I know some of you want to know what happened to Andreas. At the end of the last blog post about him, I mentioned that he was awaiting news of whether or not he will be called back for a second entrance exam for this copy writing school in Hamburg. Well last night I finally remembered to email him and he responded! It looks like his traveling days are over.
"Hey man,
I was accepted! Now I'm back in Zurich working for two newspapers, trying to make enough money to live in Hamburg for a year...
I'm feeling very energized and having a great time. The sun is chirping, the birds are shining - life is good, life is good.
I hope you are well.
Andreas"
Andreas, I wish you luck on all your future endeavors.
Perhaps the next time we meet it will be in Germany and I will be sleeping on your couch.
I am long overdue for a revisiting of my hometown anyway.
After more than a month since the Revisited entry, I am glad to say that I have made a decision and acted on it.
For the past month, I have been in touch with my parents and sister trying to build up that family I never had. Many hours have been spent on the phone with my mom and sister, learning about their lives, giving them advice and filling them in on my own life. True to her word, my mom has been trying to be more understanding and has even admitted she was wrong more than once! Though there are still some things that we cannot connect on, such as why having a significant other is different from having a close friend, I definitely feel a change.
Talking to my sister has been an eye opening experience. When my family visited me during the July 4th weekend, I asked my sister if she wanted to stay the night at my apartment in order to escape our parents. After some moments of indecision (she is a girl after all), she accepted my offer and we spent the night talking over brick toast and boba. I learned a lot about her that night and most of it was downright troubling. She told me about her childhood friend that was now backstabbing her over club politics, and how she could not bear to let that friend go because she viewed her as the only close friend that she has. She talked about her obsession to be the best and the envy of others that consumes her. What struck me the most about everything was how similar my sister sounded to my friend Jennie. With that in mind I have asked Jennie to mentor my sister, which she has agreed to do, so that my sister can learn from Jennie's mistakes and maybe have happy high school memories.
Now when I talk to my sister on the phone, I spend at least half an hour just listening to her talk about her life. Most of the conversation is her complaining about something and even though I feel some of the things she gets upset over are silly and petty, I remind myself that I used to be that way too and that those same issues meant the world to me. So I listen and give her the advice I learned through my own experiences. Mostly simple things such as how to deal with mom wanting you to go to bed early (pretend to sleep and just sneak back on the computer after mom falls asleep) and what to do in an argument (stay calm and do not yell!). All this advice giving has me feeling feeling like a brother, how strange.
Once I even mediated an argument between my sister and mom. It was frustrating, but in the end quite the rewarding experience. At the end of the call I just felt so much older, there was even a feeling of authority like I was becoming the patriarch of the family. But I cannot call myself that till I reach out and connect with the extended family. I have facebooked my cousin in LA, but so far no luck. Maybe I will try again soon, my time in LA is running out.
All this progress is not to say that my feelings of running away have disappeared. In the back of my mind, this new connection with my family feels like a sort of dependence and to someone like me who has been fiercely independent his whole life, it feels like a weakness. There is a small voice in my mind telling me that this is all wrong and that I should get away while I still have the chance. A part of me still wants to stay as far away as possible from my family.
I do not know if I will ever be as close to my family as some of the friends that I envy, but I am definitely trying. That reminds me, I have not called my sister in over a week.
The Sunday after my company rafting trip, my grandfather took me to Paju for a 400-year anniversary memorial of a famous ancestor of mine. To be honest, I don't really know who he is or what he did; I can't remember his name, nor do I actually know how famous this guy is. I think he was a teacher, but given my incredibly limited knowledge of Korean history that is about all I know.
The grave on the top of the hill is where the memorial took place
When we got there, the people in charge of the event were still busy setting everything up. Since I was one of the youngest people there, they specifically sought me out to help -- e.g. to carry heavy stuff up and down the hill pictured above. It looks small, but it was incredibly steep and it didn't have any stairs either! Add morning dew, hot Korean summers, and the fact that my foot was swollen and throbbing from my basketball injury (during the company retreat), and it was brutal to have to carry mats and all the food offerings up to the top of the hill.
There is a lot of preparation that goes into these things. I think they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars to restore and landscape the place for today, and there were at least a 100 people who showed up. This is not including the time spent by some of the older women who come down here at the crack of dawn to specially prepare the food for offering.
