This is my $300 headphones:






People ask why pay 300 dollars for headphones.  The correct answer is, because it's worth it.  You never know what you've been missing until you listen to the music with headphones that shows you the details. 

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I really want to buy a new camera.  If I do, I will be spending at least 4,000 ~ 10,000 dollars.  One side of me tells me to follow my passion and just do it, while the other side is telling me to save for the future (for the year 2012, I am trying to save about 2,000 dollars a month).  This is somewhat uncharacteristic of me.  I would usually come up with thousand different ways to get whatever I want, trampling any obstacles that come in the way. 

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I am planning to have the words "memento mori" (remember, you will die) written everywhere, my work, my home, etc. so that I won't squander any more of my living days.

It's so annoying when you think you've just heard the perfect song - you're mesmerized for almost a minute, caught in its sweet magic, and for whatever reason, it's just ruined. 

The first 38 seconds or so, it was so awesome.  I mean, I was just enamored, until the bass beat came in.  Straight quarter notes, killing the groove.  Boo. 

"It is my belief that I spend too much time staring into a screen, whether it's TV, monitor, tablet, phone, etc. Now I don't know about you, but when I'm looking into a screen, I'm usually mindlessly droning most of the time. If I were to die tomorrow, I'd definitely regret having spent my time so meaninglessly.

So starting today, I will attempt to have a "screen-free" life for a month, where I will stay away from all screens with a few exceptions (skype, work related, posting a blog). In short, don't send me any messages on facebook and expect me to get back to you. Call!"

This was my latest facebook status, and it got me thinking.  If droning is a meaningless waste of time, then what is a meaningful way to spend your time?  I'm not sure.  But I know that mindless staring into a screen isn't meaningful, to me at least.  If I had to guess, I'd say 1. Spending time with loved ones, 2. Fulfilling personal goals that will give you a sense of achievement, would have some meaning. 

It occurred to me that I always bitch about the same thing.  I want to lose weight & exercise, I want to learn at least two more languages, I want to refine my command of both English and Korean, I want to spend less time staring at an electronic screen. 

The fact that I've been wishing for all these things for years prove yet again how difficult it is to change behaviors.  However, I shall succeed eventually.  Victory shall be mine. 

Free Tibet

I always thought that people who cried “free Tibet” were annoying overzealous liberal lunatics who watched one too many Brad Pitt movies. I was wrong. Just 105 days after the Korean War, China invaded the de-facto independent nation of Tibet. The international community, pre-occupied with the war in Korea, failed to listen to the cries of then 15 year old Dalai Lama as he pleaded for help. Yes, he is the same Dalai Lama you see on news from time to time, and yes, Tibet is still annexed by China.

Today, 20th Tibetan person set himself on fire in the past year. May be we should listen to what he has, or had, to say. I don’t have anything so significant to say that it requires my drenching of flammable liquid and dying painfully as the flame slowly but fervently consumes my body. Do you?

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I was so angry when I read the news and wrote this.  It's interesting to post this on facebook, and see it slowly drown amid pictures of what people ate and where they were.

My taste in pictures seem to be really different from rest of the crowd nowadays.  Take this for example: 


taken @ the Incheon International Airport, S. Korea.


It's a silhouette of a kid looking at an airplane.  It may not be one of my best works, but I love this picture for so many reasons.  Didn't we all have a fascination of airplanes when we were kids?  Apparently not, or the point wasn't delivered well. 



Let's look at the next picture: 



View of Ulaan Baatar


I guess the view IS spectacular - I mean you don't see this kind of view everyday.  But there is nothing more to the picture.  You don't reminisce about the past (unless you lived in UB, which is not the case for most people), and it really doesn't have much depth, as in beauty is all it's got to show for.  Arguably, beauty itself has a value and we should appreciate it, but my personal opinion is that this picture is no different than a pretty girl who can't converse. 

I wasn't even going to post it on facebook but it turned out to be the most popular.  Strange.



Third picture:



Picture of my good friend, Bubmin, and his wife, before marriage.

Actually it's a picture of my good friend's wife, not him.  But anyways, 

look very carefully.  The girl you're seeing is actually a reflection.  You can tell because you can see the borders of the mirror and you can see her unreflected head.  Her soon to be husband is two reflections away in the picture, which creates the illusion that he's far away though he is standing next to her.

I like this picture because the reflections are unique.  She's talking to her fiance before her marriage, which is fairly common, but it's seldom seen from this perspective.  He looks so far away, but he's really close kinda thing. 

I guess it's true that when you're really into something, your tastes change. 

I kinda want to get the facebook timeline, or whatever its called just because you get to have that in-your-face ginormous profile picture, and I think it looks fantastic.  I'm not really gonna get it; I'm just sayin'.

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Behaviors are hard to change.  In fact, 9 out of 10, you will fail in changing your behavior (I made up this statistic).  Remember that time you tried to quit cigarettes or lose weight?  Yeah, you probably failed.  You may have succeeded, but the chances are that you probably screwed up plenty of times.  If not, well, I'm sure there are plenty of people who failed enough to bring the average down, such as me.  It took me about 30 tries to quit cigarettes. 

I'm not writing this to be pessimistic.  What I'm trying to say is that it will take all of your effort - and I mean all of it, to develop one good habit or get rid of a bad one.  So it's foolish to have 10 new years resolutions and expect all of them to work out simultaneously.  You can write 10 or 20 or however many you want, but if it involves long-term behavior, you better work on it one at a time.  Or two, if you are getting rid of a bad habit and replacing it with a good one. 

First, I'll begin my "no screens" project - no computers, ipads, smart phones, tv, etc., unless it's truly necessary.  We spend too much time droning, staring at a screen and not enough time with our loved ones or something that truly enriches our lives.  And with all the extra time I'll get, I will exercise... hopefully.