New Challenge: Korean Comic

My new challenge is to make 30 comics in Korean in 30 days. It's a way to practice my Korean, and also do something creative. I started yesterday.

The title is "재밌는 원어민 이야기" (Fun foreign teacher tales). Hopefully it'll also be a good way to record some of my stories of the last two years, before they all just disappear. I'll post some of them here with translations. I'm also going to try to find a Korean site, probably naver.com, where I can post them for a Korean audience.

Failed challenge: 300k in one month

This was a bigger challenge than I realized. On paper, a 10k run every day doesn't seem too bad. But during the challenge, you realize that if you skip one of those days, and then you have to absorb that 10k somewhere else.

I ended up skipping too many days in the beginning to catch up. Some days were really cold or raining, and other days I was worried about overworking my knees and feet.

The challenge did get me running on days I ordinarily would have just skipped, so that part was pretty good. I'll try this again when the weather gets a little better.

Running Update

Here's what I've run so far. It's not been as clean as the schedule I originally planned.
day 1- 10k
day 2- 11.5k
day 3- break
day 4- 10 k
day 5- break
day 6- 15.5 k

That's a grand total of 47 kilometers over 6 days. Dividing the days up, I should be at 60k by now, so I'm a little behind. I've been running into some problems (haha, it's a pun) such as sore knees (the reason for my break on day 3), and some stomach problems which have limited the length of some of the runs.

Another challenge has been to accurately determine how far I've run. I've been listening to radiolab shows, which are usually about an hour long. I have a pretty good idea of how far I can run in one hour, so I then go to mapmyrun.com and try to guess where exactly I had just been running to confirm (not an easy task when you're randomly selecting alleyways around Incheon).

Failed Challenge: Meditation

During my trip to India, I started a 30-day meditation challenge. Somewhere along the way, I got distracted and forgot. India can be a distracting country sometimes.

I liked what little meditation that I did during the challenge, so I'll probably try it again sometime.

New Challenge: 300 kilometers in 30 days

There's no better time to be running in Korea than during fall. The weather is cool, and the leaves are changing into other-colored leaves.

My next challenge is to run a total of 300 km within 30 days. It's the same as a 10 km (about 6 miles) run every day. Impressed with my division yet? Just wait.

But instead of running every day, weekly I'm going to do 5 days of 10 km runs, 1 day off, and then a 20 km run.

Yesterday I ran around beautiful Bupyeong Park. It has a course that's exactly 1260 meters long, so 8 times around makes a perfect 10 km run. Counting to eight very slowly while running around in a circle is surprisingly challenging for me, so I used my fingers to keep track.

There was a lot of math in this post. It's making my head hurt a little bit.

bad service and a monkey battle

Filocafe, a cafe that has the distinction of having the best view I've ever experienced, while simultaneously being the worst cafe.

I ordered an iced espresso about an hour ago, when finally she brings over a lemonade and mutters something about being sorry for the wait.

Oh, I think, that's nice of them - a free lemonade because obviously some terrible disaster occurred in the kitchen that's caused all the espresso to explode.

"Free?" I need to confirm.

"No," she says. "You no order?"

No, me no order. Oh well.

A British guy, one of the only three other patrons in the cafe, comes over and claims it before things get any more confusing. "I ordered this an hour ago. I didn't think it was coming," he says.

I made my order again and wait. At any other cafe, this would be a terrifically frustrating experience. But here, I am content to wait as long as it takes. In fact, the longer the better. Because all the while, I am watching the most amazing situation unfold on the adjacent rooftop.

A tribe of monkeys has been slowly collecting on the roof. They tore down clothes that were drying on a clothesline, and started eating the buttons off of them.

Every so often, a monkey will jump the three or four feet and land on our terrace, and some kid will chase it away with a stick.

The monkeys' numbers grow and grow, when a surprised Japanese tourist pokes his head up from the stairs. He disappears and returns with a few friends and a large stick.

The three Japanese men slowly clear a path across the rooftop. A few monkeys try to hold their ground, but the man with the stick bangs it against the ground, and the monkey quickly flees.

They make it to the room on the other side of the roof, where their friends had apparently been held captive by the monkeys. Now there's about seven guys and one girl.

But the monkeys have reclaimed the roof, and taken the stairs. And this time they have the upper ground.

They slowly go back. One man is separated from the group for a few moments, and a monkey decides to challenge him. He charges the man and shrieks in his ear. The man quickly retreats to his group.

They see me watching them only a few meters away, and wave, and I tell them to keep it up, they're doing great.

But in the middle of the roof, they are completely surrounded, and the monkeys are not backing down. Neither the monkeys nor the humans want to get physical - it's a game of posturing and bluffs, and position. And the Japanese are not doing a very good job of feigning confidence and strength. I can't say I'd be any different surrounded by monkeys.

