Yep, my post again is about The Amazing Race. I've been watching this show continuously for 2 weeks and completed 4 seasons so far (13,14,16,22). So, I will briefly summarize the race in those 4 seasons in chronological order as I watched them started from season 16. Of course this summary will be based on my perspective. If you want to read the unbiased summary of the race, you can click the link in title below which will direct you to Wikipedia page of related season or click this wikia link.
This is the first season I watched in my past two weeks. In this season I didn't really have favorite team, but I had some teams that I didn't want them to be the winner and I admired the pretty Caite Upton despite of her past "sin" hehe...
Challenges in Germany. (Left) Eating a plate of sauerkraut. (Right) Sharing a boot of beer
In this race they start from U.S.(L.A.)-Chile-Argentina-Germany-France-Seychelles-Malaysia-Singapore-China-U.S.(San Francisco), made this season's route to be one of my favorite routes in this show. Chile and Argentina challenges weren't too fascinating for me, I already mentioned some challenges performed in Chile and Argentina in my previous post. However, starting from Germany leg the race become more fascinating. In Germany they had to bungee jump, choose between playing football or eating sauerkraut (non-spicy-German version of kimchi), which I believed is very sour and not delicious hehe... The next challenge was sharing a boot of beer (approx. 1.2 L). The next leg was held at France which had classic and wine theme. In the wine theme, the challenges included looking for a marked bottle of wine inside a wine warehouse and choosing between harvesting the marked grapes over one square kilometer farm or constructing a pyramid of champagne coupes and pour champagne from the top of pyramid without breaking the coupes.
The next leg was continued to Seychelles, which was the first time I heard about it when I watched this season. Apparently it is one of tropical paradise located in Indian Ocean near to Africa, and soon be listed in my ideal honeymoon destination. After that the race went to 2 countries in South East Asia (Malaysia and Singapore), which I believed if I had joined the race I would have benefited, since I came from Indonesia hehe... In this South East Asia countries they performed the challenges related to the local Chinese people's tradition. One amazing thing happened during the race in Malaysia, where the runner up of this season (Jet & Cord) started from the last place, completed a speed bump and finished first and the end of the leg, leaving Steve & Allie who started first in the beginning of the leg to finish last at the end of leg resulted in their elimination. This was marked as the first to happen during The Amazing Race's history and also referred to a passage in the NIV Bible, Matthew 20:16, So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
In Singapore challenge, the tension between two teams (Brent & Caite
with Carol & Brandy) got intense. Their problem initially sparked
since the first leg by the involvement of the actual winner of the
season (Dan & Jordan) who first made fun of Caite because of her "sin"
in their conversation with Carol & Brandy. Carol & Brandy who
were slightly arrogant, ever since always made fun of Caite and
underestimated her, resulted in not so good relation between two teams.
Finally, in the Singapore leg Brent and Caite got chance to U-Turn
Carol & Brandy which later eliminated Carol & Brandy from the
race after finishing last on the leg. This matter disappointed Carol
& Brandy and they never forgave Caite and it continued until the
finish line, where they confronted Caite because of her decision to
U-Turned them, making this finish line one of the memorable finish lines in
The Amazing Race. Actually I was happy when Carol & Brandy were
eliminated, because in my opinion both of them are arrogant b*tches
(sorry, this is only my opinion after observing their move during the
race).
Challenges in China. (Left) Making la mian noodle. (Right) Solving giant puzzles.
Departing from Singapore the race continued to China. This is one my favorite The Amazing Race destination (the others are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and New Zealand). In China they had challenge to make 1 kg of la mian noodles under cold weather and had opportunity to meet the the "extreme" two men from China, He Pingping world shortest man and Bao Xishun world tallest man. The la mian noodles was an extremely difficult task, knowing that since then I appreciate every noodle that I eat. This episode was also dedicated to He Pingping, since he passed away several months after the race and before the episode was aired. May he rest in peace. The other challenge including solving a giant puzzle. After solving the puzzle, they distributed they 96 pieces of puzzle into 96 people who later flipped the puzzle and revealed their next clue.
