My life in KAIST on the 2nd week of May 2013 - Part 1 (KLcX & G. Rium Concert)

This post is the first part of my life story in KAIST on the 2nd week of May 2013.

KLcX promotional poster

Nothing so special during the weekdays, but approaching the weekend I attended several events held in KAIST. The first one is KISA Languange & Culture Exchange, abbreviated as KLcX (I don't have any idea why they abbreviate the KLcX term like this haha...). It is a brand new program launched by KISA and is organized by my Indonesian friend, Cindy. I was notified about his program by email. Yep, recently most of KISA announcements are published through personal email. I even made a special folder in my email account thus the email from KISA or KISA-related event will go directly to that folder and I can manage them easily.

KLcX promotional brochure

As written in KLcX promotional brochure, this event can be summarized as an event where you are able to meet your partner, share yours and and learn your partner's language and culture in KAIST. It has a goal which is maintaining good relation among international students and local (Korean) student. The background of this event, according to an article in KAIST Herald (vol. 122, page 7, May 2013), was set as the continuation from the previous KISA's Sensitivity Training event. As explained in the article, the Sensitivity Training event which served as open discussion between Korean and international students was perceived to have a lack personal interactions and long term impacts. Thus, Cindy made a proposal to organize one new event (KLcX) similar to Sensitivity Training but with different approach.

As initially designed by the organizer, this event is set as one to one interaction. However, due to difficulty of arranging the "perfect couples" (as illustrated in the brochure), it is expanded into one small group consisted of 3 people. In my case, I want to learn Chinese as 1st priority & Korean as the 2nd priority (I hope my lifetime companion is either Chinese or Korean, by descent or nationality, thus it is better to be "well-prepared" with the language and culture ^^,). Then, I was met with my partner, Yao Min, a Chinese student who wants to learn Korean. Finally, the third person Lee Ji Yi (she didn't come to the first meeting) who is Korean and wants to learn English was added to our group. I guess we could practice the language and cultural sharing by me & Yao Min teach Lee Ji Yi English, Lee Ji Yi teaches Yao Min & I Korean, and Yao Min teaches me Chinese.

In the first meeting I attended on the 2nd Week of May 2013, we met our partner for the first time, exchanged contact information, and talked about our background, etc. Also the requirements of KLcX was also introduced. Those requirements are: each group will be supervised by one mentor from KISA, every group meeting should be documented by the group and notify it to the KISA supervisor either through Facebook, KakaoTalk, or email. There will be another meeting after final exam I guess. The first meeting was finally closed by pizza dinner provided free by KISA. To be honest, free pizza was my second motivation for joining this event haha... It is a natural grad student attitude as portrayed in one comic strip of PHD Comics. In addition, after completing my first KLcX meeting, I caught up with my lab mates to celebrate a newcomer to our lab then played LOL together. That was my second time to play LOL, and I started to enjoy this game since then.

KAIST Spring Culture Festival 2013 G.Rium Concert

After KLcX, in the following day I attended KAIST Spring Culture Festival which featured G.Rium Concert. Well, frankly speaking this G. Rium concert wasn't same as my expectation. Previously in 2012 G. Rium also performed in KAIST Spring Culture festival featuring piano quartet. However, this year G. Rium was not a piano quartet performance, but rather a combination between violin and piano performance, and was made exclusive by the appearance of their special MC. I attended the event not till the end, cause I had experiment appointment. Anyway, this concert, together with another piano concert I attended later, triggered my desire to learn piano. Since then I self-practice to play piano whenever I have time wherever the piano available. I started my piano practice by learning how to play Somewhere in My Memory by John Williams.

to be continued (part 2)...

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My life in KAIST on the 1st week of May 2013

So now I would like to share about my life on 1st week of May 2013.

As I summarized in my previous post, on the 1st week of May I was struggling with my wafer bonding experiment. Yep, currently my research is focused on wafer bonding. As I also mentioned previously, I will discuss about this wafer bonding scientifically in later post. Therefore, long story short this wafer bonding, as explained in Q.-Y. Tong's book, is the experiment conducted by "simply" bringing two different wafers into contact and sticking them directly to each other by the help of either van der Walls force, capillary force or electrostatic force.

Why I quoted the simply term above? Because the basic concept is simple, just bringing them into contact. However, the most important prerequisite prior to contact is the surface of the wafer should be flat, clean and smooth enough, and this ain't an easy jobs. The wafers need to be cleaned by using some series of physical and chemical cleaning process which is not quite simple and sometimes a little bit dangerous, thus it needs to be handled with extra care.

