Window Into Next Semester

I'll be the first to admit, I haven't exactly been as devoted to the blog as I should be for a number of reasons I can identify off the top of my head.  First off, my main goal was to fill Muffinman and my other high school friends in on the details in my life, since they always complained that I never told them anything.  However, since we started using Skype more often, I stopped contributing to the blog again and let my laziness get the best of me.  Truth be told, I haven't even logged on to the blog in a while, and only briefly skim through Muffinman's posts through my subscription feed reader.  However, my goal for this semester is to re-motivate myself to post regularly and get that momentum that I had when I first started the blog going again.  Now that this semester looks relatively less time-constrained than it did last semester, I don't think this goal is way out of reach.

Unlike last semester I am sad to say I am no longer a Pledgemaster for BAP.  From what I heard of the long night of negotiations and politics after committee elections, it wasn't an easy decision which consoles me to a degree.  Being a Pledgemaster was a huge time commitment, but after being so heavily involved in BAP last semester, it feels a little weird not having BAP be the focus of my life.  I am happy to say though that I am on the Mentoring Committee this semester where I am responsible for the formation of mentoring families as well as overseeing the mentoring program within our professional honors society.  It still means I get that front-facing role and meet a lot of new people which I believe is the best part about BAP.  I also don't have a part-time internship this semester, so now I have more time to focus on myself.

However, with so much free time on my hands now I don't know what I should be doing.  One of the biggest struggles I had last semester was feeling stretched too thin among my various priorities, whether it was school, work, BAP, or recruiting for summer internships.  I was running till 4AM more nights than I should have, trying to get through classes, work, meetings, and homework.  I drank so much coffee that I can say for certain now that I was addicted to caffeine.  If I didn't have my coffee as soon as I got up in the morning or I didn't drink coffee every 3 hours, I'd become lethargic.  At times I hated myself for letting myself become so dependent on my caffeine fix, whether it was a cup of joe or a bottle of diet coke.  I convinced myself it was a necessary evil, but I didn't feel like I was myself without it.  All throughout last semester, if it wasn't one thing, it was another and I did not get a break until Thanksgiving when BAP started winding down, I dropped my internship, and the only thing I had to look forward to was finals.  Finals was a blissful compared to what I had to deal with in the previous four months -- all I had to do was study.

However, it doesn't mean this semester won't be as stressful.  I'm currently recruiting for investment banking positions, and looking at the timelines for resume drops and interviews is giving me a mild panic attack.  Summer internship applications are due by the end of the week, first-round interviews begin next week and second-round superday interviews the week after that.  Starting with the fall employer presentations, I've felt the pressure of getting an internship building up through last semester, and now everything I've done in my college career is going to culminate in whether or not I get an offer for a summer internship.

-Emoinacloset

BAP Initiation

We had our Beta Alpha Psi initiation ceremony, pledging season ended, and officially added a 135 new members to our organization last week.  Initiation itself was pretty intense; we had some big people come, like the head of US recruiting for Deloitte, so E-board was even more focused on perfection than they usually are.

This just put added pressure on me, because as one of the pledgemasters, I had to give a speech to the new member class in front of everybody.  Typically it's the chairs who do the speech (I'm just a member), but both of them had class that time so Steph and I had to get on stage to do it.  I was pretty worried about how my speech would sound, but I got good responses from everyone once it was over so I must have done pretty well for myself.  Steph talked about our time as pledgemasters overseeing the candidate process while I focused on the future and their involvement in BAP.  It's a pretty short speech, but still something I feel is worth sharing.

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From the beginning to the end, I have been amazed at the level of dedication and initiative you all have shown throughout the semester, from engaging yourself in becoming ready for the professional world to the enthusiasm you have shown doing community service. I am honored to have served as your Candidate Master. However, your involvement in Beta Alpha Psi doesn’t end here. As members, not only are you now representatives of this organization, but you are the heart of this community. An organization is more than just workshops and speaker events; it is a group of people who collectively share one purpose, one goal.


PAUSE


To give back to the community. An organization is only as strong as the dedication of its members, and you now are the future of Beta Alpha Psi. Armed with the knowledge Beta Alpha Psi has given you, I hope that motivates you to give back, as future leaders, mentors, and members, so that future BAP candidate generations will be even stronger going forward; so that they may have the same great experience that you have had.