In the nick of time, an Indian guy from below rushes up the stairs, waving a huge stick, and yelling. The monkeys retreat a small distance. He starts throwing bricks at them, and the monkeys reluctantly leave.

My espresso arrives. It's disgusting and full of sugar. I can't even make myself drink it. I will never come back here again.

We Sell Refreshing Beer - Varanasi, India

Minjeong and I are sitting in Dennis's Restaruant, in an alley maze somewhere in Varanasi, India.

We came here because we saw a sign: "시원한 맥주 팔아요!" It means "We sell refreshing beer!" It's not in Hindi, or in English: only in Korean.

There are no liquor licenses in Varanasi, so Dennis (if that is his real name) has found a creative solution that caters to those who can read the sign (knowing Korean has some surprising practical applications). Hopefully the police don't take any classes.

We ordered our bottle about 10 minutes ago, and we're still waiting for it. "Dennis" goes to the refrigerator and pulls something out from behind the Sprites. Concealing it behind his body, he beckons me over.

We go into a back room, and I watch him pour the full Kingfisher bottle into a little metal pitcher. Apparently nobody believes that the whole beer can fit into the pitcher, so now he always makes someone watch to confirm that he's not cheating them out of precious beer.

I take the pitcher back to the table, and as we enjoy our secret beer, a nearby cow pokes his head into the entryway. She waits there until Dennis comes and feeds her some bread. "She comes every day for bread."

I sip beer and wonder if bread is a good diet for cows. She seems to like it anyway; she keeps coming back.

challenge complete: 100 push ups a day

...2999... 3000.

Oh hi, I didn't see you come in there. I was just doing some push ups.

Don't know if you heard me counting, but I just did 3000 of them, so no big deal.

100 push ups a day is a very reasonable goal. I'd break it down into 4 sets of 25 usually, and space them out over the day.

It was a little strange waiting in an airport, and then suddenly doing a set of push-ups.

It takes less than a minute for a set. I immediately feel better if I've been sitting around for an hour or two, and then I do it. It has made me more aware of the effect of exercise on my body.

Summary: Great way to add some extra exercise into the day. I am going to keep doing these.

new challenge: meditation

I'm traveling in India for the next month and a half, so I think that is a big enough challenge for now.

While traveling, my emotional state bounces between joy and extreme frustration on a daily basis. It would be nice to have at least one moment in the day where I can calm myself, and restore some sort of mental balance.

So I will try to meditate every day for the next 30 days. I actually started this two days ago.

I am not concerned with the amount of time, or any other concrete goal. It might take me a few minutes one day or 20 minutes the next. When I feel like I've done it, I've done it.

Challenge complete: picture every day

I took a picture every day for the last 30 days. It sounded like it could be fun. I did it because I'm not often a picture taking kind of person.

But I enjoy a picture as much as the next man, and I think there's a lot of artistic thinking and technical skill involved in taking good pictures, which is something worth practicing.

The most disheartening part of this challenge was when I lost my camera's charger. I should have gone straight out and got a new one. Instead I took pictures with my computer, or with my iPod.

When I wasn't using a camera that allowed me to manually adjust the white balance, and the focus, and all that, the challenge lost a big part of the "technical skill" aspect, and that made me take it less seriously, and probably took worse pictures. I'll do a gallery of some of the best and worst pictures soon.

Despite mixed feelings on the success of this particular trial, I intend to renew this challenge for my upcoming trip in India (3 days from now!).

Summary: Try it out if you're curious. Everybody likes a picture. At the very least, you'll have a photographic diary of a month of your life.

challenge complete: Korean diary

For the last 30 days, I've been keeping a diary in 한국어 (Korean).

It's hard to notice improvements in a language skill because it's all so gradual. It's coming though. I need a little more faith sometimes.

I got drunk with a friend the other night and went to a Korean grill house, and I spoke a little bit. Basic, quickly spoken questions have become much easier to understand. It's always nice to notice improvement in yourself.

Like a lot of things, the better you are at it, the more fun it becomes. Anyone struggling with the basics of a second language, don't give up! 화이팅 하세요!

Summary: great challenge. Almost a necessary thing for anyone who wants to master another language. But also, not enough by itself to gain a language.

challenge complete: TED talks

For the last 30 days, I watched a video every day on ted.com.

This challenge was fun.

Watch a TED while eating your bowl of oatmeal in the morning, and then you have something inspiring to think about for the rest of the day.

In no particular order, here are a few that stood out for me over this last month:

Jill Taylor talks about her amazing insight into the human mind she had while having a stroke!

Salman Khan reinvents education through youtube.

Matt Cutts's 30 day challenges inspired me to do these challenges in the first place.

Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of having a "single story" about someone. Good talk about keeping an open mind and fighting stereotypes.

Bryan Stevenson will make you think about injustice in America.

The hardest part of this challenge was choosing where to start! So I would often choose my Ted talks based on lists like "20 best ted talks of all time" or something like that.

But honestly, I haven't listened to a bad one yet.

Summary: Inspiring, easy to do, and well worth the 15 minutes every day. It'll broaden your world, inspire, and make you think.

Does anyone have a good TED to tell me about?

challenge completed: contact old friends

For the last thirty days,  I sent a message a day to a friend whom I had not contacted in a while.

I came to a few realizations.

People are very receptive to messages. It's like a little present. People I hadn't talked to in years would respond very quickly and warmly.

It was easier to send a quick message. And I think it was easier for people to respond to a quick message. A four-paragraph novel to someone you haven't talked to in two years is big thing to deal with. They'll feel they have to make an appropriate response, and that makes it easier to put it off.

After a while, it became very easy to write these messages. I just starting defaulting to a formula. My basic message was sort of like:

"Hey, Stevie what's up?
I was thinking about that time that we were over there and we did that one thing. That sure was fun! Just wondering where you are, and how you're doing.
Hope all is well,
Tom"

Hopefully in the real message I would mention an actual activity I shared with this person.

Finally, I realized there were a lot more people I want to keep in touch with than I thought. There are still people beyond those first thirty, whom I plan to contact.

Summary: Great challenge to anyone who has trouble keeping in touch. Very easy, and very rewarding.

challenge complete: blog

Challenge: Update this blog every day for 30 days.

Status: Completed!

Challenge Review

This was a pretty easy challenge to complete. On several days it would literally take less than a minute to upload a picture, or to write a few simple sentences about something.

On days where I attempted to be funny or insightful it took longer. No surprises there.

Now let's get a little deep here. Did I learn anything valuable? Did it change my life?

Not really, and maybe a little, respectively.

I started this challenge because keeping a blog, and keeping up with my writing has always been difficult for me to do consistently. On most days, I lack the motivation or the discipline to write.

I don't know why, and it's probably because I'm unsure of my own motivations for doing it. Do I crave attention? Is it because I enjoy the process? Do I want to share things with other people? Is it an outlet for creativity or stress?

Probably a mix of a lot of those things, with certain ones flaring up more than others on any given day.

But inside of these 30 days, knowing that I have to post something, it was easy. I would just sit down and do it, without considering my feelings about it first.

I plan on continuing to post, but not every day. There's no one who has something they need to share every day.

Short version:

blogging easy! Good blogging hard. blog generally doesn;t improve my life.

technology, eh?

The other day I noticed that this blog is covered in really obnoxious advertisements. It is not an attempt to make money from the two people that read this blog. I really don't know how they got here, and I don't know how to turn them off.

I feel like this old man I saw at the grocery store yesterday. He was having problems with the credit card swiper machine, where you have to push the buttons yourself. He looked over at me and said "Technology, eh? When I retired I thought I'd never have to use a computer."

I smiled and politely agreed with him, meanwhile thinking about what a stupid old man he is.

Then I promptly handed my credit card to the cashier, and she told me I had to use the machine. We are not so different, old man.

A grocery store cashier's day is a never ending stream of people who don't know how to pay for their groceries.

fake grad school

While on a nighttime summer stroll with my good pal Kyle, we discovered something that will change our lives forever.

It begins with this inexplicable urge for people in their mid/late twenties to want to go to grad school (myself included). 

It's not that you particularly enjoy going to school, or that you think it's going to help you in your career, or that the subject matter is just so interesting to you (if it was, you'd be studying it on your own).

It's not even a practical reason, such as thinking you'll make more money in your future jobs (we all know that you might get a little more, but the cost of grad school + opportunity cost of not working for 2+ years more than offsets potential gains in most fields).

No, the real reason you want to go to grad school is...

...so you can tell people you're going to grad school.

Think about it. Sure, there are lots of little reasons. But understand that deep down inside, this is really the primary reason you want to go to grad school.

It's because you don't like working. Jobs generally aren't fun. Grad school sounds way more fun by comparison. But most importantly grad school is a "legit" thing to be doing with your time. When someone at a party tells you they're in grad school, you might say "Good for you!"

So here's an alternative:

Since you don't really want to go to grad school anyway, but you do want the perceived social status boost, and a mandate to not work for at least 2 years... why don't you just lie about it?

Seriously. Next time someone asks you what you do, just say "I'm in grad school." And then sit back and reap social acceptance.

