The days in Boston

The seventh day, was the Harvard day, which was amazing.

The Identity

We had lunch with Ji-eun and Kristina, who were Korean American and Chinese American. The fact that they were foriegn-American was meaningful, because they might have thoughts about their ‘identity’, which has been a great topic in the modern society. The confusion of identity, some call it anomi, is really something matters.

Kristina actually told me about her hard times when she came to America for the first time when she was about ten. She couldn’t talk in English for months and she lacked confidence; Being an Asian-American was being in a minor, really minor group in American society. After living in an asian community for 10 years, where asians were the absolute majority, she became one of the minorities for the first time in her life. She thought herself so small and too different from everyone else around her. She wrote her experiences, overcoming the anxiety and acting herself out, to become confident as an Asian-American in her college entrance essay, and now she’s an amazing student in Harvard. It’s difficult: to overcome yourself, and to overcome the difference of the world. Since it’s such a diverse society these days, I think these acknowledgement and understanding of difference is critical. And I think this understanding helps us from coping with the anomi. Anomi appears when you don’t know who you are, and this happens most prevalent in the era of rapid change. We can easily confirm this by finding facts that people suffering from anomi skyrocketed since the indutrial revoltion in 18C. In America, I think the concept of ‘anomi’ is bit different in the case of Asian-American, because the fundamental reason for their confusion of identity is that they’re ‘different’.

It’s the same for Korean-Japanese, who are being great social issues these days. One Korean-Japanese, who’s grandparents are Korean, was born in Japan and grew up in Japan, and totally thought she was same with any other Japanese except the fact that she had Korean ancestors. Since she had a great musical talent, she took an audition, and made her debut which was expected to be successful. However, after she declared that she was a Korean-Japanese to the public, the sales volume of her album plummeted. The result was a disaster. No matter how beautiful her voice was, not matter how wonderful her talent was, she couldn’t simply overcome the wall of discrimination. Didn’t she have to declare that she had Korean grandparents? Isn’t she Japanese? Or isn’t she Korean? Nobody could give a clear answer to her. She just had to work harder than any other singer in Japan: she made projects, which were huge challenges such as running through the whole territory of Japan from Hukaido to Kyushu, for each of her albums, and she put great efforts to her projects, and showed people in Japan that she’ve got passion for her music and her life. Finally, now, she’s quite a renowned singer in Japan, but still the tag of ‘Korean-Japanese’ follows her everytime. The reality is like this.

However, Koreans, including myself, are so negligent about these identity problems of many international Koreans, since we live in such a unitary state. But these problems are big. Even regular Koreans will have to cope with these topic in the near future in my expectation. The world is keep changing, and we never know what will happen tomorrow. There is nothing we can actually ‘ignore’, and the issue of ‘identity’ is something we really should think about, even though that doesn’t seem to matter in the current point of time. And I definitely want to think about this issue more on and on.

The Sports day 

After having these deep and meaningful conversations with Ji-eun and Kristina(actually Ji-eun told us about the awesome H-RINK and other activities, but I lack time now, and I want to mention it sometime later), we had to say goodbye to them, crying like a baby(no we weren’t!),  and started our ‘day of sports’. We played frisby for the first time in our life, and we definitely sucked. Sorry for the bad word, but what else I can comment about our frisby! We couldn’t even have a rally over 7 times, for more than an hour! But, it was absolutely fun. The highlight of our sports day was the bowling time! And that’s because I’ve got lucky and a bit of talent, which must’ve been my parents’. At the first game, I had 3 spares and got more than a 100, and at the second game, I even made a strike! Though after that I got into a deep slump, which I don’t care much since it was the first time I played bowling in my life. Our team-Dansung and Mintae- won the other team for 2:1, though it didn’t matter at all who wins and loses except the fact that the losers had to pay for the drinks. It was totally enjoyable and cool, and everyone could go back to bed in really good sports-man-spirit. Sports is really awesome, and it becomes even more awesome, when you actually play it.

