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:

I.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

I.
among twenty different tortillas
the only thing moving
was the mouth of the niño

Abeyta added bits of pieces of culture and his own feelings of the tortilla into his poem. I loved it. It was an adaptation, yet so original.

Then my English teacher, Mrs. Porter, told us to write our own versions, like the way Abeyta did.

So I thought about it.

What did I love?

What has been a major aspect of my life?

Then I knew it.

RAMEN, or more properly announced in Korean as La-Myun. In Korean, it’s 라면.

I’ve eaten ramen since I was a baby. And I cooked my first ramen when I was 7.

So here’s my poem:

13 Ways Of Looking At A Ramen

I.
Among 20 different pots of food
The only delicious thing
Was the egg of the ramen

II.
I was of three different brands of ramen
Like a consumer
IN which there are three different types of noodles

III.
The ramen was cooked on my stove
It was a small part of my daily meal

IV.
A ramen and egg
Are one
A ramen and egg and chopsticks
Are one

V.
I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of the spoon
Or the beauty of the succulent scent
The ramen water boiling
Or just after

VI.
The ramen filled up my stomach
With its noodles and soup
The shadow of the ramen package
Being cleaned, to and fro
The ramen
Packaged in the factory
For its inevitable doom

VII.
O hungry people throughout the world
Why and how can you imagine eating a steak?
Do you not see the wonderful ramen?
Brought fresh from the factories
In all the grocery stores around you?

VIII.
I know the healthier foods
And more luxurious, and good-looking foods;
But I know, too
That the ramen
Has taught me all that I know

IX.
When the ramen is extinct
It will be remembered
Forever by me

X.
At the sight of ramen
Cooking in the hot water
Even the anorexics
Would cry out in hunger and starvation

XI.
He daydreamed of Seoul
In his imaginary mind
Once, a fear pierced him
In that he might’ve
Overcooked the ramen
The noodles would be bloated
Of the ramen.

XII.
The little boy is waiting for the water to boil in anticipation.
The ramen must be cooked soon.

XIII.
It was Saturday morning all year
It was a cold, gloomy
And it was going to rain
The ramen sat
In the hot pot.

Photo Citations:

Delicious Ramen by Tistory
Ramen 2 by Ask Nate

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.

• 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

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

8. Tab Mix Plus

This add-on gives you a better use of Tabs, and it’s not any one big thing that makes it cool. It’s the small things: progress bars for loading tabs, red italicized text for finished tabs, etc.

Pros: when Firefox quits or accidentally shuts down, it restores Firefox with the same exact tabs, brings the usefulness of Tabs to another whole new level

Cons: what will happen if Firefox gets rid of its tabs?
9. WOT (Web of Trust)

The concept of WOT is self-explanatory. We, the users of the Internet, can rate every website we visit by the four categories above: Trustworthiness, Vendor reliability, Privacy, and Child Safety. Although it isn’t perfect, as normal people have no true way of knowing how “trustworthy” a site is, it gives us another caution and barrier to hide our computers from possible viruses and trojans.

If you accidentally bump into a website that isn’t fit for the WOT’s standards, this screen comes out before entering the website:

Pros: prevents viruses, tells how “safe” a site is
Cons: isn’t 100% accurate, some of the reports are BS (microsoft.com being unsuitable for children? I don’t think so…)

Anyways, that’s it.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Photo Citations:

Forecast Fox Screenshot 1 by Ensolis
Forecast Fox Screenshot 2 by Ensolis
Password Exporter Screenshot by Justin Scott
Tab Mix Plus Screenshot 1 by Gary Reyes
Tab Mix Plus Screenshot 2 by Gary Reyes
WOT by hyperiousx
WOT Caution by Bill Mullins

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.

I’ll have been living in Korea for 3 years this June, and from the moment you get here, you can see that the moral dignity part isnt there.

