Cozmopolitan Sunkyoung

One of the things I wanted to buy with my first full paycheque was a new purse. I’d been using the purse on the left since 1999. As seen in the photo, a decade had turned many parts of the purse worn-out, torn and fallen. A couple of friends even said how a lady could carry that kinda looking purse.

I had my own reasons to want to keep it with me for that long time. First, if I ever change my purse, I wanted it to be given from my boyfriend. Unlike my wish, however, when my purse was starting to get significantly worn out, I didn’t have a boyfriend, or even when I had one or two, the situation was like either the relationship was not long enough to commit themselves to buying a purse for me, or they were just indifferent to girls’ stuff.

The other reason was I couldn’t simply throw away the purse because it had been always with me even after two incidents where I was almost about to lose it. Probably in 2000, I left my purse on my seat of the bus from Seoul to Suwon, and a girl sitting next to me was so kind that she picked it up when she took off the bus and returned it to me the next day. Later in 2004, I left my purse on the locker in the library, and somebody found it and passed it to the security staff.

However, I started to change my mind in late 2008 as the bottom part of the purse where contains coins was already more than half a way torn. I thought I couldn’t wait longer until I have a new boyfriend. Also, I wanted to be a little bit more independent. It is me who makes money for myself so why not buy me a basic container of the money? So, finally I bought a nice purse at the airport duty free shop in Bangkok when I first went there earlier this month. I had wanted my new purse to be men’s as it’s much slimer than women’s.

Another story about a purse: when I met my friend, Junsu, back in September 2008, I noticed his new purse. And he said his lack of knowledge about brands was almost to make his girlfriend mad. She bought this purse for him at a Salvatore Ferragamo shop when she had an overseas flight. But, when he first saw the purse, he thought she’d got it as a freebie from Nonghyup (banking service of National Agricultural Cooperative Federation in Korea) as its logo seemed to him similar to Salvatore Ferragamo’s.

There are a couple of things I have had with me for more than 10 years and another thing is a nail clipper that my dad bought for me when I went to university in 1997. Since then, it has travelled with me to many different places in the world. Unless the cutting part becomes dull, I think I’ll keep it for another decade.

When Mitchy was visiting Singapore, he brought his iPod Touch with him and, especially when he captured some places on Google map application, where we wanted to go and find, I found it extremely convenient. Recalling those days in Brussels when I drew numerous road maps on small pieces of paper to get to friends’ homes and new places, I thought it would have been really handy if I had an iPod Touch at that time.

Still having an iPod Classic, however, I wasn’t yet fully certain about buying an iPod Touch. Then, a while later, I found a reason I needed it.

In order to find my colleague’s place where she was throwing a home party, as a kind of substitute to iPod Touch, I took a photo of Google map displayed on my netbook screen with my digital camera. But, when I arrived in the street of my colleague’s, I realised what I missed – I didn’t write down the number of her place.

Well, if I opened a description box by clicking the spot on Google map, the captured image would have contained my colleague’s detailed address too. But, with Google map application in iPod Touch, you can view a certain spot and its address at the same time only by one-click.

In addition, the more I travelled, the more convinced I became how convenient it is to have an iPod Touch. As well as a map service, I’m frequently using mail-check, currency rate, language study and tracking expenses – it was supper efficient typing all the things I bought at the supermarket while waiting for the bus to get home.

누군가가 강하다고 할 때,
실은 그 사람이 정말 강한 것이 아니라
그가 강하길 바라는 것 뿐일 수 있다.

타인으로서 그 사람에게 건 기대가 무너졌다고 해서
그 사람을 약한 사람이라 할 수 있는가?

강했다기 보다는
강해야만 했던 한 사람을 보내며
오늘 처음으로 뜨거운 눈물을 흘렸다.

When we say that someone is strong,
he or she may not be strong in fact
but it is only that we want them to be strong.

When they did not come up to our expectations, which we had of them as the others,
can we call them a weak person?

Watching a person leave,
who had to be strong rather than being strong himself,
today I cried my first tears for him.

It has been only about a month since I came to Singapore but I have already had a fair number of friends who were in town.

