About Joel…

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was taking the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul a couple of months ago. I received an e-mail telling me last night that based on my test scores I had qualified for the next stage in the process. I realize there are at least two more stages in this process, but as I really hadn’t done much to prepare for the exam this came as a pleasant surprise to me. I might be heading back to the D.C. area sooner than I had expected if I am invited to participate in the interview portion.

A couple of weeks ago I began “teaching” a professor from the French literature department. I say “teach” because this professor, who is also the president of the Korean Linguistics Society, is quite good at English. He is only having these sessions with me because he is scheduled to chair a semester this June sponsored by the foundation and wanted to brush the cobwebs off his English in preparation. Our conversations have been quite stimulating. Aside from the fact that I have to walk up the hill and to the middle of campus, it has actually been something I’ve looked forward to since it started three weeks ago. Among the interesting conversations we have had was one that was instigated by a verbal slip on my part. In passing I referred to 이동사 as the Korean equivalent to the English ‘to be’ or French ‘être.’ He corrected me almost instantly citing that 이동사 was inseparable from the object to which it related. Because according to 맞춤법 (Korean rules for spacing or spelling) 이동사 becomes one entity with the object it is attached to. (This of course is not the case with the negative form 아니다 which maintains its independence from the object). I asked if this wasn’t simply a technicality because the role remained the same despite the inseparable nature. He then suggested a sample sentence, “나는 자장면입니다” and asked me to translate it. (자장면(炸醬麵), often written as 짜장면 and 짜짱면, are noodles in a bean paste sauce often served at Korean Chinese restaurants).

At first glance the sentence would appear to say, “I am noodles.” However, and the professor knows I speak Korean and that because of that I would catch on to this, when used in different contexts it can translate to a variety of different expressions and meanings. If your friends ask you what you want to eat, that same sentence could be used to say “I want noodles” or “I’ll have noodles.” Or when the food you ordered has arrived that same sentence could be used to express “I ordered the noodles” or “The noodles are mine.” And in line with the first sentence it could also be used to say, “My nickname is noodles” or the nonsensical English phrase “I am noodles.”

Anyway it was quite an interesting discussion that came about because of a passing remark I made, which if I had thought about in greater detail in advance I could have determined was not actually true.

Carmelo Anthony was arrested for drunk driving yesterday. I hope this leads to a suspension in Denver’s final game, which they go on to lose to Memphis (unlikely even without Melo unfortunately) and miss out on the playoffs. I have always hated Melo, but after his flagrant foul on Deron Williams the other day my hate has reached new heights.

*Unfortunately Denver is the 8th seed in this year’s NBA playoffs. Fortunately, with the dive the Jazz took against the Spurs they have secured a first round date against the Yao-less rockets. In the talented West, that’s about as good a spot as you can be in right now.

I have been trouble typing in Korean on my computer lately. The cursor automatically advances turning a basic sentence like “난 니가 좋아” into a garbled mess looking like “나ㄴ 닉ㅏ 조ㅎ아.” If I type quickly enough I can get it to look correctly as I did with the first sentence, but it is by no means a lasting solution to the problem. All of my homework to date has required that I go to school because it’s just not feasible writing an entire paper with my computer behaving like this. Other symptoms of the same problem appear to be that my laptop will no longer drift into hibernation mode after an hour or so, when I open a compose message on gmail it starts out with a “ÿ” symbol rather than a blank field, and on Java crossword puzzles on the New York Times and Yahoo the cursor advances automatically leaving boxes in its wake. I have theorized that this might be the result of a jammed key, but all efforts to clean between keys has left me no better off. I have tried erasing and reinstalling the Korean IME on the control panel to no avail. If anyone has any ideas as to what the problem might be or as to how I would go about rectifying it, I would be most anxious to hear them. I don’t really have the desire to reformat my computer, especially if it turns out that this is just a hardware problem.

Our school campus is covered with cherry blossoms. Some friends and I got together on Saturday afternoon to have a picnic and hang out beneath the flowers. It was a good day all in all.

So I didn’t post anything after taking the 논문자격시험 (Thesis Qualifying Exams) a couple of weeks ago because I was pretty sure I hadn’t passed. The test time was limited to only an hour and instead of options I was required to answer every question on the test. The format and the short time took me by surprise to say the least, but the fact that I haven’t written much in Korean besides text messages for the past six months or so seriously hurt the flow of my essays.  Luckily new regulations had been instated stating that I could submit my proposal anyway without passing the exams so I decided to not sweat it too much. However, the results were posted last night and it turns out I passed. I should have passed last semester and failed. I should have failed this semester and passed. Now all that stands between my thesis and me is actually writing my thesis. How hard could that be?

Yesterday was White Day, and to commemorate such a wonderful day I made beef stroganoff. It seemed fitting because stroganoff is white, I am white, the rice I served it over is white and apparently it comes from Russia and a good portion of that country is covered in white. It turned out quite well. I made stroganoff before in America, but I used cream of mushroom soup then. This time however, I just used sour cream. You can spread this over noodles, bread, potatoes or rice.

*White Day is the day that men buy women presents and candy. The counterpart to White Day is Red Day on February 14th, when girls give their boyfriends chocolates and presents.

Anyway the recipe I used is below:
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I also made dinner for a friend of mine for her birthday too. I cooked spaghetti and meatballs. It was the first time I made handmade meatballs before. It is also one of only a handful of times that I have made a tomato sauce. (I usually make cream sauce) The thing I was most happy about was the creamy tomato soup I made though. It tasted great. You can also see the macaroni salad in the middle.

If you are interested in the recipes, I got them of the Internet and have posted them below:

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I have been cooking a lot lately. It has been fun to start making things again. I made several batches of macaroni salad. It keeps well and it is quite easy to make. Chop up celery, onions and bell peppers. Boil macaroni. Remove macaroni after it is soft and drain and rinse with cold water. Mix the macaroni with tuna, mayo, celery, bell peppers, salt and pepper. (I also add corn.)

Today I try my hand at the thesis qualifying exams again. I would link to the previous post where I stated how I felt I was unfairly cheated out of passing all of them last time, but such a post no longer exists. I only have one to take today so I should be able to devote all of my time to it. In other test news I also took the foreign service exam last Friday.  I felt like I did alright, but with the thousands of people out there taking the exam I might have to do better than alright. Anyway, after today I hopefully won’t have another test for at least a couple more months. I need a break from testing.

Happy White Day!