According to www.dictionary.com:

moral – concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical
dignity – bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect; nobility, worthiness

Here are the various ways that refutes that statement:

- cars have no regard for human life – the rule is, the car is bigger than the human.
- the yellow light is not a warning to slow down; it’s a warning to hurry up before it’s a red light
- cars stop sometimes in a one-lane street for their own selfish reasons

- my principal told me a few weeks ago that numerous kids in the past few years have been hiring people to write their college application essays for them
- there’s a school policy because parents in my school let their children stay at home on the day of a big test so that they can study for it and make it up later

- Korean corporations have always seemingly been plagued with fraud and linked with corruption

- the Korean public voted for Myung-bak Lee, whose shady past has been also linked with corruption (he used to be the CEO for Hyundai, a huge Korean car corporation)

Anyways, then the article went on the say:

However, it is a different story when it comes to wives from Southeast Asia. According to a report on current international marriages in the agricultural region of Yeongnam at the end of 2007, the average age difference between brides and grooms was 12 years.

It was 18 years when the bride was from Vietnam or Cambodia.

One reason for the greater disparity of ages in other Southeastern Asian countries is because of the other countries are poorer than Korea – in terms of GDP per capita according to purchasing power parity, according to averages by the World Bank, IMF, and CIA, while Korea is 28th in the world, Vietnam is 128th and Cambodia is 142nd.

Due to the combination of a moribund economy and conservative culture, many marriages are arranged, old school style, to make sure that there are more children in the family quicker to help raise money for the family. Or it would be so that the children were assured economic success by marrying someone with a richer economic background.

Most of the marriages in Southeast Asia are “arranged marriages,” according to PBS.

Another reason that it doesn’t happen in Korea is due to the more conservative values that Korean people place. Women don’t display their sexuality as openly as in other countries, such as the USA.

An easy place to see it is in celebrities, and the magazines. There aren’t really any famous magazines that pose pictures of famous celebrities in bikinis.

This is Entertainment Weekly, one of the most widely-read magazines in the US, with a weekly circulation of over 1.7 million.

But even in a Maxim for Men’s magazine (Korean), you can only find a girl in a dress.

Anyways, back to the main point.

A few hours ago, I asked my dad this: “do you think Koreans have moral dignity?”

“Of course not.”

Photo Citations:

Hermione Young by waldowoc
Emma Watson Older by AOL
Harry Potter Poster by Warner Bros.
Lindsey Lohan by Entertainment Weekly
Maxim for Men Cover by destinasian

“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:

The Purpose(less) Nature of Dreams

He was running through the forest. He could feel the lions chasing him. He had to run faster. And faster. Suddenly, he was at the end of a 500-foot cliff. He couldn’t jump. They were catching up. But he couldn’t jump. The lions eventually caught up. The male leader jump and sank his teeth into his neck and –

Dreams. Dreams are special. Many of the images that we see in our dreams are also things that we can see in our everyday lives. We can defy gravity and have superhuman strength. Or we can be weak and trapped. The feeling of being in a dream is so real and vivid, yet it is so far away from us. This aura of mystery and thrill that accompanies a dream is what makes it so marketable and easy to use for movie producers in Hollywood and fortune tellers. Movies such as Final Destination and its sequels have been based entirely upon the theory that whatever we dream could become true. Although many people and prominent psychologists feel that dreams are psychologically useful, in the end, dreams may have some purpose, but not a psychological purpose.

One of the first people to come up with a psychological theory of the purpose of dreams was Sigmund Freud. Truly a great psychologist and innovator, Freud (1899) stated that the purpose of dreams was that people would dream about what they wanted, or what they wished (p. 122). So for example, a child wanting to have a toy would dream about playing with that toy. Or a man who wants to go on a date with the women in the café might dream about being on a date with her. However, there are a few flaws in his theory. For example, many people dream about things that they don’t want – death, pain, war. In a study done by Dr. Jennifer Parker of the University of the West of England, 30% of women had nightmares while 19% of men had nightmares in their most recent dreams. Thus, it’s clear that Freud’s (1899) “fulfilled wishes” only are partly true, and that his theories can’t be psychologically proven, let alone be psychologically useful (p. 200).