-Emoinacloset

Spinning Plates

It's hard to find time to blog when you have to make sure your spinning plates don't fall to the ground.

That being said, it's a bad excuse to say the reason I haven't been blogging for the past three months is because I've been too busy. But one thing leads to another -- you get caught up in one thing, and then another and another and pretty soon time goes by just like that. After not blogging for so long, it's hard to get back into the habit. It's a shame because there's so much that's happened so long ago, I can't possibly remember every detail that's happened, every moment that's impacted me. Even during the times I was busy, stressed, or going through some dilemma I should have been using this blog to get my thoughts and feelings out, not just for the sole purpose of updating this thing, but more for myself.

I sometimes wonder if I've taken on much more than I can chew this semester. I haven't been able to take a break since the semester began.  Thankfully, this weekend I had the chance to sit down and write but it only feels like I'm passing through the eye of the storm. I know once this weekend pasts I'm going to have to rev it up in high gear again, like it has been up till now. Once Thursday, the date of my last midterm, ended I felt a huge surge of relief and passed out on my bed. Do you know the feeling you get when you hold your breathe underwater for the longest time, and make it out into fresh air just as your lungs feel like their going to explode? Yeah, it felt that good.

This semester I've had to juggle responsibilities and manage my time more than I ever thought I would. If you were from the future and told me in freshman year that my semester now would be like this, I would have laughed right in your face. In short, I've been dealing with school and classes, a part-time job, being a pledgemaster for Beta Alpha Psi (but we have to call ourselves "candidatemasters"), networking and recruiting for upcoming summer internships, and managing my friendships.

With school and classes, I know everyone has them, but I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to do well in order to boost my GPA for internship applications in the spring.  It's been stressing me out because I have to do ridiculously well in order to raise my GPA a decimal point -- as in near 4.0 status -- after which I'll feel a lot more stable in getting interview offers in the coming spring.  At the moment I feel like if I don't make this level my chances in getting an internship -- and by extension a job -- are going to slim down a lot.

A good friend of mine who worked over the summer at the company I'm at now recommended me for the position.  I'm very grateful to him, but damn it takes a lot of energy out of me.  It's 16 hours a week, and for those of you who have had a part-time job during the semester I hope you can appreciate that number.  I just never realized how long 16 hours a week is and how valuable that time is.  What makes it worse is the fact that my times are every Monday through Thursday afternoons, and with classes every morning before lunch, lunchtime events with Beta Alpha Psi (basically everyday), and work all I want to do at the end of the day is go to sleep and wind down.  But then there's homework, and studying, and all that extra after school work that you have to do just to keep up with everyone else.

Being a leader of Beta Alpha Psi as a pledgemaster is a huge time commitment, but it's not just the meetings or the straight work you put into it.  When you have classes at 8:00 AM, pulled an all-nighter to study for a midterm, and have work in the afternoon, the only thing you want to do is crawl into a hole and go to sleep.  To be honest, being social and putting myself out there outside of my close-knit group of friends takes a lot of energy for me.  It's why after corporate presentations and networking events I always feel exhausted.  It's not to say I don't enjoy talking to my pledges -- I love it and they're such good kids!  It's just in between everything else that's been going on, some days can get really rough but I still have to force a smile on my face.

It doesn't help that in the back of my mind I wonder when the apartment we're living in is going to get sold.  We don't have an official lease contract. We're living there on a month-by-month basis with an addendum that if she sells the place then we have three months to find a new apartment, which isn't bad.  However, depending on when the apartment gets sold things could be really hard for me and my two roommates to look for places, because it's just one thing after another.  Finals are in December, internship applications and interview preparations are in January, and interviews run all the way from February through early March.

It's the combination of all these things that makes me feel exhausted most of the time.  I feel overworked a lot. Coffee runs through my blood and sustains me.  I must drink at least 4-5 cups during the weekdays if not more on bad days.  Sometimes I feel like I'm being pulled on by all these obligations and responsibilities.  The worst part in all this is because I've been getting slammed every week, I've been neglecting my old freshman year floormates.  I haven't seen them in weeks and I miss the good times we used to have when I could just hop over a couple of doors to just hang out with them.  But now, they live in Chinatown while I'm all the up either in my apartment in 32nd street or at school, working or studying.  There are other relationships I haven't been giving my fullest attention to as well, and the only thing I can say now is I'm sorry.

