Booktube

Back in October I discovered something wonderful and addicting. I was looking for YouTube videos about NaNoWriMo, as that time of the year was approaching, and I stumbled upon Katytastic's YouTube channel. She talked a lot about NaNoWriMo, and about writing, but also a lot about books, and her videos were addicting and fun to watch. I'm pretty sure I have watched every single one she made. And I wanted more, so I took some key words and phrases, like 'book haul' and 'bookshelf tour' and 'reading tag', and I went looking for more.

And I discovered a fairly large community of readers who post videos about their reading and books and bookshelves and generally spread their love of books to other people through their upbeat videos. These people are not ashamed to say they bought a lot of books, not ashamed to show their craziness to the world. They obsess over how their books look on their shelves, obsess over books coming out soon, create reading challenges for each other, and most of all, they read. A lot.

Finding this online community was like finding where I belonged. There were more people like me who were unapologetic about how many books they bought and read, who were a little bit crazy and hyper about books and not afraid to show it. In my career field, these kinds of people are rare. You are more likely to find video gamers and Magic the Gathering players than readers, at least not at the same level I'm at. And not noly that, most of this community I've found read the same kind of books I do. The intelligent conversations about books I have been unconsciously craving for years had finally been found.

Here's a quick, basic list of some of my favorites:
Katytastic
Jesse the Reader
Poland Bananas Books
Ariel Bissett
Bookables
Little Book Owl
The Gwendolyn Reading Method
And many more. I think I'm following about 30 booktubers right now, and always on the lookout for more.

These people rekindled my desire to read like I used to. Like I've said before, the internet stole away most of my time after I discovered it, but now thanks to these awesome people I'm reading again, almost as voraciously as I did as a child and teenager.

And most of all, their influence makes me want to make booktube videos like they do. Even as I struggle with my self-image and my shyness, I want to join their video community so that I too can influence someone to read more, and so I can have a group of friends to talk to about the books I love.

So despite my misgivings about showing my face and crazy weird personality to the world, I'm going to be attempting this new, scary thing, with the hope that someday I can be the reason someone started reading again, or started reading more.

Have you ever done something scary because you thought it would help someone in the future? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Minimalism and Dejunking

For the last couple of years or so, I've had this idea in my head of becoming minimalist. I guess just the idea seems kind of romantic to me; only owning the things I need or that have real value, the ability to pack everything up and move at the drop of a hat, never having to worry about an excess of stuff, etc. It kind of goes along with my rather unrealistic dream of living a nomadic life, roaming around the world with only a suitcase and a backpack. See, totally unrealistic, though nice to daydream about.

Unfortunately, as much as I have wanted this, I'm a collector. I collect books, mugs, maps, posters, stuffed animals, clothes, kitchen supplies, even food. Everything seems to collect in my room, no matter what I try. It's like my brain can't stand empty or unfilled space so I unconsciously buy things to fill those spaces.

This is a big problem, because my dorm room, which was small to begin with, has now become cramped and so full of things I don't use it's almost suffocating. And on top of that, this tends to cost a bundle of money because I'm buying things willy nilly.

Something has to be done.

So this coming week, which is a short work week and a long off week, I'm going to focus my attention on getting rid of as many things as I can. I'm going to do it one drawer at a time, one shelf at a time. If I haven't used it, don't need it, don't like it, or can make due without it, it's going into a bag and being taken to the local thrift shop before I can change my mind.

My ultimate goal is to be able to pack and carry most of my things in two suitcases and a backpack. Except for my books, of course, because I'm making that exception, and my desktop computer, because it will never fit anyway.

In order to keep myself motivated and on track, I will be taking before and after pictures of everything and at the end of the week I'll have a nice big blog post to document how I did. So. Here's to a week of casting off the unneeded load and to becoming that much closer to being minimalist!

Tell me, have you had any experiences with minimalism or dejunking? Tell me one method you used to let go of your things.

Thanks for reading!

A Ramble on Reading, Writing, and Life

Most of my life I have been a very avid reader. According to my mom I always had my nose stuck in a book after I learned how to read, and my favorite place to go was the local library, where I would literally check out armfuls of books, sometimes so large I couldn't carry them all. I loved books and libraries so much as soon as I was 14 and old enough, I signed up for volunteer work at the library, then tried to get a job there when I was 16. When I did get the job on my second try, I quickly discovered that it was not the job for me. A lot of the time I got caught up reading the books instead of shelving them, especially the kids books.

Almost as long as I have been reading, I'm been writing and telling stories. A lot of my earliest stuff has since been erased from anything and everything because they were so embarrassing, but I have a portable hard drive full of all the different things I've tried to write over the years. Probably even before I knew it was an option, I've wanted to be a writer. Usually this was along side my other widely varied career choices, such as marine biologist, journalist, librarian, crime scene investigator, etc. But being a writer has stuck around the longest.

Of course, I'm not the greatest at writing. Sure, I've heard more than my fair share of good things about what I do write, along with a good deal of constructive criticism that has helped me along the way, but I have zero completed projects, even after writing for as long as I have. It's sort of been an on again off again hobby with delusions of grandeur.

And everything sort of fell apart when I discovered the time-consuming world of the internet, specifically YouTube. Suddenly I was spending all my time watching things instead of reading or writing. And then it got worse when I discovered K-Pop and Korean Dramas. Because then instead of reading and writing I was spending hours and days staring at a computer or TV screen watching TV or music videos. And then the Air Force happened and suddenly even time to do that was gone.

Last year I read an embarrassing grand total of 25 books, most of them in the last three months. And the novel that I have been working on since I was 16 still doesn't have a single usable word written. Essentially  my life has kind of stalled, again.

My life happens in fits and starts. Sometimes I'm progressing forwards with a lot of momentum, and other times it feels like my life is going no where. While I was studying Korean in California, my life was moving forward. I was progressing with a goal, and I was getting things done, at least in one aspect of my life. Now that I'm not doing any kind of training anymore and I'm just working, my life has become stuck again, much like how it was before I joined the military. And I don't know how to jump-start it again. It's not like I can join the military, since I'm already in.

I've been thinking about this a lot this last weekend, mostly because I was bedridden with some pretty nasty cramps and had nothing else to do but think of how my life reached this point. I still haven't made a decision, but I feel pretty close to one. Like it's sitting at the tip of my brain, just waiting to come out. Much like when you're trying to think of a word but can't quite remember what it is.

I want to get my life going again. I want to have a life that is full of progression and forward movement and excitement. I just have to come up with a way to bring that back.

Any ideas?

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you felt static? I'd love to hear about it and how you got through it!

Thanks for reading!

The Misfortune Cookie, by Laura Resnick

The Misfortune Cooking, in paperback

Read January 12 to January 16.

This is the sixth book in a fluffy urban fantasy series that I really love. The series is about a woman, Esther Diamond, who is a struggling actress in New York City who, because of her circumstances, gets mixed up in a bunch of magical mysteries that she solves with the help of a 300 plus year old wizard, a very skeptical police detective, and a wide and varied cast, depending on the book. I read the first book at the beginning of 2013, then marathoned through books two through five in October, and pre-ordered the six, this one. It took me a while to get to this book, mostly because I got in to a YA mood and read a lot of YA books instead of my normal diet of urban fantasy.

I won't say much about what happens in the book, because as the sixth in a series, a lot that happens relates to previous books, and unless you've read all the books up to this point it won't make sense. So I'm just going to talk around those types of things in this review.

First off, it was a good book. Maybe not quite as good as the earlier books, but better than book two -- which I was stuck on for months and months -- and better than some other books I've read. As it's been since October since I last read anything in this series, and I read them all together at that, I had forgotten how weirdly slow the books could be by way of solving the mystery. It's not like a hard to read or get through type of slow, because the whole book is tense and full of a lot of 'action' and suspense, and there is never a dull moment when Esther is involved. It's more like it always takes Esther and cohorts a long time to get all the clues together and finally put it all together to solve the problem. And usually it takes more than a couple of bodies.

This isn't really a bad thing, because I love reading about Esther's life and everything she goes through as a starving actress. But in this one it was just a tad tedious, but not for this reason specifically.

There is a very intense and sizzling sort of romance between Esther and the police detective, Connor Lopez. They both have a thing for the other, but Connor tends to get in the way when Esther is investigating, and Connor thinks Esther is crazy for believing in magic and the like, so even after six books they aren't 'together'. And something happened at the end of book five that was supposed to resolve all that tension and finally put them together, but between book five and six Connor did a stupid, very man-like thing, and throughout most of The Misfortune Cookie Esther was throwing a hissy fit and whining about it. And this was what got on my nerves.

Esther is a very self-reliant, awesome woman, and she's usually pretty clear headed. So her whining in book six just seemed out of character, and I really didn't like it. It was such a relief when they finally talked it out a hundred pages from the end, and I hope we don't have to go through this again in future books. Because heavens, woman, get a grip.

Other than that, it was a great book, and a great addition to the series. Now I just have to wait a year for the next book. *sob*

Rating: Keeper

Have you read a book or series where one or more characters acted out of character? Or maybe did something in character that just annoyed you? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Korean Names and Terms of Familiarity

Back when I posted about romanization, Reader Melody commented on how it was hard for her to understand names and the words usually connected with names, especially when the subtitles are different than what it sounds like is being said. So I thought it would be a good idea to try to explain some of the points of Korean name and familiarity culture.

Korean names are mostly derived from Hanja (한자), which is the word for the Chinese words used in Korean. Most Korean's have three syllable names; last name, and two syllable first name. Here are some examples and how they are written in Korean:

Lee Minho (이민호)
Choi Siwon (최시원)
Park Siwoo (박시우)
Baek Jiyoung (백지영)

In S. Korea, there are roughly 250 family names in use. Of these names, the most common, Kim (김), Lee (이), and Park (박) consist of about half the population, according to Wikipedia. Since there are a limited number of last names, it makes it a tad bit easier to recognize a name when you hear it.

First name wise, there are a million different ways to make a first name. There are always going to be the most commonly used ones, and those are going to change according to generation, so there's not much I can explain about that. There is one thing that a lot of the older generation did pretty often, and the younger generation does occasionally. Among siblings and cousins, a syllable in their given name is shared. Here's some examples.

Kim Junsu (김준수) and twin Kim Junho (김준호)
Park Yoochun (박유천) and younger brother Park Yoohwan (박유환)

Of course, because of the ebb and flow of popularity, there is going to be names that go out of style, and names that seem fresh and new. Alas, I haven't been able to quantify these names, and so I have no information to give you on this point, other that it does happen.

Now to move on to how the Korean people call each other. A lot of how people address each other has to do with how Confucianism has shaped their culture.

It is considered very rude to call a Korean just just their first name, or even just their full name. There is always another word or syllable attached to their name, depending on the relationship between the two people and on the status of the person being spoken off. Let's start with the basics. I'm going to use my own Korean name -- Tae Ahreum (태아름) -- as one example, and a friend's Korean name -- Kim Myungsoo (김명수) -- as the other.

