July 3, 2009

Work: Spent lunch with two westerners who work for another big Korean company today; good people, both. However, put several westerners together without a Korean to chaperone us, and inevitably we'll start complaining about Korean this or that. Sometimes it's productive, sometimes it's not. There are plenty of things that can drive a person batty here, and they are almost never curable. In fact, Koreans have a special emotion just to express this sentiment of unresolved injustice, called "Han" (한). It's usually reserved for bigger things like the various Japanese occupations of the Korean Peninsula, or when Anton Apollo Ohno tripped up a star Korean speed skater at the Salt Lake City Olympics (you mess neither with Korean men and their speed skating, nor with Korean women and their golf). Anyway, westerners feel Han while they live here. We all feel Han together (unlike Princess Leia, who feels Han solo).

Family: We met the cat (from yesterday) again, and I was a little too cutesy in playing with it. BG got annoyed with me; I guess I came across as trying to make her feel guilty for not letting me take her home. I really wasn't trying to do that at all, I just get really stupid around animals. Sorry, BG.

-Oh, and we stopped by the stationery store (where elementary school kids buy their water pistols, gum, play video games, etc.), and we bought a RUBIK'S CUBE!! I've had a weird hankering for one recently, in the same way I get the occasional hankering for some top-grade black licorice. Being able to solve a Rubik's cube within 2 minutes is on my long term to-do list. (It turns out that this is not a Rubik's Cube brand cube puzzle, it is a "Nobel Cube.")

Korean:
-Reviewed decks 15,16,17,18, and 19.
-Finished sample test 1 of the TOPIK book, with a 42/60 as my score. Eh. I use the term "book" very loosely because basically it's a one-off volume of fourth-generation photocopies of previously administered tests, complete with pencil marks, margin notes, etc. All that it's missing is a legible right side of every page. Maybe I'll shell out for a non-bootleg version soon.
-Ewha U. text: Pages 111-122.

Education:
-Eye-Q, Session 8
-Learned how to tie a Bowline Knot
-Guns, Germs, and Steel, through page 175 (end of Chapter 9). I had not thought about the difference between "tame" and "domesticated" before, and nor had I consciously noticed that all domesticated food animals are herbivores except for pigs (omnivorous). Also, "[c]ats and ferrets are the sole territorial mammal species that were domesticated, because our motive for doing so was not to herd them in large groups but to keep them as solitary hunters or pets." (p.173)

30 Days Challenge: Belatedly finished Day 28: Write a Love Letter.

Spending: KRW 3400 taxi, KRW 10800 lunch, KRW 3000 Rubik's ("Nobel") Cube.

Exercise:
-Hundred Pushups Challenge: Week 4, Day 1: Maxed out at 42.


Ideas: Things I want to learn: Firebreathing, currency origami, lock picking, phone book tearing, knot tying.

Today's Conversation Piece: A Proboscis Tomato:

July 2, 2009

Work: Had a fun project today... every once in a while we get a dispute with a customer or seller, and I and one of their people trade formal letters arguing the points of merit. Sometimes things go badly, like when I find out two months into a correspondence that, yes, we in fact WERE in the wrong when we discovered that a third party had committed fraud on our behalf. That's a plate of humble pie.

But other times, like today, are much more fun. I have to pore through a 150-page contract and supplemental documents, and start digging up points to back up my argument. Intern and clerk work during law school usually involves researching cases, but this is more fun because you simply don't have the precedent written in stone. It's not even written in etch-a-sketch. The answer is just not written anywhere. Believe me, I've looked. So I go by the documents, the parties' actions, and more most fun of all, logic. Putting these pieces together to make an argument is like getting your tangrams to make celebrity caricatures. I like it.

However, due to this project I worked from 7:45 until 7:30 today. And by that I don't mean that I traveled backwards in time by fifteen minutes. Not so much flux capacitor action as it was flummoxed solicitor.

Family: On our evening outing, we bought a citronella plant from a lady who had set up a tent in the parking lot. People just park their trucks any old where they please and sell...stuff. Plants? Oh yeah. Live squid which you select in order to be cut up into dead squid right before your eyes? Uh-huh. Garden hose? We got that. Pig knuckles? For sure. Lacquer dinnerware? Solid. DSL internet subscriptions? Preach on. Every night at my apartment complex, it's one or more of these types. That's not even including the produce vendors.

