Heifetz plays Paganini Caprice No.24

Another giant of the great Violinists-- Heifetz, famous for his posture. The sound and video doesn't match exactly, but still an amazinig playing. I heard one of the violinists at my school play this during masterclass, a very very good violinist, but even he struggled through the piece. The left hand pizz at 3:50 is just amazing,among with harmonics(!!!) and double stops... Man, how does he play this so easily??? No wonder Paganini was called the devil, I only wish I could somehow see him playing it himself.

Nathan Milstein - Caprice 5

Simply amazing. People who didn't learn violin will have no idea how hard it is to play to this perfection. More so because he plays it so easily. It makes me to have a good reason to strive for perfection, because it is possible. I used to be obsessed with having to play everything right, but my teachers have done a good job conditioning me stop caring so much for those but focus on expressing more. It became more and more so as the pieces I learn started to get more technically difficult, but now I guess I haven't really achieved either the perfection or the expressivness... I wonder how much he practiced for this... hmm

Summer Creation #1.

It's been 4 days since mom left for Korea and now there's almost nothing to eat. Eh, there was pretty much nothing to eat even when mom was around, but still. So I decided today to make something, and here it is! It's called 낙지복음, and for those who do not know what 낙지, or Nak-ji, is, it's like a small baby octopus. I know some people do not touch things like squids or octopus, but they are good, and a lot of Koreans like them. I don't really understand why some people won't eat those, since I've been eating all kinds of sea creatures (including sea cucumber and sea urchins and etc.) growing up. I even know a person who won't eat fish either. Wait, I know two people. Hmm.... actually one eats salmon only. Anyways, the dish was very easy to make, and it was tasty... except it was a little too spicy. I have no idea how to not make it not so spicy because as you can see, the main ingredient is pepper paste and pepper powder; it's bound to be hot. Hmmmm. Well, my sister and dad liked it, so I think all is good. I'll be making more "summer creations" as time goes, and I hope more things turn out to be a success rather than a failure.

I've also started to practice again :) It felt weird playing again when I haven't been practicing for almost two weeks (Shh... don't tell!), but I got used to soon. I can't helpt but think I sound somehow different in a weird way, but I guess I sound like what I always sounded like. Right now I'm attacking on Zigeunerweisen (<-- I had to seach for the correct spelling; why can't people name things simpler????), again realizing how freakish technically demanding it is. But I think I'm learning it more quickly, may be because I've already learned it before... not that I could really play it back then. I wanted work on some difficult things, so it suits me :p Tomorrow there will be more cooking, more reading, and more practicing as well, in addition to tutoring. Ahh relaxing times... relaxting times...

So how did the PCAT go?

Couple people asked me how the PCAT went last saturday... Well, the first half-- Verbal ability, biology, and Reading comprehension-- was pretty much what I expected, or as for biology, it was better than what I expected. The second half-- quantitative analysis, chemistry, and writing-- was uh, I guess bit harder than I expected it to be. I can't believe I forgot all Sin, Cos, Tan graph stuffs I learned in Algebra 2/precalc, and ended up just guessing all the questions related to it... My review book didn't even had those things in it. Arg. For chemistry, it had quite a lot of Ochem stuffs, and even though I probably could solve them if I had enough time, I immediately guessed on almost every one of them just to save the time. I mean, Ochem stuff aren't like biology where you either know the answer or don't know it; it requires thinking. And if I only have like 30 seconds for each problem in order to get through it all, I'm not gonna spend 5 minutes on those questions. For writing I panicked a little because I couldn't think of examples to back up my statement, but I think I did all right. I think. .....I hope.

The one thing I've noticed when I walked toward the testin center was groups of people just standing around waiting for the test to start. I think there was at least 60 people there, and it suddenly made me realize the large number of people I'm competeing against. I should've expected it, but I was a little startled. It also made me bit worried about my chance of getting accepted into the college... If I do fairly OK on the PCAT, meaning I get at 85 or above, I think I have good chance, and if some miracle happens and I get something like 90, I will have pretty good chance of getting in. Well, I still have one more shot at it. Hopefully next time I'll be able to do a lot better; I'm gonna bringing a coat, hat, and gloves so I don't get freezed like last time.