Each of these paragraphs in themselves could have been a blog post and unfortunately I've had to cram all of them in one.  Hopefully I can get around to writing more often and go into more detail on all these things.  It felt good to write something -- it's been too long.

-Emoinacloset

Homeless

View of New York Skyline at Night

Photo by: ajagendorf25, Creative Commons

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to get to intimately know the homeless people of New York City, but here I am faced with the prospect of sleeping on the streets.

Ever since I started college, I had always imagined I would move out of my school's on-campus housing by Junior year. Juniors have last priority in choosing dorms, so faced with the prospect of having to live in a crappy place far away from campus I figured I could find an equivalent or better place closer to school. Also, my school rips people off in terms of rent and on top of that crams two people to a tiny room; by getting an apartment, I figured I could save some money and get my own room. In my mind so many benefits lay in store for me, and I was excited at the prospect of having my own place.  Little did I know how difficult it would be to find an apartment!

My initial plan was to live with some floormate friends from Freshman year with whom I had already lived. Since they lived on the east coast and were relatively close to NYC (closer than me anyways), I had hoped things would work out relatively easily. However, last spring I was studying abroad in London, they were in Florence, and everyone else was back in NYC so it was difficult to keep in touch. While I was travelling Europe during spring break, I had the chance to meet up with them and asked them if I could join their apartment search, but they already had a group of three; they said they would try to look for a four-person apartment, but seeing as how New York apartment searches are notoriously difficult, suggested I have a backup plan. Unfortunately, I am not living with them next semester, but seeing as how they warned me and the fact that we did not maintain regular contact, I cannot say I am surprised things worked out the way they did.

With that option gone, I reached out to Sam and Ricky -- we had all studied abroad in London together and I had gotten close to them over the semester. Thankfully, they accepted me which was fortunate because Ricky was on his way to NYC at that moment to find an apartment. At that point I thought I was saved and would have a place to live next year, especially because Ricky had the help of Li, a friend of ours who is currently working as a broker. But I must have underestimated the New York housing market because after two weeks of hard searching nothing came up, and Ricky had to leave the City because he had something important to attend to back home.

So here we are now without a place to live. We are currently trying to come up with some kind of game plan to tackle this issue before the semester starts, but I am not sure what is going to happen next.

The City is a harsh and cruel mistress.

-Emoinacloset

A Deep Conversation

Last week, I had dinner and drinks with Rene, a friend from NYU who I met last semester in London.  Although she is a rising senior, we got to know each other while we traveled together during Spring Break and have since become good friends.  We were in HongDae -- the college town/party district -- but because it was a Tuesday nothing crazy was going on.

We went to a nice and quiet cafe/bar where we had a couple of drinks and were having a good time when the conversation shifted to our fates -- predicted by a Korean fortune-teller we ran into on the way to the cafe -- and eventually on life.  We ended up having a rather deep conversation and I feel like I gained a new perspective on living life.

What would you do if you knew...

• You only had one hour left to live?
• If you only had one day left?
• If you only had one week?
• How about one month?
• A year?

I told Rene that I'd scream or shout out loud with one hour left; with one day, I'd punch someone in the face.  I said this last one with a sheepish grin (definitely influenced by my love of Fight Club, the movie and the book) while Rene was shocked that I would spend my last moments doing something so harmful (she was raised as a Buddhist), but honestly it was the first thing that came to mind.  Reflecting back, I probably said this because I would have been frustrated -- about what, I'm not exactly sure -- but screaming out loud or punching someone in the face feels like something I could do in that short period of time to relieve some of that frustration.

With a week left I would try to meet anyone who has ever mattered to me face-to-face so that I could see each of them one last time and to tell them thanks for everything; for being there with me and for having an impact on my life.

I don't remember what I said if I had a month, but with a year I said I wanted to travel -- specifically somewhere in South America, Africa, or Southeast Asia.  Either that or it would be cool if I got to climb Mt. Everest.