The other most prominent dream psychologist was Carl Jung. Jung followed Freud’s ideas, although he later created his own theories and ideas. According to Dotson, Jung had a “compensation theory” where we dreamed about aspects of our lives that were missing. So for example, if Larry has a dream about his family dying, Jung might’ve said that Larry had that dream because Larry had neglected his family for his whole life. Larry’s dream about his family compensated his neglect for his family. However, a study done by Calvin Hall, a psychologist, disproves this theory with a study involving dream journals because it shows that people dream about what they see and think in daily life. Many students dream about their upcoming tests, or athletes dream about their upcoming games. These are all events that play a big role in peoples’ lives. As a result, although Jung’s theories of compensation any present a valid point, there’s not enough evidence to support that it’s really the truth, and psychologically useful.
Other than psychologists such as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, there are many other theories out there in the world today, written by many different scientists. One such theory is that dreams are a “cleaning-up operations” for the brain. In essence, the brain organizes and cleans up the brain while we sleep, which is why we might see things that come out in our daily lives. However, according to Domhoff, we don’t usually dream about what exactly happens in the day before. We usually dream about hypothetical possibilities, or events that happened long ago in the past. Therefore, it’s not likely that the brain defragments information in our brain through our dreams while we’re sleeping.

Finally, another theory that has gained popularity over the years is that of a dream giving us the solution to solve our problems, like a problem-solver. According to David G. Myers, author of the Exploring Psychology textbook series (2003), assuming that an average person sleeps about 7-8 hours, the average person has REM sleep, the phase of sleep most related to dreaming, about 5 times. That means about 5 dreams per night (p. 201). Seeing that most people can only remember, according to Jim Pagel (2008), an average of one to two dreams a week, which means we only remember about 0.5% of our dreams. However, according to scientist and writer Domhoff, if dreams really helped us by showing us the solutions to our daily problems while our sleep, then evolution would’ve made us remember more dreams, rather than the measly 0.5% that most people remember. As a result, if dreams really helped us solve our problems, evolution probably would’ve made us able to remember a higher percentage of them.

In conclusion, the paragraphs above show why it’s not likely that dreams have any real psychological uses. As a result, humans have created all sorts of superstition and practical uses for dreams, such as fortune telling, weather prediction, story telling, and many more. Freud’s theories are disproved by the fact that we dream about depressing and the negative aspects of life. Jung’s compensation theory is counted out by the fact that we dream about things that we do in life. The “cleaning-up” process isn’t structured and consistent enough to be true. And the problem-solving theory is too subjective, and historical records haven’t shown us evolving to remember our dreams more, which signifies that remembering dreams isn’t as useful as once thought. Like the boy running away from the lions, perhaps we’ll never know the psychological purpose of dreams. But we can always wake up at the brink of destruction, and realize that we can only move forward.

The works cited (APA form) will be here (works-cited) in this attached file, because all the indents and stuff make it complicated to upload.

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

2. Colorful Tabs

As the name suggests, it colors the tabs for you. If you’re a type of person that only has 1 or 2 tabs up at a time, then it might not be as useful for you. But for someone like me who has about 7-8 at a time, and sometimes 20-25, it’s pretty useful because it differentiates each tab, and it also keeps things colorful. It’s fun and goofy, yet useful.

Pros: colorful, differentiates tabs
Cons: I’m hoping for more colors in the future

It’s pretty simple, so it doesn’t really have many Pros/Cons.

3. Download YouTube Videos in HD and MP4 1.0

This let’s you download any youtube video as an mp4 video for free. And for those newer High Definition videos that Youtube as incorporated (High Definition with the huge screens, not High Definition), you can download that, if the video supports it.

I usually use TubeTV if I wanna watch the video on my iPod, but for some strange reason, TubeTV is weirdly inconsistent.

Pros: good quality, exact copy of the Youtube video, easy to use, don’t need another application
Cons: if you wanna watch on iPod, you need to download another application

4. Fission

Categories

The purpose of Fission is to see the progress of each page as it loads. Like Safari. It’s just something fun that makes your time on the Internet that much better.