Challenge in last leg in LDAC
The final leg, the top 3 teams flew from Shanghai to San Francisco. At Shanghai airport, initially the first two teams who came were Brent & Caite followed by Jet & Cord. However, while waiting for the ticket counter to open, Dan & Jordan came and put their backpacks between Brent & Caite and Jet & Cord backpacks without known by Jet & Cord, because they were sleeping while waiting in front of the ticket counter. It made Dan & Jordan to be the second team to get the airplane ticket. It actually pissed Jet & Cord, but due to their good personality they didn't confront Dan & Jordan. Moreover, during the flight Dan & Jordan played some dirty trick by persuading the flight attendant to promote them into the first class for free so they had better access from the airplane exit. Later this gave Dan & Jordan advantage during the final leg and made them the actual winner of this season. Honestly, I hate them to be the winner, since they were the dirtiest player in this season, started by igniting the heat between Carol & Brandy and Brent & Caite, followed by the tricks they played during the final leg. Since those things weren't prohibited by The Amazing Race's rules, they were still the legitimate winner of this race. Fortunately, this made Jet & Cord to have one more chance by participating in The Amazing Race 18: Unfinished Business. In this final leg, team had a memorable task which was experiencing to produce an visual effect animation in Letterman Digital Art Center (LDAC), which previously produced Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Cool right, isn't it?
Hufht... It's been a while since my last post. I was occupied by many other things which distracted me from writing post in this blog. I have yet to finish my previous post series, even though it's already July (almost August) not May anymore. Hufht... time flies so fast...
In the weekend of July 27th-28th 2013 I spent my time "ineffectively", which was watching Youtube channels. I started with videos from my favorite Youtube channel, yep it is Wongfu Productions. Then I jumped to the neighboring channel, which was KevJumba where I saw one of his video playlists showing his most amazing adventure with his own father. Then, it suddenly struck my mind, I haven't watched again one of my favorite U.S. reality TV series for a couple of years now. Can you guess what is it?
The Amazing Race U.S. Edition Logo (New logo started from season 14 according to its Wikipedia page)
yep, it is The Amazing Race, one of the most greatest reality TV shows which featuring 11 teams of 2 persons race each others around the world competing for the grand prize of US$ 1 million.
After watching KevJumba's playlist, I started googling for The Amazing Race. The first result from Google was unfortunately not available in my location. It was The Amazing Race official Youtube channel, where you can view the episode from any season of The Amazing Race U.S. Editions. Disappointed at first, but then I saw the third result which was a playlist of complete episode of The Amazing Race Season 16. Thanks to hensug03 who kindly uploaded the complete season 16 to Youtube (and later I realized he also uploaded season 13-22, The Amazing Guy). Supported by my "procrastination" ability (hehehe...) I watched the entire 12 episodes of season 16 within 18 hours (I promise I will not procrastinate like this again hehehe...). So, in this opportunity I will review and introduce The Amazing Race program generally, and maybe some of specific details example related to this show will be referred particularly to season 16, which is still fresh in my memory.
The Amazing Race, started back at 2001 by CBS is one of the most consistent reality TV shows which is aired consecutively until the most recent 22th season in the period of 13 years. This most competitive show gives opportunity for 11 lucky teams in each season to travel across the globe, visit the exotic places and sometimes even most remote places on earth, finish some challenges which test not only physically but also emotionally, in order to compete for the grand prize in the finish line for US$ 1,000,000. Each season consists of 12 episodes, where almost in each episodes each team which finishes last in the Pit Stop may be eliminated. However, there are some non-elimination leg during the race to ensure the number of team competing in the final leg is around 3 teams. But of course this non-elimination leg doesn't come without any cost, in the next leg the non-eliminated team will do an extra task to be completed only by them before catch up again in the race with the other team. This is called as Speed Bump. This speed bump may sometimes be a bottleneck if you can't complete it and it can danger your position in the following leg. But if you can finish it and catch up the race, you may still compete with the other teams. In season 16, one team who started last from the leg start, got speed bumped, finished first in the end of the leg. So, anything can happen in this race.
Tightrope Walking in The Amazing Race Season 16
In my opinion, in this race anything can happen, so anyone has equal chance to win the race. To join this race, as I summarize, each team needs to have good physical strength, good emotional stability, strong passion, good persistence, not easily giving up, to be smart, good personality, social interaction and collaboration, good adaptability, good communication and persuasion skill, good map reading and driving skill, good running, cycling and swimming skill, and the last but not least is to have good luck. The good physical strength and emotional stability is required because in each leg, all the team will face challenges in form of Road Block and Detour which will not only examine them physically, but also mentally. In season 16, the first road block is walk across a tightrope the length of a football field (360 ft or 110 m) suspended 120 feet (37 m) above the ground. If you doesn't have good strength to maintain the walk on the rope and can't overcome the fear of height, you'll be easily lose in the challenge. In addition, if you are in race with the other team in the same road block, you need to have strong passion, good persistence and not easily giving up, in order your maintain your position not to be overtaken by the other team or crawling to better position. If you give up during the challenge, then you'll get penalty of 4 hours which will be killing you in the race.
