Blog Post#2 What Color Is The Flower?

 Even before you start to read this post, think what color you think of when it says 'colorless'? Not like a person is colorless, but the literal meaning of it; having no color.

 It was the summer, about a month before I came to USA for the first time. The break was long, and I had nothing to do at home. I had to stay in my old house in Korea, and the saddest thing was that the house was even located in a mountain, so it would take 40 minutes to go down the mountain, and 30 minutes to get to the nearest town. The bus time wasn't even often, I usually just decide to stay at home rather than to take two hours to enjoy an hour. The bellybutton can't be bigger than its stomach. What I did was to snack on some food and watch some random shows on TV at the couch, or sit in front of the world slowest computer you can ever imagine, and test my patience. Still 24-hour-long day was long for me to waste like that. As having a lot of time, there comes a lot of thought about everything. I sometimes sat in the office room, where many books were stored, and read old stories I used to read years ago. Then, one story that I read on one day, just came to my mind. The story was about a flower having beautiful colors. She was so generous that she gave all the colors to the other flowers and finally, ended up having nothing left. The God watched the flower shivering in the snow, feeling sympathy and told the snow to give her a color of its. So I thought, 'what color was the flower then?' What color do you think it was?

 I'd never thought that colorless and invisible can be different. It was just that month that made me so sensitive about everything, and enlightened me. After having few days of thinking and research on the super-duper slow internet (Yes, that's the reason why it took even 'few days!'), I still could find some people had thought same thing as I did. I determined the word 'invisible' is the color that lets the light go through, so it reflects the color whatever behind the color. BUT, being colorless is way different. colorless is dark and lightless. To let you know easier, it is similar to the color black (at this point, I found that black, and dark is different), but a little not completely. I didn't know if people around me would accept my idea about it, but my friend told me to shut up and to play starcraft with them. Well, no one really cared (or some of them were strongly against me, being so conservative that they won't listen to me!), but I'll try to describe it here, on this post, again.

 As most of the people in the world think, when it is invisible or colorless, you can't see the object. However, in my opinion, colorless is black, to add more detail, it is dark. (Time out! Black is a color reflected by the light, but dark is when there's NO light and performs the darkness) Here comes a little science we learned in elementary school. There is an object, light and the eyes. In order to see the object, the light comes through the eyes first, then see the object. To the sub-conclusion, LIGHT equals to COLOR. Close your eyes and now what color do you see? It's black, more likely dark. Many people say colorless is same with invisible. if you are one of them, here's one more example coming. Imagine you are in a room that has no window. You closed the door and turned the lights off. Unless you are seeing the outside of the room somehow through the wall, the room is dark. Agreed? Drawing to the conclusion;


                 SUN                         l                          SUN
                  /                             l                              ＼
                /                               l                                 ＼
              /                                 l                                    ＼     
            /       O                        l                            X         ＼       
          /                                     l                                           ＼
       ↙                                      l                                              ↘
EYESㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ>OBJECT          l             EYESㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ>OBJECT

 ∴Dark = No light
 ∴No light ≠ Invisible, No light = No color
 ∴No color = Colorless
 ∵Colorless = Dark


 This is all I wanted to write about. I assume someone can throw literary questions, but I'm sure I can give higher-leveled explanation if I could use my own language. If any of you readers have any opinions about it, please comment! I would love to talk about it.

Blog Post#1 Stranger in a Strange Land

 I experienced a lot of situations indicate 'Stranger in a Strange Land', just like any other teenagers but a little bit more, I believe. Even little tiny things but bother you more than people think when they hear about it, and I assume all of us have experienced that kind of situation. The most common 'Strange Land' is the new school. Especially when you're in high school and especially the first week, sometimes it can be the first month- of the new school year. It makes you almost cry when you get to eat lunch alone by yourself (but then when someone who you slightly remember the face, comes and sits by you, there's no way to describe how adorable he/she is at that moment).

 I've already been to five schools since I was seven. I notice, the younger you're, it's easier to get along with new friends. When I was nine, I could just walk up to the play ground and make ten friends right away without knowing each others' names.

 Ever since I was ten years old, I started to move around my place. The scale wasn't that big at first; from Korea to China. The ticket was just cheap as $70, the time up in the air didn't even take an hour but we still had to drive a couple of hours to get to the town. I somehow made good friends on the first day of the school, and what I am really proud of is that I wasn't alone when I had the first lunch. Well, to shorten it, going to school in China was still easy for me to adapt. Everything was sort of similar as life in Korea, but language. I can't deny my Chinese reading and writing skills suck. Not even exaggerating, I had a hard time learning writing and reading, and now, me being in USA proves it- Imagine learning five thousands characters and still cannot even read a book, how frustrating? I couldn't find any interest in that. However, I say my speaking and listening comprehension skills were pretty good. But, what I found really difficult being a stranger is the weight of languages. I started to feel it while I was in China, learning the second language. And the matter just got real when I got to USA. What I mean by the 'weight of languages', is even when I say same things in both languages, the true meaning, or the seriousness of how people take it, is different. It is a little bit embarrassing, but to be honest, when I first went to the American school in Chicago -to give a prior notice, my school was a little bit ghetto- I got into a fist fight with a kid called me motherfuxxer. Well, it still is a pretty bad word but, not a big deal. Would've let it go. I don't know what Americans think, however, in Korea we couldn't even think of insulting each other's parents. When you tell your friend 'your mom is fat' in USA, he gives a comeback, but in Korea, he gives a good punch in your face. This example is kind of aggressive, but in the other hand, as it is, teaches the importance of the 'weight of language' really well. You know how in English, when teacher picks a student to read the paragraph, they say "Augustin, why don't you just read the next paragraph?" This is still embarrassing, i just pissed off when my World History teacher said it. I literally felt so awful and talked back(almost shouted back). "It's the FIRST time you told me to read and why do you talk to me like I NEVER listened to you?" Being in a bad mood also helped, but the way she told me to read wasn't in a good manner of language in Korean. 'Why don't you...' indicated the phrase in Korea, used when someone's bothering, not doing the right thing that was told. I surely had a fair reason to be upset.

 I can relate the 'weight of language' to the difference between cultural thoughts. And still the most difficult thing I'm facing is the same thing. I often think the reason why it's hard to fit in for F.O.B Asian kids, is because of it, both American kids and Asian kids are not fully understood by what each other's saying. However, we believe it is fair when we get to learn new phrases used in different ways which is mostly cool and make ourselves think as fluent native speakers(It really did when I first learned 'What's up?')!