National Pride

Looking at how some people go crazy over World cup, the question of national pride came up to my mind. Every country wants their country to do well, and it’s normal that they show enormous support for their teams. (In countries like US where soccer isn’t exactly the favorite sport of the people, people might support other country’s teams rather then their own team, like some of my friends. That’s cool too. I actually feel sorta bad about US soccer team… people here just don’t seem to care that much. I’m sure there are people who are as frantic as Koreans about world cup somewhere, but I haven’t seen one yet.) But when it comes down to Koreans? There’s only one thing: you support them, cheer them, make songs and parody movies out of the heroic players. You stay up till 3~4 O’clock in the morning, gather up in front of some outdoor giant screen with thousands of other people wearing red shirts, and cheer for your team from the minute the national anthem starts till the players go to sleep in their rooms. If you are lucky and rich enough to travel to Germany so you can cheer your country’s team, then you’ll be able to be a part of redness that literally covers the whole stadium. I actually got to hear one of the American commenters say “What an amazing national pride” to the cheering Red Devils. Seriously, whenever I watch one of those matches, all I can here is “Deh---han min gook!” or “Ah ri rang” song. (도대체 아리랑은 왜부르는 거냐-_- 특히 “나를 버리고 가시는 님은 십리도 못가서 발병난다” 라는 부분이 들릴때면 쪼금…-_-;; ) I think it’s bit excessive, that Koreans are hoping for another “miracle” to happen. It’s not just World Cup too, even though it’s what makes Korean people go crazy over the most. They get pretty excited to say the least during Olympics as well. Oh, and if anything happens so that there would be a game between Korea and Japan, they become scary and vicious. It’s the people of Korea, not the team, that’s winning or loosing. A great deal of pride is at stake, along with excessive emotions. I see this among younger people especially; they think Korean people are the best, Koreans can achieve anything, and they are not afraid to show unmoving allegiance to Korea. (But then people always complain about what a crappy government and education system they have... isn’t that contrasting?) I never really understood how US don’t require kids to sing their national anthem or say the pledge of allegiance in school if they didn’t want to for some reason; in Korea, that’s almost unthinkable. Starting preschool they memorize national anthem and the pledge of allegiance. I think I had to memorize verses 2,3 and 4 as well, but I massed up on it during oral test and got scolded for it… Anyways, if someone doesn’t know it or refuses to sing it, people will look that person like he/she’s the worst person they’ve ever encountered. Or they might charge the person as a spy from North Korea… although if I were a spy from North Korea, I’d really memorize those well not to be discovered. And this is also why Steve Yoo, a former Korean singer, is not able to come back to Korea to make some more money out of his superstar statues. You see, Korean men are required to go through mandatory enlistment in Army for about 2 and half years. Most of guys hate it and will do almost anything to avoid it, including breaking their own legs or simply being out of country and not coming back. A lot of superstars in Korea avoided going through it by… I guess paying a lot of money to the government official??, and it really sparked controversy. And then this Steve dude comes on a talk show, and said something like “Every REAL Korean man should proudly enlist in Army. I am a proud real Korean man and I’ll gladly go through the 3 year program no matter what”, but changed his citizenship to US the following week or something. Man, he’s like the worst traitor people can talk of now, nobody calls him his Korean name anymore. Instead, they mockingly call him “Steve”. I thought it was bit sad… I thought he was cute. LOL One bad talking ruins his whole life, although I bet he made enough money to get by. Shoulda watch out what to say in public now.

So what makes Koreans so national-pride-obsessive? I might be careful saying this, but I think Koreans learned this obsessive royalty to Korea during Japanese occupation. The history of Korea isn’t very smooth and peaceful, and after being attacked and separated and falling to the bottom, the only thing they could hold onto was probably their national identity. Confucianism also talks good deal about having to be loyal to your family and country as well. And Japanese are notorious for their unifying loyalty toward their country; talk about Samurais and WWII. I’m sure during Japanese occupation of Korea, Korean kids had to learn a lot about having to be loyal to their country (which was unfortunately toward Japan at that time). And now I’m looking at it, today’s school systems in Korea are much affected by Japanese. They are just very similar, and both countries have great pride in their nationality. Very unified population too. People of both countries will take things personally what happens to their country, as if it happened to them or their family. If some Korean got killed by a foreigner, it’s almost as if it’s someone they know personally got killed by that person. If the country is attacked or the country’s image is ridiculed in some ways, it’s your family that’s being attacked and ridiculed. I’m talking about a level that almost every single Koreans feel that way. Thing can get pretty heated up quickly. Anyways, it’s just interesting to me that how sports like soccer can bring out national pride so much… it’s almost like having a war between two countries. Winner wins all glory.

