Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Photo Essay

There's a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. But, perhaps a picture can have more value if the photo is also explained with words. Anyway, for my photo essay, I will post 6 pictures that are related to living here at GLPS. My writing won't exactly be describing the photo because I think that it would make it even more boring than it is now.


1. Notebook---

This is a picture of the notebooks we all got on the third(?) day of GLPS. I really love the fact that they have springs because it makes it easier to rip off pages you need or want to discard. However, the one thing that I didn't like about the notebook was the glossy feeling of the paper. It seemed like there was some coating done on the paper and it made writing on the notebook irritating, especially when using a pencil. The notebook has a square shape and "KMLA" is written on the cover in silver writing.





2. Food---(Sorry, don't have a photo for this yet...ㅠㅠ)

The food here at GLPS is to me really, really good. It's like maybe 4 or 5 times better than what I had in my school. Which reminds me, I really hate the free meal policy that the Korean Education Department (or whatever they're called) passed. The food at my regular school wasn't good, but still it was okay. But, after they passed this free meal thing, the food is literally inedible. In the soup, they would put a bunch of water in it so that they could produce as much soup possible for the least amount of money. Let me tell you that the soup tasted terrible (bland). It was very similar to putting too that taste you get when you put to little cocoa powder in your hot chocolate. Also at school, the combination of the meals are so weird and awkward. For example, they would serve curry with some spinach and an apple. But, I have no right to criticize the food because it is free after all. I don't know if it was because I had always eaten this kind of food at school, but the food here is just terrific. There's a lot of meat and I think more effort was put into making it then at school. It may be because of the fact that we all paid tons of money to come here, but still it is pretty good. (well at least to me) Because so much food is made in the cafeteria, the moment the elevator doors open, the aroma of food comes into your nose.

3. IPod---


So, this is a picture of my IPod Nano (gen 7). After Steve Job's death in 2011, I felt that Apple was going down the toilet. Just check out the apple website and look at all the products. The only real change that was made is color. Before, they only sold black and white, but know they sell green, blue, yellow and what not. And guess what?! No innovation what so ever. No new gadgets or cool stuff. The only change: the hue of their already well designed products. Okay, many people will love the fact that they can now buy a colorful IPhone, but it is the software that really matters. I fear that Apple, one of the most creative companies in the world has now put a fence around their genius. Even though I say this I do still like Apple. So anyways, in great need of an MP3 player I bought the IPod Nano because I already had a Mac Book Air and the design looked good etc etc. The IPod Nano, is about the size of a business card, and has a rectangle shape. It is made of mostly Aluminum and it feels very nice in your hand and you can barely feel it in your hand because it is very light. I really don't think that I could have survived without all of my favorite music to lift my spirits, especially when I was really exhausted because of all the work that I had to do. Occasionally, when I had to study in the bathroom (they cut all electricity to the dorms except for the bathroom) I would listen to some noisy songs to keep myself up. Being a huge Eminem fan, 95% of all the songs in my IPod are Eminem songs and I've also memorized most of the lyrics for almost every song as well. It might seem like an incredible feat of memory, but it's actually pretty easy because most of the lyrics rhyme.



4. EOP paper---

Everyone in GLPS has probably gotten one of these before. In this photo, you can see that there are maybe 12 sentences that you would have to memorize. But, on the first week of GLPS, EOP papers used to be almost twice as long as they are now. I guess that the PAs, realizing that we weren't smart enough to memorize so much, reduced the quantity of the sentences that we had to memorize. Anyway, the EOP paper would usually have you memorize something interesting such as a Bane (villain from Dark Knight Rises) quote, or a description of a snitch. On this particular one, it has a Mr. Smith(Matrix) quote on what humans are. The EOP paper is just a A4 paper that has a bunch of writing on it. It might just be me, but whenever I hold one of these in my hand I get the feeling of wanting to crumple it up and play paper basketball.


5. Green/Yellow/Red Cards

These cards are all of the same size and same shape, the only difference is what each card means. Green cards equal good job, yellow cards say that you're in trouble, and red cards say that you are a bad kid. I don't quite understand the hype about these cards. They're just a piece of paper made to try and control little kids. On a few occasions I noticed that some kids were doing all they could for that (useless) paper card and I was confused. Honestly, who cares about green cards? It's just a way to get kids to compete and participate more. Now, let's look at the yellow and red cards. Many kids are afraid of recieving these cards because you can't get an award if you get too many of these. First of all, I think that it isn't the yellow cards that prevent you from getting an award. It's actually your own lack of skill or effort that stops you. I think it's okay to get 1 or even 3 of these. It's just a colored piece of paper after all. However, I am not saying that we should misbehave or something like that and I also don't mean to offend anyone. I just think that some kids are putting too much fuss about these cards.

6. Jacket---


God, it is just so cold here at KMLA. It's always below 0 degrees and the occasional gale of wind really doesn't help. To add to that, the buildings are about maybe 200m apart and we have to walk all the way up- or down-to our next class. In this blood freezing place up in the mountains, my jacket was really a life saver. Imagine leaving your jacket in your dorm. You would have to single handedly battle the flesh biting cold of Korea. In these circumstances your jacket will truly help you stay warm and alive. So, when you walk to your next class, please don't forget to take your jacket. 





These are my pictures and each of their descriptions. There are some parts where I exaggerated a bit, but still most of what I said is true. All the photos were taken with my friend's camera, so I would really like to thank him. If there's another everyday thing that is important here at GLPS, please comment and I will add it to this post. Thank you for reading!!! Hope everyone has a good time for the remaining few days left of GLPS.








Sunday, January 19, 2014

Movie Review: The Princess Bride



So today, instead of studying we went to the auditorium, to watch the movie: The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride is a movie directed by Rob Reiner in 1987. It has several genres and they are to me: romance, comedy, action, fantasy, and cliff-hanger.
The movie opens with a grandfather reading a story (called the Princess Bride) to his grandson.
This is the story that the grandfather told:
Princess Buttercup is to be Prince Humperdink's fiance. However, she has still not forgotten her true love, Westley, who was killed 5 years ago. The princess is kidnapped by three bandits, but she is rescued by a mysterious black man. It turns out that this black man is actually Westley. The two are united, but only for a few moment because they are captured by an angery Prince Humperdink. With the help of the two former kidnappers, Westley is rescued and the trio plan to infilitrate and rescue the princess from her forced marriage. I will stop here because I don't want to spoil the movie for yall. 
Here's the trailer and please excuse Prince Humperdink's large and quadilateral(square) shaped face.



This movie was very impressive, especially considering the fact that the movie is 27 years old. I really liked how the grandfather was reading a story to his grandson. I felt like my own grandfather was telling me a story, when I was really in a dark room looking at a screen.
In terms of leadership, I didn't really see what to do, but I did see what not to do. For example. Vizzini, the bald kidnapper showed me an example of bad leadership. He treated his fellow kidnappers like they were fools when he himself wasn't smart either. From this example you can clearly see that if you are the boss then you should treat your subjects with respect, duh. Here's a clip that shows what not to do in leadership.



Vizzini reminds me once again that people with real talent don't have to show it. It just shows through. Here's the clip that proves Vizzini's thickness. He seems to talk with very clear logic, but when the two men drink, he dies. Well, look how much good Arisotle did to you, Vizzini.



Out of the movie, I didn't really like the end. It left me with a question. What now? Maybe the director stopped the movie here because from this point on, it would just be an obvious happy ending. Although it would have been a little mushy, maybe it would have been better if the movie showed what happened to Buttercup, Westley and the two kidnappers. 
Now, let me talk about 2 technical problems in this movie.