U-Turn Symbol in The Amazing Race
To be smart is required, especially when you're in a detour. Smart enough to choose which challenge to take, and smart enough to choose who to do the challenge. If you choose the wrong challenge, you can either give up or take the other challenge in the detour, but again it will take your time, so be smart is important. But, if during detour you get U-Turn by the other team who are ahead of your position, then you must finish both challenges in detour. That's why here you need to have good personality and social interaction. Because in this race, you will interact socially with other team and if you have good personality you may have chance not to be U-turn by the other team. In season 16, one team got U-turn solely based on personal matter toward the other team, so this is good example to maintain good personality and social interaction. The good collaboration will need to be performed especially when you get in Intersection, where two teams will join forces to complete the challenges.
I mentioned good adaptability, because this is a race around the world, so you will move to approximately 5 different continents and 10 countries for the course of 3-4 weeks. So you will not stay in one place for very long time, you need to adapt easily with the environment, and then move again and adapt again. Sometimes moving can be from the hot tropical weather to the freezing cold weather because we travel to different part of the world. If you can't well adapt, get sick and need to be hospitalized, it will slow you down in the race. Because visiting different countries, you will face the communication is not easy. Not all country use English as their official language, and not all people can speak English. In fact, according to Wikipedia page, English is only the third most common native language after Chinese and Spanish. So, my advice before participating in this competition, you need to learn a little bit of Chinese and Spanish. In this race you'll need to buy transportation ticket, either airplane, bus, train, or ship, and if you have good communication and persuasion skill you will have some advantage to persuade the ticketing sales to give you better position in the transportation and will help you during the course of the race.
Good map reading and driving skill is obviously needed, since during the course of the race you'll be required to drive yourself using the car provided by the show organizer. This car is not always automatic, sometimes it is manual handling, and the traffic condition can be different from each country depends on which hand-side driving traffic policy they use (check this page to view the right- or left-hand traffic policy around the world). While driving the car, your partner in the team need to figure out the way to go by using map (GPS is prohibited and not provided) thus you need to be able to read map or you may get lost and holding you up during the race. Since this is race, you'll do a lot of running. Make sure you practice to run both sprint and marathon before participating. Of course swimming sometimes is required, both in calm water like lake or in the wavy water like in the open ocean, you need either to be able to swim or get drown. One more thing is cycling, you won't want anyone beat you because you can ride a bicycle.
The last important thing to have is a good luck. This is also important, because if you're leading the race but in the middle you have a bad luck, you may get eliminated also. Some examples, in the opening leg of season 16, actually the first 3 teams arrived at the LAX would be able to take the first flight. But since the airplane got some maintenance and took some times, the first three teams finally departed together with the rest of the other teams. In most of the challenges that required looking for something, some teams may got lucky by finding it first than the other team, this is obvious the role of good luck. The last one, in the final leg of season 16, the bad luck of choosing the right taxi cab eliminated their chance in winning US$ 1 million.
Bora-Bora Skydiving Experience
This race is truly amazing, it gives the competing team to visit the most exotic place in Earth such as Bora-Bora and Seychelles Island. Opportunity to do extreme things you've never thought of, such as skydiving and viewing the lagoon of Bora-Bora from 3000 m height, riding a helicopter, motorboat, jet ski, etc. Also because of traveling around the world, you'll be able to experience the local life in each country expressed by either Road Block or Detour challenge you take in each leg. As example, in season 16 when they visited Chile they experienced how to dress a llama. In Argentina, they experience cowboy life of lassoing some target. Tasting some boot of beer and sauerkraut in Germany, tasting champagne in France, and even making your own lamian noodle in China. This race totally gives an unforgettable one in a lifetime experience.