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The eighth day, was the MIT day! Hoorey!! However, it snowed a LOT, so everything in MIT was limited, and every lecture we were bounded to hear(including the seemingly-awesome robotic lecture) was canceled!!! Oh, my, gosh.

The Robots 

However, MIT had a great alternative: the MIT mueseum. The MIT mueseum was the best mueseum I’ve ever visited before. It was so AWESOME that they had the whole bunch of robotic section, including facial robots, feeling robots, learning robots, robot arms, robotic competition, and every cool things about robots! It was a robot heaven! I’ve made several robots since I was 12, and some were early-stages of professional robots, but I couldn’t even imagine that these developed robots were actually made 15 years ago!! Yes, I’ve got a lot of things to learn in terms of robotics, and that, is what I want to do in my college years.

Robots are really amazing because you can virtually do anything with robots. It’s quite a comprehensive field; You should know pretty much of computer science, computer programming, and have understanding of principles in science, machanism, and creativity. It’s complicated, too. Even thinking of a seemingly simple action, you should consider the motion, angle and connections of certain parts of the robot, and also the programming of that action. When the robots become complicated, the dimension of your thinking should be complicated too. I participated in several Robotics Olympiad including linetracer robot contest, stair robot(which goes up and down the stair, using the principle of human leg) contest, and creative robot contest, and creative robot was my favorite. It’s because you can be infinitely-creative, as long as you can make that robot come true. I went to the national competition after regional competition, and almost went to the International Robotic Olympiad, which I couldn’t because I only placed the third in the national, but it was totally a great experience. I could encounter tons of geniuses with ideas I’ve never thought about, techniques I’ve never tried! That was the level of middle and high school students, and how amazing will it be when it comes to MIT and world class roboticist!! I have time, dream, and passion. I hope my dream comes true-including participating in every fields that I have passion for-, and before that, I must put a lot of efforts and passion in what I’m doing now, and in the future. I’ve got so many things to talk about as long as robot concerns, but some other time will be better for now.

After spending hours in that awesome mueseum, we went to a delicious spanish restaurant. I ate san salmon sevastian, and it tasted two thumbs up!!(which doesn’t mean short and fat, Taeho) This way, the eight day of our journey ended.

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The ninth day was another Harvard day, and also the last day in Karen, Doane and Shelby’s house.

The talk with Professor McCann

Professor McCann in Harvard majored in Korean literature. I was sooooooooo impressive that his understanding about Korean literature and its related history was so profound(it was beyond my imagination), and it was very enjoyable to listen to his short lectures and opinions. I learned very different aspects of ‘translating’ Korean poems, and maybe this is because he was a foriegner!! This is something that happens when you can get a totally objective viewpoint toward some topic. For example, I really have a lot of interest in Japan culture, and sometimes I surprise my Japanese friend by pointing out some facts about Japan, that she never thought about or even imagined about, and I had the feeling that this was because I wasn’t simply a Japanese! I think some of the great ideas of Prof.McCann was this case. He was an American who had great passion toward Korean literature and history, and he could get something what Koreans might have taken for sure or couldn’t see. I was speechless looking at him memorizing all those great poetries of Korea in Korean, and his deep, distinctive sight of view toward Korean literature. I want to write about my impression about the short time we spent with professor McCann more, but I’ll keep it for later since it’s too late now.

After the amazing contact with Prof.McCann, we took Amtrack from Boston to New Haven. It took slightly over 2 hours, and when we arrived, it was 7 pm. We went to Merriot Hotel right after and there we met Richard! We met a LOT of Yale metors including Michael, Diego, Suzie, Pat, and we ate delicious pizza all together, and a frisby of icecream. It was somehow sad because we didn’t have chance to actually ‘talk’ with mentors… Every mentors had their own conversations, and we lacked courage to interupt it, for our excuse, and it was the way today have past! We had to say goodbye to the mentors shortly after we met them, and walked down to the Hotel. But it was actually really fun at the hotel. We interviewed Michael, and he demonstrated how to do yoga and told us some crazy things he’ve done in his highschoolhood, and we had amusing times! After Michael left, we all gathered around the TV and watched Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants together, and laughed a LOT. We were childish, and so what? We are kids. After that, we finally ended today’s long schedule, and went into a sweet dream.

TO BE CONTINUED

Boston, Harvard and the Elderly people

The sixth day of this special trip has passed.

Boston, a beautiful city, had the same beautiful house in the middle of Cambridge. Karen and Doane greeted us in that house, and teached us a LOT about everything, from eating courtesy and interesting facts about Cambridge, to small wisdoms they’ve learned through their life. It was so much fun for me to talk with such open-minded, gentle people every morning in front of the magnificent breakfast.

The impressive fact was that even though Karen and Doane looked the same age as my grandparents, they were living their lives actively. Karen was an amateur artist who draw paintings on pineapples, and she and Doane always travel somewhere and everywhere, and tell us stories about the places they visited the next day. Karen and Doane, just like us, were on their special trip in everyday life, too. Contrast to the image of elderly in Korea who tend to be softer and weaker as time goes by, Karen and Doane seemed so independent and confident. They still talked freely about their thoughts toward the election and politicians in such a logical way, and they loved learning and eager to learn everything they didn’t know. I can’t say this a ‘difference between Korea and America’, since it’d be wrongly generalizing the whole image by just few samples, but there still is a ‘tendency’: in movies, American elderly people tend to be wise and gentle, and even when they are dying, they give touching messages to their offsprings. However, image toward elderly people in Korea is somewhat distorted: they’re rather too stubborn or emphasize the tradition too much so that they loose effectiveness, and they sometimes represent the conservatism toward everything. It’s true that in America, there are also a lot of opinions viewing elderly people in negative ways, and also in Korea, a lot of people sincerely respect eldery people and their thoughts, but what I want to talk about is the general impression I had over this issue.

I think this is not because the ‘level’ of wisdom is different in each country. I think this is the overall images the society and the historical background made: the country of ’self-made man’, America, still has it’s independence and progressiveness a big proud of the country, and the elderly people is the representation of those ’self-made man’s wisdom’. When Korea was in agricultural era, which was not long ago, Korean elderly people was also a sign of wisdom and experience, and the whole town showed great respect to them, and their thoughts and words had huge value for itself. However, as the society became industrialized, those values which elderly people represented became ineffective and meaningless value, and along with that, elderly people themselves were also regarded as unnecassary people in the society. According to one statistic I’ve seen few months ago, Korean elderly was one of the most ‘not-engaging-in-society-activities-after-retiring’ elderly people in the world. This fact is so unbelievable that the recognition toward our grandparents changed hugely in just a few couple decades. I also think this is somehow effected by the wealthiness of each country. Wealthy Americans had a lot of money, energy and time to spend their later life in more comfortable and willingly way, whereas the past-time Koreans in the 1960s had to concentrate only on developing and advances. This was something I was shortly thinking about while staying in Karen&Doane’s house, and I hope to find out more facts and factors about this issue as time goes by.

After leaving Karen&Doane’s place, we took a silver Boston trolly and headed to the beach. Boston was an amazing city, which was very different from San Francisco too. It was our first time to record broadcasting camera about our trip, so we got excited and nervous at the same time and had an enjoyable time with everyone. After that, on the way to the meeting with Korean Harvard students, we met Peru people playing Peru music, which touched Taeho’s heart so much(he was like “Oh, the music of home, I missed a lot, I am so happy!!”), and we stood for a while and listened to the music. Actually I’ve heard Peru music in a documentary program about Pablo Neruda, a poet from Chile, but I couldn’t even imagine that the music was this beautiful! It sounded sad, and the vibrato of the traditional Peru music was killing me. Taeho kept talking with those people in Spanish, which was another clue for the fact that he was a super-cool guy. We couldn’t stay long, so we soon said goodbye, but Batiq-team-gathered-scene definitely made some profit for those Peru people, which was pretty funny.

