World Cup

In the spirit of my friend Kristen's project I'm going to share my own new experience for today.  My friend Kristen is currently doing one brand new thing a day, every day, for one year.  So far she's almost at the half way mark and she is well on her way to 365 new experiences (read more about it at www.365brandnewdays.com).  I'm not going for even close to that many, but today was pretty special.

What does this new experience have to do with the World Cup you ask?  Well, I can honestly say this is the first time in my life I've ever been into a sports game.  That's right, I'm American, from the land of basketball and football, and I even went to U of M who has a fierce rivalry with OSU.  I gotta say though, ever since I was a kid, I've been ambivalent to just about all sports.  Basketball?  Repetitive.  Baseball?  Too slow.  Hockey?  Yawn.  I was the curiosity of all the neighbors and my family, when sports season rolled around and I showed little to no interest.  Sure, my mom is not into sports at all, but you'd think I'd at least pick up a passing interest in sports with all the hysteria surrounding local teams.  My uncle was, and still is, a Lions fanatic, and my aunts love the Pistons while I never even knew the names of the players on the teams.  This also means I've never been emotionally invested in whether or not a team wins or loses.  I went to one Wolverine's game, and I know I am an alumni and I will be lectured on this sternly (and deservedly) by U of M fans, but I totally did not care if our team won or lost.  I couldn't understand what made everyone around me scream and shout at the top of their lungs, or what compelled a 5 foot 2 asian girl to yell "Rip their F#@$#@$ing heads off!" 

Today that changed.  I went to a bar called Exit which is popular among expats here with my coworker Emily and we sat down and watched Korea vs. Argentina.  People in the bar were sporting red colored shirts and jerseys with "Fighting Korea!" and "Let's go Korea" emblazoned on the back.  There was electricity in the air and I could actually feel it.  I felt relaxed enough to yell when the Korean team came close to scoring a goal, and it felt fun to mock the Argentinian team as best I could.  Their coach is a mafioso, I swear it.  When Korea scored I actually lept up out of my seat and started yelling and joining in with the rest of the bar singing 'Taehan Minguk!!" (Republic of Korea).  It felt like a rollercoaster when the ball got close to our side of the field (notice how I'm starting to use words like we and our), and even laugh when Emily told me she wants to have the Korean Goalkeeper's children.  When the Argentinians scored their 3rd goal and Korea's loss was pretty much assured, I felt just as bad as everyone else and felt just as deflated, as if the life was sucked out of the room.  We went back home in a ... I don't know what the word for this mood is.  Disappointed, but in a sportsmanlike way?   Like I said, these are all new feelings for me.

I guess this sounds selfish, but I've never blended easily into groups and I definitely have never strongly felt any emotion linked to being in a large group of people.  The force that makes people do the wave or jingle their keys in large stadiums usually just whizzes right over my head.  When people get in a funk over a loss I just look at them like they're agonizing over spilled milk.  Now, I understand what that feeling is like, to be a part of the group and to want the group to win just because you're a part of it.  Sure I'm not Korean and soccer isn't exactly big in America, but I live and work here, they give me income, and I'm part of the community, so of course I want to show my support.  Feeling like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle where I firmly fit into my nice strangely shaped spot just felt....good. 

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Humble Pie

So this past week I was on cloud nine.  I was winning my games at the Go salons, I even beat my teacher, Mr. O, by 4 points in a two stone handicap game, and I was studying Go like nobodies business.  I was hooked to Baduk TV, and evening following along with the commentators as they showed sequences I was thinking about while watching the game.  I was plowing through games of Dosaku and somewhat following his awesome reading (as much as a mere human can anyway), so I thought I was really making some progress in Go.  I even dreamed I would just skip to KGS 5d in no time.  Then, fate walked up to me and handed me this:

Yes, good ol' humble pie.  It looks sort of like this, except its filling is made of anguish, its crust of despair, and its all topped off with a creamy, cool dollop of cold hard reality.  The fork is also conveniently there to jam through your eye.  Last thursday I sat down to play some Go on KGS.  I ended up losing two games to 3d's because I went down in flames, and dropped to 2d.  I thought...

"Ok self, 2d.  That's...not what we're going for here but that's ok.  Maybe there was a rank shift and you haven't played online Go in awhile. Just beat a 2d and you'll be fine."

Upon saying that, I proceeded to lose to 2d's.  In one of the games, I killed my opponent big and still lost (I hate those games).  So, I drop to 1d.  I tried to keep the rage from boiling over but that wasn't going to work, so I proceeded to play more and more games until I got my rank back.  I then proceeded to lose to 1 dans, and even had a hard time against 1 kyus.  It was maddening.  The more I played, the angrier I got, and the worse my play became.  By the end of the evening I had totaled my rank into the ground.  I tried telling myself that I wouldn't go to bed till I got at least 2d back, but in that state I couldn't do anything.

