Won's Whatever Web

2010-11-10T20:47:00.000+09:00

2010-08-11T15:27:00.001+09:00

To : Intl. @ers wanting to contact AIESEC Korea.

2009-10-22T20:06:00.005+09:00

Hello wonderful @ers :)
Congratulations on stumbling on my blog, whether you did it through a Google search, surfing through the links of blogs of my other blogging @ friends or by some recommendation/reference (although that would've been through email/facebook).

Yes, I know your frustration in not being able to contact AIESEC Korea with ease. I have heard comments about the closet-ness of AIESEC Korea firsthand from all around the world - from an EB member in AIESEC Mumbai to a former Malaysian MCP. Been there, done that!!

I am happy to serve as a gateway to AIESEC Korea, even show you around Korea and host you, provided that you are here physically and I have time on my hands. I am contactable at e-mail/facebook : wonjang@hotmail.com.

Chalo :)

-

2009-06-12T14:37:00.000+09:00

Finding a balance Pt. 1 - LC Coaching

2008-05-02T00:01:00.011+09:00

It's been a long time since I've used the AIESEC tag. Not that I haven't been involved in AIESEC during this time, I just didn't have anything to write about. Besides, I've been on the road (or should I say, air) for the last month; I had internet access almost everyday but I feel comfortable writing in my blog at home - I think all my blog posts so far have been made at home.

In life, we say often that we should find a balance - work and study, AIESEC relationships and non-AIESEC relationships, meat & vegetables, rock & pop. Here, I want to talk about finding balance within my role as LC coach.

Recently I've been classified by unseen forces (aka the PD team and a rigid interpretation of the AIESEC XP, based on "positions", not responsibilities) as an alumnus. When I applied for the AIESEC Symposium in early April I wrote down my role as Alumnus [slash] LC Coach.

Now truth-be-told, I haven't been designated by anyone as LC coach, so to write down a role without it being "conferred" might seem wrong, but I doubt with the level of involvement in my LC these days there will any problem.

In 2007, my level of involvement was quite minimal, especially in the last months of the previous (07/08) term. I deliberately chose to keep it that way and the only real concrete role I had was being an EP interviewer.

Since I had played an inconspicuous role in 2007, I decided to alternate this year by taking a bit more proactive approach. And the current LCP of my LC is more actually more willing to ask for advice and help, so that is an impetus for my constant invovlement.

Even just yesterday, I attended my LC's Wednesday LCM (known as RM [Regular Meeting] in @ Korea), to see how things were going in my LC. Then during dinner (the meeting are after classes at 6PM, dinner is afterwards) I spoke with my LCP about the things he requested me to do during my last month abroad - mainly to do with international co-operation and exchange. Not to mention I'm doing a session about my international conference experience next week.

Now ... to the main point of this post ... If you are coaching a LC, where do you draw the line between being proactive about giving help and advice, and impetuous interevention? Should it be on ask-then-give basis (which is not being proactive at all)or should I be the really nitpicking person who gives his opinion and harasses people with every little single detail? I know I'm giving two extemes, but I've got to choose somewhere along the scale.

As of now, I think I'm maintaining a balance. I'm being proactive about giving advice, but I not everything that goes through my head comes out of my mouth. This is because of two beliefs I have regarding @ - 1. Quite a few of the things we treat with confidence as facts are in fact opinions. 2. @ is a learning organization, so if you have an opinion that is "somewhat" incorrect, it's okay because you can fail and then learn. Failing is something we learn in the organization. And for me, as long as the "somewhat incorrect" thing isn't "very incorrect", it's okay to leave it, so the person who believes in it can discover for themselves. Or it might turn out to be correct altogether and I'll know something new!

Obviously, the LCP and LC's direction isn't one-to-one with what I envision, because that's what @ is all about - diverse approaches stemming from diverse people at different stages of learning and situational context.

The title is a little bit misleading. I have already found my balance. Now all I need to know is whether it is right, to constantly re-evaluate myself to see if I am taking the right approach.

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Sonnet IV

2008-04-26T11:22:00.005+09:00

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,–farewell!–the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

Indiamania?

2008-03-21T23:20:00.005+09:00

I was talking to Nabeel on Google Talk today (I've had an ID for a long time, but only recently have I started using it), and he asked me why I liked India so much. Strangely enough, a lot of people know I like India but never bothered to ask why; while I can't say Nabeel's question was the first time that I thought about this question, since I've reflected on my spare time (which seems to be quite a lot these days), it did give me the motivation to write this post and organize my thoughts a bit.

Firstly, I do admit that I do enjoy the chaos a bit, the unorderly fashion in which the cows, rickshaws, elephants (never seen an actual elephant on Indian streets, but I have photographic proof they exist!), motorcycles go about their daily deeds, creating what could be also called "organized chaos". What I do not enjoy is rickshaw drivers pulling over close to me on the sidewalk by just a mere few inches from hitting me, then cajoling me to get in - "Kya, aap ghar jaanaa chaate hein?" - in which the apt. response must be "You send me to Korea ar??. But it does make me feel like the important tourist cum money spender cum economy contributor I am! Then again, sometimes things get annoying I wish I looked like an Indian or wore a burqah.

The other obvious reason is the magnificent food. I've actually been eating Indian food since quite a young age, but only since APXLDS have my palates been altered to cry out for Indian food at least every now and then. The most delicious thing I have actually eaten is Indian, but it also can't be emulated. It was during the post-APXLDS study tour when we were on the tour bus on the first day, and the CCs gave us out take-out biryani on those tin-foil plastic packs and gave us yoghurt for those of us that found it hot. And given the hungry state I was in and the hot day, the heat-nourishing biryani spice and the yoghurt that slightly consolidated turned into something a bit like cheese bits was absolutely unforgettable. Then of course, there's my perennial love - masala dosa! Whenever I'm hungry and in need of a "hard snack" I think of only one thing - masala dosa! Hmmm .. the perfect crispy dosa and wonderful potato masala ... mouth-watering! I wonder what my fate would've been when we went to the chaat place near Hyd. Central Station and hadn't chosen masala dosa, not having any clue to what it actually was!

I also enjoy that fact that it isn't an completely anarchic state, yet there are ways around laws and "customs" that makes life easier - "street smarts" if you must call it. Knowing that the fixed price tag usually doesn't mean anything and asking for a 50% discount, paying the grandpa to stand in the line for you in the bank for bank related business, the rickshaw driver knowing shortcuts to shorten your travels by 10 minutes, smiling at an unknowing foreigner for paying for ketchup at an McDonalds counter (everybody knows you can get it for free ... ;) ).

Not to forget of course, none of this would mean anything without the nice and wonderful Indians I've met throughout the recent years. Inevitably, it's usually AIESECers, but I can't forget the driver uncle who drove me to Victorius Terminal in Mumbai, who told me he was from Hyderabad, when I was going to Hyderabad and wished a good time, the guy at Charminar who asked me for my number (sorry .. not interested in men!), the guy who did work in linguistics I talked with at the night of arrival at Pragati Resorts (and the nice, pretty Indian girl with him) and other various people I've encountered throughout my time(s) in India.

That being said, I should really go to North India and the deep south now! Sometime. Chalo ;)

Quick Updates

2008-03-05T22:52:00.002+09:00

Hullo, March is around.
I dunno if anybody is checking this blog anymore hah, but here are a few updates anyway.

Was sick for a few days. Symptoms included - Disorientation, dizziness, cold, cough, migranes, indigestion. (Scrapped from my answer to Nabeel's wall). But I am 99.99% recovered. I went to have veg biryani to celebrate!
Major in snow in March depressed me. People in Malaysia and Bangladesh were jealous. I am always open to trading places.
Singapore and Malaysia is increasingly becoming a meeting point!
Lots of important friends got discharged from the military. Congrats!
I took my military entrance exam yesterday. Didn't do too bad, didn't do exceptionally well either. Results out on the 21st. Don't ask anything till then!
Back-to-school season. My sis has started her first year/semester in univ., but to me it just feels like she's gone back to her high school, without the fuss of a uniform.
Had a couple of nice talks and bonding with some girls I simply love. Thanks!
The 80th Academy Awards were so memorable that I downloaded it (illegally via Torrents of course). Watching it everyday.
I've almost seen all of the Best Picture nominated movies. Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men (all the ones I've so far) were all great and worth watching at movie theaters.
Major epiphany - I really like Lost (the TV series) now.
Had a very nice time in Busan in late Feb. Saw my cousin (my fav. cousin too) get married, went to see my maternal grandma (my maternal fam. is my personal inclination) for the first time in four years. The countryside had changed a lot which left me disapointed. I suppose for a brief moment I could relate to what Yasar Kemal writes. I also spent some quality time with Ryu and Ryang-su (ex-LCP and current LCP of Busan), and Hee Kyung (VP ICX of Busan in 0607).

That's about it.
Some of my fondest memories were made in March. I wish you all the same!

My February

2008-02-07T21:24:00.000+09:00

As some people might have realized, I am not in London or anywhere near Europe at this time. My visit to London was forestalled by an unforseen event that I was not very happy with. I was very disappointed at the cancellation of my trip, but nevertheless I have been over it for some, maintaining a normal life without "unecessary" 'If only...' thoughts.

So what have I been doing so far?

1. Applied for military service. Yay................

2. Went on a food fest to spoil myself after the disappointment of London - sashimi, cheese & crackers, potato jackets, mutton (lamb) intestines (Korean delicacy), a little bit of liquor.

3. I have taken up jogging to keep myself fit. I have made it in to a habit and I am glad to report that I am feeling very light and healthy.

4. Got in touch with the world hegemony by watching American dramas and reading Marvel comic books. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite okay, since I didn't expect to much. I've also "tooken up" Lost, as season three is being broadcasted on TV here. I don't understand the full story as a person who's just started watching but I enjoy the acting. I should stop watching soon (perhaps after the end of the season) though, and watch the whole thing when it finishes in 2010. I read X-Men: Messiah Complex through downloads via Torrent. Wasn't too bad, and it felt nice to re-integrate myself into the Marvel continuity after all these years.

5. Felt very elated and excited as friends all across world took up higher positions in AIESEC. All of you are my motivation!! Displayed solidarity by calling Singapore and Malaysia on MC election days. For the few people who still have selection going on - all the best!

6. Planning a two-night trip to the North-Eastern part of South Korea, close to the Eastern Sea with a few friends. Will be visiting a very private pension (only two room for about 6-8 people tops) where the owner brews his own coffee and runs his own cafe (and the people who stay in the pension are the only customers of the whole cafe!). The concept of the trip is to be alone when we want to, then hang out together if our impulses tell us to - just the type of retreat I've wanted to do :). Good time to get a lot of reading done! Will also be going to Busan on the 23rd for my cousin's wedding. Will be seeing a lot of relatives I haven't seen over the years hah.

7. Singapore? Malaysia? Japan? The thing about Japan is .... all the people who I know for sure are going to APXLDS (Rina, Sharon, Siew Yik [?]) are people who I can see in Singapore anyway. Although Tokyo is cool, there's no reason I should be there if my friends aren't going to be there. And all my elect friends seem to be going to EuroXpros and MENAXpros. Let's see.

That's all. Tada and Happy February!

A Re-Review : Tour Express

2008-01-23T22:42:00.000+09:00

Back last year on my blog, I lashed out at Tour Express, one of the major online ticketing sites in Korea. It was user-unfriendly, slow, prone to errors, and apparently more expensive than other sites.

Well I have to admit, I have used Tour Express again, for the first since I booked my tickets to go to Singapore in Dec 2006 (ahhh the memories!). The site has improved a bit than the last time I checked.

For instance, they brought back some features that they had before their stupid, regressive "renewal". The ability to ticket availability on the next day by just clicking a button instead of choosing dates all over again was a nice touch back. It had become more stable than the last time I had used it - less errors, a bit faster in speed. It still would've been useful to see taxes before you actually make reservations though. If Whypaymore can do it, why can't Tour Express?

I visited their offices near Seoul City Hall so that I could ask about a few things about the ticket I was considering buying. I didn't want to talk over the phone as I preferred to talk "complicated" things face-to-face. The lady who was in charge of Europe whom I talked to wasn't egregiously unkind but she wasn't an angel either. The talk was very unproductive and a waste of time :P.

But the talk wasn't to decide to whether I would use TE or not, it was to decide which ticket I was going to buy from TE. TE actually had the cheapest tickets. A shocking moment occurred when I went to the Asiana Airline (my airline of choice ... Viva Sky Alliance!) office just ten minutes away from the TE office. I asked how much tickets were and the (nice) lady said ... "Wait.... we have a special price ticket for this period ..... it'll be 1.5 Million Won with taxes included!" To believe for the few seconds after "special price" I was actually holding my breath!!! The ticket I was going to buy at at TE was only 1.1 Million!! I felt pity for some poor soul who would buy the 1.5 Mil. ticket thinking it was a steal.

I went again the TE office so that I could hand over my passport for photocopying, as my ticket was for passengers 18 to 30 years of age and I needed to give proof that I was actually that old. I hoped that I was not going to get the same lady as the last; I got a very nice, helpful girl (too young to be an "ajumma") whom I wished I had spoken to on my initial visit.

So all in all, Tour Express isn't as bad as I originally thought, that or the service is improving a bit. And my destination is London from Feb. 2nd - Feb 17th. Anybody who is in London at that time should feel free to contact me :).

International Dating, International Marriages ... and such

2008-01-11T13:17:00.000+09:00

Last month (or last year!) on the 27th, some old friends got together for the first time in six years - Andrew - a Korean-Canadian-American who is currently attending Waterloo University (Canada's MIT, as he stresses) in Waterloo, ON, Julia - a Korean-Southern U.S.A.er making her way in U. of Alabama, and me, Won - a Korean-Nothing living in the most mundane of all cities and countries.

It was nice to get together and talk about various things - the high school we once went to together (not exactly together because Andrew attended for one term, Jules for two years and I went the whole nine yards and graduated from the horrible place), the people we once knew but didn't or couldn't keep in touch with, U.S. vs Canada, internships and careers and so on.

One subject matter we got to is the problems of relationships. Having lived in multicultural environments for a significant amount of time of ours lives (me having lived the least unfortunately; but also having had the opportunity to actually visit more countries than the other two :P) and having the benefit of using the big-daddy lingua franca of the world, English, quite adeptly, we have the "freedom of choice" of developing intimate relationships with other nationalities and ethnicities.

Andrew was currently in a relationship with a Portuguese-Canadian (Canadian of Portuguese background). He'd been in relationships with people of various backgrounds - a Hong Kong Chinese, a Korean-Canadian and a few more, I think. His parents were pretty much okay with the international relationships as long as the person he was dating was a Christian (typical Korean Christian family); I dunno the exact reason but his parents were against his former Korean-Canadian a few years back. So his parents criterion was apparently religion and, I would suppose, the basic decency you would expect in a human being.

Julia's parents were more conservative. Simply put - no foreigners for marriage. So that restricted her dating circles since there are not a lot of Koreans in the Deep South and her clique consists of hillbilles, dixies, and confederates (hah). Inferring from what Julia said, her parents are quite aghast by the international/interracial dating phenomenon.

Her current boyfriend was one of those rare Deep South Korean-Americans - frat boy, jock, partyer, quite affluent family background etc etc. We (Andrew and I) had the pleasure of meeting him after our lunch together. Toot toot!

And as for me and my parents? As I told the guys ... my mom is borderline racist. She said that when it came to international relationships and marriages, she would be okay with white people, but would have "a hard time accepting" other skin tones and colors. And this is coming from a woman who is probably one of the most international of her generation. Imagine what my more conservative extended family would say if I was marrying someone out of their daily color palettes.

My perspective on international relationships and marriages? If I choose to forge a relationship it will probably be with accepted other cultures as dearly as their own, or at least a foreigner who intends to. Thus the order of probability from highest would be .... a Korean-Something -> a foreigner -> a multicultural Korean. I would never ever consider anyone who is not "into" foreign cultures (this is not the same as "I would not consider a racist or cultural exclusivist" .. isn't that given in this era of globalization and multiculturalism?).

All of this is hypothetical though ... who knows ... maybe the lady of my life will be a person who doesn't know how to draw the Sunni Triangle on a map of Iraq ;)

Dee was in town!

2007-12-14T00:59:00.000+09:00

(Reminds you of a blog post title two months back that I saw somewhere ... hmmm)

YAAAAAYYYYYY (*obligatory cheer*)

When Diana told me she might be coming to Korea occasionally because SIA flies directly to Seoul (Bless you SIA!), I bet neither me nor Dee (rhymes!) expected she'd be in town in such a short time.

Anyway, she was, and I'm glad she came! Felt like such a long time since I first knew she was coming.

On the morning of the 9th, I set out of my house to Seoul Station, which is just an hour's bus ride. I thought I wouldn't need lunch because I wanted to go have lunch with the girls (Dee brought along, quote Eddie - "a nice lady friend"), but I succumbed to my inner workings and got myself two Fish-O-Fillets (Fish-O-Fillets have been my favorite McDonald's burgers since I was ten - now when I eat FOF I eat two ... as a snack lol) at Seoul Station. I was surprised to find out they were in the midst of this event where if you didn't get your burger in one minute, they'll give you french fries for free! They weren't doing this the week before when I went to the same McDonald's with Patrick and a few other @ers. As everybody knows, no sane McDonalds makes FOFs in advance, so they just said they'd give me french fries straight away (only one for one order though).

After my FOF snack, I went to the Concordia Galleria - just a mid-sized shopping mall adjoined to Seoul Station, where I went to the bookstore (quite a nice one!) and sat down with some magazines to pass my time by. It wasn't too long before I got a phone call from a perky number, which I assumed immediately was Dee. Yep, it was! I suggested that the girls stay behind and not go on a shuttle bus as I would show them around. Will be there in jiffy!

It took me less time then I expected from the Galleria to the Hilton, and the girls were having Korean BBQ (whatever that is!) in the restaurant across the Hilton so I waited for some time, singing to myself Trisha Yearwood - How Do I Live (from the Con Air OST).

Time passed, which felt somewhat awfully long (weird expression) and then there came Dee and her nice friend Heny :D. I was a bit hesitant about whether we should take a taxi, free shuttle, or just walk, since it would be cold for them and I didn't know how they would feel about walking, although it isn't that far to the first destination we had in mind - Myungdong.

But we just started walking, and I showed them that Namdaemoon (which is both the name of a district and a gate, as it literally translates to South Gate) was in sight so we decided to march on. We started taking pictures, or rather Heny and Dee started taking pictures and I started barging in and messing up photos of two beautiful ladies; they invited to me to do so, so I'm innocent! I could tell Heny was a very nice girl from the start, asking me to take pictures with her and being reactive about the things I was saying and pointing out :)

At Namdaemoon, we did catch the costumed traditional guards; Dee and Heny thought it was scary and disrespectful for them to take pictures with the stiff-as-steel guards, but I'm damn sure I saw tourists just before us taking pictures. Don't tell me you regret not taking them!

We just walked Namdaemoon Market without passing through because they don't really sell anything of interest to young female tourists - bits and pieces of junk, christmas decorations, secondhand, cameras, cameras, more cameras, cheap memorabilia, hawkers food. We moved on to Myungdong - but Kosney's was closed (forever)! Kick-ass place for girls, and even an undecorated person like moi would like to see what kind of stuff they had. Real mystery as to why closed because it was popular - guess we'll have to take you to other stores around Seoul the next time. I don't really like Myungdong and the only reason I wanted to visit was because of Kosney's but the girls wanted to check out the cosmetics store. I hadn't been into a cosmetics store since last October (I still remember because I went with Ceek and the LCP of Seoul Women's Univ. to Etude House in Kangnam Station :P!!), so it was rather refreshing (or redressing?!).

The two places we went into were the Inisfree and Etude House, and Heny told me that there weren't many of these cosmetic houses in Singapore yet - which was a bit of a surprise because people think shopping in Singapore and HK is 7334 times better than Seoul (which is mostly true). As a lot of Korean shops do, they gave us lots of freebies (I think one of the few things Korea can really claim top spot in the world is the freebies they give out). People were asking me if they were Japanese, Chinese ... blah blah. And the guy in the Etude House who showed Heny around tried to hit on them by saying that the two girls were pretty, but I don't think he spoke good enough English to get a phone number or something (or to strike up a conversation once he called!). Too bad :P.

We got out of the Etude House, took a few pictures outside the dolled-up shop, got attacked by an aggressive panda, watched ABC Mart people trying to sell shoes, went through the streets of Myungdong, on our way to Insadong! Dee stopped by to get herself cat ear-rings (the street seller told Dee that she had seductive eyes) and a handmade notebook at the stall which I've seen hundreds of times at the same place - always there selling his notebooks haha.

We entered Insadong, which is a tradition Korean street famous for it's traditional shops, tea cafes, restraunts, drinking places, art galleries and of course, tourists. We were lucky to catch a performance by at the open podium where this man showed us his skill of making beats with his hand and feet strapped to a big drum and symbols! :) We took many pictures here, including the only Starbucks in Korea that has a Korean signboard, the Buddhist temple food shop made famous by the NY Times and the famous Ssamziegil a nice building which is a like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, in which you walk up a building with many shops and cafes on the way up. Another discovery - Anna Sui is "somewhat rare" in Singapore because there aren't any AS boutiques or exclusive shops, and AS here is cheaper with a discount!

I took them to the next obvious course ... to a traditional cafe! The place's name was very poetic - dalsae neun dal man eun saenggak handa - which translates to "The moonbird only thinks of the moon". It's most famously known in Korea as the title of a poem book of a very famous poet in Korea, Ryu Shi Hwa, whom I happen not to like (I'm not alone though) but is actually the title of a Indian poet named Kabir ... the verse goes like ..

