Monday, April 26, 2010

Living in Korea

*Cost of living in Korea for a day*

Breakfast:

Normal/Budget
Bread (2.50 USD/1.50 USD)
Rice (3.00 USD/2.00 USD)
Milk (1.00 USD/1.00 USD)

Lunch:

Bibimbap (2.50 USD)
Rice and chicken cooked in Ginseng Soup (3.20 USD)
Sushi buffet (10.00 USD)
Spaghetti (4.00 USD)
Coke (1.00 USD)

It really depends on what you will be eating for that day, some might be a cheaper, like ramyeon noodle (USD 0.70) to nice restaurant meal with a glass of wine (at least USD 15.00)

Dinner:

Same as for Lunch but do try Samgyeopsal (about 10.00 USD for all you-can-eat)

Accomodation:

Hotel : No idea
Motel : At least USD 20.00, btw, this is in Daegu and not in Seoul.

Transportation:

Bus/Subway : Usually about USD 1.00 per ride but I had spent about USD 10.00 a day before when I was in Seoul last time.

Taxi : USD 1.70 per entry but the fare increases as you travel. Metered taxi unlike in Malaysia. Expensive but realible.

Car : Very cheap to buy a car in Korea. USD 6000 (about RM 20000) can buy a sedan in Korea. Malaysia. Haiyah, dream on.

Korea is an amazing country. For an average Malaysian, it might sound a little expensive but it is still a great country to visit.

The only catch is, you will definately be needing a Korean speaker to really enjoy your trip to Korea. English is not as widely spoken eventhough lots of huh hah over English in Korea these days

Finally, do you want to visit Korea?


Will be updating soon. Mid Term Exam finally over...

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Another ranting by me

I do not know why, how and what is wrong with me. No focus in my studies and so easily distracted. shit. It was so different last time. I am now yawning and spending my time typing this nuts. I might be hardworking last time but I think I lost a bit of focus now. Maybe I had spent my 2 years doing stuffs not related to studies like learning another foreign language.

My Chemistry exam is tomorrow. Do not know how I would fare this time. Felt disappointed with myself today. No work done. So many classmates think I could score but it was all a lie, I felt no confidence at all. Still, I shall not screw my paper... Hopefully...

Did not online and yet I was so distracted. Had a study timetable, I did it for every exam from SPM to STPM, but this time, I ignored it.
Felt dumb and stupid today. I have lots of "hopes" today and one of them is not to fail my chemistry paper. I will try harder in my next paper.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Come What May

"Come what may" Macbeth

- If you're prepared to do something come what may, it means that nothing will stop or distract you, no matter how hard or difficult it becomes -

My exam is next 2 weeks, but I am too preoccupied with other unimportant things than studying. Yesterday, I had a strange dream.

I dreamt that I was at a Skiing Resort in a mountanous place and my mum was so good in Korean. I was awed by my mum's ability to speak in Korean.

Maybe I think I fear that I could not really converse well in Korean in the future since I had stopped learning Korean like I previously did it in my Language Institute. I speak in Korean to my classmates but if sometimes when they could not understand me, I would be using English.



They always say my English is good.. Since coming to Korea, my English profiency had deteriorate to the extent of not being able to think of a nice topic to write for my university magazine. haiz...

But I am proud to say that I could converse in many languages. hehe.

Penang, Malaysia:

I really want to go back. By the time it's summer, I would had stayed in Korea for more than a year and half. The longest time being away from Penang was only 12 days, that was when I went to Singapore for some student exchange program. Nothing beats the smell of nice Malaysian food, craving for bak chang.



Wait till I am back.. and Bak Chang stall's owners will be laughing all the way to the bank. Good mah, they happy, my tummy also happy mah. In Korean standard, bak chang is cheap, even more for Char Koay Teow and Nasi Lemak (dirt cheap). But really, I want to taste on everything before I go back.

