thedarren

Instagram for Hamburgers

2012-02-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting conversation with a friend last night about innovation. I tend to align pretty squarely with the Peter Thiel school of thought, i.e., that innovation has stagnated massively in relative terms over the past 50 years, and we're generally not solving hard problems anymore. My friend thinks innovation is flourishing because "tools" and "frameworks" have gotten significantly better over the past 10 years or so, allowing people to go from idea to prototype (or company) in record time. While that's true, I'd argue that this has actually led to a decrease in innovation rather than an increase, because it's so easy to build something silly and turn it into a play company.

For instance, most of you have probably seen the parody of stuff that Silicon Valley people say. But I actually hear about companies like this all the time. So today, I'd like to officially announce the pre-alpha release of BurgerFlux™, a.k.a Instagram for Hamburgers.

BurgerFlux™ is a mobile social hyperlocal crowd-sourced culinary design platform that uses game dynamics to bring the most deliciously-imagined burger to fruition. Here's how it works. You, the hungry, burger-craving warrior, make your way to a local BurgerFlux Bistro, or a BurgerFlux Participating Partner (Burger PaPa). When you arrive at your imminent burger paradise, whip out your BurgerFlux Capacitor (a.k.a. iPhone 4 or above) and open up the sleekly-designed BurgerFlux Designer. With a few taps, you can select not only what goes on top of your FluxBurger™, but also what the "buns" are made of. Fried eggs surrounding a kobe beef patty topped with locally-sourced dinosaur kale and heirloom tomatoes, with a ponzu dipping sauce? I'll have two. Once you're satisfied with your creation, simply hit the "Eat me" button, and your order will be instantly put on the queue, with payment deducted via NFC, or Square, or one of our roaming BurgerBankers, who will conveniently procure your payment from your back pocket while you are deciding on quail eggs versus extra carnitas.

But wait, there's more! Your burger design is instantly shared with all other BurgerFlux customers! Indecisive? No problem! Just order the most popular FluxBurger of the day, week, month, or millenium. Locally-designed burgers are automatically given higher weight, and the default view shows your friends' recently-imagined burgers immediately upon opening the app. But just like that second and third bite of a FluxBurger, it gets even better. If you submit a new burger design, and other people order your creation, you earn points towards a future burger purchase! Which is why your design is instantly shared to Facebook, Twitter, your own automatically-created automatically-created Tumblr (don't think too hard), with your BurgerFlux Bistro locale auto-checked into on Google Checkins, Foursquare, and Yelp (for experts). And it probably goes without saying, but we use Hadoop to process the BurgerLogs and track BurgerTrends, allowing us to align the BurgerGraph with your social graph and maximize your burger enjoyment vector.

BurgerFlux runs on node.js and will go public (launch and IPO) on or around April 1st, 2012.

Christopher Hitchens, and Secret Superpowers of Stammerers

2012-02-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit ashamed to say that prior to Christopher Hitchens' death, I don't think I had seen any of his interviews. I started YouTubing around the other day, and I was amazed at the videos I found. Regardless of whether you agree with his beliefs, it's clear that he was an amazingly vibrant intellectual mind and an incredibly skilled debater.

So I was also surprised to discover shortly into the first video that Christopher Hitchens was a stutterer!

As a stutterer myself, I possess the strange ability to spot other stutterers that non-stutterers usually can't. I remember once during university, a very prominent politician came to give a talk, and it was clear in her opening remarks that she was a "covert stammerer" (i.e., pauses and substitutes words, but doesn't repeat syllables). I asked my friends afterwards if they noticed anything strange about her speech, and no one did. I told them she was a stutterer, and they were quite surprised.

In any case, since Christopher Hitchens was also one of the most fearsome debating powers in the world, I questioned my secret superpower, and decided to leave it to the Google. A quick search for "Christopher Hitchens stutterer" leads to a New Yorker profile that mentions how he used to have a "severe stutter", but overcame it via massive amounts of public speaking and debating. "Overcame" is somewhat of a misnomer here, as it never really went away, but needless to say, he was an unbelievably skilled speaker.

Which I suppose just goes to show you that communication involves far more than mere fluency of speech rhythm.

Cleanliness in Asia

2012-01-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

I've spent about six months each in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul, and there are some huge differences in cultural norms for personal hygiene and cleanliness between the East and the West. I picked up some good habits there, and look back now with filthy horror on certain breaches of sanitation that are considered normal here in the West. Here are three of the worst offenders:

1) Shoes in the house. Everywhere I've lived in Asia, you take your shoes off as soon as you enter the house. It makes a lot of sense - you've been walking around all day on god-knows-what, and if you then walk all over your home, you've brought all that stuff inside. Take your shoes off - your house will stay cleaner as a result.

2) Street-clothes on the bed. This one really bothers me now. I know tons of people in the States who will sit down in a disgusting city subway, lean back on a grimy seat at the movie theater, go hiking through a dusty forest, whatever, and the first thing they do when they get home is sit on the bed. I used to take naps after school/work still wearing street clothes, but would at least stay on top of the covers. Still gross. Before you get in bed, at the least, change your clothes, but preferably, you should shower.

3) Corollary to number two - suitcases on the bed. Holy crap! In the States, people will drag their suitcase through puddles on the street, stick it into the underbelly of an airplane for a trans-pacific jaunt, transfer it to the rank trunk of their car which hasn't been cleaned in months, and when they finally get to their destination, they'll unpack by putting that disgusting rolling case of biological mysteries on the bed that they're about to sleep in! Super nasty. According to a doctor friend of mine, this is also a hypothesis for how bedbugs spread from place to place.

Plenty of other examples exist, and there are certainly areas where the West does way better than the East (ahem, dental hygiene in China and Japan, especially male office workers, ahem). But if you want to make your home and bed a cleaner, more appealing place, this is a good place to start.

Siri-an Revolution

2011-12-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

I used Siri for the first time a week or so ago, and I was exquisitely underwhelmed. It's basically a somewhat decent speech recognition system attached to a crappy version of Eliza, which was a simple question-and-answer artificial intelligence program written over 30 years ago. All of which begs the question - why do people love it so much?

Simply, Apple succeeded by humanizing Siri and then marketing the hell out of it (her?), even so far as to inspire various parodies such as the husband and wife argument. I've watched people use Siri with fascination, trying to tease out "sassy" responses, and searching for Easter eggs beyond what was reported in the press. In fact, I've seen this use case much more than actually useful things. But it's interesting anyway to compare with Google Voice Search, which has been around way longer and shares a similar feature set.

Google Voice Search is the best speech recognition system I've personally used. It's been getting increasingly better over time, and even learns how different individuals pronounce things differently. Android also added "Voice actions" a while back that essentially do what Siri does. So what's the problem? Why doesn't it get the attention that Siri does?

