California to Snowy East Coast

The amount of traveling I've been doing in the past few days is ridiculous. Only about 36 hours after I landed in SF, Matt and I flew out to Newark together. After a day in Manhattan, now I'm off to Boston for two days. What's been making the trips a little more painful than usual is the snow storm. Our flight to Newark was delayed by almost five hours, and we got more than ten notifications throughout the day with the new departure time. Getting to the bus station this morning was tough, with this nasty rain/snow mixture.

But of course there are many more great things happening on this trip. I went to see The Black Crowes's concert in SF on the night I got it, and they were incredible! Now I'm enjoying the free wifi offered on Bolt Bus (they even have electricity outlets for every seat). And I'm eating a NY bagel. NNN. It's great to see that the travel industry is working hard to provide services that make traveling easier, but it also means I no longer get enough sleep on my flights or bus rides :-P

One more week

Only a week left before my vacation starts!  I have a ton of things to wrap up both at work and home before I start traveling.  Trying to make sure I finish everything that I've planned for December.  

Looking forward to the trip to SF and NY very much.  Will get to actually spend time and hang out with Iris and many of my close friends from college.  Also planning a Cornell reunion as well.  And spending NYE in SF with Matt!

So many acronyms

If you want to work for Google, learn your acronyms first. Acronym of the day: AFAICT (seriously?).

Thanksgiving in Korea

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American holidays.  Lots of delicious food (including yams) and corniness.  Last year, I missed it so much that I cooked a stuffed chicken myself and tried to celebrate with my family here.  This year, I had two great celebrations.  For the actual Thanksgiving day, one of the parents I met at the Cate reception invited me to dinner.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, but, besides all the amazing side dishes, there was a whole TURKEY! TURKEY IN KOREA!  And of course, many bottles of wine and pumpkin pies.  I wish I got a picture of myself biting into that gigantic turkey leg.  For the Saturday after, I got together with some friends and friends of friends for a pseudo Thanksgiving potluck.  I baked a pecan pie and a pumpkin cheesecake for the dinner and they both turned out very tasty.  It was a fun night with lots of food (again), corky wine (blame the bottle opener), and discussing random topics from politics to criminology to Korean laundry machines. 

I'm thankful for the obvious things in my life:  Family, both old and new friends, Mattdol, Juni, opportunities, colleagues, my new blanket, and gchat.

Internet access everywhere

I'm writing this while I'm sitting in a cab.  Seoul is indeed a wired a city.

Pod cars for Ithaca?

http://tinyurl.com/684gh8

Just hope they don't put the track across the gorges ;)

Cold in Seoul!

The temperature just dropped 10 degrees or more over a time span of less than 24 hours. It was so warm two days ago that I didn't have to wear a jacket, and last night, I was shivering in my new thick winter jacket.  Today, on the way home, my ears and hands were freezing and it's supposed to snow tomorrow.  Reminds me of Cornell :)

An exciting month!

November has been a very exciting month so far and the rest of it looks like it will be the same. This past week, on top of the regular baking and yoga classes, I had a really fun potluck farewell dinner at Tae's, went to a Cate reception to say hello and meet some parents, and went to Han-na Chang's concert. For the rest of the month, I have:

- 1 vs. 100: a popular trivia quiz TV show in Korea (Yes I'll be on TV)
- My cousin's wedding
- Thanksgiving cook-off
- Theresa and Zach's joint birthday party
- Raghu visiting from Hyderabad for two weeks
- And perhaps another concert

:)

Election

Today's the Big Day for America. It is the most exciting election ever in my memory and, for the first time, including the elections in Korea, I actually took some time to read about the candidates and watch the debates. Even all the Korean newspapers are covering the election in depth. And when I was on Facebook earlier, literally 99.9% of my friends' status messages were about voting (or supporting Obama).

Hope to see results that make sense. I'd like to believe that elections are not all about image marketing and people can actually set that aspect aside when making their voting decisions. But I already saw someone wrote "Voted for McCain and Sexy Palin". Yes, the person prefers a sexy VP over someone who can actually do the job. Heartbreaking, I would say.