The memorial was pretty cool to watch since I had never been to one of these things before. However, everything was conducted in Hanja -- the checklist for the food offerings used was written in Hanja, the ceremony itself was in mostly Hanja, and even a memorial song was sung in Hanja -- therefore, I had no idea what was going on or what they were saying. There were other people around me taking pictures though, so I figured it was OK for me to take some pictures and some videos throughout the ceremony.
Sign-in sheet with Hanja (Chinese characters)
Food offerings: All of it real (And yes, the raw chicken in the middle is real too...) The sticks with the attached tissue paper on top of the chicken are incense sticks.
Various old people
Grandpa in the middle
Part of the ceremony
Towards the end of the clip everyone got down to do a deep bow but I wasn't able to capture the entire thing because I felt awkward and rude to be the only one standing there taking a video of everyone else.
Memorial song, sung entirely with Hanja characters only
Even if you know Korean well it is entirely possible to be unable to understand what they are singing since the lyrics were all in Hanja.
After lunch, my grandpa and my uncle showed me around Paju, which is a city right next to North Korea. We went to the Korean War and Unification Museum where I had the chance to see North Korea with my own eyes, but I didn't see the DMZ. According to my grandpa, "the difference between North Korea and South Korea is that North Korea doesn't have any trees," which was true -- the North Korean hills looked really bare compared to the hills that were on our side.
North Korea on the other side
Military outpost and a double fence to its left
After the museum, we visited the origin of my entire clan in Papyeong (apparently there really is a place called that). There was an obelisk as well as a couple of plaques that had descriptions of the place, but nothing too exciting or spectacular.
Family origin
Tomb of Yoon Gwan, a famous general
After seeing the obelisk of my family origin, we could have just turned around to go home, but my grandpa wanted to make an hour-long detour to General Yoon Gwan's tomb who lived 900 years ago. However, by this time I was caffeine deprived and tired from being up since morning so I was too cranky and and annoyed to really care about it. Besides, like I said before I have no sense Korea's history before WWI, so I couldn't relate to how awesome his achievements were; they didn't feel particularly relevant to me, even if he is somehow distantly related to me.
However, while writing this post I found this news article that I found hilarious and informative on a 300-year feud between the Yoon clan and the Shim clan over this grave site. It also talks about Korean people's superstitions about grave sites, some of which are pretty ridiculous. Overall, it just goes to show you how stubborn and bull-headed Koreans can sometimes be.
What the hell is this?
I've decided to set up a Tumblr account separately from the blog, without Muffinman. After committing myself to this partnership with him for almost a year now, I realized I need my own personal space for me to do, you know, "me things." If Muffinman really loves me, I'm sure he'll understand.
Are you abandoning this blog? Say it ain't so!
No, I am not abandoning Life After ARC or all you devoted readers! I will continue to blog about my life as frequently as I have been -- I've been using Tumblr for about a week now and so far it hasn't been a huge time suck.
What is this for then?
To post anything I find interesting online, from news articles to other blog posts, to interactive widgets, which would be out of place if I had posted them in the blog. Even if no one looks at my Tumblr, I'll at least have the comfort of knowing anything I've ever chuckled at or had a deep wow moment over will all be aggregated on one page. And lastly, I wanted to share these deep moments... with random people over the internet.
What kind of topics are going to be covered?
Anything! But my interests mostly lie with new ways to look at the world, lifestyle tips, psychology, economy, business, and the funny and random. But mostly, it'll be Google Reader stuff (love this thing). And no, you can't have it.
Why does your theme suck so much?
It's still under construction. I'm still learning how to use this platform, and with the shoddy internet I've had at home I haven't gotten the chance to play with the themes and settings. Still, now that I am mooching off some other generous neighbor of mine, I should find something that looks decent soon, so bear with me.
About two weeks ago, I went on a company retreat with the department I have been working in. When I was first invited to come, I was excited to hear that we would be going rafting. I had gone rafting once before with my family in NorCal and I had a really great time, so naturally I was looking forward to this rafting adventure. I was expecting this rafting trip to be similar to my previous one; mostly calm waters with a couple of fast spots in the middle and some whitewater at the end .
Unfortunately, the river we went to was really shallow and didn't have a very strong current so we were forced to row most of the time. I was hoping things would get better towards the end, but nope -- we had calm waters the whole way. A lot of the time, our boat would get stuck on the rocks and our river guide would have to hop out and push the boat to a place where we could start rowing again. I felt kind of bad for him having to work so hard, but on the other hand we were the best boat out of the three and didn't get into scrapes nearly as much as the other ones did.
