thedarren

It was a clear morning on a peaceful late summer day in New York when I returned home from a pleasant jog with my Dad and found the answering machine beeping urgently with an unusually high number of unheard messages. We only got through a couple ("Where are you? Call when you get this") when another call came through, this one from my older brother. Before hello, he simply said, "Turn on the TV." The date was September 11, 2001, and both of the Twin Towers had already been struck by planes. While we dizzily tried to catch up on what had happened from both the TV newscaster and my brother, right before my eyes, I saw (on TV) the first tower just completely disintegrate and collapse. It was a shockingly surreal moment. How could the Twin Towers just ... disappear? How could terrorists launch such a successful coordinated attack on multiple high-value targets simultaneously? The illusion of safety and security was instantly shattered, and for the next few days, we f...

I had run less than 500m in my second ever 10K road race when I started to feel it - an uncomfortableness on my right side, just below the rib cage. The beginnings of a stitch. To say that this was an inauspicious start to a race would be an incredible understatement; this was the beginning of a disaster. A stitch is essentially a runner's cramp, and I've been prone to them for as long as I've been running. Before I became aerobically fit , I used to get stitches nearly every time I would try to run "hard". Since then, they've become much less common, but every now and then, when I least expect it, one maliciously emerges from dormant muscle memory and sabotages a workout. Zooming back to the race, the weather was perfect - clear and cool. My legs were feeling a little heavy at the start, probably from the weightlifting session two days before, but condition-wise I should have been fine. The gun went off, and I set out about 20 seconds per mile slower than...

These are some of the things I've learned from going to a paid fitness club in Korea: 1) Gyms are friggin' expensive here. But if you're expecting Sports Club LA/Equinox, you will be sorely disappointed. 2) Everyone is so incredibly important that they need to carry their phones around with them while they workout. If a phone call comes in while running on the treadmill, it is imperative to immediately take the call outside, but leave the treadmill operating. 3) Hanging upside down is oddly considered exercise. 4) So is this strange machine with a "belt" that vibrates, but I deliberately chose a gym that didn't have one of those things, in order to reduce the ajumma quotient. 5) Korean men never, ever wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Ever. #1 or #2, doesn't matter. There's soap in the bathroom, but it never has to be replaced because I'm the only one who ever uses it. Remember that, ladies, next time you're holding hands ...

Today I jogged a 10k. It was kinda a bummer, because I was looking forward to racing, but apparently I overstressed my body the last few weeks, and ended up coming down with a cold. Since it's not worth getting really sick just to race (while already sick), I decided to go to the race and just chill. It's kinda crazy to think that a year ago, there would have been no way I'd be able to just go out and run a 10k without really thinking too much about it, let alone jog one in under an hour (with a cold). Sometimes it's nice to put the ego aside and just enjoy the weather and companionship of running alongside a whole bunch of strangers. Plus, I got to collect a new bridge! Yet while I was running, it struck me that a lot of the people seemed to be having an absolutely miserable time. The 10k merged with the full marathon after about 1km, and it was as if we merged with a mob of zombies. People looked like they were dying on their feet. Many people were not even really ...

Translation is hard! But I just spent a little bit of time making a rough translation of today's Chosun Ilbo's article about Yuna's homecoming party/fan meeting , because I realized that the official English translation  left out some good stuff. Note: I am 100% sure that I mistranslated some stuff, because I did this really quickly, had to look a lot of words up, and certain nuances just don't translate that well from Korean to English. But it's reasonably close. Enjoy! ~~~~~ “I've Been Tired Of Skating For Awhile … But I Don’t Have Any Regrets” 2014.03.05 03:07 (Kim Yuna’s first fan meeting after returning home to Korea)   - “Hometown decision” was absurd, but happy that everything is over   - Spine injury, but won’t affect everyday life   - Ready now to qualify for the IOC Athlete’s Commission “A gold medal in our hearts!”, “Like a key to my life’s existence.” On the 4th of March in Seoul’s Yeongdeungpo-gu Times Square, at the “E1 Homecoming...