The problem is that most people don't even know these features exist. And the people that do know aren't compelled to use them. In both Apple's and Siri's cases, the feature sets are similar (Siri arguably has a larger vocabulary and better understanding of "natural language", but not by much). But in the case of Siri, people have an emotional connection, and perhaps it's this connection that pushes them to use what is clearly not yet a polished piece of technology.

What's curious is that Google has also shown the ability to connect emotionally with users, some examples being the absolutely brilliant "Search On" campaign that included the "Parisian Love" commercial shown during the Super Bowl, and most definitely the tear-jerker Chrome commercial "Dear Sophie". But in these cases, the marketing was much more general than "small feature of mobile operating system in order to convince people to buy my phone". This was by design, of course, but a notable difference nonetheless.

From a usability point of view, Apple unsurprisingly wins. How do you use Siri? Raise your phone and start talking after the beep. Yep, pretty darn simple. How do you use Voice Search/Actions (great name, btw....) on Android*? Well, there's a little microphone in the IME (that's "input method editor", for the inquisitive), in case you want to speak instead of typing. And there's a big microphone on the home screen next to the search box. And you can also press that big microphone button and tell it do something like, "Send a text message to Bob". And there's also this thing called "Voice Dialer" which does essentially a small part of what voice actions can do. Etc. Which experience would you feel more comfortable explaining to your parents? Yeah.

I always love observing how marketing and usability affect product outcomes, and since the battle between Android and iOS is only heating up, I can't wait to see what comes our way in the new year.

*I haven't seen ICS yet, so these comments are for older versions.

The King's Speech (and me)

2011-11-30T23:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I finally gathered the courage to watch The King's Speech. Why did I need courage to watch a movie, you might ask? The reason is both simple and intricately complex:

I'm a stutterer, and I have been for as long as I remember.

Well, there it is - I've said it. To be fair, I actually don't remember stuttering when I was little. My first very distinct memory of stuttering was sometime in seventh grade, when I had trouble saying "nosotros" (we/us) in Spanish class. But I also remember knowing I was going to have trouble saying it, because we were going around the room, and I counted ahead to see what I was going to have to say. Which means by that point I was already stuttering. When did it start? That's a question for another day.

So why am I publicizing this fact now? First, I'm in the midst of a lifelong attempt to "cure" my stutter. Except this time, rather than hoping it gets better on its own, I'm actually being proactive about fixing it. In an irony of ironies, I love language, and speak six different languages to varying degrees of proficiency. Yet the main thing that prevents me from speaking them better is not my inability to learn languages, but rather my inability to voice what I want to say. Getting rid of my stutter would remove the primary obstacle I have in becoming fluent in all of these languages.

Second, I'm sick of the lack of progress in stuttering research. Not much has really changed in the last few centuries. At least people for the most part tend to no longer believe that stutterers are possessed by demons (although I think they still do in some parts of the world). But has there been much progress on identifying the actual causes (and treatments/cures) of stuttering? I'd argue no. With the exception of a study identifying potential genes associated with stuttering, no one really knows what's going on. For a condition that affects between 0.5% and 1% of the Earth's adult population (and up to 5% of children), it's sad that there's been so little progress.

So I've decided to treat this as an engineering problem, and figure out how to hack my brain. I used to be able to speak without any dysfluencies, so why can't I again? And arguably, I'm already an above-average communicator. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture to 300 students in a foreign country. I coached my high school gymnastics team my sophomore year of college, have friends across the world that I speak to in multiple languages, am frequently sought out for advice/consultation from friends and professionals alike, and honestly, generally like talking and telling stories. Which is why becoming more fluent is that much more meaningful to me.

One last thing for now - I'd like to give some words of advice to non-stutterers. First, stutterers are not intellectually less-capable than non-stutterers. I remember with clarity and pain my 11th grade English teacher "helping" me with words when asked to read something aloud if I had more than a quarter second delay before beginning a word. As if I didn't know how to pronounce the word! I remember equally well the embarrassment just last week of saying "um" twice before being able to produce my name for the cashier at a coffee shop (stutterers almost invariably have trouble saying their own name). Stutterers are normal people who think just like the rest of the world. They just happen to have some bug in the connection between neural messages and actual speech. If you are conversing with a stutterer, do not offer advice (trust me, you don't know how it feels), do not complete sentences or fill in words for them, and obviously, do not make fun of the way they speak (stuttering is probably the only mental disorder that is still socially acceptable to laugh at - I can't even begin to describe how much this disgusts me). Stutterers already have inordinate amounts of guilt, fear, embarrassment, and anguish that they place on themselves, so the best thing you can do is relax and be patient with them.

And with that, let's embark on this adventure. I'll post my learnings, history, thoughts, and answer any questions that people have. Thank you for joining me on this quest - after all, without people to talk to, what's the point? =)

Modern Technology Attention Deficit Tipping Point

2011-11-27T20:18:00.001-08:00

I recently got back from a two and a half week trip abroad, and the comparative lack of connectivity was refreshing. I often feel that here in Silicon Valley, we're progressing ever more rapidly to a world in which no one looks up anymore, and relationships and friendships take place entirely in the unfulfilling desert of the virtual. Getting out every now and then is a good way to reset your perspective.

For instance, during the nine days I spent in Korea, I had a phone that was "merely" capable of sending text messages and making phone calls (to be fair, it was an iPhone 4, but the 3G was disabled). Knowing that you can't check your email even if you want to is glorious! I ended up checking my email once or twice a day at the hotel, and didn't miss it. The main thing I really missed was GPS. But believe it or not, it's possible to find things without it. And people tend to be helpful if you ask them for directions!

I then went to China, where G+ and Facebook are blocked. Facebook got so nervous about the sudden drop in attention I was affording it that it sent me an email informing me of all my unread notifications. Surprisingly, the world kept spinning without my attending to those notifications! Crazy but true.

Then I spent last weekend in Beijing with a group of friends who all had old-school tier-3 candy bar phones. You know what? They're way more fun to hang out with than the smartphone-wielding masses. They look up way more than their iPhoned compatriots. They don't pull out their phones to check Facebook or check-in on Foursquare in the middle of a conversation. And they seem to be generally happier people.

I wonder if we're reaching an inflection point in our technology-driven attention deficit disorder. Will we humans be able to figure out a healthy way to coexist with technology? Will it consume ever more of our attention until we live most of our lives in the hyperactive snapshot world we've created for ourselves? Or will we break out of our self-imposed chains and demand more real and less virtual? I don't know the answer, but it will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Piano, Language, and the Brain

2011-10-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

I decided at the age of 30 that I wanted to learn how to play piano. Unfortunately, that's about 25 years beyond the optimal age if you ever want to get "good". But since I'm fascinated by both neuroscience and music, I figured it was at least worth a shot, plus I'd have the added benefit of being able to observe my brain as it tries to learn this new skill.

