KAIST 10: The worst week in Korea.

What I have learned in Korea

In Korea, the hospital fee is not expensive at all compared to the hospital in America. Korean medical welfare is much better than the American and thus when I went to hospital on this week I only paid four dollars for all the services in the hospital and pharmacy. I have seen many American friends who just endure the pains from the sickness and don’t go to a hospital to save the expensive hospital bill. America is the top country leading the world today; however when it comes to the medical welfare in U.S. it is relatively poor. The U.S. president election is coming up soon so I hope that the next president brings up the new policy to improve the existing medical welfare policies.

The people I have met in Korea

Hyobin, one of the Hubo lab members is one of the people who get along with me in KAIST. He is same age with me; and we have many common things that both of us are interested in. On this past Friday I played basketball with Hyobin and one of his friends, Cheolgyu. He is working in the lab right next to the building where Hubo lab is. Hyobin and Cheolgyu are from Gyunsang-Do one of the districts in Korea and thus both of them have the funny accent and vocabulary while speaking. It was quite funny to listening to their conversation. On this past Saturday we had a dinner and got to know each other while having a talk. Since the KAIST is on summer vacation, I think we will often meet up and play basketball or hang out.

The statue of research

This week, I got back to work on PIC microchip. Dr. Oh, Jun-Oh suggested me to design and make any type of controller from a scratch; therefore I decided to build up a laptop cooler. Since I work on this project for the educational purpose I would like to imitate the general concept of a laptop cooler on the market. LCD display, encoder, DC motor, and variable resistance (used as a thermostat) will be used. So far, as shown in the pictures below all the power supply including DC-DC converter (12V -> 5V), and all the connectors for the external devices such as LCD display, motor, and PIC chip are installed on the circuit board. I succeeded to display the numbers implemented by the encoder on the LCD screen. Later on, this function will be used to show the surrounding temperature, humidity, the speed of fan, and the desired values to cool down the laptop, which will be calculated by the equations in the code on the LCD screen.

What new thing did you learn about yourself?

On this week, I had the worst week ever since I came to Korea because of a cold. On this past Wednesday I played basketball with the people I have known in KAIST; and that night I started to feel sick and this feeling lasted for next few days. When I get sick I tend not to tell my parents. I had this habit since I went over to America for studying abroad. While living away from my parents for several years I realized that the best thing I can do for my parents is to relieve my parents’ minds and so if I can solve the situation by myself or other’s help around me I would not let them know about the situation unless it is the case that I can’t deal with by myself. However I thought that it could be the opposite way of my thought; in other words my parents can keep the secret to relieve my mind and make me focus on studying. Therefore for the first time in recent five years I told them that I have been sick for a few days and went to the hospital near KAIST. From now on I will be more sincere and truthful to my parents so that I can become their best companion to talk without hiding the secret on the back.

Photo of the week