큰 칼…

I don’t know what to say of this situation that occurred yesterday.

While translating '”우행시” (abbreviation of 우리들의 행복한 시간), AKA “Our Happy Times” which is the novel that I’m working on for my thesis, I came across an intertextual reference in one of the paragraphs. The author made reference to one of Korea’s most famous folk tales, 춘향전 Chun-hyang Jeon.

춘향이가 큰 칼을 쓰고 앉아 있는 것은 청승스럽고 미련스럽고 아니면 무언가 위엄 같은 것이 있어 보였지만, 그건 어디까지나 훗날 당연히 이몽룡과 함께 도래할 극적인 정의의 반전을 위해 비참하면 할수록 좋은 도구이겠지만, 21세기가 다가오는 때, 실은 그건 좀 충격적이었다.

My translation: When Chun-hyang was in a cangue, she had looked pitiful and silly, if not somewhat dignified, but the more miserable she looked, the better it was for the inevitable dramatic reversal of justice that came along with Lee Mong-ryong.

The translation is a revised version. At first, I thought that ‘큰 칼’ supposedly meant ‘large knife’ so I had translated the front clause as “When Chun-hyang was sitting down, using a large knife,…” Apparently, there was a second meaning which I didn’t know of when I first translated it so when I presented the un-revised version to my supervisor, he was quite confused. Why did the author mention Chun-hyang using a large knife in this context? Mind-boggled, he went to google Chun-hyang Jeon to look for clues to this ‘knife’. After briefly looking through an online text of Chun-hyang, he suspected that 큰 칼 was referring to a ‘large cangue’ instead of ‘knife’, but he wasn’t sure. So he asked me if I knew Gong Ji-young’s (author of novel) email or contact details so that he could ask her about it. I said the only way I knew how to contact her was through her twitter. So I logged into twitter and he sent a message (in Korean, of course) to her asking about the meaning of ‘큰 칼’.

After that, I didn’t dwell on this matter anymore but waited for the author’s reply. At night, when Bf came online, I took the chance to ask him about the meaning of 큰 칼. After a few minutes he was able to give me a perfect answer of the word. Indeed, besides meaning ‘knife’, it also meant ‘cangue’ or ‘pillory’. He said it was in the naver dictionary! The dictionary which was like my bible during the translating process had this word?!! I was dumbfounded. Why didn’t I look it up in naver? I had assume it ONLY meant ‘knife’… And I felt so embarrassed for my prof and about the message sent to GJY. She must think, I’m not dictionary, look it up yourself. And no, she didn’t reply my tweet.

Uneventful.

Life’s a dull ever since the semester started. Everyday I’m just caught in the web of research, my honours thesis and translation theories. Somehow, I just cannot seem to organize these theories in a logical way for my thesis and inside my head is just a bunch of information all messed up… It’s been like that for the past three weeks, but now I’m catching up on research, reading up “quite” intensively and trying to push my way through on starting to write this thesis which is actually called a critical commentary intended to address translation issues I face in my translation project. Because it’s not the conventional kind of thesis, I am having a little difficulty starting on it but I am glad that I don’t have to write 20,000 words of thesis. This translation thesis that I’m doing is 2/3 translations and 1/3 critical commentary, so it’s about 5,000words of commentary that I have to write.

This semester, I have no official classes. It is just basically thesis-writing. So it’s really such a dull without much of a campus life, only the meetings with my supervisor would bring me to UQ twice a week. I’m just on my own the rest of the time. I meet up with some friends once in awhile, but without cliques to hang out with, I feel quite lonely at times. Good friends have all graduated and gone home. This is probably one of the reasons why I can’t wait to graduate and leave this place as well.

On the bright side, I have been trying to achieve multiple tasks with the time I have. Besides working on my thesis, I am also self-studying Korean, translating other kinds of short texts and trying to cultivate the former habit of spending more time with books (non-academia). When I was younger, I used to read quite a lot… series and series of books but why did this habit die throughout the years? I love reading, but I realised that I cannot stay reading as long as I did last time. So right now I’m just trying to cultivate the reading habit again.

Back to Singapore…

Yes, I landed at exactly 12am this morning from Seoul. Already I’m missing bf badly, and missing everything about my life in Korea. I loved my life in Korea, the times spent in school, with my classmates and of course, with beloved bf. My heart felt so heavy when I had to leave that place, I wanted to stay longer, I had that bit of impulse to prolong my stay there, but I can’t… because of the dreaded last semester I have left in Aus.

Isn’t it amusing that there is such a bipolar difference in my response towards my study abroad experience in Australia and Korea. Albeit it was a pretty short stay in Korea, but I still loved everything about it. I wanted to stay longer, even if I have to study… in fact I loved studying there too. In Australia, I just want to complete my studies ASAP and get out of that boring country. I never fail to look forward to leaving Aus… Always counting down to leaving during vacations, not really missing that place much besides the awesome weather. One of the reasons I dreaded leaving Korea was because of the fact that I knew the time for me to go back to Aus was nearing. If Aus was out of the picture, I wouldn’t be as reluctant. Oh wells. Too much for me to state WHY I feel this way so I’m going to leave it for now. Anyway, I’ve come this far, just one more semester and I’ll be out of the bore-hole for good!

Although I’m no longer in Korea now, I’ll continue to blog bits and pieces of my experiences in Korea!

Already halfway through my stay in Korea

5 weeks have past since I began studying at the Korean language education institute in SNU. We have even taken the mid-sem exams last week. I did pretty well for the exams even though I studied last minute… something which I hope won’t happen again during the final exam as I’m going to aim for an even higher score!