Between close friends, and parents or grandparents to their children or grandchildren, the syllable 'Ah' (아) or 'Ya' (야) is added to their name. So between close friends Ahreum and Myungsoo, they would call each other Ahreum-ah (아름아) -- because the name ends with a consonant -- and Myungsoo-ya (명수야) -- because the name ends with a vowel.

The next step is between just about anyone you are on the same level with, or someone who is higher level than you.; co-workers, casual friends, a person you just met, etc. The syllable 'Ssi' (씨) is added to the end of either their full name, or just their given name. So between Ahreum and Myungsoo, who are just acquaintances, they would address each other as Tae Ahreum-Ssi (태아름씨) and Kim Myungsoo-Ssi (김명수씨).  With this syllable, there is no change depending on consonant or vowel.

Then we have the terms Goon (군) and Yang (양) for addressing a generally young man and young woman respectively. Usually used by older or higher level people towards younger or lower level people. So if someone like a neighborhood grandma were addressing Ahreum and Myungsoo, she would call them Tae Ahreum-Yang (태아름양) and Kim Myungsoo-Goon (김명수군).

For working people and co-workers, people are usually address by their name with their title. So let's say Ahreum is a teacher (선생) (seon-saeng) and Myungsoo is a CEO (사장) (sa-jang). They would be addressed as Tae Ahreum Teacher (태아름선생님) and Kim Myungsoo CEO (김명수사장님). The extra syllable added at the end there is the honorific syllable added to the end of titles and is pronounced somewhere between Nim and Neem. If the person you are addressing is below you in status or age, then you would leave that off.

Of course, not everyone always calls people by their name. There are tons of different ways you can address a person, without using their name. So, let's use our two examples and explore those different name. We'll start at the bottom again.

If Ahreum and Myungsoo were siblings -- last name disregarded -- chances are one of them wouldn't call the other by their name. If Ahreum was the older, then she would call Myungsoo by his name (Myungsoo-ya/명수야) and Myungsoo would call her 'older sister' or Noona (누나). But if the situation were reversed and Myungsoo was the older of the two, then he would call her by her name (Ahreum-ah/아름아) and she would call him 'older brother' or Oppa (오빠). Of course, there are more, however. If both Ahreum and Myungsoo were boys, then the younger one would call the older one 'older brother' or Hyung (형). Or if they were both girls, then the younger one would call the older one 'older sister' or Eonni (언니).

These are not reserved just for siblings, either. It works between cousins and friends as well. And Oppa and Noona work between romantically engaged couples, too. So say Ahreum and Myungsoo were dating. Chances are Ahreum would call Myungsoo Oppa, instead of his name, especially if she was trying to be cute. And if Ahreum was older than Myungsoo while dating, then he would probably call her Noona.

Because the family is such an important thing to the Koreans, they have many different terms for family members, according to how the person is related to the speaker. It goes so far as to having a specific word for your father's older brother's wife! Since there are too many to name, I'll just say that a lot of these terms aren't really used in most dramas, unless you happen to be watching a soap opera, and then they are all over the place.

And these are all just the very basic names and familiar terms, there are plenty more and it would probably take a dozen posts to cover them all. But I think, at least for now, these are enough to keep people afloat while watching the dramas.

Is there a certain topic about Korean culture or language that you would like to know more about? Let me know in the comments, and I'll try to answer your questions in future posts!

Sorry for how long this post was, and if you made it to this point, thanks for reading!

Fickleness Plucking at my Heartstrings

I'm always the first to admit that I don't have a social life, especially right now. Yes I have friends, but mostly they are co-workers, and I usually only see them at work or in the hallways if we live in the same building. I don't actively try to spend time with most of my friends, and now that I'm on a night schedule I spend the majority of my time holed up in my room.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle of being an introvert and an extrovert. So even as I enjoy hanging out with friends and doing things with them, it usually leaves me drained afterwards and then I don't do anything for weeks. It hasn't always been like this, of course. Growing up I was always surrounded by younger brothers that I played with, and in high school I always had friends that I spent time with. It only really started when I moved with my family from Utah to a small town in Iowa a few years after high school.

Since there was nothing to do, no where to go, and no one to meet, in Iowa I got into some very bad, hermit-like habits. And these habits continued through my year and a half in California studying Korean, and now again here in S. Korea. So far, there has only been one person who has really brought me out of my hermit-state, who I met while I was in Texas for some training.

My first boyfriend.

It's still a little embarrassing to say I didn't have a boyfriend until I was nearly twenty-three, but it's true. This is partially due to the locations I've been in, but it's mostly due to my shyness, which I still have trouble with today. But when it came to Jesse, that shyness didn't even matter.

We were in the same class, even though he was a Spanish linguist and I was a Korean linguist. The first week or two I knew him by sight, like I did with the rest of my classmates, but it wasn't until he switched chairs to sit next to me that I saw more of him.

The class I was in was extremely boring. It wasn't the content, no, that was interest. Rather, it was the amount of time we spend doing nothing. It was a month long class, if I remember correctly, but the amount of things we had to learn and could have been done in less than two weeks. And so we spent a lot of time watching movies and chatting and just fooling around. So to pass the time I worked on a story idea I'd had in California that I never did anything with.

And when I struggled with naming things, I turned to my next door neighbors and asked them things like 'what was your grandmother's maiden name, what street did you live on growing up,' etc. And Jesse, who was sitting on my right, got curious as to what I was doing with this information. So I let him read some of what I was writing, because I'm an insecure writer and like it when people read my stuff and tell me it's good.

