Jjimjilbang

A quick shout out to my parents who now have access to reading my blog through my brother. In all honesty, I’m slightly regretting the decision to give my brother the go ahead since I’ve been a lot more apprehensive about what I write in here, so expect a cleaner mouthed version of the Andy most of you know (see previous posts) since I can’t disappoint my mom with my bad language.

We went to a jjimjilbang this Sunday, kinda like a super spa. It was pretty awesome and really relaxing. The one we went to was 2 floors. The first floor contained the shower area and a whole bunch of baths. Everyone is naked, segregated by sex of course, and there are different pools that are at different temperatures, ranging from 22 degrees Celsius (71F) to 41 degrees C (106F). Each had lay down areas or massage jets. There was also a sauna that was 71 degrees C (160F). That was really brutal, so much so that it hurt to move after sitting for about 2 minutes. Like when you waved your hand in the sauna, it felt like a burning sensation. Walking out of the room was pretty painful as well. The other floor was much more interesting. There are a series of rooms situated around the out perimeter of an area, each at a different temperature, ranging from 8 degress C (46F) all the way to 100 degrees C (212F). The 100 degree C one was out of control! It looked like entering the mouth of hell due to all the heaters. It was ridiculously hot in there and everything bad from my body got sweated out. On top of that, the men in the group Rock-Paper-Scissored and the loser had to do ten pushups in the hottest room. Another room which was about 37 degrees C (99F) had a bunch of little rocks on the ground that you lay down on then pile some on your chest for some extra heat exposure. The rocks were hot enough where putting your feet down too long was a little painful. After each foray into a hot room, we’d cool off in the coldest room. In the middle of this area, there are a bunch of little beds, massage machines, and some food places on the outside. The jjimjilbangs are open 24 hours a day, so it’s a popular place to go and just stay all night in one of the sleeping areas of sleeping room. It was a really relaxing day full of some good cultural experience.

I broke my shin, but it's cool, I can still run after you give him a penalty

I’ve been trying to watch as much World Cup action as I can, but the game times here are 8:30PM, 11:00PM, and 3:30 AM. I basically watch the first two games, then go to sleep and watch the replay of the 3:30AM game if I actually care about who is playing. Currently, I feel completely sleep deprived, but is it worth it? It seems like most of the games consist of shanks, shooting the ball way over the nets, bitching to the ref or falling down in the most dramatic fashion possible. Don’t get me wrong here, I love soccer, but soccer players are the biggest pussies and complainers (Cristiano Ronaldo is their king in this respect. Gah, I hate that guy!) in sports. If they didn’t try so hard to get a foul, wave their hands for offsides, and act like their shin was broken every time they get touched in the shoulder or thigh, I feel like they could make an actual play on the ball or stop the forward from getting a chance. In the Mexico-France game, instead of trying to catch Hernandez after he sprung the trap and help the goalie out, they defenders look at the touch judge with their hands up. Fuck the call, play the game! The problem is that is it so hard for the ref to determine if they are diving because of a weak foul or if they are diving because they can get a free kick. The rewards are too great and the punishment non-existent for diving (I think I have seen one yellow for diving), so it’ll always be part of the sport until instant replay is implemented for every call (aka never).

On a less bitchy note, Japan won for the first time on foreign soil and both USA and Korea have the chance to advance. Only blemish was Spain losing since I have them winning the WC in my bracket, but gotta love it when the underdog wins. Argentina looks like an unstoppable force, though their competition hasn’t been the best so far (sorry Korea). I think Africa’s last hope is Ghana or more likely Côte d'Ivoire, which hopefully at least advance out of the group stages and leaves Portugal in the dust.

GO USA!!!! FUCK FRANCE!!!!

KIEEME Conference and Muju

I went to the KIEEME (Korean Institute of Electrical, Electronic, and Materials Engineers) Conference and Muju, South Korea. The conference took place at a ski resort and I know you are all dying to know how Korean conferences are like compared to American conferences. I am happy to report that they are just as boring and long, with the added non-excitement of not being able to read any posters or understand any presentations since most everything was in Korean. The only minor difference was that at the beginning of the conference, they had every person who was presenting a poster give a short presentation about what their poster was about, 1 minute long and usually less than that. While that may seems short, if you ever attended a conference there are a lot of posters during each day. It was interesting I guess and it gives a little more incentive/responsibility to poster people rather than just standing by their poster and hoping that someone cares. The only part I enjoyed was reading some posters with English on them:

Past that, we chilled and played some poker while watching Spain lose to the Swedes. Then we went to a national park and rode some bikes around. Their bikes are really small, kinda like trying to ride a kid’s bike with dual shocks. Not only is the crank arm damn small so you feel like you’re riding a trike, the dual shocks absorb some energy you put into peddling. Needless to say, the hills did not treat me well. We also wading in a crik for a little and splashed each other, though I wasn’t expecting the splashing part so I didn’t take off my shirt.

It was tittly nipply, then ridiculously humid for the rest of the day. Good times, good times.

You Can Find Me in Da Club

So where’s one of the last places you’d expect to find me on a Monday night? If you answered anything religious, running a marathon, a club or skydiving with a chimpanzee strapped to me, you’d be right 99.99% of the time! However, the 0.01% occured as I was leaving lab on Monday night with 2 of my lab members, they asked if I wanted to go drink, which I replied “Hell yeah!” While this surely doesn’t sound like the innocent and pure individual that I am, who wouldn’t drink the night before he has to be in lab at 9AM, you have to understand what I do during the day: fucking nothing from 9AM-10PM.

Anyways, we started at a restaurant to watch the Japan-Cameroon game and began drinking soju, beer, and soju and beer mixed together since their beer taste so bad, mixing a shot of liquor improves the taste (seriously). I kept myself under control when Japan scored as not to arouse suspicion.

About 20 mins into the second half, my labmates get a call from some other people and they told us to come over to the club. I tagged along to check it out, even though I’m not really into the whole club thing. Doesn’t vibe with my stoic style, you know?

So I get there and there are some major major differences between the club experience in the US and Korea. The first is that when people dance, they dance by themselves in close vicinity with their friends who are usually the same sex rather than grinding/dry humping someone in the club. Not only that, it’s not really dancing but just bouncing/seizing with the beat. Imagine every nerdy white kid who shows up to a dance (writer included), but multiply it by about 60 people of both genders and have it be totally socially acceptable that he’s dancing badly to the beat. That’s how it felt to me, but no one gave a shit so neither did I. Another major difference is that in the Korean club, they dance for awhile, then EVERYONE goes and sits down to drink more, eat, and request some non-clubby songs during the break period. Then the DJ calls everyone back up to the dance floor and the cycle repeats itself throughout the night. It was crowded too, on a Monday night. On a side note, I sincerely hope Korea outgrows it's popped collar phase...

The night ended at 3:30 in the morning, and I was back in lab at 9AM feeling not so fantastic. The two guys who were with me happen to be the senior members of the lab, so they can basically come in whenever the fuck they want and they came in looking rested at around 1PM. I feel like I still haven’t recovered from that night sleep-wise. Damn these age rules.

The Weekend in Boring Summary Fashion

A lot has happened and I’ve been unmotivated to write, so I’ll try to break up the next few into smaller snack size posts.

Last weekend, I went up to Seoul to see everyone from lab so that we could watch the Korea-Greece game together. The original plan was to watch at city hall outside, but it was monsooning during the day so we didn’t want to stay out in the rain and freeze our asses off. Instead, we went to a horse track to watch the game since they have big screens and covered seating. We even got to see a few horse races, though I didn’t bet anything since I wasn’t feeling that lucky.