The moon-bird's head is filled with nothing but
thoughts of the moon
and when the next rain will come is all
the rain-bird thinks of.
Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

Splendid :)

The cafe itself was really cosy and nice. I'm glad the girls liked it. I like it too and I shall be visiting it when I am in Insadong. We had Omija tea (Heny), Soojung tea (Dee- who said it was like Indonesian medicine, but nevertheless drank it all when I said it was good for our skin and anti-aging!), and Daechu tea for me! Rice cakes and snacks are free in this cafe, and the warmth, smell, and antique atmosphere was very nice :)

We exposed ourselves to the blithering cold (or rather, the girls did because I thought the weather was quite good that day :P), and made our way to shopping haven in Seoul - Dongdaemoon! The prices are more or less the best in Seoul and Korea, but they a bit out of the budget for the girls ... maybe next time! But they did manage to pick up some stuff, and salvaged the time we spend, so all was good :)

Next ... Gwanghwamoon! I called all the people that were in Seoul at the moment (Patrick [who was with Eddie], Jandee, John, Andrew) to see if they could join us ... Took around 30 mins to sort everything out. Jandee had exams, John was in Daehakro doing something, Patrick/Eddie was in Apgujung but was coming on a taxi to see Dee for a short time before going for an alumni meeting, Andrew - being the out-of-school guy like me was coming to have dinner with us. I couldn't find the North Korean food place that I wanted to take them too - should've checked the location earlier ... so we went to another Korean food place I knew - the famous Sum-mael Milbadjib meaning "Wheatfield house on the island village"; the name won the "Most Beautiful Pure Korean name shop", awarded by the Korean Language Association. The food is quite nice as well, for a reasonable price - we had bossam meat (pork), mandu (dumplings) and kalguksu (noodles). One small mistake I made was that I forgot these were Indonesians! Heny put pepper on the mandu because it was bland , and both the girls put pepper in the kalguksu, which was a bit ironic because the restaurant is famous for it's "clean and neat taste" of kalguksu haha.

Eddie and Patrick came by and caused a ruckus and some more, but it was nice to see some "old" friends reunite. Eddie fancied Heny but didn't have time to stick around (boohoo). Andrew came in time to see them, effectively reuniting Andrew and Eddie (who hadn't seen each other since Eddie arrived). Andrew stayed around for dinner, while Eddie and Patrick took off. We went to the luminarie near the City Hall to take some more pictures haha. It was my first time there this year and it was nice, especially to have nice people to take pictures with as well. Very glam and christmasy.

We went back to Myundong on a taxi to get Dee and Heny breakfast - Krispy Kreme! Thank goodness for KK which closes at 11PM or 12AM. Lots of people even at a late time. Heny wanted to go to Mister Donut as well, but once we arrived they were closed ... boooo.....

We took a taxi back to the Millennium Hilton Hotel, and took some final pictures. It was the sad time to say goodbye yah.. Oh and the girls bought Krispy Kremes for me :D :D I actually thought one pack was for the each of you and I was just holding it so I could give it back to you guys. But thanks muchie ... still savoring them! Bye bye hugs then off me and Andrew went....

Thanks for being in town girls! :)

The Sickening Nationalism and Self-Exaltation and of Korean Cuisine

2007-12-04T13:43:00.000+09:00

Okay, so everybody from Michael Jordon to Michael Jackson thinks bibimbap is cool. Fedor Emelianenko thinks soju is nice to drink and finds dog meat interesting. Korean cuisine is "going global" apparently, which is a funny thing to say because all cuisines are global, i.e. no cuisine is nationally exclusive.

Recently, with the help of Prof. Alec Gordon, I've had the chance to flick through the the monthly magazine of Korean Agriculture & Food - "Agra Food", published by the Korean Agro-Fisheries Trade Corp. and endorsed by the Government. The magazine is written and published in English and Prof. Gordon is "English Editor" and writes a monthly column called "Food Culture Notes", where he articulates his views about Korean food and food culture.

To be quite honest, there is nothing special about the magazine, save one point. It is a perfect example of the food nationalism of Korea which is a essential rock on the plateau of ardent Korean nationalism, along with linguistic superiority, racism, and historical embellishment.

Before I go on, I have to say that I am opposed to nationalism in general, not because I subscribe to the bourgeois globalist agenda that is the "bobos" and "ubiquity" and "world citizen". It just makes me want to turn my guts inside out when people gloat about certain concepts and beliefs that are baseless, irrational, unscientific and anything from borderline to outright racist.

Let's start from the most flagrant example I've found while reading the four issues that I acquired through Prof. Gordon.

In the Sept. 2007 edition, they have an interview with a certain Sansworn Patsorn, who is a graduate student at the Graduate School of International Area Studies (GSIAS) in HUFS, my university. Sanworn has been interested in Korea for quite some times, having chosen Korean Studies as his major at the Bangkok-based Silpakorn University. He relates to us a story in he experienced in Thailand, while working for a Korean restaurant . He suggested to the owner(assumed to be a Korean national, but unspecified) that the restaurant should lower the prices so that more people could enjoy Korean food, rather than selling at the high prices now where only a few rich Thais can enjoy. I quote directly from the magazine -"The owner didn't accept my suggestion since she thinks Korean food should be regarded as one of the most exquisite national foods. Moreover the ingredients are expensive to get. I could understand her position but it is obvious that, to gain more popularity, it is better to diversify the customer base."

Now we see through the rhetoric of Koreans and discover the dark secrets in their nationalistic minds. Koreans not only want their food to be "accepted" but they want their food to be "regarded highly", in not only in a culinary sense but in an aesthetic, cultural sense as well. Koreans want to invoke the feelings of exquisiteness and high-endedness when people dine at Korean restaurants. The anecdote above begs the question, if the owner had access to cheaper yet adequate ingredients, would the owner consciously choose to lower prices, having such an elitist concept of Korean food? Personally, I would say no.

So what is wrong with being proud of the food of your country? Nothing, and I am proud of certain things about it. But all foods have their special and unique qualities, who is to say which is low and which is high? Koreans and the Korean media (including Agra Food) are quick to point out that korean food is healthy, in particular Kimchi, but how conscious are they about other foreign foods? Quite a lot of Korean people look at Indian food as exotic and heavy in spices that is a dislikable and pungent type of spicey and hot, different from "Korean spicey and hot", but how many of these people know that the spices that Indians use in their food actually lower body temperatures making them adoptable to their hot Southeast Asian climate? So if the response of a Korean to an European who says Kimchi is smelly and oniony is "Oh, but it's healthy :P" (and hence, saving the national pride from ridicule), then I should have the right to respond similarily to Korean to people who think Indian curry is strange, yes?

Now back to the anecdote of our Korea-loving Thai guy. I believe a good critic should be able to look at not only what is being said, but what isn't. Not that I think I am a good critic in any sense.
Now in Agra Food, we see a regular pattern that doesn't emerge in this interview with Sanworn. In every article that suggests that Korean food is special, unique there is a suggestive solution in the simplest sense, which goes something like "Koreans and Korean Govt. must to everything in their power to promote Korean cuisine and to make it more global".

But if you read the Agra Food article I have been writing about there is nothing like this after the quote. The paragraph ends with the quote and a new paragraph about the diversity of Thai food begins. This implies two things - a) the cost of Korean food in Thailand and the highbrowned mindset of the owner (owners?) is not a problem and therefore doesn't require a suggestive solution and b) a suggestive solution is only needed in the ones that are beneficial to the promotion and pride of Korean cuisine.

I can relate two personal stories concerning food nationalism. One is a remote memory- I think, of a talk I overheard somewhere. There were two Koreans and one said to the other "Korean food is very popular in Hong Kong" and the other said "Oh, then Korean food is treated a luxury dish?!" and the other responded "Not really luxurious ... it is common among the middle class" and the mistaken one responded in a slightly disappointed tone. The one responding was obviously disappointed that Hong Kong-ers didn't regard Korean food as highly as Koreans think of French and Italian food.

The other is one of a recent incident, quite clear in my mind. I was in a taxi with Patrick (President of AIESEC in Korea), and Vaibhav (President of AIESEC Ahmedabad, India) in Seoul. The taxi driver spoke quite a bit of English and told us (in Korean) that he had lived in Australia for sometime. He told me and Patrick about the semi-justified stereotypes he had acquired of "Westerners" and immigrants in Australia. Upon hearing that Vaibhav was Indian, and he told us of the time that when he was invited to have dinner with an Indian family at their house. He told us of the strange slightly uncooked rice (presumably basmati or patna rice) on a leaf that they used in a slightly disdainful tone, coming to the conclusion that Korean rice was the best.

Now I've heard this "Korean rice is the best" comment several times, from several people. When Koreans are referring to the "best rice" they mean white, steamy, moist, glossy and sticky. But Koreans just having excessive affinity to native rice, just don't like to admit that there are different types of rice that are appropriate for different types of dishes and cuisines. (Now I sound like a cultural relativist.) I'd hate to experience what biryani would taste like if it was made with Korean rice.

Agra Food, in my opinion is a magazine that reflects the culinary nationalism of this country, where upon Korean food is used to conquer regional cuisines and taste buds and sustain a self-image of a country where history and tradition is more or less lost. The magazine is a proxy agent that is filled with semi-sensationalist titles and articles such as (quoted verbatim) "Korean Agricultural Products - Poised to Make Inroads into the Global Market", "The Fixed Idea of Coffee with Muffin or Baguette Will Fade Away in Seoul; Instead, Rice Cakes with Coffee Will Be Brought in", and "Time to Move Forward Get Confidence & Go Global".

My suggestion? I think Koreans should let go of their obsession with international recognition, and the covert obsession that recognition means superiority. Koreans should also consider that globalization works in both centrifugal and centripetal circles, meaning that when the "globalizing of Korean cuisine", it should not only be a way of means to sell Korean food to the world, but to also challenge conceptions to what is and what could be Korean cuisine and enrichen the plates and palates of Koreans.

We Go Round, Round, Round.....

2007-11-21T14:56:00.000+09:00

(Police beat protesters in Gwangju, 1980s)

Now as everybody who cares about the state of the world knows, Pakistan has been declared in an Emergency (Plus?) situation by Good 'Ol Mushy (whom, by the way, I've been critical about since 2004, so boo-hoo to the short-sighted and second-guessers.), which kind of reminds of the political situation in the 70s and 80s in (South) Korea, when we too had dictator(s), martial law, house arrests, illegal arrests, protestors and a sizable apathetic population.

Since everybody in from the cornerless corners of the world are declaring their support for the opposition - changing into black ribbons on facebook, signing internet petitions that go to God-knows-where, and protesting at their respective Pakistani embassies (haven't heard that it happened in Korea though) and AIESECers around the world are conscious of the fact mostly because Pakistan has been in the network for a few years now, it makes me wonder if anybody in AIESEC actually cared about us in the 70s and 80s. I mean, Korea's been in the AIESEC network since 1962/1963. Maybe I should've acted smart by asking the implicitly forbidden question of what they and the world were doing in the 70s and 80s to the alumni (our founder was there as well) at the Q&A session at the 45th Anniversary a few weeks back.

Given that the world wasn't as connected to each other as it is now, I don't expect AIESECers in Europe to have been committing suicide in front of Korean embassies as in protest of the Gwangju Massacre, but the situation in Pakistan and the support you see on the internet by AIESECers worldwide makes this Korean guy sitting in front of his computer in the year 2007 in this quasi-psuedo-democratic country wonder about the long gone past.

That being said, I have consciously decided not to bear a virtual black ribbon or sign any internet petitons as I have skepticism for such things, but I wholeheartedly support the struggle for a democractic and peaceful Pakistan.

The Things I Could Have Done.....

2007-11-14T20:54:00.000+09:00

1. Attend a REAL (?) international conference, not an AP one.
2. Fly to India three separate times, visit four cities in 9 months.
3. Visit Kolkata (Calcutta), eat famous Kolkata sweets, go to the Jorasanko Mansion where Tagore was born and read Tagore there.
4. See Nidhi (CCP! CCP!) rock-CCP the conference.
5. Meet Shirley, the Indian MC (Deepti for the fourth time this year?!?) again, and many other unexpected reunions.
6. Use SIA airlines, make Diana proud, and have a stop-over at Singapore on my way back from India so I could drop by for the formal dinner during Singapore NLDS.
7. Attend a conference that I've really, really wanted to attend content-wise.
8. Perhaps drop by Hyderabad again (third time this year).

All of this I COULD have done if I was going to IDC 2007. But unfortunately I can't go now. My last hope, a Yahoo 10th Anniversary drawl where I could've won 3100 USD, has not smiled upon me hahaha.

P.S. If a miracle happens, it needs to happen a week before a possible flight time, cause I need my Indian tourist visa! So please keep that in mind if you decide to bless me, miracle-maker!

It's Gonna Be A Warm Winter

2007-11-12T09:58:00.000+09:00

I've been excited for quite some time now! :D

First, the ribbon is cut with Diana in early Dec.! Although for a day only :( Oh well, hopefully she'll be flying in some other time, since now she's had her (short) training at here. Hope the Korean flight attendents don't have a monopoly over Korea-Singapore lines (but I guess they do :P). Oh well there's always Singapore to Korea!

Second, KJ is coming in late Dec. (why did I keep thinking mid-Dec?), and staying for quite some time; two weeks. She wants to go skiing, which is crowded during the exact time of her stay, but it's all groovy I suppose because she hasn't seen snow at all. Funny how to quite a few South East Asians, Korea represents their experience with snow because all snowphiles in Korea go to Europe haha.

Third, last but not least, PH is coming in early Feb. Her Korean skills (being able to understand coversations at the bus stop was it?) will be put to the test. She'll also be the only person that'll be visiting be vising Busan, unless KJ is interested in going. And she has more friends in Korea than me! Lucky ducky :P.

Things to do
1. Loan cellphones for KJ and PH -> In progress.
2. Save up some money -> In progress
3. Places to go, things to eat -> Almost done
4. Contingency plans for Dee (& her friend?) (1hr, 3hr, 5hr programs depending on feasible areas of her stay) -> In progress
5. Be nice and kind. Don't be evil -> In progress.
6. Coordinate PH's IC06 reunion -> Not entirely challenging or even necessary, but in progress.

Now if only somebody would come visit me in January.... Oh yeah, Heather is coming back in January lol.

See ya!

I AM SO GOING.

2007-11-10T19:06:00.000+09:00

The land of crumpets, bakewell pudding, football (NOT SOCCER), supposedly gentlemen-ly gentlemen, rain, bespoke suits, Oxbridge, Bertrand Russell, roundabouts, "public" schools that aren't public, class animosities, the Tube, pounds and pences, HMQ, imperialists, funny, weird and attractive accents, Gordon Ramsey, Big Ben, David Holland, 10 Downing Street ... and most importantly - many and much beloved ones.

See you next Feb :)

I Have The Right To Practice Halloween, You Don't

2007-10-29T00:02:00.000+09:00

In Korea (and probably everywhere else around the world), we have certain debates about certain things that rise during one certain period of the year and disappear until the same period next year. Issues that come to mind is the Korea Univ.-Yonsei Univ. Inter-Varisity Games, Moon Harvest/Lunar New Year women's fatigue, and how politicians don't really debate during televised debates.

One of the issues that Koreans really don't really realize fits perfectly into the description above is, should Koreans celebrate Halloween or not?

As we all know, Halloween is a western conception that has spread to certain parts of the worlds, mainly due to the colossal soft superpower (and hard too, if I am allowed to mention) that is the U.S. of A, although Halloween's origins are from the area now known as Ireland.

In my young years, I used to celebrate Halloween in Hong Kong. I attended a British school and had variety of Western friends who thought it was apt to celebrate a western tradition in an Asian territory (regardless of who the sovereign was at the time). Although we didn't disfigure pumpkins, we did dress up and go trick-o-treating to each other's houses, where our moms would have sweets (not candies) and chocolates prepared for us. Good 'Ol Times.

Fast-forward to Korea, 2007. Nowadays Halloween isn't an alien concept for most Koreans. You won't catch any skeletons or vampires on Oct. 30th, but you will hear of some fancy party in Ap-gu or Chung-dam held by some pseudo-spiffy Korean party-goer(s). I have no problem with these parties or their participants, except for they seem rather fake and bogus to me.

In the western world, it's quite expected that you will stop trick-o-treating perhaps by the age of 15, when you start to grow and realize that the world isn't costumes and candy. That's when you move on to Halloween parties. But your parties are held and attended because of the fact that you celebrated Halloween in your young days, and that you have nostalgia for those days, yes or no?

Koreans have had nothing to do with Halloween until they found out in their 20s that it was a good chance to get drunk in funny costumes and decorations, and perhaps hook up with a member of the opposite sex who tries hard to be hip and western like you on an annual (and most likely, more often) basis.

Regardless of the tone and provocative title of this post, believe me when I say that I'm not so sensitive about the whole thing of practicing Halloween in Korea. I realize that Halloween isn't Durga Puja or Hari Raya; there isn't any religious "pureness" or significance to defend against desecration and indecency. People who do party at Halloween don't cause any sleepless nights or furious tantrums and preaching at.

So why the blog post? Because there's a question I've always wanted to ask. Koreans have to admit that they are not good at modernizing traditional things, except perhaps for the exception of TV dramas and movies. When you look at the parties held in Korea, there are no such things as Korean parties. There are Pink Parties, Really Wild Parties, Absolut Parties, Playboy Parties .... I have never heard of a Korean party though. I've always wondered how a Korean Night would look like if Korea hosted an IC sometime in the very far future, because there are no "Korean Nights" being done. Just look at the Korean expats partying abroad, ever seen any Korean themes? So instead of worrying about whether it'll be a vampire, medusa, or werewolf this year, why not try doing something with a hanbok?

(If you say, "If you have so many complaints and smart suggestions, why don't you do it?" - sorry but I don't go to parties. I slept at all the parties at Heroes this year. :P)

Long Long Time Ago...

2007-10-26T01:12:00.000+09:00

Here's a MSN conversation a few weeks back

PH: i didnt care abt korea until i met them in IC2006
Me: well same here for singapore and malaysia. double score :P
PH: haha wow you won. it's true though

Look at how many things have changed. I have visited Singapore and Malaysia twice in less than a year and have friends all over and from :).

P.S. I want to write a recollection of my feelings, but this will have to do for now.

Odd things that have happened to me recently

2007-10-03T02:54:00.000+09:00

1. An Indian told me on MSN that my Hindi was good lol. On a barely related note, I wish I could have told the Mumbai rickshaw drivers to shut up when they tried to talk to me in Marathi.

2. This is one that's going to happen, but I will be interviewing my boss (VP ER of my term) as she will be going through the EP selection board, and I am an English interviewer (fifth time! Tara tara!).

3. I think I know more about what events are happening in my LC than some of the supposedly "active" members lol.

4. I have been learning about banking ...... through all the interpretation work I do for my British professor ... who happens to have various accounts and financial schemes with Standard Chartered/Jaeil Bank.

5. I caught the South Kor. - North Kor. Summit Meeting initiation ceremony live ... coincidentally by coincidence like the one back in 2000. I just turned on the TV and there it was.

6. I was interviewed for a government-subsidized/published magazine. And I also mentioned AIESEC for branding lol. But nobody in Korea knows about it .... sshhhh .... (The interview is in English hah). Maybe some government official will pick it up and contact me for some govt. TNs! :D

7. I procured Saudi-Arabian fast-breaking dates, even though I am not a Muslim and do not observe Ramadan. But yum yum anyway :D

8. If Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Stuggle) is illegal to possess or trade in Austria, what happens if I bring one in my bag through customs at the airport?

9. I got a phone call asking me to pick up a 10,000 won coupon (12 USD for you aliens) from a thin-pan-pizza restraunt that I went to one a year back ago. Which is groovy, but a bit weird too. My mama theorizes that they keep all their business cards in a box (I put my @ business card in a "Get A Coupon" drawl bowl) and they take it out one year later when want you to come back and spend money.

And fashion is in class!

2007-09-16T03:19:00.000+09:00

For those of you who know... I have been spending more hours on the last two days than my usual 4-5 hrs span of net surfing. I have been doing "research". I haven't burned Google out this hard since Prof. Florig's International Organizations class. (Korea 101 - Google is not the number one search engine in Korea, unlike most of the world. It's Naver.)

What kind of research? Amusingly, the kind of research that I'd thought I'd never be doing. It wasn't African Women's Literature or the Jammu-Kashmir conflict or hamartia and Aristotle or Singaporean Politics (all subjects that I've researched in the past, for your information). It was FASHION.

Why? Here's some background.

I have a very, very special girl who I unabashedly call sister. I've known her since 2002, so it's five years and counting. Her name is Michelle. I could go on about her for several blog posts, since she's a very unique individual and I've known her quite some time lol. But the point that's needed to make this post is that she's set to be the next biggest haute couture clothes designer like those kids ..... what's their names? Christian...? Coco....? Anyway. In a few years time, if you happen to be walking down Montenapoleone in Italy, Bond Street in London, Madison Avenue in New York or Chungdam Dong in Seoul (I'll take you there if so lol), and you come across this shop that reads "Michelle Q.", take pride in the fact that you know the the founder and head designer through me :)~~.

So just three days ago, she talks to me on MSN, asking me to help her with some research she has to do. She has 50 designers to research about, and not just a simple profile but their previous work, current work, aesthetics, etc etc. So she asks me to do just 10 for her. Of course, being the nice person I am (and also considering that Michelle is the hardest working person I know and wouldn't ask me to do something like this unless she really needed me to), I obliged.

She sent me a list of 10 designers that I would have to live with (or die with) for the next two days. I had never heard of any of these designers. Now I'm an expert on fashion but I know a little bit more than the celeb-status designers of Tom Ford and whatnot. Not that knowing the designers would actually help me though, because the research I was "required" to do was bit more in-depth.

So I scouraged the internet back-to-front, inside-out. I have to say, I have a knack for internet research. I've been in the game since 1995-ish and people are sometimes surprised at the stuff I come up with on the internet.

I finished the research today, on time, thankfully. Not that I had doubts about finishing, because I planned my time very carefully; somebody entrusted me with this and I can't let them (in this case, her) down. In the process, I learned a whole lot about fashion. More than I would've thought would be possible to learn in two days. So let me share with you some stuff I liked out of the 10 designers and plethora of designs/photos I saw.

