Korail sucks – they deceive

I bought two railway tickets from Seoul to Pusan, and vice versa.

Before buying tickets online, I saw an article whose title is "the benefits of members". When I read it, I found one great benefit saying "members would get 10% discount of high speed ferry between Korea and Japan".

Wow! wow! wow!

I just signed up for Korail membership right then. And called ferry company. "I am a Korail member. Can I get 10% discount for Korean-Japan ferry?" The woman told me, "Oh, what are you talking about? There is nothing like that."

I was very shocked and called the CS centre of Korail and asked about it. The answer is "It is nothing to do with your membership. If you want to get 10% discount of ferry, you need to buy KTX ticket."

THEY DECEIVED ME PERFECTLY!!!!!!!

Korail sucks much! I don't like KTX. Many people complained about KTX. Korail sucks and KTX sucks either.

Everyone and everything that deceives sucks.

Travel to southern Japan

31 May is voting day, but I found none to vote for. I decided not to vote. And 6 June is national holiday. So If I make three days off, I can rest seven days inclusive of weekends.

At first, I planned to travel Japan from southernmost to northernmost with Japan Rail Pass but I just found it is very difficult, so I changed my plan to visit only one part of southern Japan – Kyushu.

In Kumamoto, I have a pen friend whose name is Konomi, the mother of two cute daughters. I may stay on her sister's house for six nights and will travel here and there of Kyushu.

To cut off the travel cost, I gave up air plane and decided to get on ship(With more time consumed).

This is the draft of my time table to Japan:

• 30 May 2006 (Tue) Night – Get on train to Pusan from Seoul.
• 31 May 2006 (Wed) Morning – Get on a ship to Hakata seaport in Hukuoka
• 31 May from afternoon – Matsuri and travel in Kumamoto
• 1 June to 5 June – travel around Kyushu
• 6 June afternoon – Back to Pusan by ferry
• Back to Seoul by train

We have another series of holidays in October. I would like to travel another place then.

For this time, I considered Southeast Asia, China (Shanghai), and Japan in the first place. And decided Kyushu.

I give my special thanks to Jungsoo Ok who helped me so much with his sincere heart to provide me so much precious information on travel.

Night view from my office

My office is in 39th floor(now 36th) of Prime Centre which is on riverside. Well, the night view is so beautiful. The shining lights in darkness are so good.

The photo below was taken by Mr. Jungsoo Ok who is the nicest amateur photographer in my office. He took many nice photos.

This photo is night view of Olympic Bridge in Han River from my office.

Full love dental clinic

I hate dentists and dental clinics.

No. I hated dentists and dental clinics. And I have had fear on dental treatment.
There is a dental clinic near my office whose name is "Full love". Wow! I love it. Though I still have fear on dental treatment, I don't hate the clinic. The reasons why I like the clinic are:

• The dentist who is in charge on me is nice
• The nurses are all extremely kind
• They smile always and speak in soft and tender voice
• They do not try to cheat their patients (I think)
• Most of the nurses are very pretty and cute (MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR)

I had never met a good and nice dental clinic like this. Full love dental clinic is my life time dental clinic.

Ignition plug and Kalos

Well, I have no car but my sister has. Her car is Chevrolet Aveo(it is called GM Daewoo Kalos in Korea). It ran about 20,000 km. So I decided to change its ignition plugs(Car manual says change them at 30,000 km).

Even though the original plugs had no problem, I bought four new plugs with their power cables. It is very easy job and finished shortly.

After changing, I start the car and stepped on the acceleration pedal. Wow! The sound is different. Light and cheerful noise made me happy. There was no strange trembling or disorder even at 4500 RPM. Successful.

You can find the car information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_Kalos. My sister’s car is five door hatchback style. Even though it is my sister’s but I drive more than she. I love this car. It is very good car in comparison its price.

I am fully satisfied its AISIN automatic transmission. I understood why AISIN is famous for transmissions. If you are going to buy a small car around 1.2~1.6L engine, I think Chevrolet Aveo would be a good choice.

Do you wash your hands in rest room?

It is of men. I don't know about women for I am not a woman.

I see in the rest room of my office that someone does not wash their hands. It is a bit shocking to me.

I think about ten or fifteen percent of men do not wash their hands after his piss. And what is more shocking to me is that I also found some people do not wash their hands after his dung!!!

Of course I wash my hands every time in the rest room. Do you? 

Kisha in Japanese

In Japanese, they have only about fifty pronunciations and characters. This restriction caused it to have so many homonyms.

These homonyms are dramatically solved with the use of Chinese characters. But when they send telegraph, they cannot use Chinese characters. Let me show you one famous instance. A Japanese news paper desk reporter got a telegraph from a company saying

キシャノキシャハキシャデキシャシタ
Reading: Kisha-no kisha-wa kisha-de kisha-shita
Postfix translated: Kisha of Kisha did Kisha by Kisha

He was not able to figure it out. When it is written with Chinese characters, it is very easy to be understood.

