I guess this is why teachers keep doing what they do.

Today one of my a problem students stopped by to tell me that he got a 100 on a homework assignment that I helped him with after class. I felt great knowing I am providing some good influences in his life.

Bye Thinkpads

It is painfully obvious that someone at Lenovo (when it seperated itself from IBM) had decided 2.5 years ago, models with numbers 60 and above should start falling apart after 2 years. Some parts that were metal before were cleverly replaced with cheaper pastic parts that would wear out due to wear and tear after 2 years. It is literally falling apart on me. My older Thinkpad that is more than 4 years old is still holding up well, aside from its lack of horsepower. What I hate above all else is when a company will intentionally retard their products, in this case going against their motto for being tough and reliable, so that they can make a few extra bucks on maintenance. In the end, they betray their loyal customers. I'm no expert on those things but it would seem like that would hurt them in the long run.

I'm walking away from Lenovo, formerly known as IBM. Bye.

The eagle has landed

I landed yesterday roughly around 6am at Incheon airport in Korea. Stepping outside the airport, the temperature reminded me of stepping outside a car for the first time when you arrive at a place like Big Bear. It was cold but without the snow. I arrived in Seoul at around 9am. Still a full day to look forward to. First order of business? Nap time. I was only able to sleep about 4 hours combined on the air plane. The passenger next to me was a very large female and unfortunately took up some of my already inadequate space. I had a very large backpack, and the seat that I had didn't have any room for me to store my backpack. So I had to just wrap my legs around my backpack while fighting for room with the passenger next to me doing the exact same thing.

When I got to Korea, I knew the first thing I needed to do when I got there was exchange the money. It turns out that the bank here is closed on the weekend. And I had already left the airport at time when I was made aware of this. I will exchange my money at a bank on Monday, so I will have to make due with the little bit of Won that I had brought with me. So if you happen to arrive in Korea on the weekend, make sure you change some spending money for the weekend at the airport. It will be at a premium but at least you won't be totally SOL when you need cash.

One shocker that I experienced was when I looked at iPhone prices. You can get an iPhone here for as low as $35 a month with the cheapest service (including the 8GB 3G phone, and you pay almost nothing out the door). The top of the line iphone only costs you $10 more a month for the 32gb 3GS. The likely plan people will choose however is about $15 more so you can use up to 500MB a month. That's still about $60 a month for the best iPhone out right now. Not too shabby.

I also ended up cancelling my netflix when I got here. It turns out streaming (Watch Instantly) is blocked. So I won't be able to make use of it. Kinda makes me wish I had brought my terabyte harddrive full of movies and TV shows I had collected over the last decade.

While perusing the streets of Seoul's most popular shopping district, I ran into a street vendor selling dragon beard candy. Since this candy had eluded me for years, I had to try it. The best part of this candy is seeing how its made. Its like watching noodles made by hand. A hockey puck sized amount of maltose pierced in the center then pulled and stretched until it becomes the thickness of hair while being covered in cornstarch or rice flour so it doesn't stick together. I guess more accurately resembles the hair from the beard of a dragon...if they grew beards...and dragons of this nature. That's why it must be called dragon beard candy. I also grabbed an assortment of sasusages on a skewer. And had some really good cha jang myun for dinner. It was a good first day in Korea. So much to look forward to. But I can't officially get started until I get my alien ID card at the immigration office which is going to take about a week. I need that to get a cell phone and open a bank account. Until then I will be learning how to get around and meeting up with some contacts.

Time for a reset.

I'll be leaving for the airport Thursday evening to start my year long journey in Korea. I plan to teach English and travel while I'm there. With a bit of luck, I hope to gain some worldly knowledge and grow my "circle of influence".

What is a circle of influence? Imagine there is a circle inside of a circle. The inner circle is everything that you are capable of doing comfortably and with confidence because you've learned to do these tasks and got good at doing them. It can be anything from learning a new skill (a sport, a musical instrument, a job related skill) to overcoming a fear (a fear of heights, flying, or public speaking). When you are faced with a situation inside of your circle of influence, you always feel in control and confident that you can get this task done.

Things outside of your circle of influence, the outer circle sometimes called circle of concern, are your challenges in life. When challenges are presented, they are challenges because you are unfamiliar with the task at hand. There are many unanswered questions about how things can get done. It will be stressful and uncomfortable. There will be mistakes (aka learning experiences) along the way. Maybe you were able to avoid these situations in the past, but whether it is something you want to learn how to do or something you are obligated to do, these challenges will always be challenges that limit your life until you confront them.

You confront things outside your circle of influence by breaking out of your bubble by learning how to do something by devising strategies, taking classes, and learning through trial and error. You do it enough, and what you used to consider challenges has now become something you are good at. You will also realize you are not just good at doing that one more thing, but you are a lot more confident doing things related to your new skill, that you may have found to be difficult, maybe even impossible to do in the past. When you make this realization, so many more things feel like its within your grasp, you feel you are capable of doing so much you haven't done because you've increased your circle of influence.

Why some people don't like Avatar.