This is a dress by Proenza Schouler for Target. Proenza Schouler is a collection founded by Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, who met in 1999, while in design school at Parsons. They partnered up for their thesis project, calling it by their mothers’ maiden names, which was, of course, Proenza Schouler. Target is a general merchandiser like Wal-Mart, that has more of an United States presence than an international one, but nonetheless ranked 13th in Top 20 Most Admired Companies by Fortune Magazine

I love the color and the pattern of the dress. Kind of like the dress you would wear in an tropical island on the beach during holidays. The great thing about the whole Proenza Schouler for Target collection is that it's very affordable. The dress above costs $40USD.

Here are some funky shoes by Terry de Havilland. Terry was a shoemaking legend in the 60s and 70s, with famous clients such as David Bowie and Biance Jagger (ex-wife of Rolling Stone Mick Jagger). He largely fell off the radar after his 70s heydays, until 2004 when he relaunched his own Terry de Havilland brand. Now stars such as Sienna Miller, Christina Aguillera, Kate Moss are wearing Terrry's shoes! The one above is worn by British singer Amy Winehouse. I love the funkiness of it. No Manolo Blahnik for me! :P

There were some other stuff I fancied as well, but I'm too lazy to cover it lol. That's all for now!

Recently

2007-09-07T18:20:00.000+09:00

So like what's been up for me?

1. I attended IC 07 ..... virtually of course on IC Live lol. Sorry to the AI IS team, the IS Musketeers and IC CC IS team (a few of whom I know personally) but IC Live was just as disappointing as all the other previous Live sites. Well at least it was better than XPROs Live this year :P. Thank goodness I there in person!

Oh yeah and congratulations on all the award/hosting winners! I'm as excited for you guys as you are :)

2. I bought myself (and my family) a new monitor today! Suddenly our six year old CRT LG monitor malfunctioned (it was quite okay last night) and wouldn't turn on this morning so I just got a new one. The cheapest 17 inch LCD monitor from Samsung I could get hah. It's soooo bright... arghhh.

3. I watched the Roy Hargrove Quintet in the LG Art Center in Yeoksam, Seoul!! Such an awesome performance. I admit the first bit of the performance was standard, post-bop jazz and was quite boring. But when he played "Strasbourg Saint-denis" the whole crowd was bopping there heads and all my friends that went with me said that was the best out of the all performance. I also got a RH Factor CD signed. I don't buy CDs or take autographs, but I just felt like it after seeing such a great performace.

4. My boy Ryan came out of his oh-so-comfy military service, in which he's working as a translator in the Dept. of Defense in Yongsan on some oh-so-secret shit. He's working in the Psychological Warfare and Tactics Department haha. He just decided to tag along with me the night before to Roy Hargrove (he didn't even know who he was), and said that he was really glad he saw the performance. We also watched D-War together, which was/will be possibly the worst movie that I've ever seen. I think it's hard to beat that. When I go to the cinema and pay 7000 won, I pay it to watch a good movie, NOT TO BE PATRIOTIC. D-War is a SF movie made with Korean money, and there's even a "D-War Supporters" activism group. A prominent arts/culture critic here in Korea that I like, Jin Joon Kwon, is point-on when he says "D-War revived the use of deus ex machina that Aristotle killed"

5. Speaking of movies, I've watched quite a lot of new ones these days. To name a few : Stardust, Disturbia, The Simpsons, D-War (ugh). All of them were enjoyable, with the big exception of D-War. Oh yeah, I should mention that we watched it because we were pressed on time and choices.

6. I have taken yet another semester off. I shall be going to the military in Feb 08, at the LATEST. I still go to univ. every now and then, to see people and I am participating in a class on "Literature from the Axis of Evil" by Prof. Alec Gordon, polymath and our AIESEC EP English interviewer lol. I shall be there also for various @ events, such as our LC Learning Event (they've managed to get the President of Incruit, our National Election Day sponsor and a very well-known headhunting firm; very impressive) and EP English interviews, where I will be participating as an interviewer for the fifth time (I think this is an AIESEC Korea record :D).

7. I still have yet to find myself a lucrative job :(

Best And Worst!

2007-08-09T02:00:00.000+09:00

Best and worst out of my '07 Summer Trip.

1.
Best food : My perennial love, masala dosa! Of course I had to go to the place across the main road from Hyderabad Station, where my love for masala dosa started (kind of like a hajj to me ;) ). The chaat place across the road from Churchgate Station, Mumbai is good as well. Looks like all places with good masala dosa are near railway stations hah.

Worst food: Maharaja Burger at McDonalds, City Centre, Hyderabad. I still dunno if it was because of this because I had no problems after eating this during the post tour of APXLDS 07, but I had diarrhea and indigestion for the whole day after eating it :(.

2.
Best bookshop : Oxford, next to KC College, Mumbai University. My hangout place hah. I read 200 pages of Harry Potter - The Deadly Hallows in this nicely air-conditioned bookstore. The cafe is needlessly overpriced though :P. (Tip: Order Ice Fruit Teas and ask for a glass of water [free]. The Ice Fruit Teas are very strongly made and you can keep adding water to prolong your enjoyment of the drink and your stay in the cafe with just one drink!)

Worst bookshop: Crossword, City Centre, Hyderabad. Crossword is always cool (one of main bookstore chains in India), but this Crossword's cafe has waaay overpriced cafe, bad hot chocolate, and there is service fee/tax!!

3.
Best random person I experienced : Very tall, nice french girl whom I met while waiting for Andrew at Hyderabad Station, 40 mins after my arrival. I was just standing at Hyderabad Station waiting when she invited me to sit down next to her because I looked confused (yeah, I do sometimes hah). Turned out to be a very fascinating person, second trip in India and she's been all over the country from major cities to small unknown country villages, is on a 3-5 month (don't actually remember) this time which ends in Sept or Oct. She's only 23 (looks bout 26-8 to me; damn Europeans!) and she's already graduated with a undergraduate degree in law and she's now been accepted into an grad. school in international relations, and she is planning to be an international lawyer in the area of international disputes and litigations! I liked how she saw it necessary to learn international relations because some lawyers have no concept whatsoever of the taking political contexts into the "picture" when they work. She also had a younger broth who was a professional gamer that was quite famous in South Korea apparently! (Unfortunately I hadn't heard of him.) I gave her my AIESEC namecard so to keep in touch; she hasn't mailed me yet, but I hope she will ;).

Worst random person experienced: The blasphemous, obnoxious Sikh guy that sat in front of me on my trip back to Korea from Mumbai to Bangkok. Him and his entourage probably represent the worst of India and Indian people. He was extremely loud, impolite, obnoxious, shouting, joking with in Entourage and laughing out loudly and annoying othe passengers, constantly asking for whiskey. Same with his entrouage, but the Sikh guy was the loudest and most distasteful of them. He was wearing something like a Hawaiian t-shirt for a turban; are Sikhs even allowed to do that? Anyways, the worst came when I was sleeping with my headphones on (partly because of the racket created by the dreadful gang of 10 or more) and suddenly my headphones come off by what felt like a swoosh of a hand and then there was a loud thud right next to me. One guy from the entourage had collapsed and become half-unconcious on the lane because he had too much whiskey, and what's more was puking on the floor. Talk about a rought flight.

4.
Best transportation : The auto rickshaw who got me to Hyderabad station by 8:36PM! It was rainy day and there was a massive hold up in the traffice, and my train was at 8:40PM! (Contrary to the common perception of India and their punctuality, Indian intercity/interstate trains seem to be very punctual about their departure/arrival time. The one I was taking left at exactly 8:41PM. Both trains I took were very punctual in both departure and arrival.) The driver took all the shortcuts he knew, and he even made a very skillful u-turn just in front of the station while managing to divert the eyes of a traffice policeman. Dhanyavaad :D~

Worst transportation: Dutch intercity trains. Not because of the trains themselves, but why do the ticketmasters (or whatever you call them) keep telling me the wrong platform numbers to get on to? Indian ticketmasters were very accurate in telling me where I should go to.

5.
Best surprise: After deciding to randomly call Hui Lin (05-06 MCP Malaysia; intern at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad) from Andrew's cellphone, we found out (or rather I found out, because Andrew knew but wasn't planning to attend) there was an intern's party happening not far from where we were having mutton biryani for dinner. So we went along and I met Hui Lin, who I was actually just intending to e-mail that night.

Worst surprise: The last day in Hyderabad, I only got to meet Kanika for a short time. She told me to come to AIESEC Hyderabad office since she would be there to after a meeting from somewhere else. I thought she had finished all her meetings and all, but she had another meeting in the office and I could only be with her for a short while :(.

6.
Best purchase : The free tram rides I took in the Netherlands . If you don't have a pass, you have to tickets inside the tram. If the tram is bustling with people you don't neccessarily need to buy a ticket! :P

Worst purchase : Paying 10 times as much for a taxi ride on upon my first arrival in Mumbai airport to the intern's flat than I should've. It was actually 180 rupees, but I paid 1200 rupees (the 1200 rupee taxi was much better with air-conditioning and all but I still think I got ripped off). But I didn't really care that much because I knew I was getting ripped off. Like Nikhil said to me, it's an experience.

7.
Best weather : The moment I got out of Hyderabad station from Mumbai, I said to myself: What a wonderful afternoon!

Worst weather: Getting hit by hail in Dutchland. Thanks a lot!

8.
Best dog: The guard dog that guards Gondrej Hill Side Colony, Vikhroli West (the place where the Indian MC house is!). The rare (in Korea, at least), posh European dogs that walk around in the Netherlands.

Worst dog: The random dogs that tried to stalk me at 5AM in Goregaon, Mumbai. Canine craziness. Fuck you stray dogs.

9.
What was both worst about the whole trip: Seeing some people again, and not being able to see people enough!

Whipper-snapper??

2007-07-08T00:02:00.000+09:00

Now sometimes in my brain, words pop up out nowhere (at least nowhere I can remember) and they tend to catch on. I know neither the origin of the assmiliation nor the meaning, but I use it obssessively all the same. The most recent word, was the word "whipper-snapper".

So obviously I asked the godly, omniscient Google (linked for those of you who live under a rock in Lollipop Land). It lead me to Random House's Word of the Day, in which "whipper-snapper" was selected as WotD ..... in April 1998.

" John Hines writes:

A senior friend of mine said today, "These young whippersnappers today just don't have any respect for their elders anymore." Seems I heard my Grandpa saying the same thing to me some 40+ years ago. What does "whippersnapper" mean, and where did it come from?

A whippersnapper is 'an unimportant but offensively presumptuous person, especially a young one'.

A few nineteenth-century examples: "Dost thou think it's nat'ral noo, that having such a proper mun as thou to keep company wi', I'd ever tak' opp wi' such a leetle scanty whipper-snapper as yon?" (Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby); "They think I am very stiff and cool, most of them, and so I am to whippersnappers" (Louisa May Alcott, Little Women); "...had unnaturally been jealous that a young whipper-snapper of a pupil...should become a Parliament man" (Trollope, Phineas Finn).

The word whippersnapper--which, as these citations indicate, is often hyphenated--is first recorded in this sense in the late 1690s; there's an example earlier in the seventeenth century, in a book about criminals, that seems to mean 'a rogue; petty criminal'.

Whippersnapper is probably a blend of the earlier whipster and snipper-snapper, themselves first recorded in the late sixteenth century. Snipper-snapper is now obsolete or dialectal; it is based on snip-snap, a gradational compound having various parts of speech all generally referring to "snappiness," as of conversation. "

I like!!!!

Instant.... Lassi??

2007-07-04T02:39:00.000+09:00

Ahem ahem. I was back from a three day visit to Busan and arrived at Seoul station at around 12:30am. I dropped by the convenience store cause the three hour KTX ride made my throat dry and my body thirsty (damn, I should have stopped the snack trolly for banana milk!). So in I go, I check the milk and dairy products and wait, there's........ lassi??

Now for those of you who don't know (and Allah forbid, because you have missed on something wonderful), lassi is a traditional South Asian beverage, originally from Punjab made by blending yogurt with water, salt, and spices until frothy (definition courtesy of Wikipedia and my laziness). It also comes in sweet flavors such as pineapple, mango, lemon, strawberry and other fruits. To make a side comment, the funny thing is that I did not (get the chance to) taste lassi in Hyderabad where I was for two weeks, and I've only drinken it at Indian restraunts in Seoul hah.

Back to the situation a few hours ago. Maeil, one of the biggest dairy producers in Korea decided that lassi was marketable and distributable in instant drink form and has made it available in two flavors : sweet plain and pineapple. The whole thing aroused my curiosity, and plus I wanted something yoghurty so I tried pineapple.

My thoughts:

1. The price is quite reasonable. It's 1000 won, which is just a bit less than 1USD these days. 1000 won is an acceptable price in Korea for drinking yoghurt, it equals about a bag of potato chips or two canned coffees. I would've expected the lassi to be about 1200 or even 1500 won. Lassi, by the way, is 3000 won in Indian restraunts in Korea.

2. The taste was quite good. They'be put it some herb extracts and it tastes of herbs which could be a potential turn-off but it's not too strong. It's sweet obviously.

3. The packaging doesn't look anything South Asian or Indian. Those of you who are interested, there's a site for the drink : http://lassi.maeil.com/. And the tagline "India Story" is quite corny, and lassi isn't even an exclusively Indian drink, thank you very much. I wonder what Koreans would think if there was a rice cake brand in the U.S.A. and Europe that read "China Story".

4. The funniest thing is that they've put a Tagore poem on the packaging hahaha. I spotted that they had put English words on it and I hoped it wasn't some half-correct, sappy English prose that they decided to put on for the sake of it, knowing that people wouldn't read it anyway.

They've printed My Song, which is a nice and easy-to-understand poem of Tagore's :

This song of mine will wind its music around you,
my child, like the fond arms of love.

The song of mine will touch your forehead
like a kiss of blessing.

When you are alone it will sit by your side and
whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd
it will fence you about with aloofness.

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,
it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.
It will be like the faithful star overhead
when dark night is over your road.

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,
and will carry your sight into the heart of things.
And when my voice is silenced in death,
my song will speak in your living heart.

Thing is once I started to read and find out that it wasn't just some random English wording, I kind of thought it would be Tagore, and I was right!

Conclusively speaking, I will mention this product to every Indian/South Asian I meet. I wonder what they'll think hah. As for me, it's such a typically Korean thing to mass-produce some ethnic product in "this sense", which means bordering on cultural insensitivity and whitewashing the "flava" while adding nothing original. But don't want to be overcritical, save angry. It's a nice drink and people will catch me buying it :)

A Magazine Buying Affair.

2007-06-25T23:52:00.000+09:00

Today I was a situation that I'd never thought I'd find myself in. I was in Kyobo Bookstore (the biggest bookstore chain in Korea), Bundang and I exclaimed "Shit, no TIME magazine!".

Now I haven't bought a TIME magazine for a good five years or more. I hardly browse through it. My love affair with The Economist, International Herald Tribune, occasional TV news (BBC, C-SPAN, CNN) and various current-affairs/leftist (hah!) blogs gives me my fix of my urge to know what's going around the world. TIME magazine is old school for me; reminds me of a time when I thought circulation and "visibility" meant quality.

But then again I do give TIME magazine some credit. They occasionally pick up new trends and upcoming figures before they "blow up" in other media. Their "ability" to get exclusive interviews and catch up with prominent figures who else wouldn't give interviews, although sometimes their questions are corny and superficial.

Anyway, this isn't a post about TIME magazine or my criticisms about it. The thing that made me buy TIME magazine for the first time in 5+ years was a special coverage issue titled "We Are What We Eat". It was a culinaly/gastronomy special around food and cooking culture all around the world, with articles covering everyhere from India to Peru to Japan to Italy. I read two articles at a book cafe I frequently visit and I liked it, so there went 7000won to a cause that I never thought I would agree on again, buying TIME magazine.

Right above the TIME magazine section was the The Economist section. Now, I love The Economist, but I don't buy every single issue nor do I have a subscription. But this week's issue main article was "Martyrs or traitors: The Arab predicament", i.e. about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now everybody how knows me well enough know I'm a sucker for Islam and Middle East related issues. I wrote in this blog before that I'm known among my friends as "the guy who knows about Islam."

Everytime the The Economist has a interesting article (usually meaning its cover or main article) on the Middle East or the rest of the Muslims world (which is Pakistan, Afghanistan; strangely my interest hasn't extended to Northeast Asian Muslim countries or East/Central European Muslim countries/people) I have a irresistable urge to buy the issue, and I usually end up doing so. I don't exactly have a Ph.D on Middle East or Islamic studies, but I know enough to know that the The Economist's coverage on the Middle East and Islam is quite good and that they do quite original reporting (which applies to most areas the magazine covers).

Point is, I ended buying both magazines :) No more boring subway rides for me for the week!

Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna by Bismil Azimabadi

2007-06-21T08:38:00.000+09:00

The desire for struggle is in our hearts
We shall now see what strength there is in the boughs of the enemy

Why do you remain silent thus?
Whoever I see, is gathered quiet so...
O martyr of country, of nation, I submit myself to thee
For yet even the enemy speaks of thy courage
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

When the time comes, we shall show thee, O heaven
For why should we tell thee now, what lurks in our hearts?
We have been dragged to service, by the hope of blood, of vengeance
Yea, by our love for nation divine, we go to the streets of the enemy
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Armed does the enemy sit, ready to open fire
Ready too are we, our bosoms thrust out to him
With blood we shall play Holi, if our nation need us
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...
No sword can sever hands that have the heat of battle within,
No threat can bow heads that have risen so...
Yea, for in our insides has risen a flame,
and the desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Set we out from our homes, our heads shrouded with cloth,
Taking our lives in our hands, do we march so...
In our assembly of death, life is now but a guest
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...
Stands the enemy in the gallows thus, asking,
Does anyone wish to bear testimony?...
With a host of storms in our heart, and with revolution in our breath,
We shall knock the enemy cold, and no one shall stop us...

What is that body that does not have hot blood in it,
How can a person conquer a Typhoon while sitting in a boat near the shore.
The desire for struggle is in our hearts,
We shall now see what strength there is in the boughs of the enemy.

I'll Never Return by Meena Keshwar Kamal

2007-06-17T22:53:00.000+09:00

I'm the woman who has awoken

I've arisen and become a tempest through the ashes of my burnt children

I've arisen from the rivulets of my brother's blood

My nation's wrath has empowered me

My ruined and burnt villages fill me with hatred against the enemy

Oh compatriot, no longer regard me weak and incapable,

My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women

My fists are clenched with fists of thousands compatriots

To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery.

I'm the woman who has awoken, I've found my path and will never return.

Gotta Love These People

2007-06-17T02:20:00.000+09:00

One month back I went to a house visit to Kyung-hwa (04-05 ER Director)'s new house nearby the school. Four generations of AIESEC HUFS under one roof + cheap wine + wild berry booze + cold pizzza & fried chicken + ice cream that I brought for the gathering = lots of laughs, stupid truth or dare games, getting to know the oldies and their stories (my side of course), and lots of LOVE.

Find me in the photos hah.

06/07 EB Outing at Yeoido

2007-05-06T14:27:00.000+09:00

Now, Phoebe once asked me why I don't write about my LC. The reason is because we don't meet that often after our term finished in January, at least not officially. The only official gatherings of my EB term seems to be when somebody leaves and we hold him or her a farewell party. And to believe we saw each other practically everyday for a whole year. Yesterday was our Human Resources Director, Ryan's farewell outing. He goes to military service on th 7th, so naturally there was a SMS telling my EB team to be there or be square.

So we met at near Yeoido Park, near the Han River, which runs right through the middle the of Seoul. Yeoido Park and the Han River banks are famous for picnics and outings and outdoors sports; it was Children's Day and there was flood of kiddies pedaling their asses off and consuming fatty ice-creams to relieve themselves from spring global warming that George Bush is reponsible for.

Of course being nice, time-abiding AIESECers, the whole group got together an hour later than planned. We spent our time by the Han River flying kites, riding bicycles, swishing through on inline skates, taking photos and all that outing crap. Typical stuff.

We went out to grab some chow at Gwanghwamoon where Ryan had bought us tickets for Jazz In the City, a daily jazz performance series that is subsidized by Korea Telecom and the Korea Telecom Art Hall to "popularize" jazz; the tickets are only 1000 won ($1USD) per person. I didn't go see the performance with the LC guys. I went to catch extra Uzebekistan munch with a few other friends. There's this great restraunt run my Uzbeks in Dongdaemoon and I'm a frequent goer for the mutton dishes hah. Now that Uzbekistan is an official extension country in AIESEC, I can go to their national conference for some more Uzbek food haha.

After the second dinner I went back to reunite with my LC. A funny incident was that I went to use the washroom in Hollys Coffee and I met Sumi and Jyungkyung from my university department. It was big surprise for both our sides to meet at such a random time and place. They know Ryan as well so they asked me to say farewell biddings for them.

After some beer, we acted like coventional Northeast Asians and went for Karaoke haha.

Now some photos!

Buying a kite from the Kite-Man.

Ryan flying it.

Just to give you guys an idea of what the Han River looks like.

Up for beer.

Flash bounded off from another camera and got captured on mine.

AIESEC Korea Finally Has .... Two MCP Candidates

2007-05-03T11:54:00.000+09:00

(This is the election poster me and Bristina made at last year's elections. Looking back now the catch phrase really sucks haha.)

Well, like I told Sharon I thought we had "an'" MCP candidate. But it turns out we have two.

First person is our MCVP Alumni Patrick Kim, who was also a candidate at last years' National Election Day, but didn't get elected then.

The second person is Minkyeam Kim, the SKKU LCP. He's also the architect behind Ceek and Eddie's impeachment. He's the LCP of the only official LC in AIESEC Korea as of now, and he has been acting as temporary MCP for the past two months (although he hasn't been doing anything as MCP as a result of a consensus reached by him and the MC team - such as introducing himself as MCP to the freshmen at LIA).

