s.h. ideas

DIY cardboard toy instructions for moms: http://bit.ly/1a3XtY

card + stationery + calendar design

etsy for korea

Filed under: Ambition, scribbles

city-trotting

so it’s been about a year since i moved back to Seoul from NYC. i certainly miss NY from time to time for its countless variety for food, fashion, design resources/inspirations – and oh i miss you my friends – but i also realized Seoul has become a very interesting metropolitan herself in recent years. so many cute restaurants, coffee shops, and stores are opened, parks and biker lanes are lined up nicely for greener life in the city. so i am relieved that i didn’t end up in an unfortunate return. : )

i had a chance to travel to nearby Asian metropolitan cities, Tokyo & Hong Kong, in last few months, and i noticed when i go to some other cities, now i compare those places to NYC.

Tokyo trip was short, and despite i loved its food and hygienic environment, its culture felt more flat and stiff than what i felt on my several visits made before my days in NY. especially the ‘controlled/groomed’ attitude of people stunned me – people were almost overly nice even on casual interactions which felt awkward to me and sometimes made me even uncomfortable. most were dressed conservatively (solid black suits were the uniform for office workers) except for the funky ’street  style’ youngsters. it could be the opposite end of NYC if you put two spots on a line.

tokyo <conservative ——————————– liberal> nyc

on the other hand, Hong Kong was more interesting and diverse than what i remembered from 10 years ago. it definitely felt like a leading international city where you could notice hefty population of blue collar foreigners. i loved the soho area filled with authentic foreign food restaurants – i enjoyed a tapas place which i had hard time finding a good one in Seoul. even the local culture were influenced a lot by the western (british) culture – e.g. restaurants served tea buffet. HK just celebrated(?) its 12th year since its return to China, but my impression was that Shanghai – where I’ve visited in 2006 – was still far less international than HK. if i add HK and Seoul to the comparison line above, it would probably be like this.

tokyo <conservative ———- seoul ———— hong kong ———- liberal> nyc

after spending some years in different cultural environment, i would say though, the critical fact that only matters for life is ‘the value and the attitude you pursue and sustain wherever you are’ not letting the place to define you. altough i admit it is not possible to block out the influences coming from the environment entirely, the components of everyday life is not too different wherever you are: you eat, sleep, love, work.

for me, good people – friends and family -, and positive and active curiosity to the surroundings, *and* trips to other cities to stimulate my curiosities, then i can survive!

Filed under: Versus, scribbles , asia, city, hongkong, seoul, tokyo, travel, trip

byebye Mayle

http://racked.com/archives/2008/08/18/say_goodbye_to_mayle.php

if you know me, perhaps you know how much i looooooooved Mayle. the store and their collection was my obsession for life, my sanity in new york.. this news is one of the sensational news of the year for me :’( all of my Mayle collection is soon to be vintage… sad..

Filed under: scribbles , fashion, news, sad

time

found a service(http://wordle.net/) where they create a visual map of the tags of your posts, and i got above from my blog. although it doesn’t seem that it crawled all the postings, interesting how it shows dense population of ‘time’ related words. i grew up in a culture that makes you to be aware of your age more than western culture. one of the first questions you ask to a new person is his age, so that you can figure out the hierarchy of your relationship with him and determine proper terms whether it should be respectful ones or regular. while i’ve been in the U.S. using english, i found it so much easier to make friends with people at different age and thought i’ve gotten less sensitive about age . but guess it is still in my unconsciousness that i do still think about my age and the stage in life quite a lot.

three years has passed in new york, and two days plus. kind of an awkward time span as it still gives me an opportunity to do something, but not quite enough to do anything. probably best to make use of it as moments for time forthcoming..

Filed under: scribbles , time

change

change can be exciting or nerve breaking, throbbing or heart breaking.

either way. bonne chance chère amie.

Filed under: scribbles

my first meditation lesson notes

ground

path

? (urg my short-term memory..)

gentleness = you are not squishing your thoughts

precision = you don’t fall asleep, keep your awareness

letting go = you watch your thoughts, create space, and come back to your awareness

no judgement

no perfection

no “should”

compassionate

on your thoughts and others around you.

Filed under: scribbles , lesson, meditation, notes, space, yoga

time passing

a note from a blog post -

“젊기는 쉽다. 모두 젊다, 처음엔. 늙기는 쉽지 않다. 세월이 걸린다. 젊음은 주어진다. 늙음은 이루어진다. 늙기 위해선 세월에 섞을 마법을 만들어 내야 한다.”
그렇다. 나이 듦은 시간이 간다고 저절로 되는 것이 아니다. 어떻게 나이 들 것인가. 지금 이 순간에도 우리는 나이 들고 있다.

