46 posts tagged “blog”
Back to regular postings on the blog.
Back from midterm crunch mode and bloggin' again.
So, midterms were a nightmare, in that I have to write one exam - which was kinda ok, except for one repeated question that I missed, and I also took two exams which went ok, I guess. One was a straight forward multiple choice exam and the other was a take home exam that forced me to re-(skim)read all the reading material for the course (about 700~800 pages) and give succinct answers for vague questions. Crap.
Right after the midterms, I edited a draft of one of two 10,000 word manuscripts and submitted a more or less semi-complete version of another. The other thing I had to do was a group work thing and because I don't speak Korean like everybody else, it was a painful exercise and we just got it done in time.
In other news, the webserver I maintain was infected with a trojan and I had to manually edit hundreds of lines of php code in order to get the server functioning again. We should just close our eyes, and just install Feisty Fawn on all the servers and be done with it. Ugh.
Today, I met with my cousin and his girlfriend hung out, we went to a Andrew Neuman exhibition and had dinner.
Back to editing manuscripts.
blah.
Oh, I'll post some photos from my cameraphone.
(did I mention that this website gets 3.1 pageviews a day?)
daisung
Today, I gave my first substantive lecture, a 30 min spot on the need to think critically.
I think it went well, and I was able to kinda joke with the students and at least one of them was nodding his head when I spoke, and I'll take that as a good sign.
The powerpoint file is on the right, you can have a look for yourself if you like.
One other thing I want to mention are the TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) talks which are for the first time available to the public to download freely. Well, I want to mention some of this stuff because I referenced heavily from Dan Gilbert's talk. The TED talks invite speakers from all fields, and the only criteria seems to be how fascinating the speaker's message is. I recommend Stephen Levitt and Anna Deveare-Smith and Peter Donnelly (if your're stat-minded). The page with all the talks are here.
The tickets for TED are $4000, so it's literally a steal to watch it for free so I recommend it.
daisung.
edit: ok, the powerpoint file is not linkable just yet, will be there soon.
The first day of semester started with snow.
It's unseasonably cold here, and it's killing me.
Had to pay the dorm fees on Monday and I'm some having financial trouble, courtesy of the fact that I didn't budget carefully enough. I'm down to my last 65 dollars and I'm holding out for dear life by subsiding on bread and vegemite (mum sent me some) until I get paid, which might be the end of the month.
Don't be too surprised if the blog starts getting... weird with hunger.
The subjects this semester are: Marketing Management, Research in Orgnisational Behaviour and Research in Business. It boils down to having to read a chapter of text book and about 10 papers ever week, and that's on top of writing two manuscripts, planning and conducting research (about 3 studies) and working 2 jobs.
Did I mention I have no life?
I'm looking forward to the end of semester breaks, when I'll have some time off, and be able to travel around the country a bit.
But so far, nothing exciting, especially in the way of dating.
Blog of the week is somethingawful.com, which recently had a make-over, and aims to keep people informed about the weirdest crap on the web.
It'll keep you up at night.
cuddles,
daisung.
Had a rather strange dream two days ago.
It started with me and a friend (some I knew back in primary school) trolling around the neighborhood because my friend wanted to steal some badges off cars (those metal insignias that have the car maker's logo on them) for an art project. So far so good.
It gets dark and we come to a bus stop with a small crowd (maybe 15 people) and my friend looks around and he kinda stole a guy's cheque. Well, more than just lifting it, he kinda taunted the guy before making off with it (rather quickly for a human though). I'm left standing next to the guy who had his cheque stolen and the crown kinda gathers around me and it looks like I can't flee. Instead, the crowd gets nasty and asks me where my friend went and basically holds me accountable.
Next thing I know, I'm at the guy's house (with a massive back-yard) and now I'm helping the dude get his money back. He's naturally holding a baseball bat and we're calmly speculating about where he might have gone in his back yard, when, from a distance, I spot my friend running towards me with a gun.
Well, I assume that he isn't going to shoot and I run towards him, hoping to get the gun off him so this thing doesn't escalate to stupidity.
So of course, he shoots me. The wound is just below my right ribcage and it starts bleeding immediately. Regardless, I reach my friend and I'm wrenching the gun from him when the dude smacks my friend's head from the back with the baseball bat.
I slump down and I'm asking people to call the ambulance. The pain isn't so bad, and I'm not thinking that I'll die, but damn it, it's really hard to get these people to call an ambulance. There's a discussion about how ambulance worker's aren't that good and private doctors might be better. My belly starts getting bigger, swelling with air with each breath and more blood pouring out. No one's helping me put pressure on the wound and they're still bickering.