It’s so simple, that I won’t even put a Pros/Cons section.
5. Flagfox

This add-on tells you which country the server is located in as well as the IP Address. The developer says it’s also useful for scamming sites: if you click a link for an American bank, but see a Chinese flag, there could be something going on.

Pros: if you’re curious, it gives you the IP/country of origin
Cons: isn’t 100% accurate

Part 2 coming up in the next week, probably.

Photo Citations:

Firefox Logo by spreadfirefox.com
Adblock Plus by filenetwork
Colorful Tabs by xuldev
Download Youtube Videos… by Deepesh Agarwal
Fission by zeniko
Flagfox by Dave G.

Categories

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:

5. PEMDAS

It’s a multifunctional scientific calculator, with all the functions shown as above. Although it doesn’t graph functions for you, like a regular TI or Casio, it has most of the basic functions that a calculator needs. Besides, it’s more colorful.

However, it’s not as fast as using a regular calculator, which is understood, because on a labtop, keys are harder to press quickly.

Pros: easy to download, easy to use, radians and degrees are easily switchable
Cons: takes a while to write each equation

4. QwikConvert

Although there a default version of a Unit Converter already exists, this third-party unit converter, developed by Ben Robinson, trumps Apple’s unit converter (no offense, Apple).

Basically, you just type a number and a unit, and it’ll show you all of the possible conversions, as shown above.

Pros: easy to use, very fast
Cons: conversion limited to only metric system and American conversion system

3. Bubble Bazinga

This is a game most comparable to Puzzle Bobble (right), the classic arcade game, so that’s what I’m gonna be comparing it to. If you want to play the old version, click here. The difference is that in Bubble Bazinga, if your bubble hits 2 or more of its color and the group is destroyed, that isn’t counted against you. So in essence, if you continuously hit other bubbles of the same color, the screen will never get smaller. Also, unlike Puzzle Bobble, the screen size stays the same and more bubbles are added, whereas in Puzzle Bobble, the screen “goes down.” Finally, you use a mouse to play Bubble Bazinga, while you use the keyboard to play Puzzle Bobble.

Play both games and get a feel.

Pros: don’t need Internet, no annoying music from Puzzle Bobble, mouse gameplay makes it easier for most people, more strategy required than Puzzle Bobble, no time limit, you can leave computer and come back any time and resume
Cons: mouse gameplay makes it at times too easy, slower than Puzzle Bobble, addictive, luck based, takes a pretty large part of RAM

2. TV Forecast

This widget’s really good for people who like to watch American TV shows, especially people like me, who can’t watch on TV, but needs to download them off the Internet (via Bittorrent, which I explain how to use here).

It gives you a list of shows and tells you when it’s going to come out. Very useful.

Pros: tells you episode name, what time it’s airing, and when the next new episode is coming out.
Cons: doesn’t adjust for time difference (because I live in Korea, it would be better if I knew what time the next Heroes episode came out in Korean time), doesn’t tell you the season number and episode number (which are essential for Bittorrent)

1. iStat Pro

iStat Pro keeps a tab on everything on your computer: memory, hard disk space, temperature of your computer, how fast your fans in your computer are turning, which processes are taking up the most CPUs, etc.

It’s very customizable. The i button on the left lets you add or delete any section of iStat Pro and it also lets you change the Display setting.

Pros: organized, customizable, informative
Cons: can’t change the order of the sections, takes a while to update, takes a bit of RAM

To check out some of the coolest new Widgets, visit Apple’s Top 50 Widgets. Remember, widgets are supposed to make life easier and cool, so you should download anything that catches your eye and try it out!