-Also found a very sweet stray kitty in the playground. Just the kind I like: it had a wrinkled ear and a broken tail. I instantly turned 6 years old and pleaded and wheedled with BG to lemme keep it lemme keep it, but she was levelheaded enough to remind me that two babies and three adults in an 890 square foot apartment is quite enough already, thank you very much.

Spending: KRW 14696 lunch, KRW 5000 citronella plant, and KRW 900 morning bus. It was POURING rain this morning, so the bus was crowded to the point where I really had to shove myself in and put my briefcase on my shoulder.

Education:

-Guns, Germs and Steel, up through page 141. How did farming get started? Mostly by happy accident. How did plants become domesticated? In the case of peas, it's because consumers preferred the genetically defective ones that failed to open their pods. Why did only certain types of plants become domesticated? Among other factors, annuals were favored over perennials since they take less time to bear fruit/grain.

-Eye-Q: Session 7. I tested at 1343 wpm, but that's Swiss Family Robinson time. The Economist time is still in the low three digits, I betcha.

Korean: Began the Level Three 한국어능력시험 practice book, which is really just old exams. Level 4 may be a bit ambitious after all. Let's see how 3 goes. Anyway, got about 40 questions done. Not sure yet how many were right.

Exercise:
-Kettlebell: 100 snatches, baby (50 each arm). Non-stop, too, although I did slow down a touch towards the end. That's a nice little milestone to reach. I might have to consider getting the 24kg bell soon (this one's a 16kg bell). Poof, that was quite enough for tonight. Where's my yogurt?

Today's conversation piece: Just the most awesome way to package mushrooms ever, still growing on their matrix:

July 1, 2009

Education:
-Through page 113 of "Guns, Germs, and Steel." There's a lengthy excerpt paraphrasing diary entries of several Spaniards accompanying Pizarro that describes (in the most nauseatingly haughty and self-righteous tone you can imagine) the wholesale slaughter of thousands of Incans. I'm not Catholic, Spanish, or one of Pizarro's toadies, and I have never killed anyone, let alone scores upon scores of Incans. But I still feel like shouting back into history and apologizing on behalf of mankind for atrocities like this.

Korean:
-Signed up to take the TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) in September. That's someting to work for. Looking at some practice tests, I think I'd be comfortable at a level three, so I'm going to shoot for level four (of six).
-Read pages 91-110 of the Ewha U. text.
-Reviewed vocab decks 16, 17, 18.

Family: Nice typical evening of dinner and playing outside.

Spending: KRW 3800 taxi, KRW 2350 postage stamps, KRW 6500 lunch.

Exercise: Taking a breather today. Back to kettlebell and running tomorrow. I did have a decent 20 minute walk during lunchtime, the mile or so walking home, and the family playtime after dinner . It's not like I sat on the couch eating Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick with Chocolate Chips all day.

-Also on the health front: got my lab results back from Saturday's physical. I have a slightly low TIBC count (245; lower limit for normal range is 250), but have no clue what that means. Cholesterol, etc., all good. My cholesterol is a 163 ('twas apparently fate; it's the same number as as my LSAT and MBE scores). That was kind of a relief because I've been eating a three-egg breakfast pretty much every day for the past 5 years.

Today's Conversation Piece: Wait, is that a TOILET on my neighbor's roof? Why, yes. Yes it is. Click for larger view.

June 30, 2009

Family: an hour outside with LB who was instantly cured of severe grumpiness by going for a few rides down the slide in the playground. LG was asleep for most of the evening, except for when she and LB decided it was time for both to start crying...which led me to take LB outside in the first place. BG took care of LG at this time.

Work: The following exchange has taken place at least three times now:

Our guy: "We'd like to ask this supplier for a discount from the price we contracted at. How can we get him to change his mind?"
Me: "Well, unless we have pictures of the PIC (person in charge) cheating on their spouse, all we can really do is hint that we'll look elsewhere in the future. If we signed the contract, we signed the contract. We have no leverage to insist on a discount after we agreed to a certain price."

Our communications have gone from a softer approach (which proved futile) to a more aggressive tone in which we contrast their stubbornness with that of a more flexible competitor, and inform them that their prices aren't that great to begin with.. I'm not holding my breath for the PIC's change of heart.

(I don't blame the person consulting me for advice; I think this person's just been given an all-but-impossible task. The current market realities make this supplier's concession even more unlikely.)

Education: Guns, Germs and Steel, through Chapter 2. I have the physical text as well, and Chapter 2 ends on page 66 of 440.

