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368 days ago
389 days ago
I participated in and witnessed the most transformational moment in the history of US politics --- Barack Obama was elected as the 44th, and the first African-American President of the United States last night. As he put it in his victory speech in front of around 125,000 people gathered in Chicago's Grant park, "If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where anything is possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer." I have never seen America be so alive, full of new hope on TV for my last 16 years here. The cheering, the feat, the exuberating atmosphere I saw on TV last night, I have only seen it once in the ending scene of the blockbuster movie "Independence Day" when earth defeated aliens. New York Times with triple bold font title declared "Racial Barriers Fall as Voters Embrace Changes." Several TV commentators wept, ...
553 days ago
To say Seoul is Milan in the east is definitely not an overstatement. I have never seen more shining men's suits on the street anywhere else. (So I decided to put on my suit jacket and forget about buying a cheap zipper jacket for the cool climate the first few days I just arrived.) Drop-dead gorgeous ladies were steadily running on their high heels inside the subway. Today, in a fast food restaurant called Lotterie in Jongno 3-ga, I almost cracked up into loud laughters when I saw a 30-ish young man carrying a Louis Vuitton (LV) purse. He was alone so I am sure he is not carrying it for his girlfriend. Well, his outfit does not look as stylish as his purse though. When I was wondering what he may have in that smaller-than-a-notebook-PC purse (cellphone, mirror, lipstick?), then what popped my eyes was that another man in the late 20s just walked in and, yes, he carried a different style of LV purse, stopping at the counter and ordering his food. Again, he is alone. The thickness of ...
556 days ago
"How far is it to Beijing, China?" I asked. Just like the line "How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley now?" in Shakespeare's Richard II. After being called a Chinese for nearly my entire life, I finally got my China visitor visa, it was an ordeal to get the China visa these days after the recent Tibetan riot and all the protests going on in the States and else where. Many foreign friends of mine often popped their eyes and stunned to hear that, I, look like a Chinese, had never set foot in China soil (including Hong Kong and Macau). They probably always think I should have been visiting China more than my trips to Disney. Well, this is unfortunately not true even though I am somehow proud of my knowledge in Chinese history or geography, which I did reasonably well in my high school years. I am really exciting and looking forward to my first visit to the place I was so familiar with but also so distant from over my entire life. Well, the city Seoul herself is too ...
558 days ago
Korean is the only language I know that spells their letters (Hangul) in two dimension (maybe Arabic too?). Even though I can recognize their 24 letters, to spell them out promptly, however, is a slow going challenge. I strongly suspect it is the 2D spelling that retards my thought process. Unlike English or Japanese which is either left-to-right or top-down, I will spin around the same character even with merely 3 letters for a few seconds to get it right. You may wonder how about Chinese, well, it is totally different, there is no letter but only building blocks. The pronunciation symbols, nonetheless, are still arranged in 1D. You do want to give credit to whoever invented the assembly method of Korean phonemic alphabets, though. One interesting thing I just found out was that many Korean nouns pronounced exactly the same way as Taiwanese or Fu Kien dialect in Singapore. To name a few, my first name if pronounced in Korean using the Chinese characters will sound just like the way ...
