Evita's Korean and Other Languages

[Evita]

I'm up to episode 10 of Running Man, and it's been hit and miss so far. They've introduced a segment where they have to drink something disgusting, and the team that finishes drinking it first wins. I found it a bit funny the first time, but the fourth time? Skip that. Another thing I don't like is their focus on pain. I don't find it funny when a person is hit 10 times on the forehead with chopsticks. Games where they have to use their skills or athleticism or brain are much more interesting. Also, they have too much banter sometimes. And last episode was very weird - a female guest acted as if one of the male members of the show was her boyfriend. She was very aggressive about it. There must have been a backstory of some kind there but it was not explained. From what I could gather, they were not married in real life and they hadn't filmed a drama together, so I was left feeling vaguely uncomfortable all show long.

In other news, I worked a bit on Ewha lesson 10, but it's not finished yet. I probably won't have much time for that in the coming weeks. The computer I'm writing on right now is about 8 years old and I've been wanting to replace it for a long time. It really can't be put off anymore (it could die at any moment) so I need to organize my files and move them out. I also plan to install Linux on my new machine (I've been a Windows user till now but it doesn't support user privacy anymore so I'm out) so there will be some time until I've got everything in working order.

Edit: Do you know what "hot pants" are? They were to be a punishment for the losing team. I was wondering how hot those pants would be, but it turns out they were just very short shorts. Haha. It seems this is another term that Koreans have borrowed from English and made it their own.

[gsbod]

Hot pants is an English expression for short shorts. How much of a punishment they could be would presumably depend on your body shape or tendency for exhibitionism!

[Evita]

I managed to find a video of the hot pants so you can judge them for yourself It starts around the 1:40 minute mark.

[Evita]

I've been using my Anki vocabulary deck for more than four and a half years now. There have been periods where the reviews got too much and I stopped adding new words, just trying to clear the backlog. But I don't think there have been more than 5 days in which I didn't study the deck at all. I studied at least a little during all my holidays, my trip to Korea, and well, basically every day. It's something that I plan to keep on doing at least until I reach 8000 words, and probably beyond that. It doesn't take much time, I usually do only 30-40 reviews a day. If it gets more, I stop adding new words for a while.

Last fall and up to this January was one of those periods where I had a backlog, but this week I started studying 5 new words a day again. I updated my signature with the current values:

: 5040 / 8000 Korean Vocabulary
: 325 / 1500 Korean Hanja

I'm thinking that if I could get up to 6000 words this year, that would be great.

I've also finished lesson 10 of Ewha 2 and started on lesson 11. There are 15 lessons in total so if I keep this up I could be done with the book by April like I had originally planned. But I doubt I'll be able to keep it up.

Running Man is fun. Well, some episodes are more fun than others, but I enjoy the show in general. I'm up to episode 23 now.

[AndyMeg]

Have you ever watched "2 Days & 1 Night" (1박 2일) or K-Pop Star? Currently those are the korean TV shows I enjoy the most.

I started watching "2 Days & 1 Night" because last year Park Seo Joon (one of my korean favorite actors) was invited there as a guest with some other actors from his lastest drama (Hwarang). Then I noticed Yoon Shi Yoon AKA "Dong-gu" (the male lead from one of my all time favorite dramas) was one of the usual cast members of the programme and I decided to watch it from where he joined (in the first half of 2016). So far it has been really fun and interesting because they travel all around Korea and show different places and food. They have some "fixed" segments, but the actual games vary from week to week, so it is really entertaining and refreshing.

K-Pop Star is also a really fun show to watch because of the chemistry and funny interaction between the judges.

In case you want to check it out, here you can find episodes of "2 Days & 1 Night" season 3: KBS World TV

[Evita]

"2 Days & 1 Night" is second on my list of shows to check out, many people have recommended it. I'll wait until I grow more bored with Running Man though.

K-Pop Star... Well, I'm not really into K-Pop so I doubt I'd enjoy it but I will probably check it out at some point. I'm still waiting for the time when I can comfortably watch shows and understand at least 90% of what they are saying. I think I'll watch a lot more TV once that happens.

[Evita]

I've been watching Secret Garden again. Haha. Not sure if it's my favorite K-drama but it's definitely the one I've rewatched the most. I think it's because it's a comedy, the leads have tons of chemistry, and the dialogues are sharp. I like a good thriller now and then too, but they are not very rewatchable.

The reason I've been watching it again is that the Running Man episodes have been featuring it. They're from the beginning of 2011, right when Secret Garden finished airing. They've been playing the SG music, making people wear the blue tracksuit, and even named their latest game "Secret Gary". Haha. So I got nostalgic.

By the way, something happened in the latest RM episode that I had been waiting for for a long time. They have these secret challenges. Every challenge is different because once they're aired on TV they're not secret anymore. For example, one guy had participated in knowledge quiz TV shows before RM, so the producers rounded up everyone else, except that guy, and told them that the cover challenge would be a quiz, but the real challenge would be for all the others not to let the smart guy get any correct answers. All the other members got the answers beforehand so they memorized them and completed the secret challenge successfully.

But usually these challenges are about fooling the guest. One time, the guest was an actor and he had to judge the acting of the other participants. He thought the challenge was to be the best at acting, but the real challenge was for everyone else to change their shirts without the actor noticing. They were successful here, too. In fact, every time someone had a secret challenge, they were successful. Every time! But not anymore. This time the challenge was for Gary, one of the members, to pretend he was one of the crew (fixing microphones, giving out water bottles) without the guest noticing. But the guest had seen many RM episodes and although it took her a while, she realized Gary was not participating in the quiz and eventually discovered him lurking nearby. She was quite gleeful that she managed to win the challenge, and so was I. It had been a long time coming.

[Evita]

I've been too lazy to update the log. Sorry about that.

Well, the big news is that I have finally switched to Linux on my home computer. I bought a completely new PC without an OS and tried to install Linux Mint myself, but I couldn't. There was an error, something about GRUB, and it just crashed. Then I noticed that my processor was overheating (73C) so I had no choice but to bring it back to the store to fix it. They did it (the fan hadn't been attached properly ) and they also installed Linux for me. I hadn't asked them to do it, I wanted to figure it out on my own, but I guess I'll stick with it for a while. It took me several hours to set up switching between Korean and Latvian input correctly, but the main thing is that it works now.

I've watched lots of Running Man episodes since my last post. They eventually dropped the secret challenges and also moved the running segment from the end of the show to the start of the show. Previously there had been two teams playing hide and seek (with the hiding team having some sort of mission or task so that they wouldn't hide all the time without moving), but they switched it to the guests being the hiding team and the RM members being the seeking team. It was fun. The RM members didn't know whether the guests were male or female, they didn't know anything, and there were hundreds of volunteers pretending to be the guests or just providing a crowd for the guests to hide in. There was one episode with the Phantom of the Opera theme. Another one was in an indoors water park. One I really liked was just in Seoul. The guest had 4 missions to do - one in City Hall, one in Seoul Station, one in Kimpo airport, and one in Incheon airport, and the RM members, divided into two teams, were chasing him using GPS. It was like a real spy action movie. And one other time, in a hospital, the RM members were searching for a non-existing guest. That was fun too.

And then the producers switched it up so that the guests became the seekers and RM members were the hiders. It doesn't seem to be as fun because the RM members still have to wear special clothes so it's easy for the guests to spot them and catch them. I'm now up to episode 41 and I was shocked when I finished it because they announced it had been 송중기's last show. I knew that he left RM eventually but I didn't know it was so soon. He cried during the announcement and two other cast members cried, too. It was all so sad. But it was a special episode. The producers had surveyed a bunch of Koreans asking them what would be the top 5 things they would want in their own ideal library (except books and shelves and such). Then they divided the cast plus the guests into two teams and told them to guess which items were picked the most in the top 5. And not only guess but go and get the items and bring them to the studio. And where to get them? The producers had gotten the permission of the roommate of one of the RM cast members to use their apartment for this purpose. They had put their stickers on everything that could be carried out, all without the knowledge of the cast member. When he realized everyone would be emptying his house, it was a sight to see. Of course, they brought everything back later. It was the punishment of the team that lost. And in case you're curious about the 5 things, starting from the top: coffee machine, laptop, electric pad, air cleaner, and a friend.