I think it was this TED talk that finally convinced me to start playing. Benjamin Zander speaks about music and passion, and how classical music can tell a story. At the time, I was living in my friend's basement, and there was a beautiful Kawai grand piano in the living room that went largely unused. One day, I went up to the piano, sat down, and opened one of the books to a random song. Although I knew how to read the notes (at least the ones close to the staff), I couldn't fathom playing two independent parts (left and right hands) simultaneously, while also keeping track of the pedals, tempo, volume, let alone phrasing. Impossible.

So I wisely bought a beginner's book, Alfred's Basic Piano Course for Adults or something, and set off to learn. It became clear pretty quickly that learning piano is similar to learning a foreign language. At first, for piano, you work with notes. Notes by themselves don't really do much for you, just as single characters of phonetic languages don't do much for you either. Then you start combining notes into chords, just as letters combine to form words. Yay, I can play a C-chord! Yay, I can say the noun for "beer" and the bartender understands me! Same thing.

Words turn to phrases, just as notes and chords turn to phrases. And just like when you're learning a foreign language, you struggle over how to put the sounds together to make the word sound right, and then how to put the words together to make the phrase sound right. I found that learning piano was similar - I couldn't play a whole phrase well at first because so much mental energy was expended reading the notes and matching my fingers to the right places. Once I did it enough times, though, I started to "feel" how the phrase worked together in my mind. It felt surprisingly similar to repeating a sentence enough times in a foreign language until you think of it as a block rather than a collection of words.

But the two hands thing. Well, that's just weird. How can one hand be speaking a sentence that's totally different from the other? Who invented this thing?

Anyway, one day, about two weeks into this experiment, I got sick of playing little "toy" songs, and went through my friend's music. I found Beethoven's "Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor", a.k.a. "Für Elise", or "the song that they play in every subway station in Seoul". I discovered to my delight that I could play something roughly resembling the most well-known (and also the easiest) part of it, although it was incredibly slow, and took considerable effort. But it seemed within reach. I decided I was going to learn the song as my first "real" song.

Fast forward a year. Didn't play any piano in Korea, but I missed it the entire time I was living there, so when I got back to San Francisco, I bought myself a digital piano. I decided again that I needed to learn how to play this song, so I practiced both hands separately and slowly tried to start putting them together.

Then sometime last week, something in my brain just "clicked". All at once, I understood how the pieces were supposed to fit together. I was no longer just approximating a song, I was legitimately making music. Not only that, but I started to remember the song in big chunks rather than notes. And if I got to a phrase that I wasn't entirely sure of, the "shape" of the phrase had left an imprint in my mind, and I could map that shape to notes on the piano. How incredibly fascinating to feel those new neural circuits arise!

Now, I can almost play this song that most kindergarteners play at their first recital, but somehow I've managed to trick my brain into creating those circuits that spring up almost magically for kids. And I'm positively fascinated by this.

I Hate My iPhone 4

2011-07-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I needed to get a new phone in Korea, but Galaxy S2 wasn't out yet, and the only carrier willing to sell me a phone was SKT, so I decided reluctantly on an iPhone4. It is to date my most regretted electronics purchase ever, but I'm stuck with it. Here are some reasons why I hate my iPhone 4:

1) It friggin' sucks as a phone.

Okay, call me old school, but I firmly believe that voice is by far the best way to convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. And unfortunately, my beautiful iPhone is near worthless as a phone. For some reason, iPhone on SKT is a terrible combination - reception sucks, 3G always drops out, and if I hold my phone like, well, a phone, the call drops. Sure, I can stick a lame bumper on it, but that's like buying a Ferrari and putting cardboard on the doors to protect it from scratches.

2) The UI is great in some places, terrible in others.

Why isn't it obvious how to mute an incoming call (I Googled it, but I shouldn't have to). How come the entire UI freezes at inopportune moments (today it froze as I accidentally dialed a recent number, and I couldn't cancel it)? Why is Maps so much worse than Android? And for god's sake, why do I have to switch entire keyboards to type mixed language messages? I know I'm a rare user, but these things annoy the hell out of me.

3) The Contact list is worthless.

I can't tell who on my Contact list actually has a phone number, cause I synced my contacts, and the UI doesn't convey any useful information besides the name.

4) I can't call someone from Messages.

Why not? Isn't that a common use case?

5) For some reason, iPhone on SKT has the worst failure case for text messages.

If your phone can't send a text due to size issues, either you receive absolutely no indication that it wasn't sent, or you receive a bounce 24 hours later. For one thing, why should I have to know whether the recipient can receive an oversize text before I send it? Why doesn't that *just work*? And if you're gonna be lame about it, then how come there's no character counter in Messages? I'm supposed to count myself? Gimme a break.

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It's the little things that make or break a user experience, and I'd have to say that the more I use my iPhone, the more I can't stand it.

I miss my little robot.

More Android Usability Issues

2011-04-19T04:33:00.000-07:00

Second post in a series of problems and solutions for Android usability. I'm writing these because I love Android, and if these usability issues are fixed, it'll be even mo betta'. =)

1) No notification on receipt of SMS that needs to be downloaded.

WTF? I had a nice argument with the Android team when I was still at Google about something likely related to this. If you receive an MMS that your Android phone can't display, then there's no notification. None. You only notice the new message if you explicitly go into Messages to look for it (or more likely, receive a totally unrelated SMS that alerts you to check Messages). I was told by the Android team that no notification is better than a notification when you can't see a preview of the message. I got far too frustrated arguing with someone who actually believed this to be self-evident, and just gave up (one of many super detailed Android bug reports that never made it past the Android usability gatekeepers).

Analogy - you won the lottery, but they didn't alert you, since they couldn't send an envelope with the amount of the check visible through the envelope window. You only know that you won if you call up the lottery to ask.

Clearly the notification delivers useful information, and should be delivered regardless of whether the message can be previewed. If nothing can be previewed, at least the sender can be shown, which is very useful in and of itself.

Obvious fix here is to have a notification on receipt of any SMS/MMS, even if no preview can be shown.

2) Multitouch is ... suboptimal.

Multitouch works way better on iOS than Android, at least my Nexus One. I'm told it's because multitouch is "simulated" on Android but is "real" on iOS. One of the way this manifests for me at least is that when using the phone with one hand, if I'm holding the phone too tightly, then some skin touches the outer edge of the screen, disabling all other touch actions on the screen. Seems pretty easy to detect with software....

3) Phone numbers aren't localized.

In Korea and Japan, a mobile number looks like 333-4444-4444. That is, a group of three numbers, followed by two groups of four numbers each. In America, numbers look like 333-333-4444, or three, three, four. On the stock Android OS, Korean and Japanese numbers show up as 333-333-55555. Many locals think something's wrong with my phone if they see it.

Fix: Localize phone numbers.

That's it for today! Looking forward to Android continuing to get better in upcoming iterations. Go Android!

Interesting Korean Grammar (really!)

