To Infinity and Beyond

1. I love Apgujeong. It was, is, and will be my all-time favorite city. I love the light, smell, and feel of Garosu-gil and Saerosu-gil which I spent most of my 3 years of life in. And though I love my home, I still struggle in finding the way through buildings. 2. I love toys, as you all saw in my formal essay. Especially, power rangers are my favorite. Still, I like other toys too, such as smurfs, shrek, black panther, etc. I still play with them once in a while with my own scenarios. 3. Talking about scenarios, one of my goals is to make an animation movie scenario. I love Disney animations like “Inside-Out”, “Boss Baby”, “COCO”, and so on. One day, I’ll finish designing my own fantasy world and start finding designers and BGM producers to make it a film. 4. I recently watched “The Greatest Showman”. The music at the start “A Million Dreams” became my favorite song. I listen to it at least 10 times a day. It sort of mirror my vision about success. "Every n...

Violated self-study regulations. Two penalty points. Honestly, I am not the model kid. I’m more like a normal teenager who needs an hour of Netflix time a week. And sadly, my beloved school doesn’t allow that. My school, KMLA, which is one of the few dormitory schools in Korea, has a strict set of rules followed by penalty points. And one rule is the self-study regulation, my worst nightmare. Every weekday from seven to twelve, we are forced to study. And if we are caught dozing or “relieving stress” by the dorm parent, we get a nice two penalty points as a gift. This system did fix my laziness to some extent, but every once in a month or less, I face a life or death situation: penalty points versus going crazy. So, for my sanity and some comfort in my life, I decided to start a grand project: the dorm parent detector . The basic idea of the project is simple: when the dorm parent enters my dorm room, a notification comes to my computer, and I can automatically change t...

           Laughter. Pranks. A few fights. Laughter again. These are what defined my boyhood. Every time I walk through Garosu Street (one of the hottest place in the country and the street right in front of my middle school), I slip back into the old days (well, at least for me) with the smell of nostalgia.            As a fourteen-years-old boy, I met Wasabi in the school orchestra. Okay, I know this sounds weird, but Wasabi is a name (a rap name, actually) of a boy, also fourteen-years-old back then. A shrinking violet back then, I did NOT like talking with others. But, as the king of socializing, Wasabi talked to me every time we met. Still, I didn’t care about him much before the day he made me listen to his demo-tape. For the first time, I gazed him with awe. The tape was AWESOME. It seems that the amazement was shown on my face because he asked me if I want to rap with him in t...

“…and they lived happily ever after.” But they were only like 20 years old! How can nothing happen in three-quarters of their life? The five-year-old boy still had so many questions left unanswered. Frustrated by the unsatisfactory ending of his stories, he slammed his book and stormed into his room. Closing his eyes, he began to find answers in his own artificial world: a world made of toys. From the moment I unboxed my first toy until now at the edge of teenage, these little figures have endured a steady presence in my life. My jointed rainbow rangers were not just toys for children; they were a bridge, bringing my imagination to life. With them on my side, I searched for the answers to the epilogue of novels, sudden peculiar ideas, and much more. The 3-inch soldiers and I became the children of Harry Potter one day, and babysitters of nasty dragons the other. One adventure connected to another, sprouting new ideas along the way. As our book of travel got thicker, my s...