Meanwhile, do whatever the hell you really want to do. Work your normal job. Or screw it, and quit. You've got at least two years to do whatever you want, and nobody can even say a thing about it, because you're going to grad school!

"Hey guess what best friend, remember when I took the GREs last summer? You don't? Well I did, and I also just got into grad school!"

"Hey mom and dad, guess what, I decided to go to grad school! And I got a full scholarship!"

Think about it. Nobody is going to check up on you. Nobody is going to think "Is this guy REALLY going to grad school?"

But just to be safe, always have a specific school in mind, and a field of study. Just in case there are any follow up questions. You should also probably wikipedia a few basic facts about your field.

Oh, and if you're ever in the same room with someone who goes to the "same" grad school as you, and he starts asking a few too many questions, such as "How come I never see you at grad school?" or "Who is your favorite teacher?"

The thing you have to do in this situation, and this is VERY important, you have to accuse him of being a fake grad student. It's absolutely essential that you be the one to do it first. Nobody will even think to question you after that.

And after that, he can't turn around and accuse you of being fake student, can he? He's going to look foolish, or just crazy. People will think he's desperately trying to shift the attention away from himself. And then you've won.

But you should probably leave the party fairly soon after that anyway.

picture every up-day-te

Lately I have been forced to use my laptop to take the pictures for my picture every day challenge.

This is because I lost the charger for my camera, and it's now out of batteries.

There will be a noticeable sudden sucking of the photos, towards the end of the challenge. Because now I usually just end up taking a picture of the room that I happen to be in, because I'm not carrying my laptop around to take pictures with. That's weird.

I'm gonna have to do something about this.

Boston

My last time in Boston was exactly 2 years ago, right before I left for Korea.

Oh, how things don't really change!

I went into the Shaw's where I used to shop, and bought some groceries just like how I used to.

It is more fun to buy groceries in America than in Korea. The main reason for this is that in America, people are not shouting at you to buy the meat. I never bought any meat from the store in Korea. If I'm going to buy meat, I'd like to do it in my own time, and not with someone yelling into a megaphone about how great and cheap the meat is every 10 seconds.

long car ride thoughts

people in the back seats of convertibles look like they're having a much better time than everyone else on the road.

it would be easy to steal people's money near a toll booth if you dressed like an official and walked around the queued cars and asked them to pay in advance.

rode from saranac lake to boston today, in the car with a couple of good old pals. and if you're reading this kyle, i will never apologize for choosing "telephone pole" in twenty questions. it's a legitimate choice.

tree with an eye

push upsdate

doing 100 push ups a day is not that hard, especially when broken up into smaller sets.

I've been mixing it up between 5x20 and 4x25, depending on how I feel.

I've also been mixing them into my daily runs. Run about a mile, then do 20 push ups. That can be pretty hard.

Is it effective exercise? I don't know. I probably should be giving myself a break every other day so that my body, which almost never has to do push ups, has a chance to recover.

But "do a 100 push ups every OTHER day" is a pretty lame sounding 30 day challenge.

a tennis ball and some trees

The Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a free education site. You can watch videos of all those things you learned about in school, especially if it's about math. And it has fun, addictive quizzes with an "achievement" based reward system.

If this was around when I was trying to learn math, then I'd probably be able to figure out my taxes.

optimism

Maybe it's my extra strong pot of coffee, or my new secret million dollar business plan, but I may be actually developing an optimistic view about the future.

Not my future specifically, but The Future.

I don't think I've felt this since... I can't even remember.

I think TED talks are a very big factor here. Let me explain.

News preaches Doom and Gloom every day. News, for me and many others, is the primary window to the Rest of the World. Without it, you only see your tiny, 0.00000001% corner of the world.

But with news you can see so much more! Maybe, if you read lots of News, you can see up to 1% of the world!

But the stuff you read about in the News is usually Bad and Depressing. So maybe you read other News, which is also Bad and Depressing. Eventually you start to feel Bad and Depressed. You forget that you're only seeing 1% of the picture.

TED Talks are sort of like the News. You still see only a small part of the whole picture. But the people who talk aren't Depressing at all. They're actually Smart and Hopeful. They are trying to solve some of the big problems out there. And many are succeeding at it!

If you watch enough of them, you might even start to feel Hopeful too.

Challenge Update

100 push ups: started it yesterday. I broke it down into 4 sets of 25. No problem! I haven't done the push-ups yet today, but I imagine it will be much harder as I woke up sore from the day before, and I just completed a nearly 6-hour canoe trip to buy food so I won't starve this week.