1. ROUS (Rodents of Unusual Size)
Remember these more-cute-than-scary creatures from the forest? The moment I saw these guys I got a feeling that there was a human in some sort of costume. The way this thing moved  reminded me too much about the way a human would crawl. Also although you might think that this   
creature is only fictional it actually exists for real. Ladies and gentleman let me introduce to you the world's largest rodent!!!!(Applause) It is  the Capybara, and it is from South America. Minus the teeth, the ugly snarls, and the darker brown fur, you would get this "little" guy down here.




2. Burning Dress and Fire Swamp

As in the picture above, you can see a hole or tube where the fire is coming out. You can see that the princess has caught fire. However, in the movie, after the prince helps the princess to  extinguish her dress, I noticed that there were no burn marks on the dress. She must be wearing a fireproof dress or something.
3. Rolling down the hill scene
For those of you that don't remember, the princess pushes Westley (didn't know at the time) down the hill. While the black man rolls down he manages to say the words "As you wish". Hearing those 3 words, the princess also falls down the hill. I wonder who pushed her. Finding no one else present in this scene, I can conclude that the princess pushed herself down the hill. (Am I starting to sound like Vizzini now?) 

So, these are the 3 technical errors that I found. But, rather than to criticize the director or the movie, I want to say that these errors actually made the movie somewhat more interesting to watch. These days because of all the advanced computer graphics and what not, you can't really tell what's real and what's fake. Although there were several technical errors, and the ending was a bit of a nuisance, overall it was a very good movie for something that is 27 years old. The story was also interesting and it was told pretty quickly. There was also many interesting characters and catchy phrases.(As you wish, Inconceivable, Prepare to die, etc) Although I wasn't really looking forward to this movie because of its title, it really did surprise me in the many aspects that I mentioned before. If only movies like this could be combined with the modern computer graphics…

Monday, January 13, 2014

3 Things about Me


Who are you? That is a very important question. To answer this question instead of writing a boring post talking about where I was born and how many family members I have, I will write three things about me and you get to figure out what they mean. Well, here they are:
***Please click on the numbers***

1. COD


2. Marshall Mathers



3. -6


So, these are my three things. If you want to know more-which some of you who are already bored by now might not- please click on the links at the bottom of this page.

If you have read this entire post and you find it boring; I am sorry. My only excuse is that these 3 things were the best I could think of.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Pop Song Contest


So, today we had the pop song contest in the gym at 4. I was nervous , but sort of confident because we had practiced a lot with Mr. Blaney Sir. Our class chose to do Micheal Jackson's "Thriller".



We were going to go for a modern pop song, but we chose this song instead because we thought this song would bring up lots of nostalgia from the judges. After choosing the song we had to make the dance. Mr. Blaney really did much of this. To match the song we had this zombie theme. The most interesting part our dance was when all the zombies chased the two humans (Freddy and June) and eventually ate them. To make us look more like zombies our PA, 지영, helped us put do zombie make up. It was the first time that ever had make up done on my face (aside from suncream if that counts as make up), so it felt very weird and awkward and more so because a girl did applied the sticky stuff on me. Anyways, despite our efforts, at the contest we got second place. Everyone was disappointed. We had spent so much time practicing and Mr. Blaney Sir had invested a lot of his time too. While writing this, I suddenly remember a saying that the losers always have the most to talk about.

--Picture of our class at the pop song contest. (www.glps.co.kr)

The problem for us was that unlike when we practiced, we didn't sing loudly enough. I really regret the fact that I didn't tell anyone that we should use the mics. Maybe we would have won if we did so...
I feel sorry for Mr. Blaney Sir, and wish we could have won, at least to make him feel a little better. I'm not sure if he is pissed off, but if he is I understand. After all, he was the one who made the dance and plan everything. I even saw his notebook, which was filled with drawings of the dance moves.
At least get second and we all did our best. I want to end this post by saying thanks to everyone in our class. Cheer up everyone!!!!