These days, my Wednesday starts from noon. I leave home at around 1 pm and head to OISE library. With a large Tim Hortons’ coffee, I sit there and read some books about teaching English, write a blog post, or watch some dramas with my laptop. I wish I could use a wireless connection in the library but I must be a UofT student to use it. I am asking around to see if someone let me know their account but so far I couldn’t find anyone. Anyway, I usually stay there until 6 and move to Bay&Bloor where the language exchange meeting takes place. There is an inside sitting area near Indigo bookstore. It’s a quite good place to have a meeting with around 10 people. I have been doing the meeting since last October. For the first a couple of weeks, I only got two or three people at the meeting but yesterday there were 12 people. It gets bigger and bigger.
I really enjoy being able to speak two totally different lauguages. I talk more than usual when I am with language exchange folks. I guess it’s because I am learning English like other international language students, so I understand them better and have a lot in common with them. That enables me to assist them to learn English with other English speakers and I aso learn from them while doing it. I am also a Korean speaker, so I can help Canadian learner of Korean. They ask me so many questions I haven’t even thought about them before. So, I look up my dictionary and try to give them right anwers every time it happens. I don’t know every Korean word and grammar. I also learn Korean at the meetup. With doing all these, I feel so happy that I have something to share.
The Wednesday language exchange meeting ends at 8 pm. While some go home and some go for dinner or coffee, I go to Travis’ place to get a ride with him for inline skating practice. So, I went to Bay subway station. While waiting a train, I found one drunk guy sitting on the bench and swearing. At that time, I was with two other Korean students. I asked them to move away from that guy. I walked away from him first and my two friends followed me. I heard about it later that one of my friends made a eye contact with him and talked to the other friend about something in Korean. The guy stood up with an angry face and followed us. I didn’t know why at first but I figure that out later. He said to my friend, “You laughed at me, huh, f****, blah blah blah”. He was very offensive and hostile towards my friends. I tried to keep them apart before something really happened. We walked away from the guy but he kept following us. I said to my friends, “Keep walking and don’t look back, just ignore him”. The guy eventually stopped following us and I heard the guy swearing to us but we just ignored him and kept walking to the other side of the platform. I knew that the guy wasn’t going to do anything stupid because we were three and he was drunk but I thought my friend would’ve done something bad. That was my first time involving the kind of situation here. I guess I coped with it well.
The thing didn’t get worse, so I managed to get to Travis’ place in time. It took us for around 40 minutes to get to Scooter’s in Mississuaga where we practice from his place. As soon as I got there, I got changed and put skates on and skated.
Last night, I didn’t sweat as much as I usually do for some reasons.The warmup was fast and tough enough to get me drop out earlier, so I didn’t skate long enough to sweat. It usually takes long for me to warm up. The drill afterwards was easy and short and the relay was not difficult since the first guy skated one more lap than we did which gave us extra time to rest.
I always put myself half step behind on the line during practice because I am not serious about races and I am safety-conscious due to absence of health coverage during stay in Canada. Skating is fun and exiting for me but as long as you are on the line, you put yourself in some degree of danger. Apart from that, I am happy to skate with my skating buddies and have fun. It makes me feel alive since my life here is more laid-back and relax unlike I had in Korea before. Every time I skate at Scooters, I feel like skating practice is like a miniature version of hectic life. We are at the line and start at the same time and compete and finish. There are also mistakes, falls and sometimes cheating. There are smiles and cries afterwards. There is the right track for winning and harder way to get around. It’s very similar to life we live in. So, the practice in the club is only I can get out of my daily relaxing routine and put myself in lively life.
It is almost 1 pm when I get back home from the practice. It's late to eat something but I do and I spend a couple of hours on the couch watching TV shows or news until I get sleepy to go to bed.
It was back in 2006 when I got to see the video clip of Steve jobs Stanford commencement speech in 2005 for the first time. Before I watched his video, to me he was a guy in the international news section who I can get to see from time to time. When I saw the video for the first time, my English wasn't enough to understand the whole speech without the subtitle, but I thought it was really great speech, so I got some phrases from his speech and have used one of them for the MSN id. It goes like "Keep looking what you love to do, don't settle."