Well, there are a lot of thoughts that come to mind about these two people running for MCP. I can only say that I bet (and I know), that there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes activity leading up to the announcement of the MCP candidates and elections. I suppose everybody who reads this blog will know who I will be supporting in the race to become AIESEC Korea's leading representative.

Elections are on May 13th. I wish AIESEC Korea good luck :).

Mixed Feelings

2007-04-28T22:49:00.000+09:00

I did it in the end.

For those of you who might remember, I did write an application for LIA Faci sometime in January. I wasn't selected. Well, it was a good thing that I wasn't or else I wouldn't have had a great conference experience at APXLDS in Hyderabad.

I finally sent my application for facilitator of our Summer NLDS. But I'm not that ecstatic or nervous as I should be. I have a lot of mixed feelings about sending this application.

I knew that I would send it in the end, but this is the first AIESEC application I have written with doubts.

Reasons are multiple. Basically it has to do with AIESEC Korea not having in it's midst the four people that made me believe in AIESEC the most (cutting two of them off from their membership). And plus the subtle disenchantment with the so-called "AK Leaders" made me want to delete my application all together.

I cannot say I believe AIESEC Korea has the potential. This statement is the kind of naive positivity that I am extremely skeptical of. It has no evidential basis.

The reason I'm applying is twofold. One is that I believe I still have things to contribute (I've used this word an awful lot of times this past week) to AIESEC Korea. Two, I wish to see the proof that AIESEC Korea does have the potential through this summer's NLDS.

And if I'm not selected? Well, since when did not being picked for a position make me stop my AIESEC XP?

Oh and two people to thank. A good friend that I've met and gotten to know in AIESEC, Tom (ex-KU ICXD) called me today to check if I was applying for NLDS facilitator. He was too, so it made me feel relieved that somebody in AIESEC with the knowledge and passion was facilitating our NLDS, regardless of whether I'm selected or not.

And Justine (SWU LCP) left me a nice, bright message on my Cyworld (a Korean facebook/myspace whatever) . It wasn't because of the message itself, but it reminded me that AIESEC Korea still has good people like Justine and that I shouldn't give up trying to know them better.

Whatever comes, shall come :)

AIESEC vs. Parents, Parents vs. AIESEC

2007-04-18T02:30:00.000+09:00

Now all AIESECers have heard about or experienced themselves conflict with their parents concerning their involvement with AIESEC. This a post about the few and worst stories I've heard, and what I make out to be the fundamental breach between parents and AIESEC.

In Korea, and probably other countries in Asia, university students in general are still under the influence of their parents and more or less yield to their wishes, than say, compared to North American and European students.

So it's not uncommon to hear about AIESECers who have been consulted, scolded, coerced and even threatened by their parents to slow down on AIESEC or to put an end to AIESEC all together. Like Ewha's PDD, Sang-ee said to me (and a group), your parents are bewildered when everytime they call your cellphone to check on you you say "oh, I'm with AIESECers" or "I'm in an AIESEC meeting" or "Sorry, I'll be late. I have an AIESEC event to attend." To put it in African-American/Korean lingo, does AIESEC bring food to the table?

No it doesn't. We're the international platform for young people to develop their potential. Our core work is an integrated proccess consisting of leadership experiences, exchange oppurtunities, international conferences. Not to mention, we work to realize our vision of peace and fulfillment of humankind's potential. So unless I'm on working in an internship or a fulltime MC/AI position, the food on my table comes from somewhere else.

Before I start telling the stories, let me explain in short my take on the whole collateral damage caused by parents when devoting yourself to AIESEC.

I believe that what we stand for as an student's leadership organization; our vision, role, core work, management philosophy, leadership philosophy, is inherently incompatible with Korean parents (I am adjusting the breath of my claim to just Korean parents, although I'm tempted to say just "parents.")

Making a positive impact on society through the development of individuals? To Korean parents, especially those sick of "social change" and "democratization" movements of the 70s and 80s are allergic to anything that involves "the betterment of society" or "change in society." Their sole concern is whether their children will graduate early and earn enough salary to purchase an apartment flat of their own, preferably in Kangnam or Seucho-dong.

But with the gradual liberalization, so to say, of parents who want they children to have the life that they didn't have (which is a life driven by whatever you find passion for) it's not that hard to find parents who leave their children to do what they want (my parents for example). However, AIESEC Korea in particular constantly (although not unanimously) fails to convince even these liberal, freethinking parents that AIESEC is worth it. Here's a few stories.

Our former MCP, Hye-jin Jang started out her MCP term without telling her father. Her mother was aware of her being MCP and she had said to her father that she was prepraring for the National Bar Examination. In Korea, in order to have a career in law whether as a lawyer, judge or prosecutor, all students regardless of their major have to pass a highly competitive National Bar Exam administered by the Minstry of Justice once every year. To pass this test, a lots of people choose live in "gosiwons" which are basically one-room flats. There are certain neighborhoods called "gosichons" where there is a huge conglomerate of gosiwons, the most famous being Shinlim-dong in Seoul, where there more than are 20,000 students living and studying in these gosiwons.

So Hye-jin told her father that she was moving out of her house to live in a gosiwon to study. Korean parents are usually very hesistant of their daughters living alone, but they'll make an exception when their daugther is studying for gosi (which means "high test" and covers the National Bar Exam and the Civil Service Exam). In the end, her father found that his daughter was not living in a gosiwon nor studying for gosi. He barged in the MC office and pulled her daughter out by the hair. I don't know what happened to her next.

Then there was the issue of our former MCP Ceek. He was MCVP ER in 2005, and after attending IC, he found himself wanting to become MCP. So apparently he mentioned it to his father, who then threatened Ceek that if he ran to become or became MCP, he would come to Seoul and tie a rope around his neck, tie the other end to a KTX train (high-speed, interstate train; the Korean TGV) and let the train drag him like that all the way to Kimchun (which is 299.1KMs from Seoul).

This is actually a post I started writing on March 7th, but I guess it's a twist of fate that I have postponed finishing it for so long, because I have final story to write about.

Six days ago, our MCVP PD, Julia, voluntarily resigned from her position. I do not know the exact reason for her resignation. But two nights before she resigned, I talked to her briefly on MSN. I had known for a long time that she was in shock of Ceek's impeachement in Feburary, and that she had been unsatisfied with her role as MCVP PD. She told me that not coming to LIA (Log Into AIESEC; our national induction conference) was a decision of her own, rather than not being able to. I was a bit selfish, telling her about my negative opinions on AIESEC Korea rather than consoling her; the conversation iteself was a bit untimely as I had to leave the computer soon. I was very nonchalant at least outwardly when I heard from a PD member that she had resigned two days after that conversation. I had talked with her before about Ceek's impeachment, I was there when she was frustrated by the lack of involvement and self-participation that this year's national PD team showed. I knew about the schism between her AIESEC position and her parents. I assume that her parent's oppoisition played a role in her decision to resign. Yes, it is only an assumption, but I keep wondering whether she would've resigned if her parents had supported her, even tacitly.

I do know some cases where parents are supportive of AIESEC, such as my former LCP, Heather's parents. But especially after Julia's resignation, I don't want to change the tone of this post to convey an oh-but-look-on-the-bright-side message. I sincerely hope that the people who are reading this don't block their (future) children from doing things they have a genuine passion for.

Few Things About My Name

2007-04-13T02:07:00.000+09:00

Okay, my name is Won Jang. Won is probably the easiest name in the world to pronounce if you don't pronounce it Wong like almost every Chinese speaker in APXLDS 2007 tried to do. I think I annoyed a few by trying to coach them to loose the "-ong" sound. My apologies if you thought I was obsessed with minor details, but it's my name for godsake.

Like many non-western Asian names, many people (especially the non-Chinese crowd) are usually confused as to whether my name is Won or Jang. My name is Won and my surname is Jang.

Then my name causes a small confusion between Koreans and other numerous asians, because Koreans usually have three letters in their name, but I have just two, one letter for Won, which is 원 , and one letter for Jang, 장. So I have tell them that I'm a "wae-ja", which means in Korean that I have one letter for my first name.

Then there's the problem of whether people should romanize my name as Won Jang or Jang Won. It's Won Jang; I never, ever use Jang Won when I use English. It's extremely awkward.

Then there's the multiple meanings my name has. For you Chinese speaking population, my name is 張元 in Chinese characeters. 元 means first or most important. Jangwon in Korea also used to mean the top ranking in the government bureaucracy examination in Ancient Korea. So people always used to tell me when I was going to "jangwon geub jae", which means top an examination. In modern times, "jangwon" can just simply mean number one, so there are lots and lots of jangwon brands. Jangwon maths, jangwon bulgogi, jangwon car repairs etc etc.

Jangwon also means manor (in English), seigneurie (French), Grundherrschaft (German) in Medieval European History. I had a few chuckles in History class back in high school. In both Korean AND World History!!

Then there's the whole "Won" thing. In English, it's the past tense of win, and in Korean it's the Korean currency.

More yet!! A newie laughed at my name card when she saw the side that said "Won, Jang". It's because there is a Korean word "wonjang" which means principal (of a kindergarten usually), director or president (of a institution, not the nation).

There are so many things to explore about my name!! Thanks grandpa!! Hope you're doing well up there!! :)~~

Gift by Rabindranath Tagore

2007-04-08T00:48:00.001+09:00

O my love, what gift of mine
Shall I give you this dawn?
A morning song?
But morning does not last long -
The heat of the sun
Wilts like a flower
And songs that tire
Are done.

O friend, when you come to my gate.
At dusk
What is it you ask?
What shall I bring you?
A light?

A lamp from a secret corner of my silent house?
But will you want to take it with you
Down the crowded street?
Alas,
The wind will blow it out.

Whatever gifts are in my power to give you,
Be they flowers,
Be they gems for your neck
How can they please you
If in time they must surely with,
Crack,
Lose lustre?
All that my hands can place in yours
Will slip through your fingers
And fall forgotten to the dust
To turn into dust.

Rather,
When you have leisure,
Wander idly through my garden in spring
And let an unknown, hidden flower's scent startle you
Into sudden wondering-
Let that displaced moment
Be my gift.
Or if, as you peer your way down a shady avenue,
Suddenly, spilled
From the thick gathered tresses of evening
A single shivering fleck of sunset-light stops you,
Turns your daydreams to gold,
Let that light be an innocent
Gift.

Truest treasure is fleeting;
It sparkles for a moment, then goes.
It does not tell its name; its tune
Stops us in our tracks, its dance disappears
At the toss of an anklet
I know no way to it-
No hand, nor word can reach it.
Friend, whatever you take of it,
On your own,
Without asking, without knowing, let that
Be yours.
Anything I can give you is trifling -
Be it a flower, or a song-

(*Magnificent poetry by the man himself. I tried googling this poem so I could just copy and paste but the only result I got was another poem called "The Gift" by Tagore. Apparently I'm the first one to make this "available" online!!)

Thoughts Running By

2007-04-07T23:45:00.000+09:00

(*This is the photo I sent to the Musee de l'Elysee's exhibit. One of the best photographs I've tooken in my life. Thanks for the link Diana!!)

1. When will AIESEC Korea start showing me the people to believe in once again?

2. "AIESEC Korea isn't one-millionth of what AIESEC has to offer. You know this. Don't abandon your XP because some people fucked you over."

3. YouCan in Turkey? Chances are I won't have enough money to attend, or just barely enough to attend. The real dilemma that's boiling inside of me is, even if I did have enough money, would I attend? There are a few reasons that I could not want to attend; first, I want to attend an issue-based conference rather than a "general leadership" conference, and secondly after APXLDS, I've realized that being the sole delegate is more comfortable for me than (and as I told Shub, Indah and Remy, cooler as well!) being a "delegation". Every year there's at least two people attending YouCan from Korea so if I attend YouCan I'll be part of a delegation. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I want to visit some non-AIESEC friends in Poland and Italy (both have their own houses so if I have enough money for tickets then accomodation is handled).

As I told Imran, one of the options I'm considering is just staying in Turkey for a few days without attending YouCan. It would be definately worth it just to see my friends again. I would definately go to Turkey if I had the money, but I'm not sure which should take precendence first, Turkey or Poland/Italy. I'm also considering a trip back to India, which is quite attractive considering I have friends there now (thanks APXLDS!!) and it costs much, much less to fly to and hang around than Europe/Turkey .

4. 13 people have added me on their MSN list after APXLDS. This makes my MSN contact list 119 people. I've erased two people (non-APXLDS) off, just because I didn't speak to them and apparently they had no intention of speaking to me. I want to erase more people to be honest, not because I don't like them or anything, but just for the sake of keeping my list neat. I have too many people that I haven't spoken for too long (too long meaning six months and over).

5. My arms to your arms. Her hug is my hug. :)

Remembering Hyderabad.

2007-04-04T00:55:00.000+09:00

....

The magical moment when I saw Kanika through the window of Ritwik's car, cruising through Hyderabadi traffic, learning the rules of jaywalking (I was already an expert, but now I'm even better!!), shopping in Mozamjahi Market, Famous Ice Cream, Mazzaa mango juice, Kinley, Oxyrich, Minute Maid Pulpy Orange Juice, sugar cane machines, guwawa sellers, coconut crushers, morning walks alone in Hyderabad Public Garden, Hyderabad Railway Station, going to the (the abominable) Tata Indicom shop to photocopy passports only to come back to the hotel to see Shub again, getting to finally match Indah's name with her face (sorry! haha), watching India being bowled out by Bangladesh big time, trying to teach Gautam Korean......

Reunion with Piyush and Deepti at Global Village, This Is The World We Live In, reciting Ryan's PAI candidate closing speech in front of the man himself, the APXLDS Faci roll call, outdoor activities, "cricket, yeah, yeah you lost cricket" (sing it to the tune of "yeah, yeah, we got spirit"), intriguing conversations during meals, China vs. Korea vs. India "debate" with Srinivas, meeting with Rita Baptista (ABN AMRO - AIESEC Coordinator), meeting Anne Schafer (DHL AP Regional Coordinator) again without even realizing it until she was gone, Mutter Paneer, Kwality Ice Cream, freshly baked naan with ice cream (anyone who hasn't tried this should!!), staircase chitchat with Ryan, Jeanne, Aman, Piyush, taking 20 minutes to explain the "AK situation" to Jeanne during dinner....

Seeing a sitar performance for the first time in my life during Indian Night, sleeping through the whole hiphop party night (woke up at 3:30AM after sleeping in the lounge couch), watching funny rollcalls every morning, touring the Salar Jung Museum with Nidhi, eating HK cup noodles for the first time in eight years (courtesy of Daryl and the HK delegation), loosing my camera due to an electricity failure in an internet cafe, Chowmallah Palace, Golconda Fort, Charminar, bangles, Qutb Shahi Tombs, Ramoji Film City, Jiva's, General Bazaar, Eat Street and Prasads IMAX Theatre with Kanika .......

Every road I walked, every word I said, every song I sang, every hug I gave...

And much, much more.

Getting Ready For APXLDS pt. 3

2007-03-12T22:32:00.000+09:00

PHEW.

Okay, this will probably be the last or the second last post before I leave for India on Friday, so here we go.

1) I've secured all funds necessary for me to attend. But I'll probably be very low on extra cash. We'll wait and see.

2) Julia has decided to enroll this school term after all. So that makes the Korea delegation four people: me, Ziggy, Jake, Cindy.

3) I've sent e-mails to all the professors to see if I get my attendance checked during my abscence. In Korea, it doesn't matter if God sends the locusts, if the professor doesn't check your attendance then your attendance isn't checked, period.

So far my winning percentage is very satisfactory. Four out of five professors have said that they will accept my excuse as long as I provide them with proof that I have attended the conference (ex) receipt). The one prof. left is probably the most strictest of them all, so I have my fingers crossed.

4) T-shirt designs are in printing. (Yeah!!) Global Village shopping is going on. Ziggy has procured 17 free copies of Prof. Lee Won-bok's "Korea Unmasked : In Search of the Country, the Society and the People" comic book. Prof. Lee is famous in Korea for his "Far Country, Neighbour Country" series, which are a series of comic books explaining a specific country's history, culture and people. "Korea Unmasked..." is a comic book he drew and wrote about Korea. Ziggy plans to give a copy of it to each country delegation.

5) Final DG list is out. I'll be meeting Piyush, Deepti, Kanika, Shubhangi, Anisha and Ryan at APXLDS. Looking foward to reuniting with all these great people. And of course, making new friends!

6) Brrrr! It's way too cold here in Korea. It's been 0 celcius with strong winds (making it practically sub-zero) and my biological incubation system is going bonkers because I'm feeling colder than I "should be feeling". So I'm all set to sweat in some 20C ~ 25C Indian weather!! Woohoo! (I'm just hoping that the weather warms up a bit in Korea when I get back.)

Looking Back pt.2 - Malaysia & Back In Singapore

2007-03-04T03:12:00.000+09:00

So starts my journey into Malaysia :)~

Meeting up with Nabeel and Jason, we rushed hard to get a train into Kulua Lumpur, as it would obviously be more comfortable than catching a bus. We went to the station, only to find that the expensive seats were left. So we walked to try out our second option, which was to catch a bus.

Funny thing was there were various bus companies selling at various prices and various times. Very different from interstate/long-distance buses in Korea. We have a couple of companies, but we have only a few terminals and a few booths, where you choose by time not by company. And the prices are more or less the same, except for luxury-seat buses.

The night was very hot and humid, and I was sweating a lot. I've noticed that I sweat a lot and that my body needs a lot of fluids. Not being a science-guy, I always wonder what comes first. Is it because I drink a lot that I sweat a lot, or do I sweat a lot because I drink a lot. If anybody has a good (i.e. scientific) answer, please kindly leave a comment.

In the end, we got ourselves a bus. We waited in the McDonalds of the bus station for awhile, since it was only place that seemed air-conditioned, haha. I got myself a Fillet-O-Fish Xtra, which is basically a Fillet-O-Fish butwith two fish fillets in between the burger bread. It was kind of what'd been dreaming of, since I'm such a sucker for the Fillet-O-Fish (been loving it since I was young). I also got myself a 1.5L water bottle to gulp down during the remainder of my trip.

What sucked about the bus station is that you had to pay for the public toilet!! I mean, where's the "public" in that? I bet they make a lot of money. I think the guy had a smirk as I paid him to use the toilets. IF (that's a really big IF) I become rich, I'll buy the bus station and the first thing I'll do is to make the toilets free and then you'll lose your lifetime job of penny-collecting.

We got on the bus, which was more comfortable than I expected! I looked at the Singapore NLDS photos through Nabeel's laptop before falling asleep. All of us were tired, and we slept pretty well... I think. It was already KL when I woke up. More exactly, it was Plaza Rakyat (as we would find out later). We lingered around, and KJ's parents came to pick her up and a few minutes later me, Nabeel and Jason went with Jason's parents' car to Jason's place.

I think it was almost 6-7AM-ish when we arrived at Jason's place. Jason's place was a barber-cum-living house with barely any seperation between the two. It was a unique experience so to say, cause I've never been to a place with both functions, although I've been aware of such places. Jason's parents made us noodles, which were very good (would've had more if I was very hungry) and we went to sleep.

I woke up at 9-10AM ish, again being the early bird out of the three AIESECers. I was pretty sure that Heroes started at 1PM, but Nabeel said that the conference started at 4PM and we had plenty of time. Being the one to tend to believe people, I decided to concur. (But it turned out that I was right. Then again, later on we found out that only a small number of people actually turned up on time for the opening.)

We burned time at Jason's house, me chatting with Nabeel about North Korea and Islam, drinking soy bean milk (which came not in plastic cartons, but white plastic bags tightly knotted and with a straw sticking out), and watching 007 Casino Royale via DVD. Actually, I didn't watch much of Casino Royale because I was too sleepy and took a short noon nap.

When I woke up it was time for us to go (or so we thought so). We took the train, which was pretty slow at times and reached UKM train station. The map that was provided in the DG booklet was misleading because it suggested the NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, where Heroes was being held, was walking distance from the station. Since we had luggage and had no idea where it was, we just decide to catch a cab. It was a good thing we did, because NIOSH was definately NOT walking distance.

So we finally arrived at NIOSH. Ariff of the conference OC was the first person to greet us and help us check in. I finally got to meet Chee Kek, the conference co-ordinator who's name I had heard of the most. We just put our luggage in the dorm rooms, which was a three people in one room and was quite nice (tho whole conference place was).

Finally, we got to meet the Heroes DGs, in the main theater. They were in middle of a IBXP session (if I do another theoritical/simulation IBXP session again, I'm going to puke) when me, Nabeel, and Jason barged in. Jason left just before dinner because he had a family emergency and wasn't really interested in the conferece.

Like I did with my Singapore post, I don't see the point in summarizing the sessions, so I'll just jot down a few memories.

1. Meeting Koji again - Shows you how small AIESEC can be, with all it's 97 MCs, 500 universities. Koji was a Heroes DG from Japan and he also visited our LC back in November 2005 because he was a NALDS (the now extinct North-Asia Leadership Devleopment Seminar) DG and knew Heather, our LCP who also attended NALDS. I saw him when I first came into the theater and was planning to speak to him after lunch, but surprisingly he remembered me as well and spoke to me first during lunch.

2. The Hong Kong connection - Being an AP conference and all, there were obviously DGs from Hong Kong. Bonida and Calvin from CUHK was present, and of course they were surprised that I lived in Hong Kong for 7 years (all Hong Kong @ers I meet are surprised when I tell them this). I should really visit @ in HK the next time there, which I hope will be this summer.

3. Chicken & Curry - I mentioned this in the Singapore post, but too much of anything will kill. My basic meal for two weeks went like chicken - curry - chicken curry - curry - chicken - chicken - oh wait what's that curry? chicken curry.

4. Numerous punishments - Anisha is mean a conference chair who just loves punishments, haha. That one where people put their hand through their legs and hold another person's hands and dance is good.