2011-04-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

I think one of the hardest things about Korean (or any language, for that matter) is learning the subtle nuances and differences between grammatical constructions. Typically, when you're learning a new language, you start with super easy, often present tense constructions.

We eat food? You go store? I happy.

Then you start to learn how to form proper sentences, and learn various tenses:

I'm eating food now. She went to the store. I'm happy.

For most people, language learning never goes beyond the point of simple sentence construction. But for Korean especially, there are an incredible number of nuances in sentence endings and conjugational forms, and most foreigners either don't use them or use them incorrectly (myself included). Korean is a very indirect language, like Japanese, so simply stating what you think often makes you come across as rude. As a result, there are tons of ways to form "simple" sentences in Korean, all with different nuances. It's confusing for non-native speakers to know the differences. What follows is the same sentence, just with different verb endings, along with the approximate translations in English. Without further ado, I present, via dialogue, a "Story about Samgyetang" (chicken ginseng soup)!

A: 삼계탕 먹고싶었어? Did you want to eat chicken ginseng soup?

B: 삼계탕 먹고싶었는데. Well, I wanted to eat chicken ginseng soup, but ....

A: 삼계탕 먹고싶었지? You wanted to eat chicken ginseng soup, didn't you?

B: 삼계탕 먹고싶었잖아! You know I wanted to eat chicken ginseng soup!

A: 삼계탕 먹고싶었다고? You said you wanted to eat chicken ginseng soup?

Hopefully this helps illustrate some common verb endings in Korea. Note that some of these actually have additional meanings (especially 는데). Enjoy!

Assorted Android Usability Issues

2011-04-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

I like my Android phone. It's a quite functional device, and is actually pretty decent for making phone calls (for those of you unfamiliar with a "phone call", imagine a tweet, but longer than 140 characters, and transmitted via human speech). But it has a fair number of usability issues that constantly annoy me. Some have been fixed as the OS has evolved (for example, searching from the Google widget used to only allow vertical mode, but luckily they added landscape mode a while back), but others continue to linger. Here's an incomplete list of some of the usability annoyances I've found, along with simple fixes that would make the experience better.

Problem: "Next" and "Done" buttons in text fields. Their behavior is inconsistent at best, confusing at worst. Sure, I know that "Next" moves you to the next text field. But does your grandma know what a text field is? No. So this fails the grandma test.

Try handing an Android phone to an iPhone user and ask them to add a new contact. They'll put in the first name, at which point they're presented with a large "Done" button underneath the first name field, and at the bottom right of the keyboard it says "Next". And if some autocomplete items came up, then the Last Name field is completely obscured. The iPhone user will invariably click "Done", which is not what they want to do at all. They actually need to hit the back button (???) to hide the keyboard and go to another field, or hit the Next button (which is super far from the active point of visual focus at this stage) to advance to the next text field. Again, not intuitive, not easy.

Unrelated to contacts, a lot of apps have the "Done" button, but don't actually handle clicking on it. This results in people tapping "Done", only to remain on the text field. The Google Translate app used to have this problem, but fixed it awhile ago.

Solution: Kill the "next" button. Change "Done" to "Ok". Don't obscure the entire screen other than "First name" while adding a new contact.

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Problem: After adding a new contact and clicking "Done", you are returned to the Contact list at whatever point you happened to be at before adding the new contact. I can imagine the thinking that went into this, but it's flawed. The first thing people want to see after adding a new contact is confirmation that the new contact is in their address book.

Solution: Scroll the contact list to the newly added contact after the user hits "Done".

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Problem (Korea-specific): The stock Google Korean keyboard only exists in "full keyboard" mode, whether you're in portrait or landscape mode. In portrait mode, it's incredibly difficult to type accurately, and multi-tap input would actually be much faster and less error-prone. How do I know, you might ask? All the Korean carriers replaced the full keyboard with multi-tap keyboards for vertical mode. Come on, Google - typing is at the core of the user experience for a smart phone. Why make it more painful than it has to be? Besides, the auto-correct is far worse in Korean than English.

Solution: Multi-tap keyboard for vertical mode, or at least the option to choose one. Yes, I know the carriers have different multi-tap keyboards. Choose one.

As I was writing these down, I thought of many others, so I'll save them for a future post.

Android, we love you, but please fix simple usability problems - you'll end up with much happier users!

Reading and Language Learning

2011-03-29T04:14:00.000-07:00

One of the super frustrating things for me in learning Korean is the speed at which I'm able to read. It's embarrassingly slow, and makes me feel really stupid whenever I have to read something. I can read in my head faster than I can read out loud, but both are well below "useful" speed. Lately I've been able to level up slightly by forcing my brain out of its comfort zone and trying to follow Korean raps. Rapping (which I love) is faster than normal speech, so I figure if I'm able to follow Korean lyrics in a rap as it's going, then eventually I'll be able to actually read. Working well so far, although I can still only get through about half of the subtitles in an average TV newscast.

Of course a big part of this is pattern recognition. When first learning Korean, you have to look at each component (jamo) in a character and consciously process how to put them together to sound out the syllable. As you get better, you start to recognize words. And I'd imagine as you progress even more, you start to recognize phrases at a glance. I know in English I can read and understand about half a paragraph (a few sentences) at a brief glance if I really try, but in Korean I'm still frustratingly stuck in single word land (which is certainly not helped by my extremely limited vocabulary).

Anyway, for fun, I took a brief look the other day at a European language that I had never studied before. I checked out the transcript for the first lesson, and my first thought was, "Well, I can read the transliteration, but I wonder how hard the actual language is to read." Then I remembered that many languages are actually written in Roman characters, and it wasn't a transliteration at all. Man, when I'm done with Korean, I'm going to blow through a bunch of European languages like there's no tomorrow - for better or worse, my brain was wired for it at a really young age, so I'm sure it'll be way easier than Asian languages.

New Job

2011-03-06T04:23:00.000-08:00

So, I decided to temporarily put my life as an entrepreneur on hold to become ... well, an entrepreneur =). That is to say, I recently started working with a startup back in San Francisco. I say with and not at because geographically I am spending part of my time here in Korea and part of my time back in San Francisco. Sure, there are time-zone issues, but in the grand scheme of things, if it's the right fit, that's a very small detail.

What made me go back to being gainfully employed? Well, I found an early-stage company doing very cool stuff, literally in the field that I read textbooks about for fun. I have the chance to work on the kinds of problems I always wanted to work on at Google, but was never quite in the right place. That's not to say that I didn't like the work I used to do - working on a product used by millions of people was actually pretty awesome, and adding features that you could show to family and friends who all use your product was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the fact that I could add stuff to make people that I would never meet smile (well, at least they were smiling in my imagination). And it was satisfying to make something that I used every day better, faster, stronger.

But there's another side of me that loves working on really challenging technical problems, building stuff that hasn't been built before. I relished the chances I had to do this in my last job. And now, the chance to do that with friends while creating real value? Yeah, seemed like a good decision to me.