SEM images of the cross section of my successful wafer bonding experiment result

 
Let's look the SEM picture of the bonded wafer's cross section above. Now imagine, what happened if there is dust at the bonding interface? Yes, the surface will not 100% touch each other. Since this is a microscale experiment, the non-existence of dust is really important to promote better surface interaction. After sticking them together, it needs one final step which is a annealing process to strengthen the bond between the wafer. In the first time, I performed this annealing in other lab by the help of my friend.

However, due to the close deadline of the lab meeting (5/4) and the availability of my friend and his machine, I only had a chance to perform the annealing experiment either on Thursday (5/2) or Friday (May 3) evening. It made me confused at that time, since I already planned to attend KAIST-ONE Brazil on Thursday evening coincidentally at the similar time proposed by my friend to do the annealing experiment, and on Friday I aimed to prepare my Saturday lab meeting. These difficult choices needed to be decided immediately.

*When you are facing some difficult choices in your life, don't simply give up. Because your life is actually composed of the choices (C) you make between the day of your birth (B) and death (D). This B-C-D phenomenon will be further discussed in my later post regarding my life on the 2nd week of May 2013, which is attending 6th TEDxKAIST.

Finally, I made my decision. I canceled my plan to attend KAIST-ONE Brazil and did the annealing experiment instead. This choice I considered as one of my good decisions. After annealing, I observed that my experiment was success as you can see in the SEM images above. This long time trial and error experiment turned into first time success. Using this result I prepared my lab meeting presentation on Friday and fortunately the responses from the audiences were mainly positive. FYI, in the grad student life lab meeting is one regular meeting where you present the result of the researches you have been conducting during a certain period of time (honestly for me, it is in principle the period between each of my lab meeting turn). In my perspective, this meeting is really important because the discussion happened during lab meeting can enrich your knowledge and sometimes when you're facing some problems in your research, through the discussion, other lab mates or professor may give some suggestion that may help you to solve your problem. Thus, good preparation for lab meeting is required in order to communicate the result of your researches better.

At last, the disappointment of not attending the KAIST-ONE Brazil was totally gone after completing my lab meeting on that Saturday and gaining some positive feedback to my research. Usually, my habit after completing a lab meeting is relaxing my mind after hard preparation of lab meeting. On that week I chose to have some rest and woke up late on Sunday. After waking up I had some brunch with simultaneously watched Safe Haven, adapted from one of Nicholas Sparks romance novels, in my laptop. Watching some movie or TV series is one of my way of relaxing my mind. In the afternoon I decided to have my Sunday afternoon walk. I fully charged my iPhone battery and then went to the  Gap Stream (갑천) in front of  my campus. I walked along the stream while listening to my mixed albums of Maksim & Bond played by my iPhone. I headed to the east where I finally arrived at Hanbat Arboretum (한밭수목원) after 30 minutes of walking.
 

Some pictures taken at Hanbat Arboretum (한밭수목원) East Arboretum

This arboretum is really big. It has two arboretum wings and huge central plaza in between of these arboretums. At this central plaza many events have been held, i.e. Easter mass, cultural festival, food festival, etc. In the central plaza, you are also able to rent various kind of public bicycle and ride it to look around the plaza. But please be noticed that the bicycle can't enter the arboretum. I got caught before while entering the arboretum using my bicycle by the security in front of arboretum's gate. While I was in the arboretum, I spent most of my time in the east arboretum, sightseeing and enjoying the scenery of blossoming flowers in the blissful spring season. I captured many pictures of the flowers as you can see in my picture collection above. In the end, I totally recommend this nice place to hang out, have some picnic and spend some quality time with your family or your significant other.

So, that's the story of my life on the 1st week of May 2013.

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A Brief of My life at KAIST during May 2013

Well, it's been a while since my last post. Nowadays I get inspired by a group of my junior at KAIST (Iwan team) to keep writing in my blog. As you can see in their blog, they decide to run an informative media to promote the higher education in Korea. It is a pretty nice idea for them, considering they're still an undergraduate student (compared to my undergraduate life, I can say this is awesome and inspiring). I guess that it is mainly influenced by their own experience while pursuing study abroad. So, keep posting guys! Good luck for your project ^_^

