The First blog of many, yes... "The Obligatory Intro". I'm going to Korea soon to play Starcraft 2 (this is primarily on my own money as I'm an adventurous person by nature ) and wanted to share my experiences while I am there. I plan on being there for the minimum of a year. This is meant to be a sort of journal for my time there, but it will more than likely just turn into a giant ass random trollfest. (trolling via me not you )
But travel is much cheaper right now than you'd might think, a flight from the midwest to San Francisco is only running me about 150$ (with a weeks advanced purchase on the ticket) and from San Fran to Incheon is only 580$ for a 12 hour nonstop flight (you fly into a satellite city of Seoul, about an hour and a half away, so it generally evens out.) or you can fly from San Fran to Gimpo INTL which is only about 20 minutes from Balsan.
So far it looks like I'll be staying as close to Balsan (in Seoul) as I can since I'll be practicing entirely at SuperDanielMan's PCBang. But, there is potential for me to at the GOMTV foreigner house, I'm currently talking to John about that one.
BTW, SDM doesn't get enough credit for being a fucking amazing giga-baller in regards to eSports. He'll bend over backwards to help out a stranger in the name of eSports.
PLAY THIS GAME!!! It's called Desktop Dungeons and it's quite possibly the most randomly fun and addictive game of the last few years. It's extremely simple, short, and engaging, but most importantly, INSANELY replayable. This game will last you a maximum of 10 minutes to play through but you will certainly want to come back and play again almost immediately. But be warned, this game is quite hard and there are some tricks to surviving. So far I'd have to say that Berserkers and Fighters are the easiest to play with. Give it a try and thank me later + Show Spoiler +
(Probably the best song on the album)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0yY0zxk-18&feature=related
If you liked Girl Talk's songs from his new album, get them for free here (hes a Giga-Baller and releases this shit for free online) http://illegal-art.net/allday/
I've been working on my Korean for the past week and a half or so and it's actually getting quite good. The language actually seems to be quite a bit easier to learn than a lot of people are willing to admit.
I have about 100k in savings right now and I plan on staying in goshiwons etc. for the most part if I can get in the foreigner house or something similar to that that would be fantastic. You can stay in a number of goshiwons for about 300 USD so I should be fine.
It would be a tourist visa, at the moment I'm waiting on my passport and after it arrives I plan on just going and applying for my tourist visa at the US Embassy after I arrive.
Learning hangul is super easy, but I've found actually learning speak is quite hard just beacuse it sounds ntohing like english/german/romance languages where you can trace roots and stuff.
At the moment I'm reading "Basic Korean: A Grammar and Lanugage Workbook" its nice, the examples really help you understand the pronunciation which i struggled with a bit at first. It's by Andrew Sangpil who wrote another book in the series (called Intermediate Korean with some random subtitle as well) they are fantastic books and I sincerely recommend them to anyone trying to learn the language.
On January 06 2011 13:59 GT wrote: At the moment I'm reading "Basic Korean: A Grammar and Lanuage Workbook" its nice, the examples really help you understand the pronunciation which i struggled with a bit at first. It's by Andrew Sangpil who wrote another book in the series (called Intermediate Korean as well) they are fantastic books and I sincerely recommend them to anyone trying to learn the language.
Thanks. Might actually order that for this summer. Learing korean for the hell of it ftw.
I'm fine with pronunciation, it's just getting started with vocab & grammar
Do it man, these books are definitely the best tool I've found. I personally don't think Rosetta Stone and all of that crap are really the things to be doing. That's just some trendy BS, sitting down with this book, reading, analyzing, and working through the problems has definitely been worth the time invested thus far.
On January 06 2011 14:03 GT wrote: Do it man, these books are definitely the best tool I've found. I personally don't think Rosetta Stone and all of that crap are really the things to be doing. That's just some trendy BS, sitting down with this book, reading, analyzing, and working through the problems has definitely been worth the time invested thus far.
Oh yeah, certainly. Was always my plan.
I have the FSI stuff but the FSI stuff assumes your'e enrolled in a course, so they sort of skip basic grammar lol.
I understand people don't like to talk much about personal finance but being a budget hawk I'd like to ask how you managed to save up $100,000. How long did it take? What's your income? Did you inherit some of it?
On January 06 2011 15:19 reg wrote: I understand people don't like to talk much about personal finance but being a budget hawk I'd like to ask how you managed to save up $100,000. How long did it take? What's your income? Did you inherit some of it?
Yes, through inheritance. Np on asking I'm not really sensitive about money lol.
I play zerg, I play on 4 different accounts which sound ridiculous lol. But they all have about 62-65% winrates and are all around 2800-3k (although i think one of them is only about 2600 but regardless i tend to ladder against/train with people that are in the 3100-3300 range while still maintaining this winrate) also, all but one of my accounts has under 200 ladder games played, i tend to play customs a lot. When I'm in Korea I plan on getting a stream going, I just haven't been a member long enough iirc.
EPT
) and wanted to share my experiences while I am there. I plan on being there for the minimum of a year. This is meant to be a sort of journal for my time there, but it will more than likely just turn into a giant ass random trollfest. (trolling via me not you 
)