It's also funny how things work out. A number of my conservative (in the career sense) friends chided me in the past for hopping around so much at Google, but it was interesting to me, so I did it anyway. Now what seemed random in the past is actually proving valuable. A friend put it to me best - she said the best career advice she ever received was to do what you enjoy doing, because if you do something you hate in order to get somewhere else, you'll probably end up hating where it takes you.

Buckle up, it's going to be a wild ride.

Korean Names, and Crazy Language Idiosyncrasies

2011-02-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

Korean names are tough for non-Koreans. Before I came to Korea, I used to just be pretty bad at remembering Korean names, because they don't vary as much from one another as Western names tend to. I'm fine with remembering Korean names now, but Koreans have an annoying habit of making it exceedingly difficult to learn their names.

The first problem is that you never know what form of someone's name you're going to get. If I ask a Korean what their name is, sometimes they give me their English name, sometimes they give me their name in standard Korean family name/given name order, and sometimes they give me their Korean name in Western given name/family name order. It's most annoying when they give an English name that they don't actually use, because then you won't know when someone is calling them with their Korean name. If they give you both English and Korean names, you now have twice as many names to remember. And a lot of Korean names said backwards (i.e., given name/surname) are actually valid Korean names forwards, so you need to clarify with them which part is their given name, since it's inconsistent when Koreans speak with foreigners.

For the sake of people trying to learn Korean names, let's just make it easier. If a foreigner asks you your name, tell them your Korean name in standard family name/given name order, and optionally follow it up with, "But please call me " if you really do prefer to be called something different.

Of course, it's near impossible to learn people's names by listening to conversations, since everyone calls each other "older sister", "older brother", "teacher", etc.

Anyway, in a totally unrelated topic, for some reason the Korean word for "sweetheart" is the same as the word for "self". I found this quite confusing at first - I'd hear people at coffee shops talking about 자기 (chagi) this and 자기 that, and I wasn't sure if they were talking about other people or themselves, since one of the first homework assignments we had in class was a 자기 소개, or a self-introduction (or were we supposed to introduce our significant others? hmm). It turns out that when used to mean "self", it's almost always used in a third-person sense, such as, "She thinks so highly of herself. She has some serious 공주병 going on." But you can complicate it further by talking about your sweetheart and what they think of themselves, which would use the same word 자기 for two totally different meanings. Context is super important in Korean.

아이고. Need to study more.

Resolve to Focus on Real Life Relationships in 2011

2011-01-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a new year. Time and others have declared Facebook the ruler of the Internets, while Twitter has been crowned the best thing to happen to personal communication since the telegram. But since it's a new year, my hope and wish is that everyone will take a step back and focus on real-life relationships in 2011.

The world is more connected than ever, but the always-on connectedness has a somewhat ironic effect of isolating people behind self-imposed digital walls. How many friends do you have on Facebook? 100? 200? 500? Is your happiness directly proportional to that number?

Take a second to think back to your best moments of 2010. Were they spent in front of a computer screen, tending to your virtual crops and "liking" status messages? Or were the best moments, the moments of true emotion, honesty, love, and levity spent with other people, out in the world, right smack in the middle of this fascinating adventure called life?

Commoditizing friendship won't help you truly connect with people. Tweeting 140-character sarcastic repartees might be a fun creative outlet, but it won't foster fulfilling relationships. Did you text a friend to flake out on something in 2010? Why not resolve to use voice next time (assuming you have a phone that is capable of making actual voice calls)? You know that good college friend that you IM every couple months? Why not try picking up the phone and giving them a call the next time they cross your mind?

Social media has its uses. Facebook is certainly more colorful and useful than your dad's rolodex, and is a great tool for procrastination and idle distraction. Twitter is fun for keeping tabs on your favorite bored celebrities. Email and other messaging are great for offline, non-interrupting communication. I use them all.

But the frenetic, short attention span world that we've created for ourselves is not healthy. It's not inspiring new paradigms of connectedness. It's not everything we're told it is. In short, it's not social.

For me, the times when I'm the happiest, when I'm enjoying life the most, are the times when I'm out in the world, interacting, laughing, loving, learning. Living.

So make 2011 a fresh start for your relationships. Don't forget that humans are social animals, and we've evolved to live together in communities. But most of all, remember what it means to be truly social. You don't need to "check in" to enjoy life. In fact, it might pass you by while you're looking down at your phone.

Go out there and live your lives to the fullest in 2011. You may be able to edit your status messages after the fact, but you only get one chance with your life. Go and make the most of it.

Snowpocalypse 2010: The Trip South

2010-12-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

Live blogging the journey from New York to North Carolina.

12:47AM: Home! Train finally pulled in around 11:45PM. Lots of people got on the train, presumably to head down to Florida. They've got a long night ahead of them.

10:47: Somewhere in mid-North Carolina. Train's been blowing its whistle pretty much non-stop the last hour or so. My speculation is that it's to scare animals off the tracks, but since the only things moving slower than the train are the African tree sloth, I think we should be okay.

10:30: We got stuck behind a very slow-moving freight train for awhile, so it pushed us another hour and a half back. Looks like we're now scheduled to arrive about three hours after initially scheduled. What's crazy, though, is that they don't make any announcements about expected arrivals - I have to find everything out myself via internet. Good thing I have a data plan. The lack of customer service is somewhat mind-boggling.

7:52: Traveling is always fun for people-watching and eavesdropping. On my last train, the guy behind me was talking to the dude next to him about a trip to China he made awhile ago. He made the quite ridiculous claim that "Chinese food sucks in China", and backed it up with his experience of "ordering all the normal stuff, like orange chicken, but there were bones and shit sticking out of it". Holy shit. Bones! In chicken! I thought they were invertebrates, to be honest. Like a good American, he finished the conversation by stating how he "probably gained 20 pounds while I was there since all I ate was McDonald's". Nice.

7:30: Approaching Richmond in 5 minutes. EDGE connection barely strong enough, but coming through in patches. One of the nice things about train travel is that you can actually go for a decent walk. I walked eight or so cars to the cafe car, only to find a line at least an hour long, so I walked back, but only made it about five cars until I came to a door that wouldn't open. A moment of temporary panic, since I imagined the cars splitting apart to go to different destinations with me stuck in the wrong section. A few minutes later, a guy from the other side tried to come through, and found it stuck from his side too. Eventually we were able to pull it open - turns out it was just stuck since it's a crappy old train.

5:19: Took two hours to transfer trains and get moving again. What a paragon of inefficiency. Who knows how long the whole journey will take now. At least the second train has a bit more space than the first one.

3:03: About to transfer trains at DC. I'm hoping for a wild west transfer where we jump from the top of one train to another.

2:57: Fuck you, Amtrak. Just found out that these tickets are usually $83. I hope you go bankrupt and a real train company replaces you.

