This week was the IMID International Display Exhibition in
Ilsan. Ilsan is a suburb of Seoul just to the North I think. I went up there
with Dr. Kim and a few grad students to view the exhibition as well as to sit
in on some conferences. Unfortunately my camera is now officially broken so I
don’t have any pictures of anything this week. Hopefully it will be replaced
soon.
The exhibition floor was typical as far as exhibitions go,
it was just on a larger scale. There were many independent companies showing
off their newest tech. I didn’t actually get around to everything but I did see
a few cool ones like a company that makes 3D screens viewable without any type
of 3D glasses. Most of my time was spent at the Samsung and LG setups. They had
huge areas dedicated to all areas of their businesses; the newest cell phones,
TVs, computers and cameras. It was all very interesting. If you want to know
more about the conference check out this site:
http://2008.imidex.org/english/index.php
Since I was with the OLED grad students the conferences we
attended were on White OLED technology. It was made up of universities and
private companies giving 15 minute presentations on their research and how
they’re furthering the technology. Every presentation was in English, even if
English wasn’t the speaker’s first language. Although I don’t know that much
about OLED technology I found the presentations very interesting and could
understand what they were talking about for the most part.
At lunch time we were going to go to a place in the
conference center but it was too busy. So we went to the car and drove to a
small restaurant a few blocks away. When we came back after lunch the
conference center’s parking lot was full. There was parking on the streets
surrounding the center but they were all full too. So we double parked on a
very busy street in a bus zone. We told the driver it probably wasn’t the
greatest place to park but he thought it would be ok. I joked about how we
would be walking back to Hoseo because the car would be towed. Sure enough, it
got towed. We came back after the last conference and it was gone. So we sat
and waited for an hour and a half for the owner of the car to track it down, take
a cab to go get it and then come back to get us. We were supposed to be meeting
up with a colleague of Dr. Kim’s at a university in Seoul for some dinner. We
finally arrived very late and started eating. The restaurant we went to was in
the Hongdae area of Seoul. It’s a club / bar area. So we jumped around to 4 or
5 places before making it back to the hotel.
I don’t understand how Koreans do it. They can stay up until
all hours of the night drinking and then pop out of bed at 7am the next morning
ready for the day. I wasn’t built that way. The two hour car ride home wasn’t a
pleasant one.
Ok, so now it’s time for my rant. It’s about my Korean
language class. I don’t think it’s for me. It’s not that I don’t want to learn
Korean, I do. It’s just that I don’t believe this class is the way for me to do
it. The first week was fine, we learned the letters and how to put them
together to form words. We also focussed a lot on pronunciation. I was doing
well during this time I thought, I was able to read, very slow mind you but I
could do it. It was the next week when my stress level began to grow. We
started progressing a little further into our workbooks and I had no idea what
was going on. Everything is in Korean with little to no English for me as a
reference. The teacher also doesn’t speak any English so I don’t know what
she’s talking about when she’s teaching. When we’re supposed to be listening to
a tape and writing answers in our books the instructions are in Korean so I
don’t even know what I’m supposed to be listening to let alone what I should be
writing. Same thing applies when we’re doing an exercise in our books – the
instructions are all in Korean. I’ve never felt so stupid in all my life. I sit
there praying that I don’t get asked to answer a question. Even though I’m sure
it’s something as simple as the teacher asking me what food I like to eat, I
can’t answer. I just sort of make a face like I don’t know, but she stays on me
and keeps on asking. It’s really quite embarrassing. Then finally someone will
whisper the answer to me and I’ll repeat it (TRY to repeat it). This doesn’t
help at all, although the teacher is off my back I still don’t know what the
question was or what I said to answer it. The teacher knows I’m the weakest in
the class so she thinks it will help to ask me just about every other question
she brings up. I know she means well, but it’s not helping. The absolute worst
part of it is when I do manage to repeat an answer that someone has whispered
to me the whole class claps at me. I know they also mean well and are trying to
be encouraging, but to me I feel like a dog that just learned a new trick. I
just need a lot more time to spend on learning it which usually isn’t a
possibility because I’m at the office / lab most nights until 9:30pm. I’m
trying to stay positive but I’m actually at the point where I’m thinking about
it at night and it’s stressing me out. So today I didn’t go to class. I know
this is something that maybe isn’t the best thing to be writing on my school’s
blog site but I’m trying to be honest about it. I just think for me, there’s a
better way to be learning. One of the English teachers is actually quite fluent
in Korean because he’s been here for 6 years. He’s offered to tutor me
privately and teach me things that I will actually use in the remaining time I
have here. Like how to order food at a restaurant, ask directions, etc...
I think this type of crash course would be better for me and
for my mental health.
I love everything else I’m doing. The lab work is great. I
just started in a TFT lab learning about thin film transistors and active panel
matrices. Technology seems to be a universal language. I can be taught by
someone who doesn’t speak English. I can also ask questions about what I’m
learning and be understood with no problems at all.