2006년에 스티브잡스의 스탠포트대학 학위수여식 연설비디오를 처음으로 보게되었다. 그 비디오를 보기전에는 가끔씩 신문 국제면에서 보는 그런 사람이였다. 그 비디오를 처음으로 봤을때 내 영어가 자막없이는 전부 이해할 수 없는 수준이였지만 아주 훌륭한 연설이라고 생각이 되어서 몇몇 문장들은 따서 내 MSN ID로 써 왔다. "안주하지 말고, 네가 정말 하고 싶은 일을 계속 찾아라" 이렇다.
Today, one of my skater friends corrected that quote, so I've just changed it. Now, it's "Keep looking *for* what you love to do, don't settle". Anyway, a couple of days ago, I saw the video again with no reasons. There was no subtitle. This time, I understood most of the speech but missed some words and phrases, so I googled and found his speech and made a subtitle file with it. A little later on, I watched it again with the subtitle I made. With the help of subtitle, I was able to understand the whole speech. I think It is great and inspiring.
오늘 스케이터 친구 중 한 명이 그 문장을 고쳐주어서, 바로 고쳤다. 지금은, "안주하지 말고, 정말 하고 싶은 일을 계속 찾아라", 어찌되었던, 며칠전에, 그 비디오를 그냥 다시 보게 되었다. 자막은 없었다. 이번에는 연설에 대부분을 이해했지만 몇몇 단어와 표현들을 놓쳐서, 인터넷으로 검색해서 연설원문을 찾아서는 자막파일로 만들었다. 조금 지나서, 만든 자막파일과 같이 다시 보았다. 정말 대단하고 영감을 주는 연설문인것 같다.
I love the way he delivered his speech. It sometimes gives us laughter and is not too formal as it could be and there were three stories from his life, not from famous books or something, so It was like the movie based on a true story. I didn't feel bored.
그가 연설을 하는 방식을 나는 정말 좋아한다. 때론 웃음을 주고 그럴수도 있는데 너무 딱딱하지도 않고 다른 유명한 책이나 그런것들로 부터가 아닌 그의 인생에서의 세 가지 이야기라서 실화에 근거한 영화같다.
Somtimes, I found some newpapers articles and writings from the internet very wordy and figurative. So, it doesn't interest me and then I just stop reading them. It is partly because of my lack of English and partly because of my preference for writing, but his speech is just simple and clear. I like it. 가끔 신문기사나 인터넷에서의 글들을 보면 정말 말도 많고 너무 수식어구가 많다. 그래서, 별로 관심이 안 가고 그냥 안 읽는다. 영어실력이 부족한것도 있고 원래 취향이 그래서 인것도 있지만 그의 연설은 정말 간결하고 명확하다.
There are a couple of things in his speech that surprised me. He was adopted at birth and he dropped out college not to spend his parents' savings; as he said, he was lucky that he found what he loved to do early in his life and became a successful businessman but got fired at 30 which was earlier than other people could be, and then got back to the company which fired him before. What a turn of event it was. I remember the time when I had to see a half bunch of my coworkers getting fired from the company back in 2003. I had worked with them more than two years. It was very difficult time for both them and me. After that, I actually started to doubt working as a salaried man and the passion about my job. After that, I worked one more year for another company. That was it. I quit the job and came to Toronto in 2004. But as Steve jobs said, if you like what you do, it might be easier to get back to your track no matter what happened to you before. But I didn't like what I did. That's why I am here trying to find what I am good at and what I love to do with my life. It's still unclear but I will keep looking for it.
그의 연설에서 나는 많은 사실에 놀랐다. 그는 태어나자마자 입양됐고 부모님의 돈을 쓰지 않으려고 학교를 그만두었다. 그가 말한대로 운이 좋아서 일찍 인생에서 하고 싶은 일을 찾았고 성공적은 사업가가 되었지만, 다른사람들보다는 이른 나이 서른에 해고고되었다. 그리고나서는 다시 해고되었던 회사로 다시 복귀했다. 정말 인생반전이 아닐수없다. 2003년에 동료직원 대여섯명이 해고되는 것을 경험했던 것이 생각난다. 그 분들과 이년 이상을 일했었다. 우리 모두에게 정말 힘든 시간이였다. 그이후에 월급쟁이로 일하는 것과 내 일에 대한 회의가 들기 시작했다. 1년을 더 일했다. 그것이 다였다. 직장을 그만두고 2004년에 토론토로 왔다.
Some of the people I know keep advising me, "You've got to get married sooner and you've got to come(go) back to Korea and started working." I don't know I guess it's just not the right time. When Steve jobs said like below in his speech, I really liked it because it makes me forget about those things.
몇몇 아는사람들이 계속 충고해주는데, "빨리 결혼해라, 한국와서 일 시작해라". 모르겠다, 그냥 생각하기에 지금은 아닌것 같다. 그래서, 그가 밑에서 처럼 얘기할때 정말 좋았다, 왜냐면 저런 것들을 잊게 만들기 때문이다.
"Your time is limited. Don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
"다른 사람의 인생을 사는데 시간을 낭비하지 마라. 다른 사람들의 생각에서 비롯된 삶을 사는 것처럼 고정관념의 덫에 걸리지 말아라. 다른사람들의 생각들이 너무 마음속에 있는 목소리리를 덥어버리게 하지 말아라. 그리고 정말 중요한 것은, 너의 마음과 직감을 따를 용기를 가져라. 그것은 어떻든 이미 너가 정말 무엇이 되고 싶은지 알고 있다. 그외 모든것들은 부수적인 것이다.
There is another part I like about his speech. He was diagnosed with cancer and faced death very close. So, with his experience, he gave us a very impressive message about facing death.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
그의 연설에서 내가 좋아하는 또다른 부분이 있다. 그는 암을 진단받고 죽음을 정말 가깝게 직면했었다. 그래서 죽음을 직면하는 것에 대한 아주 감동적인 메시지를 그의 연설에서 주었다.
"내가 곧 죽을 거라는 것을 기억하는 것은 인생에서 큰 결정을 내리는데 도움을 주는 내가 경험했던 가장 중요한 도구이다. 왜냐면, 거의 모든 형식적인 기대들, 모든 자존심, 곤혹스러움이나 실패에 대한 두려움 - 이런 것들은 모두 죽음의 직면에서 사라져버리고, 정말 중요한 것만을 남긴다. 네가 곧 죽을 거라는 것을 아는 것은 내가 뭔가 잃을 것이 있다는 생각의 함정에서 벗어날수 있게 하는 최고의 길이다. 너는 벌써 알몸이다. 너의 마음속을 따르지 않을 이유가 없다.
Like he said, it would be helpful to think about the fact that we all die someday when I need to make a big decision in my life. It would also help me not think about what other people think about my decision and leaves what is truly important to me.
그가 말한대로, 언젠가 우리가 언젠가는 죽는다를 것을 생각하면 인생엣 큰 결정을 내리는데 도움이 될 것 같다. 또한, 다른 사람들이 나의 결정에 대해서 어떻게 생각하지는 신경쓰지않고 진정 뭔가가 내게 중요한지를 남기는데도 도움이 될 것 같다.
I am still not sure when to go back to Korea, what I would do, where I start, and how. But, at least I am aware of that time is limited and I will do what I really love to do with my life. I will not make the same mistake as I did before. Until then, I really wish that I stay hungry and foolish like the last message from Steve jobs speech.
아직 언제 한국 돌아갈지, 무얼할지, 어디서 시작할지 그리고 어떻게 할지 확실하지가 않다. 하지만 적어도 시간은 한정되어 있고 정말 내 인생에서 내가 정말 하고 싶은 일을 할꺼다. 전처럼 똑같은 실수를 하지 않을꺼다. 그때까지는 스티브잡스의 연설에 마지막 문구처럼 배고프게 어리석게 지내고 싶다.
