lao-ocean-girl » Weblogs

Happy Children’s Day

lao-ocean-girl — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:23:15 +0000

In Korea, today is Children’s Day. In other parts of the world, it’s Cinco de Mayo. Oh, how I would love a bowl of guacamole and a margarita right now.

After my jaunt to Seoul on Saturday for pre-Buddha’s birthday celebrations, I debated going again on Sunday because the weather looked like crap. I’m a huge fan of festivals, but not when it includes being cold in the rain. As the sun started setting, the weather didn’t look any better and I opted to stay home instead.

One reason for staying home was to work on my blog. As you can see, there’s a new template. First, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1, and it looks really snazzy. (Trust me, you’ll have to take my word for it.) It wasn’t as easy as people on the internet made it out to be, but I eventually got through it.

Afterwards, I started working on the blog theme. This took some time too, because all I know about CSS and PHP is what pops up when I google how to do specific tasks. As you can see, when it comes down to it, I’m a 3 column kind of girl. There’s just more real estate to play with.

On the right-hand side, you can also see my Twitter widget. I’ve been Twittering for a short time now, and you can “follow” me at http://twitter.com/laoocean. “Tweets” are basically like the “John Doe is _______” feature of Facebook, but more frequently. I can also update what I’m doing by sending a text message from my cell phone to my account. It’s up to the minute blogging! Do you want to know what I think of Iron Man before I even leave the theater?!? Well, now you will!

Through tweets, I discovered two good Flickr related sites:

Flickr Leech – You can see my photostream (or anyone else’s) in a larger page view than on the normal flickr site. Check my stream out.
Flickriver – Check out interesting Flickr photos, 500 at a time! There’s so much inspiration there.

Overall, I’m happy with the new look, but will be customizing different aspects of the site in the future.

Working Conditions at Korean Universities

lao-ocean-girl — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:05:26 +0000

Joe has compiled a list of the posted working conditions from various Korean universities. Most of my friends also work at universities, so it’s interesting to see what other places are offering.

How to read the listing:

Chinju National University of Education

16 hrs/wk, 2.3 MA/2.0 BA, housing: provided—furnished, vacation: paid summer/winter

It means: 16 hours a week, 2.3 million won ($2425 USD) a month if you have a Masters degree, 2.0 million won ($2109 USD) if you have a Bachelor’s degree, a furnished apartment, and you get paid vacations in the summer (July/Aug) and winter (Jan/Feb). The Korean school year starts in the beginning of March.

Remember, just because someone works at a university doesn’t mean they teach university classes. Over the years, universities have realized there’s a lot of money to be made running “hagwon” classes on their university campus. Since most university classes finish by the afternoon, there are a lot of classrooms vacant after that time. Coincidentally, children get off from school by three or four o’clock. My university started running a kids program last semester. For the upcoming semester, I’ll be teaching mostly Freshman to Senior conversation classes, but I’m also obligated to teach 2.5 hours, two days a week in the after-school children’s program. I don’t mind teaching kids, so it wasn’t a big problem for me. Still, I’d rather be teaching all university classes. There’s a lot of planning involved when teaching kids.

Must read for anyone taking pictures in Korea

lao-ocean-girl — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:39:00 +0000

I’ve been reading the Metropolitician for about a month now, having been turned onto the blog through his SeoulGlow video podcasts. The other night, I was browsing through the archives and came upon a really interesting post from January. He thoroughly discussed the rights of photographers in Korea. Specifically:

Can you take a picture of anyone on the street? Or do you need their permission first?

If they DO catch you taking a picture of them, can they make you delete those photos?

Can a security guard take your camera away from you?

Can you take pictures inside a store?

These are all questions I’ve wondered about, especially since I carry a camera with me at all times. Michael (Metropolitician) answers all of this in his blog post. Definitely check it out. Below is an excerpt:

“So here’s what I have known since first started taking pictures here – see, I do my homework – and what paranoid citizens, journalists, and even the cops seem to be unable to understand: taking a picture in itself, barring mitigating circumstances, is not a crime. And I’ve know the law since my ass deplaned here in late 2002.

Here’s the relevant text, taken from a book for photojournalists called ????????, or, roughly translated, “Korean Photojournalism Theory.” It deals with the tricky question of “???/choseungkweon” or “the right to one’s (facial) image,” which is a concept about which the average Korean citizen holds an inflated, paranoid, and nearly erroneous misconception. From the book, here’s the relevant section that talks about the subject as it relates to Korea:

?? ?10?: “?????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??”

?? ?16?: ?? ??? ???? ??? ??? ???? ???.

?? ?32? ?4?:??? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ?? ???? ???? ???? ??? ?? ??? ?? ????? ??? ? ??(??? ?? ??? ?? ????? ?? ?750?? ?? ????? ??? ? ??.)

?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ??? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ??. ?? ?? ?750?? ?? ????? ??? ? ???? ????? ?, ???? ?? ??? ??? ?? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ????.

So what I see here are some basic things, and you legal eagles out there, please tell me if any of this is wrong, and/or add to the conversation.