More stuff about becoming an aerobic beast that didn't fit in the last post . First, a few people have asked me how much cardio I actually do. The answer might surprise you: on average, I've been doing between 2.5 and 3.5 hours of low-intensity cardio per week. That's it, and that's all it took to see the massive benefits. That's not a lot, people. I'd like to get that up to around 5 hours per week (I don't think 5 hours is necessary for health - I just want to see if my aerobic pace will improve), but it's tough to do that along with the lifting I do. However, I do walk a ton . I live in a large city, and I love walking. My gym is a 15 minute walk away from where I live, and the nearest subway stations to me are 7 and 10 minutes away. So along with the targeted cardio, the constant movement also needs to be taken into account when analyzing your own fitness regimen. That being said, I was walking a ton before I got healthy, so while I'd say cons...

I've been watching the media firestorm over Dennis Rodman's recent visit to North Korea, and I gotta say, I'm solidly on the pro-Dennis Rodman side. This post is not satire - I seriously think the media should give him a break. First, let's talk about the press conference. It was obvious to me from the get-go that he was drunk (which doesn't excuse anything - just an observation). His "spokesperson" should have pulled him away from the mike before he said anything dumb. But if you listen to what he did  say, he actually made a reasonable point - Chris Cuomo from CNN probably doesn't know a damn thing about North Korea, whereas Dennis Rodman has actually set foot in the hermit nation four times in the past year. Yeah, what he said could easily be interpreted as implying that Kenneth Bae did something wrong, and that's why he's in prison, but what he actually said was (courtesy of CNN itself), "Do you understand what he did in this count...

It finally happened - I got a cold.  For the first time since I drastically reengineered my health half a year ago, I found myself coming down with something. Since temporary setbacks are often a good time to judge your progress, I decided to take this opportunity to write an update on my personal journey through health and fitness reinvigoration. Last time, I wrote about how low-intensity aerobic training had completely upgraded my health . My sleep schedule normalized, my digestive issues completely disappeared, my energy and mood both skyrocketed, and I generally felt "good" for the first time in my life. Since then, I've realized just how drastic a change I've actually made, but the real eye-opener is that I had never seriously considered that there was anything wrong with me - although my baseline was shitty, I never knew anything else, so I just wrongly assumed I was normal. Well, there is nothing normal about getting cold after cold in the winter, having one ...

Recently this article about 10 things that South Korea does better than anywhere else  has been making the rounds on social media, but when I first read it, I couldn't tell if it was sincere or satire. A few of the items on the list are not very positive, such as "overworking" and "using credit cards". So, I thought I would try to put together a better list. Here are 10 other things South Korea does better than anywhere else: 1) Small side dishes, a.k.a. " banchan " (반찬) Banchan are by far my favorite aspect of Korean cuisine. Rather than the "appetizer and main dish" approach of the West, a Korean meal is essentially built around small dishes. Even a 5,000 won (about $5 USD) meal at a mall food court will come with two to four banchan in addition to the "main", and often people will actually choose restaurants based  on the banchan (e.g., seolleongtang , or beef bone broth soup, places tend to have the tastiest kimchi). Ther...

Learning Korean as a non-Asian foreigner is an exercise in masochism. Note that I specify "non-Asian". Why does that make a difference? Simply because Koreans possess a deeply-ingrained belief that non-Asians are incapable of speaking Korean. The self-fulfilling prophecy of it is that since Koreans expect you to be incapable of speaking Korean, due to this mental block, they are likely to not understand you regardless of your proficiency level. Additionally, they won't respond to you with normal Korean like they would respond to an Asian person, because they assume you couldn't possibly understand. You will rarely ever have an opportunity to hear natural Korean, because Koreans simply won't speak it with you unless 1) they are open-minded and awesome (meaning they have probably lived abroad - thank you to all of you), or 2) they have known you long enough that they've gotten past the odd sight of a foreigner speaking Korean. In short, nearly every time you o...