Korean diary: actually I had nearly done a straight month of this already before I made it a challenge. I send the diaries to my girlfriend 민정 who checks them and sends me her diary in English. It's a nice way to keep in touch across the seas, and also study Korean and English. Pretty easy and routine for me by now, but that probably means I'm not trying hard enough to challenge myself when I'm writing them. I should probably strive for harder grammar structures, and new vocab.

Message old friends: This one is a good challenge, and I recommend it to anyone who would consider it. I've been using primarily Facebook (email in the case of one friend I know who doesn't use Facebook very often). So far I've probably gotten replies from more than half of the old friends I contacted. Some people respond immediately and others straggle in the next day, or a couple weeks later. Either way, I can almost always expect a new message every time I log into Facebook, and I expect I'll probably still be getting messages from some straggles well after this challenge is over.

I've caught up with friends, and been surprised by what they've told me they are doing with their lives (I think most people leave the most important things off of Facebook status updates). It has also prompted some meetings. On average, this is one of my quickest daily challenges, and has a great payout for that effort.

Picture every day: In the beginning, I really enjoyed this one. I took some good pictures, I thought. And I learned more about my camera in the first couple of days than I had since the entire time I've owned it (nearly 2 years). But this last week's photos felt a bit hurried to me, like something I was doing just so I could check it off the list. We'll see how the rest goes.

TED Talks: This has become one of my favorite things to look forward to every day. The funny thing is, my opinion of TED has not really changed -  I still think they are among the best things to watch on the internet. But now I am actually watching them, instead of just thinking that I should. I highly recommend this as well. If you're stuck wondering where to begin with 900+ videos on that site, this list is a good place to start. I've watched most of them by now, and have yet to be disappointed.

Update this blog: This is one, like the picture challenge, can vary. I like today's post idea, but I am often struggling to squeeze something worthy of posting out of my often barren brain. However it is a very nice way to organize the challenges I'm doing, and I usually refer to the blog to see what it is I actually have to do today.

Overall I am very pleased with the 30 day challenge idea, especially during periods of time when structure in my life is otherwise lacking. I plan to keep doing them a long while, even after I start a new job. I would recommend this to everyone.

As my spotty memory recalls Matt Cutts once saying in his TED talk: "The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why don't you do something you've always wanted to do, golf ball sandwich."

100 push ups

New challenge: 100 push-ups a day for 30 days.

The push-ups can be done at any time of the day, and they don't need to be consecutive.

boathouse

The boathouse at Spring Pond Camp.

paradox of choice

This TED talk by Barry Schwartz reminded a lot of the other TED talk on choices I heard this week. He's funny, and although he comes across like an old grandfather who is afraid of the world changing, I do believe he's right about most of it.


The basic message is: the western world dogma of "Choice = happiness" is wrong, and in many cases "choice = increased expectation, wasted opportunity cost, and unhappiness."

It's good to have some choices, but being happy isn't linked to having lots of choices, or even making the right choices. It's a state of mind and you can have it (or not have it) whenever or wherever.

Here's something: Whenever I get a nice long break, I'm always excited about it. But unless I have something planned (in other words, limit my own choices), I end up not doing much, despite having unlimited options (paralysis).

snake

This little guy spooked my little cousins. They chased it under the main cabin. Then it came back. Saw him take a little poop and then slither into the tall grass.

a long time

30 days is a lot longer than I expected it to be. I'm about halfway through my first challenge - updating the blog everyday - but it feels a lot longer than that. Not that this is hard, or that I don't like doing it. I'm pretty neutral about the blogging, which is probably why I don't do it on my own very much.

I can see how eating nothing  but McDonalds for a month would be really gross. And it probably feels like seven years and three days.

almost late post

This will probably be posted on the next day, unless internet returns to the cabins in the midst of this awesome thunderstorm.

I knew a day like this would eventually come. I think as long as I write this on the correct day, it'll still count for the 30 day challenge.

Yeah. Totally.

how to get a job

alright, I don't actually know how to do that. I've had jobs before, but I couldn't tell you how I got them.

I did think up a pretty ethically sketchy way to give yourself an edge in getting a job, inspired by a TED video I watched today about irrational decisions.

Step 1: Create a dummy resume that is similar to your own resume, but slightly (but obviously) worse than yours. The qualifications are similar, but maybe a slightly lower GPA.  And maybe your "dummy" didn't do that community service thing you did last summer.

Step 2: Send in your resume to a place you want to work.

Step 3: A day or two later, send in the dummy resume.

Step 4: Get hired.

I haven't tested this. I don't recommend doing it. But it would probably work.

Nobody will ever choose a dominated option on purpose. But what's cool/messed up with human rationality is - when given THREE options (say for example: you, a "dummy" who is slightly worse than you, and some other guy who's also trying to get hired), people tend to favor the option that dominates one other option EVEN IF that option has nothing to do with the third!

