1min's Blog

An Account of Chopsticks and Shame in Wangfujing, China On a side note, I have many posts in store for the future, but I have been to lazy to get around to writing them. I'm sorry! I'll try to make time for them!

Introducing official cross browser support! If my coding is correct, my website should look the same on all modern versions of Chrome, Firefox, and on IE. Please shoot me an email if you find any inconsistencies. In addition to the multi-browser support, I also did a few design changes that I felt were necessary. The favicon, website font, colors scheme, and many layout changes were made. I think that they make the site a lot easier on the eyes. On a side note, some JavaScript changes are still forthcoming!

http://blog.1minlee.com On a side note, it's super cool to have my own domain name. It's like my personal slice of the internet and that's awesome.

People have been asking me what the point of this main page was and how it differs from my blog. I've decided to use this page to keep track of the updates on my website while the blog will continue to be my personal journal throughout life. If you haven't visited my blog, I highly encourage you to check it out here . I have a very large range of posts ranging from the incredibly personal, to the theoretical, and all the way to the practical. On a side note, these "side notes" are a tradition carried over from my blog.

It has always been my dream to create my own website for personal growth and what better day than my birthday to launch a website? Welcome one, welcome all to Wonmin's personal website! I guess then this is the first official post of my site? Please use the top right links to visit the other pages and enjoy your time here! On a side note, please keep an eye out for further improvements to this site!

www.1minlee.com On a side note, happy birthday to myself! Woo!

Not my post , but the main picture is me! Hurray for internet-stardom! On a side note, my personal website is almost up and running. Keep a lookout for it!

Borrowing Bills to Bungee at Great Dragon Gorge, China I am now able to talk about what this post meant. While in China, I worked as an article contributor to a website called Jetset Times. I wrote a lot of articles about my experiences in China and will be linking to them on my blog as the articles come out. Stay tuned for more! On a side note, my new monitor makes my neck hurt.

Here's the link for the Wikipedia entry for "Hangeul." Now here's the link for the Wikipedia entry for "Hangul" (Without the "e") Notice anything similar? Of course you do, they both point to the same entry! Now why is that? It's because there is no real set romanization of the Korean language. Or at least one that is universally accepted in South Korea. Why does this matter? Korean is a language with an alphabet, there shouldn't be a need for romanization right? Just learn some 한글 and be done with that! To hell with the Latin script! But that's really not good for foreigners. Are you Korean? Can you read 한글? If not, then those two characters mean nothing to you. Only if I tell you that those two characters are read like "hangeul" or "hangul" can you begin to pronounce the word. Romanization is an essential step for foreigners in learning a foreign language. Take two examples, the Chinese pinyin , and the ...

A lone child sitting alone in a public lounge. He is reading out loud his homework for today. One plus one is two. Two minus one is one. Six minus three is three. What an adorable sight. Like clockwork, the child is there every single day. Rehearsing his multiplication charts and reading them aloud to his parents over dinner. His mother corrects him every now and then, while the father nods solemnly. 对外经济贸易大学 The mother is a sort-of janitor for the international student’s dormitory. By "sort-of" I mean she's not legally or officially employed by the university. She works daily, cleaning after the students, restocking toiletries, and attending to various needs of the staff. By night, she uses the public kitchens and prepares dinner for herself, her husband, and their son. She stores the leftovers in the communal fridge. Where does she live then? In the basement level, with the other members of the staff and her own family. They live in cramped ten-by-ten rooms with...

Update with 5 word sentences. I am currently in China. I haven't posted for awhile. I now apologize for this. I actually am writing stuff. But I can't post them. I will explain why later. But until then good bye. On a side note, censorship.

-- Sent from my phone. Please excuse brevity of tone or any tacos. Thank you! The above is my current phone email signature. It gets attached to the end of any email I write on my phone . Is it okay that I have such a signature? Is it professional? Should I change it? Agree? Disagree? Reasoning : I really like how the word "tacos" symbolizes "typos," and it in self is also a typo. This kind of cute, laid-back joke are my favorite types of jokes. Previously, it said: -- Sent from my phone. Please excuse brevity of tone or any typos. Thank you! I've also messed around with a parody of the iPhone signatures. -- Sent from my rooted Android phone. Freedom to choose is always better. But that sounded way too arrogant for my tastes and I chucked it after a few days. Which sounds best to you? What email signature do you use on your smartphones? On a side note, I wish Providence weather would just make up its mind and be a bit more consistent.