The reason to ask yourself these questions is to discover where your priorities lie.  The things you want to do during the shortest amount of time are the things most important to you, and as the time you have left increases you have the flexibility to include more and more of your lower priorities.  Rene pointed out that there are a lot of people who procrastinate on these priorities and make excuses, saying 'Oh yeah I'll get to it eventually;' but time flies and before they know it they have missed all these opportunities.  The point is, why do people put off their priorities if they really are that important?

How would you answer the above questions?  Discuss.

-Emoinacloset

400-Year Anniversary Of A Famous Ancestor

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.

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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.

Additional Pictures

-Emoinacloset

Emoinacloset's Tumblr Account

Click here for access

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.

How about some sample posts?
Death by Caffeine
Facebook's "Report a Deceased Person's Profile" Form Invites Pranks
etc.

Call this an experiment.

-Emoincloset

Click here

Company Rafting Adventure!

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.


Korean countryside

-Emoinacloset

Additional Pictures

Life As An Intern, Halfway In

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.


-Emoinacloset

Lost In Translation

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.

-Emoinacloset

Why Yes, I Would Like To Work

Inspiration is a curious thing.

When it hits you and you start writing, your words can flow out like rapid machine-gun fire, rat-tat-tat-tat!  However, lately my muse seems to have gone dumb and won't get up to nudge me in the right direction.  You see, unlike Muffinman I haven't been able to take great adventures to far reaching places, meeting people at orientation banquets and so forth.  I'm confined in the office, seated at my desk in front of my company-sponsored computer, click-clackity typing away and sneaking moments to check out Facebook.  And if I had gotten any kind of substantial work at all, I could be blogging about it.

I've been here at my internship for about a week and a half now, and so far 90% of it has been at my desk browsing the internet the whole time.  My subscriptions on Google Reader keep me busy until about lunchtime; the rest of the day I am stuck finding various new ways to pass the time while looking like I'm doing legitimate work.  There are two ways I accomplish this: I only browse sites that mainly have text (unfortunately that means no YouTube or Flash games), and I always have an Excel document open that is crammed with random numbers for me to Alt-Tab to.  And of course, I always have my forehead scrunched up and slightly purse my lips, as if I were either mildly confused or thinking hard about the difficulties of the new "project" I have undertaken.

It's not that I want to avoid doing work.  In fact, I would love it if I could stay in the office overtime, but the staff here rarely give me anything to do, and if they do it's usually a menial task that takes about 30 minutes.  I ask if I can help with anything, yet they don't give it to me!  Sure, I'm an intern and I'm probably useful for nothing at this stage of life, but really guys, can't you give me at least something I can put on my resume?  Maybe I can spin this by telling people I got really good at sitting in an office chair.  I certainly can't put down "Actively sat at my desk executing make-believe work," or "Seized opportunities by taking advantage of the free coffee near the water cooler".

However, despite the lack of projects I am given I try my hardest to be a good intern by showing up to work.  I am usually one of the first people in the office, which is pretty easy considering the fact that people start to trickle in at around 9:30 and the last workers finally arrive around ten.  I also try to leave last as well, despite the fact there is nothing for me to do here (very difficult!).  At around six, as if on cue, loud banging noises come from cabinets opening and shutting as employees get ready to leave the office.  By 6:15, only a few people who have been assigned an exceptionally large amount of work are left.  I ask them if they need help; again they say, "Thanks, but there's nothing you can do.  You can leave now."  And of course, I leave.

So far, I have been a little disappointed with what I have been doing (or not been doing), but perhaps I was expecting too much.  I had visions of the managers grinding me down, but it's been quite the reverse instead.  I was initially uneasy about not doing anything, but after talking with various people who went through the same experience as I am going through now, I have accepted my fate and resigned myself to refreshing my email, Google Reader, and Facebook periodically in the hopes of finding new content for me to read.

Hopefully, they'll let me do something cool.  Like work.  Before I leave Korea, please.

-Emoinacloset

It's Called A Visa (Part 5)

Hopefully this is the last post on the subject.