Update: So it is Obama! :)

Random Topics

OK, two posts a night. I just have so much to ramble about my day-to-day experiences. I may officially give up writing about the Singapore/Hyderabad trip at this point :-P

YOGA I absolutely love it! I'm only doing weekly classes now but thinking of doing it at least twice a week next year. I had always thought yoga was overrated and a bit pretentious, with all the fancy mats and "yoga-wear" that cost a fortune. But after my third class, I became a fan. When I work out at the gym, I'm going really fast and hard, isolating the muscles I want to work out. But in yoga, you pace your breathing and movements, focus on balancing and staying still, and pay attention to how your muscles connect and work together when you work them out. I'm greatly enjoying this reverse perspective and the positive effects on my physical strength and flexibility, as well as my mood. I feel very stable and positive after every class.

COOKING I'm realizing more and more how much I love the creative, hands-on experience. Because I knew that, I did consider a design career but for the reasons that are worth a whole another post, I took a break from it. But I'm planning to pursue a more creative career path in a few years, and a culinary school has become a serious consideration, just because I, simply, want to learn everything about cooking. Learning the theories behind the reasons you choose a certain type of a pot or slice different veggies in different ways has always fascinated me, and coupled with the desire to be professional at what I love doing, I'm seriously looking into this. Matt suggested me to start trying things out now rather than waiting to make the big jump later, and I plan on spending more time in the kitchen and taking short-term classes. I've already started to cook more, and my two next major projects are the team dinner next week and Thanksgiving Extragavanza, which I'm planning with Theresa to bring Thanksgiving spirit to the lonely expats spending the holiday away from home.

JAMLEGEND.COM This game has become my addiction of the season. It's a fantastic, very well-made online version of Guitar Hero! It keeps your statistics in a range of categories and does a really good job to motivate you to compete. You can also duel your friends -- you play a song first and send the duel challenge message for the other person to try to beat your score. I hope they come out with real-time dueling and take away that Roxanne girl.

Happy Halloween!

It's already November 2 in Korea, but since I had a pretty good Halloween this year, I still wanted to write a quick post about it.

Just the night before Halloween, I got this urge to make something for the office. I quickly looked up some ideas online and decided to make evil pumpkin faces. The cookie recipe turned out fabulous, except it would've turned out tastier if I had better butter. The only available butter in the store downstairs was Seoul Dairy's butter (not that I would've spent 22 dollars on The Organic Valley's sweet cream -- taxes suck) and it smelled nothing like butter. The most fun part was "carving" the pumpkins. Just a quick baker's tip here: after you cut out the cookies, stick them in the freezer for a few minutes before sending them into the oven to prevent them from melting too quickly and losing the shape. It was a big hit at work! I baked a few dozens and they were gone in less than ten minutes :D

Our team dressed up for the costume contest on Friday. We just bought those Scream masks and a few other weapons, like axes and scythes, and won the best group costume. For the evening, I didn't do anything Halloweeny but went out to see Bank Job and had a few beers afterwards. The place was all fancily decorated with pumpkins and cobwebs, so that took care a bit of my craving for America-style, overboard festivities.

Then there was a big party on Saturday. In general, no Korean-Korean people dress up for Halloween but there are an increasing number of these costume parties as more foreigners are traveling to Korea to live and teach. I had a lot of fun with hanging out with Keith, Theresa, and Zach, seeing some crazy costumes, and meeting new people. I actually met some software engineers working in Korea/Singapore, which was great because all the foreigners I've met have been English-ee teachers. The night didn't end on the best note as we were all too tired to get ourselves into partying in Itaewon, but it felt good to celebrate Halloween. Oh, what was my costume? Just a plain, boring witch :-P

More pictures here!

Back from another trip

I just got back from a week in the Bay Area. Other than the quick cruise ride on Thursday, I spent the whole week in Mt. View. Will have to get better at planning and executing. Anyway, I was mostly exhausted during the trip as it always takes about a week to get over the jet lag when I travel in the direction of Asia to America. On the plane back to Seoul, I slept for almost the entire ride which usually never happens.

Still planning on writing about my trip to Singapore and Hyderabad ... the next big trip will be the holiday trip to CA/NY in December!

A new haircut and a new friend

I got a hair cut today. Chopped off more than half of my hair -- all the curls I had! I'm back to a normal Asian girl with straight hair, hehe.