Peaceful night sky So it's currently Spring Break over here in Brown. I didn't go anywhere, but instead elected to stay on the campus. It's really peaceful as everybody already left for warmer locations. I decided to try an experiment for the duration of the break--I decided to go nocturnal . Why you ask? No particular reason. It's just something that I naturally tend towards anyway. I get most of my work done at night. I play with my friends at night. I sleep really late and wake up even later. My life has always been on the nocturnal side. I am no morning person. So this break, I decided to fully embrace it and go 100% nocturnal--sleeping at 8AM and waking up past 6PM. Or sleeping at sunrise and waking at sunset. I don't really know what biological effects this experiment has had on my body ( Vitamin D ). But so far, I feel perfectly fine. Adjusting my sleep cycle took a few days where I progressively slept later and later. First 6AM, then 7AM, then 8AM, a...

Car / Pedestrian and directions of travel Imagine this scenario, I'm sure it's already happened to you many a times. You're walking down the street, when a car is coming at you from your right. What do you do? The car could stop and wait until you cross the street, then continue on its way. On the other hand, you could also stop and wait for the car to pass by and then continue on your way (Assume there are no stop signs, traffic lights, or police officers). Either way, somebody must stop. One person must necessarily wait for the other in order to proceed. If we assume that time saved is a normal good and that waiting is an inferior good , then obviously, a rational individual would want to minimize their waiting time and maximize the amount of time saved. We can show the results in a payoff matrix. Both Go Suppose that both the pedestrian and the car decide to go without waiting. Then assume that there will be a car crash and both individuals will die and the...

W is worth only 4 points? Lately I've been playing Words With Friends a lot. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's basically just Scrabble for your smartphone or a Facebook game that you play with your friends. I like it particularly because I don't have to overly commit to it and can play at my own leisure. I make a move, you make a move. It could take days, even weeks, for a single game to end. Sometimes I have to look at a specific game-board multiple times (couple of days) before I can finally decide on what word to play. And If my opponent notices that I haven't played a word for a long time (3 days+) he/she starts pestering me, "Hey man, it's your turn on Words " or "Are you ever going to play your word?" It's not particularly annoying and most of the time I just brush them aside until I have the time to actually sit down and play my turn.  Yet, I can't help but think that the pestering has a subtle subconsci...

I saw the movie Margin Call yesterday night. It was a pretty suspenseful movie that dramatized the recent financial crisis of 2008. At the very least, the cast was very well selected and every actor was incredibly professional. While I don't fully understand the financial crisis, nor am I claiming to be an expert on economics or finance, but the movie made me feel a little weird--especially at this point in my life where a lot of my peers in school do in fact go off in search of finance jobs. One particular scene struck me--the scene where the character Seth Bregman (portrayed by Penn Badgley ) is crying in the bathroom stall because he's afraid of getting fired. A little background info on Seth before I tell you how I felt. He's a 23 year old working in the Risk department at a large unnamed corporation who made $250,000 last year in bonuses and salary. I was a bit annoyed as to why he was crying. Here's a young fresh graduate making six figures with an abs...

Left - Shuffle, Right - Smart-shuffle Wouldn't it be nice if all media players, iPods, Android phones, or whatever you use to listen to music could all sync? I would love to look at the statistics on my music listening habits. Which songs get skipped one second in? Which songs have I listened to the most in my lifetime? Which songs are never played? Which songs are over-played? This got me to thinking about a smarter way to shuffle songs. Let's just assume that somehow, music we listen to was kept track regardless of whatever device we use. Some magical tool that we shove in our ears, I don't know. Think of the possibilities! Music that was recently added to the library have heavier weight. Songs with high play-counts can slowly decrease in weight à la diminishing returns. Lower play-count songs will be favored over higher play-count songs. The same song will never play back-to-back. An option to have smoother transitions from song to song so we aren't listening...

At school, I currently work part time (9 hours / week) at the school eatery as a cashier. It's not the most glamorous job in the world, but I find it incredibly relaxing and fun. Which is contrary to general consensus--that a minimum wage job cannot be anything but hell on earth. I brought this up to my dad, proud in my unique ability to see the silver lining on what is considered to be a dark cloud. He then suggested that my part-time job didn't sound like a job, but rather an escape. An escape from the ordinary and mundane life of a student. Is that true? Was working a cashier job an escape to me? It's true that the money doesn't really matter to me. If I think about it, what's truly special about working is the interaction I have with the countless students who pass by. I have more fun in those 3 hours of interaction than I do in any class or study session. I guess it was  an escape after all. This led me to think about what else in my life is an escape? ...