2/22/2008
After I got up, I checked my email and went to my (Korean) blog to do the usual daily update. I was surprised at the number of visits. I got almost fifty thousand visits yesterday! How did it happen? I soon found out that one of my entries was selected for a main section of NAVER, which is South Korea’s leading search portal, much like Google. Also, another blog entry was selected for the same portal and put in the recommended open dictionary section, a user-generated online knowledge archive. I was very excited!! My blog is now only less than a month old. Blogging certainly brings us an amazing opportunity to communicate with a lot of new and interesting people. And, the more people that visit my blog the more excited I get about developing new content.
After I finished a big project on February 19, I have been working at a more relaxed pace. Being a freelancer has both bright and dark sides, but having control over my own schedule is one of the greatest advantages. Of course, that is not the case all the time because I have to reorganize my schedule depending on client needs. Anyway, around lunch time today I watched a television show called “Little People, Big World.” This is the only show I watch regularly. It is definitely my favorite! It is a reality show about the Roloffs, a dwarf family.
Actually, they don’t call themselves dwarves, but “little people” (or LP for short). LP is considered a more appropriate name for both dwarves and midgets. Dwarves and midgets are also different. Midgets are smaller than average people, but normally proportioned, whereas dwarves have different body proportions. In the Disney animation, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, the dwarves have different body proportions than Snow White. They have short limbs and heads that look bigger than usual for the size of their body (disproportional).
The Roloff family is an average American family in many ways, who live an ordinary life, but just face different challenges than taller people. I like Mr. Matt Roloff, the father of the family. He is a little person and is an extremely passionate and capable man. He is always dreaming about new projects, and makes those projects happen with amazing courage and tenacious effort. He works in the computer industry, and owns a farm called “Roloff Farms”, a place I really want to visit someday. I respect his personality very much, and even though I am not a little person, I consider him one of my greatest role models.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
What an exciting day!!!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Busy, busy, busy ...
The last few days were very hectic. On the morning after Valentine’s Day, I got an emergency project from a client who needed some work finished by February 19. The client is a well known Korean organization that needed research on how English language websites represent their organization’s issues of concern, and also consultation on how to develop content for their own English language website. It was quite a big project, probably needing at least 1 week, but the client was in an emergency situation so I got only 4 days including the weekend. I’ve worked all day every day since I got the project. On Tuesday, I worked for over 24 hours straight until 5 a.m., slept for 3 hours, and then restarted. I finally got it done and sent it out to my client yesterday.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day
2/15/2008
To celebrate Valentine's Day, we went out to dinner last night at an Italian restaurant called Tucci’s. The restaurant was very crowded. Valentine's Day is probably one of the busiest nights of the year for restaurants. Every time people came into the restaurant, a waiter repeated the same sentence to them, "You're looking at about 45 minutes." I guessed it meant that they should expect to wait for that amount of time, but I couldn’t understand why the phrase 'looking at' was being used. Looking at what? So I asked my husband, "What are those people looking at?" He answered, "It means you will experience waiting for 45 minutes. You are looking at the experience of waiting for 45 minutes." 
As the waiter said, we waited for 45 minutes until we were seated. We both ordered pasta with a light sauce. I love this restaurant because the salad is so fresh and light without heavy dressing, and the pasta sauce is also not as heavy as many other Italian restaurants. The food just tastes perfect for me, and the service is good as well.
After dinner, we got home and had our small personal Valentine's Day party with chocolates, Kahlua, and a Valentine's Day balloon. My husband made a delicious drink blending Kahlua with milk and vanilla ice cream. He brought the drink to me and said in a really sweet voice, "Happy Halloween." Halloween? It’s almost 8 months away (October 31). I was a little confused, but just replied "Happy Valentine's Day." He realized that he made a mistake, and started laughing. He said, "It must’ve been the sweetest 'Happy Halloween' anyone has ever said! I mixed up Halloween and Valentine's Day because they are kind of similar. They are both commercialized holidays celebrated by a lot of people, yet people don't get days off from work." We had a great Valentine’s Day!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Today's word from Diary: nudge
2/13/2008
I went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant tonight. I love shrimp fajitas. Shrimps are grilled with onions and bell peppers in a spicy and sweet sauce. Actually, fajitas were the first meal my husband made for me at the beginning of our relationship. Before he was introduced to Korean food such as Samgyupsal and Jabchae, tacos were his favorite food. Mexican food is deeply integrated into American cuisine.
After the meal, I got a cup of dessert coffee called a 'coffee nudge', and my husband got fried ice cream for dessert. I usually don’t get dessert, but I wanted to try the 'coffee nudge', which was described as hot black coffee mixed with Kahlua, brandy and whip cream. Kahlua is coffee-flavored liquor, and it is the only kind of alcoholic drink I like. Starbucks also produces a similar type of coffee liquor, but it is not as good as Kahlua. I liked my dessert, but I started getting curious about why the drink was called a coffee 'nudge'. Nudge means to push slightly. I guess it got the name because Kahlua, brandy, coffee and whip cream are gently mixed together.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
My experience at American Democratic caucus
2/9/2008
Today at 1:30 I attended a Democratic caucus held in a middle school. It was the first time I've seen a caucus in the United States. As people came into the school, they were assigned to classrooms depending on their home address. In the room I was in, there were around 30 people. When people entered the room, they wrote their names, addresses and phone numbers, and their choice for Democratic Presidential nominee on a sign-in sheet. Some people came in and wrote on the sheet that they were uncommitted, and so had not decided on a Presidential nominee.