By the beginning of last week it was pretty much unspoken that I wasn't going to be working at the company.  There was just this huge obvious silence coming from that general direction.  First of all, the boss-man referred me to HR and let them deal with me, so I rarely talked with him on the phone anymore.  And then, the HR guy in charge of me seemed distant every time I tried to call him for an update. Our conversations always ended with, "We'll call you."  The calls never came.  I was always the one who had to initiate the conversation and call them first, even if I gave them the benefit of the doubt by waiting an extra day or two.  I felt like a spurned lover who keeps thinking, 'she'll take me back,' even when the door's been slammed in his face again and again.

I was disappointed, I was angry, but most of all I was frustrated.  If they weren't going to let me work, they should have come right and said, "Sorry, but we can't offer you a position," rather than lead me on with empty promises and no call-backs.  I think I have some idea now of how it feels to be unemployed.  It's so demoralizing -- all you end up doing is lying on your bed with your laptop in front of you, left with nothing but your own thoughts and the hope that someone will post something on your Facebook wall for you to comment on.

However, this story has a happy ending.  Fortunately, I was able to find another internship -- unpaid, but it also means I won't have to apply for another visa.  Thank goodness I can do some kind of work now. It's all I've wanted to do since I got here, and now I'll be able to do it.

-Emoinacloset

It's Called A Visa (Part 4)

The devil is in the details.

After going through this whole visa crisis I have become an expert on short-term employment visa issues for Korean-Americans in Korea.  Last weekend I was able to meet with my uncle, a lawyer in Korea, who had taken some of his time to find out what the exact legal situation is, for which I am very appreciative.  It is all pretty convoluted and at times just plain ridiculous.

As it turns out there is a visa (F-4) made especially for foreign-born Koreans (교포).  My uncle calls it the visa of all visas because it would allow me to work wherever I wanted without any obstacles.  Unfortunately, I am unable to apply for this visa because I hold a dual citizenship -- I was born in the US, but my grandparents also registered me as a Korean citizen when I was born.  Since I also hold a Korean citizenship, there is no reason for the government to give me a visa made for foreign Koreans; after all, why should they.  The story makes sense up to here and that's as far as it goes.

I've mentioned before the problem with working for a company as a Korean citizen is that the military offices will be alerted of my situation and they will whisk me away to my mandatory military service.  The funny thing is, I can't even renounce my Korean citizenship on my own initiative.  The government basically tells dual citizens "you can give up the Korean citizenship but only if you serve your two years in the military first."  Utterly ridiculous; if I serve there is no point in having to give up the citizenship any more. Fortunately, I can get a military service exemption (which would enable me to drop my citizenship) by fulfilling a strict list of requirements, including but not limited to: being born outside of Korea and raised there, parents who are permanent residents or are citizens of that country, and less than three years residence in Korea.

My uncle went to the immigration office to find out exactly what these requirements are, but they wouldn't tell him unless I am present and divulge my personal information.  The trap is if I go, give them my personal information, and it turns out I don't meet one requirement, I may not be let out of the country.  I have this image of the immigration officers inputting my information into the computer, seeing that I don't meet the requirements, and then pressing a button under the desk to alert the military service men hiding in a closet nearby to drag me away to the nearest army base.  It must be government policy to be really shady about military service related citizenship cases.  In all, it's too risky to attempt anything like this here but I can try getting this issue out of the way once I go back to the US.  "Besides," my uncle said, "your mother would kill me if I let you take a risk like that and you ended up having to serve in the army and not see her for two years."

This is why the only other option is either finding an unpaid internship or a short-term employment visa.  The problem with the latter is that it's a hassle for the company to sponsor me because then HR has to go through the process of drafting several documents, and no one really wants to do all that extra work for an intern.  This is probably what happened with the company I was supposed to work for -- I have basically given up on them.

-Emoinacloset

Music Core

Fan girls await

Last Saturday, I was able to get tickets to a Korean music show, Music Core (쇼!음악중심).  I figured while I'm not doing anything I might as well take the opportunity to see one of these things live after I've spent countless hours watching artists perform through YouTube.  Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve one of my goals for this Korea trip: seeing SNSD in person.  They are no longer doing live performances in Korea, and on top of that, they are out of the country!!!  I knew they were no longer performing their latest song, 'Run Devil Run', but I was at least hoping to see Tiffany and Yuri (Two out of nine SNSD members) because they are the regular MCs for the show.  Alas, I was disheartened to learn they would not be there.