On my way home, I stopped by one of the earring stands on the streets of Gangnam. The vendor lady didn't look Korean/East Asian and I started wondering where she was from. While I was looking through hundreds of beautiful exotic earrings, I overheard her talking on the phone in Spanish. I ended up getting more than five pairs and bargained a bit (a habit picked up in India, haha). When she finally agreed to my first price, I said "Gracias" and she almost fell off of her stool. When she asked if I were good at "Español", I laughed and gave her all of the only five phrases I knew in Spanish, which really amused her. Turns out "Iliana" is from Peru and speaks fairly fluent English. After a short chat, she wrapped up an extra small pair of earrings with the ones I bought and thanked me for making her laugh so much. Incredible what my tinsy bit of Spanish could do!

100th Post: Back in Korea

I'm finally back from India. It was such great two weeks and I already miss it! I'm gonna give it a try and write several posts about the major events of my trip. Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures!

http://picasaweb.google.co.kr/joowon.ahn/BangaloreMysore
http://picasaweb.google.co.kr/joowon.ahn/Thali
http://picasaweb.google.co.kr/joowon.ahn/Hyd
http://picasaweb.google.co.kr/joowon.ahn/Singapore

Time has its own way

On my way home tonight, after a 12-hour work day, I realized how much more stable I had gotten over the past few weeks. I started to feel this way when I was hanging out with Lingyi a few weeks ago, although I'm not sure if the conversation I had with her was a wake up call or just a timely coincidence. I am truly enjoying the benefits of living in Seoul -- to the extent that I'd feel conflicted to give them up if I were to move to a different city. They include new friends, places to take yoga or cooking classes that are ten minutes away from work or home, being able to meet up with my oldest group of friends (sixteen years and counting) regularly, Juni/family, etc. There are certainly things I don't have here that I love -- lawns and trees, places to freely bike around, good cheese at reasonable prices, and some of the people I care for very much -- but I've finally come to truly appreciate the positive sides.

Another big shift in the past few weeks is that I'm able to think about the different challenges in life separately and work on them individually with a more confident, positive, and realistic mindset. What a change from a few months ago, or even a few weeks ago, when I felt depressed and helpless. It felt like a ball of yarn all tangled up and I couldn't figure out how to get out of the mess.

Seems like I just needed some time to get stronger.

Pshaw

I turned a Google hater into a Google lover after four emails.

;)

A Month of Traveling

I just got back from 홍도 (Red Island) and 흑산도 (Black Mt. Island) and will be traveling to India in a week! The day after I get back, I'm going on a hot springs offsite with my team. :D

Inspiration

There was an all-day offsite today for career development events. Most of the agenda was listening to some of our executives and managers about their previous experiences and future plans. It really got me thinking about my own experience and goals, and as I filled out the exercise sheets, I made significant progress on career development in just one day. Thinking about my long term goals has always been one of those things that are difficult to make into a habit, like exercising regularly or walking Juni, and today was a great start.

Listening to people with 10 to 20-year careers with ups and downs was very comforting as well. One of my recent challenges has been trying my best in my current position without feeling impatient or anxious about the future, and all the talks today reminded me of that I have so many years ahead of me and you learn the most during the tough times.

It was one of the most inspiring experience in a very long time, followed by an amazing duck/pork BBQ dinner with four different types of drinks (soju, beer, dongdongju, and raspberry wine).

Plane tix confuse me

About a week ago, I bought a round trip ticket from CA to NY for December. I got a reservation confirmation email from Expedia, and while on the site, I decided to run a quick search to see how much the prices have gone up (and feel good that I booked mine this early). And guess what! The prices have gone down for the exact same set of flights as mine! I ran the same search on Continental's site and apparently I have wasted $70. So confused ...

:)!

Got an anonymous note on my desk this morning that said "Have a nice day :)"

:)

No options

I've been noticing that these four main food chain stores are spreading all over Seoul, at a very scary speed -- Paris Croissant & Baguette, Dunkin, Baskin-Robbins 31, and Coffee Bean. Almost every new "coming soon" stores downtown have been one of these four, except a Burger King (great). It had never creeped me out though, until I went to the Incheon Airport to drop off Matt about a week ago: I really wanted a smoothie from this cute smoothie place they had, but it as gone; in fact, most of the places that offered a huge range of food choices had been replaced by one of those four. It reminded me of those arguments you hear everywhere -- such as losing diversity in nature by breeding only certain types of grains or animal stocks for maximum profits, or conglomerates putting small startups out of business -- and for the first time, it really got to me.