Media: I left my iPod at home today, but I have an old Creative Zen Vision:M 60 model on which I keep a few movies stored. I finished "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" during lunch. Overall a little too light and superficial to be the Charlie Kaufman story it aspires to be, but there were at least two moments were I laughed out loud and hard enough to draw attention to myself.

Korean: Reviewed decks 16, 17, 18

Exercise:
-One Hundred Pushups: Week Three, Day Three. Maxed out at 38.
-Couch to 5k: This is a new endeavor. I'm a terrible runner, but it's about time I worked on that. Starting at Week 2, Workout 1. This is a twenty minute workout broken up into 210 second chunks (90 second running, 120 seconds walking).

Spending: KRW 3400 morning taxi, KRW 14696 lunch, KRW 3200 afternoon snack. Also USD 49.11 for a birthday present for my mom. Am I a cheapskate?

Today's Conversation Piece: A serving tray in the hospital room we were in after the birth of our daughter.

"Wellbeing Story: The room was filled with the scent of sunflowers." Not only is that a terrible story that does nothing for my well-being, sunflowers DON'T EVEN SMELL.

June 29, 2009

I'm not going to post on the weekends. Too much other stuff going on. Most of that stuff is errands and hanging out the family. Nanny has off from 5 p.m. Saturday to 7 p.m. Sunday, so I'm doing the Daddy stuff then.

Doesn't mean that I'm not doing ANYTHING for two days, though.

Education:

-Finished "The Black Swan." Lessons learned: 1) Don't confuse lack of evidence with evidence of lack, 2) don't try to apply bell-curve probabilities to scalable things (scalable meaning things with no realistic limit such as wealth or wartime death tolls; non-scalable things would be like human height or weight which do have realistic limits), and don't give too much credence to the "risk metrics" employed by mutual funds, etc.

-Now somewhere deep into chapter 2 of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. He makes the assertion that the people in "primitive" societies such as indigenous tribes in New Guinea are, on the whole, smarter than us folk from "developed" countries. This is more or less because those breeding in such harsh environments as New Guinean jungles have survived long enough to do so by dint of their intelligence (spatial, social, etc.), whereas in western societies, we now have the ability to stave off natural selection and the ability to breed is much more democratic.

We in the west bemoan that "stupid people shouldn't breed," but it may be that stupid people in New Guinea simply get their gonads torn off by angry monkeys before they get the chance. Or...whatever.

Family:

-Saturday: BG, LB and I went to Namdaemun Market to price shop for Similac formula for LG. We also bought such rare black market goodies as Quaker One Minute Oats and Costco multivitamins. Afterwards, we went to a Japanese restaurant where I had soba noodles, BG had sushi, and LB had a grand time spilling water and eating slices of lemon. In the evening, we had a very nice hour or so in the playground and then a steep walk up the steep hill behind our house.

-Sunday: LB and I spent an hour or so in the park across the street, and then we came back for a nice nap. Later in the afternoon, BG brought LG out in the stroller and the four of us went back to the park where we ate watermelon and chunks of orange, and got very hot and sweaty. The weather is gross these days.

Exercise: I'll include here my visit to the doctor for a routine physical. That was Saturday morning. I had to skip breakfast so the blood tests would be accurate. Also crossing my mind was a particular quote from Fletch. Yes, that one.

Between Saturday, Sunday and Monday:
-Hundred Pushups: Week Three, Day Two: Maxed out at 35.
-74 Kettlebell snatches. 37 per arm.
-Lots of walking around outside pushing a stroller up steep hills and playing on jungle gyms with my son.

30 Days Challenge:
-Day 22: Improve your posture. Dang, that's long term.
-Day 23: Learn a manual skill. I said I'd learn some knot tying. Will have to get cracking on this.
-Day 24: Play! On it like white on rice on a paper plate with a glass of milk in a snowstorm.
-Day 25: Start a debt reduction plan: I'm paying off my student loans (about USD 835 every month) and the balance of my credit card every month. That's pretty good, right?
-Day 26: Take the Marine Corps fitness test. Haven't and don't plan on doing so for a little while because I know what my score is. It's sad. However, I'm planning on getting there soon. That's a priority goal. Once I hit 100 pushups, I'm doing that.
-Day 27: Start a book: See entry for day 24.
-Day 28: Write a love letter. That I will do.
-Day 29: Conquer a fear. Hoo boy, that's a toughie. Let me think of a good fear from my many choices, and then I'll work on nipping it in the bud.