At that night, we met Korean Harvard students at the student hall room and talked a lot and questioned a lot to them. As I felt in Google, many of them were not ’super-special geniuses’, but people with more passion and dream. It was a shame that we couldn’t talk much about everything since we lacked time, but it was great to feel the atmosphere of ‘actual Harvard’ and be in that atmosphere myself.

A bigger day is waiting for me, and it’s TO BE CONTINUED.

The ‘Relationship-building’

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Jungdaun,

Please comment some more on the differences you see between Western and Eastern relationship building. Do you find Western relationships to be somewhat superficial? Why? Can you tell us more about relationship building in Korean society?

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Alan, thank you very much for leaving me comments.^^ I do think that there are differences between the Western and Eastern relationship building, whereas similarities also exists. Especially in the case of short-time relationship, such as relationship between people who met during traveling or in some special occasion, there I found the difference. The importance of privacy(or individualism) and cultural differences are the things I came up right now for the reason of difference.

I think privacy, which is a very important concept in western relationship building, make some limits in getting to know each other. Actually privacy is also important in eastern society, though it’s somewhat different from that of western society, and superficially the limits coming from privacy and cultural differences are just some mild unconvinience in asking private questions and some ‘not-to-do’ attitudes toward a person you first met. However, I believe and also felt that respecting the privacy does not just end up for itself, but makes up some sort of chain-reaction and builds a transparent wall between people, which is invisible to western people but tangible to eastern people. And I think this wall refrains me from builing more ‘dynamic’ relationships between people who I first met.

There is a short story about Korean relationship I read in some culture-related book. When two Koreans meet for the first time, after drinking beers together, they suddenly become ‘brother’s. From the next day, the two people in ‘brothership’ call each other ‘Hyung(older brother)’ and ‘Dongseng(younger brother)’, and can possibly say something that might be rude to ask to someone you recently met in western society. This story is not totally true, but it shows the tendency of eastern society that people think ‘deep and friendly’ relationship an important factor in building relations with others. We call this intimacy ‘Jung(情)’, which can’t actually be replaced in any other word in English, since it’s so complicated ‘Koreanish’ feeling. This ‘Jung’ enables people to build a special mutual bond between them, making people know each other in more personal, but also very caring and respective way, and the ’dynamic relationship’ I mentioned above can be formed! But at the same time, eastern society is also changing as the world is globalized and industrialized, and the focus on eastern intimacy is getting weaker too, which is a phenomenon I am sad about.

However, in some aspects, I think western people are more friendly than eastern people; People tend to be more active when they are talking to someone who they don’t know, and greetings and courtesy are much more casual. This brings a ‘broad-connection’ between people, and this looks somewhat superficial for me in the first glance. However, if it develops into a deep relationship after time goes by, it will be an invaluable asset for a person! I actually felt that through the friendship between Taeho, John and James; their relationship looked so cool and casual, and at the same time, they seemed to have very deep understanding to each other. Maybe the time and ways are the things that matter.

In my opinion, I don’t think either eastern or western style of relationship building is ‘not good’. No matter what style the relationships are, they are the same invaluable relationships and I learn a lot and feel a lot from them! It was the difference in the phase and feelings and other factors in relationship building, which came to me a lot, as a young Korean, that made me think about the human-relationships in western and eastern society.

I hope this could be an answer for your question, Alan.^^ I couldn’t cover the whole relationship building in each society, and my thought is somewhat incomplete. But I’m in the course of learning and encountering the world, and I’ll figure it out! If you have more opinions and advices about my thought, please tell me, I’d love it. Thank you again for reading my blog and leaving your comment, and please visit again! Have a nice day!

P.S. :

Sun, thank you very much for sharing your opinions and feelings about my writing!! I was so happy to read your comment.^^ The ‘omelet case’ was really funny for me and Taeho too; we laughed a lot! I think there are a lot of cultural differences between Korea and America other than this case, and many of them will give me valuable lessons to think about. I believe there were a lot of culture shocks you’ve encountered during your life abroad. Did these culture shocks really helped you understanding the world in more various viewpoints?

I made a lot of valuable human networks today, too! Everyday is a treasure: I meet some of the coolest people in the world, and can talk with them and ask questions! Tomorrow, we’re going to Yale. Thank you again for your comments! I’m happy that you’re interested in my blog.^^ Have a great day! See you again!

THE GOOGLE DAY

The fifth day of the trip has passed.

We went to Google. The ‘magnificenticity’ of Google was beyond imagination. Every building was named after each continent in the world, and the rooms inside the building was also located at exactly the same places where countries might be situated in one continent. GENIUSNESS, was the thing kept catching my mind. The masterplan in front of the first floor lobby was actually a giant white board, which gets erased once in a year. There were so many things written there: charts and graphs which represent someone’s own idea about progression and invention, seemingly-silly-looking-but-creative scribbles, tons of ideas about tons of subjects, and so many other writings covering the white board. This was not just a white board. It was a sign of creativity, freedom and openness which allow people to be crazy as far as they wish to be. It sounds easy, but it’s not. Creativity and freedom are not often the first things considered by the education administration along with teachers themselves. We can easily think of current situation of education in Korea. No matter how much the government sets a great motto of ‘creativity’, it’s hard to be practiced in the actual education field. One of the factors is that when we brake current rules and customs, the whole frame can be in danger. At the same time, however, a frame-braking can be a enormous power to make a change in the community and further – the world. Why can’t we be allowed to say things we came up to, do things we got passion for, study things we are interested in? They’re common thoughts of contemporary teenagers, common opinions of everyone who spent their teenage-hood, but questions which have not been solved.

‘Organizing the world information’. This simple mission phrase was the biggest power and motivation which geared up the whole Google. Various people taking care of various jobs were running for this same purpose, and I could feel the passion and hotness everywhere in Google. Megan and Pete, the two Googlers, introduced the Google campus and answered to our questions while walking through the Googleplex, eating amazing food at the cafeteria, and sitting at a small conference room. The more we questioned about the revolution and the success of Google, the more I could realize that a world-wide success isn’t something derived from a huge change or super-genius ideas. Small changes in paradigm were actually the biggest moving source of the world-biggest internet site. In the same way, the ‘genius’s working for Google were also not so different from other people around the world. To a question ‘What do you think was the thing that made you more stand out than others?’, Pete answered, “I just got more passion”. A little bit more passion, that was the difference, a huge difference.

In this way I was deeply impressed by EVERYTHING in Google. It was more like a HUGE amusement park rather than a ‘world-best-Internet-company’, and the atmosphere was very idealistic for me: I wanna be a Googler too!! There are so many things to write about Google, but maybe ’storing the touching-wave inside my mind’ can be an alternative for the flying times!

After saying goodbye to Google, we went to Batiq Headquarter, where we met Derrick again and talked a lot about cultural differences between Korea and America. Since Derrick had a load of interesting experiences including those in Korea, we could make a lot of ‘understanding-zone’, and talk freely about courtesy and attitudes in both countries.

Then we went to Taeho’s house, which wasn’t so messy than I expected(I don’t mean it Taeho, no!), and took a break and talked a lot about everything. I was so into the ‘minesweeper’, and recorded all the BEST SCORES, which wasn’t so meaningful since nobody actually played it before me..

Yes! Then we took a flight to Boston! A whole new world! Across the time line! Via Philadelphia! Sleeping out the whole flight! And, this way, the new day begins…

 TO BE CONTINUED

The day of ‘THE CONTACT’

Today we started out the day by meeting Derrick. Passionated, energetic person, Derrick succeeded making me think about the ’specificity’ of my dream. I believe I still have a lot of time to plan my dream, but thinking about what exactly I want to do is never too fast. The fact I focused on was that I knew few things about the fields which I’m interested in. Busy school life and the quantity of highschool study can’t be a good excuse for leaving my dream in total negligance. I want to start out persueing more passion toward my real interests.

