13 Ways To Look At A Ramen (라면)

Excluding Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss, I’ve never really been an avid fan of poetry. A few days ago in English class, we read a poem about blackbirds. It was called “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens (click the link to read).

Honestly, I thought it was another one of the 13572318746 boring poems out there.

Then, our teacher, Mrs. Porter, told us to look at a poem written in a format similar to that of the “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.” It was called “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Tortilla” by Aaron Abeyta.

What Mr. Abeyta did was that he found something that he loved, a tortilla, and made a poem of a similar form of “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.” Here’s the first stanzas for each poem:

YEARBOOKs Today: Purposeful??

Why do we need yearbooks?

This is the cover of this year’s yearbook.

I”m not saying that yearbooks are bad – they preserve memories and all.

They probably would’ve been pretty nice for people in the ’70s and ’80s, where many people leave your school, and contact with your friends is limited.

But in an age of text messaging, Facebook, and e-mail, what’s the real purpose of yearbooks?

In a school where return rate, especially for juniors (which I am), is literally 100%, it seems as if,  for me, yearbooks are now obsolete.

As seniors, they would be nice to have, with senior pages and all.

But as I look around in my classes, in lunch, those yearbooks aren’t just worth paying 50,000 won ($39) for.

Not anymore.

Hiatus Over… WHY? Well, APs, of course!

I’ve been taking a hiatus of blogging. The last blog post I wrote was on April 26, 2009. That’s in a different time period. According to the Time Calculator, that is:

• 4 weeks
• 28 days
• 672 hours
• 40,320 minutes
• 2,419,200 seconds

Why?

Two Words, not including the “the.”

The APs.

After taking 3 of these tests this year (Calculus AB, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics), taking 1 last year (Biology), and deciding to take 4 more for next year (Calculus BC, Physics, Spanish, Psychology), I decided to explore the historical origin of these tests.

According to the Wikipedia article, APs were created after World War II by the Ford Foundation to further education for students who desired so.

As a result, the APs were initially created as a way for high school students to take college courses in high school to save them money and time in college.

While this is certainly a commendable cause, these days, is it achieving its goal?

It seems as if people only take APs to put something else into their applications.

Knowing that many parents, including my own, can’t and probably won’t be able to afford full college tuition for me, I’ve been taking AP courses to not only put something on my resumé, but also to possibly take college in 3 years or 3.5 years. Whatever works, right?

Although I signed up for these courses optionally, it seems as if it’s impossible to get into any respectable university these days without these courses filling up a big portion of your resume.

And I feel them slowly draining the liveliness and youth from me…

Here’s a good article that agrees with me, mainly about the college applicatino process.

Photo Citations
AP Logo by nicevillehighschool

My Favorite Firefox Add-Ons Part 2

This is the second and last part to the first part of this blog, My Favorite Firefox Add-Ons Part 1

6. Forecast Fox

This handy add-on gives you the current weather, as seen in the picture above. Provided by Accuweather.com, this add-on also provides future weather for up to 2 days, wind speed, and a radar of any region in the world. It’s preferences menu also lets you show whatever you want an is very customizable.

Pros: instant up-to-date weather, radar gives clear view, if you click it, you can go to the website quickly, very customizable
Cons: doesn’t give temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, preferences menu can be a bit tricky

7. Password Exporter

This add-on lets you save all your passwords on Firefox, so that every time you visit a website that you frequently visit, you don’t need to retype your username and password. It also keeps your passwords and usernames stored on a file, so that you can Export the passwords to use on another computer.

Pros: extremely convenient, saves time, can export to use on other computers
Cons: you can see all your passwords, but someone that is using your computer can see them as easily

Koreans = Moral Dignity?

This is Emma Watson, well known as her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies.

So what about her?

I was reading an editorial at Joongang Daily, a Korean newspaper which also has an English counterpart, mainly for Koreans that want to improve their English. But I also occasionally skim it for interesting articles.

This editorial commented on the rumor of the 19-year old actress that she was dating Russian Roman Abramovich, the billionaire oil magnate and owner of Chelsea Football Club. He commented that it “saddened Harry Potter fans.”

Then he went to go on to talk about “trophy wives” – basically gold diggers who marry older, richer men for their money.

Here’s an excerpt:

Since the 20th century, celebrities were naturally loved as the new “trophies.” One major example is when former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith married oil magnate Howard Marshall in 1994 when she was 26 and he was 89.

During the U.S. presidential election in 2008, Republican candidate Fred Thompson was a subject of great discussion because his wife is 24 years his junior.

It is hard to find such an example in Korea, but social leaders who marry trophy wives are not rare in other Asian countries such as China and Japan.

This is probably because of the social atmosphere that demands moral dignity together with material success.

This last part of the excerpt caught my eye. No, not the part that says material success. That, I know about. But the part about moral dignity… moral dignity?!?!?!?!?

Probably one of the most ridiculous things that I’ve heard all year.

The Futility of Google (for research, anyways)

A few weeks ago, my Psychology teacher asked our class to write an essay. The prompt was this:

“Are dreams a useful psychological tool?”

Obviously, we were studying about dreams.

I went to Google, the most prominent search engine in the Internet today (Yahoo and MSN probably have more searches overall, but Google has the most visits for a website initially designed to search the Web).

Obviously, dreams are a really broad topic. Dreams have always been associated with the supernatural aspects of life.