Koreans are having another game with Swiss tomorrow, and the TV will once again be filled with the sound of Red Devils cheering… I honestly don’t think Koreans have that much chance against Swiss, but being Korean, I must support them… I won’t be one if I didn’t cheer for them, right? And I’d love to see Korean team moving up too.
Oh and best of lucks for me as well; PCAT’s this Saturday. As of now, I just want to get it over with. ARG. I should actually be studying rather than doing this. Sigh…

Record

Today, I met up with some friends and talked for almost 5 and half hrs.... A record for me, because literally all we did was just sit down and talk. Didn't watch movies, go shopping or anything, but just talk. Man, am I tired. And about 90% of the topics was about relationships... (and why does every one of them have to be so complicated???) For both of my friends I haven't seen them for a loooong time, so we sort of exchanged infos about what we've been doing the whole time... and whenever they asked me "what about you? Anything new?", I really felt like there hasn't been much to talk about. I always get stuck whenever people ask me things like "so what's up? what's new?", because really, there hasn't been anything much "new" in my life. I almost always ends up saying "ummm.. nothing really exciting... the same old stuff, you know", and I know how BORING that is. But that's the truth; I haven't been doing anything much except studying after the semester ended, and there aren't much I can talk about that would interest other people. During the semester I've been busy doing my own stuffs as well. Every week sensee would ask me the same question, (and now since I'm volunteering, one of the pharmacist almost always ask for any exciting things I did over the weekend...and I don't have anything to say...), and I would just sort of think about it a while (yeah, what have I been doing?) but I can't think of anything else to say, so I'd just say "nothing much." Only when I started to tutor kids and ask them what's new I understood how boring the answer "nothing much" can be... I should start thinking about what I would tell people next time they ask me those stuff, so at least I can sound like I do more than just eat and sleep all day. I'll be ready to carry on a conversation... instead of just listening and saying "uh-huh" all the time. My heads are full of useless information relating to PCAT, that I can't seem to remember what I've been doing until now, and I think that was probably why I couldn't think of anything to say because I've been not paying attention to anything else much. I should learn to talk better....

Woohoo!

Woke up at 5:45 to watch the world cup match between Korea and Togo; I remember dreaming that I woke up 2hrs later than the game so I missed it all, but when I woke up the game was just starting... yay! It wasn't the most exciting soccer game I've seen, but we won, so all is good :) I kind of felt that the players weren't on top of the game, and man, the Togo players were vicious... Korean players almost flew down on the ground whenever Togo players body slammed them; I wonder if it would be the same for other macho European players as well. Hmm.
I also searched online for player named Lee, Chun-soo, who scored a goal in today's match. A lot of people don't seem to like him very well. He's very cocky, full of himself, and doesn't listen to his senior players (which is a BIG thing in Korean culture; you are pretty much to do as you are told), showing objections whenever he can. Today he deicided to do the freekick even though his senior player was suppossed to do it, and the last time they didn't let him, he swore. And I also read that during the last World Cup, he broke the curfew to go out partying, and got rebuked by the captain... not much of a dedication. But I think it's working out for him because the commenters during the game only talked about two players from Korean team; Lee, Chun-soo and Ahn, Jung-hwan, both famous for playing only for themselves, but certainly getting attentions. Quite a few Korean people think that 2006 players aren't really thinking as a team, but trying to show off as much as they can so they can be noticed by other European groups and get scouted. It's true that there are a lot of new young players on the team, since many veteran players retired last world cup... As for drama, I think last world cup was waaaay better. We'll see how far they can go this time, 홧팅!

What to wear... or what Not to wear.

I just watched a reality TV show "What not to wear", a show about tracking people down who dresses horribly, persuade them to come to NY (I think it was NY, if not, it doesn't really matter), throw away all their clothes in home while telling them what horrible clothes they have, lecture them on how to dress properly, give them $5000 or something on visa card, and then let them shop plus make over with new hairstyle and makeups. It's pretty entertaining show, especially when you get to see the before & after look of the picked person, and how their friends and family reacts to the "new & changed" look. Some of the people on the show, like a teacher who makes her own cloth & insists her cloth to be made out of organic matrials, are really in dire need of some help, looking more like out of time and space. Those are the ones who change most remarkably; even if they don't look like super stars, at least they look normal and attractive now. But most others aren't so bad, and for few of them I didn't think that they really needed to change how they dress. And in some cases, even after those two fashion gurus dressed the person as they liked, he/she doesn't look that good.

