Looks like I won't be locked out next year

I have blamed being locked out of grad school for my thoughtless climbing accident last winter. It led to being in the hospital for four months and probably the most boring time of my life this year. However, this year to ensure I wouldn't be locked out I applied to more than a half dozen terminal master's programs in economics, albeit also largely out of a desire to use one of these programs as a proctor to see if I'm fit to move onto a doctoral program. Strangely enough, as I was on the web checking to see if civil war erupted in North Korea over Kim Jong Il's much anticipated death, I received the strangest offer from Barcelona Graduate School Of Economics at Universidad Pompeu Fabra. While this is a terminal master's program not too different from LSE's MSc. Economics(Research) program in that it is possible to move onto the doctoral program at Universidad Pompeu Fabra after completing the MSc. with distinction, I was surprised by being offered both a partial fee waiver and a TA-ship. As I'm on blogger still trying to see if I can gather anything from Kim Jong Il's death, my mind keeps giving way to thoughts about when a decision from LSE will come. No, I don't think I'll be going to Barcelona without an unfavorable decision from LSE, but I sure do prefer Barcelona over another climbing accident. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Unable to Post

I went climbing and fell pretty bad to the point it required surgery and a long stay in the hospital. I will not be able to blog again until after the follow up surgery some time in Apri.May.

How I view Graduate School in 2011

Last year, applications to doctoral programs in economics spread into my celebration of New Year's Day. I wanted to see how sure I wanted to apply to terminal masters programs.

Me: Jan. 1st, a year go (2010): Of Malibu, 2010, and the puzzling dearth of Korean Nobel Laureates

It's 2010 and it's been twenty-two years since the Dodgers won the pennant, one hundred years since Japan annexed Korea (Joseon/Chosun/朝選), and ten years that I've had the right to vote. And, probably a a little more time than that since I've been to the Rose Parade in Pasadena (the Rose Parade's on TV right now). And, on a side note, it's interesting how there are probably as many floats from Chinese companies as there were from Japanese companies back when I went to the Rose Parades. My younger brother graduated from La Canada High School in La Canada-Flintridge, which would make a float for the parade each year. I attended the school for a semester as well and, well, it's a pretty big thing in that city.  

 Me in 2011: My attitude has changed considerably. I will not  apply to doctoral programs out of both the questionable likelihood of being able to pursue research interests life long in academia and due to the attractive feature of terminal masters program in economics being able to function as a  prognosis to measure how suitable I am to pursue my research interests within academia. I would like to return to London and attend the MSc in Economics program beginning in October of this great new year. I guess you see the first paragraph of my statement of purpose first draft. But, that's also what this blog does - share thoughts

 I view these programs as prognostic programs that see whether I am suited to continue studies within Academia.

A planned visit to South Korea. What does North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island mean? rev 1

Dec.23.10 - Part 1, draft

I plan on visiting South Korea for a month or so in the new year, contingent on my schedule for 2011. I find news of North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island to be quite shocking and the numerous number of protests that followed the provocative act.  After North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island, this was then followed by a number of demonstrations that were either targeted against North Korea or South Korea's response for being too forceful.I would like to get a first hand impression of how things are/ in South Korea in late spring of the new year.

The United States finally sent the U.S.S. George Washington to the Yellow Sea in live fire exercises. This was not followed by another North Korean response by North Korea's military, but rather hideous claims by North Korea re-inviting inspectors to suspected sites in North Korea's nuclear weapons program and of the existence of a nuclear weapons program not unlike that of Pakistan or Iran (parallel uranium enrichment program).

I lived in South Korea in 2001 - 2005 and I cannot imagine how South Korea could be now. The years I was there were memorable for its livid Anti-American protests.

I had earlier thought that in the wake of the deployment of the USS George Washington that another North Korean act of aggression in the 2010 calendar year to just not be possible out of North Korea's fear over a China angry that there happened to be a U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carrier off  the waters that surround Beijing and Shanghai. Furthermore, the sinking of the ROKN Cheonan brought forward a (weakly worded) UNSC statement and large joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea in both the waters west and east off the Korean peninsula.

However, this was then followed in November with a North Korean attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, which happens to be located in the Yellow Sea. North Korea then announced that the country welcomes back inspectors to suspected sites for its nuclear weapons program and also happily announced an existence of a parallel, uranium enrichment program. 

This finally brought the USS George Washington off the waters of the heart of China and an easy way to bring forward thoughts that criticize China -- such as the AEI's proclamation of concern for North Korean aggression.

To finally bring the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea as well as provide the AEI or organizations that lack any genuine interest over North Korea to use the country as a convenient method to attack China -- by attacking North Korea, the attacker could bring to attention how useless and ineffective Chinese leadership in the region is. Almost as in a textbook example, China protects North Korea out of concern for her provinces that border North Korea and North Korea responds by selling out China in order to gain a security guarantee from a power that rivals China. 