Last, some additional tips is trying not to be eliminated in each leg. It is okay if you can't be the first team to finish in every leg, but the important one is to keep racing and get to final leg to have chance to win the grand prize of US$ 1 million. Sometimes, due to the transportation availability, your position may all be reset in each leg, so you can try to finish first in the following leg. The good thing about finishing first in a leg that you will receive an additional reward such as holiday trip, money prize, HD TV, etc. This prize will be worth, even in the end you don't have the grand prize, at least you saved one. You can get more information in the Wikipedia page of The Amazing Race. Hufht... I hope someday I can join The Amazing Race.
Now come to the second part of my story on the 2nd week of May 2013.
The Introduction
In this post I will briefly explain about 6thTEDxKAIST event held in my campus on May 11th 2013. As you learned in my previous blogpost, TEDxKAIST is an independent local event held with the spirit of TED: ideas worth spreading. The event I attended was the 6th event of TEDxKAIST since its first installment in 2010. This event was actually my second TEDxKAIST event, but this was the first time I officially registered as participant in TEDxKAIST event. In my previous TEDxKAIST event, I was been a substitute of my lab mates who registered but couldn't attended the event. Even though I didn't attend all talks in 5th TEDxKAIST event, I was amazed by the remaining talks. After participating in that event, I later decided not to miss the registration of next TEDxKAIST event again.
The Theme
Early promotional poster of 6th TEDxKAIST event
That's why when I first saw the announcement of the 6th TEDxKAIST event, I prepared myself to be aware of the registration date. As you can see in the early promotional poster, even though the list of speakers hadn't confirmed yet at that time, the theme of 6th TEDxKAIST event itself was already eye-catching. In their homepage about this 6th event, they posted a quote by Jean Paul Sartre who stated that
"Life is Choice between Birth and Death: B-C-D"
When I first saw this quote it really struck my mind. For me this quote is not only inspiring, blowing my mind, but also opening my mind to face the reality that I fully responsible of my life by all the Choices those I made or will make. I committed myself to attend this event, so at first day of registration I registered at TEDxKAIST homepage and was later notified to be one of 100 lucky participants of the 6th TEDxKAIST event.
The Souvenirs
Souvenirs from 6th TEDxKAIST event. From left to right: Lock&Lock's Balance Tumbler, Pen and Notebook, Smart Phone's Screen Cleaner, Small notes with T-Shirt shape, TEDxKAIST Sticker.
Finally, at the day of the event I went to the designated place and I registered myself before the event started and got this souvenir package. To be honest when first time I received the souvenir bag I was a little bit disappointed because they didn't give the TEDxKAIST's hoodie as they did in 5th TEDxKAIST event. But anyway when I checked the souvenir one by one, I found that they gave me a Lock&Lock's Balance Tumbler with infuser, so I can put tea leaves, brewing them, and take it wherever I go. These souvenirs itself exceeded the amount of registration fee (KRW 20,000), so finally I took them happily (later I heard that hoodie is only distributed as souvenir on the Fall semester TEDxKAIST event)
The Organizer Team
The organizer of TEDxKAIST event are a professional team. The way they handled the event from the preparation, announcement, till the day of the event manifested their professionalism. The event was started at 2 pm sharp, and they didn't tolerate any late participants (the room was closed when the event started and one of organizers guarded the door). In my opinion this policy is made to help the speaker to focus on their talk without any disruption from late participant who entering the room while talk is being delivered. Since this TEDxKAIST event is located in Korea, the main language of the event is Korean. Luckily, since TED event is a internationally-renowned event, there is a real-time interpreter to translate the Korean talk into English. If you're not familiar with Korean, you should ask the organizer while you're registering to give you a headphone. Later during the talk, the interpreter who stays at a special booth inside the room will translate the talk and deliver it to you via those headphones.
The Talks
This 6th TEDxKAIST event was divided into 4 main sections. The first section consisted of two talks from local speakers and one TED talk from TED.com. The first section as designed by the organizer focused on the impact of individual's choices on the individual and/or the environment around the individual. The first two speakers were Sonya S. Kwak (곽소나) & Myeong Seok Oh (오명석). Their complete background can be learned from this link (click the Speakers - Kor/Eng tab to view their background detail). The talk then followed by a TED Talk video of Sheena Iyengar presented in TEDGlobal 2010. The event was then continued by the second session which was a coffee break and an ideation session. After discussion in the ideation session the talks were resumed. In this third session the talk was started by a TED Talk video of Dan Gilbert followed by two talks by Jeong Weon Lee (이정원) & SooA Yeo (여수아). This third section focused on the decisions for the group by the individual and the choice we make for all. The fourth or last session was an after party with dinner provided and interaction with the all speakers were possible.