Now, come back to my story. In this post I want to tell about my life during May 2013. Why May 2013? Some of you that familiar with Korean culture may guess since I live in Korea, this month is special because it is well known as family month (가정의 달). FYI, Korean people are celebrating 3 special days in this single month. The first one is Children's Day (어린이 날) on May 5th, the second one Parents Day (어버이 날) on May 8th, and the last one Teacher's Day (스승의날) on May 15th. Coincidentally, Buddha's birthday (석가탄신일) in Korea this year is celebrated on May 17th, which is adding the number of holiday in this month (Long Weekend Hopefully ^_^)

Interactive advertising of some events held during May 2013 at KAIST. These advertisement were composed of bunch each single event posters which shaped into their own event identity. From left to right: "피아노" literally read as Piano which indicating the event by KAIST Piano Club, Darth Vader's face indicating the event by KAIST Orchestra which will play the original score of Star Wars, and the last one "ᄇᄋᄇ" literally read as BOB which is abbreviation of Ba-O-Bab an a cappella club at KAIST.

However, frankly speaking there is nothing special with May 2013. I just realized in this month I have a quite tight schedule plan other than daily hectic research yet to be accomplished to balance the quality of my life as graduate student. In addition, so far I really enjoy this particular month than any other months during my stay in Korea. So, let's summarize my life in this month:

KAIST-ONE Brazil

My Experimental Results on 1st Week of May 2013

Gap Stream (갑천)

Hanbat Arboretum (한밭수목원)

• 1st week of May: I was struggling with my wafer bonding experiment. Finally, for the first time I succeeded to bond two different silicon (Si) wafers together. I will talk about this research specifically in the later time. In this week I also planned to attend KAIST-ONE Brazil. But due to my experiment schedule, I canceled to attend this event. It was pretty sad in the beginning (T_T), but later after analyzing my successful experimental results, this feeling was completely disappeared. In addition, this choice was made me able to present my research progress nicely in the weekly Lab meeting. As Sunday is considered as weekend, my story of this week was closed with my nice Sunday afternoon walking along the Gap Stream (갑천), sightseeing in the Hanbat Arboretum (한밭수목원) and also watching some nice movies.

KISA Languange and Culture Exchange (KLcX)

KAIST Spring Culture Festival 2013 G.Rium Concert

6th TEDxKAIST event (Choice between Birth and Death)

PIAST & PIACNU 1st Piano Ensemble "OPERA"

• 2nd Week of May: Nothing special happened during the weekdays. However, approaching the weekend I got a quite busy plan. On Thursday I participated in first meeting of KISA Language and Culture Exchange (KLcX), I got a partner to exchange language and culture who comes from China. Through this KLcX event hopefully I can improve my Chinese language ability and make some new friends. On Friday I attended KAIST Spring Culture Festival which featuring G.Rium Concert, professional artists who were performing classical violin and piano. On Saturday I attended two events, first one inspiring 6th TEDxKAIST event (Choice between Birth and Death) and the second one listening to harmonious melody played by PIAST & PIACNU in their 1st Piano Ensemble "OPERA" which was a Piano concert performed using 2 pianos by 4 piano players using in total 8 hands.

Until this article is published, I just passed the second week of May, so the following weeks are considered as my plan.

• 3rd Week of May: In this week I plan to attend KAIST A Cappella "BAOBAB" concert on Wednesday, KAIST-ONE Malaysia on Thursday (will not miss it), Si-KOMO an outbound event held by KAIST-INA & KAIST Orchestra 21st Spring Annual Concert "TRILOGY" (performing the original score from the best three Trilogy movie of all time: LOTR, Pirates of the Carribean, & Star Wars. I've been dreaming for this kind of play) on Friday, and enjoying the rest of long weekend.

KAIST Spring Culture Festival 2013 Korean National Ballet "Sweet Ballet"

• 4th Week of May: There will be KAIST Spring Student Festival started from Mat 20th to 22nd. Even tough this event is mainly organized by undergraduate student, there will be various booth stands that we can visit. Also in the third day of festival there will also be KISA Food Festival. On the weekend, I plan attend the other performance of KAIST Spring Culture Festival while this time will perform Korean National Ballet "Sweet Ballet" (it is a rare occasion tough) and on Saturday I will busy with my other lab mates to host my lab annual homecoming day.

KAIST Spring Culture Festival 2013 Concert (Park Sae Byul & One More Chance)

• 5th Week of May: So far I only have 2 events I'm planning to attend, which are KAIST-ONE China on May 30th (definitely will not miss this event), and the closing performance of KAIST Spring Culture Festival for this semester, Concert (Park Sae Byul & One More Chance).

So, that is summary of my activities during May 2013. You may find the detail description of each week by simply clicking the week in above hyperlink.

Thank you for reading this. Hope you enjoy it

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