30 things about me

1.     My name is spelled Oh Ye Lim in passport, but I wrote it Oh Yae Lim for a while because I was shocked when my teacher in the U.S. pronounced my name 'Oh Yee Lim'. 

2.     In Facebook I am Ooh Yae Lim because some boys started writing ‘Oh 예림’ every time I posted something on Facebook. Now I think I can change back to my original name.

3.     I don’t have many friends. In fact, I think I only have two closest friends.

4.     My mother comes from a strong Christian background, and my father is an elder of one of the biggest churches in Korea. My family is very religious.

5.     I think I made only the best choices in my life, because if they weren’t the best, I wouldn’t have made it. 

6.   I don't like math, not only because I'm not good at it but also because it enforces a strictly regimented, simplified view of the world. I started hating math when I realized the fact, and therefore decided to give it up; while my grades plundered, I'm proud because I think of it as my transition from a modern human being to a post-modern human being. 

7.    I like to wander around the street listlessly. Last winter, when I stayed in Seoul by myself, I spent three hours every day just walking around the street. I walk a lot because I can process my thoughts much easier when I’m at motion. Sometimes I try to observe a person’s appearance and figure out which building he or she would go into while wandering. Sometimes I'm absorbed in some random imaginations.

 8.     I’m listening to Rhye, Stars, Tame Impala, and random girl groups these days. I cannot easily pin down my taste in music. My friends, however, say that I particularly like music that does not contain melodic development, but rather repeats the same melody over and over again. 

9.     When I was in middle school I used to think socialism was the only way to fix this society. As I came to high school I believed anarchism was the only way to fix this society. But in truth, I think this world is fine as long as old scholars are straying around warning about the end of the world.

10.  My biggest goal in life was not looking ignorant or easy.

11.  My father set up a NGO group helping developing countries through appropriate technology. Whenever I meet my father’s coworkers, they say, “Your father is such a great man." That's the main reason why I don't like charity organizations. 

12.  I dream a lot. My dreams lack creativity, and most of them take place in our school with the people I know. I get guilty when I wake up because I know my subconscious is reflected in my dreams and it's not only a coincidence that the people I secretly hate get persecuted and the people I secretly like dote me in my dreams. 

13.  I want to be familiar with semiotics just to cite semiotics scholars in future writings. 

14. I wore a very short hair when I was in middle school. While I had short hair I felt a little like a boy, and acted like a boy. My tone of voice was lower, and I used rough language. My father said once that when I was in middle school he felt like he was raising a football player who accidentally was born as a girl. 

15.  Right now Susan Sontag is my favorite female intellectual. She was a revolutionary culture critic in the 60s. I first read her work “Notes on ‘Camp’” and appreciated her rigor in defining an obscure cult phenomenon with such precision and wit. After that I read her essays ‘A Woman’s Beauty’ and ‘Against Interpretation’. I like her because she scoffs at those who take the norms of this society seriously and instead analyze them from an objective point of view to show how they are not absolute but rather transitory and shallow.

16. Even when someone is tortured for his/her own faults, I don't want a group of people condemning the person in the guise of 'proper education'. I think group condemnation is only an another form of entertainment, and I am disgusted by the enthusiasm with which people engage in 'criticisms'. I can't stand the superficiality of such an event. 

17.  I like signing up into personal websites of interesting figures. In middle school I signed up into Orson Scott Card's website. He is a homophobic SF writer with a strong Mormon faith, and he usually wrote appraisals of the Bush administration. Recently I'm monitoring Ma Kwang Soo’s personal website. He’s a professor in Yonsei university, and he posts a poem expressing his fantasy. He says all feminists are ugly and digs women with long nails. 

18.  I read a lot of contemporary poetry, but only in Korean for now. My current favorite poet is Kim Seung-Il. He published an anthology with the title ‘Education’. Three of the poems there deal with two brothers whose parents are dead. After their parents die, the older brother starts to spit a mouthful of toothpaste towards the bathroom ceiling, and the younger brother starts to pee while taking a shower. The poems look at the brothers’ change after their parents’ death in three perspectives. My favorite parts are the part where the older brother narrates, “but the thing is, I have inevitably realized that a bully that attends school is cooler than a bully that doesn’t attend school”, and when the bathroom narrates “Tile wants some space so people won’t slip because of the water… The younger brother pees on the tile. That’s a variable. I called the younger brother a variable.” 

19. I inadvertently talk too candidly and often appear as outspoken by my peers. I think it's a part of me that I can't really control or be careful about, since I am a very self-conscious person but still cannot think of the possible impact of my words. I usually just speak out what I have to say and people react more than I expect. 

20.  I always didn’t like acting girlish, but looking back, maybe I should've acted more girlish. 

21.  I don't like articles from Wikitree and Insight. They are articles meant only to be shortly consumed and then dismissed. When they are political, they only adhere to the safest stance, afraid that they won’t receive many likes if their stance is slightly disagreeable.

22.  I read excerpts from ‘The Second Sex’ by Beauvoir when I want to get annoyed with KMLA society.

23.  Often I'm overly self-defensive. I feel like all people are my enemy, and I snap back at them when I think they are trying to tease me. 

24.  My favorite movie director is Hong Sang Soo. He makes films depicting mundane and everyday life, denying the existence of any noble ideologies or action. His characters cheat, lie, and pretend to be pious but oddly I feel natural watching them. His films tell me that this world is all pretentious, and happy moments are only an illusion, but give hope that in that ugly reality there lies the strength that truth can give. 

25.   I often go to the movies alone without taking popcorn. I think it’s a way of treating films as an art. I don’t think you can fully appreciate a work of art with somebody else. As soon as another person is with me, I start feeling overly self-conscious and cannot construct an honest impression of the movie. I feel the need either to flatter or deride the movie. 

26.  My thumb is much shorter and thicker than others’. This kind of thumb is called ‘우렁이 손톱’ in Korea, and there is a myth that people with this thumb is usually diligent and hard-working. That just shows how misleading a myth can be.

27.  I visit many community websites regardless of their political disposition or gender dominance. I am used to the rough language and inappropriate contents these websites sometimes provide. I think it’s restricting to only visit sites with the same political stance and the moral standard that I have. I want to have the freedom to take whatever is appealing for my intellectual appetite and then discard others. 

28.  I used to be an ‘Otaku’. I was a big fan of Fullmetal Alchemist. In middle school I used to attend many comic festivals with my friends. I never understood why so many people hate Otakus. I felt like they were just in a habit of hating someone because that person doesn’t like the same things they like.

29.  I don’t know what I’ll become in the future. I want to write something, but I want to be rich. That’s the big dilemma.

30.  I like existentialism. I like the idea that existence precedes essence, and that people can choose their own path in life without some higher purpose in mind, without thinking of what my 'fate' is.