Koreans:

Koreans are generally nice, they are also very kind but I find them being shy when they encounter/meet a foreigner. They could also remember my name so quickly and yet I could not even remember their names after a month of studying together. OMG!

Everyday I would hear them say : "Anyeong haseyo Jin Soon See 안녕 하세요 진순 씨!(How are you Jin Soon)" and I would say "Anyeong haseyo" without the name and we would continue talking. Haiyah. Can't remember their name lah...

Anyone knows how not to forget their (and other people's) names? Honestly, I have a big problem in remembering names, I could not really even remember some of my schoolmates/classmates' names and whats more with other people's name. Some people could not really understand me.

Good impression of my coursemates in my university. :)

Facebook:

I felt bored using facebook. Last time, we had friendster and I created it out of "Peer Pressure" and have more than 300 friends but only about 70 percent of the people in my "Friend's List" are the people I know. Is it really worth having lots of friends that just appear as one of your so called "friend's list"? I find it vague when I see some people have lots of friends that they really do not know. The final curtain was when friendster introduced the application thingy, it choked my inbox until I got tired of deleting it ONE BY ONE!

Then, I switched to Facebook. I can still remember how it started. It started when I was in Lower 6 and "abusing" my privileges as the head student counselor (During my time, I make it the same ranking as the school captain, been able to enter disciplinary room and make admendment on the student records, those were the days...) But to those critics, I want to say this, I did my best in making my Board the very best and we had proved that by been almost equally the same as the prefectorial board. But as a human, I am never perfect and I am prone to make errors.

Continue, I did open an account during my class lesson, I did not enter my class that time and I think it might be my ever boring Puan Soon's Chemistry class. Instead of facing the laborious task of listening to the ever boring monotonous, sleep inducing lectures, I took the "other" path. It took a mere minute to create an account and another minute to approve my pending invites, that was about 10 people already invited me. That was my first set of "friends".

I make it my rule to not make my "friend's list" the same as my former friendster account and I do not approve or add anybody I do not know. Since I started with only 10 friends, it was great because I could see almost everyone's activities without going one by one.

Within days, it became 27, I think I might be right because I have my first foreigner in my 27 friend's list. I am like a Jakun *A type of monkey that get overly excited over small things*. No. Actually, she was my former teammate in a student exchange program in Singapore. She was the first Korean that I had met.



And today it had extended to more than 360 friends with over 20 pending requests from some people that I had never met. With more friends, it means more time to check their "lifestyle" and like I wish that I have more time, I became lazier to check my peoples' profiles. This is why I prefer to have small list of friends and at the same time I want to have more so that I can at least keep in touch with my friends whenever it arises.

I like meeting more people. I like talking to my friends. But with so many friends, it had became a chore if we (I mean all Facebook users) are to check one by one and with so many spams and unwanted "Polls" and "You got hit by XXXXXX pillows this and that". It had became too much.

With so little time and the addiction to the Facebook games, Mousehunt and so forth, sometimes I slept late to complete my assignments and stuff like that.

Great.

Homeworks:

Korean lecturers are crazy when they give homeworks, they keep on giving homework without really explaining how to solve them. WTH. They always say that the questions are almost the same as in High School syllabus and you can answer it after refering to your high school books.

And the students, well, damn smart la. They had only stop studying for 3 months but I had not even touch a single book on my major for almost 2 years - 1 year of not doing anything in Malaysia and 1 year of learning Korean in Korea. It was tough and that was incomparable to other foreigners taking the same course as me. Some of them did not take that kind of mathematics before.



Most Koreans are 2 years younger than me and the lessons when they were at high school was equivalent to Form 6/A-Level! Wow.

But most of them have no life, after school, they had to attend night classes, usually until 11 pm, crazy. But when I think of it again, I did that too, after school, I had tuition until 8 pm and sometimes I had night tuition too but still it was not as severe than the Koreans.

Malaysians especially the students are lucky lots.

Thank God.

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