Some people like to go against the flow. They dislike things just on the sheer fact that too many people like the same thing. They would rather hunt for flaws so they can say they don't like something that majority of the population seems to like. Why do they do it? Well, what if I said...I personally didn't like all the Godfathers, Shawshank Redemption, all 3 Lord of the Rings. They were all are predictable and kinda slow. Hey, look at me! I have a different opinion! Did I get your attention? I was kidding about that, but I bet it kinda lit some kind of an urge to argue against me.

I 100% agree that Avatar is a rehash of a classic story like Pocahontas, but its told in a fresh new way. I never watched Pocahontas thinking, wow, I wish I lived in that Chinese village with all those talking animals. I never felt immersed in any movie like I did with Avatar.

If you expect the movie to do something predictable, you are just watching the clock until your expectations are met while totally missing all the good parts in the process. Why not do the opposite and hunt for something to appreciate. With this movie, its not too hard.

My review of "Food, Inc."

Too much conspiracy theory, but there are some good messages too.

The story of corn and e.coli was that, "this may be happening, and if that is true, then this really bad thing is happening." A lot of the points were driven in this manner. And the fact that they added dramatic music and cinematographic lighting effects accentuate their points whenever they showed the evil meat processing plants left me wonder if there was another agenda for "Food, Inc." by its producers.

There is one story of a family where the dad spends more than a hundred dollars a day on medication (implying he got sick by eating unhealthy food for a long time), then says because of this, they can only feed their families through the dollar menu at Burger King. How about the miracle of technology and science that is able to keep this man alive and functioning? The alternative is that he is dead and the family is in a worse situation. Lots of people die due to bad genetics, and it has been this way since the dawn of man. The fact that he can take a pill, he should consider himself one of the lucky ones. Also, with bad decisions in life, like deciding to have more kids than you can provide for, he should consider it a blessing that he is able to feed his family of 5 through the dollar menu, rather than buy a head of lettuce for dinner.

There are some good tips at the end. Buy food locally at the farmers market. Buy things when they are in season. When you buy food from local markets, you support your local community. The food is cheap, and the food tastes amazing because fruits and vegetables are best when they are in season. This takes the need to add chemicals to colorize and to keep it fresh through the long communute from a country that you wouldn't ever consider traveling to.

If I were to add to the conspiracy theory, I do think there is something bizarre going on in the big American grocery chains. Let's take Ralphs for example. Do you ever remember being in the fruits and vegetables section at Ralphs? The raw fruits and vegetable prices are outrageous. Sometimes, I go there, and I want to buy an orange, and I find myself in a situation where I have to decide whether I want to pay $1.50 for an orange. Why of all places, should a single orange cost $1.50? You would expect that a big market can provide you good deals for fruits and vegetables? If you've been in the asian market, compare that to the atmosphere of an American market. The fruits and vegetable sections of the asian markets are bustling with people. The worst thing is, you pay $1.50 for that orange, and you realize that the orange has been stocked for its appearance, and long shelf-life. The last thing they care about is taste. So maybe there is some truth to the conspiracy here. The big markets would really prefer that you buy something from the regular isles, not their fruits and vetables. And they've calculated out that if you really want something from their fruits and vegetables section, they have that too. It's just not going to be cheap.

Navigon MobileNavigator 1.2 vs TomTom 1.0

I updated to Navigon's MobileNavigator from 1.1 to 1.2 and wow, what a huge improvement. It speaks the street names, doesn't seem to have a problem wanting to start navigation when it has already triangulated your position, in-app iPod controls, and night time color scheme.) My guess is they rushed to get their initial release out there because of TomTom, and they both (TomTom and Navigon) shot themselves in the foot. The new features on the Navigon app are solid, and it looks like they are serious in trying to improve this thing, unlike TomTom who hasn't released an update since 1.0.

Having used my Garmin Nuvi 360 to travel thousands of miles across the US, I have some strong opinions on what it's going to take me to not grab my *real* GPS when heading out the door for a long drive to a new destination. On my iPhone, I tried both Navigon 1.1 and TomTom 1.0 when they came out, and my reviews for both products would be "pathetic" for TomTom and "a good start" for the Navigon. Maybe the TomTom actually works for the iPhone 3GS, but for the iPhone 3G the TomTom app would just jump left and right all over the place while you were driving in a straight line. And it would jump across an entire street over or it would say you are in the ocean. I understand that its mostly due to cell phone triangulation, but its something that can be controlled with some code (it should know you can't be on the road for one second, then be 500 ft out in the ocean the next). I'm sure Navigon and I'm sure every other GPS app already does this unlike TomTom.

Trying to use an app like TomTom in front of people reminded me of nerds in high school who would try so hard to make a high-tech gadget do something simple (like bringing a keyboard for their Apple Newton (PDA), staring at that ridiculous small screen and trying to take notes. Then spending half the class trying to troubleshoot why the keyboard stopped working) when it was obvious it was more trouble than its worth. Everyone else in the class would screaming in their minds, "Just shut that thing off you idiot!!!"

I heard great things about TomTom devices, but the TomTom's iPhone app was so bad, I pretty much swore off the brand for good. Navigon on the other hand seems to be rapidly improving their app. I'm looking forward to future improvements. I think it may be good enough to let it start guiding me around when I'm out in the wild without my trusted Garmin Nuvi 360.