Author: Willem

It’s a good thing I packed my North Face jacket because it’s in the 40s here (about 5 °C). These jackets come in many styles and colors, and I saw this article in the Korea Joongang Daily newspaper on a previous trip back to the States. Turns out the jackets reflect a social hierarchy at some Seoul high schools. The ‘layers’ of the hierarchy are :  the Loser (even though that jacket costs 250,000 Korean won or $215) , the Commoner, distinctly Middle class, the Bully, a Rich Family Punk or a Captain (700,000 won or $600).    Which one am I?  Well, my jacket is all black – and I got it at a sale two winters ago for $150, seemingly too cheap to even be a ‘loser’.

Even the Japanese station NHK World reported on the first Republican primary vote on Tuesday in Iowa, noting Mitt Romney’s ‘win’.  (It was by a sliver of 8 votes, over Rick Santorum).    Hey, and it takes 5 Kanji characters to spell Iowa!  The state derives its name from the Ioway people, one of many American Indian tribes that occupied the territory at the time of European exploration.

As I approached the neighborhood pub called Smiths here on 15th Ave around 3 pm, I heard the sounds of people singing Auld Lang Syne to bagpipe music.   So I joined the little crowd that watched them from outside until they were done.   ‘Let’s go occupy Victrola!‘ joked one band member, and they were off to the Victrola coffee shop down the street.

‘Occupy’ has become a political word in 2011, of course (poster picture from http://occupywallst.org/) – and makes me wonder what will become of the Occupy movement in 2012.  Also check out the poster for a New Years Eve benefit concert for Somalia.  A few more things to contemplate would be :  if we will get a new US president in the November 2012 general election; if the 2012 London Summer Olympics (the opening ceremony, say) will be as spectacular as Beijing in 2008 (probably not), and if the world will come to an end as per the Mayan calendar.   On this last one, let me stick my neck out and say that is a ‘no’.

*A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement presented as a fact, but with no veracity.

(Long post ahead!). North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il’s funeral was Wednesday.  Regarded as one of the few Stalinist regimes persisting into the post-Cold War era, North Korea—along with its culture, history, and society, and the daily lives of its residents—is hidden behind iron curtains even in today’s information age.   One official picture (first one below) turned out to have been Photoshopped – to make people milling around in the white snow section on the left disappear by adding ‘snow’ over them.

But more information from North Korea is emerging. Further down are pictures I took a few weeks ago from NHK World’s TV coverage when Kim Jong Il died, as well as some culled from the web.   The map picture shows the major roads in the country, even though private car ownership is almost non-existent.   (You use the bus or a train to get around).   What about flying?  Well, North Korea’s sole airline, Air Koryo, currently has scheduled flights from Beijing, which depart at 11:30AM every Tuesday and Saturday, and return from Pyongyang at 9AM on the same days.  Air Koryo is the only 1-star (worst) airline on Skytrax’s list.  (Yes, you can fly in on this airline – but only as part of an official tour group. Another option is to go check out the jointly controlled truce village in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas, which has regular one-day bus tours from Seoul).   The airline does operate internal flights as well.

Where does the flag (next picture) come from?  It came into being in 1948 when the country was founded as a result of the post-colonial settlement handed down by the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR).  The Korean War between the north and South Korea of 1950-1953 in which some 54,000 US personnel were killed is sometime called The Forgotten War (from the US perspective).  And today I learned that M*A*S*H (popular 70s-80s TV series) stands for 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, South Korea, so it depicts the Korean War and NOT the Vietnam War.

Food? Frequent food shortages.  Basic food is rationed, while one can buy canned meat or a small amount of vegetables either from a store or farmers’ market.  The local specialty liquor is insam-ju, Korean vodka infused with ginseng roots.  Spicy food seems to be is short supply; there is no kimchee (spicy cabbage, found everywhere in South Korea, as in the picture I took at a shop at Seoul’s international airport).  No candies or sweets for children.

Language?  They speak Korean, much the same as in South Korea.   From Wikipedia (I will have to research what the heck this means) ‘The genealogical classification of the Korean language is debated by a number of historical linguists. Most classify it as a language isolate while a few consider it to be in the Altaic language family.  The Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax’.  Ooh, sounds complicated.  I love it !

Cell phones?  There has been cell phone service since 2008 and reportedly 60% of Pyongyang residents and many ordinary citizens now have phones.  (And some even have iPhones).  An Egyptian company was contracted to help build out the infrastructure.

Defections.  I think the last picture I snapped from NHK TV shows the latest defectors in 2011 that were found by the Japan Coast Guard – a wooden boat carrying nine people, three men, three women and three boys. The group had been sailing for five days towards South Korea but drifted towards the Noto Peninsula.   The first famous defection occurred shortly after the signing of the armistice ending the Korean War, on September 21, 1953, when then 21-year-old No Kum-Sok, a senior lieutenant in the North Korean air force, flew his MiG-15 to the South.  No was awarded the then immense sum of $100,000 and the right to reside in the United States.