Next part of the series: My Favorite Firefox Add-ons

Photo Citations:
Macbook by tech_in
iPod by wiki.videolan
Dashboard (logo) by danuff
Dashboard Screenshot by macinstruct
PEMDAS by Apple
Qwikconvert by dashboardwidgets
Bubble Bazinga by softpedia
Puzzle Bobble by islandlabs
TV Forecast by bigbucketblog
iStat Pro by iusethis

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

This is a site where people can sign up and broadcast anything on TV for free. Viewing is free, broadcasting is free, and streams are good. This is the closest thing that I can get to the TV in America, besides ATDHE. They have everything – people streaming themselves on the channels, people streaming themselves playing video games, and tens of channels of movies and TV shows. You can have favorites within Justin.tv as well, if you sign up. And here’s some of my favorites in Justin.tv (click on the pictures):

Although all of these don’t stream 24/7, a lot of these will often stream for bursts at a time. If there’s two of the same show (Friends, South Park), the one on the left is more probable to stream 24/7.

Photo Citations:

ESPN by www.polotodaynetwork.co m
Justin.tv by aapglobal
Nickolodeon by playgroundestudio
Hey Arnold! by thisissophat
Tom and Jerry by proteinpower
House by elviscostello
South Park 1 by south-park-episodes
South Park 2 by dan-dare
Friends 1 by threedrinksahead
Friends 2 by tvshowcentral

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:

“I taught at Daewon for a year-and-a-half before quitting in the middle of my contract (having an F-4 helps with that) because of me finally being faced with two roads — participating in evil, or maintaining my sense of ethics…

…I’d never teach in a Daewon or Yongin again, since the kids’ life is a living hell.

The problem with these schools is that they apply the best aspects of the Korean system (test assassination) to the requirements of getting INTO American colleges (SAT, SAT II subject tests, and now the AP’s which have become de facto required). The kids do remarkably well on these tests. But when they get to the American schools, they are woefully ill-prepared. But the schools don’t have a vested interest in caring about that — they just want their kids to get INTO famous schools, and it doesn’t matter how they DO at them.

One of the struggles in the FLHS has always been to actually teach them something substantial, rather than for the tests.

Now, I am in contact via chat and Facebook with many of my former Daewon students, whom I first met 3 years ago. They agree that their first year in American college was like getting hit with a Mack truck…They always kinda rolled their eyes. Now, they get it.

Anyway, I did what I could to prepare them, and it was always a struggle, fighting against the stream. Other teachers fought the same battle, and usually got attacked by the Korean teachers for it. Most of the foreign teachers at these schools quit after a year. When I was in Daewon and Yongin, I was not the first teacher at either school to quit before the year ended. Turnover rate is nearly 100% per year for foreign teachers. And Daewon paid an hourly rate of $100 per hour, average part-time teaching load 12-15 hours per week. How bad must it have been for people to quit, or not renew their contracts? Don’t just do the math — try to imagine the extreme suck of one’s life to consider quitting a job that paid sometimes as much as $6,000 per month for (technically) half-time work.

Basically, your life sucks at these schools for 3 years, but the kids and parents swallow their pride and ire, since it is the fast-track to America’s best schools. Period. That’s the exchange. But it absolutely brings out the worst of the Korean school system in a soul-crushing nightmare of pain that many students realize only gets them to the door of the institution they wanted, but has woefully under-prepared them to make it through.

…a school like Exeter prepares you to think, gives you a spectacular education. Because you’re not spending all of your time sitting in a chair.

And if the Times reporter actually thinks THAT school approves of rock bands (or the cheerleading squad that was summarily crushed by the principal when I was there) or anything non-academic that isn’t a 1-hour-per-week weekly meeting so the kids can put it down on their college apps as filler without it technically being a lie…

Intentional or not, this piece on Daewon couldn’t have been written better by a well-paid PR firm.”

Although this article was probably biased, it probably was mostly true.

And it brings up the question: is it even ethical for us to let these kids to live out these kinds of lives?

The average person probably would be able to do it, but not without repurcussions.

I probably literally would’ve gone at least a little bit mad. I wouldn’t be the same after high school as well.

Who cares if you get into an Ivy League school, if you’re not gonna live life to its fullest?

You only get to live it once.

Photo Citations:

Sleeping Students by kuraeji