I loved Stanford campus I visited today, and the events happened during the day are unforgettable. One of the most wonderful interaction of today was the ’short-but-very-powerful’ contact with John(who resembles Nicholas Cage, though Taeho disagrees) and James(who is so great at cooking ‘bap’). The aura they’re giving off was enough for me to get refreshed and relieved. We had big conversations during eating bap, chilly and cup-ramen(though I was playing game the most time) and it only lasted for 40~50 minutes, but it had huge impacts: it made me think, and it’ll make me keep thinking. James was an amazingly  extraordinary guy. He was delighted at everything that happens around him, and he expressed it in a neat and cool way. He really cared about people, and even though I met him for hardly an hour, I could tell it. I think that’s because he is sincere. He doesn’t pretend, and he is the guy he really is. John was also really pleasant person. He seemed to be having great passion in his major, and told me a lot about the courses he went through to find his aptitude and the way his lived his college life. John also teached me how to play Xbox360 guitar-playing game and I was so exited(it was the first time I played Xbox) and actually pretty good at it, though I could barely clear the medium level.

I have tons of things I felt and the time is flying. I hope I can stop the world clock or either invent a auto-mind-recording-device. Every moment is precious, and I don’t want to lose track of it. I’m in complicated thinking in various topics, and there really are some hard parts to solve during the trip, but I want to make the best of the time I spend with great people and conversations.

Tomorrow we’re going to Google, and starting our way to the east coast. I really miss my family, and I hope we go to Boston via Korea, and see my family even just for a while.

The Human Network

It was the third day of our trip, the weather was nice and pleasant. I want to talk about the awsome Berkley campus and all the behind stories Denis, Shina and Jing told me about a lot of topics, but it’s 3:00 AM and I wanna revatilize myself, so I’ll write the event I was most impressed today.

It was our whole new talk about the human network which started from the Berkley campus to Starbucks and Hwaiian Grill. It was a fresh shock. Sheena told me about the fund-raising jobs she participated in, and it felt so vibrant and activated, there were hundreds of energized people who really care for social issues and actually act out for them, according to Sheena’s comment, and this fact is super-cool. Being and working together with admirable people who loves what they do and are motivated to make a change is a magnificent experience, and it’s what I always crave for. I’m lucky that I actually had valuable encounters with wonderful people through the last 3 days, including Taeho, Denis, Halle, Katie, Jing, and Sheena.  The conversation went all over to the methods of actually making the changes and how to start them. Here the human network comes important. I never knew human network can be such a good basis for every social life including founding one’s own business, gathering people with common beliefs, and starting making changes in various ways. I recognized that I was underestimating the power of network and relationship. But it really is: relationship with others and the network beyond light connection can be a superb powerful motivation and also method for a social change. The greater fact is that the mentors we met today acted out for those valuable interactions since they were highschool students, and that helped them specify their dreams and seek and persue what they really want to do.

I got overwhelmed. At the end of the day, when we said goodbye to Denis and Jing, I felt sad. Even if the fact that the conversation with everyone I met today was one of the best conversations I ever had, it ends up so fast and easy. I will study and work in international basis in the future, and if the most of the human relationship I encounter turns out this way, it won’t be a genuine human-to-human interaction. The western society is pretty much adjusted to these kind of relationship, and it does have many positive aspects which help life become more active and broadly-connected. It is also unaviodable when living in the contemporary society which is highly globalized, and changes in a lightyear speed. But the consideration of eastern view toward human relationship-tending to know each other in more personal but respective way, considering mutual ‘bond’ an important thing in relationship- is necessary at the same time, and this will leave me deeper thinking about the topic.

The second day of the Journey

It was the second day of the journey, and everything went cool.