5. Phoning Heather - I just wanted to hear her someone's voice, and Heather happens to be one of the seven people in the world who's cellphone number I memorize, haha. I went to a international phone call shop with Jai from India, who wanted to call home. Funny thing was the distance of the country from Malaysia and the amount of money they charged didn't correlate. If I remember correctly it cost more to call Vietnam than Korea. That was great, but they didn't have Korea on country phone call fees list and the assistant who worked there had to bring a bigger country book from the back. I suppose nobody really calls Korea from there. Wouldn't be surprised if I was the first Korean ever to visit the shop.

6. AIESEC Malaysia Awards Night - This was one event to remember. The event was basically what the name says, it's a night to give out awards to LCs, members, and alumni. It was organized by Sri, who wasn't officially a faci or DG at Heroes but was there with us in a lot of sessions and meals due to the fact that AMAN was also held at the theater in NIOSH.

Everybody was dressed up in suits and fancy dresses for AMAN. I wore my hanbok for the night, because it was in an approriate color for a formal setting, being a modernized version, and I thought it would be a waste to have to brought it with me if I wore it only once at Global Village in Singapore.

Anisha introduced us Heroes DGs during the Awards night, and it was fantastic to be mentioned at such an important national event.

Three things stood out for me at AMAN. One was that there were performances in before and in between the awardings, which I thought was a good idea that keeps the audience amused and entertained.

Secondly, they had an Alumni Hall of Fame, something that we don't have. I suggested to Patrick (MCVP Alumni) that it was a good idea in the future (probably won't happen this year) to give recognition to the alumni that have really headed for the future through AIESEC and have given their true support. If we can't get rid of bullshit alumni here and there, the least we can do is recognize the good ones. One alumunus who was inducted in the hall of fame, who uses SNs at his company, got a big round of applause when he promised to use 100SNs by the year 2015.

Thirdly, there were externals such as Lorreal, Nestle, Standard Chartered present, but after AMAN the whole theater turned into an AIESEC dance disco. I wondered what our externals would think if they saw our mass dances during our conferences. But heck, I'm imagining too much because we can't even get our externals to attend NCON, save conferences haahaha :P.

7. Waking Nabeel up every morning - Thanks for sleeping late roomie. Especially the morning after the night Anisha allowed us to go out to KL. You probably would've never woken up if I hadn't bothered to check on you :P.

Oh yeah and to my other roomie Kiko, reading law books is good but try to do something else while you're at an international conference, like I did, such as trying to watch Malay TV dramas.

8. Like I said, the grouping thing that goes on in AK conferences is kind of a setback. There was lots of freedom during meals where you could just sit and talk to people around you. It was mainly at meal times that I got to know Susan from Egypt and the Heroes facilitators .

After three nights, the conference ended with hugging, shaking hands, sugarcube scribbling, contacts exchanging and taking taxis to our hotels (those on an extended stay) on a rainy day.

Moving to Plaza Rakyat to our hotels was the annoying part for me, and probably everyone else. We were at UKM station but the others (including Chee Kek) wouldn't come after several minutes of waiting, so "we" (by we I mean - Piyush, Jai, Kanika from India, and Susan, Amr, Shady from Egypt, and poor Kiko who was just indecisive and decided to follow us, haha) decided to take things into our own hands and go first. I had to carry my two luggage bags around myself since everybody had their own luggage and couldn't help me with mine and there were some long stairs here and there which I didn't really enjoy :(~.

Another thing that happened was that Chee Kek had told us that the hotel was at Pudu, so we got off at Pudu station and waited, but later he told us through Nabeel's phone that it was actually Plaza Rakyat station so we had to get on the subway again.

The place where we stayed was actually right where KJ, Nabeel, Jason and I got off from the Bus from Singapore. It was an okay place, in that it was safe and clean. But RM165 (if I remember correctly) for a two-person room is more than I am willing to pay, personally. So thank goodness we "secretly" shared a room (all the guys from the "dissident group"; Kanika and Susan shared a seperate room) and therefore, shared the fee. Amr later said that the hotel workers knew that we were sharing the room, but I bet it's common practice and they can't really regulate it because they could probably more than one room on each floor that "cheats".

After that, we went to Pasar Seni station near Chinatown where KJ was waiting to show us around. She waited two hours for us, it was very kind of her and we were very sorry to show up so late.

Chinatown was, well, Chinatown haha. The Chinese restraunt we went into was overpriced, and the food was just average at best. And I say again, Singapore and Malaysia are cool countries, but selling water gets head shakings from me!!

I wasn't really interested in shopping (unless there was a bookstore haha), so I just lingered around and eye-shopped as it was mainly Kanika and Piyush interested in buying things. If I were to make an analysis, Kanika is bit ubquitious and sporadic when it comes to shopping and is motivated by transient emotions, while Piyush is a bit more "focused" than that. I don't know how many times I heard Kanika say "oh, I want to do this, or buy this"! Not that I was annoyed or anything. Not at all.

Mini-Episodes during our night tour.

1) We met the Egyptian guys who came out night shopping. I realized that metallic art that Amr wanted is in Korea (and probably other places around the globe as well) as well but I don't really remember which was more cheaper or expensive.

2) The Cantonese guy. I wish I learned Cantonese back in Hong Kong so I could say something to him. Okay, I really understand how you could be annoyed at us for talking near your store while not buying anything (it was because you didn't sell anything good, by the way), but just a few words and we would've been out. You really didn't need to badmouth us while we were walking away from your crappy store.

3) We also met the best taxi driver in KL!! We took a cab to Petronas Twin Towers (yes our team of six crammed to one cab) and the cab driver told us (or rather Piyush) to keep the change which was basically around RM6. Piyush was so impressed (or rather touched) by him that he got his phone number so he could take his cab to the aiport.

These were the moments that stood out, not that the rest of it was boring.

And here are my things to do back when I'm back in KL.

1) Go to a bookstore hahaha. I can sense a few rolling eyes here. I wanted to visit the Borders in KLCC but it was too late by the time we got there. Purchase a few radical Islam/Jews in the eyes of Islam books they had at the KL Sentral bookstore. Also ask why they were selling Windows 95 manual books in the 21st century.

2) Get a Malaysian souvenir. Perhaps one of the those metallic models of the Petronas they hold at the wholesale store.

3) Drink that coffee with condensed milk they sold at the Indian/Malay restraunt Nabeel had his brunch in. It was very dense and sweet and it suited me.

4) Meet Koreans and pretend to be glad to see fellow countrypeople. Tell them that I've lived in KL for 20 years and recommend a few tourist spots that aren't actually tourist spots.

5) Shock people by giving out FREE WATER BOTTLES.

6) Go to Nandos. Nabeel says its good.

7) MUST MUST MUST!! I must get those Cheese Potato Wedges they sell at KFC again. They're absolutely my style. Reasonable price as well.

Back to the story.

Now we got back to the hotel room after sightseeing at Petronas and a bit more shopping. KJ took the "best cab in KL" back home and that was the last time we saw her. Back in the hotel, we fooled around in the hotel room, listening to Bob Marley, watching Kanika being fooled by Nabeel's card tricks and me taking photos. Then at around 4:30AMish Piyush had to go to KL Airport to catch his flight to India so we saw him off to the front of the hotel where he took the best cab in KL. Then everybody decided that they were tired and they fell asleep.

Again, I was the early bird out of the five men in our room. Good thing I was too, because I was sleeping on the bed and Shady got to use my space after I woke up. I took a shower and then went for the free breakfast they had at the restraunt. It was also the last time I saw the Taiwanese delegates. I took time to also read Education européenne (aka An European Education/Nothing Important Ever Dies/The Forest of Anger) by Romain Gary, which I started on my flight from Seoul to Singapore.

I realized that the guys weren't going to wake up anytime soon so I decided to take a self-tour around KL. The streets KL aren't the perfect for a reflective take on the past, but nonetheless interesting to a guy who was confined within a building for most of his stay in Malaysia. I also found a big wholesale mart that sold all kinds of things including CD-Rs, which we planned to use for burning NLDS/Heroes photos and videos and headphones which Nabeel needed.

When I came back to the hotel room the guys were more or less awake. Nabeel wanted to have brunch, so him and Kanika and I went to a Indian/Malay restraunt which was quite okay. (Just writing about this makes me want to get some good curry. Maybe I'll hit the Nepalese restraunt they have in Dongdaemoon soon.) It was the only restraunt I went to that served free water, but as Nabeel pointed out, the "local" that was sitting on the table next to ours was drinking bottled water so I doubt the free water was 100% pure, ugh.

The next hour or two was spent trying to get Jai a better ticket than the one he had. He visited a travel agency who couldn't really help him. So since me and Nabeel had to "try" buy a ticket from KL Sentral to Singapore, the three of us went to KL Sentral with hopes of getting what we wanted. Bonida, Calvin and Kanika also came with us for awhile and later on parted ways at a station as they had flights to Hong Kong to catch.

We were luckier than Jai. We got 10PM tickets to Singapore which were perfect cause they allowed us to arrive at 7AM ish, so we wouldn't need to spend another night at the (a quite expensive) hotel room, like we worried. Instead we gave Jai 10SGD (we didn't have enough RM) because we put our luggage for the most of that day. After eating fast food for lunch at KL Sentral (where I had my first and last encounter with the Cheese Potato Wedges) we went back to the hotel and on the way we dropped by the wholesale mart to do some simple shopping.

Oh yeah, and two bullshit encounters that happened to us. One, we were charged for this international call nobody in our room apparently made. I, for one, never even so much as touched the phone. If I were prone to conspiracies, I'd think that the hotel charged us in revenge for five people taking a room designated for two. Two, the magnetic card that opened our room wouldn't work. I tried several times before going Jai to the hotel check-in counter to tell them. They renewed our card, but after some time the problem happened again. The second time round they tried to tell us that we hadn't paid RM5 off our hotel bills, when we'd paid RM165. Does that even make sense? Why the hell would we pay RM165 and not pay RM5? That's what we tried to tell them, but nnoooo they just had to check with the morning shift worker. Actually we told them to do that. They wouldn't give us compensation when it turned out that we were right and they were wrong. ASSES.

10PM came just like that. We said bye to Jai and Egyptian guys and went on out way to KL Sentral. We were at McDonalds buying dinner, when we had a pleasant surprise. We met Sri!
I was (we were) very glad to meet her because I didn't say bye to her properly because we thought she'd be joining us on the night Heroes finished. She was trying to contact Susan, who had made arrangements to stay at Sri's place for a day. We told her Chee Kek was still in the hotel where Susan was so she called Chee Kek.

The ride back to Singapore wasn't that bad. I slept most for most of the ride, having only slept 4-5 hrs in the morning and wandered around KL for most of the time I was awake. Nabeel found it a bit uncomfortable with his long legs and all, so he decided to move to an cluster of empty seats later on in the ride. Oh yeah, it also rained a lot during our ride. That sucked.

We train led us to a station near Outram Park MRT. We walked from the station to Outram Park MRT and we went from there to Clementi to get to Nabeel's dorm at Prince George's Residence in NUS. The dorms were nice but they're a bit tight about security, which reminds me of Hong Kong. Elevators won't work without at "key", there's a security door for each corridor and of course a lock for your private room. One other funny thing is that there's a water basin in Nabeel's room, but none of the other elements that constitute a washroom.

I spent time in the lounge burning photos onto CDs and browsing the internet on Nabeel's laptop. His desktop couldn't access Korean fonts, while his laptop could and the wireless internet connection was best in the lounge. Nabeel showed off his culinary skills by cooking dal with spices for dinner. I also tried Iranian dates, which were extremely sweet and therefore good. I thought the myth that dates were good for your sex life was an uniquely Korean thing but Nabeel told me that people also drink a highly condensed juice of dates instead of viagra. It's a small world!! By the way, if there's any real science to the sexual empowerment function of dates, please leave a comment.

Then we went out to see the MCs and other members for dinner at City Hall. Again, I was lucky to have a chance to see them again because I didn't say my farewells adequately. I also met Yuta from Heroes again, which I didn't expect at all. We had some fun chit-chat at the food court and I had my ice-cream and cookies for desert, which were quite good, except for the amount of ice cream they gave you.

At 6:30PM it was time for me to leave, and the guys saw me off to the MRT station. That was very nice of them. What's more, Diana gave me an AIESEC Singapore shirt! Which made three shirts I got during my overseas stint, the AIESEC Singapore shirt, the Singapore NLDS one, and a purple AIESEC UKM shirt that I trade our pink LC shirt with Ariff. Half my apparel consists of AIESEC shirts, and my goal is to collect more before I grow too "old" to wear them, ha.

SO (a big SO), this ends my travelogue. I will always remember and cherish the moments came and went as if it was the few hours that took me to write this. The great rotary of life has connected us together. So let's reminsce and celebrate both the times of the past and times to come out of it!!

Love always :)

Fucked Up

2007-03-01T00:43:00.000+09:00

Strangely, occassionally during a year there seems to be a period when not only things around you to aren't going too well, but also to others, simulataneously.

In other words, it's a fucked-up period.

Now, there isn't anything life-threatening going on with my life. I'm looking foward to going back to school, meeting some people I like very much, ones that I haven't met in a long time. My music life has been uphill again, and I just found out yesterday that Roy Hargrove and Dave Holland is perfoming in Korea, in September and October respectively!! And I'm going to APXLDS, which will be a groovy conference with groovy people.

These are all things to be happy and excited about, and without a doubt I am.

So what's wrong? Basically it has to do with the state of AIESEC Korea at the moment, and the state of various people around me (mostly, but not limited to AIESECers).

On the state of AIESEC Korea, as some of the readers of this blog know, it isn't all sunshine at the moment. I have no more to say more than that, until at the very least, March 5th.

On the state of various people around me. Again, I have nothing much to say. Please be happy and successful in whatever you aspire to do, stay healthy and maintain a consistent love for life. A big toast to life, and all the best, precious ones.

Getting Ready For APXLDS pt.2

2007-02-27T01:09:00.000+09:00

Today, I went to pick up my visa at the India embassy.

The India embassy is located in Han-nam dong, home to South-East Asian, African, Latin American embassies (embassies for Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya, Gabon, Sudan and many more are concentrated in Han-nam dong), and rich motherfuckers that want to live in peace without the interruption of the press and lowly middle-class peasants, such as Samsung bigwig Lee Kun-hee and Hyundae Motors boss Jung Mong-goo.

The the visa/passport affairs depratment of the India embassy has a seperate entrance right next to the main entrance and leads to a seperate office. In the office there are lots of English speaking Koreans, British, and obviously, Indian people waiting to tell the angry-looking Indian embassy employee that they need a visa/passport renewal or whatever.

Anyways, point is I got my visa without any hassle, so I am free to enter and leave India for six months :D.

One side note. I must retract my comments about hoping for the impossible situation of Korea having a visa-waiver program with India soon, because upon research I have found that India requires all foreign-nationals except those from Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives to apply for and hold visas.

On another unrelated note, I wrote on the APXLDS applications that I wanted to hear Ravi Shankar and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the APX parties. Will they accept my request?

I've told various AIESECers and non-AIESECers that I'm going to Hyderabad, India. Everybody is aware of Calcutta and Mumbai, the most internationally famous cities in India, but I report that so far I have found nobody who knows Hyderabad except one EB in my LC who is a Hindi major. I know four people that have travelled to India for more than two weeks and none of them have heard of Hyderabad. One of my friends, who has travelled India for about a month and half, responded to my comment that Hyderabad was the fifth laregest metropolis in India, by telling me cities in India were dirty whether they were the first or the fifth. We'll see about that, ha.

And more reunions!! Apart from meeting Kanika and Anisha, I'll be meeting Shubhangi from @SIPO again, and hopefully Piyush (who's now MCVP Expansions in India, congrats) from Heroes will be around as well. I was talking to Sri from @Malaysia, and she even looked into tickets to Hyderabad so she could go as well, but it turns out that she has exams then, so unluckily that's one person less to reunite with :(~. But I'm hoping for some more "surprise" reunions once they release the DG list (will they do that by the way?).

More on people going to APX. John Wayne unfortunately can't go to APXPRO. His parents wouldn't "subsidize" his travels. Pity, cause I was hoping to do the "Honey" roll call that was such a hit at IC '06. And he would've done well at the conference, with his IC experience and all.

And in the meantime Julia is in a crisis as well. She was one of the three MCs that didn't tell their parents that they were running for and had become a MC (the others being Ceek and Stacy), but she was rounded into a tight corner and had no option but to tell her parents that she had become an MC member. Her initial plans were to keep on with her university studies during her MC term, and she had already told her parents that she had to go to a Physics camp (her major is Physics) in March, which was actaully APXPRO.

When she first told her parents the truth, her parents told her to take a break from school if she wasn't going to study properly. Then a few days after that, they seemed to have changed their minds, and now the final verdict is literally "It's up to you (Julia)". They're leaving it up to Julia to decide. And the dilemma she's stuck in is, if she takes a break from school there's no way that she can go to APXPRO, because she told her parents that she was attending a Physics camp, when she had no idea that her parents would allow her to take a school break. But now, if she took a break and said that she attending the camp, they'd probably be very suspicious as well, suspecting that it was actually an AIESEC-thing.

But of course, Julia wants to go to APXPRO very much. So I told her today that since she hadn't filled in the application form on aiesec.net, that I would send an e-mail to the CCs to ask whether they received late applications. If they don't then there isn't any need to clouded by the prospects of APEXPRO, since she won't be able to go in any case.

I'll have a post about the conflict between parents and their kindred concerning AIESEC, because I've heard lots of bad stories, one involving a former MCP's dad pulling her daugther out of the MC office by the hair.

Anyway, I'm counting the days till the 16th (departure date for @Korea DGs). Wish all of you could be there.

How I Spent Lunar New Year

2007-02-18T23:28:00.000+09:00

(Picture of a traditional table for rituals for the deceased during Lunar New Year in Korea.)

Now, for those that don't know, there are other countries that celebrate Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year). Called Sul-nal or Gu-jeong in Korea, we put on our hanbok (the traditional Korean clothing, for those of you at NLDS and Heroes you guys saw me wear a modernized verison of the hanbok at Global Village and AIESEC Malaysia Awards Night. The traditional one we wear at Sul-nal is more colorful), pay visits to the graves of our ancestors, bow to our grandparents, receive pocket money (although not in hong bao/lai si/ang pao/pung pao(s)), eat traditional food, and enjoy a great family reunion.

While westernized, Korea is still a culturally conservative, Confucian country in many aspects and the attachment to tradition is embodied in the Korean version of chunyun (massive traffic loads in China during Lunar New Year). Families travel by bus, car, train, even plane to the patriarch's family to spend Lunar New Year together. Every year I hear nightmare stories about lengthy trips on transportation to Busan, Junju, Daegu, Daejyun, Masan etc etc.

Now, my immediate familiy doesn't do this. I haven't visited my extended family at Sul-nal for eight years, which is ever since I've returned to Korea. I get tired of answering questions every year about whether I'm going to a family reunion, or where I'm going (quite a few people take Sul-nal trips for granted). Once I tell them that I'm not going and that I haven't gone for eight years, I have to give them an explanation.

Well, first one that I give is that during my seven year stay in Hong Kong, my family wasn't able to make any visit at any Sul-nal. So after seven years, when I came back to Korea, my extended family doesn't seem that concerned about whether we come to Busan (where most of my paternal and maternal extended family resides) or not. Of course, they'd like it very much if we joined them, but it isn't a do-or-die thing, unlike some ultraconservative Korean families that make it a family obligation.

The second reason would be that our family is too tired to get through the whole ordeal of getting to Busan, especially with the terrible nation-wide traffic jam, which is the worst in the whole year along with Moon Harvest Festival. Plane and train tickets are booked months in advance and highways are clogged up like a bad respitory obstruction.

So how did I spent my Lunar New Year?

I got up at 10AM in the morning, which was earlier than my usual waking hours these days. I called up my grandparents to wish them a happy new year and longevity in life. Then I had a (simplified) traditional Korean Sul-nal meal, which was dduk gook, buchim gae, and han gwa (I had these on my table at Global Village) for desert.

Then I watched a bit of TV, took a afternoon nap, then after sunset I went out to Coffee Bean to get myself a Black Forest Ice Blended Coffee (which I didn't have for a long time) and to read.

Oh yeah, I also looked at the APXLDS 2006 photos!!. Proves how great my internet scavenging skills are hahaha. Of course, I found a few familiar faces! Ceek, Elfier, Diana, Jing Wen, Halmen, John Briones, and Chris (AP Director 05/06). Ceek weighed less back then, and Diana didn't have that china bowl hair, haha (by the way, I think the china bowl hair is better! But you're cool with any hair Dee). It never occurred to my mind that Dee and JW would've met Ceek in the Philippines before IC. Looks like they had a rocking time. And Philippines is definately a beautiful country. I know Ceek and Diana affectionately remember their time at APX. I hope I'll do the same with my time in APXLDS 2007.

So went my relatively ordinary day. Now I have AIESEC work to do!! Hup hup!!

Oh yeah almost forgot to say it. Happy Lunar New Year everybody. Or in (honorified) Korean, sae hae bok mani bad eu say yo.

Wet

2007-02-13T21:37:00.000+09:00

Everybody around me knows I absolutely hate the rain.

Today, the skies showered for the first time this year.
I had an umbrella with me, but for no reason, yet a reason, I strolled Insadong with rain pouring down, soaking me up.

What do I believe in?

Getting Ready For APXLDS

2007-02-12T20:31:00.001+09:00

Okay, as you might have noticed I'm not going to APEXPRO unfortunately. The MC team decided that I should attend APXLDS. Oh well, orders are orders. I can learn a lot and have fun at APXLDS as well. I will be going to Hyderabad with Jake, Cindy, Julia, Ziggy. I'll also meet Kanika from Heroes, who's a Hyderabad LC member (if she's not partay-ing or taking exams) and also Anisha, MCP of Malaysia who's a faci for APXLDS and was the chair at Heroes.