(cross-posted from  https://medium.com/p/34c91eeb56 ) 언어는 공기다. 어떤 문화를 알려면 그의 언어를 못 한다면 모자란 스쿠바탱크로 숨쉬 듯이 몸부림칠 거다. 아무리 좋은 번역이 있더라도 그저 똑같지 않다. 언어는 햇빛이다. 지난 주에 첫 한국어 된 소설을 다 읽었다. 시작했을 때 모르는 단어가 너무 많아서 불가능한 일인 줄 알았다. 조금씩 읽던 스토리에 빠지며 더 쉽게 읽을 수 있게 되었다. 다 읽었는데도 난 아직 한국말에 갓난아기다. 그러나 이제 커튼을 젖혀서 이른 아침의 햇볕에 쬐는 갓난아기다. 언어는 감정의 정혈(精血)이다. 수백만명 사람의 마음을 움직이는 다른 방법이 있나? 음악도 있고 언어도 있다. 음악은 바로 언어의 한 종류다, 단어 대신 순 감정으로 만든 언어다. 음악을 감상하지 않거나 언어능력이 부족한다면 어떻게 인생의 굉장히 다양한 감정을 맛볼 수 있을까? 언어는 상대편이다. 나는 언어랑 늘 특별한 관계가 있다. 어렸을 때부터 말할 때 말을 더듬거린다. 다른 사람들이 자주 “나도 그래. 긴장이 될 때 말을 진짜 더듬거려”라고 관계를 맺으려고 노력하기는 하지만 정말로 어떤지 완전히 모른다. 상상해봐 — 말하고 싶은 걸 아는데 아무리 애써도 못 나온다. 조롱에 갇져 있는 종달새가 아침마다 자유를 이루려고 날개를 괜히 파닥거려서 감옥에서 못 달아나는 걸 깨닫다는 것처럼 — 그게 말더듬거리는 느낌이다. 그게 내 상대편이다. 그 상대편이 항상 옆에 있어서 그런지 언어를 너무나 좋아하게 되었다. 언어는 창조의 정수(精髓)다. 대부분의 문장이 적힐 때 인류사상에서 처음 쓴 거다. 그게 언어의 본질이다: 겸손한 연주자들이 모여서 훌륭한 교향악단이 되듯이 평범한 단어들이 모여서 감동적인 표현이 된다. 언어는 미움을 만들 수도 있고 사랑을 만들 수도 있다. 언어는 장인(匠人)의 인생 내내 쓰던 불완전한 도구다. 언어는 활기(活氣)다. 언어가 없는 인생은 색깔이 없는 세계와 같다. 언어는...

View from top of Dobongsan, north of Seoul. Sept 4, 2013. (cross-posted from https://medium.com/better-humans/dcc36325c2d ) It’s all Ueli Steck’s fault. A couple months ago, I happened across some Ueli Steck videos that I had already seen a couple years ago. I think they resurfaced after he got attacked by a mob of sherpas while ice-climbing without ropes on Everest . For those of you who don’t know, Ueli Steck is a Swiss alpinist that sets speed records on extremely technical climbs, without any ropes. He literally runs up mountains . For some reason, when I saw the videos this time around, I decided that I also wanted to run up mountains. In one of the videos, he explains that his training relies heavily on heart rate monitors, which intrigued me. I’ve tried a few times in my life to “make myself” into a runner. I read Born To Run on a plane a few years ago and decided that I, too, could be a runner. Just like that. So I started running again, but just like every p...

How do you become a better person? How do you uncover your faults, and once found, how do you know where to focus your energy in order to improve them? How do you even know that there's something wrong in the first place? The answer lies in self-awareness, an absolutely critical life skill that most people spend a lifetime avoiding. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been possessed of the notion that the world is overrun with people who tramp through life in a nearly unconscious state. I can clearly remember going to the store one day as a child and watching a middle-aged woman pushing a cart while muttering to herself, not like she was crazy, but more like she was just going through the motions of life. She was an NPC , and she was not alone. I was probably three or four years old. Growing up to be the engineer and scientist (and philosopher?) that I am, I'm constantly searching for elegant solutions to the problems around me. My friends know that I very often start ...

Okay, six months of 한국어학당 finished (20 weeks x 20 hours per week = 400 hours of instruction), so I figured I should self-assess my Korean progress. First, the positives: - I speak better Korean than most foreigners here, which isn't saying much, since the bar is embarrassingly low. That is, if you can properly order food, say hello, goodbye, thank you, and pronounce (and remember) Korean names properly, then you are already ahead of probably 95% of foreigners, and Koreans will call you a "genius". It's 2013, people. This is sad. - I can get around Korea just fine. I have no trouble with daily life. - I can have conversations in just Korean about various topics, sometimes for hours. - I can read and write better than I can speak. - Occasionally, I can express complex concepts by mashing together words I already know. Now, the negatives: - My Korean is nowhere near "natural". The word and grammar choices I make are decidedly strange, and I don'...