The weather was rainy, colder than yesterday, but it didn’t matter. The whole special 2 weeks are waiting for me! Actually the winter in Sanfrancisco is almost the autumn in Korea. It’s warm and pleasant.

In this weather, we started our day by going to Denny’s to grab some food. There, I felt something cultural. Looking at the menu, I found out there were no rice in the omelet. The fact that there was no rice was a shock to me, but it was a shock for Taeho that I got shocked at the fact which seems so natural for him! In America, omelet with no rice is absolutely natural. In Korea, it’s not. This new discovery made both of us get shocked. What seems to be natural can be really different from culture to culture. In this way, the thinking patterns can also be different. Different thinking patterns can make a lot of difference again, and I think this is the way how the world has it’s own culture and features. So if we acknowledge those differences more and more, that’ll be a one cool way to know the world in one’s own viewpoint, which is also many-sided, since that’ll mean I got through various thinking methods from various people around the world. I expect there’s gonna be whole different world beyond my imagination even except for this omelet event, and that will definitely be exiting.

 After that, we went city touring. The building of San Francisco is really awsome in lots of aspects. Hyeree and I found out that those are victorian buildings through the SF guide channel on the TV. And what kept me surprised was the fact that the whole city and the buildings were so ‘not-Koreanish’. The feelings I feel when I look at SF are really different from those I felt when I visited Japan or China, or even San Diego where I once lived in. It was so exotic for me, that I didn’t feel that I myself was really walking down the street. It was like while the DaUn-body walks along, and the real me was looking down at the DaUn-body in a objective viewpoint. I suppose I’ll feel this way when I get in to hypnosis  It’s really cool ’cause I’ve never felt these kind of feeling.

The most impressive event of today was the time we spent with Halle and Katie. They were energetic, open-minded and  really seemed they knew what they were doing! They were living a life. Talking directly, but with politeness, and showing the biggest interest to the person they were talking to is absolutely something that makes commuication more ‘communicationistic’. You see, there are a lot of ‘dead-communication’ which actually has no meaning except the fact that someone’s talking to somebody, and that’s definitely not cool. And at the same time, people do a lot of dead-communication, and that’s one of the things that make life boring and uncomfortable, and also unhonest. So, the encounter with the ‘real-communication’ made me delighted. The lunch with the whole series of communication-topping was great, and I felt a whole bunch of feeling-wave. Taeho also gave me something to think about while talking about the economy-and-the-world. It’s the fact that in the world, there are so many factors starting from economical or political factors which can be numerized, to cultural and humanitical factors which can’t be translated to someting obejective and artificial. When we know that, one single social phenomenon can represent a lot of factors hidden behind it. At the same time, an event which seems so trivial can be one of the factors that triggered some sort of huge events or disasters. I was really impressed because that links with the reason why I wanted to study economy. There are so many factors which we don’t know in the society. It’s like the submortgage policy which actually wasn’t that big a concern actually triggered the plummet of stock market of the whole world. And while things are happening like that, I’m pretty sure that there will be a principle-or principles-which can explain all those happenings. I want to find out that principle, and that’s why I got interested in economy. I was happy that Taeho mentioned that too himself, and I was like ‘yepee~!!! Economy really can answer the questions!’

Back to the lunch at the Ramen store. Actually, it was bad that I didn’t have many chances to talk with Katie, Halle, Taeho and the friends that much. But it’s only 2 days after I arrived in America with new friends and mentors, and maybe I just need more time to activate my motors! That won’t be a problem.

We made a lot of cool memories after that too; We rented a van, droven by Halle, visited the awsome Jelly-Belly factory, rode a cable-car which became distracted by shaking camera, bought super-cool nintendo chips and case, ate dinner at a funny Korean restaurant where President Rho visited, worked out together at a fitness room at the hotel basement, and everything was cool! I have bunch of things I wanna write, but it’s too late for today! Tommorow we’re doing some conversations and we visit Berkly, and it’s really gonna be a greater day! Hooray for our special two weeks!

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