This is pretty much what the rafting journey looked like
Fellow co-workers
However, despite the calm waters, rafting was still fun. We played a lot of games on the boats and swam in the water for a while (relatively clean, but still pretty gross). Everytime two boats passed each other we would flick water to each other using our paddles. At one point, the three boats decided to have a race, with the loser having to buy the winner ice cream. We were sure we were going to win because we had been coasting in first from the beginning, but one of the other teams used their boat to block us from going ahead, the little cheaters. However, we were able to break free and come in second; the important thing to note is we didn't have to buy ice cream for another team.
After we went rafting, we came back to our campsite to freshen up. We only had three bathrooms and it took a while for everyone to shower, so while we were waiting some of the guys and I played some basketball. Unfortunately, I ended up slipping and hurt my foot doing so; the court was made of sand and there was no friction at all. I ended up walking with a bit of a limp the rest of the trip but I didn't really notice the pain because after showering, we had some Korean barbecue, and you always, always drink alcohol with Korean barbecue.
Nice cabins!
Suffice it to say things got pretty loud and drunk fast. One of the directors started making rounds and started pouring us "so-maek" (소맥), that is, soju and beer mixed together. Typically you'd only put in a little bit of soju to compliment the beer, except he was pouring everyone half beer and half soju. Soju happens to be one of my least favorite liquors, and I imagine the taste of it to be similar to drinking nail polish remover. Unfortunately, that and really bad Korean beer is the only thing Korean people drink.
I was worried they might force me to perform an "individual talent" (개인기), like singing a song or dancing, neither of which I am adept at. Fortunately, everyone was too drunk to really care or take notice. I guess you can say Korean companies are a lot like frat houses in the sense that both of them haze a lot. From what I've heard from my co-workers however, this company is definitely not as bad as some other ones out there -- I've noticed there aren't nearly as many after-work drinking sessions as I had initially expected.
I ended up staying up until 3 in the morning where the night ended with rounds of Go-Stop, a Korean card gambling game. I learned how to play but in the process lost W4000 (~$4) in the first round. To give you some basis of comparison as to how much I lost, people typically only lose about W1000 or even less per round. I decided to call it quits after three rounds because it was getting late and I didn't want to go broke.
Despite losing W4000 just like that, it was nice to get out of the city and breathe some fresh county air. The whole trip was a great bonding experience and I definitely feel like I've gotten to know the other people in my department better.
As much as I love my car I do not love it enough to spend two hours a day in it. But that is exactly what I have been doing my whole month in LA since everything is twenty to thirty minutes away. It is actually quite bizarre how that works. No matter where I am in LA, the place that I want or need to go to is always at least twenty minute drive away. Of course that is only true without traffic.
This can happen anytime and anywhere in LA
Traffic in LA is a bizarre thing. It can happen anywhere anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I have experienced traffic at midnight more than once where there was no accident in sight and after a couple of miles, the traffic would dissipate as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. In addition, traffic can really ruin your day because it takes your regular travel time and multiplies it by three. Normally it takes me twenty minutes to get to work in El Segundo, that is at 9:30 AM when there is no traffic. On my way back from work it takes me around an hour in rush hour traffic, though I have just recently discovered a way to get around this and reduced that time to 40 minutes. I think twice about driving anywhere during rush hour traffic and many times I do not go where I want to go because I do not want to sit in traffic.
Parking is another one of the frustrations that I have in LA. Around my apartment it is nearly impossible to find parking after 6PM. I used to come home from work and drive around for twenty minutes just looking for parking in the area and often times I would have to park blocks away from my apartment. It also does not help that I am terrible at parallel parking and in two instances I have hit a car, though no damage was done. Thankfully, once we got the apartment door opener, my apartment mates let me have the parking spot because I drive everyday, so I do not have to do that anymore. Parking in downtown and generally anywhere where there are things to do costs a lot of money unless you get validated. I have yet to walk around and explore Koreatown because I have not been able to find affordable parking. The only place I found that lets me park for the whole day, charges $14. There is no way that Ktown is worth $14 parking.
Besides the driving,everything in LA has been great so far, I love the people, food and culture. Maybe if one day LA decides to get a respectable subway system, I could see myself living here.