Some doctors arrive riding in a purple hearse, and I'm not afraid of dying but it's getting pretty worrying. The doctors are dressed in blue surgical gowns and they get me on a small stretcher pretty quickly, face down. They start to make incisions on my back, right where the spine meets the hip, a 20cm sized 'x'. I'm alarmed, but it doesn't hurt, and the doctors explain that they're trying to deflate my belly, which they do.
At this point, I wake up with my hand over my 'gunshot wound', which is kinda sore.
What kind of an f+ed up mind do I have that gets me shot in my own dreams?
daisung.
But I'm back.
I'm in the middle of writing a manuscript and I'm about 70 % done, so there's some scope for relief. Semester's about to start and that means that I'll now be working two jobs as well as doing coursework, research and writing to boot.
There hasn't been much change, but there is the influx of new exchange students and I've been taking them to the local dollar stores and cheap eats.
I've upgraded my laptop after saving much money and I've also cashed the cheque I won as a scholarship, and I'm very happy with my new shiny Macbook. I've finally started to orgainse my photos and music and I can make skype calls at will as well as video chats. It's not a gaming machine, but that's not really my aim.
The kid's I'm teaching are improving their English and they're starting to write almost ok and their level of talking is starting to improve. The stories I'm hearing from them are a little depressing.
One of the kids had to go to "Study Camp" where he had to study for 16 hours a day so that he could "get into the habit of studying". The camps had insane rules, like a boy and a girl were kicked out because they were holding hands and they believed that that romantic contact was significantly distract them from their studies. The camp lasted almost a month. He's moving to high school (Korea has a middle school and high school system much like America). Where he has to stay after official school hours are over until 10pm. That's not a typo. He has to stay until 10pm to do some voluntary study. The school is fenced like a prison, with some sections literally having barbed wires.
There was talk of moving out with some people I know to apartments near the uni, but that fell apart after we found out about the crippling deposit ($6725, for a 1 year lease). The monthly rent wasn't bad though ($400/month, albeit for small rooms). I have the same German roomie (he passes himself off as Australian because he can't get work teaching English) from the holidays, and I now live next door to a descendant of Che Guevara. No kidding. I'll put up a picture when I have my camera on me and he's around.
On the food side, I've cooked a little bit more for myself then I usually would, but that's going to change with the term starting I guess.
Daisung.
And I wondered if any of those buttons could be used to call up the Yakuza and arrange an assasination.
Come on, it's the only time when I ever think about killing any one.
Like if the Hilton sisters don't naturally die of excessive whoring, I'd get on the bidet, press a button and arrange for a fatal throwing of a sextape or something.
Then I'll ask the Hiltons to see if they'll adopt me.
They'll probably say yes. It'll be so cool...
It's the year of the pig and people who are born in the year of the pig are meant to become wealthy. It's a cheap superstition, but the banks and other financial businesses are giving away gold pig piggy banks.
The tabloid shows were showing pictures of fertility clinics and people are visiting hill formations that look like vaginas (NOT KIDDING) in hopes of getting pregnant.
Yes, the couples are (trying to) mak(e)ing babies.
I gotta hand it to a superstition that gets people making love.
That's all I got. It's 11:36 on Sunday night.
daisung.
Finished reading it not too long ago.
Facinating stuff - the world through the eyes of an economist answering questions on everyday phenomena.
For example, the authors attribute the sudden and spectacular drop in crime rate in the US during the 90s can be attributed to legalised abortion.
Roe v. Wade was a landmark case in the US that legalised abortion in 1973. The authors argue that an entire generation of criminals were not born because the mothers who sought abortion did so because they thought they could not take good care of the children. The data indicated that the mothers often had low education, had low economic status, and had other demographic variables, which are related to criminal behaviour.
He got pelted with editorials of course, but the fact that he's done this work doesn't make him a monster, it's not like he performed any abortions or forced anyone to commit a crime, he just had the best explanation to an unexpected phenomena.
A must read. Click un the books section on the right.
Funniest thing I've seen for a while.
Starring very funny people as well as Toni Collette, who I recon is a highly underrated actor, along with Selma Blair and Wynona Ryder (although I admit she's more eye candy than substantive).
I've posted a lecture by Dan Gilbert (Harvard lecturer) about how to make the best possible choice at any given time.
I'll have another one about stress from a noted physiologist.
daisung.