1) According to the 10th and 16th articles of the Korean Constitution, which defines a “right to happiness” and “right to privacy,” respectively, as this is expressed in concrete terms in article 32, clause 4 of criminal law, a person entrusted with a picture of someone can’t use or reproduce it without one’s wishes or according to commercial whims, but “because there are no stipulations for punishments, one can only seek compensatory damages according to clause 750 of civil law,” for which you have to show clear and concrete damages to one’s person or reputation. That means, you gotta have lost a job, gotten a divorce, or something else to which you can put a dollar (or won) sign.

2) According to the book, since there are almost no actual precedents for seeking damages to “chosangkweon” alone – most of the cases shown in the book that set significant legal precedents were all cases in which individuals’ images were used without their permission for commercial purposes – it is “little more than an academic issue.”

Lao Cook videos

lao-ocean-girl — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:12:36 +0000

The Lao Cook recently starting posting cooking videos. The videos are short, informative, and makes cooking look easy. Still, I doubt I’ll be making Sushi Maki anytime soon. Check them out.

Plus, see what they plan on doing with this shark! Yikes! By the way, if you’re curious, you can hear what the Lao language sounds like in THIS video of someone plucking a bird.

Photo Manipulation

lao-ocean-girl — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:08:29 +0000

There’s a great discussion going on at Javajive about how much one should manipulate a photo in Photoshop. Check it out.

Brandon’s observation to a comment I made:

Lao-Ocean – An interesting fact about dSLR photography is that quite often an image taken with a point and shoot will actually come out to be more ‘likable’ to an untrained eye. They often have settings which increase saturation, sharpness, and contrast straight from the camera. Often people will boast that their point and shoot takes better pics than an SLR. In many ways, it’s simply doing some of the photoshop work for them, but I’d much rather have the control of doing it myself, as once the camera works it’s magic, you cannot easily go back to what your eyes may have seen. Since you’ve recently stepped over to the dSLR side, did you notice anything like this? Have you found it easier or more difficult to achieve decent results with the XTi?

It shows how much I know about photography, because I never realized that point and shoot cameras “fix” shots before you see them on the viewfinder. It makes sense now. Haven’t you ever taken a photo (even in daylight) and reviewed your picture, only to find that didn’t look quite how your eyes saw it? Maybe the hue of that flower pedal just doesn’t look “right”. I noticed this many times when using a P&S. With my new camera (Canon Rebel XTi), it’s a lot easier to correct pictures to the way my eyes saw them. If you noticed from my Thanksgiving pictures, most of them are washed with a warm, orange hue. It’s because there was no flash, with the lamps and candles as the light sources. I only had to brighten them up a bit, but there definitely would have been a different feel to the pictures if a point and shoot forced flashes on those pictures.

Are you a feet person?

lao-ocean-girl — Fri, 19 May 2006 17:02:55 +0000

This is Kim Joo-won, a world renowned ballerina.

These are her feet. [Links via The Marmot's Hole]

Laotian food

lao-ocean-girl — Fri, 12 May 2006 14:53:13 +0000

Ever wonder what Lao food looks like? Or how to make it? Check out laocuisine.net (picture of green papaya salad is from that site). Another place is Thai and Lao Food Blog. Both have lots of pictures and recipes, while the latter also provides videos to help you cook your dish.

If you’re still hungry, check out Vienne’s site: The Lao Cook. Vienne is a chef in Andalucia, Spain making mouth watering Lao, Thai, and Japanese dishes. Now I’m in the mood for sushi balls.

Border Photos

lao-ocean-girl — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:43:49 +0000

Three friends spend three months on the U.S. Mexico border filming and distributing disposable cameras to two types of groups, migrants trying to cross into the States, and Minutemen volunteers trying to stop them. [http://www.borderfilmproject.com]

On this site, they say that most migrants had never seen or used disposable cameras before, so there were instructions to help them take pictures. There’s also a Profile section where you can read stories from some of the migrants. The similarities through many of the stories, are that they want to earn money and then return home. The guy from Honduras wants to make enough money so that he can build a house when he returns. The oldest man in the profile has already crossed about 20 times.

What’s your secret?

lao-ocean-girl — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:39:11 +0000

This site amazes me. It appeals to my gossip-monger, and artistic side, all at once. At PostSecret, people anonymously send in their secrets on a homemade postcard, which are posted on the site. I don’t know if they’re all true, but I hope they are. It’s be sad to send in a fake secret, just to get a reaction from somebody. New secrets replace old ones, so there isn’t an archive. Of course, it made me think of what MY secret would be. What about yours?

"It all began with an idea Frank Warren had for a community art project. He began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places — asking people to write down a secret they had never told anyone and mail it to him, anonymously.

The response was overwhelming. The secrets were both provocative and profound, and the cards themselves were works of art — carefully and creatively constructed by hand. Addictively compelling, the cards reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions. Frank calls them "graphic haiku," beautiful, elegant, and small in structure but powerfully emotional." [Barnes & Noble]

These are from today: