I'm going now. Please enjoy my last post, and thank you for reading this all along the way. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences with you, dear reader. I hope you have enjoyed reading of them.
--
First things first. Video. Here. Finally.
Happy now? Me neither. The first 2 words are supposed to be "hello there!" but for some reason YouTube snipped that off. Woops.
So first of all, allow me to indulge you on the final product of my research. I finished the program Thursday, and it was at least partially successful. If you don't want to look back to my post from a few weeks ago, I was tasked with the duty of turning 3-d voxel (and some 2-d images as well) signal intensity data from MRI machines, taken over different times (ranging from 10-200ms), and creating a slope for the intensity for each individual voxel over each of those times. Then, I was to turn the slopes for the individual voxels back into an image, and make that display in the Matlab window. It turns out that Matlab really isn't the best program for visualizing 3-d data, but I found a function on the Mathworks file exchange site, called vol3d, which allowed me to turn the slope data into an image with 3-d axes, which stacked the image slices along the z-axis instead of creating one solid figure. The final result for all of the data looked like what you see to the right. This is a decent job of data visualization, but the lack of transparency into to the inner bone region makes seeing a difference in bone and marrow with the T2 and T2* imaging difficult. The intention of this program is to take this data and visualize it, then take other data from similar projects around the world and compare our data to it. As a programming n00b, I would say that such a crash course in Matlab was a really beneficial experience; that is a software that I will be using for a very long time to come, and now I feel I can conquer pretty much any task thrown at me. I am grateful to have undertaken the project, and would definitely be interested in further research opportunities because of it. |
| Nothing emanates Buddhist modesty like 3 giganticgolden statues. |
We left Ulsan Friday evening and arrived in Seoul at around 8:45 that night, so there wasn't a whole lot to do except walk around the Hyewha district, where our hostel was located. The next day, Labiba and I woke up damn early to head out and see something in Seoul before I had to head to the airport for my 5:30 flight. Using the subway, we went to Insa-dong, which is a region known for the shops with traditional Korean gifts and food. We got there really early, so there wasn't a lot open while we were there, but we did find a couple open shops and looked around there for gifts to bring back home. Then, around 9:30 or so, we migrated north to Seoul's largest Buddhist temple, called Jogyesa. We arrived just prior to morning service, so there were many buddhist believers who had entered the temple to pray and prepare. The temple itself was a marvelous sight to behold. On the outside, the walls are painted with story-telling murals that wind around the structure, and the top is decorated in the traditional green and red paint that I saw first at the Gwon residence my first weekend here. Inside it was even more incredible. In the front, there were 3 giant golden statues of Buddha, and on the walls on either side, there were many lit candles. There were lamps that hung on strings towards the ceiling, and an altar in the middle of the building, towards which many older folks were praying. Some of them did a routine where they stand up, get in a praying position (hands flat together underneath chin, head down) then squat back down to make the same pose, and repeat the process, which, honestly, was kind of fun to watch.
 |
| "'sup?" |
 |
| Throne room of Gyeongbukgung |
Things I Will NOT Miss
- Sleeping on those awful mattresses. Koreans like really firm mattresses. In fact, many Koreans don't even use mattresses at all, they just lie a mat down on the floor. I guess it makes sense, then, that the mattresses in the UNIST dormitory were about 3 inches thick and gave practically no give at all. As a result, I had major sleeping problems the entire tripo; it took me forever to fall asleep in the first place on those things, and then when I did (in the early morning hours), I couldn't wake up any earlier than 11. My back would be in pain for an hour or two after waking up, without fail. I know that firm mattresses help your back, but if you're used to sleeping on your side, then doing so on a hard surface kinda hurts. That is first on my list.
- K-Pop. I don't think I'll ever get these awful songs out of my head for the rest of my life. Everywhere you went in any city in Korea, shops, restaurants, grocery stores, department stores, and even some bars, would play K-pop. And every time I passed by something playing K-pop, it was always one of maybe six songs that were getting constant airplay, and were all very poppy and catchy, and they all made me feel like throwing up. I'm not going to link you to a K-pop song because I don't think you deserve such cruel punishment.
- Drinking Soju (and other bad alcohol). If you want to get drunk in Korea, you drink Soju. I'm not quite sure what it is made from, but the alcohol content is about 20%, and it tastes exactly like watered down vodka, or worse, rubbing alcohol. And you drink it straight! It is served cold, which kinda helps a little bit, but when you start taking shots of the stuff, it becomes intolerable before you can really get drunk. That, and the horrible beer selection that they have here I will not miss. Max, Cass, and Hite are the big beer brands of Korea, and they all taste like Natty or Genny Light (i.e. cold piss). The only saving grace of both of these types of alcohol was that you could mix them together, a drink called somekchi, and the result was a little more alcoholic and not quite as taste-raping. But still not good.
Bittersweet
- UNIST campus. The campus at UNIST, as I hope my cinematography displays, is pristine. Only three years old, the buildings are all brand new, and it is a very clean area. The surroundings are very pretty hills, and I got a chance a couple weeks ago to walk through the natural landscape in search of a lake. The facilities and buildings are also quite nice, and the dorms were alright too. If it weren't so damned far away from everything, I might have put this solidly in the "will miss" category. But the fact remains that it is a 10-minute bus ride into the nearest city-like area of Ulsan, and 30+ minutes to any of the major attractions in the city. At least the bus system was easy.
- Ulsan. Ulsan city is a big city, and there are many great restaurants, cultural sites, and museums that we went to and enjoyed. The problem is, Ulsan is a big city in terms of land-mass, so without an escort, finding your way around is damn near impossible. The bus system is excellent, but even if we had found a full bus map, we wouldn't have been able to read it. The food in Ulsan is superb; fantastic seafood, delicious bulgogi, and many delicious barbecue places. However, there is limited shopping and nightlife around the city, and relatively few tourist attractions in close range of that. Ulsan is a business-driven city with many fine points to it, but is not the best town for tourists or sightseers.
- Culture. This is a really, really broad thing to try and describe. I will miss the family-style attitude and focus on doing things together, and making sure nobody gets left out of the group. I will also miss how relatively little money mattered, as it seemed a lot of the friends I made were more than willing to just pay for peoples drinks or food or what-have-you. I won't miss how unwilling people are to take calculated risks; nobody walks across the street unless the light is green, nobody wants to go on impromptu swims or hikes, and nobody wants to do or wear or eat things that go against the grain. Also, I dislike very much the inherently segregated dorm system that is in all Korean colleges. Girls are not allowed in the same building as guys, let alone the same room. It wasn't so bad in the summer, but in the wintertime, if you want to hang out with a group of guys and girls, you have to go outside or to a different building. This is an unnecessary and obnoxious cultural hinderance that really got under my skin for the short time I was there.
Things I Will Miss... A Lot
- Being able to drink legally. Only... 8 more months until I'm 21. *sigh*
- Ultimate Frisbee. While I can play ultimate in the U.S., and do play on occasion, I have never played with the frequency (or intensity) with which I played with the UNISTars. Clayton, GaRam, and I (but mostly Clayton) pioneered the sport at UNIST, and by the time the few weeks were up, it had become something that we did regularly. All of the UNISTars were vastly improved from week 1 to the final week. [Rao and Smart tie for most improved, if you want to make me award it]. From 3-on-3 to 7-on-7, we would always have a spirited game and it would always be fun (and I would always be soaked in sweat afterwards... stupid humidity).
- Research. Despite my total newbage when entering the lab for the first time, I was able to complete an entire project. Granted, any EECS major probably could have figured out how to do my task in like 2 days, but still... This made me consider grad school a lot harder than I was previously, and I definitely want to do research again before I graduate. I dare say that I ight even have gained an affinity for Matlab, which, given my attitude about coding before this project, is a huge turnaround. I enjoyed it that much, and I hope to continue it in the future.
- Food. Oh my god the food. I love Korean food to death, and I have been spoiled by having it fro every other meal. From the chicken, beef, and pork, to the barbecue, the seafood, the kimbap... hell, even the snacks that I bought at the 7-11 was really good. I had more variations on ramen than I had ever dreamt possible: jajang ramen, spaghetti ramen, squid ramen, kimchi ramen. Oh, and did I mention how much I love kimchi? I LOVE kimchi. Seriously, I can't get enough of it. Whether it is in ramen, in rice, grille, cold, something about that spiced fermented cabbage makes me fall in love. The ingredients they use in many of their dishes also appeal to me, especially garlic. It is frequently cooked into food, but at barbecue places, garlic comes in a plate with a red sauce that cuts its intensity. We often roasted our garlic off to the side of the meat, then dipped a piece of that and a piece of meat into the red sauce (except sometimes I skipped the meat..). Koreans also make liberal use of the chili pepper, which is just fine with me. In fact, many of the Koreans I ate with were surprised and impressed by how much I liked spicy food; on some occasions, I could handle it better than the locals! I never met a meal I didn't like during my time here, and it was, hands down, my favorite part of the experience.
- People. I will greatly miss all of the friends that I met at UNIST. In no particular order, I give shout-outs to our Korean teacher (who we simply called "sunsaeng-nim," which is Korean for teacher), who taught us a fair bit of Korean in only two weeks, and took us out to get coffee and all sorts of awesome stuff. I'll miss the UNIST faculty, including our program director SoJin Choi, Professor Kwon (head of language center), and Mr. Lee, David, Professor Choi, and Professor Tatar, who work/teach in the language department and facilitated our early language course and cultural experiences. I'll miss Professor Cho and all of my labmates, Sohyun, Franklin, Cheong, Min Ah, Seul Kee, and the the time I spent in front of that computer. Finally, and more than anything, I will miss the great student friends that I met at UNIST, and all of the time we spent together with them hanging out, going out to eat, or going on some adventure within Ulsan or elsewhere in the country. I'll miss SeongWoo and MinYung (mine and Labiba's homestay people), Eun Kwang (roommate!), Smart, Rao, Abi, Jolly, Fawad, Minhaj, Ahmed, Raja, Arif, Marian, Alicia, Jae Sung, Harmony, Melissa, John, Walter, Boris... did I miss anyone? Oh, yeah, that's right–I miss all of you. Thank you all for making my trip nothing short of spectacular.
I guess that's it for me, then. It has been fun, but now it is done. I thank you all for reading and keeping up with me, and especially sitting through these long, verbose posts that I'm prone to write. I've had a lot of fun writing about the trip. I wish you all a warm and heartfelt goodbye.
