As an American citizen living in Korea and teaching English, I’ve had a good share of international and domestic travel experience. Since my first trip to study abroad in Shanghai in 2004, I’ve traveled to China twice, Hong Kong once, Japan three times, Korea five times, and returned home to visit my family five or six times. Therefore, I have a very good working knowledge of what is required for all portions of a successful journey: from buying tickets, to arranging documents, to finding my way around crowded airports, to security checks, boarding planes, and customs at the other end. I’ve developed my own habits and patterns for doing things that make my international travel much better, safer, faster, and more efficient (including always using carry-on bags). After countless successful experiences with airplane travel, I had begun to take my success for granted – I had a perfect record of travel. But a recent experience in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) with United Airlines sent me spinning.
Since I have so much travel experience to different countries, I’ve also had lots of experience with different airlines. By far the best of the best always happen to be Asian airlines. Korean Air was always my favorite, Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong is also wonderful, I’ve heard Singapore Airlines gives first class service even in economy class, and I recently experienced Asiana Airlines first class service in economy as well. The US airlines however, leave something to be desired. Delta is not bad, but nothing like their SkyTeam partner Korean Air (first class service). Northwest is the cheapest and it’s really true that you get what you pay for, service is just average. United Airlines, or perhaps Los Angeles International airport (LAX), or perhaps a combination of the two however is by far the worst airline I’ve ever dealt with. It’s not the flight itself that stinks, but the customer service stinks and as Dave Carroll sings it’s often a case of “pass the buck” and “don’t ask me.” Here is the story of my recent experience with them, in an email complaint I sent to the company.
Today in class, all my students were asleep. Teaching them was like pulling teeth: not pleasant at all. I’m constantly discouraged by the educational system in Korea, particularly hagwons. But more than the system itself is the mindset that drives and encourages the system. Hagwons in and of themselves are not evil or even bad. They are present to fill a need (real or perceived) and they generally succeed in what they strive to do. Rather it is the “need” that drives much of the success or failure of schools and hagwons in Korea. The need is: to receive high quality education, learn enormous amounts of material quickly, pass difficult high school and university entrance tests with flying colors, graduate from an “Ivy League” (or at least upper-level) school, and ultimately have all money, wealth, and fame lavished upon them for their accomplishments. However, in their rush to get a jump on the competition and increase their own standing, I feel that many students (with their parents’ strong encouragement) are actually doing themselves more harm than good. Often I feel, the very goals these students are attempting to achieve are hindered by their own self-destructive study patterns.
Coming to Korea is a wearing experience, even for computers, especially if they aren’t handled well on the journey over (thanks airport security for cracking my friend’s screen). If you’ve been having trouble with your computer -> slow down, freezing, crashing, over-heating, or only turning on sporadically, it would probably be a good idea to either (A) upgrade the whole computer or (B) switch out the hard drive. Most people would probably prefer to not shuck out the bucks for a new computer, so with this post I’ll deal with cloning and switching out an old hard drive.
Living in a foreign country definitely has it’s ups and downs. Of course every country has its share of frustrations and difficulties, blessings and good points. But, by being a foreigner in a foreign land, it can often be much easier to complain openly and “blame” that land (in my case Korea) for its differences. We (expats) can easily begin to fall into an “us vs. them” mindset, especially in Korea where everyone who is not Korean is labeled a “Wei-guk-in (foreigner).”
Internet Explorer 6 has given me a good share of headaches over these past few months. Every time I make a website, I have a 
What a sad statement for Korea and all Koreans on 
Step 3 – Testing and Maintenance
Step 2 – Code