09.7.2008 | 1:45 am | My Grad School Life
In my opinion, being a graduate student is an eternal journey to find the most comfortable place for reading books. Music is important, not only for aesthetic reasons but to keep myself reading. Over the last few days, all I did is ordering books for the new semester and buying new songs specifically for reading background. When I started a phd in political science three years ago, it was a bunch of post-rock (?) bands (Explosion in the Sky, Mogwai, etc) and classical music that let me survive the first year. I tried various kinds of music for the reading purpose since then, but it seems I am settling down with very quiet ‘ambient’ (whatever it means) like Brian Eno and Sigur Ros, and a bit more electronic pop kind of music including Broadcast, Stereolab, Cibo Matto, Air, etc. I downloaded new albums so it feels like I am fully loaded for this semester.
I wonder what other people listen to when they read.
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08.30.2008 | 5:30 pm | Languages, Travel, Taiwan, Korea
One of very important reasons to stay being a student and to work in academia is the long summer (and winter) vacation. It is not really a ‘vacation’ since we usually have lots of work, but we have a chance to become a total vagabond for three months every year.
I fully enjoyed my summer 2008. First I participated in a graduate conference at UCLA on China studies, where I presented my paper on colonial education in Taiwan. I flew to Taiwan, helped Michi to settle in, ate a lot of xiaolongbao and my favorite food there. I am still in love with Taiwan, and I always want my friends to enjoy their stays in Taiwan, too. I am very glad to hear that Michi has also developed a personal attachment to this amazing island over the summer. I also flew back to Japan to visit my parents in Takarazuka, and also made a weekend trip to Tokyo to see a number of friends who had just got married, had a baby etc.
My main goal this summer was to improve my Korean to the extent to which I can manage academic discussions with Korean professors. Last two summers, I attended university affiliated language courses (at Seoul National and Yonsei), which was probably a good idea since I was still studying very basic grammar and expressions. This time, however, trusting my ability to motivate myself to study hard without any group pressure, I decided to work with a personal tutor, make language exchange friends, and read academic materials by myself, instead of going to one of these language programs.
I have to say, this was a brilliant idea. My teacher, Bong sonsengnim, was a very experienced professional instructor and linguist. She is fluent in Japanese, and has lived in Japan and the US so she knew common traps for Japanese and English speakers. I studied intensively with her, and ended up doing a lot of writing exercises. I did not intend to emphasize writing ability but it helped me (and my teacher) a lot in learning subtle differences between expressions and mistakes that I tend to make frequently, and in internalizing new vocabulary.
I also did language exchange with four students at Yonsei University. Sookyeong is starting her phd at Cornell this fall. We were supposed to do language exchange between English and Korean, but it soon turned into discussions in whatever language we feel like using, since she also got the same combination of languages that I have. We share lots of similar interests and ideas on approach to history and academia, and I could not help but get excited every time I see her, imagining us collaborating together on publications and conference panels in the future. Sookyeong introduced me two of her friends, Hongsuk and Mihyeon. Both of them are studying modern Korean history. We strictly stuck to an hour-based Korean-Japanese language exchange style (unlike with Sookyeong). We mostly discussed academic subjects or academic life in Korea. The other language exchange friend was Yelee, whom my teacher introduced to me. She studies historical linguistics and will go study in Japan soon. She is doing comparative research on changes in Japanese and in Korean during modernization (if I understood correctly), which sounded very interesting to me. I learned a lot from my language exchange friends, and thanks to them I grew significantly more attached to Seoul this summer. Another good thing about academia is that, since it is reasonably a small world, I am sure that we will meet each other again, and can help each other from wherever we are.
I read quite a bit in Korean, too. I collected a number of dissertations and master’s theses related to my topic at the National Library, and Sookyeong introduced me major works in Korea that I should know of. It is always hard to stop myself from buying more than I could read the next year or so at bookstores in Asia.
I spent the last 10 days of my vacation in Bali, Indonesia. Colm was in Yogyakarta studying the language for the whole summer, so we decided to gather in Bali. Bali is full of European people, and I assume it does not look like the rest of the country at all.
Putting aside many sociological questions that occurred to me about westernization of one part of the country, it was simply a relaxing vacation for both of us. We traveled to Ubud, Mt. Batur, and Gili Trawangan. We could see one small part of extremely diverse natural environments in Indonesia when we did sunrise trekking to Mt. Batur. Gili islands are tiny islands (north of Lombok), and have beautiful beaches where we just relaxed and snorkeled. One guy was setting up a tent on the beach. It is actually a great idea to bring your own tent and stay there on Gilis and use shower and bathrooms at some of the diver’s cafes. We were also stunned by the beautiful view of mountainous Lombok Island (next to Bali). Maybe we will explore Lombok next time…! Mental note: Bring more cash to Gili islands since things are more expensive and there is no ATM on the islands. I uploaded some pictures here.
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07.27.2008 | 3:00 am | Feminism, Travel, Korea
I just heard an incredible story about some side effects of the Special Anti-Prostitution Law put into effect in 2004 in South Korea.
