Photo Journal #5

I can’t believe my time in Korea is already over. I am writing this photo journal from the AAAI conference in Atlanta because the end snuck up on me so quickly! Danielle, Bob, Peter and I spent the last 4 days in Jeju (the Hawaii of Korea) together but I got to spend time with the boys the night before Peter and I flew back.

My last official lab day was July 6th. Dr. Oh had a faculty meeting so he was out of the lab all day, which gave the boys a little more freedom. Typically Danielle and I would make a big deal when it was someone in the labs birthday and since we had a lot of January birthdays we decided to have a big half birthday party on that last day. Cheol , noticing the emphasis we put on birthdays, got me a half birthday cake. It was the sweetest thing ever. We put on two and a half candles (because I was 20.5 years old on July 5th) and sang happy half birthday in Korean. The cake was an awesome sweet potato cake but this is different than the American orange sweet potato. It looks like a normal potato but is sweeter and is usually served with this almost syrup tasting sauce on it.

Our idea of a big party was playing Korean card games with a traditional Korean deck of cards and, of course, good old regular poker. Chung su, Jungwoo, Inho and I stayed up late playing a tournament and then I hit the hay before waking up super early to go to Jeju.

I got back from Jeju on Sunday and it worked out perfectly that the World Cup final was at 3 30 in the morning on Monday. I got to finish up my packing and decompress from Jeju and then the boys said they would come in for one last hurrah with Peter and me. Jungwoo, Cheol, Taejin, Dongil, Peter, Danielle, and I went out and ate lots of Korean food and Soju (Korean rice alcohol). Peter and I brought our luggage in the back of Jungwoo’s car on the way there because we had to go straight to the airport immediately after the game because our flight was at 10 30 Monday morning. The above picture of Danielle, Jungwoo, Peter and me was when we were saying goodbye (even before the game ended because we didn’t have time to see it all!) on our way to the bus. It certainly was an interesting adventure getting to the airport. Actually now that I think about it, it was the exact opposite of interesting because we passed out immediately upon getting on the bus.

We got on the plane and that was it! We certainly made the most of our hours in Korea. Peter did the calculation and we did not sleep in 52 hours before finally falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow at the Georgia Tech apartments we are staying at for this conference. Definitely the longest I have ever been awake, I am pretty sure I was losing my mind. Peter and I tried to log in to his blog for about 20 minutes, going through every email he has, and didn’t even realize until the next morning we were typing his email address @google.com instead of @gmail.com. It is five o’clock even after twelve hours of sleep last night and I am already ready to go to sleep.

I was really sad to leave Korea. I was mostly sad to say goodbye to everyone I met. Going around the country was really fun and I was really glad I did it but my favorite part was definitely just hanging out with the lab boys. I loved how they would teach me bits and pieces of Korean, help me out on my project whenever, eat whatever crazy delicious concoctions Danielle and I would make, go along with all of our ideas that must have seemed ridiculous to them, and just being friends with a group of great guys. I mean no one has actually gotten me a half birthday cake, no matter how much I go on and on about it.

I really hope to stay in touch with them in the long term. Jungwoo and Cheol already had facebooks and Danielle is setting them up for the other guys. I actually skyped with Danielle at 4 this morning (jetlag…) and got to say hi to everyone. Danielle said afterwards they all said how much they missed us and wanted us to come back and just really great things so I don’t feel like I am keeping up fake relationships but real friendships. I also have been convincing them to come to the US and hopefully down the road they will. Who knows, maybe I will hit up Korea in the future and be able to hang out with them.

All in all it was such an amazing trip. I think back to the time in February when I first heard about it and my apprehension about traveling to Asia for six weeks. I mean if you had asked me before this trip where the last place on the planet you would ever find me it would probably be some Asian country. Now I am so happy I went and can’t wait to return. It is different but people are people. I had so much fun getting to know the hubo boys and exploring the country that I definitely would not trade this summer for anything.

This experience was even more perfect when I think about it in conjunction with my traveling abroad this September to Jordan. Korea was the perfect stepping-stone because the language is completely different like Arabic, which gave me the feeling of being really helpless while at the same time being an easier language and everyone in Korea is nice and helpful (which I am not expecting to the same extent if at all in Jordan). I got to learn how to travel the right way in a very foreign country to an American but still a safe environment. I can apply this to make myself more effective at traveling and living in Jordan; I have that many less hiccups to survive.

It is amazing how attached one can get in six weeks. Even less than six weeks in the program I was near tears when the Korean Red Devils got eliminated in the World Cup! I hope I get to see these guys at many points again in my life but in the mean time thank you whoever invented the internet!

Final Results

This was the final result of my project. This is my 3 degree of freedom version of the Puma robot programmed to spell out my name in the air. I also programmed it to write Inho's name in the air because he helped me so much. After I wrote my last blog post Inho went to Mexico and so I was on my own. I really wanted Inho to be proud when came back and to have proof that i was working the whole week. I first saw him at midnight the night he came back and i went up to his desk and said that my robot could write his name. He said he wanted to see and as we were walking in the hallway he asked "who helped you?" and i proudly, like a five year old, said i did it by myself. He watched and was super impressed and told me i did a good job like three times (which if you have been reading is legit). I was sooooo happy. Its odd, i have never really looked for someone's approval as much as Inho's. I am not sure why, maybe because i really liked him, but i just wanted him to think I was doing a good job.

