August 2004 Archives

... moving sucks! assembling furniture sucks even more! will post "after pictures" in oh.. say about a year??

i'm at inchon international airport right now, and gonna board my plane in about 20 minutes... it was fun while it lasted, but it's time to be american again!

(15:27:27) re:: 1. 자네는 우리 딸 행복하게 해줄 수 있겠나!
(15:27:38) re:: 2. 부모님은 뭘 하시나!
(15:27:56) re:: 3. 박사 나와선 뭘 해서 먹고살 건가!
(15:28:07) re:: 4. 우리 민애 어디가 맘에 드나!
(15:28:28) [영훈]: 그 다야?
(15:28:35) re:: 더 많겠지
(15:28:39) re:: 궁금해? ^^
(15:28:45) [영훈]: 네.
(15:29:00) [영훈]: 계속 말씀 하세요
(15:29:12) re:: 5. 예전에는 여자친구를 얼마나 사겨봤나
(15:29:27) re:: 6. 잘하는 게 뭔가
(15:31:44) re:: 7. 집안 분위기는 어떤가

alrighty... it's about time that i tell everyone this story... so where to start... mmm, about half way into the internship i became really good friends with soojin (who i'm sure you know by now) so by the time august rolled around, i inevitably had been meeting a few of his friends...

well, one saturday about about four weeks ago, i was suppose to meet up with soojin and one of his elementary alumni friends, along with her little sister. but the day before, a bunch of older interns were leaving the company, so as a farewell gesture (to both them and their youth :p) we decided to go to "booking". ("booking" is basically a night club where waiters drag around girls to your table in order to hook you up with a possible date... if you like 'em, you offer them a drink, and then go out to dance, yada yada -- there's a whole "art" to it which i really didn't care for... but somehow got a girl's number in the process :p). well, we didn't finish until around 7am that morning, and by the time i finally went to sleep (still piss-drunk, by the way) it was 8am, but had to meet up with soojin two hours later... so before noon, i met up with soojin and had lunch, after which we met up with his friend, min-kyung. at this point i was hung-over and dead-tired, but somehow managed to be dragged to a forty minute bus ride to young-tong where i met min-kyung's little sister, minae... who, thankfully, spoke english, which was a first in forty-eight hours. the four of us ended up spending the entire day together, all during which all i could do was nod off and barely remain conscious.

despite that awful first impression i gave minae (sorry!), i sent her a 문자 (text message) the next morning saying i left a comment on her cyworld saying we should meet up again, and the rest was smooth sailing... after going out a couple times, watching movies, getting drunk, and ending up at 찜질방's (24 hour family sauna parlor's), we found out, after both coming out of an awful past six months, that we were exactly what we were looking for... i don't think it could have happened any more naturally or more easily...

so what about minae? after living 14 or so years in korea, she came to the states on her own to a private high school somewhere in minnesota (i think)... she's now a sophomore at drake university in iowa (where the corn grows), studing towards a B.FA (bachelor of fine arts) in graphic design. she's an amazing artist, supposedly an awesome cook (though i'll be a judge of that in a couple weeks, right minae? ^^;;) and she somehow really digs me, which, of course, i don't mind at all ^^.

hey - those of you who'll be in NYC, we're both coming up 9/23~9/26, so gimme a ring if you wanna meet up! i'll definitely be visiting young-ji, doeun, jung-kwon, joo-han, seung-jin, and chang-mo! and of course you, too, dave (always a given!)

after an incredible three months in korea, i'm finally ready to come back home. i've seen it all - nore (karoake) 방, pc 방, dvd 방, street vending, night clubs, booking, 전지현, seoul tower, korean folk village, overnight sauna's, a billion daily 문자's, annoying "lady in paris" drama theme song everywhere i go, konglish, technomart, coex mall, every type of korean snack food...

although i've been out every night for the past four weeks, i'm totally energized to finish up my last year of grad school, especially since i haven't feel like i've done anything really worthy here at SAIT (mainly due to external circumstances, so i really can't blame anyone for it).

the best part of it all was meeting my extended family and making awesome friends... from the seoul national university engineers - seunghoon, hyunsook, haeri, jungsoo, to the MIT folks - joyce, soojin, to the NYC folks - doeun and jungkwon, and the various others scattered around the world like jiyoon, jihye, and jihyun, and seungwoon. i've also met a handful of people outside the company, such as juok, seungjin, and of course the lovely minae...

man... i'm gonna miss you guys! (except you, minae, cuz i'm gonna see you in a couple weeks ㅋㅋ)

well, it's raining here and feels like 장마 (raining season) all over again!

the place i work finally shut off port 22, preventing me from secure-shelling to any of my duke accounts... what does that mean? i can't upload any pictures directly to my web server, so instead i have to upload them through xanga, which recompresses all the photos to a smaller (and thus significantly lower) quality...

minae... on our two week "anniversary"

a pretty long blog entry is in order soon to cover the incredibly awesome past fifteen days that i've had here in korea... all i want to say for now is.. i think i can safely say that after all the confusion, and all the stress, and all the waiting i've endured in the past two years, it was definitely worth going through if this is where i was supposed to be...

most of the interns are leaving this week, so we've gotten together a lot to spend our last days here in korea... man, 21 minutes until 퇴근 freedom.. a bunch of us are going out tonight to meet up for one last meal, and i'm also meeting up with youngji (friend from duke) who i haven't seen in four months. by the way, my laptop completely died, so i can't post any new pictures anymore while i'm here =( here are few from doeun's cyworld...

soojin, me, doeun, ji-hye, and clara (jihyun) at a cow intestine joint (haha) seunghoon, me, and doeun

haha, i know, it sounds nasty... but it really isn't :p

la menu 순대 볶음 나와 민애 say "ahhh!"

とてもうれしかったよ　君が笑いかけでた
すべてを溶かす徴笑みで

春はまだ遠くて　つめたい土の中で
芽吹く瞬間を待ってたんだ

たとえば苦しい今日だとしても
昨日の傷を残していても
信じたい　心ほどいてゆけれと

生まれ変わることはできないよ
だけど変わってはいけるから
같이 지내자 . . . いつも