An older man was organizing the procedure. Everybody in the room was given a chance to speak for a minute to convince people to vote for their favorite candidate, and to discuss issues related to the choice of nominee. Most people, including my husband, actively engaged in the discussion. The most prominent issue was which candidate would have more of a possibility to defeat John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Of course, all the people in the Democratic caucus were critical of the Republican Party because of Republican efforts to cause the Iraq war and damage civil rights.
The main argument for choosing Hillary over Obama was that she has more experience in politics and knows how to negotiate. On the other hand, Obama supporters argued that Obama has a better capacity to appeal to swing voters than Hillary, also Hillary has a large group of opponents that have formed for the last 16 years since she became the first lady of ex-President Bill Clinton. Some also argued that Obama has the ability to make apathetic young people get involved in politics. The choice of swing voters is crucial because Democrats and Republicans tend to have a roughly equal amount of support in American politics.
My husband and I were sitting at a table with a 20-year-old man that was one of my husband’s former students. The man frequently made funny jokes, saying that he did not want to have a cry baby as president, referring to when Hillary was crying in public, he also said that he didn’t want America to turn into a monarchy ruled by a family for a long time. At the end, people in the room got the chance to change their presidential preference after hearing different opinions. The participants who chose uncommitted at the sign-in made their decision. After everyone made their decision, they were split into groups supporting each candidate. Hillary supporters sat at tables on one side of the room, while Obama supporters sat at tables on the other. Seven people sat on the Clinton side, and 23 people sat on the Obama side.
Interestingly, most of the Hillary supporters in the room were senior ladies, whereas the Obama supporters were more varied in age and gender. My husband also supported Obama. After the split-up, it was time to elect our delegates to represent us in the precinct. Based on the ratio of the number of supporters, Hillary supports got 2 delegates, and Obama supporters got 5 delegates. Then pledge sheets and envelops were distributed to asking the participants to donate money to the Democratic Party. The caucus ended around 2:45 p.m. Later, we found out from the television news that Obama received more than twice as many votes than Hillary in Washington State (Obama 67%, Hillary 32%). That was about the same percentage we had in our room. It was a very interesting experience to see how a caucus worked.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Today's word from Diary: Toss and Turn
2/4/2009
Today is the last day before 'Super Tuesday.' It's the day when 24 states out of 50 states in the U.S. hold caucuses and primary elections. The television news is covered with stories about who will be each party's nominee for president. The star of the movie Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, made an endorsement for Republican Senator John McCain, while his wife endorsed Democratic Senator Barack Obama. Even the Korean news media shows a big interest in what is going to happen on Super Tuesday. One of the main news stories on Korean internet news was "Hillary Clinton tears up again. Will it work again?"
My husband is also very interested in tomorrow's elections. After he got back from school, he watched the news while eating lunch. He looked a little tired, and said "I was very tired last night when I went to bed, but I was tossing and turning for a long time." Toss? That's the word I heard when I played dodge ball in middle school. "Does tossing mean you throw your body around?" I asked. He answered, "When you say tossing and turning, it means you move your body around a lot trying to make yourself comfortable because you can't fall asleep."
I also have a hard time falling asleep at night because I am really a night owl, and have been since my childhood. I am more creative and productive during the night than the day. So even when I had to work from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. at my previous job, I often stayed up until 2-3 a.m. to generate more creative ideas. It could have made me tired during office hours, but I was fine, except that I was exhausted during the weekend. My body doesn’t seem to need as much sleep as average people.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Today's word: fumble, mumble, stumble
2/3/2008
I watched the Super Bowl between the Giants and the Patriots on TV tonight. I've never watched an American football game even on TV because I am not a sports fan. Even during the 2002 Korea-Japan world cup, when a huge crowd of Koreans went out into the streets in red T-shirts, I was still not interested in any of the sports events. However, this time I decided to see what an American football game was like. I was curious about why people are so crazy about it.
While watching the game, I asked my husband whether players fought over the ball. He answered no, unless a player fumbles. Fumble? I remember he used the word when he dropped an incense stick the other day. I teased him for being clumsy. I looked up the word in an online dictionary, and found that to fumble means "to touch or handle clumsily or idly" or "to drop a ball that is in play" (in football) [American Heritage dictionary].
This word reminds me of another word "mumble". As a non-native English speaker, I really dislike it when a person is mumbling because it makes it hard to understand. I think mumbling is kind of like being clumsy or idle when making a sound. To me, mumbling is like eating your words inside your mouth. In a dictionary, it means "to utter indistinctly by lowering the voice or partially closing the mouth" [American Heritage dictionary].
Another word that comes to my mind is "stumble", which means "to miss one's step in walking or running; trip and almost fall" or "to act or speak falteringly or clumsily"[American Heritage dictionary]. All three of these words ending with '–umble' seem to mean 'to do something clumsily.' Interesting coincidence I found!