And he liked it. He liked my story enough to encourage me to write more, and so I wrote a lot during that class, giving him the different parts as I wrote them. Then the class was over and we both moved to our language specific classes.

I didn't really think much about him after that. But then, a few weeks later, when I was invited to go to the arcade at the local mall with some other friends, he was there. We got talking, and I started joining this group of friends more often and seeing him more often. We ended up eating lunch together a lot, even though we were both on different schedules, and after study hall we would get together again for dinner on the weekends.

Then there was the movie watching. Whenever we could, we would hijack the building day-room, where the TV was, and we would watch a movie. We watched Kiki's Delivery Service -- one of my favorites -- and The Thieves -- a great Korean heist movie -- among others. And then we went to various restaurants around town for dinners. Then we started spending weekend evenings and nights at the Hastings bookstore, which people said was a weird place to have dates, but we both loved books and movies and it was really the only place open late other than bars.

And then I realized somewhere among all this time spent with him that I liked him. And not just puppy love, but I enjoyed being with him. We always had stuff to talk about, and he was always making me laugh, and I was surprisingly good at making him laugh as well. And he was always encouraging me to write.

We both knew it couldn't go on forever, though, because he was going to graduate his class and leave for another part of Texas, and I was going to graduate and leave for Korea. But up until the very end, we didn't talk about it, and I tried not to think about it.

Then he left, and I cried. I was heartbroken that he was now gone, and I missed him like crazy, even moments after he had left me at my dorm room on the night before he left. The next couple of days were hard, because everything reminded me that he wasn't there anymore. I ate lunch alone, and I spent more time in my room then ever before.

And then, three days after he left the strangest thing happened. All the feelings I had for him disappeared, vanished like they had never been.

Before he left we had promised to stay in touch and try the long distance relationship thing. But after the feelings were gone, I didn't want to think about him anymore, and just the idea of keeping up the relationship when I had no feelings left felt wrong. So I broke it off with him, and since it was my first time doing anything like this, I didn't exactly do it the nicest way. In fact, I'm pretty sure I broke his heart, and it's one of my big regrets to this day.

Skip ahead a bunch of months, and I made it to Korea. And without realizing it, I missed Jesse. I still do to this day, and I really regret what happened in the end. I can't understand what happened. It might have been a previously unknown defense mechanism that I have, it might have been a certain Heavenly Father telling me he and I weren't meant to be. Whatever it was, my first boyfriend, and now my first ex, has become my first big regret.

Sometimes I think about contacting him and apologizing, and trying to explain what happened, but I realize who foolish that would be, and how it would probably just open old wounds for him. So I sit here in my room, missing him and wishing I could have done things differently.

Dear readers, have you had a relationship that you regret how it ended? If you're willing, I would love to hear about how you dealt with it in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading.

The Master's Sun or How to do a Drama Right

Picture found at DarkSmurfSub.com

I just finished one of the most well done dramas I have ever seen. Considering I watched it immediately after watching one of the worst dramas ever, this is pretty fantastic, and revived my faith in the greatness of Korean dramas.

The drama is called The Master's Sun (주군의 태양) and is one of the great ones. It aired at the same time that Two Weeks did in the fall, but while I made the decision to watch Two Weeks at the time, I almost wish I had watched this one instead. Of course, it turned out better this way, because I got to watch it with subtitles, which is much better in my opinion because then I can understand everything, instead of just half of the things.

First, a description. The Master's Sun is about a woman named Tae Gongshil (태공실) who can see ghosts, and has been living a life hiding from the scary ghosts as best she can. Then she meets the owner of a large mall, named Joo Joongwon (주중원). And after accidentally touching him, she realizes that he makes the scary ghosts disappear. So, in order to try to escape the scary ghosts, she clings to him and does everything she can to get into his life so that she can use him when she is scared. A lot of hilarious things happen along the way, and in the end they fall in love and end up happily ever after.

The first thing I want to say is the pacing of this drama was spot on. Remember how I talked about how poorly done the pacing was in Nail Shop Paris? This was most definitely not the case with The Master's Sun. Everything that was revealed came out naturally and at the proper beat along the story-line. And I was paying attention to that because that's one of the things I'm trying to work on in my own storytelling right now.

Next, the characters. There was a large cast of characters with a fairly tangled web of relationships. Not nearly as many as The Heirs, but still. It was interesting to see how everyone was related and how everyone had a part to play. Now, I loved almost every single character. There was the one bad girl who was the ultimate villain in the story who I didn't like, but she made a good villain and a good counter point for the main character that it was okay. However, other than her, I loved every single other character, which doesn't happen very often. Every character had a weakness and a secret, they weren't all perfect, and they all made mistakes. But they all did the best they could with what they had, and everyone -- except the bad girl who ended up in jail -- had a happy ending. I have never seen a drama end with this many couples before.

And the two main characters, oh be still my heart. There was actual, visible character development, and it was so wonderful to watch these two progress and become better people because of meeting each other. Because that's what love is supposed to do. And that's what I love to see. It happens quite often in K-dramas; the girl meets a guy who isn't very nice or looks down on her, etc., and through her love and the thing that happen he becomes a better person. But I've never seen any drama that has really taken it to the level that this drama was.

Because sometimes the characters change in unrealistic ways, or they don't change very visibly. But Joo Joongwon changed a lot because of the girl, and he changed in a way that fit his character and seemed natural. And then there was Tae Gongshil, who also changed. And I loved seeing how she went from being a scared, lonely woman who never did anything to a bright, happy woman who was willing to go after the man she wanted. It was beautiful transformation, and one of my favorite kinds.