We brought in with us a large bottle of Jack, vodka, and some wine along with bottles of Coke, cranberry juice, and the Sprite equivalent in Korea. It was a lot of alcohol, and we ended up killing it all between about 7 of us. Still sober in this pic while were our "Red Devils" T-shirts:

Pre-game pump up began with a concert by a famous Korean diva, with a bunch of Korean pride and cheering songs, all of which included a series of clapping and dancing and whatnot (Koreans suck at doing the wave in a stadium by the way). Then the game began and ended with Korean’s and us foreigners going nuts when Korea scored against Greece, especially Jisun Park scored. Here's the horse track before the game:

The picture doesn't do the area justice. It was pretty fantastic view, even in the rain. We then left the horse track and went to a bar to have some beer (which is still filthy) and semi-watched the Argentina-Nigeria game while socializing. The night ended for most around 1 or 2AM, but I stayed up and watched the USA-England game which kicked off at 3:30 in the morning, and watched the sun rise.

Drinking Culture

So in the last week, I went out to drink twice; once with the lab people, professor included, and once more when everyone from Pittsburgh came down to visit me. Drinking is a large part of Korean culture. Every time I walk past this bar-like place on my way home, it’s usually full of people who are hitting it hard, regardless of the night it is. I think the reason for this is that we start at dinner time, around 6 ish, and by the time it’s midnight, we’re all pretty much drunk enough to call it a night, allowing for a full night sleep in preparation for lab, school or work the next day.

The drink of choice is soju, which apparently is the most consumed liquor in the world, if that gives you an idea about how many/often Koreans drink. It tastes like a little sweeten vodka and is consumed as shots, not mixed with anything else. It’s aight, at best.

Unlike USA drinking, drinking in Korea is more ritualized/proper. Younger’s pour for the elders first, always using two hands on the bottle or one hand on the bottle and one hand under your elbow, mimicking getting your clothes out of the way back in the day of lengthy clothing. To receive a drink, you must have 2 hands on the glass or your right hand on the glass and the other hand on your stomach. Once everyone has been poured, you clink glasses and say “Gombe!” or “One shot-ah!” Drinks are always served with food.

The other drink I had, this time with the people from Pittsburgh, was makgeolli (pronounced like broccoli but with an “m” instead of a “br”). It’s kinda like sake, though not as good (bias much?) and is much more drinkable than soju. It is sweeter and has a slightly fizziness to it, more like wine. The place we went served the makgeolli in a metal tea kettle sort of thing, and each cup was a small metal bowl:

Same pouring rules apply, though less stringent since we were all ignorant Americans. To get more, you bang a separate empty kettle to get the waiters attention and they bring another one for you. Sound rude? Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt when I did it.

So far, the beer here is awful, like Naty Ice or IC Lite awful. Any imports have 100% import tax on them, so there are like $15 bucks for a bottle. Only cool thing so far about the beer is that one of the places I went to had cup holders which were sunk into the table and kept at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it kept your beer cold for longer. The pitchers themselves had a metal rod through the center of the pitcher and extended into the cup holders so the beer in the pitcher would be kept colder. I think that was a special thing to that place though since I have yet to see it anywhere else.

I’m pretty home sick or suffering from severe Xbox withdrawal (or both). Just wish I knew my MCAT score....

Language Barriers All Around

If my posts seem disorganized and feel like a bunch of random thoughts and events, not only is that how I tend think, that’s kinda how my days feel to me at this point. Furthermore, if you find these posts to be long, try not talking English all day but experiencing a bunch of things you want to talk about. Come along for the ride!

Professor Lee came back from the United States today so I got to talk to him for a little while about how I liked Korea and small talk like that. Then he asked me what was one of the major differences between Korea and America so far and I said there is an incredibly strict hierarchy in Korea that just isn’t present what so ever in America. Elders are your superiors and that’s pretty much the end of the discussion, whether graduate students or people on the street. He laughed and joked “In America, you hold the door open for girl, but in Korea, you hold door open for elder!”