“easy to be young. everyone’s young, at first. not easy to get old. it takes time. youth is given. aging is achieved. to get old, you need to produce magic to mix in time”
spending time is not equivalent to getting old. how to get old. even at this moment, time is passing.

i am not so old ‘yet’ to get sentimental on aging, but this note somehow makes me empathize.
admittedly, youth gives ruthless confidence and arrogance that makes you ignore this time passing. the difficult part is many don’t realize it was rash until they look back.

at the same time, however, this ill-advised bravery is only acceptable when you are young and perky – beginner’s luck. trial and error. only given once when it is your first time.

really, hard isn’t it to get old and wise.

Filed under: scribbles , age, aging, blog, old, time, youth

what a website means in life

While working in the business creating websites for retailers, I got to wonder how much it means to build ‘a website’ out to the world: how much impact it brings to the retailer himself, to its buyers/users, and to the world.

Since World Wide Web got huge since the 90s, internet took over every man’s everyday life. Basically, it made everything possible through its network: people read news, play games, talk with friends and family, do shopping, order food, etc etc. I recently read an article on Time magazine that there’s not only a service that broadcast weddings on the web to family and friends in a remote location but even a service that allows a groom and a bride to exchange vows over webcams! Yikes.

Despite all the doubts on the aftereffects this WWW revolution brought to the society – i.e. loss of human contact, digital quality control -, it’s undeniable it certainly plays the central role in modern life.

According to this theory, I must be working in one of the most prominent industries in this time. However, while websites are places where people spend a big chunk of their time everyday, the depth they put into each website is so shallow, it is hard to say time and energy each website took to be presented to the world (except for those amateur websites built poorly) is getting paid off with people’s enough attention and appreciation. My major suspicion is it’s because web exists in a digital form and does not have a tangible existence, thus, people tend to take it less seriously than things they can perceive the ‘realness’ of. A coffee shop one person goes to everyday certainly means more than a website he visits everyday. It just brings less memorable existence in his memory.

So websites are rather ‘useful’ in life than ‘meaningful’ – just like why Myspace is quite efficient to keep communication but not the best way to build great friendship. This argument supports why people make a big fuss about analytics and usability studies on webs. There’s big money involved, which is apparently what this world is evolving around (Not trying to sound skeptical but just trying to make better sense of what it is I am doing). So what does a website mean in life? For retailers, money. For users, easier life. For the world, well, a win-win game that makes world more convenient and profitable, not necessarily in the most graceful way, but who cares – as long as it’s quick and easy just like how McDonald’s is still surviving after all these lawsuits!

Filed under: scribbles

in reminiscence of halloween days.

happy halloween weekend! seeing all those half-naked girls in costumes on the (chilly!) street tonight, i couldn’t help but remembering myself and my silly friends who were just like those in old days..

sometimes it is good to see people around you and think/know that “you’ve been there” – not in a snobby way but more like in a self-gratification that you already have passed that one test in life in the past.

on the other hand, sometimes it is very comforting to realize that i am lucky to have opportunities and goals to reach – that there are still so much that i haven’t done, yet there are still plenty time and chances waiting for me. having opportunities or goals can mean a lot more than that you already have achieved everything. you basically earn fuel to burn to make your life keep going.

while setting goals lies in the future, looking at people and remembering old days definitely comes from the past. people repeatedly say that we shouldn’t caught up in the past or live for the future but that we should live in the moment. true. but when you think about it, it is a good mixture of motivation for the future and gratification from the past that makes your present moment rich and well-balanced. without knowing what you want, or what you learned, it is hard to know how to live your life right, right?

just like we say, everything has its moment. also we say in my culture that you should see, experience, and learn more when there are more chances with your youth. i admit i sometimes get caught up too much in the past or miss my moment by looking out for the future. i would like to mix up my great lessons that i dig up hard with my tears and sweats with great opportunities lying out for me to make my this very moment special and memorable.. as a matter of fact, this weekend, i just had my first pumpkin carving experience as well as a corn hole throw game – living in another culture is great in a sense that you get to experience things that you wouldn’t really appreciate pass four otherwise, but it still gives you great sensation just like when you were a little kid learning and seeing things for the very first time.

Filed under: scribbles

that’s life

인생 살아볼수록.. 참 별 거 없다.

그 순간엔 내 인생 다 결정나는 것 같았던 일들도

지나고 나면 결국 별 차이도 없는 결과였던 것.

자조적인 냉소가 아니라

왠간한 일에는 참 아둥바둥할 필요가 없다는 깨달음.

Filed under: scribbles