So I went to apply for a passport today. This will be the last time that I'll be applying for a passport in the next four years, because I'll get a re-usable one that lasts for four years. Before the law changed, men that haven't completed their military service had to get a new passport everytime they wanted to go out abroad. But thankfully, somebody noticed the futility of this process and changed it so pre-military men can get "normal" passports. I remember on my way from Singapore to Malaysia one passport inspector asked me why I had such a thin passport and I had to tell her about the whole Korean passport restriction rules. Hasn't she had any Korean men to inspect?

I went to Seu-cho District Office, where they make passports. I've been through the procedure three times so thankfully I didn't make mistakes, like leaving my used passport back home (you have to bring one-timer passports back so they can stamp "VOID" on it), bringing photos that cover your ears (not allowed as passport photos), or trying to get a queue number first (fill in the application, then get a number!).

Passport comes out in a week, then I have to apply for a India tourist visa. Considering that Korean tourists to India are increasing rapidly (I've had quite a few around me), I think we should have a visa-waiver program soon. Especially when you consider the visa is a damn 65USD (the passports cost 15 USD for godsake).

Hyderabad, here I come! :)~

Looking Back pt.1 - Singapore

2007-02-10T00:15:00.000+09:00

This is a good way to show how good my memory is, haha. Many have attested to my ability to remember the smallest details of my life. This the most comprehensive account of my time in Singapore and Malaysia that I will ever write.

It's been two months since I arrived in Singapore for my first ever AIESEC international conference. I attended Singapore NLDS, and I headed to Malaysia one day later to attend the Heroes Conference as well.

Initally, my plan was to attend Heroes only, which was scheduled on November 4th. Ceek told me about Heroes during the Entrepreneurship TFT meeting back in October and having taken a break from school and all, I decided to attend. Then as I searched for tickets, I found that my airline of choice (due to the fact that I have quite some frequent-flier points on it), Asiana Airlines, only flew to Kota Kinabalu.

I called up a Malaysia travel agency in Korea and they told me that they could get me a ticket from Kota Kinabalu to Kulua Lumpur, but it was 260 USD and it was by plane. I called up Eddie to consult my options and he told me that the conference had been postponed until December.

So with a sigh of relief I told myself that I had time to explore my options. By then, I had subscribed to the AP GN aiesec.net community because I wanted to receive mailing on Heroes directly when it was sent, instead of Eddie fowarding the relevant mailing back to me.

Then on Nov. 1st I got the AP GN newletter which, I can effectively say, changed my life.

Below the new date of Heroes Conference (Dec. 14th - 17th), there was news of Singapore NLDS being held on Dec. 9th -12th, finishing two days before Heroes started!! What's more it also said that it would be possible for NLDS DGs to go to Heroes by coach ride. I had heard great things about SIPO IC delegation through the AK IC delegation, and that AIESEC Singapore was a strong, well-founded AIESEC country. That, plus the fact that my airline problems would be solved if I went to Singapore first, then to Malaysia then back to Singapore to catch a return flight back to Seoul, I felt a strong desire to attend Singapore NLDS as well. Ceek gave me extra encouragement to attend Singapore NLDS as well, so with that nudge I decided for sure to go to Singapore as well as Malaysia.

I decided to ask some general questions regarding travel from Singapore to Malaysia, and pre-accomodation before the conference started to David Thong, OCP of Singapore NLDS. I sent him an e-mail but I got no reply back. Then I decided to "pull a few strings" and talk to Phoebe, MCVP OGX of @ SIPO.

Now, I still have no idea when I first heard about Phoebe through the AK IC DGs. As I have related to her she was "in the AK discourse" from some point on after the AK DGs returned. I had spoken to her while drinking (Eddie's) whiskey at a bar near MC office after Open Forum when Patrick (Phoebe's honey) called her via cellphone.

(This is the photos of Patrick and Ceek at the bar with me. Posts are boring without photos, ay?)

So after the third National Election Day, I grabbed the chance when I found Patrick outdoors speaking to Phoebe, yet again through his cellphone. Actually I "grabbed" it from Andrew who was speaking to Phoebe before me. Being the smart one she is (no cheekiness), she remembered speaking to me back a few months ago at the bar. I can recall her reaction so vividly when I told her that I had the intention of attending NLDS. Like Ceek's encouragment, her tone and words on the phone really strengthened my resolve to go to Singapore.

So she helped me out through the whole process of going to Singapore NLDS. She kindly answered my very inquisitive e-mail and other questions I had through MSN. We had long, long talks about Korean Culture, drugs, AIESEC, differences in university systems; probably because Eddie and Patrick weren't on MSN or were busy, haha.

Time went by, and I left on the 7th, two days before the conference because Asiana Airlines only had tickets left on the 7th. Phoebe saved my life by kindly offering me to stay at her dorm in NUS before the conference, something you don't see in Korea or even Asia (males staying at a female's place or vice versa).

I arrived in Changgi Airport at 9:50PM, and Cecilia from NUS was supposed to pick me up. I was wearing my pink AIESEC HUFS t-shirt so that she could recognize me, but it turned out she wasn't there when I arrived. I wandered around the airport for a bit, and I saw Deli France at the end of the Arrivals floor of the airport. I told myself that I should go to Deli France during my stay since I was such fan of it back in Hong Kong, and it wasn't in Korea. I tried to find Cecilia, when a guy asked me whether I was Won. The guy was Shin, MCVP ER of @ SIPO.

So Cecilia arrived, and I was escorted to NUS via MRT. Now one thing I noticed is that Singaporean universities aren't really situated near subway (MRT) stations, with perhaps the exception of SMU. Of course, not all universities in Korea are near subway stations (the obxnious Seoul National University and Sung Kyung Kwan Univ. comes to mind) either but most in Seoul are at least within walking distance from a subway station. Hanyang University, a new AIESEC Korea LC, has a subway station INSIDE the campus. And the difference in number of universities is to be considered as well. But anyhow, the proximity of subway stations is one criterion I use for determining a "good" university.

So I arrived at Ridge View Residences, Phoebe's place. But Phoebe wasn't there and Justine, Phoebe's sister Justine came and gave me the keys and kindly took my food for Global Village to be stored away safely in refridgerator. Phoebe also took the liberty of asking Justine to show me around Singapore since I had an extra day before the conference actually started. We decided to meet at 11 AM.

Now, I like walking a lot, and I'm a bit of an explorer when it comes to new places. I washed and headed out to Cheers, the Singaporean 24-hr convenience store. I always think convenience
stores are a good way to understand a country and it's culture, and I enjoy looking around. I bought myself Ruffles potato chips (which I thought were sour cream and onion but happened to be just plain) and Iced Peach Tea. Funny little situation in Cheers was that there were two Koreans, a guy and a gal, who were speaking in Korean and them and I were the only three people there, and it was a bit weird cause it felt like I was in Korea again.

It took me quite awhile to sleep in Phoebe's room. There are times when I'm not a good at adjusting to sleeping in a new environment. And people chittering loudly outside and the wind coming in from an uncloseable window didn't help either. I didn't struggle too much.

Next day, I woke up at about 7:30AM. Or at least that's what I think. Thing was I had no watch and no cellphone (Korean cellphones don't have internal digi-clocks in them, they synchronize their time via cellphone services; no cellphone connection means no time display and no use as a watch) to enable me to keep track of time. I found out through a clock hanging on the University Hall (it was the place across the computer store, don't what the it's for) that it was about 8:10AM by the time got out of Phoebe's room and checked it. So being the explorer I am I decided to take a tour around the university.

I started from the Alumni House across Ridge View and worked my way up to the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. I was very impressed by the Conservatory, being a music afficiando; my LC members said "This is a building inside the campus?"when I showed them photos of the building, haha.

Then passed through the Faculty of Engineering, and reached the place I wanted to see the most, the Central Library. My international politics professor told a class I was that the two places he visits abroad to see what the country is like are universities and historical significant monuments/locations. I would include convenience stores and libraries and exclude historical places (a lot of them are governmental semi-propaganada, but that also shows you something about the country as well I suppose).

Anyway, I visited the Forum Bookstore before going into the library and I left the bookstore with five books in a plastic bag, haha. They had very good collection of books, which I think is partly due to the fact that NUS classes use actual books instead throwing a few photocopies, prints, or a single textbooks like Korean universities. I bought A Question of Power and Sello, both by Bessie Head, Brecht: Collection of Plays Two, But Beautiful A Book About Jazz by Geoff Dyer and Men And Women And Other Poems by Robert Browning. The greatest part was that I got the books by Head, Brecht, Browning for a mere 3.00SGD each! Amazing! I was particularly pleased about the Bessie Head books because she's a writer I like and her books can't be found in Korean bookstores.

So after the purchase I went to the Central Library. First, I was about to give up entering the place becaue they apparently had an electronic gateway that required identification. But this guy saved my life by entering without tagging identification which lead to me realize that you didn't really need it.

The Central Library was awesome. Not too dull nor flashy, lots of cool reading spaces and most importantly, lots of books; Ryan (our HRD) said "I would study a lot harder if we had a library like this"(yeah right!). I liked how they had quotes about libraries and books and written on glass in the bookshelf area. I took pictures just for the sake of remembering them.

So after my book tour it was 10:30 AM and I headed to Ridge View to meet Justine. I was near a few steps to the entrance of Ridge View when a bus stopped just in front of me and Justine came out of it. She said she had a few bills to pay and would be with me in a few minutes. So I went and washed up to get ready.

My pre-conference Singapore tour consisted mainly of these things: books, books, and of course books. I told Phoebe weeks before my arrival that I wanted to go to Borders and Kinokuniya (in the I ended up visiting six bookstores in Singapore haha) so I headed to Raffles Place, Borders and Kinokuniya with Justine.

Borders was truly amazing. The books-on-sale piles that they had on floors weren't some dirtily-used-bad-quality books either. I actually got The Duke Ellington Reader by Mark Tucker (bless his soul) and Edgar Allan Poe : Complete Tales & Poems (in hardcover!) from the sales section. I was tempted to buy a croquis book to do some fooling around with a nib pen, but resisted by I telling myself that I'd get them from Korea.

Kinokuniya was just as great as well. As you can tell, I'm absolutely ecstatic about bookstores (I'll have another blog post about them). It was in Kinokuniya that I found Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation by Umberto Eco, a book which my British professor asked me to buy for him. I read the Introduction in my bed at night during Singapore NLDS and it seemed like a hard but interesting book - looking foward to "borrowing" it back from my professor. But one thing that annoyed me about Kinokuniya was that their Book DB search isn't that user-friendly and it took me some time to find the Umberto Eco book.

Justine and I then had lunch at the food court in the Takashimaya Shopping Centre where Kinokuniya resides. Justine had Korean Bulgogi (which is basically marinated beef) and I had Roasted Duck with Rice. I tried some of the Bulgogi and I was surprised to find it was very close to the stuff they have in Korea. I suppose the it's easy to get ingredients within the Asian region (evidence supplemented by my experience in Hong Kong as well; I had original Korean food everyday). I hear they make terrible Kimchi in France haha. Bon Appetite?

Now comes the worst experience in Singapore. I'm a big IKEA fan and like all genuine IKEA fans, I only eye-shop and never buy anything. And Korea having no IKEA (which I think is absurd), I wanted to visit IKEA for the first time in eight whole years.

But no-no. Fate wouldn't allow me to do that. Justine and I asked eight people (all locals as well) the bus stop that would take us to IKEA, but they simply wouldn't tell us the right directions. Everybody gave us different directions. This is why I told Sharon just yesterday that Singaporeans could be generalized as "too polite or too proud to admit that they don't know directions". So my reunion has with IKEA is postponed until ..... well who knows when?

So having given up the hunt for the bus stop we decided to head over to Singapore Management University where the NLDS facis were preparing for the big day up ahead.

Well, after some searching around (again), we reached the SMU administration building where NLDS was going to be held. There I finally met, Phoebe, the person I'd been talking to for the last month or two (depends on where you count from). And I met Diana, Sharon, David, Andrey, Adam, Francois, Yasmine, Imran, and the rest of the facilitators, all of whom I'd be acquainted with for next four days. I also got acquainted with chicken and curry, which would be my staple food for the next 12 days, argh. (Not that I don't love chicken and curry, but everyday for almost two weeks? Please.)

After another day at Phoebe's place, NLDS "finally" started. I could go over every session went through, every person I met and talked to for the last days, but I won't do that. I'll just write down some (non-session) memorable moments.

1) Teaching Phoebe Korean : Now she knew the basics, "Ahnyoung" "Saranghae" "Bogo sipuh" and the more intermediate phrase "Cee kwang ah, bap mug uh so?". I taught her how to say "nothing special", "is there something wrong?", how to make a question out of an ordinary sentence and vice versa. I also deliberately called her Pee-be time to time, because Koreans can't pronounce "Ph" :P.

2) My ubiquitous use of Oppa : Oppa is big brother is Korean. At NLDS, there was mainly Dei oppa, Andrey oppa, and Sharon oppa (haha).

3) Holding impromptu Korean Culture 101 classes: No, North Koreans aren't a different people, race, or ethinicity. Yes, North Korea and South Korea have different social, economic, legal, political systems. And yes, we do eat dogs. Rain is okay, but he isn't the best we have.

4) Teaching Diana "Ahgi Gom" : Cute little roll-call involving Momma bear, Papa bear, and Baby bear. Originally a Korean kids song. Sorry I didn't know the whole thing, Dee. I'll teach you properly next time :)~

5) Sharon's DLD opening. : Left a lasting impression on me. I should use the format sometime. Plagiarism? The most highest form of flattery, haha.

6) Qiqi's love for Korean pop culture : Yes, I like Kim Tae-hee a lot too.

7) This Is The World We Live In: Love the Faci roll call. I've been through 60+ LC/Faci/MC roll calls, but this is only one I actually memorize. I still dance to the moves every now and then haha.

8) Imran's The Calling : Imran with his guitar singing Wherever You Will Go by The Calling. Good one there. We should really have some instruments and good music at AIESEC conferences.

9) Freedom-centered meals : This is something I think we should adopt in AIESEC Korea. In AIESEC Korea conferences you get assigned to a group and you eat all your meals with your group only and at the end of the conference you only get to know your group people. But I really liked the idea of having no seats and sitting in floors and in groups, though I have no idea whether it was deliberate or not haha.

10) AIESEC Dances! : Can't forget this! Got to know a lot of new ones, courtesy of Dei (who knows 17 dances by heart!) and other @ dance loving people (Imran, Sharon, Diana). You guys should dance to Together Again!

11) Andrey's rejection of my caricature : I drew a caricature Andrey on mahjong paper and he rejected it by scribbling it out! Boohooo.

12) Francois telling me I was Korea's best export : Second only to Kimchi!

13) Stealing people's internet connections : I don't own a laptop, so a big thanks to Dei and Khai Jia for allowing me to use their laptop internet connections!

14) Global Village : Having to run a booth alone (big thanks to Phoebe for volunteering to help!). Dragging 20 KGs of Global Village stuff all the way from Seoul to Singapore. But Cecilia coming back for Kimchi, Ewa coming back for cookies, and people telling me that the berry juice was good made it worth it. Guy named Igor was abusing the berry juice when I came back from the washroom! Bah! I didn't really get to enjoy the other booths, but the country performances were superb (with the exception of having to see the infamous Japanese roll call again - catchy, but no thank you).

15) Hugging after closing!! : Now this is something that we should really in adopt in Korea. Now Koreans have an aversion towards general hugging (esp. female-male hugging - a whole blog post in itself), and I understand that people are going to see each other again since only AIESEC Korea people come to AIESEC Korea conferences unlike Singapore NLDS, but still, show a little affection for godsake. Coming from a guy who loves hugs (and struggles with the anti-hugging culture in Korea), hugging is one of the best things on earth, period.

16) And every other second of it : Sorry to all the people and events I didn't write down, or get to meet or experience. They say that memory is what you record, but that doesn't mean that it necessarily have to be written recordings; I remember all of you in my head and heart.

Four days went by just like that. One thing that was new to me was that there were sessions into the afternoon/night on the last day as well, which is in sharp contrast with AIESEC Korea's conferences which ends it's last day with only a closing plenary in the morning.

I would have to stay in Singapore for another day since Heroes would be on the 14th. So me, Khai Jia ("the only Malaysian delegate"), and Daniel ("the shy German guy") went to a backpacker's hostel near the SMU dorms in Little India.

Now the backpackers wasn't the best of all places to stay. But I guess for a price we paid (15.00 SGD) we couldn't expect too much. When we first came in, there was this Aussie who spoke fluent Bahasa Malay, and tried to speak KJ only (and KJ, he was not good looking!!! I'm only mentioning the encounter with him so I can say this, haha).

The place we slept in had about 7-8 two-story beds and it was heavily air-conditioned and packed with Australians. It was so air-conditioned that I woke up in the middle of the night to put on a coat. I can sleep if it's hot, but not when it's cold. Khai Jia was the only Asian girl in the whole hostel (or at least out of the people we saw) and I was one of the only two Asian males. But looking back, Daniel was probably the only European as well, haha. Makes our crowd pretty unique.

I was the early-bird, as usual. Woke at about 8:30-9PM-ish, fooled around for awhile and woke KJ and Daniel up at around later cause our check out was at noon. We had the free toast for breakfast, and we went out as Daniel as our guide to go "sight-seeing" around Singapore.

Looked around the old police building (colorful place), the Parliament building and of course, a random bookstore (sorry to KJ and Daniel if they thought I was there to buy something, ha).

Daniel had to go clean up the SMU Admin. building (poor Daniel) and so he left us. Me and KJ wandered around Raffles Place for awhile, then got a bit hungry and went to Deli France (a touching moment for me haha). I had a lasagna, and KJ fish pasterie, both of which were good. Deli France has always been that place of overpriced, miniature foods, but still tasty. We also met a very cute braided blonde girl, who KJ just had to take a picture of.

Afterwards, Cecilia met us up at a MRT to show us around. We went to Vivocity, which is a relatively new shopping complex, akin to the COEX in Korea. The view outside the complex was quite nice, you could see Sentosa across the sea. Yet again, I couldn't resist overlooking bookstores, so I went to a nice second-handed bookstore and another Borders.

Then we met up with the NLDS OC team and Imran for dinner at a Thai restraunt, which was great because I didn't get to say bye to them properly. I absolutely hate parting with people without saying bye to them properly. The Thai food was good too. Good thing I ordered rice as well cause the soup in the noodles was good, like I expected. Koreans just love rice with soup.

After dinner, we were in a bit of a rush to 'try' catch us a train that would take us to Kuala Lumpur. After going back to Little India to fetch our luggage from the hostel, we rushed to try catch a train. Nabeel and Jason would be waiting for us at the station ... so started my journey into Malaysia......

Genetic Write-up Of Koreans.

2007-02-08T00:52:00.000+09:00

Now this is something of a broad topic that I've been wondering for a long time. Just what is the genetic write-up of Koreans? Are we really that genetically related to other Asian people, and if we are, how much? It makes me sick when some Koreans pride themselves as people of pure ancestry and for never attacking a foreign country (both points are false).

So I remember of having done a search on English google and the Wikipedia for some answers but they didn't seem to have any material that answered my questions, which weren't limited to the ones above.

Today, I came across a special feature in the the Donga Science (Gwahak Donga Magazine. Donga newspaper is one of the biggest newspapers in Korea and Donga Science is a seperately sold magazine that covers science and technology issues). It's a good read at times. A friend of mine subscribes to it, and the one I came across had in big, bold letters "Hanryu (the Korean Wave; Rain, Goong, My Sassy Girlfriend, et al) is the power of 0.00586%".

Being an ardent critic of Hanryu (I think it's bullshit) I thought it was some mediocre article, and it turned out to be one, but it also had information of the genes of Koreans that I had overlooked on the news.

So who are Koreans, genetically?

Before getting into the numbers, some pre-knowledge. People are different in looks because of SNP or Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, or variation in nucleotide (DNA sequence) differences. Typical human beings have a total of 3 billion nucleotides, if you put together two random human beings, they will have about 3 million nucleotides difference, or roughly 1% difference. In other words, 99.9% of the human DNA sequence is the same, and it's the 0.1% that will determine the difference in looks. But even within this 0.1%, not all of it is different. There is a difference in percentage of this 0.1% that will experience an SNP, which depends on which two people you compare.

According to research, there is within the 0.1% or the 3 million nucleotides a 5.86% difference between Koreans and Japanese people, Japnese people being the genetically closest to Koreans than any of other people of a foreign nationality. Then comes the Chinese, which we are differentiated by 8.38% difference. Since this is out the 3 million nucleotides (0.18%) Koreans have 0.00586% difference compared with the Japanese, and 0.00838% compared with the Chinese. But I don't think it matters if you say 5.86% and 8.38% because the 99.9% of the whole Human DNA is the same anyway, whether you're Cablinasian, Parsi, or whatever.

Another interesting research result in next article written by a biology professor is that we have more South Asian lineage than most Koreans coventionally assume. Koreans wouldn't be even remotely surprised of being genetically close to Japanese or Han Chinese, but what about Vietnamese, Thai, or Hmong people? Albeit not as close as the Japanese or Chinese (to be more specific Koreans are the closest to Beijing Han Chinese), Korean DNA definately shows traces of South Asian descent.

So what does this all mean? The interepretation of the proximity of foreign people's DNA to Korean DNA by the writer (head secretary at the dean's office of Korean Institute of Science and Technology) is to me, despicable. She ends the "0.00568% article" by contemplating that whether the 0.00586% of "Korean DNA" could be the driving force for Hanryu. Doesn't she have better things to write, like call-me-back Post Its for Robert Laughlin?

February

2007-02-08T00:31:00.000+09:00

Yes, it's that time of the year. Valentines, back-to-school, birthdays (Happy BirthdayDad), farewells, hellos, and whatever. So what I am doing?

1. National Recruitment Campaign Team - Okay, basically AIESEC Korea's recruitment methods suck, so this year, we're tearing it all apart and making recruiment guidelines that actually makes AIESEC the 'culture of excellence' it should be viewed as. I'm in the Selection Guideline team, and my job is to make sure the guideline follows the Global Competency Model.