Should have said I was 25 instead of 20, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I’m getting demoted to the undergraduate lab tomorrow…

He also said something interesting about the dynamics of the lab, which felt more “family” like to me. He gets the utmost respect from all of the students, which is kinda similar to the US in respecting your PI, but this is a whole new level. That being said, he is responsible for finding jobs/doctorate positions for all of his students who are graduating! How nuts is that? So there is definitely a closer tie between professor and lab members here in Korea then there is in America. He said that he has graduated about 50 students so far. He also said something I thought was funny in that even though he gets all the respect, he has to pay for everyone when they go out for dinner ‘cause that is the senior person’s responsibility, but every project that gets funded in Korea actually has a budget for this particular purpose. I thought that was pretty cool.

He also came in with a brand new iPad from his trip to America and when I asked if he bought it, he said that he got it fo’ free. Apparently some people from Apple took him out to dinner and gave him one because he freakin’ developed the LCD screen for the iPad and the iPod touch. He discovered/invented (can never tell with science) the way that you can look at a screen from any angle. Try looking at you laptop from different angles and if it’s an older model, you’ll see the picture go blurry. But if you look at an iPad or most phones now, you can look at it from any angle and still see the screen. Pretty sweet, eh eh eh?

I think the best part of the day was when he busted into lab later in the day and exclaimed “Andy, you don’t drink?!?!?!?” If you didn’t know, drinking and eating are a GINOURMOUS part of Korean culture, so of course this type of news is a BFD (big “furry” deal). I knew that this false accusation my professor asked me came from something lost in translation. When I had been previously asked “Do you drink?” by other lab members and I answered “Yes, but the drinking age in the US is 21 and I’m only 20, so I can’t drink publically.” Made me chuckle inside, and now everyone in lab is telling me that drinking is fun, just not too much, which I politely nod and say “yes” since it’s too much of a hassle to explain what got lost in translation. Apparently we’re playing soccer with everyone in the lab (professor included, how sweet is that?) tomorrow and then getting drinks and food later for my welcoming party and “first” time drinking.

Out of context thing said to me today: “I want to play with you.”

Context: He asked me before the above statement if I was bored, which I said “Just reading up on LCD things” aka “Yes.” Then he said the out of context statement, then completed the statement with: “But we are all too busy with work.” Which I replied “I wish I was too…”

I’m sure all of you are asking: What are you doing in your research? Honestly, pretty sure it’s going to be a whole lot of nothing (just like real undergraduate research. JK! But not really). He gave me a choice of “working” on monitors which can be seen in the sun or developing blue phase liquid crystals; I’m probably going to choose the latter. The problem with these experiences is I know from previous research that it takes months to just be trained in equipment and lab procedures, let alone be doing something meaningful for the lab. So I think that I’m basically going to be shadowing others, and that’s the best case scenario right now. I spent the day trying to figure out LCD stuff, and finally did about an hour ago. I’m going to be figuring out electro-wetting tomorrow for shits and giggles.

Korean’s don’t say anything after someone sneezes, or people in this lab don’t. Not sure if that’s the norm yet.

Things I’m now used to in Korea: Being stared at walking down the street (saw another American guy yesterday!). Conversations about me that I’m not engaged in, but am witnessing first hand. Jokes that are completely lost in translation, but laughing anyways. Not having generally coherent conversation, but rather exchanging a few sentences. LANGUAGE BARRIERS ARE HUGE!!!!!!!

Things I am not used to, nor will ever be: Being treated like a baby, and necessarily so. I can’t speak or read Korean well enough to get around. I have to be escorted everywhere outside of lab. If you know me, I’m kinda fiercely independent when it comes to taking care of myself or setting my schedule. The thing is that I can get from lab to my apartment and back comfortably, which I explained to everyone so that I don’t have to tell someone I am ready to leave and feel like a dick cutting into their work day (9AM to 10PM in lab by the way. A shorter day by last semester’s standards, yet it is technically summer for me). The response to me saying this was, “It is our culture to take care/protect guests.” Shut down….

AM I RANTING?!?!?! FUCK YEAH!!!!

Until my next catharsis, you stay classy San Diego.