 

 

Alright, here are the ‘official’ answers! (picture from Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition Dec 24-25, 2011).  And how did I do? (If you are a Google recruiter, stop reading).  My response to Question 1‘s answer is .. Ok, if you say so (there is an infinite number of correct answers).   I didn’t get it.  I tried prime factors, differences to three levels and other weird things. Which, after not working, is of course a clue that it’s something still different.  Then I thought it could be years in the 20th century with significant events, but still no luck.    Question 2.   I thought the answer is, first – the balloon stays put for an instant, due to inertia (Newton’s First Law), and then thought it would move forward but couldn’t explain as nicely as in the newspaper answer as to why.   Question 3.   I got this one .. and I got Question 4.  Fairly easy to solve with algebra, and making the number of pages in the book the unknown quantity x to solve for in a single equation.   Question 5.  Missed it!  Aargh.  Best I could offer was that it was a reference to Wheel of Fortune (very popular TV game show), and that the guy tried to spell ‘HOTEL’ or something of that sort, and lost the money he had.

.. that’s what this weekend’s Wall Street Journal Review section challenges its readers with, with an article about interview questions candidates can expect at Google.   Want to give them a try? (If you don’t have training in math and engineering, just try Question 5).   I’m going to take a crack at them myself without peeking at the answers at the back of the newspaper, and will report back tomorrow!

Question 1 : What is the next number in the sequence 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, .. ?

Question 2: You’re in a car with a helium balloon on a string that is tied to the floor. The windows are closed. When you step on the gas pedal, what happens to the balloon – does it move forward, move backward, or stay put?

Question 3 : Using only a 4-minute hourglass and a 7-minute hourglass, measure exactly 9 minutes – without the process taking longer than 9 minutes.

Question 4 : A book has N pages, numbered the usual way, from 1 to N. The total number of digits in the page numbers is 1,095.  How many pages does the book have?

Question 5 : A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune.  What happened?

I love this picture.  Look at the faces (and is that a baby crash helmet the kid is wearing?).  The photo was snapped by Mark Gormus from Associated Press and made MSNBC’s Year in Sports Pictures for 2011.  The caption reads : Tiffany Goodwin of Fredericksburg, Va., robs her husband Allen, at right with glove, of a foul ball while holding 8-month-old son Jerry during a minor league game between the Richmond Flying Squirrels and Harrisburg Senators in Richmond Va.

After 5 months I finally got my 2010 Federal tax refund from the US Treasury (it was a complicated tax return).  Yes, it took a long time, but they paid out 5.6% in annual interest in addition to the refund.   So off I went to my Wells Fargo branch office to deposit the check.  (Wells Fargo has a market cap of US $143 billion and 263,000 full-time employees.  All this to say it is a really, really big bank).  The deposit made, the cashier makes me see a financial adviser.  Here is more or less how the conversation went.  And what will I do with the money after it clears the checking account?  Put it in a Wells Fargo savings account?  Oh, I have a savings account already (with an interest rate of 0.01%! incredible but true).   Ah, but they can upgrade the account.  Then it goes from 0.01% to 0.4% interest.   That’s 40 times the current rate, says the adviser.  (Thinking).  OK. First, I can do the math.  Second, on-line bank ING Direct offers 0.8%.  (Yes, which is still next to nothing).

So! After being annoyed at the US Treasury for holding on so long to my money, I now want to give it back so they can hold it some more.  Bankrate.com says that even if one has $100,000 of cash AND deposit it in a CD for 5 years, the best return offered is some 1.8%.   One could always try Dividend.com to find high-dividend yielding stocks.   Just don’t pick France Telecom with a fantastic dividend yield of 13%, but off 34% from its 52-week high.

Here’s the seal of the Department of the US Treasury.  The Treasury prints and mints all paper currency and coins in circulation through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint.  The Department also collects all federal taxes through the Internal Revenue Service, and manages U.S. government debt instruments, with the major exception of the Federal Reserve System.

Could nine pillows on one’s bed be a few too many?  (From my Marriott Hong Kong Sky City hotel room bed.  I’m making my way back to Seattle on Wednesday morning).   I guess all these afford the sleeper a lot of choice between softer and firmer and bigger and smaller pillows.      Or maybe it could make one dream of being on cloud nine (a state of total euphoria) ?

Never mind that is does not snow in Hong Kong.  One can always shake up a snow globe like I did on Sunday in a Godiva chocolate store  (the one in the picture).    The ‘Belgium 1926’ is a reference to Godiva’s founding country and date.   Legend has it that the Anglo-Saxon woman Lady Godiva (1002 – 1066) , rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to protest high taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants.

And how long have snow globes been around?   Seems the first ones appeared at the Paris Universal Expo of 1878, featuring a little Eiffel Tower inside.