Maybe three weeks ago, Andreas surprised me when he replied back to my email and told me he was in LA and had been for a couple of days. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to meet up with him. We decided to head to the Getty, a massive art museum with one of the best views of LA. When I picked him up at the bus stop, I shook his hand and told him how glad I was to see him again. Andreas told me about his travels in Las Vegas, reminding me once again, how badly I wanted to do what he was doing. Instead of being the typical tourist in Las Vegas by going to casinos and bars, Andreas drove around the desert with a folk singer that he met at his hostel.
The Getty is a beautiful place
At the Getty, Andreas proved quite the art student. He pointed things out in many paintings that I would have never seen by myself. His comments on the art pieces always seemed to resonate with me and when there was a disagreement he would listen and try to see things my perspective. I have never before had such engaging experience at an art museum.
"We've all seen that look on a woman's face before" - Andreas
Starved we left the museum in search of more affordable food. We parked at my apartment and then proceeded to walk about two miles to a Persian sandwich shop, I had found on yelp. The shop was hidden away on a small cross street which made it all the more frustrating to find. At least 20 minutes was spent looking up at the street numbers and wondering why the shop was not where it was supposed to be. However, when we finally found the place, it was all worth it. The beef tongue sandwiches were delicious and the place itself was charming. Stepping through the metal gates into shop's courtyard was like stepping into another world. This place was an oasis of tranquility, from the busy and loud streets of LA.
Over lunch, I heard about how his journey might soon come to an end. He had participated in a copy writing test before he left and was awaiting the results. If he was to be called in for the second round of tests from this very prestigious school, he was going to pack up and fly straight to Hamburg, ending his months of travel. It was sort of disheartening to hear, that we all must eventually go back to the real world and make that money again. Surprisingly, he was very impressed with my blog post about him, going so far as to say that I have a gift once he heard that I had not received any professional training. Not going to lie, that really boosted my ego.
After the late lunch, Andreas suggested heading out to Santa Monica since I had never been there before. Santa Monica is fairly touristy place, and we both agreed it did not offer anything too exciting. Some of the street performers were interesting and there was a monkey but besides that there was not much else. We went to the beach, sat around a little bit and then walked along it to the pier. The Santa Monica pier is a smaller and less fun version of the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk, so I was a bit disappointed.
The only Asian street performer I saw
I don't blame the monkey for looking sad
As darkness set in, I decided to walk with Andreas to his hostel in Venice. This was partly motivated by the fact that I really wanted some Mexican food and also because this was Andreas's last day in the states. The next day he was going to fly off to Santiago and who knows when I was going to see him again. I did not end up finding any cheap Mexican food and we ended up eating at a Subway that was right across the street from Andreas's hostel. Before arriving at Subway, Andreas told me how much he loved their sandwiches, which I found hilarious because Subway sandwiches in my opinion are one of the worst sandwiches you can buy. I still do not understand how someone from Europe who grew up with those amazing cured meats could be satisfied with the plastic lunch meats at Subway. In a way, our last meal together was absurd as our first meeting.
After dinner, we shook hands, exchanged goodbyes and parted paths. Andreas left as quickly as he came, leaving me wondering where and when I will see him again.
Surprised is an understatement when I saw Nitya's name on the incoming call (who knew her number was still on my phone). At the time I was in the car en route to a fundraiser and was in a conversation with the chair of the non-profit, so I could not pick up. Later that night I called back, did not get an answer and decided to text her instead. The next thing I know, we had set up a time for coffee.
The whole affair was very strange and surreal. At the coffee shop, Nitya greeted me with a hug and what seemed like genuine happiness to see me. This caught me off guard, as I was expecting a more muted greeting, after all, how could she be so nice to me after all that I have done to her. I was very uncomfortable when she asked me to tell her about all the girls that I presumable have been with since our breakup. Throughout our time at the coffee shop, she was very open about everything which struck me as very odd. Suddenly, I knew how Ashley felt after I started talking to her again after a two months and demanded that she open up. Only this was happening to me with someone that I had not talked to for one and a half years. So yes, like Ashley, I just closed up, became very guarded and just listened to her.