Addictions

The three hings I'm addicted to at the moment:

• Foosball
• Piano
• Jigsaw puzzle
  

Another good weekend

So far my weekend has been exactly what I needed. Restful with lots of piano playing, playing with Juni, reading, etc. and going out at night to try out cool bars and other places to hang out. On Friday night, I found this amazing place in Kangnam called Sky Bar, Chang. I had the best pina colada ever. And of course I stopped by WA Bar tonight -- I love sitting at the "bar" table with over a hundred types of beer placed in the center, in a huge ice tray. I picked out this drink called DNA, from Australia, wiht a huge green thumbprint on the bottle. The highlight of my weekend was winning a piggy cell phone stand from a shooting game. I got 36 out of 40 shots! Watch out, people ;)

How does one come to love another?

..and how does one feel loved by or communicate love to another?

I just watched the movie Rain Man, which stars Tom Cruise (Charlie) and Dustin Hoffman (Raymond). After twenty-something years, Charlie finds out that he has an older brother, Raymond, who's autistic. For the chance of getting some of the 3 million dollars inherited to his brother, Charlie takes Raymond to LA with him; they drive across the country, from Cincinnati to LA because Raymond is afraid of flying. During the six days of driving, they go through an endless series of incidents that drive Charlie crazy, but in the end, the movies shows that they have bonded throughout it all and that Charlie really cares for his brother.

I've always been a firm believer in that a strong, close relationship cannot be maintained without good verbal communication, especially when it comes down to romantic relationships. But the movie has reminded me of that there are so many other factors to a strong caring relationship. And of course, there are so many different ways to communicate the feelings for the other person other than words. The two most touching parts were when Charlie was eating cheeseballs with a tooth pick (Raymond's main utensil is toothpicks) and when Raymond called him his "main man" (whom he can trust and rely on).

The movie shows a number of the other examples of two very different people growing more acquainted with each other in their relationship and how they communicate that they care in non-verbal ways. Because of his autism, Raymond must stick to a routine: must go to bed by 11pm; must have his bed by the window; must watch a certain TV show; must eat pancakes on Tuesdays with maple syrup on the table before the pancakes come. Obviously all of this drives Charlie absolutely nuts, thinking it is all BS, but as they spend more time together, he happily does everything to keep his brother calm and happy. Raymond learns to actually stop talking when Charlies tells him so and also not be afraid of his hugs (touching can be extremely upsetting to autistic people).

This is why I find relationships fascinating. I love observing and analyzing relationships because it reveals so much of the subtle, sophisticated dimensions of interpersonal communication and I find it beautiful.

A quick look back

Highlights of the past few weeks:

• working hard to finish strong for my first quarter at Google
  
• thinking about where my destination should be
• meeting more people and staying up 'til 6 in the morning on weekends
  
• playing on my piano and violin
• our team offsite to Lotte World! followed by a crazy dinner/karaoke night
  
• lots of classical music at work
• ran into a stationary taxi and hurt my knee
• read through possibly every single IT related article in Korean for one of my projects
• wine and cheese at my place; made my own bruschetta (they have fresh basil in Seoul!)

Oh wine

Two of my favorite wines have been secured for my birthday party!

*for Nelson's Question:
- Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva 2004
- Marques de Riscal Rioja 2003

:)

Progress

Feeling lonely less frequently and the loneliness is far more tolerable than before. Feeling a little bored though.

Growing up is ...

no fun. I miss the fun times with no responsibilities or reality checks!

What's Wrong with Mark Z.?

Why can I no longer collapse the stupid minifeed box on my profile? I hate having to scroll to read people's profiles!

Broken in

mmm

Balance in Life

So the last time I wrote here was three weeks into my job. Now I'm almost two months into, and life's been exciting and challenging. The biggest challenge for me is still finding the right balance in life to keep learning and be happy. I take baby steps forward, sometimes significantly bigger steps, but also back step sometimes. Overall, though, I do feel that I've grown just enough to feel stronger to not just feel like crawling up against my pillow in bed, trying to face away from the challenges.