Stage with Camera Crew

After seeing these shows only through YouTube, it was really interesting to see how they actually produce the show.  Most of the performances are live and go straight to broadcasting and the live performances all use the same backdrop you see above: a oval screen looking down upon LCD columns interspersed about the stage.  Every group that comes on gets different colors, lighting effects, and sometimes fog machine stuff which gives each performance a distinctive theme.  I would have loved to take more pictures of the different groups performing, but there were security guards around the whole theatre deleting pictures and videos off of people's cameras -- I didn't want to lose the few pictures I had.

Because all the performances are live, the artists need to get on and off very quickly so that they don't cause a gap in show.  However, they often put pre-recorded performances in between the live ones so the artists can take a bit more time to switch places (you can usually tell if there is a backdrop in place of the pillared stage seen above, but not always).  During a pre-recorded performance, the group will usually only be able to perform part of the song, or just introduce themselves to the audience -- the stage crew needs enough time to set up for the next number.  Finally, it was cool to see the cameras all moving around to achieve the dynamic effect you see on TV.

It was also fun to see those crazy fans scream the names of the various groups that performed.  It was kind of sad to see the newer groups not get as much attention as some of the better established groups like Super Junior, SS501, f(x), 4 Minute, and MBLAQ.  When one of the MBLAQ members took off his shirt during their performance, all the fan girls started screaming their heads off -- I thought the roof would cave in.

Like I said before, I was initially disappointed to hear Tiffany and Yuri would not be hosting the show that day, but I was somewhat consoled by the fact that Hara (하라) and SeungYeon (승연) of the girl group Kara were hosting that day.  I couldn't help but notice that every time an unknown artist came up on stage, my eyes would drift over to where the MCs were sitting.  ㅋㅋㅋ~


MC booth

P.S. How about Korea in their first World Cup game? Excellent game 2:0 against Greece. Korea Fighting!!!

-Emoinacloset

It's Called A Visa (Part 3)

The story thus far…

Our hero, Emoinacloset, is at risk of having come to Korea in futile. At first excited about the prospect of interning in Korea, he hears on the first day of duty that he cannot work because of problems with his visa. The boss-man tells Emoinacloset he will look into their New York branch to see if they can accept him as an intern but there is no guarantee.

Part 1
Part 2

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For the past week I have been sitting in the house with nothing except a computer for company. Thank God my neighbors haven’t set up a secure wi-fi connection. When I first came to Korea I was so excited for my internship I carefully watched how much I ate so I could look good in my suit, despite the fact my grandmother here spoils me with food. However, when I got the initial phone call telling me I would not be able to work there I gave up hope. That day I gorged myself with Korean rice cakes I had been abstaining from to fill up the despair I felt inside.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s frustrating to come all the way to Korea for a no-show internship and be put in a situation where all I could do is wait for the company to call me back with some kind of news, good or bad. I felt like punching someone in the face could tip the world back into balance, at least a little; at least that way I’d be doing something. Is it strange to feel like this? The only thing that made me feel somewhat better was lying on my bed, staring into the fluorescent light above me, listening to Amy Winehouse, and slitting my wrists.

I couldn’t sit around doing nothing. I started to look into other internships I could apply to as a contingency plan in case things didn’t work out for me, but then my mom said she was willing to let me come back to the States to get a visa and then go back to Korea. She had calculated the cost of a round trip ticket back to the states vs. the cost of living and rent doing an internship in New York and it was about the same. Besides, it seems like such a waste to throw this opportunity away just because of a visa problem. With that knowledge, I told the company I was willing to go out of the country and do anything to get the visa I needed.

So after telling HR this, I went to the immigration office Wednesday morning to figure out exactly what my situation was and it turns out I might be able to work with a C-4 visa (for short-term employment). On top of that, I don’t have to go all the way back to the United States to apply, I can just take a short trip to Japan and go to the Korean consulate there. I told the company everything Wednesday, but it's Friday now and I don't know what's going on.  I just called them and they said they haven't started processing the documents I need yet, and that I should hear from them sometime next week.

There’s a sliver of hope, yet at the same time I can’t help but feel uneasy.  If I’ve learned anything from what’s happened thus far, it’s that Korean companies are shady.

