EOP and Hanbok

6.  Reflective Essay about an experience you’ve had at KMLA recently (not last semester. I know you wrote this in Mrs. Choi’s class to).  You should weave in the theme of a “learning experience” and come to a resolution by the end.  Club activities, homate experiences, how to deal with rules that are made to be broken etc. are all themes you might consider.

Required Writer’s Choice: Option 1.

Mornings of KMLA are tough. When large amounts of homework, quizzes, and club activities are combined with morning exercise with a dash of cleaning inspection, morning becomes hell in KMLA. It was one of those morning hells when I heard a shocking yet true word from my friend.

           My friend, also roommate, was in a very cranky mood that day. It was as if he had bee hives planted under the silly pajamas that he was wearing. He was whining and swearing as he got through the morning but exploded when he got to his school uniform.

“S***! Why is this HanBok so F****** hard to wear! I don’t get this crap about maintaining tradition and wearing this ridiculous HanBok as school uniform! If we really care about Korean tradition, than why do we have EOP(English only Policy) to make us use English in our daily lives? Arg! I got the wrong leg in my pants!”

It was rather hilarious to see my friend swearing while struggling with his HanBok pants (I think he was losing the battle). However, as I thought about what he said, I had to agree with him. If we’re trying this hard to maintain our own tradition by living in Hanok and wearing HanBok why are we keeping EOP? This had me going on thinking for the whole day. And this is what it lead to.

You see, the world is always in constant battle between keeping one’s own identity or rather assimilating with other parts of world. Korea is not an exception. To be honest a large part of Korea has already been assimilated with the world. Through the process of modernization, Korea has abandoned the traditional clothing, houses, and culture of Korea while bringing in new culture such as T-shirts, jeans, apartments, and hamburgers, which most came from the west. Now scholars are fighting whether to get hold of our own traditions to keep us from losing our identity or to fully assimilate with the western culture to increase competition for Korea in the global ubiquitous world. Which should we choose? Our own history and tradition while losing all the benefits of sharing the same culture with the rest of the world, or the conventional and efficient assimilation while abandoning our true selves during the process?

This is a similar question as universalism and multiculturalism,  one awesome all combining culture to rule them all, or many respectable cultures all equal in value ruling the world. I think that KMLA has done a wonderful job of solving this universal question that is tormenting many great minds of the world, going right between them.

If KMLA is to go with the multiculturalism side sticking to Hanbok, and Korean traditions, we would be able to maintain our identities but lose contact with the larger world and fail to be the leaders that the school is trying to educate. If KMLA is to go with the universalism side sticking to usual school uniform with white shirts and using English, we would do well as we graduate and jump into the foreign world and become powerful people. But would it be worth anything if by then one’s lost all esteem of where he came from or what he isㅡnot a good leader either. But what KMLA has done is, to wear the traditional clothing Hanbok while using English in our daily lives, just the balance between them.

In a way KMLA has reached the true hybrid between multiculturalism and Universalism. Keeping the precious identities of Korea and also becoming assimilated to adapt to the larger world. Absolutely remarkable it seems to me. And to all this, I have to ask my cranky roommate for helping me realize this.

Spreading Technology

           

5.  Review a TED video of your choice (not Ken Robinson), and include aminimum of 20 SAT words within your writing.  Underline them in bold. If you want to use more without sounding ridiculous, you are welcome to try.  Select them carefully before you write.

Required

     Even at this moment prodigious technologies are found all over the world. However crucial knowledge engendered were usually not tangible to the general population.

“unfortunate situation where a tiny, tiny fraction of the world can actually participate in this exploration or can benefit from that technology.”

 It would just squander between the very astute minorities, due to the reticent environment between the common public and the highly professionals. Though due to the pivotal advancement of communication nowadays such as YouTube, TED, and other ubiquitous means of information, the immense technologies atrophied may now become exhaustive coalescing with the whole world with ease.

“ make the technology accessible to a much wider percentage of the population.”


    The video shows a exemplary application the application of the phenomenon. The guy in the video, Johnny Lee, working diligently with fanatic devotion found a very eccentric usage of the wii remote. He tweaked the remote and created elaborate programs to use the remote to simulate an interactive whiteboard, and 3D TV. Due to his innovative work, now companies and schools don’t have to buy expensive equipment but use scanty materials to do the job. We owe large part of this to YouTube for expediting the spread of ideas and knowledge throughout the world. Now being esoteric is the thing of the past.
    
      "hope online video distribution to be embraced by the research community"

Review on Starcraft and Korea's Obsession over it

    

3. A Review.  You are allowed to review anything you want – a book, movie, video, album, game,  restaurant, hotel…. Just about anything.  You should have personal experience with that thing, and supply factual data to dress up your writing (Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, IMDB, and Metacritic etc).  React to opposing or supporting reviews that might add to your response.  You must include a rating system.  Stars, thumbs, out of ten or our of five, A- or C+ etc.

Required

The world is asking Korea; why are Koreans so obsessed with the game Starcraft? Though I’m a Korean myself this is not an easy question to answer. I first met Starcraft when I was 7 and almost grown up with it. It was the first computer game that I ever encountered and if I recall myself playing it, memories of me figuring how to beat missions and computers is what pops up. It was truly an enjoyable game, even for my elementary self. Now I assume most Koreans felt like this when playing Starcraft. But why? How has such a normal game such as Starcraft become so loved in Korea?

