Emergency action for Moisture Attack on Blackberry

My Blackberry Curve 8250, or Gemini so it's called had many times of error and shutdowns. In my honest opinion, Blackberry has splendid toughness besides its reliability is also considerable. I am not a neat person who cares about their phone nicely. My Gemini has more than three times of water incident, water comes in into the phone because I have no casing. After those incident I always found the same problems occured, my blackberry keyboard is not working. Even tough the phone turned on with no problem at all, still I can't navigate the phone because the keytone is not responding. After Googling for certain same cases, I founded the fact that blackberry could has Moisture Attack. Blackberry will not responding any keyboard input because there is certain amounts of moisture inside it. I was so desperated that time because I lost my only one phone back there, I was thinking about buying a new phone. Then, suddenly the idea emerged! Here was the idea:

Courtesy : http://thehealthjournal.com

If you are asians, you eat this everyday. This is rice grain, which if cooked will turned to rice. Rice is a primary carbohydrates sources. Among all characteristics of rice, one was used for this emergency action. Rice has capability to absorb moisture from nearby sorroundings. This is same effect as using desiccant (silica gel is the most popular) for drying purpose. Let's go to the steps:

1. Open casing, remove the battery of your blackberry.

2. Prepare a sufficient amounts (a quarter kilograms is more than enough) of rice enclosed in proper container.

3. Just put the naked blackberry inside the container, above the pile of rice.

4. Take some time (for me I leave it for a night) for the drying process.

5. Voila! After some time, you can check that your BB is working again! That means the moisture has already sucked by the rice. Congratulations! Now you can cooked your rice! 

Korean brush their teeth for three times a day! and other amazing facts about koreans.

Almost two months I have been in South Korea and I have met enormous facts about Korea (and I think they're very unique):

1. Korean brush their teeth after every meal in one day! It's more likely to be a lifestyle in Korea to maintain your oral hygiene. All of my colleagues here always brush their teeth after they eat the meal (applied for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). This facts amazes me because it's a very rare activity to done for me, ordinary Indonesian. I just do my regular teethbrushing (night and morning) everyday. Now I am into this habit and I brush my teeth every after-meal.

2. Korean likes ramyeon (instant noodle) and they have a specific pot for cooking ramyeon. Let's call it Ramen Pot. It looks very nice for pot, it has golden colour, medium size, and it is perfect for ramen cooking. From my experience for cooking ramyeon, it can fit up to 4 ramyeon each time. This is how it looks like (maybe you could see it a lot of time if you watch korean drama):

Ramen Pot

3. Korean likes to eat soup (tang, gug, and jigae) very much and they eat it together. Usually korean soup served in large pot so we could eat it together with friends or family. Here is my opinion about korean soup:
- Korean soup has magic effect, I feel very healthy after eating Korean soup.
- Korean soup always had red pepper in it.
- Korean soup doesn't contain much salt, yeah it's healthy though!
- Korean soup always served at very hot level.
- Korean soup always better served with rice.
And if you are travelling to Korea, I suggest you to try this Sundae Gug or the soup of sundae. I have talked about sundae on my previous post. I like this food very much, it is better eaten at chilly winter day.

4. Korean loves their country so much, they have pride of the nation in their heart. They use Samsung, Hyundai, KIA, LG, Lotte products which are Korea's national product.

5. Korean really likes to drink, specially Soju. Soju is Korea's national liquor which have incredibly cheap price. Worth 1000 Won each bottle. Compare to milk worth 2000 won, soju is categorized as cheap drinks.

6. Korean has modern queen, Queen Yuna. Actually it's Kim Yuna, the famous world figure skating athlete. They love Yuna very much.

7. Korean food has so many side dishes. Even if you only order one portion of beef soup, you will get kimchi, vegetables, dumplings, garlic, etc for the side dishes.

8. There is one ramyoen that tastes very hot, buldak bokkeum myeon. I like spicy and hot food but still this ramyeon is worth to try. You must taste the after burn sensation!

Yeah, that's a few facts about Korea and still plenty of that actually. If you plan to travel to Korea, make sure you taste all of the food because they are amazing.

Getting Better Through 43 Ways

I read an interseting article in LifeHack about personal development. This is about starting a habit that could make you being a better person everyday. You should read about it because all of them are right, couldn't agree more about that. Some of them would make your life more interesting, prevent you to fall into a boring life.

Beside all of 42 habits above, I want to add one more habit. TRAVEL to another country at least one time a year. Travel will open your mind beside could be an alternative way of refreshing your mind out of daily routine. You shouldn't travel to famous destination among the world but try the unique instead. Maybe you could go to Kashmir and the sorroundings. You could get a once in a lifetime experience there, I am very sure. (Actually I haven't been there yet but I have a dream to go there several years later). 