2. Reading - I've been reading various books and magazines. Picking up The Economist here and then.

3. Apply for classes - School spring term starts in late Feb - early March, so I should be deciding on the classes I'll enroll in.

4. MAKE SOME GODDAMN MONEY - This actually should be my first priority since I'm broke after that trip to Busan I mentioned below. Especially if I want to go to APXPRO in Hyderabad in March (I'm still waiting for MC approval for me to go to XPRO though. I'm not quite sure if I want to go if they say I should go to APLDS instead of XPRO.)

Well that's my boring Febuary. Hope some exciting things will turn up here and there. And some dough 'rolling' oppurtunities as well. Wish the best for everybody reading this!

Notice of Vancancy

2007-02-02T15:55:00.000+09:00

Will be here for the next two days with the 3 year AIESECers (alumni? lol)

See ya! I'll have photos up and all.

Fuck Tour Express.

2007-02-01T11:56:00.000+09:00

I hate this site.

TourExpress is one of the major online airline ticketing websites/agencies. It's run by Daum, one of Korea's biggest internet portals, and that link enables them to be connected with literally all airlines that run from and into Incheon and Kimpo Aiport. For instance, another popular online ticketing site in AIESEC circles is Whypaymore? (good site name, as Heather mentions), but the number of lines shown when you search is limited for some reason, and TourExpress seems to have the most number of results.

It has lots of results right, so it's a good site right? W-R-O-N-G. It's interface is so user-unfriendly that you could cry or smash the computer with your fist trying to find a ticket that will fly you to Herat or Ma'an (just kidding, both cities don't have airports). Actually I think it's nearer to user-killer.

First, the search results take a long time to load, and if you wait 30 seconds, chances are about 6:1 that they'll come up with "No results searched" "There is no schedule for that date" "Sorry we are having problems with the system. Please try again later". Now the thing is, when you're looking for the perfect ticket you're going to have to search at least six times, especially with this site. So that means you're going to get a message like that at every encounter with this terrible site.

Second, why are they so secretive about their damn taxes? Customers are going to have to pay them in any case. In order to see the taxes you have to finish the whole proccess of ticketing and when it comes up on "My Flights" on your account information, only then can you see what the actual price you're going to have to pay is.

So in order to find myself the cheapest ticket and the most comfortable one time-wise when I tried to buy tickets to Singapore and Malaysia in December, I had to reserve every ticket that I was interested in, and it would appear on My Flights and I would check the aggregate sum (ticket price + taxes). Then if I wasn't interested I would delete it. I did this with about 7-8 tickets. Talk about manual labor.

Third, why do they show tickets that aren't available? This is probably the most annoying problem of them all. When you type in your date, destination and etc, they show you ALL the airlines departing regardless of actual availablity. So even though every ticket in every airline might be taken, you still have to click through every search result in order to know it.

Another sub-criticism related to this is that, they do this regardless of whether or not you selected "Return Flight" or "One-Way Flight" in your search criteria. What I mean is, if you selected Return Flight, it's best that the site find you only the results that actually have in-and-out flights right? Not for Tour Express apparently. As I said in the above paragraph, they show all results regardless of availability, but they also show results whether or not a return flight is available.

Fourth, the site isn't improving at all, it's getting worse. Before they upgraded their site, say you wanted a flight on Feb. 1st and it wasn't available; they'd have a simple link on the search page that would allow you to check for tickets on the same airline on Jan 31st or Feb 2nd at a single click. But for some absurd reason they got rid of this function. So internet surfers are forced to click Back and search again a milion times.

Worst thing is, people care about the price of their tickets, so they're going to have to live with this.

I just might write to them about this. I bet they're going to reply to me with a "re: Here's how your site could improve. 'Dear Tour Express user. Thank you for your e-mail, however blah blah blah.' "

NCON pt. 2; The Actual Event Itself.

2007-01-31T00:47:00.000+09:00

Despite me and other people being all critical about NCON (there are now posts on the AK community about it) there were brigther, festive sides to it. Now for the content of NCON itself!!

First, I must start on a darker note. (I prefer bad news then good news like most people.) Ted's LC, Soong Sil University has been expelled from AIESEC Korea membership. The reason was SSU had very low perfermance and it was decided that it was not up to AIESEC membership criteria.

I saw Ted after the whole ceremony ended and he was almost in tears (I could see it in his eyes). Everybody including me offered him their consolation but he didn't really want to hang around or talk as if he was okay. He just said a few goodbyes and he went off somewhere and didn't seem to pick up his cellphone.

Although I could never completely understand his pain, I can imagine what he's going through. He worked hard but his EB team didn't support him that well; Jae-Myun, their ICXD was the only one that seemed to make an effort to work (for instance, their ERD was out of contact during the summer for ages) and even he went to military service in November. Now his alumni will be questioning him and the incoming EB team, and he will simply be remembered by people that don't know his efforts as "the LCP that banished his LC from AK". But outsiders' opinions probably aren't the least of his problems. He's going to miltary service early in Feb. and he's probably sorry as no one as ever been to his incoming EB members that he isn't there to help and support them. The worst of it comes when you realize that Ted's university life has all been about AIESEC.

I hope Ted gets over it and gets back to the nice, affable guy I shook hands with just before NCON started. Good luck to SSU as well. I'm sure with hard work and determination you guys will be become a proud member of AIESEC Korea again.

Now some better news about AIESEC Korea!!

Congratulations to Sook Myung Women's University and Han Yang University! They have gone up from start-up LCs (unofficial) to become extension LCs (officially part of AIESEC Korea membership) at this year's NCON. I saw SMU members (it can't be SWU since there's already Seoul Women's University right?) hold hands praying just as Ceek was about the membership results. Just as Ceek said "Chuka habnida!! (Congratulations in [honorified] Korean)" all the members burst in tears and everybody in the ballroom was cheering and clapping. Same happened with Han Yang University, only they didnt't really cry. They had a handmade banner which read "We're going to LIA too!!!", which was funny.

Congraulations again to both LCs, I will be watching your contributions to the growth of AIESEC Korea!! (We now have a new record of 11 LCs in one city!!)

More things to celebrate!! Ewha Women's University got the Best LC Award. One their salient strengths was that they had very good member retention rates, something AK isn't very good at. And Sogang Universikty got the Most Proggessive LC Award. So, congratulations, especially to Jandi and Andrew!!

Wow, this post is getting long. And I still haven't started with the photos. So here we go.

(Special thanks to the NCON photographer and her nifty Canon 400D DSLR camera. Wish I had one. All the high-quality resolution photos are hers, and the rest are from my Olympus C-755 UZ.)

NCON 2007!

The MC team on stage.

The LCPs!

Ceek giving Il Yu (45th MCVP HR) flowers and an award. He steered a good term and he's a role model to many people as an AIESECer and "outside" of AIESEC as well. He received an award at NCON for helping out AIESEC Korea register as a non-profit organization in Korea.

Il, getting down from the stage. Nice capture of the moment.

HUFS LC, 06/07 Term NCON DGs.

Bristina, Bristina's dad, Cho-rong's Parents, Sang-hwa, Sang-hwa's mom.

Our "babies" (don't like that term). Best of luck on your EB term.
Make us proud.

My team. Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, third-year members.

Justine (SWU LCP/NCON Photographer/NCON OC F) told me it was a good shot. I think not :P.

Heather should learn to be camera-shy for a change. But good picture :)

Can you spot the differences, erm, similarities?

The MCP dining table. Ceek brought his mom and dad, but I wasn't important enough to be introduced, haha.

The MC team dining table.

Back of the conference hall.

I like this photo a lot. But it also shows why Patrick should quit smoking. (Sorry Pat. Then again, being MCVP Alumni and all..)

With this photo, I can safely say that John Wayne is a camera whore.

Nari caught fooling around during duty. Jokes, this was taken before the start.

Young-hwae, Lucia, Heather. What a random bunch.
When will Koreans stop using the peace sign (or Victory sign)
when posing for a photo? (Just for the record, I don't do it.)

More people added. John Wayne, Jung-wook, Young-hwae, Lucia, Heather.

OC OC OC!! Uhyee Uhyee Uhyi!

National Congress pt. 1; Who's NCON is/was it?

2007-01-28T00:54:00.000+09:00

Jan 19th was the historical launching of our annual National Congress, or NCON. Like I posted on 'My AIESEC Schedule' earlier, it was held at the Air Forces Assembly Hall (it's official name is the Air Forces Club or something like that, crappy translation) near Daebang Station, Seoul.

Now while, the photos speak for themselves (I will comment on them as well, haha), the title of this post obviously does not. It is a title I have been thinking of for a long time, so let me elaborate.

I dunno when I first received this information, but I probably heard from the MC team even before the OC team was formed that this year's NCON was going to be more fancy and grandiose than any of the previous NCONs. From the very beginning the MC team had in mind this year's NCON being held at a big ballroom with dinner served by waiters and all.

Naturally, holding an event at a more grandeur place requires the DG fee to increase, especially when you consider that it is much harder to receive financial funding for NCON than for other national events such as LIA (the easiest), NLDS, and etc. This year, NCON had no funding from any external or partner company, so the DG fee was 25,000 won (25 USD) for second/third year AIESECers and 40,000 won (40 USD) for alumni, parents, externals and other "guests." This was a big increase from last year in which the DG fee was 15,000 won. And even with this increase the fees from all the DGs would not be enough to save the OCs from creating a deficit, and the OCs had to reimburse the deficit with their personal money, some 100,000 won (100 USD) per OC member.

Many people in AK saw NCON as excessive lavishness. A few people said half-jokingly-half-seriously that they would hold their own party if the DG fee was going to be 25,000 won. It wasn't from some group of nonsensical AIESECers either. (Nobody held a seprate "rebellion party" in the end, well, at least if there was I certainly wasn't invited.)

You have to know where this counter-aggressiveness is coming from. The NLDS fee was 65,000 (65 USD) and if you were to go to NCON that's already 90 USD. People might say that that isn't so much if you really care about AIESEC, but what really got some people worked up is the justification for holding an overwrought occassion.

The explanation given for holding an NCON like that was that they wanted to invite externals and parents to join in our NCON. Yes, that was only good reason the MCs had. To put it more meanly, they just wanted to show off to outside observers.

So comes the title, Who's NCON is/was it? Was it really worth driving up the the DG fee and making the OCs plug the big deficit hole in order to impress externals, at the expense of risking the possibility that AIESECers wouldn't come because of the high fee?

Now the fees caused a lot of noise, but the noise didn't really pipe down after NCON, it actually got noiser because of the event itself.

First, NCON started 45 minutes later than it should've. This is probably as bad as the time the MC TEAM was late for National Election Day (the second one with John Wayne as MCP candidate.) Of course, Ceek and the NCON Chair, a HUFS and MC alumnus, Mr. Kyung-lim Kim apologized for the major delay, and the delay was caused by a long NLCPM. But nevertheless, it was disappointing to see one of the most important events of an AIESEC year start almost an hour later than it should've.

Second, Ceek has to learn to be less nervous in front of an audience if he's to be MCP. Sorry to Ceek, but his NCON presentation performance was poor. Lots of stuttering, mispronunciations, and he had to look back at the PPT on the big screen so often that it felt like he wasn't addressing the audience at times. He's been told many times that his public speaking isn't as good as it should be. He was good at his Election Day and LC visits, but he got low marks and critical comments from the most recent NLDS because of his speaking at sessions. I wasn't there to witness it, since he wasn't a Faci at any of the third-year sessions, but I could see why people say he has a quite a lot to improve on. But like I said, he was good at Election Day, so I'm sure that he has it in him if he tries hard and practices.

Third, this is a comment of my own, but I don't know why Ceek did all the talking while explaining the Year Plan. Sure, as MCP he has the right to talk about the overall Year Plan, but I think it would've been much better if the MCVPs of each respective part talked about their Part Priorities instead all of them being explained by Ceek, especially considering his performance. It doesn't take more than 30 seconds to get up and and introduce yourself.

Fourth, I asked Elfier (NCON OCP and ex-MCVP ICX) privately how many externals were present, and he said zero. Yep, we hold the event that marks the start of a new AIESEC term at an extragavant venue to lure them to come and none of them turn up. There were about 190 DGs present, and excluding about 20-30 alumni and parents, that means about 170-180 out of approx. 240-260 members. Honestly, the turnout wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I do know for a fact that a few AIESECers were deterred from coming because of the high DG fee.

It was the sum total of the first two points plus the increased DG fee that elicited quite a few disgruntled AIESECers.

Personally, I'm wasn't that against the idea of holding a fancy NCON itself. I'm just writing that quite a few people thought that it wasn't "Oh it was so exiciting and motivating" event it should've been.

Who's NCON is/was it? What is the exact purpose and nature of NCON? Who is our main target and beneficiary?

We have to be exact about these questions before planning another NCON next year. I hope that the people involved in planning NCON learn from this year's mistakes to make a better NCON.

This was the critical post about NCON. National Congress Pt 2. will be more brighter, cause there were things to celebrate and be happy about. Photos will be up too :)

MSN Etiquette?

2007-01-26T00:23:00.000+09:00

(Note: Although this was "inspired" by a few people, this post is not meant as a direct shot at anyone in particluar, should anyone think differently. I've been meaning to write about this for a long time. )

The one thing that annoys me the most is when people say that they add you on MSN, or ever more annoyingly, actually and add you on MSN and leave it at that. I have a few people that I haven't even talked to after the person added me on their list.

One of my simple, basic principles in life is to talk to the person FIRST, once I've added him/her on MSN. Because me adding him or her on MSN implies that I am at the very least remotely interested in the person, that I like to talk to him or her, and furthermore that I would like to sustain a relationship whatever the limitations of online friendships are.

No wonder it confounds me when people add me and never talk to me. Maybe I make too much of a deal out of adding MSN IDs. (I don't tend to add people just because I know them.) For most people it might be like collecting namecards, you can throw them away in a box or namecard organizer and come back to them when you want to. Not for me.

Like I said, it isn't that I'm exactly agitated by the type of people I'm describing; nothing would please me more than a mute person suddenly talking to me first on MSN. I'm more to the effect, puzzled.

Best Music I Heard In 2006 Pt.1

2007-01-21T14:19:00.000+09:00

Now before I start, there are two things I want to say. Fiarst this is the best music I heard 'in' 2006, not the best music I heard that was released in 2006. So there are albums from the 50s to albums that were released in the turn of the year. Secondly, this is not a 'Best of 2006' list, since I think that only people who listen to at least 150 or more albums released that year is really qualified to make a list of that sort. And Pt.1 covers albums, and Pt.2 will cover the performances and indivdiual songs.

One more thing, to save you the trouble I state that I have nowhere on my list Se7en, BoA, Rain, Big Bang, or any other Korean artist that appears on Asian TV regularly.

Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble - Couldn't Stand The Weather : And I couldn't stand playing a fake guitar with my bare hands every time I listend to "Scuttle Buttlin"!! Stevie brings on the blues!

Tonex - O2 : Shit, this album had my attention for the first half of 2006. Proves you can make head-bopping, danceable music without making it corny. And good vocals too. Pity he retired too early.

Ganksta N.I.P. - South Park Psycho : Haha, this is one nasty hiphop album. I told my friends this was the Southern N.W.A., but it'll probably horrify your mom even more. They call themselves the originators of "Horrorcore" Rap. Dunno about that, but it's great to hear some good gritty rap in an age where hardcore hiphop is hard to find.

Clara Hill - Restless Times : Wow, what a fabulous album. I don't really like House a lot, but I enjoy House-influenced music, especially House with contemporary R&B and I think I can say this album is one of them. (Just for the record, she calls her style Deep Soul.) I don't know how many times I've heard "Here" and "That Easy" on this album. Clara is co-credited with writing her songs, and I'd be very impressed if she took a "leading role" in co-writing them. Fabulous cover as well. She's very photogenic I think.

Husky Rescue - Country Falls : This is one of those albums that I came across really randomly. Nobody around me listens to them except me. I found this hard to classfiy and I'm think I'm being a bit obtuse by saying it's Indie Rock with Country music influences; the daps of Country was what made it very enjoyable for me. It sounded like a Western Jaurim (the most popular Korean "indie" band in Korea, if that makes sense) to me in that they both use a female lead vocal that sounds similiar (to me), but Husky Rescue is better, haha.

Natalie Walker - Urban Angel : The cover and cover title may look as if it's a cheesy commercial pop album, but I dare say it's not. It has mass appeal, but it's nothing to be guilty of. It's a a somewhat dark, very emotional album with good consistency in song quality and good vocals. "Sanckens Doll" is a great heart-breaker.

Miles Davis - Miles Ahead : If I were to pick just one person for one single person in one genre to listen to for the rest of my life, in Jazz it would be Miles Davis. It's not just about having a few good songs on a few good albums. He's made five classic albums at the VERY least, and was an innovator in jazz with very diverse styles. And Miles Ahead is just perfect. "I Don't Wanna Be Kissed (By Anyone By You)" makes me want to learn the trumpet.

Joe Zawinul + Zawinul Syndicate - World Tour : Zawinul should collect a dollar and an apology from anyone who says white men can't do or "understand" funk. Maybe this isn't the best album to show it, but there are wallops of undeniable funk. This album rather shows his range of influences, from European church bells to "good old" American Jazz to perhaps even Caribbean music with the use of kalimbas and the song "Caribbean Anecdotes".

Minnie Riperton - Come To My Garden : Everybody in Korea got to know Minnie via the classic "Lovin' You" via a TV commerical. While I absolutely love "Lovin' You", I wouldn't say it was one of her very best. To find that out that, listen to this album.

Julie Dexter and Khari Simmons - Moon Bossa : Probably one of the albums I listened to the most this year. Has lots of commerical appeal, and Koreans would probably love the songs on here as well. Julie has a delightful voice, and the album has a very uptight, cheerful mood running through it.

Nina Simone - Live At The Village Gate : Despite what the cover may signify, this album shows that you can be a legendary female vocalist without shouting your lungs out like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston (no offense, I like them both.) I absolutely love her version of "House Of The Rising Sun."

Gil Evans - Svengali : (Apparently, there isn't a good high-res picture of the cover on the internet.) I've always had great respect for Gil Evans, and this album is a melting pot of different sounds such as funk, rock, post-bop, big band. Very eclectic, but never incoherent (unlike a lot of genre-crossover efforts I come across.)

Sonny Rollins - Without A Song - The 9/11 Concert : 50 years into his career, and the Saxphone Colossus is still standing strong! Sure he retired not once, but twice before his revival, and critics say his albums aren't up to par with his live performances; so what could be better than a recording of a live performance?

Sonny Rollins lived in NY, a few blocks away from the WTC building, and heard it collapse after the planed crashe. When he was forced to evacuate, he did with his saxophone in his hand. This concert is the performance he played right after 9/11

The opening solo lines to "Why Was I Born" has my vote as the best first one minute of not merely a saxophone song, a jazz song, but any song I've listened to. Stephen Scott on the piano is a magnificent companion.

Jackie McLean - Bluesnik : Jackie should be mentioned along with Coltrane, Rollins, Adderley, Gordon as one of the greats. Very 'blue' album. I like the cover a lot as well.

Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch : Whoever thought that avant-garde jazz would be such a joy to listen to? Eric Dolphy's flutes soar so high. A bonafide classic in everybody's books, including mine.

J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding - The Great Kai & J.J. - My very first trombone experience. A big thank you to J.J. and Kai for making it so wonderful. Not to mention the all-star lineup of Gil Evans, Paul Chambers and etc.

Idris Muhammad - House of the Rising Sun : Funky funky funky! This will be a blow in the face to jazz purists, cause Idris can do 'purist' jazz just as well as any drummer in the history of jazz (go listen to his albums with Ahamd Jamal), but he chooses to explore the funky sides of jazz, like this album shows. Accompanied by Idris'drums, every player does his part in this album. I've met the man himself in person, and though he limps a little bit in his walking he's extermely energetic and on the set, not to mention one of the softest, humblest people I've met.

Az - The Format : Aahhh... This basically saved hiphop listening for me in 2006. AZ will never be the person who rhymed over "Life's A Bitch" with Nas, and we have to get over that. But the tone of his voice and his flow, which was my initial attraction to him, is still good on this album and I think it was one of the most underrated albums this year.

The Isley Brothers - Harvest For The World : Along with the the Jones (Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Thad Jones), The Isley Brothers are best musical family ever. So many great tracks on here, and I'm constantly amazed at the quality of songwriting. Ron's vocals are timeless, and Ernie is a monster on the electric guitar. Gem of the 70s, for sure.

J.R. Bailey - Just Me N You : The one of the best male R&B album I heard this year. Also one of the few albums that I found every track to be enjoyable, especially "Everything I Want I See In You." The album cover looks like something René Magritte would've painted.

Joe Pass - Virtuoso : What can I say about the man that hasn't been said already? He's what the album cover says, a virtuoso. "How High The Moon" is just astounding.

Johnny 'Guitar' Watson - Gangster Of Love : Bring on the funk!! Johnny Guitar Watson is a severely underexposed guitar player; I'd suprised if 1/100 of the guitar players in Korea knew him. This is a compilation album of the best tracks of Johnny. The track "Ain't That A Bitch" is already classic, but I like "Love Jones" and "Booty Ooty" just as much.

Surreal & DJ Balance - Future Classics : No, it's nowhere near a classic album, nor does it have any classic tracks. I couldn't understand what the hype was with this album in Korean hiphop circles, but nonetheless tight album.

Panacea - Ink Is My Drink : I still have to figure out whether it was something wrong with me or with the collective state of hiphop in 2006, but this was the only album that I thought was worth listening to again, along with Future Classics and The Format above. It was very well received this in underground hiphop circles. Yes, there's nothing new about the album, but the beats are good, the flow and lyrics are on point. What else could you ask for?

Ravi Shankar - Three Ragas : Brings peace to your mind. Music when you can't listen to any music at all.