From my exams, I realised my weakest point is my Korean listening skills. Somehow my listening skills aren’t always the best even with English and Chinese. I remember that I don’t do very well for my listening tests when I’m in primary school. So from now on, I’m going to make myself listen to Korean radio everyday. I actually have two Korean radio channels i listen to occasionally:

1) Park So Hyun’s Love Game

2) Super Junior’s Kiss the Radio – Has an iphone app which you can listen and watch them live while they’re on air! :)

I am absolutely loving the life I’m living right now in Seoul, enjoying every moment, even when I’m in class, even when I’m studying! The past 5 weeks in Seoul couldn’t beat the 2 and a half years I spent in Aus even though life in Aus has been great fun. Here in Korea, I get to spend a lot of time with bf, Korean lessons are interesting (not always but most of the time), and I get to use Korean everyday and everywhere I go! I feel much more confident using Korean right now.

The only downside is that I’m not making Korean friends in Korea because I’m studying in a Korean language institute so there is minimal chance of meeting other Korean students. Luckily, I made Korean friends while in Aus and have met a couple of them since I came to Korea. One of them, 수빈언니 (Subin unnie) has invited me and bf to her house for dinner tomorrow! She has been so nice to me, providing me places of interest to visit in Seoul, many of which are not the usual tourist spot but she highly recommends them.

The weather in Seoul is freezing but it isn’t as cold as last year. 5 weeks in Winter Seoul, I’ve probably become used to the weather already. Every morning, I make sure to wear enough before stepping out of the house. In the past, even though I know it’s cold I thought I would be able to tolerate the cold, so I wear a knit sweater and a winter coat on the outside. But that’s actually not enough especially when it gets below 0dc. Two layers underneath is the least that one should wear not to feel COLD (like trembling cold) outside.

Right now, I just have to make the best of what Seoul can offer me and spend the next 5 weeks working hard towards improving my Korean even more.

No difference

Yesterday I sat for my one and only exam for this semester and returned all my library books, marking the end of the academic year! Even so, I don’t really feel much of a difference with before and after the end of semester, besides no deadlines to pursue and exams to think about. I still have to continue studying for Korean though, a process that can never be paused (at least for a long period of time) when it comes to acquiring a second language with the intentions of becoming fluent in that language. Adding on the fact that I’m going to Korea for 3 months of “language training” 2 weeks later, that only puts me in a semi-holiday mood.

The revision period for my exam has been a total slack as well, I watched one movie a day one week before the exam while allocating few hours for revision. So I was already in a semi-holiday mood at that time! I also completed 여인의 향기/Scent of a Woman, watched the Big Bang Theory and continued knitting the scarf for bf during revision period. ;p

I’ve already gone pass the light brown colour section as seen in the photo right now. I do hope it’ll pass off as a good looking scarf… so far I’ve never seen such a colour pattern before as usually scarves have either striped or solid colours. But I didn’t have enough yarns due to the yarn sale, so I settled for this colour pattern, i.e. large sections made of different colours.

Anyway, I’ll be going back to SG next Monday! I don’t feel that excited yet… actually I’m just neutral right now. Maybe because there is still a week left or maybe I’ve gotten used to it… 

Excitement rolling in

Here comes November! The month when I’ll take on the last assessment of the semester, the month when I’ll head back to Singapore and the month when I’ll go to Korea! Specifically, my Korean translation exam will take place in two weeks’ time, a week later back to sg and 5 days later off to Korea. Exciting times.

I have plenty of time to study for my Korean exam, which is the reason why you see me blogging more often, watching dramas and movies more often and just taking my time with the studying process. You could say I’ve started my holiday in advance! :p This isn’t really procrastinating since I’m studying bit by bit everyday right? I just spend more of the day relaxing than studying… I know. I should change that the other way round.

This week is SWOTVAC week. I went to school today to meet professor Jung (my Korean prof  and supervisor for my honours thesis), submitted my translations to him and borrowed his Korean-English paper dictionary for my Korean translation exam. He’s so nice. When he heard that I would be going to Korea this coming vacation, he said that I could contact him and perhaps meet up in Seoul in January since he’ll be there at that period. He said that he could bring me around Seoul! It would be cool to meet him in Korea, maybe I could then introduce my bf to him, but I think the whole situation would be kind of awkward… I’d think about this.

Anyway, as I expected, there was a huge turn out of hardworking students cramming in the library. I felt a little guilty that I was kind of enjoying swotvac week (more like “holidays” to me), not feeling any stress and definitely not cramming. But I resolved that I would study harder when I get back home, spend more time studying in a day than watching The Big Bang Theory. Oh, that comedy sitcom is hilarious, which I supposed many of you should know since it has been very popular since 4 years ago (I am slow when it comes to American sitcoms)! I spent about 4 days finishing the first season which is pretty short and now I’m starting on the second season. But I found that you’ve got to have a certain level of knowledge in science, sci-fi stuff (e.g. movies, comics, etc) to understand some of their jokes. Nevertheless, it’s a comical sitcom that keeps my mood up when I’m feeling down.

About blogging, as you can see, I am now quite the active blogger as compared to the past year. Besides the extra time I have now, after reading a lot of blogs recently, I’ve suddenly found the motivation to blog more. I’ve also changed my blog layout to a much simpler one and have added labels to my recent posts. Comments are welcome in the comments section after each individual posts. I’d be adding a profile page soon… hopefully.