman.  I had spent all my money and shared my knowledge with you, and what did I receive in return?  You guys taught me how to live.



You see, even though I had everything in America, my life was always so empty because I wasn't spending enough time with people whom I loved. In Mongolia, it was the opposite:  I didn't have much, but I was spending so much time with people whom I loved.


I may have had 50 inch TVs back at home, but every hour I spent on TV meant that I lost an opportunity to talk to my family and friends.  Every hour I spent on the internet meant that I was missing an opportunity to give someone a hug and share my life.  You see, I don't care about the type of TV I had 5 years ago, but I do remember how Enkhbolgang flooded my bathroom and the Mongolian lady downstairs yelled at us for 30 minutes at 1am.  It's these times that I cherish and remember, not my former possessions. 


Here, I found my purpose in life, which is to love and be loved.  I want to love God and be loved by Him.  I want to love you and be loved by you.  This is why Mongolia is so special to me.  I received so much more than what I gave, and I thank you for it.


Now, I would like to finish reading this letter by telling you things I hate about Mongolia.


Right now, I have a great life in Korea.  My job pays me well, I love working with kids, I have a lot of vacation... But after coming to Mongolia again, my life in Korea doesn't seem as good.


Another thing I hate about Mongolia is the sky.  I have been all over the world but Mongolia has the world's most beautiful sky.  Such beautiful clouds, and so many stars at night in the countryside.  Now when I go back to Korea and America, the sky will never look the same.


Our young adults, I hate you all.  Especially Tom Nandia, you are the worst.  You didn't know how to say a single word in English when I was here for six months, and now that I'm here for only two weeks, you suddenly know how to speak both English and Korean?  It seems like most young adults can speak either English or Korean now.  We could have had even more fun 5 years ago.  I hate you guys.


And Small Nandia, I hate you the most.  Every time I come to church, the first thing I do is look for you.  But come this Thursday, when I leave for Korea - no matter how hard I look, I will not be able to see you.  No matter how much I want to see you, I will not be able to.  This will bring me great sorrow, and all I will be able to do is to close my eyes and bite my lower lip to ease the pain.


Mongolians, I hate you for making me cry.  During the past 10 years, I did not cry once in Korea and America, but I cried all three times I was here.


But I do not regret the time I spent here, for I have the blue sky with me.  After I leave in August, fall will come, then winter.  And when the spring rolls by, and the sky in America is almost as blue as the Mongolian sky, I will be immersed in past memories.  I will close my eyes, and start to run with my arms spread out against the cool spring breeze, reminiscing how children chased after me during the most joyful time in my life.  With a thin smile, I won't be lonely, at least not until I open my eyes and the wind carries my memories away.  After a deep breath, I will silently utter, 'I wish you were here.'


Thank you all, for so many reasons.

I have so many things to say. So many emotions. But I refuse to write with my ipad. Give me a week or two.

As usual, I will post my pictures on the blog before facebook.




Kevin and I went to Sokcho over the weekend. This picture was taken in a bus.  I have no idea where we were.



Taken with Bubman before we left.  May be he was telling me not to take a picture.  Oh well, it's not like I ever listen to him anyways.



Kevin sleeping comfortably. Olympus has horrible focus... I swear I focused on his face!



Toilet for handicapped, toilet for foreigners. 



Finally at sokcho.  The reason why we took the bus for 2 hours was to eat grilled fish.  Do you see the place that says "전문점" on the far left, in white?  That is the place.


Honestly though, the fish was a bit disappointing.  It was much better the first 3 times I tried it.



Fish hell.


The squid soon-dae was absolutely amazing though:




Rest of the pictures are just us fooling around.  Enjoy!

























My friend Matt in the middle, Kevin on the right, and Matt's friend on the left. 

I hate my iPad

It's official.  I hate my ipad.  For the past two weeks, I was completely swooned by its ability to entertain me for hours and hours.  I was able to show videos and pictures to friends, browse through magazines on the subway, listen to music on a bus, play drums with garage band, connect to the internet, facetime/skype with family and friends back home, and play games in between. It was everything I ever dreamed of.