One of my favorite thing to do nowadays when I watch K-Dramas is to play 'can you spot the K-drama trope' and this one was a gold mine. There was just about everything from the protective mother figure who doesn't like the main girl, someone ending up in the hospital, someone getting amnesia, a funny scene involving a bathroom, to the nasty rich woman who tries to steal about the main guy. It was great.

A lot of people in my circle of friends dislike K-Dramas with a passion. From my questioning and investigation, the only reason I can come up for this dislike is they are all desensitized to violence and sex, cynical about life, and used to American TV shows. For me, however, The Master's Sun reminded me of all the reasons I love K-dramas.

I would recommend this drama to anyone who loves K-Dramas, however I'll also put up a warning: This drama is not for the faint of heart. Seriously, a lot of the ghosts are cringe-worthy and I found myself jumping in my seat just as much as the main girl. A lot of times in the beginning, the filming style was like a horror. So if you don't like scary things, I wouldn't recommend watching it.

Except I really would, because the ending is totally worth it.

This drama made me laugh more times than I can count, cry more than I have in a while, and cheer louder than I should have at 1AM. It was definitely worth the time I spent watching it, and chances are I will be watching it again.

So, dear readers, do you have a favorite drama that you go back to over and over again? Even when you know you should be watching something new? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

How Not To Do A Drama

Note: This might have a few spoilers. I apologize in advance.

Last week I watched a short drama, sort of to pass the time since I'm still getting used to being on the night shift again. It's an unusually short drama, only 10 episodes, called Nail Shop Paris. It has an interesting concept of a internet story writer disguising herself as a man -- a common trope in K-Dramas -- to get a job at a nail shop, where only men work -- another common trope -- in order to be close to the muse of her latest story. It has the usual flock of flower boys that are included in this kind of drama, and I really enjoyed watch it. It was a train wreck from the start, but still fun to watch.

So the story is Yeo-Joo is a writer who was recently accused of plagiarism and needs to write a new story that will clear her name. After her roommate Ji-Soo suggests she go people watching to find her next story she witnesses a man rescue a woman in the subway from a crazy person, and she decides to follow him. Turns out this man is Alex, a man who works as a manicurist at a high end nail salon. Yeo-Joo decides she wants to get close to him to find out more about him. Fortunately the nail salon is hiring. Unfortunately it is only hiring men. So of course she disguises herself as a man and joins the crew at the nail salon where she meets Kay, the resident ice prince, and Jin, the 'smiley angel.'

And then of course, wacky things happen because this is a woman pretending to be a man in a nail salon.

Throughout most of the drama, I liked it. It was a weird kind of like, because of how bad a lot of it was. I mean, there was a lot of good, but the bad and the underwhelming got in the way. It was a fun, mostly fluffy feel good kind of drama, which I like sometimes, and I liked enough of the characters to care about what happened to them Though looking back, that might have been because of the actors, not the characters themselves. Like people say, hindsight is 20/20.

While this was a good, light drama to watch, it was also the first drama I've come across that I ended up not liking in the end. Here's why.

Mostly, it was the final episode and the ending. It was horribly rushed, and they tried to fit three different very huge revelations in the last ten minutes. It was confusing, and poorly done. If things had been  spread throughout the last half of the drama, instead of the last half of the last episode, then I might have liked it better.

Then there was the main character, Yeo-Joo. She was a good character, I guess. I can't really pinpoint anything specific that I didn't like about her, but as the drama went on I didn't like a lot of the things she did and she just didn't seem like a very strong person. By about the middle of the drama I realized I didn't consider her as female at all. Maybe it was just that she actually looked male, or maybe it was that she rarely acted feminine. Even when she was with people who knew her secret, she still acted the same. And then in the last two episodes when she finally did start acting more like a girl, it felt flat and forced.

Then there was the romance. Honestly, I felt a bit conned by the end, because I had gone into the drama assuming one thing, and it ended up completely different in the end. I'm usually pretty good at picking out who the lead guy is, and who the girl's going to end up with. Not so with this one. The usual signs were there, but they were almost like false signs. So the one I thought throughout the whole drama was the second string guy -- Kay -- turned out to be the lead guy. That left me with a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth. And on top of that the love triangle wasn't handled well at all. First, the 'main guy', Alex treated her like a loved little brother for most of the drama, and then suddenly BAM! he has deep feelings for her as a woman.

And the real main guy, Kay, did one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. Near the end, when it was getting close to the time for Yeo-Joo to chose which guy she ends up with, both guys know that she's a girl, and both guys know that the other guy likes her. But Kay has been dating her, sort of secretly, and it's only been recently that Alex started liking her, or at least showing that he liked her. And when Alex, in his own way, said that he would give up for Kay, Kay got all pissed off and claimed that he didn't want to be seen as pathetic. For some strange reason. And demanded it be made into a contest. What?

The other thing that really got me in the end was she didn't end up having to really chose between the two guys. She ended up getting to keep both of them, which to me felt like cheating. Much like how the Twilight series ended, the girl got everything in the end. Which is not how it is in real life. There is always going to be a loser in real life, and sometimes I wish dramas would show that. Yes, we all want to know that the other guy or the other girl gets a happy ending too, but not if it weakens the rest of the story. And plus, all I could think of how hard it must have been for Alex to continue being around the woman he loved while she was with another man. So not only did it not make sense, but it caused pointless heartache for the second string guy, when it should have just been ended cleanly so he can move on and find someone else.

Of the two guys in the love triangle, I much preferred Alex, the guy she didn't end up marrying. He was softer, gentler, and always put others first. Always. Even when it came to the girl he loved. I would have chosen him, instead of the other guy who was jealous and anxious and picked on the girl, even after they got together.