Nitya has been busy since I last heard about her. I revealed to her about how I have been keeping tabs on her through mutual friends and that I knew about some the things that she was doing. Interestingly, it seems that she has been doing the same to me, going so far as to have been reading my blog in order to prepare for our coffee meet up. She told me how she had picked up modeling after being scouted by someone at a party for a fashion show. In addition she was having a photo shoot later that week. I heard her side of the story about what happened with Jennie at UCLA during the summer and also why she decided to transfer to UCLA. She told me about her ex-boyfriend as well as how she had picked up drinking. The biggest surprise, was when she told me that she was not mad at me anymore and that our relationship was an important and happy part of her childhood.
We left the coffee shop, because Nitya found it too distracting. I found myself walking into bebe with her and shopping. Nitya tried on various dresses and asked my opinion on them. The whole affair reminded me of what we used to do when we were dating. It was all very deja vu and very uncomfortable, though I tried my best to hide it.
Somehow, we even ended up eating dinner together at a nice restaurant complete with white table cloths. Everything in my mind was screaming that this was a date. At this point, Nitya grew annoyed at how guarded about everything I was being. I apologized and just told her that the whole day was simply too surreal and that I would need time to open up. When we left the restaurant, she asked for my shirt because she was cold and I gave it to her (how could I not) which made me feel even more awkward.
At the end of the night, I was more than happy to leave. I refused her invitation to a party that she was attending and I simply walked back home, confused as to how the day played out.
I haven't been posting recently, even though there's a couple things I can definitely blog about. Unfortunately, the internet connection I have been using at home has disappeared on me and now I have only a really bad internet connection to rely on, if it even lets me connect. Up until this week I had been using a neighbor's wireless connection -- my grandparents are so old-school they do not even have a computer, much less an internet connection. I must have been slowing down the neighbor's internet significantly for them to find out I was leeching. I'd blame it on the TV shows I have been downloading regularly since I've come to Korea.
So far my internship has required me to do whatever random tasks the staff ask me to do, like translating, updating excel files, and looking up data. Whenever I'm not doing any of the above, I have been working on an indefinite project to summarize industry reports and then translating them into Korean for the staff to read. It is incredibly difficult and time-consuming -- probably why it was assigned to us -- to try and condense a 40-50 page industry report into 4 pages, and then having to translate industry terms such as "blowout preventer" under "Oil & Gas: Equipment & Services" to Korean. Fortunately, the I've gotten to know the intern sitting next to me (Korean native studying in the UK), and so we've divided up the work according to our respective skills; I do the summarizing and he does translating. It does nothing to help my Korean but at least we get the job done faster.
Recently however, I have been assigned to a new project; carrying out financial due diligence on a potential takeover target. In standard English, that means my team has to look carefully into the target company's financial statements to see if anything looks fishy. So far, I've mainly provided a support function for the staff; what else can you expect from an intern? Even still, it's been pretty interesting seeing how all the parties -- the potentially acquiring company, the target company, the accounting advisor, the legal advisor, and the investment bank -- come together, especially since I'm interested in going into investment banking. Yesterday, I was able to listen in on a conference call highlighting particular issues my team need to look at in more detail which felt pretty cool, but maybe that's only because I'm new at this.
In all, I was expecting more late nights and a constant flow of work, but perhaps my expectations were too high going in. I've come to terms that you can't expect too much in a very technical-based company like the one I'm in without any formal training. Still, it's an opportunity I can't let go to waste.
I do not think many of you know exactly what I am working on at my internship. I believe that this proposal that I wrote for the research project will make everything clear.
I edited some stuff out to make it anonymous.
- muffinman
------------------------------------------------------------------ Research Project Proposal
The problem:
Politicians and non-profit organizations have realized the power of social media as a way to spread their message and advance their cause. However, despite the fact that many politicians and non-profit organizations have incorporated social media into their outreach operations, most have done so ineffectively. This can be seen in the lack of quality in the social media accounts and a lack of integration between the different social media platforms.
When asked about social media, Mr.K, director of non-profit A, stated that his organization was still learning how to use social media to reach out to the younger generation. He also admitted that they have not put as much effort into it as they should have and will soon be hiring someone to manage their social media accounts. Congressman S. was in a similar situation, where he and his staff have just begun to learn how to use social media tools to reach out to constituents and that he was “definitely still planning to use it in later years.” It can be seen that many politicians and non-profit organizations are still in the learning stages of using social media and have not reached the level of sophistication of the audience that they are targeting.