-Emoinacloset

A Lesson On Family History

Last Saturday my grandpa, uncle, aunt, and I went to the family burial ground in the countryside, about 3 hours away from Seoul by car.  My grandparents usually go about seven times a year here to take care of the graves -- specifically, the one of my great-grandfather.  We go and pay our respects by doing a "deep bow" -- getting all the way down on our knees -- and then we tidy up the grave site by pulling weeds to prevent it from getting overgrown.  We spent a good two hours pulling up weeds under the hot sun.

A little lesson on Korean culture: All Korean names are derived from Chinese characters (although if you translate them into Chinese they might not make much sense).  You probably know the more common last names such as Kim, Lee, and Park, but just because they sound the same does not mean they are equal.  The combination of the underlying Chinese characters as well as the the family's origination denotes which "clan" you were from.  Traditionally, two people in the same clan could not marry, which tells you how serious Koreans are about this stuff.  I am part of the Papyeong Yoon clan (파평 윤씨).

I had come to the countryside two years ago, the last time I was in Korea, learned a little about my family's history (I also had to pull weeds that day).  I guess my grandpa must have either forgotten I had come here last time or he wanted to show me again, so I got the full tour. This time though, I had my camera with me so I took lots of pictures.

Traditional School for the Yoon family





Memorial Service House



The tables where food offerings to ancestors are placed



Burial grounds



Lunchtime



Traditional Korean House
(Also where my grandpa was born)



 
 
 
 

Additional Pictures

-Emoinacloset

It's Called A Visa (Part 2)

What the hell happened?

I just received the call from the company, and they said they will not be able to offer me a position due to legal reasons. I can't work at the company because my visa is the wrong type, and they won't let me work as an unpaid intern because it is against company policy. As it turns out, I am a dual citizen of the US and Korea but if I work for the company as a Korean citizen, I have to go serve two years in the Korean army right away.

The boss-man did say that there is a US branch of the company in New York and that he will try to talk to them to see if they can accept me as an intern. Even still, I don't know if this is a sure thing -- they might not accept interns on such a short notice (after all, this is kind of ridiculous). Even if they would have accepted me, what if the US branch has already begun training for their interns and can't accept me? It looks like my only option now is for me to wait it out and pray things work out. Of course, even if they can offer me a job in New York the problem then shifts towards issues like, "How do I get there?" and "Where will I live?"

I have only been here a week now, and I am already looking into the prospect of leaving. This seems like such a waste of a trip to Korea; I was really looking forward to working here this summer. By now I was expecting to have already happily started work; now all I can do is sit and wait.

Moral of the story: Always make sure your job is 100% guaranteed before you rush ahead to buy a plane ticket that ships you halfway around the world.

This is such a WTF moment.

-Emoinacloset

It's Called A Visa

So I dropped into the office this morning, thinking I would start today. All we did was an informal interview, and then they sent me off with some people to work out the details. That's where the problem began.

I may or may not have a problem with my visa. I came in Korea on the multiple entry visa I used two years ago to come here, but the people there are not sure if I can work because my visa may not work for employment. I've been trying to figure out my chances of things not panning out by going through the Korean visa/immigration website. From what I can tell, as long as I don't get paid everything should be fine. Of course, there may be some other factors in play that I don't know about.

I forgot to say I don't need to get paid for this internship (although I would prefer it), which could affect how this turns out, but I'll tell them when they contact me on Thursday. If this doesn't work out, for the next three months I'm going to feel like such a bum.

-Emoinacloset

Summer In Seoul

Many of you may already know by now, but I will be in Korea for the summer until 8/24. Although I would have loved to land a summer internship in New York, I think this is a pretty good second. I'm going to be interning there, hopefully doing some kind of finance-related stuff. As long as they don't have me making copies and getting coffee for them all the time, I'll be happy. After all, it's something I can put on my resume.

However, I'm kind of worried about the language difficulties I might have in the workplace. Already I barely manage conversing in Korean with my relatives in everyday conversation; I can't imagine how bad it'll be when I need to discuss something work-related. I got a Korean-English dictionary to prepare myself and learn words I encounter that I don't know so I suppose that's a step in the right direction.