But then, that's just me.

Overall, I enjoyed watching the drama, for all it's faults. It was entertaining to watch this train wreck of a drama, and there was a lot of things that I did like about it. I might watch it again in the future, if only to watch Alex, but I will most definitely not watch the last episode. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

So, dear readers, have you ever watched anything -- K-Drama or not -- where you hated the ending? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Onyx, by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Onyx in paperback

Read January 10 to January 11

Again, I said I was reading one thing, The Dream Thieves, but I ended up reading something else. I'm maybe seeing a trend here.

Onyx is the sequel to Obsidian, and in terms of sequels, it knocked my socks off. The two books I gave up on to read these two were both sequels, and didn't have quiet the impact as sequels as Onyx did. Because this book took everything the author had built up in book one and cranked it up to eleven. The romance was better, the main character was better, even the plot conflict, while built on what had happened before, was better. Jennifer L. Armentrout really knows how to put her characters through the ringer, then force them to live and work through the consequences to their actions.

And one of the biggest things I loved about this book? There was a theme under it all about choice, and how everyone has choice and has to live with the consequences of their choice. Which is one of my favorite things to see, because it doesn't show up very often. And it is an important thing to learn, especially nowadays.

A down point, however, was the fact that the bad guy for this book was the Department of Defense. Now, I can understand having a secret government agency as a big baddie, but using the DoD as a blanket term for a government agency strikes me as ignorant. Because the DoD covers a lot of different groups. The US Military being one of them. It felt like every time the DoD was mentioned, I -- as a member of the US Military -- was being lumped in with the black-suit-bad-guys from the government. And that rankled me just a little bit.

Not enough to turn me off from reading this book, though, because the chemistry between Katy and Daemon is as hot as the surface of the sun, and I can't wait to read the next book. Just as soon as it arrives in the mail.

Rating: Keeper

Have you read any sequels that were better than the first book? Tell me about them in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Korean and the Nightmare of Romanization

I'm a little obsessive about certain things. Okay, I'll be honest; I'm a lot obsessive about a lot of things. But that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about today is turning a language's script into English's Latin script and the pitfalls that come with that. Mostly about Korean and romanization.

First off, the Korean Language (한국어/한국말) uses Hangul (한글) as their writing system. This is an alphabet that was created in about 1443 during the Joseon Dynasty (조선시대), reportedly by the king at the time, King Sejong (세종대왕). It has a fantastic creation story and is really a beautiful alphabet, but that's for another post.

Now obviously, if you didn't know the alphabet, you wouldn't be able to read it. That's a given. And for a lot of people in the world, there is no real reason to learn how to read Hangul. So of course people are going to come up with a way to write Korean so that English speakers, or people who read the Latin alphabet, can read Korean, even if they don't understand it. This is especially helpful with names and brands and things of that nature. I get all that. That kind of thing is important, especially in a world where English is the business language.

But. What I don't get is how the different kind of romanizations for Hangul came about, and why they are so... wrong.

There are three different major romanization systems that I know of. McCune-Reischauer (MR), which came about in the 1930s and was the first officially accepted romanization. Yale, from the 1940s, which is the accepted romanization among linguists. Revised Romanization of Korean (RR), which is from the early 2000s, and is the current officially accepted romanization.

Let me give you an example of how different these three are -- and this comes from Wikipedia:

The Korean word for 'wall' is 벽. In MR this is pyŏk. In RR this is byeok/byeog. In Yale this is pyek.

The people who created the Yale romanization must have been smoking something, because what?

Now to be fair, Korean does have a lot of sounds that English doesn't have and a lot of rules that guide those sounds. And 벽 is a perfect example. ㅂ, or the letter bieup (비읍) is not exactly a 'B'. It's kind of in the middle of 'B' and 'P'. Then the 여 vowel sounds a bit like 'Yaw', no southern accent, made in the back of your throat. And then the ㄱ, or letter giyeok (기역) is normally in between a 'G' and a 'K' sound, but since it's at the end of the syllable then it sounds like a 'K' that is cut off before you finish making the sound.

So for the person who doesn't have a PhD in linguists, Revised Romanization is the closest approximation.

I would be completely okay with this if there was any kind of consistency. But there is no consistency, and so my little obsessive brain grimaces and can't process Korean written in the Latin alphabet.

Here's a couple of examples:

One of the most common last names in Korea is the name 이. Most of the time this is romanized as Lee, which while partially correct thanks to North Korea, is not the sound 이 makes. Other times it is romanized as Yi, and still other times it is romanized as I, and sometimes as Rhee. See how different it all is?

Of course, that's not the best example, sometimes Lee or Rhee is correct. There is the name 이, and there is also the name 리, which is the North Korean version.

Here's another example.

A couple singers that I know of have the name 정민. However, for one of them it is spelled Jungmin, and for the other one it is Jeongmin. Now, this is probably to differentiate the two singers, so not the best example. So here's another one.

There is a famous old university north of where I am called 성균관대학교. Now, 대학교, or Daehakkyo is the word for university, and I'm not picking on that one. What I am picking on is how 성균관 is romanized.

Sung Kyun Kwan.

You probably can't see it, so let me make it a little clearer.

성 has one vowel there on the right, the 어 vowel, which is pronounced kind of like 'aw' at the back of your throat.
균 has one vowel in the middle there, the 유 vowel, which sounds like 'you.'
관 has two vowels that make a 'wa' sound, but that's not the focus here.