So I’m not saying that saying that Google is bad. You shouldn’t even use it for research papers. I just needed an interesting title. And I really couldn’t think of one. Anyways, back to the psychology paper…

Movies such as Dreamscape, about a who uses psychic powers to enter people’s dreams and help them, are prevalent in society, which made searching for my essay difficult.

The Internet is a powerful tool, if used wisely. But it also has a lot of junk, which is what I found.

So I’ve written my essay, with a bibliography below (APA form) to help anyone out there who has a similar essay topic as mine, or just likes to learn, I guess:

My Favorite Firefox Add-Ons Part 1

This is the third part of my Favorite series.

Part 1 was My BOOKmarks while Part 2 was My Favorite Macbook Widgets.

Anyways, here goes the final part:

After discovering the wonders of Firefox after buying my Macbook, I’ve realized why people like it so much – it’s so customizable.

Just like the Macbook Dashboard, third-party applications are available for everyone to use as they wish.

Furthermore, every time Firefox starts, it checks for automatic updates for any of your add-ons. So your add-ons should always be up-to-date without needing to go online to check for updates.

So here are some of my favorite applications in alphabetical order:

1. Adblock Plus

Possibly one of my favorite add-ons. It literally blocks every one of those annoying advertisements on the top or sides of your screens. Furthermore, it probably makes your Internet faster when visiting sites with adds, because you don’t have to see them anymore. It doesn’t block pop-ups, but that’s okay, becuase there’s so many good pop-up blockers out there these days (especially the one that comes with Firefox by default).

The only problem that I have is that it could, one day,

Pros: Blocks almost all advertisements, it’s free, makes Internet faster, can block other Flash applications that you see on the Internet (even if they aren’t pop-ups)
Cons: it could be banned soon, the Block button that appears on the top-right corner could be annoying if you accidentally press it

My Favorite Macbook Widgets

Ahhhhh. My Macbook. A piece of… what should I say… art that I use everyday, almost no exceptions.

I got my current Macbook in the beginning of my 10th grade (so almost 2 years ago) because my school required everyone in our school to buy it. When they sent letters telling everyone to buy it, I was shocked, to say the least.

A computer… for everyone?!?

I mean, we already had a computer lab and carts of Windows labtops around the school that were plenty for everyone. Did we really need them?

That’s a question to be answered in another blog post….

After using Windows desktops for my whole life, I was confused when I got this Macbook. I went through every Application that it came with, and was pleased to find that it was so… simple?

And that world – SIMPLE – is the word that summarizes Mac and its success. Just looking at the Macbook – white, plain, clean, yet fresh and with an aura of something religious – mysterious yet comfortable.

The most popular mp3 player in the world – the iPOD - is so simple. It’s just a rectangle with a screen and a circle underneath the screen. Fashionable, slim, and uncomplicated.

One of the greatest things about Macbooks is the fact that its really personalized. You don’t have to change the way you use computers. You can make the Macbook change so that it suits you. One example is the Dashboard.

And with this Dashboard, you can download third-party applications all over the Internet that can make your life easier, which is what machines and technology were essentially originally made for.

Here’s a screenshot of a Dashboard

As you can see, there’s a lotta stuff. A good place to look for popular or cool Widgets is in Apple’s Top 50 Widgets. And here are my favorite 5 widgets:

My BOOKmarks

I’m kinda lazy to write something educational and don’t really have anything in my mind right now. I just watched a Lakers game on my computer, and I’m currently watching House on a site that streams it 24/7 on HD.

How am/did I watch all of this on my labtop? For free?!?

Living in Korea, I miss out on a lotta things that I could’ve been watching had I still lived in America. So here’s a few of my favorite websites that keep me connected, at least electronically, to some of my interests:

First of all, I love sports, especially LA sports, and so I keep bookmarks on my favorite teams, as well as reading blogs about my favorite teams:
Los Angeles Lakers Clubhouse (ESPN)
Los Angeles Dodgers Clubhouse (ESPN)
USC Trojans Football & Basketball Clubhouse (ESPN)
USC Blog
LA Times Lakers Blog
Forum Blue & Gold Lakers Blog

Well, I have some school bookmarks, but that’s kinda boring and useless to an average reader.

Then, I across my Toolbar, I have:
Youtube: obviously, it’s the quintessential video-playing website of the Internet.
Facebook: a way to talk with some of my friends in the States.
LA Times: to stay with the news and some of the other cool stuff happening in Southern California.
LA Times Sudoku: one thing I like about this version of Sudoku is that all possible numbers for each box is filled in red. So you don’t have to waste 15 minutes of your time trying to find out which numbers are possible for each box.
ATDHE: a website with a collection of links to live sports games and TV shows in America. Great website.

And possibly my favorite website: Justin.tv

Elite Korean Prep Schools – Good or Bad? Part 2

Nearly two months ago, I wrote a blogpost about Korean college prep schools, and a particular type, called Korean Foreign Language High Schools, such as Daewon and Minjok Leadership. and it came mainly from my personal experiences of living in Korea and from this New York Times article.

That article mainly praised the Korean Foreign Language High Schools (KFLHS) for taking the students to new heights by taking them to prominent schools, mainly in the Ivy League.

However, a few days ago, I read a blogpost by a former teacher of Daewon which unequivocally criticized the schools heavily. Here’s a few(actually, many) excerpts: