today is the day

when I found out that my sense of optimism is quite different from that of many people in my motherland.
I hear that I am an optimistic person (and it is true that I try to see my glass always half full), but when they say the word "optimistic," I am often confused whether they are really giving me a compliment; their eyes say, "You little girl, what do you know."



Today was the day..
when I was falling asleep like the usual me after lunch
and heard all so suddenly that North Koreans are firing on 연평도. This attack made South Korea go under the "Jindo-dog#1"code, which according to Dr.Lee (who was in the ground combat unit in his younger days) is the state right before a declaration of war. At a moment like this, Koreans display an incomprehensible amount of optimism.
Ex#1: "This is not the first time where the North acted like this. And nothing really has happened this all along ♬"
Ex#2: "We're fine because we're in a hospital building. They can't touch us ♪"
Ex#3: "If we were meant to die today, we will just die ♪ " (yay)

...

Now what I think is that,
maybe, I have a different threshold for perceiving what is realistic and what is not.

That is, if I were to give a GRE-style antonym to this whole situation it would look like..
earthquake : Californians :: Kim Jong-Il's lunacy (똘끼): South Koreans

makes more sense now, right?

if a picture paints a thousand words then why can't i paint you

"If" by Bread.
This is by far the most romantic song I've heard. Lyrics and melodies like these are hard to find nowadays, no? There are some bands who write incredible songs, but even so, I don't think they quite match up to sentiment of the olden day artists. Maybe I was meant to exist in the 60's or the 70's :/ But please just listen to the guitar, pay attention to the lyrics, and feed your autumn-drenched souls...

If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can't I paint you?
The words will never show the you I've come to know.
If a face could launch a thousand ships,
Then where am I to go?
There's no one home but you,
You're all that's left me too.
And when my love for life is running dry,
You come and pour yourself on me.

If a man could be two places at one time,
I'd be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.
If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I'd spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away

:) ah

happy early christmas (nope, cant do that)

Dear Santa:
what I really would really love to have for Christmas is significant p-values
(and one Tickle Me Elmo, maybe).
Thanks! :)

Sincerely yours,
one pathetic grad student from Seoul ♥

knock knock 여보세요?

Sometimes we wonder why we need to pray.
(Doesn't God already know what we want? He knows what's in my mind, right? 다 알고 계시잖아요) When I was little, my definition of prayer was "asking for something 'good.'" Then after some years of Sunday school and a few "last night of the retreat experiences", I've come to acknowledge prayer as a conversation with God. I developed a cute habit of speaking with God frequently and even at random times of a day: standing in line for a latte or making my way from spot A to spot B in a huge UCSD campus, for example. Instead of thinking to myself, "It's a beautiful day," I modified this expression into a friendly question of "It's a beautiful day....isn't it?" Talking to God wasn't so hard. Not at all. God's been everywhere in my life, and every time I took the eucharist, his existence in me was once again reminded.

"Prayer" to a 24-year-old Kim 현 Monica is a ruler that measures how close she is standing to God. To answer the questions that I posed at the beginning of this post--of course He knows more about me and how I feel, but the significance of act of praying is that we examine my relationship with God.

Where are you? (Genesis Chapter 3)

For the first time in a very long tme, I attended mass out of my pure desire to be in His house. I've missed church a couple times within the last month (50% attendance rate. That's a Fail!) and somehow, I was able to compromise with my own conscienceness that it's okay to take a break if I feel like it :/ If there were an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other [like in cartoons] I guess I let the demon kick angel's butt. But even with that foul nonchalance, I knew from the back of my head that I won't stray away too far. I knew God was expecting me and I planned to return..soon. And today, I went to mass at Myungdong church and was absolutely delighted to be there.

The choir sang Dona nobis pacem and I discovered myself reverberating the same phrase in my head. God, grant me your peace. I have no clear reason for reciting such prayer with such direness, but at least at the moment, I felt desperate. 왜였을까?
I have yearnings that cannot be fulfiled by my work alone. To be free from selfish desires and realize that He will provide what I really need will I reach the peace of mind.