The focus is on 어 and 유 being romanized with the same Latin vowel, even though the two sounds are completely different.

Can you see the problem here?

And there is things like Hyundai (현대) and Samsung (삼성) and even the names Park (박) and Choi (최), well known names and brands that have been romanized in such a way that unless you know the Hangul, you will never be able to pronounce it correctly.

I don't really have a solution to this. I'm not a linguist, and I'm definitely not in any kind of position to suggest changes. But it's something that frustrates me on a daily basis.

Do you know a foreign language? How about a foreign writing system? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Marathoning Dramas, or How I Switched My Schedule

Since my job is a twenty-four hour manned position, occasionally I have to work the night schedule. It's exactly the opposite the day schedule, except I have to live like a vampire, sleeping during the day and waking when the sun goes down. It's what I did for the first few months on the job, and now after a few months of day shift, I'm moving back to the night shift.

In order to do this, I have to switch my schedule around. I don't know how other people do it, but most of the time I stay up 24 hours, pass out when morning comes again, and that's it. This time around wasn't quite as easy as the time I switched to days, but it was still easier than the first time I switched to nights. And since I have recently re-discovered Hulu as a way to watch K-Dramas over here, then this time I decided to marathon a new drama as a way to keep myself awake.

Honestly, not the best choice I could have made.

First, I decided to watch Who Are You, which is one that came out over the summer, 2013. Because I wasn't connected to Drama Fever, my normal way to watch dramas, I didn't know that this one existed until later in the year, and I was smacking myself for not seeing it before. It stars Ok Taecyeon as the main guy, who is one of the rappers from the K-Pop group 2PM, and So I-Hyeon as the main girl, who also started in Heartstrings and Cheongdam Dong Alice. It's about a policewoman who wakes up from a coma able to see ghosts and her journey in figuring out how she got put into a coma, why she sees ghosts, and how she can help the ghosts that appear to her. The whole thing is equal parts comedy and melodrama, with a healthy dash of horror.

Second, watching this drama over the last two days has certainly been an emotional roller coaster. One moment I'm laughing at how silly and goofy and adorable Taecyeon is, and the next I'm weeping at how heartbreaking the main girl's story is. Of course, most dramas are like this. The first half of the drama is full of comedic situations and all the things to get you to fall in love with the characters and care about them. Then the second half is all about taking everything away and making the main couple really work to be together, which usually entails heartbreak, misunderstanding, outside forces working against them, etc.

I just finished watching the second to last episode, and a very important ghost character finally left. It was so heart-wrenching that I cried -- as I tend to do a lot while watching good dramas. More on that later -- and then I just didn't feel up to doing anything. I haven't watched the last episode, and I've been kind of moping around my room without purpose. This seems to be a pattern of mine.

But I've gotten off track.

So, I'm now on a weird night schedule, and probably will be for a couple of months, if not more. Watching this drama has helped me stay awake while making the transition, even if it left me kind of down, and I recommend watching it, if only because it is such a well done drama. And it's got Taecyeon.

So, dear readers, have you ever had to work on a weird schedule? What did you do to make the switch? Tell me about it in the comments!

As always, thanks for reading!

Top Five K-Pop Debuts of 2013

I got into K-Pop January of 2011. So it's just about been three years since I first heard Girls Generation's Run Devil Run, which is what started it all. Since then, I've been a part of the K-Pop community -- in spirit if not in person -- for a lot of debuts. 2012 had a ridiculous amount of great new groups taking the stage, and now 2013 has had a lot as well. While there weren't as many debuts that I was excited for, there was a handful of groups that really stuck out of the masses, at least in my eyes.

These are in no particular order.

Global Icon (A.K.A GI) is a girl group, the only one this year that I really liked. I'm not a big fan of a lot of girl groups, mainly because I don't like the over-sexualized look, and I don't really dig the cutesy look either. But most Korean girl bands are either of the two, so it's kind of lean pickings for my taste.

GI came out in April with a song called Beatles, which has nothing to do with the music icon or the bug. It was a fun, really catchy song that was all hip-hop and spunk and it was pretty different than most girl groups. The five girls all had short punk hairstyles, something I've always thought was awesome though it never quite looks right on me. The girls had a hip-hop, punk concept, and I think it really worked for them. Their voices were not shrill and were just my range, so it was easy to sing along. Or rap along, as the case may be. And the dance to the music video was made of moves that would have looked just as good performed by a boy band. Which I thought was awesome.

Speed is actually a sub-unit, but the larger group -- Co-Ed School -- hasn't been active the beginning of 2011, so it's almost like a new debut. They had their 'official' debut early 2013. New members added to the line up, and a chance for these boys to shine without standing in the shadow of the girls from the main group, and this group really took off.

On top of the fact that the seven boys all have great voices, their debut music videos were drama videos and told the story of the Gwangju Massacre from the early 1980s. It was a heartbreaking story and not a shining moment in Korea's history, but it was a very well done set of two videos, and it fit their music very well. And not only that, but the rest of the songs on their albums have all been good and worth the money I spent on the repackaged albums. I look forward to more music from them.

Bangtan Boys, otherwise know as BTS, is a hip-hop group that debuted in June 2013. This is the one group that I had heard about before their debut, and was pretty excited for them. I love hip-hop groups because they put a lot of their focus on dancing and choreography, which is one of my favorite parts of K-Pop as a whole. And BTS did not let down. Their dancing is just amazing, and their vocals are great as well, which is always a good combo.

While their albums were mostly fluff, the few extra songs other than their singles have been pretty good, and each one has been better than the last, so I'm pretty excited for what they have to offer in 2014.