Spending:
-Saturday: KRW 235,000 for Physical, KRW 35,000 for vitamins, KRW 20,000 for lunch
-Sunday: None
-Monday: KRW 3200 morning taxi, KRW 14,696 for lunch

Today's Conversation Piece:

Rotisserie Chicken Truck cruising through my neighborhood.

June 26, 2009

Family: Barely got a chance to hang out with LB today; BG brought him in the stroller to meet me on the road home, but he fell asleep quickly...and for the rest of the evening. However, I did get a chance to feed LG tonight, which I haven't been able to do for the past few days. BG and I had a nice quiet dinner together while both kids were asleep.

Work: For the afternoon, my boss and I went on a field trip to the headquarters of Hyundai Motors, which also houses the offices of one of our business partners with whom we were meeting. Fun to think that the second richest man in Korea (worth USD 2.29 Billion according to Forbes) was just eight floors above me. Both legs of the bus trip down there were about an hour, so I made good progress in The Black Swan...

Education:...finishing discs 6 and 7. I like this book now. It's been focusing on the phenomena of excess information actually hindering the accuracy of predictions, rather than serving to eliminate variables in forecasting. Sometimes, you can't see the trees for the forest.

Korean: My participation was minimal, but if sitting in on a 2-hour Korean-language business meeting isn't good language practice, then I don't know what is.

Fitness:
-Ffffffaahhhhhhh. Lost count but quick, but plenty of kettlebell snatches. Also 50 presses (25/arm).
-25 minutes of running up that hill, like an extended Kate Bush remix. Does violent panting and wheezing count as exercise?

Miscellaneous: Brian Deutsch, a prominent Korea blogger, who also has regular columns in two, if not all three, of the English-language daily papers in Korea, picked up one of my comments and put it in today's column. Woohoo! I am, to an infinitesimal degree, slightly less obscure! Thanks, Brian :)

Today's conversation piece: Hard-boiled eggs with bible quotes and little happy cartoon Jesuses (or is the plural form Jesii?) that some of my more enthusiastic colleagues distributed around the office at Easter time. Click to enlarge.

June 25. 2009

Work: Continued work on cleaning up the translation for brand usage guidelines. Lots of stuff about Pantone colors, font weights, and other stuff I know precious little about. Much of the text is vaguely philosophical in describing how the company logo should be expressed, and just...doesn't...quite...work in English. My facebook status the other day was an example of this text ("It speaks for modern people's spirit and ambition by adding the feel of [company name] logotype and making the most of readability."). For reference, I looked at a similar guidelines document from Hyundai Motors, and it was just straight up "this is how it should be; don't do this, don't do that."

Hyundai Motors of course, has a much more international presence than my company, and even though the English text in their document was very straightforward, I imagine the original Korean text had the same kinds of expressiveness as the one I'm revising. I read an article this morning about how the structure of one's language actually affects his perception of the world (i.e., English speakers lose their keys with a transitive verb, whereas a Spaniard's keys lose themselves reflexively; the effect being that a Spaniard may feel more fatalistic about the disappearance of his keys). Korea is a supremely unique culture, with a supremely unique language. One example: there is a slew of different verbs for the same action depending on your estimation of the person to whom you're speaking. There is such a thing as a Korean mind.

So this work really has two layers: 1) to make sure the translation is a sensible one, and 2), to "erase" the Korean-ness out of it. Konglish is a far harder language to navigate than Korean.

Spending: KRW 3200 for morning taxi. Co-workers took me out to lunch today. Thank you, guys!

Education: Lunchtime was a social occasion today, so no time for The Black Swan on the iPod. Only had that on the walk home. Up to disc 6, track 6.

Korean: Plenty of obscure technical vocabulary like 보조색상 (supplemental hue), 적용규정 (regulations for practical application), 글꼴 무게 (font weight), etc. But no progress in any identifiable medium. Oh, "medium/media", that's another one: 매체.

Exercise (and Family):
-Google Earth says the walk home is 1.15 miles (1.85 km), so there's that every day.
-About one hour of walking with BG and LB, and playing with LB in the playground.
-One Hundred Pushups Challenge: Week 3, day 1: Maxed out at 31 (last week's progress test measured 34, but that test did not have 4 sets of push ups directly before it like today did).

Today's Conversation Piece: Animatronic skirts at the Prada Transformer, across the street from my office.