I don't have problem with people trying to look good; it's great that a person can feel a little more confidant about themselves by wearing fashionable cloth and changing their hairstyle. But something striked me when I was watching the show... Can a few sets of clothes and new hairstyle really give somebody more happiness and confidance? The people on the show always ends by saying "I love this look, I feel so much happier and confidant now. Thank you!!" It's almost like a streotypical consumerism; people buy happiness and satisfaction through spending tons of money on things like clothes, shoes, bags, cars. Is this show promoting consumerism by brainwashing people to think that they need to dress absolutely perfect in order to live a good (or better) life? Can it really change someone's life, make them happier then before? The people on the show seemed to enjoy themselves after they've changed, but is it real feeling or are they now just more aware of how good/bad they look? I really wonder if the people who went through that show now spend a lot more money just shopping around and changing their clothes. Happiness and confidance is good, but I don't like the idea of having to buy stuff to gain those. My math professor is one of the worst dressed people I've seen in my life (he only wears T-shirts and shorts, and most of the T-shirts he wears are the ones people give out on the streets when some event happens), but I know he wouldn't go to NY to change the way he dresses even if they give him a million dollars. Ok, may be he will go with "million dollars", but my point is, he's perfectly happy with who he is, what he does, and how he looks, even though it's not the best look that he can have. (He is a really interesting person... Math professors and music & art professors are the most peculiar people ever. Oh, and the science professors are the worst spellers.) Would somebody really need to change even if the person feels good about themselves? But then there's the question of wheather a person feels happy with her/himself, and how others feel about the way the person dresses. Who should decide, the person or the public opinion? I mean, given that the person does not dress in really offending manner...

I don't like the idea that everyone has to try to dress like super stars, but I also don't like people dressing way weird, as if they don't care what anybody thinks about them. I'm sure most people care about what others think about themselves, and I think trying to look attractive is a natural thing. I feel more attracted to a person who dresses nicely than a person who just doesn't care about what they put on, but I don't determine what the person is like by the way he/she dresses. Cloth gives out such an impression to others, it's hard to just not care about what to wear. I guess the only reason people are interested in clothes is how others view them with the clothes they wear.... which reminds me that I need to go shoping. I only have 2 jeans now because my mom accidently threw away my new jean I bought few weeks ago. But I feel like I shouldn't do anything but study untill PCAT's over with.... sigh.

운

처음 Baron's PCAT preperation 3rd edition을 보고 스트레스가 팍팍 싸인후 일단 Kaplan에서 나온 책을 사기로 마음을 먹은후 책방을 3군데나 다녀봤지만 책을 찾지 못했다. 아무래도 피캣이 3주 안으로 다가오니까 다 팔린듯 -_-+. 인간들이 평소에 사둘것이지... (<-자기는-_-;;) Baron's꺼는 책방에 넘쳐났지만 일단 집에 2nd edition이 있으므로 그냥 무조건 Kaplan꺼로 사기로 마음을 먹고 드디어 Barne's&nobles에서 찾았는데... 45불이나 하는건 또 뭐람=_=. 심각한 고민끝에 다음번에 공부할때도 사야 하니까 결국 사기로 정하고 계산을 하는데... 직원이 말하기를 "It'll be $16.96." ....??? 덜컥! 자...잘못 찍혔나? 아까 분명히 45불 이라고 봤는데.. 하면서도 말안하고 꾿꾿히 그냥 $16.96 내고 나와서 확인해 보니 역시... 잘못 찍힌것이였다. 음... 흠... 흠.... 큼... (우히히힛;) 거의 훔치다시피(??) 한 가격에 비싼책을 사버렸다. 양심의 가책이 조금 느껴지기는 하지만... 좋은건 어쩔수 없지 훗~. 엄마랑 언니는 굿럭이라고 붙을꺼라고 하는데... 영수증 버리지 말고 가지고 있어야지. 움하하하핫; (제발 붙어라 붙어라 붙어라;)

Studying hard...

With PCAT coming up in less than 3 weeks now, I'm almost panicking. I took practice PCAT by myself last Saturday, and got something like 56%?? on it. And my verbal ablilty (antonym and analogy, which I suck at anyways) came out to be about 40% ....Goodness gracious. I couldn't even guess becaus I had no idea what the words meant, some of them which I've never seen in my life. So with the shock I've got, I decided to study study and study... before I really get 50% on the actual PCAT. I need at least 86 on it to be considered a "candidate" by the college. Sigh. A girl I met while volunteering at the pharmacy who's taking it at the same time as I do, but she seemed pretty careless, saying that she doesn't have time to study because of all her summer classes and she knows she'll do bad on it but doesn't really care anyways. I'm pretty amazed because here I am, almost freaking out, and she says she's not gonna study for it... I don't think I really buy that, there are people who always say "oh I didn't really study for it" and get like 99 on their tests, and plus, would anybody really want to waste $105 just to fail it? I'm going to take it again later but I still don't want to do bad on it the first time. The thing I worry the most about is the vocabulary and chemistry... For chemistry it's hard because I don't have access to the periodic table(what????) or a calculator (not really of a problem for me, but still), and for vocab, I just don't know any words. I started to make flash cards and memorize bunch of SAT words now... I tested them to my sis' bf who is english major, and he got 90% them correct... which makes me a little pissed. Ah well. Should stop blogging and start studying again... I always seem to run out of time to do everything I plan to do that day, I guess I must list too many things to do for one day. I also realized just now that I haven't been practicing for like 5 days... shame, shame.

