Q&A

desperately trying to populate my world with real people (without making any effort to change)

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I wonder how snakes developed their venom - whether it got more and more toxic over time. I suppose to make up for their lack of appendages they had to find a quick way of incapacitating their prey.

The less effective your physical attributes are at killing, the more your chemical attributes have to be; I suppose that makes sense - that something you lack is made up for in a different way; I mean, if snakes were so heavily disadvantaged, they would have gone extinct a long time ago.

But if that's the case, since our blood and saliva are harmless to most species, does that mean we have a greater physical potential to harm, or has that mechanism developed along a different avenue?

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it's not always about the girl

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Hee Jun. He says it calm and cool, like a salesman presenting a shiny new product.

Oh?   like the singer. 

He furrows his brow in a manner only rich people know how. Excuse me?

Undeterred, I continue to play the nice guy. Moon Hee Jun, from H.O.T? He's a celebrity.

Oh    ok. He makes no effort to hide his indifference. The bastard.  

   You've really never heard of him?

No.  And my surname is Ahn by the way

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There's this really good Japanese movie, based on a manga, called Solanin that I saw a few years ago. In the movie, there's a scene where, right after Meiko quits her job, her boyfriend sees a red balloon wandering past as he's getting ready to go to work. Later, when Meiko wakes up and ventures out onto the balcony, she finds a red balloon hovering just beyond the terrace. (I know, so far it sounds sort of like an M Night Shamalayan movie, but just bear with me) As she reaches for the string, it floats up and slips out of her grasp, soaring away, up towards the vast blue sky. Meiko stares after it wistfully.

Ever since, I've been trying to figure out the significance of the elusive balloon. Perhaps it means letting go of your childhood and growing up. Or the futility of trying to hold on to something that is constantly being drawn away. Or something about freedom perhaps

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Do you feel as though some traits are handed down through our DNA - things beyond temperament and IQ - like actual habits and patterns of thought? I do. Perhaps it's simply a matter of being around them for so long, but sometimes I feel that parts of me and the things I do are not only genetically predisposed but almost analogous to my relatives. When I give directions, I see my uncle in me. When I tell a joke, it's a little bit of my dad tempered with a little of my granddad on my mom's side. When I eat noodles and wear flip-flops, I see my dad's brother and his son, my cousin. Am I the only one who experiences this?

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It might just be my ignorance speaking, but I feel like Korean's a little more malleable than Japanese - that the rules governing sentence structure and syntax aren't as rigid.

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because you think that the darkness defines you, but you don't have to. Don't let that define you