But the big problem was, I didn't like who I was becoming.  I mean, do I have innate geeky tendencies which is why I like to play with gadgets like ipads?  or have I become a geek because I play with gadgets like ipads so often?  I don't know, but I didn't like the idea of becoming a person who stared at a screen for hours on end.  We have one life and to spend 95% of it on eating, shitting, sleeping, working, and watching a screen is truly depressing.

Then what kind of person should you become so that your life isn't depressing?  I don't know.  In honesty, it's all quite depressing at the end, since we're merely a dust speck in the universe.  But I would like to be an important dust speck.  You know, the dust speck that made a difference?  The dust speck who loved and was loved by other dust specks. 

So today when I go back home, I shall not turn on the computer nor open my ipad.  I shall instead play my bass, which is also somewhat useless if you think about it.  But all art is useless unless you're a some sort of dealer or contractor, and there lies the beauty of art - to appreciate something with no ulterior motives but beauty.  When I get bored of doing this, I shall... eat chicken and drink lonely by myself... sigh.

My first post on the ipad

Yes folks, this is my first post written on my ipad. I thought i woiuld write more once i got the ipad, but thats simply not true. In addition, i will not capitalise any of my i's, just because its damn annoyig to do so (and yes, its the wrong its, but adding an apostrophy is also damn annoimng on this thing.)

I have this long elaborate piece about my relationship with writing, but ill write more when im on a keyboard. This just feels to much like text messaging, and its pretty much impossible to have extended intelligent conversation on text messages.

Ps by the way, i got the grren smart cover. Anti-climactic, i know.

Japan Day 3

I woke up at 6:00am to visit Nara, the other former capital of Japan.


bunch of people drawing stuff.

Honestly, I really liked the place.  They have bunch of random deer walking around everywhere.  And you better be careful, because they'll... bite, butt, kick, and knock down... apparently.


Haha, most of the deer that I saw were quite nice.





Afterward, I decided to have lunch back at Osaka:




oh how I miss sushi in Japan.

and some snack:







Tacoyaki. It's very good.

And then I decided to visit Kaiyukan. Supposedly, it's one of the best aquariums in the world. I thought it wasn't much compared to sea world, but I'm not supposed to go there, according to lillian and others who saw the cove (is that the name?). The documentary is on my must see list but I haven't seen it yet.


this is one of the largest ferris wheels in the world.

But even without the ferris wheel, kai-yu-kan is definitely recommended. It is a bit pricey but worth most of the penny.













And then I decided to have dinner here:




This Omu-Rice ladies and gentlemen, is no ordinary omu-rice. I swear they have cocaine in here or something. It was probably the best meal I had in Japan. I never knew something so simple could be so good.

And then I had a snack here:


This is a curry bread. I took a bite to emphasize that it has curry inside.



I actually wanted to have 2 dinners that day, so I did. Here is where I had my second dinner:





And the curry was again excellent. I still do prefer the omu-rice over the curry, but I may be biased because I ate the omu-rice first.

This was pretty much it.  I don't have as many pictures this day because 1. I was at J-House, which took up a lot of time, and 2. I was developing blisters. 

masculinity and the color of ipad smart cover

I was looking at ipads (yes, I'm one of the few people that actually need it - more on this later) and my female co-worker, who happens to be my best friend at the school, peeked at my monitor and said, "you know, I don't really care about the ipad, but I want to buy every single one of those covers, all in different color."

I just laughed, but inside, I was thinking: 'Gosh girls can be so dumb.  Why the hell would you buy identical covers for 40 dollars just because they're in different color?  I guess the phrase 'overlapping functionality' doesn't mean much to you.'  

But it turns out that I was the one that was dumb, because I'm seriously thinking about getting an ipad and I want multiple covers in different colors.  But that is not the only problem.  The problem is that one of those colors happens to be pink.  Yes, I'd like to have a pink smart cover. 


I think pink matches so well with white, and that's really all there is to it.

But honestly, I'm afraid of what other people will think.  I'm almost ashamed to admit this, because I've NEVER been the self-conscious type. 

