03312007 | Promise me

　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

　　　　　　　　　　"If you lose yourself, you will lose everything..."


　
　
　
　



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03202007 | On congratulations to great achievement

AFP/NASA/HO/File (related article)

A professor who taught me organic chemistry in college once said, "I personally believe that a periodic table should be loaded in a spaceship searching extraterrestrial because that could be one thing that they would understand". Well, I have two other things over that on my side; music and mathematics. I guess those are two basic and universal languages that could explain us evolved and civilized at one tiny part of the cosmos to who, if any out there, probably might develop totally different ideas and tools. And I especially believe in person that music would be very helpful to get them know about us; There is love and friendship. And there is misunderstanding, conflict and hatred but also understanding, forgiveness and reconciliation. And for that, of course, I know I have to wish they had same audible range with us. ;P





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03172007 | A cozy place to have music

So I tread along the aisle trying not to express glee being surrounded by tons of CDs. Then one of the staffs shows up with big smile asking, "Would you like some tea or coffee?" 　

Here is a place I'd love to drop by to buy records or just even to get some freshness. It's a specialized record shop for classical music. It's not as regular as can happen everywhere because classical music is not being enjoyed by broad and various people here in my country although we have some particular enthusiasts with solid background on it. So there have been huge concerns on its possibilities when it has first been announced that a classical music record shop was going to be built at the very central area in the city. And for the record, classical music market has been coming through tough time worldwide.

But, fortunately and proudly, I heard recently that it's planning to move to a larger space. Like people working there said, it doesn't mean they made a big profit in past years. But it's really good for them and all of us loving classical music as well. I'm so happy for them. 　

You may also stop by here even if you are not going to buy anything or not even a fan of classical music. You will always be welcomed with warm a cup of tea. So if you happen to visit my country, why don't you try? :) If the time is so perfect, you're gonna get invited a wine party!

> Taken from Poongwoldang, a record shop in Seoul. Take some candies and snack as you want.

　

　

　

　

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03152007 | A parade

One of the strangest cultures of America for me is parading. It's simply because I'm not familiar with it. The last parade that I've seen in my country lately was World Cup soccer players' for celebrating their huge success. Well, wait. Come to think of it, we actually used to parade quite often - a very long long time ago. That was a definitely different age from now. So I still don't get why Americans are so crazy for parades. For me, it's just large big balloons, walking in a row and having to wait to cross the road. ;P


Taken from 29th (maybe) Anniversary Christmas Parade in San Jose, CA last year. I was excited from people's excitement there.
> pentax me super agfa vista 100 desaturated





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03152007 | Some more books I can't live without

As someone would notice it too, the list below is quite inclined toward western readers' preference. It's pretty obvious though. Well, it would've been better if I had seen some more great book titles on it, like The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, My Sweet Orange Tree by Jos Mauro de Vasconcelos, Perfume by Patrick Suskind or Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. I think these are the classics even though they were not originally written in English. Anyway, I'd like to introduce some other good books I can't live without. I mean, you're going to like it if you had any chance to try it - written in my mother tongue, of course. ;P



Letters From Wildflowers by Dae-Kwon Hwang

This book contains more than a message from mother nature. The author had been in jailed for over than 13 years without any justifying reasons and this is the record from there - not in a voice of angry or offence. He found out a reason to live by planting wildflowers around his small cell and could reconstitute his thought to the world. A very calm and peaceful story than any other meditations.



Tyogye and Gobong being writing translated by YD Kim

Yep! Another collection of letters. Tyogye and Gobong were both historic figures who accomplished great academic achievement in Josun Dynasty. Tyogye was particularly the one of the two mastering one form of Confucianism. They exchanged and shared their views on the philosophy by writing a letter each other although Tyogye was older than 25 years than Gobong and already got an important position while Gobong just passed the exam which was required to whom wanted to be a government officer at that time. So this is a very unique and decisive lettering which can help us realizing what is the true attitude to researching and understanding their great thoughts as well.


p.s. I'm sorry for any poor translations.





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03142007 | 100 Books You Can't Live Without

Yesterday I came across some exciting post (here) and decided to try it myself with some changes. The original article was published on World Book Day (March 1st) at The Guardian.

Bold the ones I've read and italic the ones I've ever tried to read yet haven't finished.
Bold and underlined means that I especially CAN'T-LIVE-WITHOUT although which doesn't always mean I've read them more than once. I know it might sound weird but I too love some of them to read again. I mean, sometimes I'm afraid of losing first impression or not getting even the same amount of the feeling for the second.
Anyway, here we go.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

8 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernières

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Misérables - Victor Hugo


And what an odd! The ones in yellow were all in this list which I accidentally bought the day before yesterday. They are just next to me on the desk now waiting to be read. :)





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03082007 | Lighten up!

Tribute to Mozart :: Raoul Dufy





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