LC9 is a group that was advertised about a lot on some of the K-Pop websites I follow before their debut. They debuted in May, and while I was not impressed by their music video, the vocals for their single was pretty good. Their music video was just a gimmicky video full of weird violence meant to be an attention grabber, and it just wasn't my thing. Sure, it sparked a story idea, but that's something else entirely.

So at first, the group didn't impress me very much. But then I listened to the rest of their album, and loved it. The one ballad from their album is one of my favorites -- and is in English, bad though it is -- and I love all of the instrumentals from the four songs on the album. So despite the poor impression of the music video, this is one group to watch out for, because they'll surprise you.

M.Pire came with little fanfare in August, and since their debut they've had a little bit of a line-up change. And so far they've only had one music video and I haven't had a chance to listen to their latest single, but their first single was really good. They kind of have a vampire theme, with their name being a mix of Music and Vampire, and their debut music video had them all posing as vampires. It's pretty interesting, and goes along with the whole theme of 2013 for K-Pop, which seemed to be supernatural.

They have good vocals, and their song was pretty catchy, so I'm going to keep my ears open for when they come out with more stuff. Hopefully soon. I should probably also note that M.Pire now includes Lumin, who was originally Lee U from F.Cuz, which is one of my favorites. And I know his voice is like a gift from heaven, so I can't wait to hear what he adds to the group.

I know some of you readers watch K-Dramas. Do you listen to K-Pop too? If so, tell me who are some of your favorites!

Thanks for reading!

New Year's Resolutions

I don't do this very often, but this year I have a list of New Year's Resolutions. And it's not just something I'm saying because everyone does resolutions at the start of the year, but these are things I really am going to try hard to make happen. Normally I don't, because I haven't always been very proactive about making myself or my life better, but this year I just feel the need to change things and get better at things.

Of course, I could make a list a mile long of things that I want to do this year. But knowing myself, I decided that I would just get overwhelmed if I did something like that. So I decided to stick with just 10 pretty easy ones, and have methods in place for making these happen. So, here are my 10 New Year's Resolutions for 2014.

• Write every single day - It doesn't matter how much I write, as long as I write SOMETHING. It would be nice to write 1-2k, but that's not realistic with how real life is going. So as long as I have written something, that's all I can ask of myself.
• Read every single day - There are too many books out there to not read every day. And every month more books come out, so my TBR pile gets larger and larger, and I can't afford to not read.
• Reduce current media spending by 50% - I may have a problem with buying movies and music. And books. And it's kind of draining my bank account, which is unfortunate because I'm trying to save up for important things like a car and a house and a world backpacking trip.
• Increase gym attendance by 300% - What this really means is I want to start going to the gym three times a week, instead of just the required one time. Because I have a little bit of pudge I could do to lose, and I want to increase my current level of fitness. And that's not possible without going to the gym.
• Remove one un-needed/un-used item from my possession every three days - For a while now I've been thinking about and trying to start becoming a little more minimalist. I don't know what it is, but my room collects things like writers collect ideas, and it makes for a very cluttered room.
• Complete one CLEP or class a month - I'm trying to get my associate's degree so that I can move on to my bachelor's degree, and I can't do that without actually working on getting credit hours.
• Cut eating out to 3x or less a week - Currently I eat out way too much. I don't really like the food at the Dining Facility, so instead of eating there, I eat at any of the fast food restaurants around here. And it's starting to show around my belly and in my bank account.
• Eat healthy - Going along with the previous resolution, I need to start eating healthy. Essentially this means I need to stop eating junk food. It's embarrassing, but I've gained almost 30 pounds since joining the military, and not all of it muscle. So no more junk food!
• Cut internet usage by 50% - I use the internet too much. And a lot of it is just time wasting, so I want to cut that time wasting out. Because there isn't enough time in the world to do everything I want, so I should use every moment I have.

What are some of your Resolutions for this year? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

December Reading Wrap-Up, January TBR

On the first of each month, I'm going to post a little wrap up of everything I read the last month, and list out what I hope to read for the coming month.

Some of the Dec2013 books I read

December was a good month for my reading. At least, the first half was. I read six books in the first twelve days, which may be a personal record of some kind. The second half of the month wasn't quite as good, because I got stuck on a sequel that wasn't quite as good at the first one. And I lost a lot of reading time because of that. Eventually I skipped it and moved on, and I finally finished the month off with just one more book, bringing the total up to seven.

I bought a lot of books in December. And when I say a lot of books, I mean a lot. I wasn't keeping count of how many I bought, but I went to the English bookstore in Seoul at least three times, and got a bag full each time. And one trip I went to two bookstores. So my pile of books to read kind of grew a lot more than I wanted. But, I have a good feeling about this coming year. It's going to be a good year.

Jan2014 TBR

Now, normally I don't have any particular order for what I read. All my books sit together on the shelf and I pick out what strikes my fancy, much like at a library. But since I have so many books I have to read this year, I decided that I need a little bit more structure. Obviously it won't be too ridged, because I don't read like that. But it will at least be something like "I have to read something from this stack of books this month instead of just anything."

So for January I'm going to try to read the following:

• The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak - I'm joining a book club at the local library, and this is what they're starting this month.
• Onyx, by Jennifer L. Armentrout - Because I just finished the first book and I'm really excited to see what happens.
• Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer - I'm a little nervous about this one, because I don't know how much of the previous book, Cinder, I remember.
• The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater - Because I really should have read this sooner.
• The Summoning, by Kelley Armstrong - I don't own this book, I'm just borrowing it from a co-worker, so I kind of have to read it as soon as I can.