Irish Reunion – Keith on the left has been working in Singapore since past February and was so kind to have offered me to stay at his place before I found my own. Brendan left Korea last November and has since been living in Shanghai. We all worked together at Irish Association of Korea while we were in Seoul, organising St. Patrick’s Day for the past two years. These lads are one of those who have significantly influenced me to be (like) Irish. See what colour I am wearing! And of course we had bottles of Bulmers, Irish cider, before dinner.

Last month Mitchy and I missed a chance to see each other in Korea by only two days. But on Wednesday of last week, thinking about what I was going to do during the long weekend (according to my company rules, if a public holiday falls on either Saturday or Sunday, following Monday becomes a replacement holiday. How great! I’ve never worked for a company that has this brilliant rule.), suddenly I came up with a spontaneous idea that it would be good if Mitchy, who’s staying in Taipei throughout May and going to Seoul next month, could come to Singapore and spend the weekend together. And, fortunately, he was also spontaneous enough to make it  happen. We had a lot of fun, visiting different places, having great food, and, as usual, encountering some hilarious situations. A further story is to be posted soon.

Tamzyn was stopping over in Singapore for two days and one night on her way from Australia back to Ireland. We worked together at an English school in my hometown, Koje, for about a year before I left for the Netherlands in June 2003 and I met her again in Cork in summer 2005 while I was doing my internship in Dublin. Weeks ago this year she sent me a message via facebook when she saw my status update on my arrival in Singapore and finally we met each other half a day before her departure. Tamzyn has applied for a professional jewelry design programme in Kilkenny and I wish her the very best of luck!

Now, you have seen my lovely place where anyone of you are always welcomed, and who’s going to be my next guest?

My family and many friends have asked what my place looks like and I’ve finally got some free time to upload the photos. So here they are.

In Singapore, there are four main types of housings: condominium, HDB, apartment and private houses. Of these, I think the first two housings need to be explained a bit. A condominium is a kind of apartment complex which usually consists of a swimming pool, a tennis court, gym, and BBQ garden. HDB, acronym for Housing and Development Board, is government-built housing and is often located in a very large cluster near public transport.

Varsity Park, where I live, is a condo near my company and I think its name ‘varsity’ comes from its location close to National University of Singapore. When I first visited this condo for viewing a room that was being rented out by a family of four from Sri Lanka, I took to the place right away and you can see why.

Of many good things about my place, I like that it has a lot of water space throughout the area. It does help cool down the temperature and is also good for mentality, I think. The artificial stepping stones on the left are my favourite part of the condominium.

A small hut on the right in the first photo is a reading room, most part of which is stood above the swimming pool. Next to this small studying space where I often go to use the fast wireless internet, there are function room where one can organise (religious) lectures, (children’s birthday) parties etc. – These are the occasions I’ve watched so far -, and another floating house that is not seen on the photo is gym.

This is a swimming pool where you can hardly see a crazy person swimming in rain. It is only a couple of steps away from my place. So, when you visit my place, make sure that you bring a swimsuit with ya!

P.S. – As I’m reluctant to post my address and mobile number here at my blog, if you email me, this contact information will be shown in my signature of the reply.

Thorough hand washing is one of the things you can do to prevent the infectious disease, but I haven’t seen anything better than the demonstration published by Korean governmental agencies.

A couple of years ago I saw this small poster sticker on the mirror in the public toilette of one of my previous work places in Seoul. The phrase and numbers stand for ‘ 손씻기: washing one’s hands, 1: per day, 8: eight times, 30: for thirty seconds.’ I was surprised by the advisable frequency of washing hands, ‘eight’ times, and realised I had never washed my hands that often.

Soon after this incident, I found a picture of demonstration of thorough hand washing in my grandma’s room when I visited my parents’ place.  I guess she was given the poster by civil servants who must have visited seniors’ house where she goes everyday to chat with her friends.

Looking at this demonstration, I was surprised again how delicate hand washing can be. Since these two discoveries, I’ve been trying to wash my hands as thoroughly, often, and long as possible. If you haven’t done hand washing like this before, why don’t you start it now?

두 친구는 눈밭을 가로질러 집으로 돌아가는 길이었습니다.
피글렛은 푸 같은 좋은 친구가 있어 너무나 다행이라 생각하며 살며시 미소를 지었습니다.