So, the next day I dusted myself off and just said "Self, you're not half as good as you thought you were."  I reviewed my games and I saw that all I did was go all out for the kill.  Every move was single mindedly aimed at destroying my opponent.  Of course it was fueled at having been beaten by players I thought were weaker than me, but they ended up winning, so they weren't so weak after all.  Now that my KGS rank has been trashed into the ground and my self confidence in the gutter, I'll have to pick up the pieces.  So far, I've been playing ranked games on kgs, 2 a day to get my average back to snuff, and even when I told myself I'd be calm and concentrate, I still lost to a 1 kyu (lemme tell you, that's a bad feeling).

I'm sure anyone reading this who is low dan or one kyu will feel standoffish but the fact of the matter is I studied hard and I did gain strength, so it's hard for me to swallow that someone who is 2-3 stones weaker than me was able to achieve victory.  It just means I'll have to redouble my efforts.  More exercise, more eating healthy, more tsumego problems, more more more until I get to where I'm going.  I was actually nervous playing a one dan today and even though I won handily the scar of having been dethroned so completely is still on my mind.  I guess the moral of the story is, be patient, and keep your ego in check.  Whenever mine starts going out of control I always have one of these episodes.  We'll see if I bounce back.

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Election Season

June 2nd is Election day here in Korea and I gotta say it's a happenin' time. When Americans want to promote their local politicians before election day rolls around, people usually put plastic signs on their lawn, maybe a bumper sticker or two, and for the more daring, T-shirts. Sure we have heated debates on television for the presidential election, but for stuff like director of education and local offices, there's not a lot of hoopla. Mayor races are of course big in Korea like they are here, but let's just say there's a lot more fanfare:




For the past two weeks or so there has been non stop fanfare with signs and posters plastered everywhere introducing different candidates. They have trucks with political supporters riding in the back waving signs and dancing to different tunes which all glorify the candidates name. The "Yu Jae Yong" song is my favorite and I have to get a video of it before the elections are over, because it's sickeningly addictive as the lyrics are mostly the man's name. People walk down the street wearing colored T-shirts and waving banners and flags. You can't really walk past a main thoroughfare without seeing some form of advertising.

O Sae Dong, larger than life.

While it may be a rather interesting spectacle to me, my supervisor at work was telling me she really finds election season annoying as she can't go home without a truck driving up and down her street blaring someone's name. A lot of my korean co-workers shared the same opinion as they didn't really care who became director of education or like commissioner of such and such, they just wanted to go about their daily lives.  For me, election day means a morning off and a lot of fun.  Yes, Koreans get election day off, or rather, the morning off to be able to go vote.  Wish Americans did that.

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So You Want to Play Go?

Available at www.sundaygolessons.com

Well, I'm finally finished.  As some of you may know I published 3 books on Go last year.  Well, I did some editing and revising and now I can say they are really ready.  The "So You Want to Play Go?" series was designed to take someone who knows nothing about Go and guide them to becoming a single digit kyu player.  The first book is a primer on the rules and basic strategy, aimed at 30-20 kyu players, i.e. people who are just beginning the game.  The second is for those who have some experience but need an introduction to the larger strategic concepts such as middle game fighting and tesuji.  The third deals with more complex strategy and goes deeper into the subject that were introduced in the second level.  Besides Go there is plenty of cultural information including the history of the game as well as profiles of professional players.

I started writing the first book abut 4 years ago after I went to the South Carolina Go Congress.  I was inspired to start writing a primer after I watched a lecture by Maeda Ryo on the fundamentals.  I had learned Go by looking at professional game records and reading books in Chinese (which at the time I didn't understand but gave me every reason to take Chinese!).  I felt I had a good grasp of the basics, but looking at Maeda sensei's lecture I decided that it was more important for people beginning to learn Go to concentrate on set shapes and know them backwards and forwards.  I learned Go haphazardly when I first started, just experimenting with whatever I thought was good and trying moves from pro games.  I thought a book that was more organized and showed things beginners want to know when they first start would go a long way in making Go more popular.

What do I offer that other Go books don't?  Each book doesn't concentrate on just one idea or area of Go, I wanted the reader to have access to as many different faces of Go as possible.  For instance, you'll find chapters on Attacking, Sabaki, and the Opening in the third book where other Go books only focus on one subject.  Instead of piecing together the game like I did, learning one concept from a lecture here and another concept from a book, I thought it'd be easier for the reader to just have everything at their fingertips.  Is there more to Go than what I've written about?  Of course, but my job isn't to create the great Bible of the game, just lend a helping hand to the Go community I'm very much apart of.