           

    The game Starcraft was first published on the ancient year 1998, by Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard is famous for many games such as the Diablo series and Warcraft series but it has not ever gotten a more popular hit than Starcraft. This has to be thanked to Koreans for buying 4.5 million copies of the overall 9 million copies worldwide. At the time of its publish, it was viewed as a overall good game but it wasn’t that special          Here are some reviews given by critics at that time.

Gamers' Temple    96

“One of those rare games that is not overly complex, but provides a challenging and fun gaming experience. It never seems to get old or boring.”

Yahoo! Games  90

“You get a fun, instantly appealing, easy to play-hard to master real-time strategy, with character and an endless amount of playability. “

Cincinnati Enquirer   80

“It won't win any awards for originality, but it's good enough to shrink your nightly sleep to just a couple of hours.”

1. Graphics and technical components   ★☆☆☆☆

           It is possible to understand the popularity at the past but how is Starcraft maintaining its grip over 13 years in Korea? The graphic and technical elements of the game are ancient, 2D isometric screen with low quality graphics and physics engine giving awkwardness, sound play and out of game add-ons from the 90s. Even the entire size of the game file is only about 700 megabytes while today’s games like Call of Duty, Modern warfare 3, going way over 20 gigabytes. I give it  one star for graphics and technical components for this game.


2. Game play   ★★★★★

           While Starcraft carries simple game play and graphics it’s a game where you can fall really deep in. It’s one of the games very easy to learn but much harder to master. Macro strategies combined with small micro controls makes Starcraft very addicting. Starcraft is a game where bad players can hardly beat computers while pro gamers can beat average players 3:1. The more players enjoy this game; they obtain new skills to excel in this game. I think this is the most crucial factor in Starcraft that led to its popularity, very simple game play while having the most complicated skills to master to be good at it. Koreans just loved it even till now. Thus I give it over 5 stars for game play for this game.


3. Influence on Korea   ★★★★★

In 1997 Korea met the IMF foreign exchange crisis and it was in dire need for some economic boom. In 1998 Starcraft just did the job fueling 15thousand jobs and 900 million dollars into the Korean economy. Scattering over 20,000 thousand PC rooms in Korea, now starcraft isn’t just a game but a culture for Koreans. It has gone so far that Starcraft has become a symbol for Korean males, if a Korean male does not know or is unable to play Starcraft he is likely to be teased that he is not a Korean. Pro-gamers, PC-rooms, game leagues giving massive amounts of prize money, these all game from Starcraft. I give it 5 stars for influencing power for the impact it gave to Korean culture.

Here is a Starcraft game play of the famous pro-gamer lim yo hwan.

Starcraft is still growing its power over Korea due to the new Starcraft 2 released in 2010. Starcraft 2 is a 3 part series starting with Wings of Liberty. I have played and is enjoying Wings of Liberty now and look forward for the latter series.

Trailer of Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty

Sea turtle, joker, facade with out be verbs (for Mr.Moon)

I live like a sea turtle, wandering the streets without thought. I fly upon the sky, floating on thin clouds, enjoying the world itself. No worries, I tell myself and go on daily life in lazy fashion. I enjoy others laugh and try hard to earn them. I joke and fool around like a joker surrounded with laughter. A thick shell surrounds me and hides my true self from the world. Only when at my most comfort and closest I reveal; most are aware only of the Façade that surrounds me.

The body reading journal 1, 0~30pg

The first pages of the book focus on the introduction of the setting and characters of the story. . The story takes place around 1960 in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. There are 4 main characters Gordie, Charlie, Teddy, and Vernand the story itself is told by Gordie himself. The book goes around each character introducing the background of each character. After some explanation is done, the story sets of as Vern finds out about a body that is yet to be found. The 4 boys plan to find the body.

         Just as the story starts to hold a firm on the ground, a story inside the book is introduced. The story is written by Gordie again and is about a guy named Chico going through similar hardships that Gordie faced. Now this confused me a little bit because even before I could get a hold on the main story another story was thrown at me and it was hard to follow all of them. This new method of writing was very interesting to me and I kind of liked it. Maybe I’ll try this in my writing later on.

What is Karma? Spring... (unfinished?)

What is Karma? In Buddhism, life is a repetition of death and reincarnation. During this cycle of death and rebirth the only thing that remains after one life and the other is Karma. Karma is the cause and effect of all actions done in life. If a deed, good or bad, is done at a point in life, the deed will return to the person in the future or the next life. Thus Karma makes life like throwing objects in the air, whatever you threw in the past, it will come back and hit you later in the future.

The little monk in the movie tortures weak creatures for his own pleasure. At this point, the ball full of bad deed is thrown in the air. Later in the movie the big monk punishes the kid cruelly, the same way the little monk tortured the creatures. Now this is very similar to Karma. At the time the little monk’s action was in progress, only observation is made by the big monk. The kid is not stopped nor scolded; the big monk just stands as an invisible man. However similar to the cause and effect of Karma, the bad deed returns to the kid in the future as punishment for the kid to suffer all pain endured by the creatures. Thus the movie could be viewed to illustrate Karma in a small scale.

Now, as a toddler, I was also a young mischief full of curiosity. I would catch little insects such as grass hoppers or butterflies and torture them for my pleasure as well. Well torture it is, viewed from myself today, but when I was at that age, it was just a fun game where the consequences were not fully understood.

Now for these actions when I was a kid, will I be punished later in life due to the cause and effect of Karma? And should I be? So… What is Karma?