푸는 속으로 생각했습니다.
‘이 돼지 녀석, 재채기 하기만 해봐라, 아주 뒈졌어.’

This is the picture file I got from my friend, Gillian in London, soon after the outbreak of swine flu occured. This world-wide contagious disease has influenced a lot of aspects on our current life, no matter how serious they were, and, to me, anything related to pandemic influenza is now an indispensable element, at least for my work.

My official job title is ‘Project Executive for the ASEF Network for Public Health.’ This network aims at establishing a stable and constructive working collaboration between various regional, international organisations in Asia and Europe with particular regard to preparedness planning for and rapid containment of pandemic influenza. Initially, the project mostly mentioned avian influenza as a representative example of pandemic influenza but it was only five days later since I started working when the swine flu hit the world.

Currently, project manager and I are on the status of consultation process, meeting as many relevant people and organisations as possible in order to seek for useful ideas and insights for designing the network. For this reason, we’ve been confirmed to travel to Jakarta on the last week of May and another trip to Bangkok the following week is being planned. Unfortunately, we don’t see any possible meetings or events in Europe this year but hopefully next year.

As many of you know well, what I do now is exactly what I have always wanted to do: building up or enhancing collaboration between different cultures/organisations; working in an international setting; having chances to meet people from various backgrounds. Work is not everything but something very important on how you feel about your life. And I now feel pretty good about this new chapter of my life.

Having had kinda long hair for 4 years, I had wanted to have my hair cut short after I came back to Korea and finally it was deleted from my to-do list. Quite a big change for my look between before and after, right?

Since I came back to Korea, my schedule has been really hectic, travelling across the country with visits to several cities and meeting family and friends all individually. And today I did the most things and met the most people ever and I wanted to track the routes taken on Google map.

큰 지도에서 Routes on 10 April 2009 보기

Things done and people I met today
- Lunch with Des
- Shopping at Kyobo Book Centre
- Shoe repair
- Money changing
- Having hair cut
- Shopping at duty free shop / Meeting with Jooyeon
- Meeting with Jihyun
- Dinner with Younghwa

Crossing the river twice, the total distance by public transport was about 37 km and I walked almost 5 km. It was such a long day indeed.

In 2007 & 2008, as a member of the Irish Association of Korea (IAK), I was involved in organising the city-wide St. Patrick’s Day Festival. For the past two years we achieved a huge success, especially attracting 18,000 participants and spectators in the middle of capital with population of over ten million.
2007년과 2008년, 나는 한국아일랜드협회의 멤버로 세인트 패트릭스 데이 페스티벌 운영에 참가했었었다. 지난 2년 동안 우리는 큰 성공을 거뒀는데, 특히 작년에는 인구 천만명 도시 서울의 청계천에서 18,000 여명의 참가자와 관객들을 이끌었다.

Due to the economic turmoil, a worry over maintaining the festival had loomed but in the end even crisis couldn’t stop us (today’s press release on JoongAng Daily)! The 9th St. Patrick’s Day Festival in Seoul will be held at Daehangno on Sat. 14 March with lots of events consisting of a parade, music bands, ceili dancing and ‘hooley’. For more details, please visit the IAK’s website.
경제 침체 때문에 축제를 계속 이어나갈 수 있을 지 걱정이 많았는데 결국에는 경제 위기도 우리를 멈추게 할 수는 없었다 (오늘 자 중앙데일리 보도문). 올해로 9번째를 맞는 세인트 페트릭스 데이 행사가 이번에는 14일 토요일 대학로에서 펼쳐지게 되었다. 퍼레이드, 밴드 공연, 아이리쉬 댄싱 그리고 뒤풀이 축제인 ‘훌리 (hooley)’가 마련되어 있으니 자세한 사항은 IAK의 홈페이지를 참고하시길.

I’ll be missing my friends at the IAK this weekend but I will keep my green spirit up. Good luck, mo chairde!
이번 주말 IAK 친구들이 많이 보고 싶을 거다. 하지만 초록빛 정신만큼은 간직하마. 친구들아, 잘 될거야!

* Photo from www.iak.co.kr