Probably the most infuriating thing about Korean English is its use of abbreviations and initialisms without explanation. I just got an email advertising an "IE seminar". "We have a really exciting IE seminar". "This Zoom link is for this week's IE seminar".

And in my experience, if you ask a stupid question like "What is IE?", Koreans will give you this confused look and say "Same as in English" and then you have to ask them to say it in Korean. They have this really bizarre notion of what words English-speakers actually use.

Anyway, after reading through the Korean version of the email, I have deduced that "IE" is "Industrial Engineering".

My performance in chess puzzles, as taken from lichess.org. The part shaded in pink is when I had a cold (the point at which I "no longer have a cold" is not really a sharp line, so I made it kind of fade out).

I thought it was cool that I can visually see the effects of a cold on my ability to think.

It's very easy to learn! It only takes a few hours to get the basics of reading, writing, pronounciation.

Memorizing the ORDER, though, is evidentally a several years-long task (for me).

So like 95% of my students are Korean. And, as students are wont to do, they often send me emails without telling me their student number, so I have to look them up on the class list using only their name.

You'd think after 3 semester of this, I'd have fully memorized the Korean alphabet, but no. I know ㄱㄴㄷ are at the beginning (all the "Kim"s are at the top). I know ㅎ is at the end (that's where all the "Hong"s and "Han"s are). I know ㅇ is somewhere in the middle (that's all the "Lee"s, "Lim"s and "Ahn"s). But for every other letter, I'm still lost on where it goes in the alphabet.

I think the problem is there's no Korean alphabet song, or at least none that I'm aware of. An alphabet song makes everything easier.

Student: My math exam conflicts with this class's exam.
Me: Hmm, that's weird. That's not what the exam schedule says. Let me check with your professor. What's your math professor's name?
Student: Kim Jong Un

I emailed him and it's true. The math professor's name coincidentally IS exactly the same as the North Korean dictator's. One of the unexpected joys of working at a Korean university.

AND the student was right: the exam schedule is wrong :(

I have a social media (well really just Mastodon, as that's the extent of my social media use) cycle.

10 I'm spending too much time on Mastodon. It's not really a good or productive use of my time.
20 Stop using Mastodon for a few weeks.
30 Have something to say that my wife and friends would not appreciate
40 Make a post to Mastodon
50 Read my feed
60 Realize that everybody on my feed is quite funny and interesting
70 Get into the daily habit of reading all the interesting stuff everyone is doing
80 GOTO 10

I feel like there should be a happy medium somehow. Maybe only read a few posts a day? But which ones? I am not sophisticated enough for this social media stuff.