I came across to a Japanese blog and I tried to read them... and realized that I don't know even 10% of the Kanji letters that he wrote. It's went: Kanji, some hiragana words, Kanji, some katakana, kanji, and some hiragana... (But from his profile, I could figure out that he's 27 yrs old, Male, and has a part-time job; アルバイト <-which is supposed to be German(?). But who knows if I interpreted it correct or not???) I recognized few words that I learned when I was in Korea, but I had no idea what they actually mean... I also have no idea how to pronounce them in Japanese either. Same thing happened when I looked over at a Japanese book that my dad has; Kanji after kanji after kanji. Man, forget about learning grammar stuff, I need to know what the words mean before I can figure out if it's in past tense or present tense! It's same for any language I guess, I always think that grammar is important, but knowing the words are even more important. Without knowing words, you can't describe anything you want to say, because... well, you just don't know the words for what you want to describe. As for grammar part, let the natives figure them out... I bet they'll understand at least 70% of what you were trying to say without proper exact grammar. I'd like to be able to read simple everyday texts (like the blog that I gave up on reading further; I could pick out some of the grammar patterns I learned but that didn't really help), that would be cool. I'd like to study next semester material of Japanese, but my schedule doesn't work out, thanks to stupid physiology and orchestra. Arg. I'll just take them next next semester, and hope that I don't forget what little I learned about Japanese. Why didn't the Japanese people just not use Kanji and rely on using hiragana and Katakana only, like Korean Hangul does? That would make things 100 times easier...

The placebo effect

So my dad, like a typical Korean man who goes crazy over those "healthy well-being" products, bought home three large jars of honey and one small jar of royal jelly. Mom wasn't really happy, because my house already has sufficient honey, and nobody really bothers to eat them anyways. But my dad insisted on how "his honey" is different from others and how he got it at much lower price then any other store (mom thinks buying at Costco is way cheaper), along with the health benefites of the honey(especially royal jelly) and other "witness stories" that he heard from people who consumed royal jelly. And today he went on and on about how he doesn't feel any tired today and slept very well last night because he had the royal jelly. I pretty much went "sure, sure" over it, as I know how he gets like this every time he buys some ginseng or a balance bracelet. (Yesterday he also made me search online for a new balance bracelet because he lost his or it broke or something; I for instance don't believe in that stuff, I mean how's some metal+gold bracelet on wrist help people fell less tired and more energetic??? But dad believes it works, and if he thinks the sky's yellow color, it is. What? You think it's blue? You are out of your mind!!) I also looked online for study on royal jelly, and there isn't much of a miraculous thing about it. It's pretty much made up of carbo (sugar), lipids, and some protein, and the only thing that people know for sure is that it helps in lowering cholesterol. I guess that's something, but I believe the effect my dad's feeling is 99% placebo effect.

I don't understand this "well-being" phenomena in Korean culture, especially among males. It's all over the place! There's well-being food like ginseng, green tea and other organic products, well-being snacks (like Oh-yes chocolate cake snack, or cookies made out of various cereals), well-being crayons, and the craziest I've seen so far, well-being origami paper. Yes, an well-being origami paper that's non-acidic and I think it had some green-tea powder in it or something. I don't think I'll be surprised if there's well-being T-shirt, well-being brick, or a well-being piano. God, what is going on with these people??! It's like everything has to be well-being!! And do they really believe that by using some well-being paper it'll make them healthier? I'll rather exercise more! (which I really should by the way.) I don't have any objection to living a healthy lifestyle, it's just that I don't understand the whole obsession with consuming everything well-being. What an weird, weird phenomena it is...

This happend a second ago:
Dad: I think the royal jelly has positively amazing effect on me, I don't feel tired at all, and when I woke up this morning, I felt really good!
Mom: That's just what you think, how would you know its effect in just one day?
Dad: No, it really makes difference, I can feel it!
Me: Dad, that's just a placebo effect. I looked at this medical website and it said that only thing it does is reduce cholesterol.
Dad: Oh what does the western medicine know about royal jelly? The oriental medicine says it's good for you!
Mom: I've never heard of oriental medicine mentioning royal jelly before. You just heard from what other people says about it, that's all.
Me: It's the placebo effect!
Dad: Well, it works for me! (meaning 'don't care what anybody says, it works if I say it works')
Me: (rolls me eyes)