Studies by Nielsen and Gallup indicate that social media’s popularity and use are continuing to grow rapidly. Continued use of low quality social media accounts and slow adoption will be increasingly detrimental to the prospects of politicians and causes of non-profit organizations.
Our solution:
As most of the interns are part of the generation that grew up with social media fully incorporated into their lives, we find ourselves to be very comfortable and knowledgeable with the subject. This puts us in a unique position to help introduce politicians and non-profit organizations to social media.
Over the course of the next four weeks, interns will comb over Facebook, twitter, Youtube, blogs and websites. They will scrutinize and breakdown each of these social media platforms that they have used extensively for years and determine their respective strengths and weaknesses as they understand them. Interns will also look for ways to apply these strengths and weaknesses towards advancing a civic cause. These findings will then be applied towards our own social media accounts so as to demonstrate their effectiveness.
In addition, interns will study social media’s role on recent civic actions. These case studies that involve expert statements will lend legitimacy to our research and make our project more relevant, as well as provide real world examples of using social media in a civic context.
One group of interns will examine the March 4th protests that took place at college campuses across the country. An assessment of the state of events that led up to the protests will be conducted. Interns shall study social media’s role before, during and after the protests. Research will also be done on the aftermath of March 4th. Interviews and statements with some of the individuals involved with the March 4th protests including UC regents, professors and organizers. Emphasis will be placed on finding how social media was used successfully throughout the March 4th protests.
Another group of interns will be analyzing how non-profit organizations and politicians on federal, state and local levels have been utilizing social media to conduct campaigns. Comparisons of the different approaches towards social media taken by various campaigns will be assessed for their effectiveness. The experiences of various political staffers and non-profit organizations with social media are to be included in the handbook. Once again, an emphasis will be placed on what was successful.
At the end of the project, we will compile our research into an accessible handbook which can be distributed cheaply and easily to interested parties. A supporting section on the our website that hosts supplemental multimedia content, such as video, and a copy of the handbook will also be created. This combination of traditional and new media in spreading our research project allows for the highest visibility and accessibility, due to the fact that we are targeting an audience that is still more comfortable with traditional media. We aim to distribute the first batch of handbooks to politicians and their staff during our visit of the state capitol.
Our hope is that the handbook can be of aid to non-profit organizations and politicians in their inevitable adoption of emerging social media tools.
It was the first day of my internship, and my 'mentor', who had been assigned to me to ease the process of settling in, had invited me to lunch with a couple of her co-workers. I was incredibly anxious in saying or doing anything, not only because I had to think of the right words to say, but also think, 'Is this appropriate to say at this time,' 'Is this what people would say in an office environment,' and 'What the hell are they talking about?' I was so preoccupied with figuring out what my next grand sentence was going to be that I made the fatal mistake of calling them 'Nuna' and 'Hyung' -- something you would only call someone close to you, never mind a co-worker. I still cringe when I think of this moment.
I'll say it now, for someone who was born in and grew up in the United States, I'm not too bad at Korean. Up until this point however, the only times I've ever had to use Korean have been with close family members or friends so I've only used it in an informal setting. Talking amongst co-workers was something I had never done before, so naturally I felt anxious and overly self-concious about everything I said.
It just goes to show how awkward I can feel when I speak Korean, especially when talking with people I don't know very well. I feel pressured to at least look like I know what I am talking about, which only makes me more self-concious about my speaking abilities. Personally, it's frustrating I can't express myself in the same way I can in English because either I can't nuance what I want to say or I can't formulate the sentence in the first place. In my brain I'm having a fantastic conversation, but my limited vocabulary won't let me have a real conversation in real life. This mental exertion, to me, feels like the equivalent of squeezing Play-Doh through a funnel.
I definitely don't talk as much in Korean as I would in English. I tend to mumble and speak in incomplete sentences in the hopes that the other person will understand what I'm saying and fill in my side of the conversation for me. I also tend to stop listening to the conversation when I can't follow what they are saying and just nod my head as if I understand completely. This usually works until someone suddenly ask me a question and I am caught by surprise. Probably not a good habit.
I'm even afraid of introducing a new topic for the fear that I would have to carry a whole conversation by myself stumbling the whole way through and finally end up in a dead-end. So usually, I just sit awkwardly, listen to the conversation, laugh when everyone else laughs, and respond when I've been addressed. Compared to when I speak English, when I speak Korean I can actually feel myself being less confident.