My friends and I were discussing the fact that there are very few cocktail bars any more in high-end downtown areas in Seoul. My friend told me that it is because, as a result of the 2004 Anti-Prostition law, female workers (and capital in the prostitution industry, I assume) rushed to other industries, including hostess bars. There is a universal law that cocktails could not be expensive enough to pay the human cost in hostess bars, so many turned into bottle charge bars where hostesses consume a considerable amount of their customers’ bottles and charge them extra for serving at the table. According to my friend, there has been a huge increase in the number of ‘perverse’ bars (bikini bars etc). In high-end areas, this system functions because it is usually government officials and corporate businessmen who regularly go to these expensive bars.
Another phenomenon that was triggered partly by the 2004 law was sex trafficking towards abroad. The Asia Foundation seems to have held a conference on this issue. They discussed at the conference that, combined with the credit card debt crisis among young people in Korea around the same time, many female college students in debt were recruited to serve in the sex industry in Japan for a summer in return for clearing their debts. He told us an episode of how one girl and her family escaped from sex trafficking to Japan, which was incredible…
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07.24.2008 | 1:44 am | Languages, Academic, My Grad School Life
I blame the path dependency in our citation rules, especially on foreign sources. Why do we need to romanize Japanese, Chinese and Korean titles? If you cannot read these languages, romanized titles are not useful at all, anyways. We provide rough translations of the titles. Why don’t they let us just type in foreign languages.
Ok. Japanese and Chinese romanizations are pretty straightforward. But Korean is so hard to romanize, and when you do, it is really hard to read it back as Korean. Please, please, please, please, someone who has the authority to change the system. The current citation system is totally Euro-centric, and has no consideration for other languages which do not use roman characters. Help us save a lot of time that we currently spend to make a romanized bibliography which is no use to anyone.
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07.22.2008 | 2:43 am | Taiwan, Korea, My Grad School Life
Muninn has been posting really fun articles at his blog recently. Since I share common interests, and probably have similar background knowledge to some extent, I really enjoy his satires in these articles. At the same time, I have been surprised with how people react to them.One of the postings he made was about the anti-Korean sentiment among the Taiwanese. It is a fun article *BECAUSE*, as far as we know, most of the Taiwanese are so chilled out about these ’sentiment’ issues (except those nationalistic anti-China youths). Even when our friends make negative comments on Koreans, they know that it sounds totally irrational, and it is almost like they are playing this ‘game’ of nationalism, which is apparently very popular in the world, just for fun. We see it as a satire on the Taiwanese own part, and Muninn is just participating in the Taiwanese sarcasm in his posting. Obviously, people are not used to this sort of sarcasm. It is amazing how many people are trying to explain ‘why’s in their comments despite the fact that it is just a game of irrationality! And as a result, many of them end up creating another stereotype of the Taiwanese. It is exactly what Muninn (and the Taiwanese that he mentions in the posting) is making fun of.I (and Muninn, too, probably) was wrong to assume that people know the Taiwanese are super open and laid-back, and that the irrationality and stupidity of anti-something sentiments is so obvious that it requires no explanation.Munnin also has two completely satirical articles this and this. Muninn spreads so many secret meanings (especially in the one on Dokto) which people with no background knowledge will never get. I guess this is how Muninn, a total role play and history geek, enjoys his free time.
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07.20.2008 | 4:54 am | Travel, Korea
I was talking with my Korean language teacher about the school uniform culture in Korea the other day. It has gone extreme in Japan, especially in Tokyo, and you see high school girls wearing extremely short uniform skirts and strutting everywhere. In Seoul, school girls wear smaller, rather than shorter, uniforms. Apparently they want to make it look very tight. I was asking my tutor if it is considered fashionable here. She was not sure but she told a great story of an experience related to high school uniforms which I would love to share.
According to my tutor, Korean high schools had school uniforms a long time ago, but many of them abandoned them by the 80s. In the early to mid 90s, the virtue of school uniforms gained new support, and many schools which had abandoned the uniform adopted a new uniform system. When my tutor was in the senior year in high school in Pusan, her school also decided to join this nation-wide school uniform movement. But of course, as in any other effort to invent a new tradition, there were many problems to solve during the process– what kind of uniforms will they adopt? even more importantly, who has the right to decide?
Thus the war began. Uniform companies submitted tons of designs to the school, and since there were so many of them, the school decided to let class representatives and teachers to narrow down appropriate candidates. Alumni joined the incumbent representatives because the school reputation matters a lot to them. They selected 6 designs, and as you can imagine, there was a generational divide between students and teachers in what they selected. Then it was time for all the students (and concerned alumni, possibly) to vote. Instead of election speeches, the school organized a fashion show so that students could see more clearly what it would be like if they wear them. However, the teachers, in the hope of winning the war, picked attractive students as the models for the conservative uniforms, and chubby students for the ones that were popular among students. Students decried the unfairness of this conspiracy that the teachers masterminded, and the school had to hold another fashion show to make it fair.