It would actually be nicer if people mocked, 'are you a girl?' or something along the lines because I could snap back and say, 'you think masculinity is defined by a color?  you're fucking dumb.' But it's the silent, judging stare that makes me uncomfortable.  And after a while, it just might wear me out.

I'll have to contemplate about this a bit longer.  I'm actually compelled to get an opinion of my co-worker (may be I AM turning into a girl), but for now, I'm actually thinking about getting a pink cover just because it would be a challenge.  You know, crushing my insecurities while being a called a... fag.


The other color that I really want.  I actually want green just as much.  I might just be anti climatic and buy green after all this. 

...

I'm more sensitive to color than most of my fellow male friends.  This might be due to photography, or may be I edit my pictures well because I'm color sensitive (correlation vs. casuality).  At any rate, all this is ironic because I still can't match colors when I dress. May be I'm not color sensitive at all.  Or may be I'm only sensitive when it comes to products.

...

Some people think there's no use for an ipad.  Well, I need one.  I mean, I won't die if I don't get it but I need it more than others.  Here are the reasons:

• I do about 6~8 'light' traveling a month.  That means I'm on a bus or a train for about 1~3 hours, 6~8 times a month.  For entertainment purposes, it would really be nice to have a portable device that is not heavy as a laptop.  Smart phone or an ipod touch would suffice, but I don't have one.
• I do 3~4 'heavy' traveling a year.  This is a no brainer. I already went to LA and Japan this year, and ipad would've been nice in both cases.
• Photography:  As most of you know, I'm a photographer.  It really would be nice to review & share my pictures immediately.  It's also nice to be able to share your pictures in a group setting after a photoshoot at Yosemite or something, when we have dinner afterward.  Yes, you can view your photos on the camera's lcd, but it's a different experience.
• Music:  In case you've forgot, I play multiple instruments.  It would be nice to hook up a guitar and record it on garage band once in a while just for fun. 
• Movie editing:  Once I get a better camera, I will be experimenting with movies.
• Presentation:  This is also where an ipad really shines.  I do a lot of presentations.

The only reason why I shouldn't get it is because I'm an internet addict and I need to spend more time away from the screen.  It's a convincing argument.

I rarely post other people's pictures here but...



omg so funny hahahah.

Japan, Day 2

So after sleeping at a dusty, smelly, low-budget capsule called a room, I headed for namba station for lunch.

This crab place is supposedly very famous, a landmark sort of.  I didn't eat there because it seemed too expensive, but I took a mandatory picture.



After that, I found Chibo. Okonomiyaki has been around for decades and decades, but Osaka-style okonomiyaki is the most popular, and Chibo is where it began. They must be doing something right for them to be in business since 1967.



Okonomiyaki is about 1,500 Yen, which is somewhat pricy (15bucks). But I had to try it.



It's basically a Japanese pancake, somewhat similar to Korean 부침개.



This stuff was delicious. It was a little bit of an overkill towards the end, but it was still pretty darn good.



If I had to describe Japanese cuisine in a phrase, it would be 'attention to detail.' They seem to care about the smallest little things, while Koreans just eat whatever, however they want.

After my wonderful meal, I hopped on a train to Kyoto, the former capital of Japan.




The place below is Kiyomizu temple






And because Kyoto is a big tourist city, there are lots of cultural attractions everywhere (i.e. Japanese women wearing their traditional clothing). When one of them took out their digital camera, I had to take a picture of it.













After that, I went to the Kyoto Tower and its vicinity. There's nothing to see there.



I saw couple other temples and stuff afterwards, but honestly, all the temples pretty much look the same after a few. So I decided to skip on temples and Kyoto in quest for good restaurants.  I originally went to Japan to take pictures, but this is when the purpose of my trip changed to eating good food instead.  I hopped on the train back to Osaka Station, and back to Namba.




Osaka Station

What I've always wanted to try was Japanese Ramen, and this place is supposedly the most famous (that's what the book said at least), so I went there.





It was pretty good, but it wasn't phenomenal. The bigger problem was that I was still hungry afterwards. So I decided to try a little sushi.





But to my dismay, this place was mediocre. I later learned that it's a pretty big sushi franchise in Japan. Boo. I walked around a little bit more before going back to the hotel.