2:52: I'm no locomotive engineer, but here's a tip for future railroad builders of America. If the tracks aren't straight, you can't go fast. It's simple. Build them in a straight line. And ... go.

2:45: Baltimore. Woo. No snow on the ground anymore. Also, no people in this station. Strangely eerie.

2:32: Just got a cold Sam Adams from the "dining car". Zipping through Delaware. Traveling by train has its benefits: More room for coach seats. No security lines. Nice views. We just passed some icy lakes that were reasonably pretty. I'd voluntarily do this trip if it was 3-5 hrs and cost $50. 10 hours and $185 just doesn't cut it.

1:52: (somewhere near Wilmington, Delaware) During the time we waited at Philadelphia, two or three Shinkansen would have left the station for their destination. Whereas the bullet train comes every 10-15 minutes, the Silver Star runs once a day (or possibly twice on some days). America, fuck yeah!

12:57PM: Approaching Philadelphia. Sounds like the train is sold out from Philly onward. Turns out we have to change trains in DC, because we're technically not on the Silver Star yet, we're just on a train that's taking us to the Silver Star.

11:59AM: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We've reached cruising altitude of 10ft above sea level, and are currently speeding along at a ground speed of approximately 45mph. You may think that we're experiencing some light turbulence, but that's just the old rail lines. Don't worry about keeping your seat belts fastened, because there are no seat belts on trains. If you missed your holiday groping from the TSA, please ask the train attendants for an ex post facto security check. Enjoy your flight!

11:52AM: We're moving! Should be in Raleigh in no time. ;)

11:41AM: Sitting on the train in Penn Station, 39 minutes after scheduled departure time. Already spent two and a quarter hours on a 1:20 LIRR into Penn Station. Apparently a tractor trailer got stuck on the tracks, leading to the delays. Someone rhetorically asked how a truck could get stuck on the train tracks. I suggested that the driver had lowered it for looks and performance. He laughed. New Yorkers appreciate humor even in bad situations.

I've been up for six hours already, and am still just in NYC. On the bright side, I was able to find a nice egg and cheese on sesame bagel sandwich for breakfast at Penn Station. Nowhere has better bagels than New York. Nowhere. Be especially wary of places that have "New York" in the name, but are not geographically located in New York. Those tricksters don't know how to make a good bagel.

There's something calming about old train stations. But I can't get over the fact that the Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train) was built in 1964. That's nearing fifty years, and we're still stuck with century-old train technology that moves at a snail's pace. How does Sarah Palin reconcile this with "American exceptionalism"?

Also, my feet are finally warm and dry again from pushing my friend's car out of the driveway this morning. Tennis shoes and snow drifts don't go well together.

Blizzards and Trains

2010-12-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

Due to the "Winter Blizzard of 2010", which the media is making seem like the friggin' apocalypse, my flights were canceled and I bought a train ticket from New York to North Carolina since flights are sold out till Friday. Ten hour ride tomorrow, for $185 (more expensive than my nice one hour JetBlue flight). Our rail service is embarrassing. I am ashamed of our public transportation.

In any case, I may attempt to live blog the wondrous journey down the northeast corridor, assuming I can tether my 3G. Although I feel like they won't allow any technology newer than 1900 onto the train. One can only hope.

Decision Analysis and Airport Transportation

2010-12-26T07:10:00.000-08:00

I flew out of Seoul the other day, and had an interesting lesson in decision analysis and making tradeoffs with respect to airport transportation. The options for getting to the airport from Gangnam are the following:

1) Taxi. Never done it. Pros: Door-to-door. Cons: At the mercy of Seoul traffic (especially bad since I had to travel during rush hour to the airport), and rather expensive.
2) Taxi to Coex, then direct airport bus from City Air Terminal. Pros: Direct bus is a known quantity and cheap (15000). Cons: Taxi still has to fight rush hour traffic in a busy area.
3) Subway to Coex, then direct airport bus. Pros: Both are known quantities and cheap. Cons: Need to lug stuff down into subway and then all the way through Coex to the City Air Terminal.
4) Airport Limousine Bus from nearby stop. Pros: Cheapest option. Cons: Need to wait outside for the bus.
5) Subway the whole way. Never done this, but I think it takes forever and has a bunch of transfers.

Usually I do option 2 or 3, depending on how much luggage I have. But this time I decided to try the Airport Limousine Bus, cause there's a stop about a five minute walk from my place.

I get to the stop, and the sign says the bus comes every 10-20 minutes. Not bad, I think to myself, despite the approximately freezing temperature outside. 5 minutes pass. No bus. 10 minutes. No bus. 20 minutes. No bus. After 30 minutes, 50% more than the maximum interval between busses, still no bus (although I saw two going the other direction), I decided to cut my losses, head to the subway, and go for option 3. Probably an hour wasted, but I'd at least make it to the airport in time.

Of course, when I get about 50 feet away from the bus stop, the bus comes. I try to flag him down, but Seoul bus drivers are friggin' maniacs, and he blew by me and didn't even pause at the bus stop. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Anyway, while I was standing on the nice warm subway, I considered what had happened. Assuming "10-20 minutes" means a bus comes an average every 15 minutes, then the expected wait time should be 7.5 minutes. Which means I stood out in the cold for four times the expected wait time, or three times the expected wait time if "10-20 minutes" actually means "every 20 minutes". Considering that the airport limousine bus had a bunch of stops before heading to the airport, it probably would have taken like 15-20 minutes more than the airport bus from Coex. Walk to the subway is 5 minutes, then subway to Coex about 7 minutes, then another 7 minutes to get to the City Air Terminal. And the City Air Terminal busses are every half hour, giving an expected wait time of 15 minutes. So the "subway plus City Air Terminal" option has an expected wait time of about 5+7+7+15=34 minutes, and only five of that is out in the cold. Meanwhile, the airport limousine bus has the 5 minutes in the cold to walk to the stop, 7.5-10 minutes expected wait time in the cold, with a "worst-case" wait time of 20 minutes, which I exceeded by 10 minutes anyway. Plus an extra 15-20 minutes on the bus compared to the CAT bus. So the total amount of time for the two options is about the same, except one option has a lot of standing out in the cold, and the other has a bunch of lugging around luggage.

Point of the story is that I waited too long for the bus, and I should have gone with the known quantity from the outset.

Faking It

2010-12-17T04:43:00.000-08:00

I find it fascinating to observe how people fake speaking foreign languages. I've been guilty of it myself for sure.

The simplest form of faking it is the "nod and smile". When I used to live in Japan, I learned very quickly that Japanese people have a tendency to respond affirmatively to English even if they didn't understand it at all. They'd simply nod and smile, which makes for a polite conversation, but no actual understanding or resolution of the problem at hand. I picked up this annoying habit when I was there, and would do the same when I spoke Japanese, just nodding and smiling rather than questioning people and making them repeat themselves (this is one of the reasons my Japanese really sucks).