This baffles me, but it also makes so much sense it's scary.

the Breakfast Dilemma

A very good TED talk about how the freedom to make choices can often hurt our potential to be happy.

I have my own language for this that I call the Breakfast Dilemma:

I love breakfast more than any other meal. But when I go to a good breakfast place that has an extensive menu, I come across the Breakfast Dilemma. I want to eat everything, but I can only physically consume one or maybe two things (nowhere was this dilemma more pronounced than at Bouchon's in Las Vegas, the greatest breakfast place I have ever eaten at).

Do I go for Eggs Benedict? French Toast with powdered sugar and fruit compote? The Hungry Lumberjack? I will spend more time on breakfast menus than any other kind of menu. And I never feel confident when I make my order that I'm choosing the best one for me.

This mental anguish continues long after the choosing itself, especially if someone I am with orders one of my alternatives. The scrumptious Eggs Benedict of Now turns to sand in my mouth, as I dream of the Huevos Rancheros that might have been.

If there were fewer options - if this restaurant was only good at making one thing - I would actually be happier with my breakfast experience. Although my brain is programmed to believe otherwise. We believe having more choices is never a bad thing, because how could it be? And yet it does, because those roads untaken will torment you.

The Breakfast Dilemma; it'll get you every time.

luna moth

Sometimes you don't even need to think about what picture to take.

한국어 일기

Today my post is going to also be my Korean diary challenge for the day. Is that a cop-out? And more importantly, where does the expression "cop-out" come from?? 

오늘 우리사촌은 왔어요. 나는 그녀를 12년동안 안만났어요. 그래서 오늘은 정말 특별한하루예요. 오늘 사촌의 딸을 처음에 만났어요! 그녀의 이름은 머리예요. 12새예요.

지금 머리랑 머리의 친구랑 우리동생이랑 "튜빙" 하고 있어요 (한국말로 튜빙 단어 있어요?) 그들은 튜브위에서 앉고 배뒤에 타고 있어요. 너무 재미있어요!

오늘의 날씨가 아주 좋아요. 하늘이 너무 맑지만 별로 안 더워요. 이날씨가 수영을 위헤서 원벽해요. 안타깝게도 나는 수영을 하기 싫어요.

What I think I wrote:

Today my cousin arrived. I haven't seen her in 12 years. So it's a special day. I met my cousin's daughter for the first time today! Her name is Molly. She's 12.

Right now Molly, Molly's friend, and my sister are out "tubing." (Is there a Korean word for tubing?) They are sitting on a tube and riding behind the boat. It's really fun!

Today the weather is really good. The sky is clear but it's not too hot. It's the perfect weather for swimming. Too bad I hate swimming.

picture every day

This challenge is just copying the 30 day challenge guy from TED, who probably copied it from someone else. But as cliche as "a picture a day" challenge might be, taking this picture was surprisingly fun.

This was near the visitor interpretive center near Saranac Lake, NY.

Up to five challenges per day now. Each one can be done in a few minutes, but it's hard to keep track of them all the time. I think the best strategy is to take care of them as early in the day as possible.

And they've been fun!

turn your life into a game

Another good TED talk, this one by Jane McGonigal.

She talks about turning life into a game. Why? In short, games are fun and challenging, and the benefits from these challenges are real (and she backs it up with science, so you know it's true).

I have spent an immense amount of time playing games. I've wasted a lot of time with bad games, but also had great experiences with others. It's a category as diverse as people themselves, so it's hard to say much about all the games that's always true.

But good games should always challenge you, and stretch your imagination. If they can be social as well, so much the better.

I've been using games in my ESL lessons for over a year, and the kids are far more responsive and eager to use their English during the game than in the "regular lesson." Games do something to our brains that make us want to challenge ourselves, and that power can be channeled in any direction we want.

For example, the 30 day challenges are about things I'd like to do but never do, but when put into a game context, somehow I become excited to do them.

Am I really that dumb? I can't motivate myself to do something unless it's part of a game? Well, if that's the case, I'm going to be doing a lot more games.

learning a second language

I woke up at 7:30 to do a half hour English lesson with Alyssa, my 3rd grade-ish student from Korea. It's great seeing her English level improve. I've been teaching her pretty consistently for over a year now.

In the spirit of improving foreign language skills, I added Korean diary to the 30 day challenges.

Language acquisition is a tough thing to stay motivated about. My problem is that my goals are hazy at best and improvements are hard to measure.

And you can't learn much of any language in 30 days, despite what those annoying Pimsleur ads proclaim. And if you get discouraged and take some time off, you go backwards!

