Fazlur Khan

Fazlur Khan realized his talents as a structural engineer by working as a partner in design, defining the architectural/structural schemes for building projects together with his architectural colleagues. His personal appreciation of the disparate design priorities of function (usefulness for its purpose), structure (economy and efficient use of materials), and aesthetics (satisfaction of an emotional need for meaning and visual interest) enabled him to assume an influential role in the creative process of designing architecture.

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Does Michael Jordan know Taekwondo?

I’m feeling a bit bored and in the mood to write something. I just thought of one that I would write about. I recently went to see Taekwondo show in Seoul and was somewhat surprised to see how well-choreographed it was. The accompanying music was pretty good too and the show would have been a lot more boring without any music. One scene that I particularly enjoyed was the fight between one lady and two guys. Obviously, it was choreographed but it was nice to see a lady throwing kicks and punches to the guys in a fast rapid manner. In the beginning, a group of young age ranging from 8 years olds to 13 years olds came out on the stage and exhibited different movements and some various moves. Then, they brought out the wood blocks and started throwing kicks and break the wood. Apparently, it wouldn’t be any taekwondo without those. Wood blocks started to fly out into broken halves and onto the stage and sometimes, the floor underneath the stage. After the younger group was done with their part, the next older group came out and to my own guess, they were approx. between 16 years olds to early thirties. You could see the difference between two groups as the older group exhibited more sharp movement and made some power moves and higher kicks. Sounds were louder, music faster, and wood blocks snapped louder.

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Origins of Japan may have come from Korea

Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages.

In agreement with the scenario, our results indicate that Japonic languages descended from a common ancestor approximately 2182 years ago. Together with archaeological and biological evidence, our results suggest that the first farmers of Japan had a profound impact on the origins of both people and languages. On a broader level, our results are consistent with a theory that agricultural expansion is the principal factor for shaping global linguistic diversity.

Researchers studying the various dialects of Japanese have concluded that all are descended from a founding language taken to the Japanese islands about 2,200 years ago. The finding sheds new light on the origin of the Japanese people, suggesting that their language is descended from that of the rice-growing farmers who arrived in Japan from the Korean Peninsula, and not from the hunter-gatherers who first inhabited the islands some 30,000 years ago.

Identity

Thought I’d take some time to share some of my thoughts as I’ve been here in Korea for a little more than a month. Initially, I was excited to be here, to have some new experiences and to get know Korea in a first-hand manner. By now, I’d say the novelty has settled in and I’ve been thinking about myself and the world that surrounds us. 

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On Dating

Found this gem online; thought I’d share here.

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1. When you get in your car and turn on your ignition switch, you expect your car to start. You don’t just sit there and think about whether it will start or not. You just do it and expect your car to successfully start. Well you must use this same mentality when approaching, meeting, and attracting women. You must expect success and expect good results when pursuing single women. Practice this “expecting success” mentality and you will achieve amazing results in your love life.

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The Korean lantern

I recently went on a twilight (moonlight) tour at the Changdeokgung Palace, which usually was reserved to VIPs during late hours, so I took this opportunity to take some pictures. One of these reminds me of the Korean lantern that was used as a logo for the 2010 G20 Seoul Summit.

The initial publicly visible preparatory steps were in the creation of a website. After four months of test runs, the online venue became a platform for announcing the choice of a summit logo, which was chosen out of 2,279 entries in an open contest. The Korean lantern logo represents light shining in the dark and also the light which welcomes guests. This forward-looking theme is repeated in the official Korean slogan — “with people to the world; with the world to the future.” The logo incorporates an image of the sun rising over the sea, and the 20 rays coming from the center represent the 20 members of the meeting.

It’s amazing what you might get out of pictures as you snap them.

The Shining

Something has been acting up in my mind and I’d like to attribute that to the concept of the “Shining” that was made popular by author Stephen King when he wrote the book, The Shining, and was made into a movie with Jack Nicholson being the antagonist.

The Shining is simply a heightened feeling of anticipation that you’re able to read someone’s mind and know exactly what is she/he thinking of. It’s almost like reading the person’s face in a poker game and try to determine which hand he has or whether he’s bluffing. You get that heightened feeling of anticipation; your mind is “shining.” Stephen King took that concept into a horror story in which the boy has premonitions of what is going to happen next and how the hotel pervades Jack’s mind with weird visions and turns him into an insane person.

The Shining.

Jeju Samdasoo – drinking water from Korea

As a person who regularly drink water, when I relocated to Korea on work assignment, drinking water was one of the first things I did. I like to drink water myself and my favorite brand is easily Smartwater by Glaceau. I’ve noticed that I like the light clean taste of water, unlike Evian or Fiji Water, which is usually more bodied. Aquafinas or Dasanis are awful, too tappy-tasting to me and I think even its bottle cap smells awful. Never will I buy their bottle. Though back at home in California, I use tap water filtered with Brita. Tastes pretty good to me.

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Dad



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S. Korea Deaf Table Tennis championship

Blanketed

Flickr link

30 years old.

Now that I’ve turned thirty years old, it’s a significant milestone in my life, for sure. Much of that has been learning about myself, who I am, and what I like doing. I’ve come a long way from being born, adopted, then found my birth family in 2002, and now I’m living in Korea for a year.

For those who know me well, I enjoy thinking about philosophy and generally question things. There’s lots of good stuffs on the Internet and I like to think of things in terms of science and universe like what Carl Sagan usually shared. Although Earth is a big planet (maybe not so much with the world population rapidly growing), it’s really really tiny out in the universe alone and it makes us much smaller. I’ve realized that we’ve pretty much existed in our consciousness, taking part in the light. It’s weird that we can hear same sounds, see same things, yet be in different bodies. I guess it’s the mind that binds us and our souls residing in bodies. My line of thinking is similar to that of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche with the idea of existentialism. Kierkegaard maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom. Both of them also believed that one should define the nature of their own existence. It’s a similar notion to one quote I read—“Life isn’t about finding yourself it’s about creating yourself.” That’s what I believe in, and that’s mainly one reason why Facebook is so popular because it’s given us tools to share ourselves rather conveniently.

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Korean guy and girl

Cool, I found two nice classy pics of Korean man and woman in black and white.

Looking classy!

Google Korea

Office shows where I currently work at.

My niece

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