貴社の記者は汽車で帰社した

First Kisha is 'your company', and second kisha is 'reporter', and third is 'train' and the last one is 'back to company'. So the translation would be "Kisha(reporter) of kisha(your company) did kisha(back to company) by kisha(train)."

Latin alphabet has many characters to combine it, and Korean characters have several parts to complete a letter.

In Japanese they have only completed characters. There is no combining. For example, か is /ka/ and き is /ki/. There is no relations between the characters even though they share the sound of /k/.

In Korean, /k/ is ㅋ, /a/ is ㅏ, and /i/ is ㅣ. So 카 is /ka/ and 키 is /ki/. Korean characters are very easy to learn and understand.

Street smoker sucks

Of course, I do not smoke. I never have, and I never will. And for that, I really don't understand the smokers.

Just once, I tried to smoke when I was a junior high school student. With two of my friends, I tried but failed and they did.

The reason I hate tobacco so much is not it is bad for health. It is simple – I cannot breathe.

My office and rest room are non-smoking area by the latest government act. No one smokes in the office but, some smoke in the rest room secretly. They are breaking the law. The hidden smokers in the rest room suck.

In the street, it is not illegal to smoke. Whenever smokers pass by, I cannot breathe in the spot. They are just annoying me, and annoying every one around them. It is not fair that I have no choice but to breathe in the smoke!

Every street smoker sucks because he does not care about others around him. The law makers must make a new law that forbids smoking in the street. Every one who wants to smoke must smoke in a closet and let no one breathe in his smoke!

How to input characters which are not in English

I am studying Español and Français now. And I cannot input some characters with accent marks and others such as ñ, ç, é…

First, I tried to change the keyboard layout. It worked fine. I can input ñ with spanish keyboard layout. But the biggest problem is that I don't know the keyboard layout. It is very inconvenient.

I just found out easy way!

On Windows XP:

1. [Control Panel]
2. [Regional and Language Options]
3. [Languages] Tab
4. Click [Details...] on Text services and input languages
5. [Text services and input languages] dialogue box
6. [Settings] Tab
7. Click [Add...]
8. Set the language as you wish and "Keyboard layout/IME" should be "United States-International"

On Mac OS X:

1. [System Preferences ]
2. [International]
3. [Input Menu] Tab
4. Turn on "U.S. Extended" in the list

It is very easy to use.

• Press ' and then press a e i o u y c will make á é í ó ú ý ç
• Press ` and then press a e i o u will make à è ì ò ù
• Press ^ and then press a e i o u will make â ê î ô û
• Press " and then press a e i o u y will make ä ë ï ö ü ÿ
• Press ~ and then press a o n will make ã õ ñ

Jihye

Jihye is a girl child in my church. She is fourth child to her parents, and I have seen her from her birth.

I like all children in my church, but the reason Jihye is special to me is that she also has been thinking me special. From the times of her baby when she was not even say a word, she recognised me. When I took her in my arms, she stopped crying. She did not cry when her father went out, but she did cry out when I went out.

Now, she is a little bit grown up as you see in the picture below, and she runs and plays. She is really a tom boy and very cute. I believe that she is most cute in my church. She even now runs to me whenever she finds me.

'Jihye' is her name and her family name is 'Lee.' Jihye stands for 'Wisdom' in Korean.

Definition of IT

When I was a university student, I was in a club studying English through movie scripts. We saw the movie first, and then we read the script book of that movie.

There was one movie that I did not see and read the script later together. That is "Sleeve" by Sharon Stone. In the script of Sleeve, I just found a short sentence defining the word of IT.

Sharon Stone was in her boy friend's room and seeing the room in the building across the road through a telescope. She cried out to her boy friend, "They do IT." (My script said like this.)

I just found the definition of IT in this short sentence. This is why Internet and IT industry are full of porno.

Personally, I don't like or dislike Sharon Stone. But there is no movie by her that I have seen. My most favourite actress is Georgie Henley, and second favourite is Renée Zellweger.

King Kong and the beauty

I saw the movie King Kong on-line. This is my second movie by Peter Jackson. First movie was Lord of the Rings of course. These two movies are quite satisfying. I was surprised by the dinosaurs. I had never expected them.

One funny thing is that King Kong’s nostrils are heart-shaped.

What I realised again in this movie is that beauty is most important factor for man. Even King Kong recognises the beauty. In the movie I saw many skulls – King Kong must eat them all. Every man and woman who is not beautiful was eaten, but Anne Darrow who is beautiful was not eaten but loved.

But I don’t think so. There are so many thing more important than the skin deep beauty. Yes of course. That is heart and mind. One of the current blind points of current visual culture is that almost every heroin is beautiful in heart and in face also. For this, so many people has the formula of “Beauty in face = Good in mind” in their brains.

I believe that I can find a true love. A true love does not concern about the beauty in face, or economical circumstances, I strongly believe. The only reason I have this strong faith is that I am stupid.

In the final part of the movie, the film maker said “It is the beauty killed the beast.” Yes, whenever man falls in love, the woman would spoil him soon. Through Eve sin came into. And woman is much blessing for man while she is greatest disaster for him.