I was a mid/high achieving high school student, but Spanish was my worst subject. And that was by a HUGE margin. It was only by the mercy of the teacher that I didn't get straight Ds or Fs.

I used to think that I was just "bad at other languages," but I am now convinced that it was because I just never figured out how to learn a second language.

I'd like to go on for a really long time about my various theories on language acquisition (and by "my theories" I mostly mean ideas that other people have had that I read at some time), and I will. But I want to keep this post relatively short so that I can actually have something to say every day this month.

What I was trying to say before I got on a tangent is this: there are ways to break down the gargantuan goal of learning a language into bite-sized pieces.

Some ideas I have for future goals: watch a Korean drama or movie every day for 30 days, read X pages of a Korean novel every day for 30 days (so that I finish the novel by the end of the period), or "No English" for 30 days (I'm kind of terrified and excited about that one). 

what happens next?

I've been thinking about what the goal of these challenges should be.

At the end of thirty days, do I want to continue with the goals, or will it have been enough? Are these changes that I want to incorporate in my life indefinitely?

I think the answer is: somewhat. For example, contacting an old friend every day for the rest of my life is just not feasible. I simply don't have enough friends to that. In fact, towards the end of these thirty days, I will probably be struggling to think of a friend to send a message to.

And without facebook, it would probably be near impossible.

But perhaps I will be better about staying in touch with people after this month. That would mean success to me.

Even if I don't, I will still have contacted thirty people that I otherwise probably would not have contacted. It feels good to do that, knowing how good it feels to be contacted myself. And who knows what effects these messages might have over time?

Something like posting in my blog everyday, however, would be possible to continue forever if I wanted to. But is that the ultimate goal here? I don't want to commit to that. But hopefully I will be better with updates.

And it's nice to know that it's not only possible, but actually pretty easy, to do something like this over thirty days as long as I simply define it as a goal.

TED talks

Whenever I watch a TED talk, I always tell myself I should watch more TED talks. This whole 30 days challenge thing was inspired by one of those talks.

That's why I added watching TED every day for a month to the challenges. It's not a difficult thing to do, but it's something I wasn't doing before.

Today's TED talk was Dave Eggers talking about his 826 Valencia project, a tutoring center/buccaneer supply shop. I felt pretty special having almost volunteered for it this one time (went to Korea at that time instead).

write it down

I'm on vacation right now. Not that my entire life isn't like a vacation. But right now it's more vacation-y than usual. 

I'm on Saranac Lake, and keeping up with blog postings and messaging old friends is not on the top of my list. It's easy to do though, so I've been doing it. It takes me about 30 minutes altogether to do them both. I can have breakfast and drink coffee while doing them.

But I definitely wouldn't be doing these things if I didn't write them down somewhere.

I heard a long time ago that you should write your goals down. I sort of passively agreed with that idea without ever doing it until now. It makes sense though. It's too easy to "forget" about a goal unless it's made real somewhere - by telling someone or writing it down.

Day 2

The challenge is pretty easy so far. Don't see what is so difficult about updating a blog every day. But probably it's the lack of a job, and also posting things with little content.

I'm in Albany, New York now, staying at my godfather's house. I'm in that uncomfortable zone where I'm awake before everyone else, and I'm really hungry for breakfast but I have to wait for everyone first. Good chance to post.

I've always thought I should stay in better contact with people that I care about. So I'm going to send a message to someone I haven't talked to in a while, every day for 30 days (a different person every day).

30 Day Challenges

Inspired by this TED video I found on my friend Leo's facebook wall, which was inspired by Morgan Spurlock's 30 day challenges, I have decided to begin a few challenges of my own.

I'm going to write about them here. In fact, my first challenge will be: update this blog every day for 30 days. I like this because all of you will know when I'm not doing it. (By "all of you" I, of course, mean my mother, and that one person who thought this was going to be a blog about fishing, and the millions of fans I imagined).

See you tomorrow!

cambodia and animals

There's lots of dogs here. I hope none of them bite me, or any of us. But if I had to choose, I hope a dog bites Gus instead of me or Joe.

We spent a day on Rabbit Island. I found this totally gross prehistoric worm thing in the ocean. Then we went and played in the ocean. Didn't see any rabbits.

The day before that, there were a whole bunch of monkeys just sitting in the street! Joe tried to get close to them, but the big monkey charged him and Joe had to back down. I don't think we could have won against all those monkeys.

It's hard to tell what you'd do in a crisis situation, but I think I would have run really fast and left Gus and Joe behind to get bitten and clawed by monkeys. I'm glad they didn't attack us. I'm also glad I was wearing running shoes.