Probably the most challenging time in my life of almost twenty-four years I remember -- but I'm definitely starting to enjoy the challenges.

Still Lovin' It

It's been three weeks since my last entry. Every day, I find something about my job, Google, and the field that I really appreciate and/or find fascinating. Aw!

Working at Google

I'm well into my second week at Google Korea, and it's been awesome so far. More updates this weekend!

Bleeding Money

Not looking forward to my credit card bill for March.

Piano, new glasses, hair, new clothes, dentist appointment, high cell phone bill, plane tickets, and I still owe money. Yikes.

A New Piano

I've been waiting for this moment. My own portable digital piano! After watching Once, I got sheet music for Falling Slowly, one of the movie's soundtracks and the piano part looked really pretty. Then I decided to actually get a piano, after not having played for about 5 years. I did some research online, checked out a few different ones at several shops yesterday, and picked out Casio's PX-110 DK. It got delivered earlier today and I played for over five hours!

Before buying the piano, I stopped by Goguma, absolutely the most unorganized and awesome used book store I had ever been to. I had so much fun looking around and actually got some really great music scores. One of my new favorites spots in Seoul.

Spring is Here!

I was out today for about 3 hours running errands, and spring is finally here! It felt like one of those days at Cornell in late March, when the air starts to feel breezy and warm against your face. On the way home, I picked up some greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and sliced almonds to make a nice light salad for dinner. Now that reminded me of those summer nights in Ithaca. (Awwwwwwwwwww I miss Cornell :D)

Distance and Mind

마음이 지척이면 천리라도 지척이오
마음이 천리오면 지척도 천리로다

우리는 각재천리(各在千里)오나
지척인가 하노라.

A Question

To you, what is fun and what is important?

MSN Messenger -- Terrible

• I don't like how it displays IMs.
• I can't even share a folder with more than two people. That is lame.
• I can't even find the Add button.
• The stored conversations are not integrated into my Hotmail account. Why would I need to search my buddy list? If they want to add an useful search function, make my IM logs more easily searchable! Right now they are stored as .xml files in "My Received Files" folder. Wow.
  
• Has graphic ads!
• Horrible menu design. I can never find what I want. The icons are too small. Do they even have a user experience team or just design things for kids / teenagers?

Ugh. Google needs to add video chat to GTalk ASAP so I can ditch this thing.

Life in a Big City

Matt has been talking about his weekend trips to Rasputin, one of the biggest used music stores in the Bay Area, and it intrigued me to see if there were any in Seoul. There were a number of online stores, but I much prefer going through old CDs (or books) one by one, not having any particular artists in mind.

I kept googling but only found a few LP stores, which seemed to have a bad reputation for being overpriced and unfriendly staff. Then I started looking up used book stores and ended up finding this big thrift store chain called "A Beautiful Store". There were over 20 stores listed, with some of them being just regular thrift stores and some carrying mostly CDs and books. I can't wait to check them out next weekend!

Oh, I also found an used book store called "Goguma", which means yam in Korean. I will have to stop by :-P

Taking Care of Myself

I've started to take care of myself, and it feels good :)

꽃이 진다 슬퍼하지 말라
영근 열매다

No .EXE

My laptop is broken, so I've been using my mom's computer at home for the past couple of days. She just had it formatted a month ago, so there were barely any applications installed. I logged into Gmail and it just hit me that I didn't have to download AIM to talk to people on my buddylist .. and I realized, wow, this is so great.

So if I could do everything online, maybe I will get a MacBook Air :P

Random Thoughts

• Today was my parents' 26th anniversary. I knew they weren't planning anything, so I got a small cake and candles on the way home. They were really touched :)
• Breaking up is difficult. So difficult when the decision is not mutual.
• Let's be thankful for what I have now instead of what I do not.
• It is silly not to take the risk when there are also a million things that give me hope and one thing I'm afraid of. But that biggest fear is getting my heart broken and it seems unbearable.
• Am I taking everything too seriously?
• I need tea time with my girls. I need to relax about life and its uncertainties.