So far I've gotten great feedback.  A friend of mine used the first level of the series to teach his beginner classes at Case Western with good results.  I also got some good comments from members of the Quad Cities Go club.  I'm excited because hopefully I can help the English speaking Go world in my own way.  Visit my main website, www.sundaygolessons.com, if you want to see some previews or order.

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K-pop

I probably sent many of you running to the hills with this title.  K-pop, like it's dreaded cousin J-pop, is all about the sugar coated, bubble gum, recycled lyrics that is the hallmark of pop music.  It's like they took the sugary sweet lyrics of American pop music, refined it, added artificial sweetener and served it on a bed of cotton candy.  Originally I started listening to it so I could find out what the kids listened to and why they reacted so weird when  I said certain words in English.  See, in K-pop and well...a lot of popular asian music in general, to spice up the song they add one or two words of English.  Not too much to offend people's ears but enough to sound exotic. The thing is, the people listening to it may not have any idea what the words mean, especially the children.  This leads to some strange occurrences, like one of my 6 year olds singing "Puppy puppy puppy puppy" for half an hour straight.  Another time, when kids in class were tired of class and started complaining, I'd tell them "I don't care" and then they would respond with a rousing chorus of 2ne1's hit song "I don't care, yeah yeah yeah".

Hearing this at the drop of a hat was a little annoying but funny nonetheless.

As far as groups to listen to, there's a wide variety.  There's the mega groups like Super Junior and Sonya Shidae (Girl's generation) where they give the better looking people more screen and song time.  Of course Korean girls will know every guy in the group, their blood type, and what their favorite food is.  I personally like Super Junior despite the fact they ruined the word "sorry" for the kids with their hit song "Sorry Sorry".  I also enjoy T-ara, Brown Eyed Girls, and Shinee (having your group's name in English is also fashionable).  

The thing is, for learning Korean, nothing beats it.  I've taken to studying Korean more seriously where before it took a back seat to Go.  I enrolled in a class for awhile but it's expensive and even though it was helping I get a lot of reinforcement from well...everyone around me.  I plan on going back maybe next month but in the meantime I'm studying on my own. The thing is, I don't learn from traditional books as well, I learn on my feet.   I learn by listening to people speak and using context and logic to figure out what words mean what.  So far I'm pretty conversational and I can talk to the kids when I need to communicate with them so I know they understand me.  I wanna move to the next level, and so far K-pop is doing it.  Now this may seem odd or exaggerated, I mean after all you'd think you'd need a book right?  Well, like I said before, the book is good but it only gets me 20% of the way.  Like for instance, I learned how to speak German mainly from watching anime dubbed in German and then using the book to teach me some grammar.  The book just introduced vocab and grammar, the show reinforced and added to what I knew.

All in all it's great fun.  It's nice to be able to sing with the kids.  Korean kids have no compunctions about singing and do so at the drop of a hat.  Of course when I sing in Korean it melts their little minds because they're trained to think that non-Koreans don't speak Korean at all.  That's a cultural thing I believe I'll never really understand, but hey, I don't really have to.  By the way, if you're wondering how any child could sing puppy for 30 minutes (I'm not kidding you), then I dare you to watch this.  Don't do so for too long though; try to keep your sanity. Sure, they aren't technically saying puppy but it sounds like it.

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Perfected Recipe #1 - Zuccini bread

My absolute favorite dessert since I was a kid, my first perfected dish.  It's a culinary masterpiece which is now a permanent member of my repertoire: Zuccini bread.  Sure it has a bit of a Korean finish since I had to use the Korean version of Zuccini.

Which looks like this.

It's called "En Hobak".  Hobak means pumpkin but I think the term is used for any type of squash.  It's got a much higher water content and is a bit sweeter than zuccini but I thought "Hey this is dessert".  I ran all across Korea and back to get the right spices, and after much effort, hard work, and slaving away in my mini kitchen I finally created this:

What makes it awesome is the struessel topping.  The bread itself is spongy and moist yet firm.  The walnuts give it a good texture and did I mention the crunchy cinnamon/sugar struessel topping?  I also got the right spice mixture which is a secret I'm taking to my grave.  The people at worked loved it and we're off to a good start.  Btw, I don't want to put stuff that's too easy on my list, like sautéed vegetables.  I want something that takes some effort and skill.  Anyways, I'll post again later once my schedule settles down.

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The Return

So today, on May 1st, I took the subway to Migeum.  For the past month I've been taking a break from Go, and for the past two weeks, I havent touched anything that had to do with Go.  No books, no Go TV, no problems, no logging onto online Go servers, nothing.  I was nervous when I got on the elevator to go to the eighth floor.  After all, I was going to be rusty and the kids are merciless.  I walked in, and everyone was surprised to see me, many of the kids that had been there for awhile were happy to see me, and class resumed.  How did I do?

I owned them.

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