But enough about Running Man. I have also been studying a little. I'm up to chapter 13 in Ewha. Got Anki for Linux, set up Audacity the way I like and verified that I can still make Anki cards the way I want. Well, except Hanja, I haven't looked up how to type it yet.

Edit: I forgot to mention another reason episode 41 was special. 김종국 is a Korean singer and also a RM member. What separates him from the other cast members is that he works out a lot and is very strong. He's almost always on the chasing team and his nickname on the show is "Commander from Sparta". I think there was one episode where he single-handedly took out everyone else. When teams are formed, he's usually the leader of one team, and the two RM members that are older than him are on the other team. But this time the three of them were on the same team together with a guest, who was also older than 김종국. So he was the youngest one for the first time ever, and the others used informal language with him and made him do errands and treated him as very inexperienced. It was hilarious.

[Evita]

And again it's been a long time since my last post. Do you think I've been watching more Running Man? Correct! Haha. It's become my go-to show when I'm tired in the evening and don't want to do anything. It's not always funny, some parts are boring to me, but I've gotten to know the seven cast members so I can watch for their interactions alone. I've even started rewatching some bits. I also pause now and then to look up a Korean word and enter it into Anki. I think more than half of my last 100-150 words come from Running man. 아군, 빡빡하다, 전략, 최강, 처제, 뜯다, 돗자리, 다물다, 현수막, 씁쓸하다, 즐비하다, 완패, 모함, 검거하다, 쾌감, 까불다, 코뿔소, 잠복, and many more.

I also ordered and received Ewha textbooks for levels 3 and 4. I still have one chapter left in level 2 but I'm putting it on hold because it has some grammar that I don't want to enter into my sentence deck right now. Instead I'm going back to the Sejong textbook that I put on hold about a year ago. Currently I'm in lesson 9 out of 14 in level 3. This level doesn't contain any new grammar for me, I'm just mining it for sentences and reading/listening practice. It seems so easy after Ewha.

I think I'll try to watch more dramas in the near future. I've watched very few of them in the last couple of years, I guess I just lost interest, but now I feel that interest coming back. Currently I'm watching Chief Kim and I think it's my favorite drama in the last 12 months. Well, there was a family drama about 5 kids that I also enjoyed a lot but I don't remember whether it was in the last 12 months or not. Usually I pick out dramas based on the reviews on Dramabeans, but that can be hit or miss. Everyone there was raving about Goblin so I watched it but I still have to finish the last episode. Somehow it didn't grab me. The same with Weightlifting fairy. I tried it out just last week, watched the entire first episode, but no, that's not for me. How to cope with fellow students who are mean and how to find who stole your panties from the laundry? It was just boring, and the acting was sub-par.

[AndyMeg]

The same happened to me with Goblin: I only watched about two episodes and left it in my "to finish later" list xD! (but with the korean transcripts leosmith shared, I'm thinking about giving it another try)

Have you tried "Strong Woman Dong Bong-Soon"? It is on my "to-watch" list. I've seen the first episode and found it pretty funny.

From the ones that are currently airing, then one I'm enjoying the most is "Circle". It is sci-fi mixed with suspense. It's really interesting so far!

Also, Viki launched its "Learn Mode" and it works with some k-dramas. It is far from perfect but they are open to receive feedback.

By the way, I've always wanted to ask you: How did you choose which words to put into your Anki vocabulary deck? (I've started to study with it in a particular way, and I'm curious about your word choices). And really: Thanks a lot for sharing your deck!