Here I summarized the 6th TEDxKAIST event solely based on my own experience and memory, with some additional features from a related KAIST Herald article. Hope you enjoy it
The 1st Section
The 1st Speaker - Sonya S. Kwak
Sonya S. Kwak, the 1st speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event
Sonya S. Kwak is currently a Professor of Industrial Design in Ewha Womans University. She is an alumni of KAIST, Dept. of Industrial Design. She works on the research project related to Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Her talk entitled "The People I Met, The Robot We Made" basically shared her own experience of how she made her robots. She told how the interaction with the people she met led her to decide her robot's design and function. As I quoted from the KAIST Herald article (Vol. 122, Page 4, May 2013) her robots made her famous, won several trophies and exposed to media several times. She introduced us to several robots she created. The first one was "Mung", an Emotional Interaction Robot. This robot can express its emotional feeling by created some "bruising" marks on its face. These bruising marks are made by using LED. Initially this robot was conceived to be a substitute to "swear jar" and applied to young age children to teach them the bad influence of profanity. For the example, when someone says bad words to the robot, the bruising will comes out indicating that it is hurt. Otherwise, when someone says good word to the robot, the bruising will goes away. This robot is also able to be re-programmed to be "referee" during sport games. As shown in the its World Cup 2010 promotional video, it could detect foul or injury by its bruising.
Mung, Emotional Interaction Robot on World Cup 2010 promotional video
Hangulbot performance
The last robot that she introduced, and also the robot I remembered the most was the "Hangulbot". This robot was inspired while she saw her daughter played Lego. She realized that the shape of Lego could resembles the Hangeul (Korean alphabet) character as the building block. So then she decided to make the Hangulbot, for specific motivation to teach her daughter the Korean alphabet while her daughter is playing (some kind of Edutainment) and to widespread the Hangeul internationally. The basic building block of Hangulbot consisted of five blocks and it can pronounce over 10000 Korean syllables. You can see the Hangulbot's demonstration in the video above. If you want to learn more about Sonya S. Kwak you can watch the following video. She also showed us some funny entertainment video that she directed using the Keepon robot on her previous collaboration work, featuring Korean music group, Peppertones. Enjoy the video.
Interview with Sonya S. Kwak in ArirangTV - The INNERview
Keepon performance (Korean version)
The 2nd Speaker - Myeong Seok Oh
The second speaker was Myeong Seok Oh, currently a student in Korea University. His talk entitled "The Easiest Way to Change the World". How? At the end of his talk he told us about it. During his talk he described his experience when once he almost committed suicide. However, the choice of not killing himself later affected and inspired a lot of people with similar problems. As I remembered from the talk, he made a website where people who has problem can share about their problem, and he will respond to them, urge them not be devastated by their problem and help them find their way to solve the problem. There was one story that a school-girl wrote in the website about her problem and planned to kill herself, and when he responded to the girl, the girl suddenly felt that there is somebody out there that listen to her problem and she didn't feel alone anymore.
Myeong Seok Oh, the 2nd speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event
In summary of this talk in KAIST Herald, Speaker Myeong Seok Oh spoke about his efforts and campaigns to encourage people to speak up at difficult times rather than blaming themselves for not being able to properly cope with the situation. His active and constants works made the city of Seoul awarded him special prize to recognize his effort, made him as the youngest award recipients at that event. At the end of his talk he concluded the easiest way to change the world is by building an "ARK" at one time. He borrowed this passage from his favorite movie Evan Almighty. "ARK" is abbreviation of Act of Random Kindness. What an inspiring talk, isn't it? Let's ry to build "ARK" from now on.
The 1st TED Talk Video - Sheena Iyengar
The following talk was a related TED Talk with the 6th TEDxKAIST's theme, taken from TEDGlobal 2010. The speaker was Sheena Iyengar and her talk entitled "The Art of Choosing". This was a pretty good and inspiring talk. How she conducted her study about how people choose was really interesting. The introduction about this talk as summarized in TED.com is: Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the
choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices
(Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking
research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our
decisions. Please also find out and enjoy the talk by watching the video below.