R.Kelly - Happy People/U Saved Me : I'm sorry, but I've liked his music for quite some time now, and though his latest album TP-3.com sucks Happy People/U Saved Me is one of the best double albums to come out in quite some time. He has the vocals, the songwriting skills, and he makes Christian-flavored music that I enjoy very much. I will be coming back to this album for years to come, just as I do with all the previous R.Kelly music.

Robin Thicke - Evolution of Robin Thicke : If you like Justin Timberlake, listen to this album. His music is kind of like Justin's but with much better vocals. I didn't expect much, but I admit I was surprised. The track with Lil' Wayne is simply wrong, wrong, wrong, but other than that very enjoyable, especially the ballads.

Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom : Now this was my 'Aberration of 2006' album, cause it's an album by Mike Patton, singer of the "alternative rock" group Faith No More, and it's a very eclectic rock based album. The muisc has all the signs of an anger-rock group but it features diverse artists such as Bebel Gilberto, Norah Jones, Rahzel, Kool Keith, Dub Trio and etc. I listened to the album because I was interested to hear the music of an artist that would want to collaborate with these artists (some of whom I like), and the result of my curiosity turned out to be very pleasurable. Caters to a diverse audience, in my opinion.

Motohiro Nakashima - I Dreamt Constellations Sang : I listened to a few Japanese albums this year, especially on the jazz-funk/soul-jazz side such as Sleep Walker, Soil and Pimp and they were OK, but I didn't think they had any replay value. But this album, on the other hand, had my attention for quite awhile. Very quiet, relaxed, contemplative jazz music using mainly guitars, strings, and keyboards with a sprinkle of programmed drumming. Best heard at night.

And it gets my nomination for best album title of this year, though I think "I Dreamt A Whole Constellation Sang" would've been better.

Maceo Parker - Southern Exposure : The amazing Maceo Parker, who started as James Brown's (RIP) saxophonist, but didn't stop there and became one of the best jazz-funk/funk-jazz players out there. I saw the great man at the Jarasum Island Jazz Festival this year, and though I was disappointed that he didn't play any of the songs on this album, it was a good performance.

Coleman Hawkins - The Hawk Fliest High : Before John Coltrane, there was Coleman Hawkins. Coleman Hawkins was the original saxophone giant along with Charlie Parker, Coleman the Tenor giant, and Charlie the Alto giant. This was my soundtrack for 2006; it's an album that you can listen to in all moods, good or bad, elated or depressed, frivolous or solemn.

Lee Konitz - Subconscious-Lee : Relaxing 'cool jazz' from the early years of Lee Konitz. His compositions are warm and soothing and at times playful as well. Great for beginners of jazz as well.

David Garfield - Giving Back: I listened to this in early December and I'm still listening to it now. David Garfield is a saxophonist that makes great smoothed-out jazz, and it's a delight for the ears of fans of artists like Fourplay and David Sanborn. The track "Tok" will go down as one of the best saxphone tracks I know.

2007 LIA Faci Applications ARE OPEN!

2007-01-19T11:03:00.000+09:00

(Above: 2006 LIA's Drinking Comptetion [photo courtesy of Ryan], Below: 2005 Official LIA DG Photo)

Like I mentioned in my last post, Log Into AIESEC (LIA) is a our annual newie start-up/induction conference which happens almost straight after recruiment, usually for three days on the last week of March.

Today, I checked our AIESEC Korea official community (we use a cyber community named Freechal, instead of AIESEC.net like we should be doing) and there it was in, black and red letters, LIA Facilitator Application Forms.

Now you give you the context as to why I'm so excited, it's mainly cause this will be my first experience facilitating (excluding Local LDS, which is basically a miniature-NLDS you hold for a day with your LC), and secondly, I'll be working with a MC and Facilitator team that I love and respect very much. But probably overshadowing these reasons is that I can really see the desire and will to rectify a conference that was below average. (I'm sorry to the former MCs and Facis, but this is true, and there is undeniable consensus on this.)

The problem was with former LIAs were that they were to an extent, fun-orientated and that naturally comprimised the nature of the conference, which is to introduce AIESEC in a proper fashion. I also think that introduction to AIESEC such as terminology and culture should be done at the micro-level in the LC before LIA happens, and that LIA should introduce concrete excercises and leadership activities, so as to give them a strong impression of what @ DOES rather than keep feeding them about what it is or strives to be. Sure the AIESEC XP, Role, Core Work, Vision, Six Values, Brand Promise, Culture of Excellence, Strategic Triangle, Product Leadership, and AIESEC 2010 sounds good, but what does it mean to a newie three weeks into AIESEC?? Not that we shouldn't mention these at all, but we shouldn't bombard them with these obscure terms and make it turn-off for them.

Anyways
I'll leave the comment I left on the Faci Apps. annoucement.

"Let's make it the BEST LIA EVER!!"

(Wish you international guys could be here. Yes, everyone of you!)

My AIESEC Schedule

2007-01-18T10:35:00.000+09:00

Jan 20th - Heather (LCP of HUFS LC) is out of town (to be precise, in HK) and she has asked me to attend the Awarding Sub-committee meeting that decides which LC should get awards at NCON (National Congress). A great honor, I must say.

Jan 25th - NCON at the the Air Forces Assembly Hall in Dae-bang Station. It might sound outlandish to hold an AIESEC event at a facility for retired military people, but Air Forces Assembly Hall is a very new building (opened in 2003) which cost 26 million USD to build and is complete with a grand banquet hall, wedding hall, and a sky lounge. I'll be blogging about NCON later cause I'll probably have a few things to say, and of course, I'll be posting photos.

Jan 26th - First official National Fuctional Meeting. Well, it's the third time that ER has a met as a team; at NEBM, and at Winter NLDS (which I wasn't present, because of the third-year @er track). Let's hope we cut the ribbon well!

Before Jan. ends - LIA (Log Into AIESEC - AK's freshmen induction conference in March - April) facilitator applications open. I'll probably be applying for this. A lot of people have expressed interest in facilitating this conference, and I expect it to be one of the most competitive processes in recent @ history.

Also before Jan. ends - Entrepreneurship TFT meeting has got to happen. If we don't meet at least once before January the whole timeline is going to wrecked. Or at least in early-Feb.

By the looks of it, the results of Heroes Conference in Malaysia will be out in a few days-weeks time, and if people start asking me about our project and we don't have a more developed plan, I'm afraid we're going to end up last in the race.

One more thing in Jan. - A Chinese SN will come to work in Korea, for the UNICEF-ING Life Korea Chances for Children program, and my LC, HUFS, will be doing the S&L (Service and Learning) with the SN. It's not a TN our LC raised, but an MC TN.

Nevertheless, it's a good chance for our members to collaborate with companies however indirectly in may be, and to do some firm learning from incoming SNs, which AK has never none properly. We had to go through a competitive selection process to aqcuire the S&L initiative, and we must do our best to ensure that the good oppuritnity we have in front of us isn't squandered. (One LCP jokingly asked to give the S&L to them, fat chance :P haha.) Like John Wayne (MCVP Finance) said to me, whether AK can re-raise the TN depends much on our S&L performance and results.

(To comment on a bit about John Wayne's comments. John Wayne said to me that it 'depends' on our S&L performance but I wrote 'depends much' because you can't dump all the responsibilty on our S&L. The most essential coefficient will obviously be the performance of the SN in the actual workplace, and we do not have to sufficient control of that.)

Feb. 3rd-4th or 3rd-5th - Third Year @ers Retreat in Busan, or ATYC (AIESEC Third Year Camp) as Jung-wook (PNU OGXD, and pseudo-OCP of this retreat) calls it. I bet this is kind of gathering (a gathering of people from all LCs that shared the same term) is very unique in the world of @.

We'll probably be drinking the national beverage soju, exchanging tales of the past/present/future, and hopefully somebody will take us to get some good sashimi (or 'hwae' in Korean) because Busan, being a sea/port city, has good seafood. (If we don't go, I'm going alone or with a cousin of mine. I haven't had good hwae for ages.)

The most interesting project we'll be doing is filming AIESEC dances with the Gwang-an Bridge as the background. The Gwang-an Bridge is to Busan what Rainbow Bridge is to Odaiba in Japan, and it's beautiful to see at night. I have promised to provide a video camcorder rather than filiming them with low-quality digital cameras, haha.

So that's my schedule so far. Isn't too packed or too lazy, I think.

Mediation

2007-01-16T01:28:00.000+09:00

I've known for quite some time that I'm not a good mediator. One of the jobs I would never take would be a professional negotiator, conflict resolver or any sort of profession that involves warring parties and me in the middle of the mess.

Usually I'm a scaredy-cat and I choose to be the onlooker in conflicts, whether minor interpersonal ones or ones that really affect people's lives. I know that neutrality in a world like this is useless and even harmful, but I tend to succumb to my fears a lot.

I find in the few times that I do partake as a middleperson in a conflict that I tend to take it very personally. The verbal whips lashed on me when I temporaraily sway to one party is a bit hard to take, even if it is only a minor one, or doesn't even mention me explicitly. Especially when the parties have in mind only the interests of themselves and no consideration for the opposing party, or the mediator caught in between.

In a sense, I strive more for self-preservation and self-protection than resolution.

I find that I am a selfish person in the utmost and lowliest sense. Because when I lie on my pillow to go to sleep after a day of "hard work" (spade full of sarcasm) I am relieved that I am not the one of the people involved first-hand in the conflict itself, and that I am to an extent immune from whatever the reparations of the conflict is.

But as long as I am conscious of my shortcomings, I believe I have taken the first step in overcoming them. It is how I have come made self-reparations in the past, and I with more bravery, skill, and support, maybe I will consider a future in my "do-not-become" list and furthermore, learn to be more responsible.

Day At The AK MC Office.

2007-01-14T23:30:00.000+09:00

In the alleys between Sung-soo Station and Kun-dae University Station, surrounded by manless garages, second-industry factories, retail carsellers, and a sushi bar lies the den of AIESEC Korea, the AIESEC Korea Member Committee office.

As the door to the MC office opens, your eyes are met with a stinging sour, and the nostrils are clogged by particles of dust, dirt, and evaporated sweat. The pile of clothes lying around is tantamount to a year's worth of cleaning; numerous AIESEC apparel, jeans, suits, ties, socks, and last but not least reused underwear. The area of mobility is perhaps limited to half of the actual space.

The big wooden table that uses up 1/7 of the office space hosts laptops, namecards from yesteryear, a broken fax machine, pens, documents dating up to the 90s, plastic bottles of water/Coke/orange juice, and other miscellaneous junk that hasn't been touched for any time between a few months to one year.

The AK office is, in short, a hellhole. A place where people survive in the harshest conditions in the civilized part of the world; a combination of human filth, unsanitary stink, inedible leftovers, and a slimy, hairy bathroom.

Well, that is, until just a few hours ago.

Today was the "official" MC room cleanout day. And I happened to make my small contribution by cleaning out the kitchen sink and dishes/mugs/etc. A round of applause to Eddie, Ceek, Patrick, and John Wayne for making the world (MC office) a better place to live in. But my round of applause may be short-lived, as they will be ones that will be reverting it to the miserable place on Earth it once was.

I just realized I missed the last subway that brings me back home. Oh well, a night in a clean MC office will be a novel experience, so I might as well be the first one to try it out :).

The Socio-Geography of AIESEC Korea

2007-01-13T14:02:00.000+09:00

Click the picture for a bigger one.

(I think this is the first map of it's kind, a map of the Seoul LCs in AIESEC Korea, plus the MC office. I know for sure that it's the first one in English. I spent an hour or more making this. Proves that what meets the eye isn't all there is to it.)

AIESEC Korea has numerous records in AIESEC to my knowledge. Most roll-calls produced in a year(39+), most developed country in the world that doesn't pay their MC members (not intended as a diss), and of course most LCs in one city, which is 10LCs in a 605.41 km² area that is known as Seoul.

So what makes this possible? A lot of people I met at Singapore NLDS/Heroes Conference in Malaysia were surprised/confounded/amused by the fact that we had 10 LCs in a single city. But as I tried to explain to people that would listen, Seoul is like the municipal dictator of Korea in the sense that an abnormally high number of social, economic, cultural functions and entities are highly concentrated in the city.

Let's see.. Half of the population of Korea lives in the city of Seoul, whereas the other half lives in remaining, 11,100 km². This relvatively small area accounts for 21.3% of the nation's GDP (which was in 1998) and 15.5% of nation's foreign investment. It is home to the Blue House (the Korean equivalent of 10 Downing Street and the White House), National Assembly, all major embassies, most important administrative buildings such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Defense, the Constitutional Court of Korea, Samsung, Hyundai, LG, KIA Motors, all but a few major foreign companies, ROK-US Allied Forces Command, the National Medical Center, the National Theater of Korea, and other entities that Korea couldn't possibly survive without.

And the most important fact pertaining to AIESEC Korea is that all major universities are compressed into the metropolis. For high-schoolers in Korea it is the matter of whether they get into a university in Seoul or a non-Seoul university that concerns them the most. It is a testament to the sad fact that all the top universities except for a few medial schools and other specialized schools are situated within Seoul.

Much of AIESEC Korea's activities require a memeber's physical prescence in Seoul, such as LCP meetings, national OC/Faci/TFT meetings, elections, and NLDSs (which due to the 'majority rule' are held near Seoul) and already the Pusan National University LC members (which is in a completely different 'state' 432km south of Seoul; about 2.5 hrs on the KTX bullet-train) have a hard time coming to NFMs (national fuctional meetings that are held about one every 2-3 months) , national elections, and participating in national affairs. They also have a hard time raising TNs because all major companies are in Seoul and most of the companies in Busan (=Pusan; Busan is the correct Korean pronunciation/romanization. But the university's name is still Pusan National University.) are transportation companies, wholesale/retail companies, and lodging/food companies which makes them harder to raise TNs.

There was a time when there were a a few LCs outside of Seoul. But due to the regional inequality of potential TNs and the geographical distance to Seoul, all former LCs except in Busan outside of Seoul declined in performance and was in the end, deprived of AIESEC membership. The only reason Busan survives is mainly because it has dedicated members, and it's socio-economic position is second to that of Seoul, therefore has better oppurtunities than say, Choon-Chun or Jun-Ju. And even Busan LC went through it's share of hard times. At this year's Winter NLDS, there were two delegates a start-up LC from an university outside of Seoul, Dong Eui University that used to be a former AIESEC Korea LC but was truncated from the network for, I assume, the above reasons. I wish them luck, as I hope to see more regional diversity in AIESEC Korea.

But then again, reckless expansion is unneeded and should be refrained from, as Ceek (MCP of AK) says, and of course I agree. Do the start-up LCs have the potential to retain membership? Does AK have the capacity to fit in more LCs? If we take in more LCs in Seoul (there are two universities, Hanyang and Suk-Myung Women's Univ. that are peparing for membership as well), will there not be a mouse-race for the limited number of TNs? Of course, Seoul has thousands of companies that AIESEC hasn't contacted yet, but what about in the next 10 years? Not all companies are compatible with AIESEC (and shouldn't be treated so, if you know what I mean.). And the broadest question of all, does more LCs necessarily benefit AIESEC Korea? I think not many people will say yes.

The depressing thing about it is, that it is possible to change AIESEC activities to be more inclusive of universities in other regions, but we can do basically nothing about the socio-economic despotism of Seoul . Already there have been many successful attempts at the former. I heard from a former LCP of my LC that we held an NLDS once near Busan rather than Seoul. And for quite some time now, in most national events a certain of amount of the fee is subsidized for Busan @ers who have to pay more to attend the events. But we cannot change the fact that Seoul is still the sole treasure chest of TNs and other oppurtinities and advantages that make Seoul the best evironment for AIESEC to thrive, which Seoul LCs are in a position to use at the expense of other regions. No, I am not saying that any university outside of Seoul that wishes to join AIESEC is doomed, but there will be a certain limit to the flexibliity of activities posed by external conditions.

AIESEC Winter NLDS 2007!

2007-01-11T21:34:00.000+09:00

Winter NLDSs hold a special meaning for me, even though I've been to only two so far. (Well, Singapore NLDS was in December, but can it really be counted as a 'Winter' NLDS? The question has many meanings.) I went to my most recent one just a few days ago on the 4th till the 7th.

In Winter NLDS, there are no more 'I dunno if I want to remain in @' or 'Oh, what's an SN?' people present. Nope, only the cream of the cake come to Winter NLDS, and I'm proud to be part of a great conference with so many great people.

Winter NLDS 2007 was in Po-chyun (which is Northeast of Seoul) , Gyoenggi-Do at Yum-Gwang Youth Center, where we had also held our Winter NLDS 2006 !! It meant so much to me to return to a place with so many wonderful memories, and the place where I officially started AIESEC. (I don't really want to count my 2005 as an @ year, cause I was basically an @er by name only.)

Again, we went to the Hite Factory (Hite Brewery Co. is the leading beer company in Korea, and it also distributes Carlsberg, Lancelot and other foreign alcohol brands in Korea.) to take a tour around one of their beer-producing factories and mini-museum of their company history, and to get a free drink, haha. Typical of Koreans to go to a beer factory? Actually, Hite sponsors the buses we rent to go to the NLDS logi, and also our beer during the conference. So yipee!

After that, we arrived finally arrived at Yum-Gwang Youth Center. The unique thing about this Winter NLDS was that all the EB-to-bes (Second-years in @) and current/outgoing EBs (Third-years in @) were seperated, unlike the usual mingling of EBs and EB-to-bes in other conferences. So it was funny because I knew all of the people except two in our group of 10, and the same went for most current EBs; very family-like atmosphere. We also had different tracks, and the sessions we current EBs heard was downstairs in a completely different plenary to the young ones.

The third year sessions were inspiring and at times touching as well. There was only thirty of us cramped (unfortunately) into a small room barely able to fit us in. But the 'groove of the room' so to say was quite something. Lots of chortling, munching (we had Mr Pizza as a sponsor; two whole pizzas for each group of 9-10!) and not much voluntary participation, but that didn't stop Kelvin from calling names out, haha.

So thank you Eddie, Elfier, Kelvin, Stacy and also Miles (42/43rd MCP of AIESEC Korea), Il (45th MCVP HR) and Jae-woo (former SNU ICXD) for the awesome sessions and for their immense love of third-year AIESECers.

And a big thank you to the AK Rocks Facilitator team, the On Challenge OC team, and those nifty chewable toothpaste pills (Den-Po) that kept me clean for four days :).

Now for the moment that people (especially AIESEC Korea people, since they won't be reading the blog posts, haha) have been waiting for, PHOTOS!

What the main plenary looked like.

Folks are session-ing

Eddie with his Rocky Balboa pose.

Andrew with his winning smile, and Seung-bin implying that she is very,very cold.

Eddie, Ryan practicing his favorite "Follow the leader" dance, and Elfier.

One of the rare occassions in which Kelvin posed for my camera.

This photo gets my nomination for the unofficial cutest photo of NLDS award. Eddie wore those slippers the whole time.

What a typical facilitor notebook looks like.

Elline is talking but Andrew is too bored to listen. Ted is sleepy, while Young-hwae is as shy as a budding flower.

Joo-yun and Hyun-joo. Yes, I know they sound the same.

The PNU acapella, Jung-wook, Gyung-ho, Ho-chul and Ellis.

The infamous almuni gang! Miles, Yong-gyu, Mariah, Il, Joon-hoon(who is NOT an alumnus!), Jae-woo.

Eddie has something really important to say, but Elfier and Kelvin are posing and Hunroo is on the phone.

John Wayne with a smirk on his face. Good one on teaching the guys "A up, a down and all the way around!!"

Ted facilitating. You were a great scribe at AIESEC Dialogues!

Jake is talking to the group.

Heather in a review session.

Seung-woo, and Andrew trying to be cute.

The third-year AIESECer plenary - now you can see what I mean by 'cramped'.

Something serious has come up! Ryan, Jung-wook, Eddie

Ryan and Julia - former MCVP PD candidate rivals.

Ryan, Duk-yong, and Julia checking them out.

Some of my favorite people in AIESEC - Hunroo, Cindy, Andrew, Ted, and Julia.

Jung-hyun, Kelvin, Ja-young, Joo-yun, and me. This was my Winter NLDS '06 group. And for those that haven't seen me in many years, yes , that is unfortunately, me.

John Wayne, and Heather. Jake is also lurking around in the background.

A girl I don't know, and Ziggy.

Readership

2007-01-08T13:09:00.000+09:00

Like I told Nabeel (who said he'd be a regular reader of my blog. Hi there, Nabeel), one of the reason I proceeded with making a blog is because of the fact that I don't care about readership.

The Korean version of facebook/orkut/myspace/whatever is Cyworld, which I have been using since 2001 (and a member since Feb 2000), before its western equivalents even began. I have quite a graveyard of material there; 389 photos, 533 posts (some of them can be counted as actual writings, about 100 + are just documents/reports I backed up) and 979 wall posts (think facebook walls). This is all excluding the photos/posts I put up on groups/clubs which I think estimate about 200+.

So needless to say, Cyworld makes up an integral part of my identity, regardless of what the anti-Cyworld avant-gardes (which in French means front guard, advance guard, or vangard) say.

Anyway, the point that I am trying to make is, I have been long been nonchalant about my readership on Cyworld. About 5-10 people visit my account everyday, which is meager considering that my 'popular' friends get about 20-70 visits per day. But I have been writing anyway without caring about the number people that want to read my thoughts.

So, if I don't care about readership in general, why should a low number of readers prevent me from writing a blog?

The answer was/is that it shouldn't. And hence, my blog is in existence.

My Very First Blog Post!

2007-01-08T12:38:00.000+09:00

(I bet there are a lot of blog post titles like this on the web.)

Now, I've been aware of the blog boom for quite some time now, even though I don't remember when it was that I first heard of it, or when I visited my first blog. But now I'm sure to remember when I made my first blog, and when I wrote my first post, which are both now and today.

I hope to blogging about my @ work, Korean Literature, Korean History, Korean Pop (Internet) Culture (both as a critical consumer and an outsider), Music, and other various things that interest me in life.