The next level of faking languages is to learn a few key phrases/words and string them together in different combinations. Good words are "like", "hate", "this", "that", "man", "woman", your nationality, etc. The first time I came to Korea, my thoughtful friends taught me the Korean words for "like", "hate", "Korean" (person), "Japanese", and "American", and were quite entertained as I proceeded to have the same conversation with everyone about whether they liked or hated the different nationalities.

The level above this involves learning actually useful question words, along with a few declarative phrases. This guy I know in Korea has this down-pat, and actually convinces most people that he speaks and understands Korean, but I'm pretty sure he only knows about 20 words. So, like the Rock, he relies on exaggerated facial expressions, and is clever enough that if anyone asks him for details in Korean, he just responds with another question, a more exaggerated facial expression, or ignores it completely. It's fascinating, because I think people actually think he speaks Korean.

Of course actually learning the language is better than faking it. Yesterday on the subway some Korean guys were talking about me (not sure what they said), and I got them really flustered by telling them that although I'm a 백인 (somewhat derogatory word for white person), I could speak Korean, to which one of them said, "shit, he really can speak Korean". Hah. Watch out, people. I'm onto you.

The Sound of Languages

2010-12-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

People tell me that my pronunciation is good in foreign languages (except for Spanish, since I'm incapable of rolling my r's - if anyone can teach me how to do it, I will consider naming my first-born after you). But I want to clear up a common misconception - this is not due to any natural "talent" with languages. I'm extremely conscious of every sound that comes out of my mouth, and I strive for accuracy in my pronunciation. It takes effort. Constant effort =P.

Which got me thinking - I wonder if studying music when you're little is correlated with improved foreign language pronunciation. I played guitar for a couple years when I was little, and I was fairly perfectionist with respect to the music. Sometimes for assignments I had to tape record (yes, cassette tapes) myself playing some piece, and it would take me forever to capture a good enough version that I was satisfied with. Of course, little did I know that professional musicians do hundreds of takes and split their songs up into segments, later cobbling them back together into a finished product.

Anyway, I grew up with a perfectionist's ear for sound and rhythm. For example, it annoys the hell out of me how large groups of people (e.g., at a stadium) cannot clap in beat to music, and always end up ahead of the beat. The fact that they're not on beat bothers me at an almost visceral level. Another example was watching Michael Jackson's This Is It. There's a scene where they're rehearsing the opening of "The Way You Make Me Feel", and the guy playing keyboard is trying to rush through the opening at a rhythm that doesn't make sense (Michael tells him that he needs to let one of the pauses "simmer"). The way the other guy wanted it just sounded "off". Michael got it. I got it. I wish I was there to back Michael up. I felt frustrated for MJ trying to explain to the guy why it sounded better his way, but it just did. It made more sense.

Now, with languages, I try to pay attention to not just the sounds of the words, but the overall pitch progression of the sentence, and the rhythm that the words are strung together. I love the rhythm and pitch variations of Korean. It's very sing-songy. It's not a tonal language, but it just sounds weird if you speak it with the wrong pitch.

I hear a lot of people speaking with pretty poor accents, and it makes me wonder what their musical background is. Some people actually can't hear the differences between sounds. My favorite example is how Americans not hailing from the Northeast are completely incapable of distinguishing between the vowel sounds in the words "Mary", "merry", and "marry" (they're all different, people!). Is this an ability that can be learned later in life after your primary auditory neural development is done? For that matter, how does your auditory system continue to develop later in life? Can you train yourself to hear sounds that you didn't grow up hearing? I don't know the answers, but my guesses are yes, your auditory system continues to develop later in life, it's just more difficult. Yes, you can train yourself to hear sounds that you didn't grow up hearing. And yes, having a musical background (i.e., a good "ear") has a direct effect on pronunciation of foreign languages.

Fun with Physical Therapy

2010-12-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

I'd like to say I have a healthy distrust of the medical industry. I try to read between the lines when doctors talk to me, and I like to research myself to understand what's going on. Anyway, a few months ago I tweaked my shoulder pretty bad in the gym. Then I played golf, which didn't help. I decided to give physical therapy a try, figuring that it couldn't hurt.

Well, it hurt. After the first session of physical therapy, my shoulder felt stiffer and worse for the next couple days. After the next session, it felt even worse. All we were doing in the early sessions was ultrasound, which some people believe doesn't do anything, while others believe it stimulates the tissue to heal itself. It certainly does something, because in my experience, I got a painful dull ache in my shoulder during the ultrasound, and I asked the physical therapist to stop. That dull ache carried on in my shoulder for days, and my range of mobility (without pain) got worse and worse.

I continued doing physical therapy for about two weeks, and then since I quit my job, I stopped. Moved to Korea and my shoulder was still quite messed up, which meant I couldn't lift weights or workout. Maybe five weeks after I started physical therapy, I was really annoyed that my shoulder wasn't getting better (rest didn't help, theraband exercises didn't help), so I decided unilaterally on a different approach to healing my shoulder - I'd stop resting and start working out again.

Yes, that's right. Physical therapy and rest weren't helping, so I decided to try very light weight-lifting in order to fix my shoulder. The theory was that some scar tissue had built up in the joint from the earlier inflammation, and light exercises might break up that scar tissue and improve circulation enough to help the shoulder.

Within five days my shoulder felt twice as good. Range of motion improved, dull ache was gone. It still didn't feel good by any means, but was definitely on the upswing.

I continued adding weight and doing more exercises, carefully, while continuing to do theraband exercises for the rotator cuff. Now, about 4-6 weeks later, I can lift reasonable amounts of weight without pain, can do pushups again without pain, and am generally pretty happy with how things are going. Certain overhead exercises still hurt (there's still some sort of impingement), but my range of motion is pretty good, and probably better than most people's natural range of motion. I plan to keep working out and slowly improving the shoulder.

The point of this story is not that ultrasound is evil. In my one data point, it seemed directly to hurt, but it may in fact help in other cases. Nor is the point that physical therapy doesn't work. I've seen physical therapists do amazing things with people. The point is that it's worthwhile to listen carefully to what your body is telling you, and even when the medical establishment fails you, your body is often times smart enough to fix itself.

Initial Thoughts of Language School

2010-12-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

Went through my first week of Korean classes. I placed into a much higher level than anticipated, which was a nice surprise. Frankly, I was terrified when I heard my placement, but when I got to the class, it turned out to not be as bad as anticipated. Here are some random thoughts from the first week.