1st TED Talk video presented in 6th TEDxKAIST event
The 2nd Section
The Coffee Break & The Ideation Session
After the 1st section we had a coffee break (Dunkin' Donuts sponsored the donuts and coffee) followed by an ideation session. In this ideation session we were randomly grouped into 10 small groups (by special sticker attached to our name tag) and had a topic to be discussed among the participants in the group. I regretted this ideation session because it's mainly conducted in Korean. In my opinion this is a very good session, where we can exchange ideas with the other member in the group. Since the interest of foreigners to attend this event is pretty high, I wish in the later event the organizer will predetermine which group to conduct the ideation session in English or Korean and not directly pre-distribute the participant. I hope they let us the participants to be able to choose which group we want to enter (Korean/English group) with presetting the maximum number of participant in each group. I believe this method will promote good relation among Koreans and foreigners. Anyway, I need to tell this to the organizer, not just complaining here haha... After concluding the ideation session, four participant from different group volunteered to give presentation about what they discussed during ideation session, and there's a prize for best presenter.
The 3rd Section
The 2nd TED Talk Video - Dan Gilbert
The third section was begun by the the TED Talk video of Dan Gilbert whose talk entitled "The Surprising Science of Happiness". This talk was also pretty good and inspiring. He divided the happiness into two, "natural happiness" occurs when we get what we really wanted, and "synthetic happiness" the happiness we choose to pursue when we don't get what we really wanted. The discussion of synthetic happiness brought this talk into the 6th TEDxKAIST because of the similarity to the choosing theme. The summary of this talk as written in the TED.com: Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea
that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our "psychological
immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as
planned. He says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often
wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in
his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, "Stumbling on Happiness". You can watch his talk by playing the following video
2nd TED Talk video presented in 6th TEDxKAIST
The 3rd Speaker - Jeong Weon Lee
Jeong Weon Lee, the 3rd speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event
Frankly speaking, from all speakers in the 6th TEDxKAIST event, only his talk I didn't really focus and catch the relation to the event theme. It's because either his talk was less interesting than the other or mainly I was sleepy at that time (even though I already had 2 cup of Americano during coffee break). So, I just put the review of his talk as written in the KAIST Herald aricle: Speaker Jeong Weon Lee, senior researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI), emphasized collaboration over teamwork. According to him, Daedok "Teukgoo" (Innopolis) should now rename itself as Daedeok "Japgoo" (looking for workers) to welcome many fields of study as possible. Only then will true collaboration work to produce great creativity ideas.
The 4th Speaker - SooA Yeo
SooA Yeo, the 4th speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event
The last speaker is currently an undergraduate student in the Dept. of Physics KAIST. His talk entitled "10분으로 만드는 아름다운 세상" which means "10 minutes to make a beautiful world" (according to Google translate). In his talk, he initially described that he previously joined a volunteering program to give tutorial to high school student. However, because the high request of tutorial and sometimes the tutorial location couldn't be easily reached, he started to think alternative way to keep his volunteering work going on. His breakthrough was made by creating the free online resources of pre-university level education namely Chalk Academy.
In my opinion this program is similar to the previously existed Khan Academy, but the approach used in Chalk Academy is a little bit different. He (SooA Yeo) started the Chalk Academy by uploading the tutorial video to the internet, which video shows the tutorial by writing the course material on "chalkboard" (I guessed this is where the name came from). This substitutes the role on previous face to face tutorial method, without getting rid of the direct tutorial sensation. This method overcomes the problem stated before and starts getting known nationwide. He said the reason he made this online study program based on his believe that the internet service in Korea is capable to reach throughout the country. At last he gave his advice "공부하다가 모른다고 포기하지마" which means "During study if you find some difficulties, do not give up" (maybe he suggested to visit his Chalk Academy website to whom finds difficulty during study)
The 4th Section
The After Party
After the 4th talk, the event was concluded and there was an after party. To join this after party you need to pay additional fee (KRW 10000). The dinner was provided, which Domino's Pizzas and some wines were being served. This section also opened up opportunity to interact among the participant and the speakers. However, because of my another schedule (later told in part 3 of this blog post series) I chose not to join the after party.
The Conlusion
This concludes my summary of 6th TEDxKAIST event. In spite of my little disappointment regarding the souvenirs and ideation session, overall the 6th TEDxKAIST event was really good. I'm really looking forward to participating the next event in the fall semester.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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-ONEBrazil. 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.
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.
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.
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.