With a transition in North Korea leadership still in progress and this being situated next to promises by South Korea's Lee Myung Bak Administration for a more forceful response to future North Korean acts of provocation, it might be too early to say these events will be followed by a long period of silence. This should in no way lead to absolute fabrication of heightened tensions resulting from President Lee Myung Bak's policy toward North Korea being too aggressive towards fascist North Korea.

This is a political environment that I'd like to see first hand.

I like the Internet so much because...Are the Korean and Mongolian languages related and, if so, how?

edit: 12/20 for clarity
edit: 12/21 corrected dates of regarding King Sejong's rule...
I haven't posted in a while as I've been and am being treated for falling from a wall I was trying to climb. I like to think I'm like superman at times and I guess this has been another episode, albeit one unlike any other in my life. In treatment, I haven't had an Internet connection and during this time I've arrived at an answer to the question, why do I like the Internet so much? to answer the question of why I like the Internet so much.

I earlier wrote:

In this blog, I feel I have an outlet, where I can express my views and opinions on issues or events going around in this world that in the absence of this blog, I feel I otherwise would not have. I mostly write about issues that I feel strongly about. I usually relate it to my own personal life experiences either in school or not. Sometimes, I write about what I feel I like to share. At other times, I find myself too busy to write anything at all or with nothing I'd like to share.

But, this only accounts for a fraction of what attracts me to the Internet. At the hospital, I've come to feel very lucky when a newspaper became available to me. However, gaining access to a newspaper has also made me wish I still had access to not just a single newspaper, but to the ability to read or search for articles amongst thousands of newspapers, publications, and blogs via the Internet. These feelings have shown up after I got injured thinking I was Superman. I tried climbing up a wall and fell down.

A time when I really felt like Superman was during my summer vacation in 2009 in in guess where and where... ? ^^

I don't quite remember the source, but a few years ago I remember reading -- perhaps it was when the Wikipedia was first introduced -- the claim that Korean and Mongolian are some how related to each other. I believe Korean as a language not unlike  the Japanese language is traditionally classified as not belonging to a branch of languages, such as Altaic. One of the nurses that I have met during my recovery has been a Mongolian immigrant to California. I told her about this claim and how one of the examples had been how saying the "right side" in Korean and Mongolian are almost homonyms.

In Korean, one form of saying right side happens to be "Ba-reun-jjok" -- it's not my computer here so I can't access the Korean written language, which by the way had been invented under the rule of King Sejong the Great, who happens to be a great grandfather dating back to the 15th century CE on my mother's side and a reason why I tell my brother he needs to become more fluent in Korean. For more details, maternally, the creator of the lineage happens to be none other than King Sejong the Great's ninth son.

According to the Mongolian nurse, right side in Mongolian happens to be none other than "Ba-rrohn" (with a rolling r here).

Another claim of the paper had been that the Korean dish Bulgogi or Beef was a descendant of, well, guess what, "Mongolian Beef." I wish I had Internet access as I need to get going now.

So, I saw a wizard today...

I was walking down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley today, and, well, I can swear I saw a wizard. He wasn't like one of those wizards from say Lord of the Rings, where he was dressed in all white with a long beard, but a wizard in truly Bohemian, Berkeley style fashion. But, naturally, it reminded me of this time I went to a fortune teller in Korea. Fortune telling is big business in Korea. There are even reports of past presidents, not sure of the current president, but past South Korean presidents consulting fortune tellers on important issues with perhaps nationwide consequences. I guess fortune telling is a huge part of traditional Korean Shamanistic beliefs though not in the way that, say, some Chinese may interpret the symbols on the South Korean flag. (The South Korean flag, while currently symbolic of a country of fifty million has traditionally been symbolic of Chinese fortune tellers.)

Anyways, I went to a very commercialized fortune telling place (COEX); the lady used all types of strange cards and asked me when I was born, what time I was born, and other details, many of which I didn't know or couldn't remember. She read my fortune anyways. I'm not sure if they always use cards, but it seems to be down to a science in that country where extravagant sums are spent to see the future. Well, I'm not sure what glimpses of my future the fortune teller saw, but I remember a card showing up with a figure that had a rather uncomfortable resemblance to that wizard from the Lord of the Rings. I don't see myself as a particularly superstitious person, so a card with a wizard on it didn't do much to make me take much of this seriously. On top of that, I couldn't decipher some of the words the fortune teller was saying as she was using many words that I was simply unfamiliar with.

But, one thing I do remember was that during the Year of the Rooster, I was told "to apply" and I would receive a favorable outcome; I applied to UC Berkeley that year.

And school starts...

After a week long vacation, I'm heading back up to Berkeley today for my final year of undergraduate studies.

I have some pictures and information on the North Korean embassy in London that I'd like to share shortly. There's like no information available on this embassy if you do an Internet search for it now.

In the meantime, if you look below I posted some of the articles I believe may be of paritcular interest that I've written over the course of the past couple months.