I also want to put out there that I will not be going to Shanghai next semester. I was initially excited to go when I first got into the World Studies Track (A program I was in that allowed me to study abroad in both London and Shanghai) but after a semester abroad in London, I missed New York too much to bear the thought of being away for another semester. In addition, a lot of my close friends dropped out of the program and I did not want to go on to Shanghai after that.

This was something I had been contemplating late last fall and all last semester, but I finally pulled the plug. I am sorry Muffinman, but hanging out with you in Shanghai and the chance to see the World Expo are not enough of a reason for me to spend another semester abroad. Muffinman was devastated when he heard I was not going, and I suspect he still harbours bitter resentment towards me for this. I can tell because every time we talk about Shanghai, Muffinman always bring up the fact that he and Pratik, my roommate who is going to Shanghai as well, are going to meet up and have a blast. He constantly reminds me, "You're going to miss out." I try to be supportive.

That being said, I feel like my summer in Korea will sort of make up for the fact that I'm not going to Shanghai. Yes, I know Korea can never fully replace Shanghai -- I've never been there before -- but Korea is still Asia, and this feels like a good second. Besides, with the internship, the World Cup, and the possibility of war breaking out between North and South Korea the next three months should be exciting!

Goals:
1. Watch the World Cup at one of those crazy mass things wearing a Be The Reds shirt
2. See SNSD in person at least once
3. Drink soju at a 포장마차 (Korean drinking/food tent)

-Emoinacloset

An Existential Question

During Spring Break on the Canary Islands, my friends and I were all eating dinner after a long day of surfing (attempts?) on the beach when Mel asks me this potent question: “What do you see yourself as: Korean or American?”

Clearly I said both, but she pressed the issue further telling me to pick just one, and that made me think, what would I call myself? How should I define my identity?

The thing about studying abroad is that it truly makes you appreciate how unique America is. For example, when we went to Spain I was constantly reminded that I was not white; I was Asian, which made me an outsider. Another example is in Italy, when a friend of mine met an ex-pat who said she loved Italy as a place to visit, but hated living there because the government’s inefficiencies made it so frustrating to live there. You live in the United States all your life and take the institutions, values, and culture for granted because you don’t really know how everyone else lives. I believe it’s only when you experience what it’s like living in another country that you can fathom how awesome it is to be American.

I’ve grown up in and lived in America my whole life, and the only tie I have to Korea is my family, the culture my parents have instilled in me, and the color of my skin. Otherwise, I’ve completely accepted America for what it is and embraced it. I love aspects of Korean culture, but at the core of my beliefs are American values which shape my views and how I see the world.

“America is the greatest country on earth,” I say to Mel, reaffirming my decision. She just laughs and shakes her head in dismay – Sam says she is a die-hard Japanese patriot. I understand her, I guess. Although why one would pick Japan over America escapes me. It must be because underneath it all she is a fob. That and she goes to school in Switzerland. Europeans only think they have the moral high ground.

Clearly, my views are compromised by my background, so go ahead and take what I say with a grain of salt. Muffinman, who is an anthropology major, recently told me an axiom of anthropology is that “all cultures are equal”. Theoretically, sure why not? But in my own narrow-minded world of reason, America continues to be number one. Not too long ago, I read a blog post by the Epicurean Dealmaker which I felt was really good at conveying what it is that makes America so great. Excerpt:

“Like most cultures, I think the American culture can best be described by a set of stories, or myths, we tell each other and ourselves. One of the most important and enduring of these is that the United States is the Land of Opportunity. Cynics both inside and outside the US and outsiders from cultures older, wiser, and/or more tired than ours may scoff, but I believe that deep down almost every American truly believes anyone can become President (or a doctor, or CEO of Goldman Sachs)… But the mere fact that so many of us believe social mobility is possible, and indeed valuable, means that as a people we devote more time and energy into bettering our condition in life.”

-The Epicurean Dealmaker, "American Baby"

For those of you like me, how do you see yourselves? More American, or more whatever ethnicity/race you may be?

-Emoinacloset

PS: That being said, come World Cup time, if it ever comes down to a Korea vs. US match, I’d have to root for Korea. Blasphemy? I think not, because in my own head I get to make my own rules.