I didn't actually use inverse kinematics to do the name writing because the positions were very easy and mostly just common sense. I am still glad I learned it though. It gave me a much deeper appreciation for the problem solving involved in robots. It is easy to just think a robot can do anything but still serious work is put into just getting a robot to move the slightest bit.

Along with this appreciation though came the realization that robots are no where near where I thought they were. The media makes it sound like any day now we are going to have robots servants, or robots running the world, or robots doing amazing things we can't even dream up yet but we are no where near that. I remember Danielle asked Dr. Oh when is she going to get a robot to do her dishes and Dr. Oh said she would be lucky if she ever saw that. Additionally Hubo is run by Jungwoo on a computer pressing buttons. I haven't seen it do anything autonomously so there certainly is a long way to go before I get my robot servant.

The problem (and im not sure i even know what i mean when i say the problem, i guess just the whole robot uh..thing...) is a lot more complex than I assumed. I know I only learned a tiny piece but I get why even though all over the world people have dedicated themselves to robots we still don't have flying cars and what not. This was a solid educational experience and I would recommend it on so many levels to anyone. I am a government major and I still got a ton out of it. Anyone willing to work hard and be out going should absolutely jump at this opportunity. All that matters at all is whether you are willing to put in the effort to do what you want. It really is the type of program where you get out what you put in and I will be forever grateful I put all I could in.

Photo Journal #4

This is a picture from the weekend Peter and I spent in Seoul. We met up with Cheol (on the very left), his brother (on the very right), and his brother’s friend to watch the Korea world cup game (and it was pouring rain).

This week provided me with a window into the mind of Koreans. Up until now I was under the impression that yea, maybe had some different customs but that essentially we all thought the same way. I knew there were some differences, like the way disabled people are swept under the rug or homosexuality was not accepted but we encounter that in the US regularly to some extent, or at least I am aware of that line of thinking. I was so surprised at three instances this week in which Koreans left political correctness at the door and just said it like it is.

First was Cheol. Bob, Peter, Danielle, Cheol and I were sitting around. Bob was talking about Mike going to the gym and Cheol said, Mike needs to go to the gym. He needs to burn off his fat. He needs to burn some calories to get into shape, he is too fat. The four of us were just silent, jaws semi-dropped. Danielle then asked “you said that to him?!” and Cheol replied “yes, he needs to know. I am helping him” completely serious, like he had just done something really nice for Mike. We continued on saying , “you cant say that! That is mean.” But he insisted, saying how it wasn’t mean, that he was helping him. We were all so surprised. However in retrospect Cheol also told Danielle that she had gotten bigger compared to when she first got here (which isn’t true by the way) right before going into a bathhouse. But then it seemed like a joke, whereas this time he sincerely was trying to help Mike. Another instance of this was when Mr. Kim walked up to the office manager and told her she had a big pimple on her face. She just looked down when she told him and when Danielle asked him about it he too explained how he was helping her.

At first I was just so surprised that my knee jerk reaction was how do they not have emotions, I mean do they think that the other person doesn’t know already? But I find it sort of refreshing now. They just speak the truth instead of cluttering it up with formalities. And if that is the norm then maybe hearing someone say a comment along those lines wouldn’t be as hurtful as it may sound to us Americans. No beating around the bush, straight to the point. I like that. Another aspect of this is that it seems Koreans wear their emotions on their sleeves. They don’t put on happy faces to make everyone around them happy; if they are angry, upset, sad you know it.

This week was the final stages of my semi-puma robot project. I was writing the code for it and no matter what I did I could not get control of one of my three servo motors. I had spent hours trying to fix it but finally asked Inho and he straight up told me not to bother him with little problems and that he has been reading other people’s code a lot and it is takes a lot of time for anyone besides the writer to understand what is going on and that he was not my teacher. Of course it was really hard to hear this but the fact he just told me and his actions and facial expressions clearly matched what he was saying made me really appreciate what he was saying. He was totally right and he was not going out of his way to soften the blow.

I have welcomed this sharp contrast but I think that is due to my personality. I would much rather here how I am failing right to my face than have it sugar coated and watered down. I have a feeling this won’t catch on in the US. I don’t think enough people share my enthusiasm for bluntness; everything is about positive reinforcement but sometimes people just need to hear they are wrong. It makes the compliments that much more momentous. I know when Cheol said I was a fast learner or when Inho says good job that they truly mean it.

Sometimes we flirt with heartbreak when we ask the guys how we look to Koreans or if we are too big compared to the Korean girls but that is part of the fun (cheol says that Danielle and I are not too big and that we are a good size, so whew dodged a bullet there). I will miss this honest society but maybe I will spare those who surround me from bringing back this part of the culture, well anymore than I already do
: ).