Students got the second most popular uniform in the end. It was certainly a war that occupied everyone’s mind at that time — although as my tutor says, 그때는 아주 심각한 문제였는데 지금 생각하면 너무 웃겨! (It was a very serious problem, but if you think about it now, it is hilarious.)
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07.17.2008 | 3:12 am | Travel, Korea
Pink and baby blue ties represent masculinity (?) in Korea.
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07.10.2008 | 3:53 pm | Languages, Japan, My Grad School Life
英語、フランス語、中国語、韓国語と語学の勉強を続けてきた、そしてこれからも増えていくと思われる私にとって、電子辞書というのは、もはや欠かせない小道具になってしまった。電子辞書に関しては、私、古今東西カシオ-Ex-Word-Seriesと決めている。しかしこうやってどんどん言語が増えていき、また使い方というのも決まってくるので、どうしても一般的な電子辞書の進化の形では、満足できなくなってきた。
たとえば、私がこの６月に買ったEx-Word, XD-SP7600。タッチパネルになったのはお利口だし、韓国語が最初から入っているのは数少ないので仕方がないが、使いにくい。以下、カシオの皆さんの目に留まることを願って、詳しく文句と提案をしたいと思う。
文句１．新規検索ページに行くためのボタンを統一しろ。
このキーボード部分の上部にある辞書選択ボタン列の部分。今は一つのボタンにつき、２種類の辞書が設定されていて、押すごとにその２種類が交互に現れる。ここ、一つのボタンには一つの辞書ということにしてもらわないと困る。何故かというと、ある単語をただスペルの確認の為に引く時などは一々「決定」など押さないで、見出しだけ見て、すぐ次に行きたい。昔のEx-wordは各ボタンにつき一つの辞書だったので、それさえ押せば新規検索ページに行けたのに、今度は２種類の辞書の間をスイッチしてしまうだけなので、「戻る」を押さなくてはならない。しかし、逆に見出しから「決定」を押して単語の意味を見ている時、癖で「戻る」と押すと見出しページに戻ることになり、新規検索ページに行ったつもりで手早く次の単語を入力し始めてしまい、何度無駄になったことか。つまり、見出しページだろうが、各語彙のページだろうが、どこからでも新規検索にすばやく戻れるようにして欲しい。
文句２．使わない辞書が多すぎる。
なぜ同じような内容の韓日辞書が２種類も入っているのか。なぜ広辞苑じゃなく、明鏡なのか。
要らないもの：
ー複数アルファベット／複数ひらがな検索
ー音声機能
ーひとこと会話系辞典
ー世界の料理等トラベル系
ーワイン、サプリメント系の辞典
ーパソコン用語。。。
などなど、使わないものが多々ある。逆に、多言語を学んでいる場合はわざわざカードを購入して入力しなくてはいけない。つまり、３万円以上払っておいて、既成の半分以上のものは使えない、自分にとって便利にするには、お金だけでなく、カードを買うなど色々面倒な作業が必要になる、それだけ作業が増えれば、不良品、故障や紛失など面倒なことが起こる可能性が高くなる。分かるでしょうか、この「不合理」な感覚が。
というわけで、どうしても実現して欲しいのが、インターネットで、オーダーメイドできる電子辞書。まずナビゲーションの元となる言語を選択して、どの言語間だけでなく、どの辞書を入れたいのかを選択できるようにする。値段は辞典の数で決めてもいいし、各辞典で値段が違ってもいいし。できれば機能も選択できると便利だ。音声が必要かどうか、カラーがいいか、など。自分の好きな電子辞書が造れるんだったら、500ドルくらいは出してもいい。
なんならiPhoneやiPod Touchのアプリケーションとしてあっても便利だなあ。
カシオじゃなくてもいいけど、もう一つ欲しいのが、デジカメ＋メモ機能。本屋などで、買いたくはないが、タイトルと著者などを記録しておきたいシリーズなどよく写真にとるが、その時や資料館などで、各写真に一言つけられると、随分リサーチがしやすいんだけどな。
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07.1.2008 | 11:53 pm | Military, Korea
I cannot find the same article online but there was an interesting article (for me) in today’s Korean Herald.
Military fatigues cause confusion at protests over U.S. beef imports.
“The Defense Ministry briefly got entangled yesterday in a public rumpus over U.S. beef imports after it said it was moving to crack down on protesters wearing military uniforms, but hurriedly backtracked amid a backlash.”
All Korean males who underwent the military service here keep military uniforms for reserve training and in case they are mobilized as active-duty soldiers. ‘Military uniforms’ are a symbol of national unity and sacrifice of young lives to their home country. Now, young Korean males wear them at protests on the issue of US beef import. I would like to figure out WHY they want to do that and what it means from a sociological perspective. Is this another “dancing in the street” phenomenon in which the state has no possible means to control collective ecstasy?
A side note on today’s news:I have never encountered other medias that refer to the OECD (i.e. rich countries) as the major standard for everything as the South Korean news media does. Someone should study this phenomenon.Korea’s Gender Wage Gap Biggest in OECD
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