Ho Chi Minh

Four Tucsonans sat together on a street corner somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City, ate a Vietnamese meal and drank some beer in mugs with ice. Gus had known them from before - Denise and Sonya - two expat English teachers in Vietnam.

We were joined by a bunch of their friends from Vietnam, Tasmania, the US, and Australia. While we drank, people would approach. There was a kid, probably no more that seven years old, who yelled "Hey!" and then started juggling flaming sticks. Then he ate a hot coal. He went around to collect donations.

Several females, from very young girls to hunchbacked old ladies, came to us with cigarettes and different foods. Sonya got us some lotus seeds and boiled quail eggs. They were both pretty delicious.

Rats and cockroaches shared our walk back to the hotel. As Gus said, the weather is perfect for living things.

Ha Long Bay (with rats)

After a karaoke session that ended with the Spice Girls, we went to bed in our cabin on the ship. I was as drunk as I needed to be in order to sing a couple hours of karaoke. Breakfast would be at 7:30 AM.

Gus and I both woke up at some hour in the middle of the night, and we could hear a squeaking noise. Still a little drunk and confused, I wondered aloud if that sound was the breakfast whistle?

It wasn't the breakfast whistle. First, it was about 3 AM. And as I would later learn, there is no such thing as a breakfast whistle.

The noise continued. It was inconsistent and every so often there was scratching. The noise was being made by a rat that was trapped somewhere nearby my head, most likely underneath the bed.

We discussed our options. Abandoning the room did not seem good. It was cold outside, and there were probably rats everywhere. I announced that I would take my mattress into the bathroom and lock myself inside. But Gus correctly pointed out that the bathroom was too small for this.

We could simply go back to sleep, suggested Gus. Perhaps that would work for him, but the rat was simply too close to my head to do this. I would never be able to rest as long as I could hear its cries and scratching.

We realized that we must pull out the bed and deal with the consequences. Perhaps it would be able to retreat back into it's hole. The worse outcome is that it would be free in our room, and in a foul mood. It might want to attack us, regardless of the fact that we are it's would-be liberators. I armed myself with a stool.

We were both on Gus's bed. I reached over and pulled on my bed. The bed moved, and then there was silence. This was the one thing we did not expect. I investigated. It was not under my bed.

The crying resumed. We realized now that it was coming from inside the wall.

Shaken and full of adrenaline, I went back to sleep. The rat eventually stopped crying. It must have died. However I could hear the scuttling of other rats, as they ran through their secret network of passages, so very close to my head.

Streets of Ha Noi

We traveled to a bar in Ha Noi whose online review promised rats. We didn't find any. We did find lots of beer. And when our beer was inside of us, our new friends, Nam and Dat, treated us to theirs.

There are three things men are good for, according to Dat: "Drinking, gambling, and fucking." This was just a piece of the wisdom that was given to us on that night.

I tipped a helpful man in the bathroom, and by doing so created a dangerous precedent, evidenced by his later attempts to earn his tip from Gus. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And when in Asia, don't tip, unless you want your friend to get a neck massage while he pees.

Finally, don't eat Indian food in Ha Noi, particularly the one suggested by the Lonely Planet. The sweetest revenge of the trip was steering a curious couple away from these overpriced curry mongers. Eat outside and drink outside, on the streets, that's what Vietnamese culture is all about.

On the streets, I arm wrestled twice and lost twice. I also leg wrestled, which hurt.

Hong Kong: a 7/10th to scale person's dream

Hong Kong is the least spacious place I've ever been in. Although Gus assures me that New York is more crowded, I don't remember it that way.

(photo of the room)

Here's our room. Two people can comfortably stand in it at the same time, but if one of them started dancing it wouldn't be good. We are in the legendary Chungking Mansion - an enormous and compact monster of a building that smells much better than it should - like incense and indian food (the indian food here is amazing).

Nick took us out to Happy Valley. Hong Kong's famous horse racing track. We blew a few hundred Hong Kong dollars on some statistically sound wagers (horses with funny names), but luck was against us. Our losses will be the city/country/administrative state/whatever it is of Hong Kong's gain. The money goes towards public works, or something positive like that.

We had more luck in Macau - the Vegas of Asia. We sat down at a 10/25 HKD table (roughly 1.5/3.5 US), with buyins of about 2500. I was running pretty hot the whole time, and got up to nearly 5000 by the time I cashed out.

The table was full of Chinese, excluding Gus and I. Unlike the Walker Hill Casino in Seoul, although the dealers all speak Korean, the official game language is English. Here, the game was conducted in Chinese. It was still easy enough to follow, and if we didn't understand something, the dealer or someone at the table would explain again in English.

The Chinese players were good. It felt like it could have been any 1/2 or 1/3 game at home.