Korea, Wedding, State Exam

In September of last year I went to korea for... the 4th or 5th time or sth (I feel like I always say it was the 4th time). We visited family for Chuseok and then burrowed a car and travelled to several Cities, Gyeongsan, Gwangju, Yeosu, Busan and Seoul. I made lots of photos and here are some that I like, I'll start off with some family pictures



my brother took this photo of our neece


my cousin and his children


peekaboo! Reminds me of that meme of that young girl running away from things


Baduk



this is me enjoying some delicious red bean ice cream. There's nothing in Korea that can't have some red bean it.



Green tea, green tea everywhere



dat bamboo



more bamboo



This was our Hotel in Yeosu.. wonderful little city (~300k inhabitants) consisting of multiple islands



It has some nice attractions like the dragon cave



On my way there...


And there it is.. yeah ok the pic isnt too exciting, being there was cool though, it's pretty big and it was quite stormy so the atmosphere was appropriate


much more important though: the legendary Penis tree


um, yeah, after rotating and cropping it like this I guess you can see what they were goin with..


Just as the sun rose dozens of (I assume fishing) boats came by, driving towards the sun, like moths to the flame.


Yeosu in the morning


Yeosu at night

I really enjoyed my stay in Yeosu, having been an expo city in 2012 it has so many attractions, there has been so much money invested into it, but already a year after you can see that this was only very temporary, compared to how much there is to see there were so few people walking around that it just had this mystical, romantic feeling to it.




boom, were in Busan now.


horsey reminded me of TL


Fishing in the metropolis


My favourite photo of the trip

Busan is such a cool city, you can chill and swim at a beautiful beach while being surrounded by massive skyscrapers.
While this beach was actually much nicer than the following, on a teamliquid.net blog I of course cant leave out a photo of the legendary


Gwangalli Beach! This is the wonderful beach at which the sea was graced with FBH's genitals
Sorry for the shitty mobile phone picture though


now onto something more spiritual





Arriving in Seoul we were greeted by the Korean princess




Photo of Seoul that I took in 2009


Photo of Seoul in 2013

Overall it was a good experience, though I'm not gonna pretend it was all super fun and wonderful. My family has never been one that was extremely close, conversations are always held at a very superficial level and I have always found it impossible to "just be myself" around my family.
There was a lot of tension between my big brother and my father, egos clashing and all that. My father's poor shape, having been quite obese was a hindrance for any kind of "sightseeing" as well, which often meant split up groups.
The best time I had was usually by myself, just wandering out there into a foreign city and just experiencing it without falling into the same behavioristic patterns I do around others was a cool experience. Especially if I got good photos out of it.
One day I was in a particularly bad mood, and I was walking alone through Seoul, one modern grey building after another, traffic noise everywhere, when I discovered a huge buddhist temple amidst all of this. There were maybe twenty people inside, quietly praying. As is always my first reflex I walked around taking photos (until I saw that taking photos was forbidden)
Eventually I took my shoes off walked inside and meditated for half an hour. And *poof* all negativity was gone for the rest of the day.

This isn't to say that the family experience was all bad though. I got along very well with my mother and I pretty much had the first really intimate conversation with her ever. To a lesser extent the latter is also true for me and my brother.
After the korea trip things would go back to a more superficial level but I am very glad I had those conversations. Also my dad is in way better shape now than he was in Korea.

But as I already said, experiencing cities I hadn't seen yet was really cool. Busan and Yeosu were my favourites, although Busan definitely has some ugly areas as well. Also all the stray dogs make me sad


just look at this cute little fella... he wasn't aware that walking in the middle of the street with cars behind you wasn't a very smart idea. I managed to lure him away from it but he was scared of me, too. Eventually he hid in a small gap under a container.



And seeing my Korean family is always nice - I still don't speak korean (I've finally started "properly" learning ~7 months ago) but it's always pleasant around them, some of them at least talk a little bit of English.

...passed away this month.
She was in a bad state for a few days, then recovered again. My uncle was considering sending her to the hospital again, thankfully he didn't. After feeling better for a bit it all happened very quickly and instead of a hospital room alone or surrounded by strangers she died at her home, with her family.

Like I said we have the obvious language barrier between me and my korean family but
it is amazing how easily you could tell how much love my grandmother had for me and my brothers and how proud she was of us without understanding the language. And the way she moved and talked and laughed, it was all so adorable haha, I couldn't help but smile when she was around.
To think that she raised a huge family of nine children, while her husband was busy getting drunk and gambling away their money is pretty amazing as well.
I'm sad I didn't learn the language well enough to really talk to her before she died and wish I knew more about her and that long long life of hers but all I can do now is cherish the time we had and keep improving my korean so I'll be able to communicate with the rest of my family.


R.I.P. grandma




brother + grandma

mother + grandma

here she decided this monk needed an orange

this was while my aunt was talking about how her dog died

queen of korea

I have a "new" Website (like I said, I wanted to write this a whole while ago..) showing off some of my photos
www.kyroba.com enjoy
A short while ago I also created an account on 500px, I like the social aspects of that site, if you're on it plz follow, I only have one follower so far haha

http://500px.com/kyroba

Well not of my wedding, but I did this video for friends of mine last year, I believe I haven't posted it on TL yet.
Itt was a highly emotional bunch of days and I'm quite happy with the result (especially since I was fearing not having enough material since I was 99% focused on photos, not on video)
http://vimeo.com/73733587

In my last blog I talked about how I need to spend a lot less time on TL, the most immediate reason being that I needed to prepare for my state exam.

My post count went down a whole lot although sometimes after a done day of learning doing some lurking on TL was nice
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Those ~100 days of learning were actually a surprisingly nice time - from an academic point of view it's nice to be able to fill a lot of those knowledge holes I'd always had.
And from an 'enjoying life' point of view it wasn't so bad either - I could wake up when I want, be where I want when I want, as long as I do my daily set of topics and questions.
I live in a wonderful flat with my girlfriend and my dog now so getting to stay home while still feeling productive was pretty awesome
Also during that time I have finally started taking (skype) singing lessons, which I'm really happy about, I've already learned quite a bit. And I haven't been all that bad at working out in my private tiny gym (=a bench and barbell+dumbbells) either. And like I said I've also finally started learning korean.

In April I wrote the exams and I passed.
I'm a bit disappointed about my grade but oh well there's enough need for doctors, it's unlikely I'll end up under the bridge. And despite of it this whole phase was good for my faith in being able to become a good doctor - I always had doubts because I was usually on the lower end of grades during all of university (say what you will about med students but they're pretty damn good learners) - but I've realized that I was really overthinking it.
I always felt a bit insecure about my knowledge as a med student but at the end of the day it's the same with everything, whether it's Starcraft, photography or medicine - do something a lot and you'll get good at it - others might learn faster or more efficient but then you'll simply have to put more work in and you'll be fine. (Ignoring the rare breed of the 3k games Silver-ranked SC2 player)

Also I wanna become a psychiatrist and I had every psychiatry question correct so that was cool.

Oh and I can say I did the exam honestly and completely on my own - there was a lot of cheating going on in the toilets...certain people were freaking out asking for answers claiming they might fail otherwise when in reality they ended up having like 86% correct (which is a B, you need less than 60% correct to fail)

Now my next steps are another half a year for working on my doctorate thesis, then my practical year, then oral exams (which noone really ever fails afaik) and then I'm a doctor. I could already be one but I'm glad I've taken it slow, the last year has been really good for me, and I'll be working for enough years in the future anyways. And hopefully during this time I will finallly be able to record some decent sounding music - it's been a long time.