My vocabulary sucks. There are many very simple words that anyone who has been in the country a year or so should probably know. I know none of them. The first embarrassing incident was minutes into the first class, when the teacher asked who was a first-time student at the school (first time: 처음). I understood the equivalent of "Who is a <blank> student at this school?" I was proud I understood that much, but didn't want to take a gamble that <blank> was "unpaid tuition" or something, so I kept my hand down. Other things that everyone knew but I was clueless about: simple everyday verbs, body parts, and the Korean name for Girls Generation.
My listening is also pretty bad. I think this just takes time. I can understand slow speech (sometimes), but full-speed speech is tough for me.
Irregular verbs are my nemesis. I never learned how to conjugate properly.
My teacher speaks almost completely in the most formal type of grammar. I hate it. I don't want to use the "습니다" form with anyone. It's not very practical for real life situations. I make a conscious note to answer in the "요" form, which is the standard politeness form, even if it's considered slightly rude to answer a superior's formal conjugation with a less formal one. I don't care - it's my money and I want to get good at the more useful parts of the language.
The first day of class, I didn't understand like half of the explanations given during the lesson, because they were meta expressions about the language. After a week, I can understand about 90% of the explanations.
We do a bunch of drills where we have to talk to other students. I was reading a book about language learning, and it made a fine point - if you're talking to other students, you're probably hearing a lot of incorrect usage of the language, and no one's there to correct you. Some studies have even shown people's language abilities decrease after courses that focus on talking with other students, because you simply reinforce each other's mistakes. Two things I do to mitigate this: 1) Try to correct other students' mistakes in my mind while they're speaking (if I know the mistake), and 2) Try to speak with the teacher during the dialogues.
We often have to read Korean from the slides. The teacher directs the reading at a pace that is approximately 25% of normal pace. This is another thing that drives me crazy - why practice speaking at a rate that's not normal? So I just try to speak as fast as I can, which means I usually finish before everyone else. I would rather they force us to speak faster than we're comfortable with.

Anyway, language learning after childhood is basically hacking your brain. I need to figure out the optimal way to accomplish it. Stay tuned.

Back to School

2010-12-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

Today I return to school, just a few years after I was last a student ;). I figured since I'm living in Korea, I might as well learn some Korean, so I signed up for classes at a local university known for good language programs.

Last Saturday morning, I went to the university on two hours sleep and a mocha for a placement test. There's only one test for all the levels, and it gets progressively harder as you go through it. You know that recurring nightmare where you show up for the final exam, and it's for a completely different topic than you thought it was going to be, or you accidentally forgot to go to class the entire semester? I learned on Saturday that it wasn't a nightmare at all, but actually a training run for this test. Imagine taking an exam where you can't read any of the instructions. And you can only understand a smattering of words on the page. That was this test.

In actuality, it was kinda fun, and was a pretty good exercise in time management and test taking. I've taken enough standardized tests that I was able to guess what to do on most of the sections. Then when I got to the reading comprehension, I didn't understand enough to make any sense of it beyond a pure guess, and I was burning through valuable time, so I just skipped it and went to the essay section, at which point I realized I had never written more than sentence fragments in Korean. Ah well. The first essay was pretty much, "Introduce yourself. Talk about your family, job, hobbies, etc." The second I think had something to do with Hyundai building a computer, and you were supposed to write a screenplay about it, but I'm pretty sure I misunderstood, so I just left that one blank. My Korean's more at the level of, "I'm cold - can I have some more kimchi?", rather than writing intelligent screenplays about Korean computers (Yeah, I most likely misunderstood the thrust of that question =P). Will find out in a couple hours what level I placed into. I'm hoping it's not the lowest level, but I'm not holding my breath.

I still don't know exactly what I'm doing here, but learning Korean certainly can't hurt. Might be time to revive the Triple Lindy as well. Welcome back to school!

Selective Memories

2010-11-20T04:56:00.000-08:00

I recently read the New Yorker's piece on procrastination, and what resonated the most was the amazing complexity of Indian bureaucracy that prevented George Akerlof from even attempting to mail a package of clothes back to his friend in the States. My life over the past month has been an endless string of dealing with such bureaucracies and inefficiencies in Korea, and I can fully sympathize with Akerlof just giving up and not even trying. Bureaucracies in foreign countries are really complicated to deal with, even for seemingly simple things. And what I've noticed more and more is that almost everyone I talk to has an extremely selective memory about how to accomplish tasks. Most people like to say, "Oh, it's easy, you just go to so-and-so and it's done."

Oh really?

I remember back in middle school science class (or was it elementary school? or was it repeated in an intro math or cs class in university? hmm....) having an assignment to write instructions for preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A lot of people started with something like, "Put peanut butter on one slice of bread and jelly on the other and make a sandwich with them", to which the teacher would start to point out all the things missing with the algorithm. Where do you get the bread from? Which side of the bread do you put the peanut butter and jelly on? How do you spread it? How do the slices go together? What do you do after the slices are happy married in peanut butter and jelly bliss? The point was to get the students thinking critically about all the steps that are actually involved in accomplishing something.

Well, apparently most people didn't take that class, because the majority of people tend to be either lazy in conveying information or blissfully forgetful of how to actually accomplish things involving bureaucracies. Consider the case of mailing a package internationally. "Just go to the post office - it's really easy." Okay. Where's the post office? When is it open? How do I search for the post office locations and business hours? How do I get there? Where can I buy a box and packing tape? How do I fill out a customs form in a foreign language? Etc. These sorts of things require huge amounts of inertia (and probably half a day) for people unfamiliar with the country, and that inertia is often enough to cause complete paralysis of activity.

This sort of thing used to bug me to no end at Google, too. Many engineers assume that everyone else can fill in the details about how to do something, but often those details require intimate knowledge of their systems, and that knowledge is never documented. The coworkers I enjoyed working with were the ones who could anticipate what other people wouldn't know and send all of that information in their initial response (or politely provide help when requested), and the ones I hated working with were the engineers who would leave out huge, incredibly important steps, and then get annoyed with follow-up questions.

The ability to anticipate what others know is an extremely important skill, and one that most people are not very good at. If you want to improve your ability to communicate, this is a great area to work on.

American Nexus One in Korea

2010-11-15T23:43:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's possible to use an American-purchased Nexus One in Korea. But it ain't easy. All you need is:

A long-stay visa. You're on your own for this one.
An Alien Registration Card. The only way to get one of these is to get some sort of long-stay visa.
A Korean-issued credit card. Get this after you get the Alien Registration Card. Since you have no credit rating in Korea, you will also need to open a Korean bank account as collateral. You can do this with a passport when you arrive, or with your Alien Registration Card later on.
A Korean citizen. Not for keeps - you can return them after signing up your phone.
A Nexus One.

Then simply go to the KT Service Center and have your Korean friend tell them you want to register your American-bought Nexus One on KT's network. Two hours later, they'll sell you a sim card for 5500 KRW (about $5), charge like a $30 registration fee, and you're good to go. Better than spending $600 for a new one.

The main point of this is that now you have maps with GPS. See http://thedarren.blogspot.com/2010/11/address-systems-are-broken-in-korea-and.html.

Enjoy.