I think it's about time that I say this Bible verse again..the one that fuels the entirety of my soul: Yahweh Yireh.
"On the mountain Yahweh provides"
Lord will provide. Amen.

저 멀리 가지 않아요.
돌아오려고요 :)
picture title: 멀리 안가는 포즈 but really, 멀리 못가게 하는 짧은 다리

우리 인생도 아름다워 ♥

주말 저녁에도 나를 10시까지 들어오는 바른생활 어린이로 만든 드라마 <인생은 아름다워>가 어제 끝났다. 참 좋은 작품이었다. 덕분에 내 인생도 설레여 질 정도로.

참 아름다웠던 제주도 배경 속 4대 가족, 10쌍의 커플 중심으로 생겨나는 에피소드들로 스토리가 전개 되었다. 이혼, 재혼, 출산, 죽음, 동생애까지 인생의 참 많은 얼굴을 담고 있기도 한데 궁극적으로 이 모든 다사다난함 끝에 돌아올 곳은 가족이라는 것, 그리고 또 결국 제목이 말하듯이 인생은 아름답다는 것, 그 메시지를 전하며 끝난다.

드라마가 끝나기 5분을 채 남겨두지 않고 극 중 송창의가 하는 대사 중 참 마음에 드는 하나: “마음은 표현하며 사는거야”. 실제로 작가가 그리는 등장인물들은 서로에게 예쁜 말만 하며 산다. 항상 가족애를 중심으로 드라마를 쓰는 김수현이 현대 가족에게 좀 더 다정하게, 예쁜 말투로 정말 사랑을 말하며 살라고 전하고 싶었나보다. 난 그렇게 이해했다.

그리고 내가 여기서 마지막으로 호섭씨 사진을 첨부하는건 전혀 생뚱맞지 않다.

이제 호섭씨 못봐서 어쩌누 ㅠㅜ

찾아야 하는 페이퍼는 관심 밖이고 난 지금 뭐하니

In l'Ultime Secret (a novel by Bernard Werber; 베르나르 베르베르의 <뇌>) a physically paralyzed man has the dream of controlling the world with the his one intact body part--the brain. Back in the days, I thought it was creative of Werber to dare think that the human brain can act upon the physical world with no help from external limbs. And I was somehow persuaded that we are pretty close to that day...even without much knowledge in neuroscience.



A paper published in Nature says that patients with severe epilepsy "have used mind control to change images on a video screen. In other words, we can purposefully strengthen or suppress an idea/image to deliver what's in our mind to the external environment.
"생각만으로 세상을 바꾼다"는건 비유적인 표현만이 아닌 세상이 벌써 온걸까?

First of all, the field of brain-machine interface is still overwhelming.
But we've already made a man move a computer cursor to remote-control the robotic arm with his neural activation (a chip was transplanted in his motor cortex).

And today's biomed seminar was on designing a genome sequence the way clients want. Designing a DNA set. Tailoring certain characteristics into a Life.
What's next? Where are we walking into?

Here is the link to the Nature News article: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101027/full/news.2010.568.html

(I have the paper, pdf.)

and below is the video that explains the procedure. Warning: content contains images of the real brain (juicy!)




my question,though: but if you attempt to suppress ideas, you'll notice that it's harder to do so; conversely, you will end up thinking more about it. Wouldn't this interfere with your purposeful "move"?

i got a papercut

big deal.

그런날이 있다.
뜨개질 하다 코 하나 빠뜨렸는데 무시하고 계속 목도리 뜨는 기분으로,
눈썹 짝짝이로 그려서 하루종일 거울볼때마다 신경쓰이는 그 느낌으로,
어느 도미노가 옆으로 빗나가 쓰러져 뒤에 것들은 너무나 뻘쭘하게 서있게 되는 그 상황처럼,
일진부터 삐뚤어져 잔잔하게 어이없이 살게되는 하루가 있다.

이런날에는 괜히 하얀,순하게 생긴 종이에 손을 베인것조차 10배로 대단한 일인듯 느껴진다. 아 아퍼!

브로콜리너마저도 이런날 이런마음으로
젓가락 사이로 미끌어지는 브로콜리를 원망했겠지
이런, 브로콜리 너마저...

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