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cute smoothie place they had, but it as gone; in fact, most of the places that offered a huge range of food choices had been replaced by one of those four.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.