Self-Reflection

I did a lot of self-reflection last night. And it seems to me that, over the past year, some of my best qualities had waned a little -- independence (emotional independence, in particular), confidence, and appreciation of little things in life. I think those were at their peak from Spring 2005 - early Fall 2006. Between now and then, I worked on Senior Week, started dating Matt, graduated, moved to Korea, have been working at SNU and living with my family. I'm not sure how exactly all these things have influenced who I am, but looking back, trying to figure it all out:

I had always dreaded moving back to Korea, and when I did, I was so determined to minimize re-adjusting to Korean culture and therefore minimized my social activities here. Obviously I started to feel very lonely, relying on talking to Matt and other friends in the US to feel connected. Very unhealthy, needless to say. I'm still not 100% comfortable with letting myself go and immersing in my life back in Seoul. I tried so hard to assimilate during my years in the US, and I'm afraid of losing my connections to the culture and people there by changing again. And not having a "big" job brought the feeling of inferiority. All my close friends were working at "big" companies, and I kept drawing the comparison. I wanted to feel responsible and challenged without having to trying so hard to on my own;

Then my relationship. I dreaded losing my "American" qualities because I felt the connection we had was based none of my Korean sides, and as soon as I became even slightly more “Korean”, our connection would weaken. Matt was also in a pretty intense program at Google, meeting a lot of people and going through various new experiences. I was alarmed that we weren't sharing as many experiences as we did at Cornell. Again, I was afraid that our connection would weaken from it as people bond over going through similar experiences. And the fear of drifting apart from not seeing each other often made me obsess over making sure that we talk every other day and for a longer period of time every weekend and also setting up definitive dates for visiting each other as soon as possible. I put all my efforts and time toward talking to him and visiting him. For example, if I got vacation days, I wouldn’t even consider visiting other places other than Mt. View. It makes sense to keep up the communication and visits, but what if I’m so caught up with it that the rest of my life is not growing? I think I’ve been overly paranoid and refused to take any risks. Now that I’ve decided to stay in Korea longer, I will have to figure out a way to get over my fear of drifting apart so I can be comfortable with exploring different opportunities and experiences. I think I’ve been making a progress here already, mostly due to the visits and all the other things we’ve shared over the past ten months that showed me our connection has only grown in spite of the distance.

In conclusion, I will have to be okay with immersing myself in my life here, be confident that I will only grow and not lose anything, and be excited about the positive changes.

A Dreamy Week in California

Walking down the trail and across the bridge
With the sun shining through the trees

The breeze blowing through my hair

Feeling the warmth of his fingers around mine

It all feels like a long, peaceful dream
I can still feel and see every moment
So dreamy and delicate
Afraid it will all fade away slowly
Until I can no longer feel
His hand in mine
His lips against mine

So I reminisce
Over and
Over again
So I remember
What it all feels like

Till next time.

What I miss

I miss working with professional people with intelligence, modesty, and creativity.

The One and Only

Out of 3,324,047,000.

Thanks to Technology

I had a really good time today catching up with Heahter, Emily, and Elizabeth on Live Messenger today! It just felt like one of those Friday nights hanging out at 803 Seneca, sipping tea and having a girl talk. What would I do without messengers, webcams and the Internet?

The Perfect Song

"Sometimes a love song's got a little bit of death in it, sometimes a death song's got a little love in it sometimes a song about being friends, sometimes .. this is just, just a looove song." - Dave Matthews

Well troubles, they may come and go
But good times, they're the gold
And if the road gets rocky, girl
Just steady as we go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYkljoL7PYA
I could never get over how amazing this song is.
It makes me teary every time I listen to it.

Feeling Better

Since early this week, I've been feeling more relaxed and confident than I ever had in the past half a year or so. I was feeling anxious mostly about finding out where I'd be in a few months, but now I'm actually kind of enjoying the process. It reminds me of those months before hearing back from all the colleges.

First Entry in 2008

A Happy New Year!

Last night, I wrote down my new year's resolutions and wishes. It's something I do every year and my resolutions and wishes are pretty much what they have been for the past few months. But it still was a good ritual that helped me feel more hopeful and optimistic.

I wish for security, certainty, and love.
And my resolution is to plan and pave my way. It is the year of the rat after all ;)