So, let's do the 42 + 1 ways of getting yourself better. Hehe. 

Korean Noodle!

I'm a fan of noodle, specially instant noodle or usually named ramyeon or ramen. During my stay in Korea, I tried to taste as much kind of noodles here. Yeah, they have a lot of different noodle name and variative way of serving. Some served with gochujang while the other served with no sauce but only soup. Two weeks living in Pohang, at least I have eaten about five differents type of noodles. At first I was kinda skeptical for korean's variative noodle. I thought that they will tasted the same each other. After several tasting.... Yeah I founded that they are very different, even for first time people surely can know the difference of that. So if you wanna know about Korean noodle or maybe planning to taste some of them, I have a recommendation of noodle that you should eat:

1. 칼국수 (Kalguksu) or the knife noodle.
Called by knife noodle because of its preparation process uses knife to cut the wheat into 'noodles like' form. No wonder you will found the noodle's size is kinda wide. Usually served with soup and other additional ingredients like seafood (clamp, prawn, fish, etc) or beef/pork. I tasted the haemul or the seafood kalguksu. 
First tought: the texture is very addicting, makes me wanna eat more and more. I like noodles which has chewy and soft texture and this one has it. Actually kalguksu is a kind of summer food but still worth to try in the winter. This food gives refreshing taste after eat and of course the full taste because it containts much wheat. 

2. 냉면 (naengmyeon) or the cold noodle.
I am not kidding, this kind of food really served cold. Actually it's a winter food but I don't feel very good when tasting this cold. I prefer hot noodle to the cold one, yeah noodle should served hot no matter what (Just my opinion). So my first impression is not good with this one. But still worth to try because it's very popular even they make a song of this noodle. Jessica from Girl's Generation sings about this noodle! Haha. Maybe it's kind of promotion, I don't know the exact meaning of the song. And yeah, it usually eaten with dumplings (you can choose for the fried or steamed one). Dumplings called Mandu in Korean.

3. Chinese noodle - the Korean version
I went to Chinese restaurant last Friday and they served two kind of noodle as their speciality. Yeah, one is my favorite and the most famous one: 짜장면 (jajangmyeon)! The noodle with black sauce! And the other is jjamppong (짬뽕). I think jjamppong is not very special so let's just skip it. Unfortunately I haven't try the jajangmyeon with black sauce because I ordered the restaurant's modified jajangmyeon because it's their speciality. I felt dissapointed of my choice because actually which I oredered was a spicy sauce noodle. Right now I am still curious about the black one, yet still I have tasted the instant noodle version (Jajangmyeon made by Paldo). Just by the look I can feel that jajangmyeon is very yummy, no wonder I always looked at other people's bowl while they ordered a jajangmyeon. 
Look how jajangmyeon looks like:

Yet I still have tasted the instant noodle version:

4. Ramyeon!
This one is actually an instant noodle but some restaurant also served this as a menu. Yet I still try this at one restaurant, of course with some variation not just the plain ramyeon because that is actually an instant noodle. Several popular variation of ramyeon are cheese-ramyeon, ham-ramyeon, bulgogi-ramyeon, kimchi-ramyeon, and tteokbokki-ramyeon. I tasted the latter, which is a mix between ramyeon and tteokbokki (spicy fish cake). Tteokbokki is a very famous snack food in korea. Nothing special about this because basically you can easly found these two food so when you are going to ordering ramyeon, avoid to order these ramyeon. Order a cheese or unique one instead! Hehehe.

First Winter in the City of Steel

안녕하세요!

Finally one more list in my bucket list is checked, which is having a winter season in foreign country. Yes, right now I am in the Ginseng country called Daehanmingug. Not like other visitor, I am a C-4 visa holder which means I am coming to Korea for a paid job. I am doing my winter internship program in Pohang University of Science and Technology located in Pohang City, a seaside city near Daegu and Busan. POSTECH is one of the top college for engineering degree, especially the Ferrous technology graduate school which named GIFT (Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology). POSCO has good academic-industrial relationship with POSTECH which make it as the best graduate school for material study specially steel. I will talk about the research about steel later..

Pohang is an industrial city, only ranked 10th of most populated city in South Korea. The atmoshphere is kind of peaceful, calm, pleasant, and cozy. You won't met many people that talked in english except people around university. It's a must to bring your Korean friend along to buy or eat something at the restaurant. It is not valid if you can read Hangul though! You can try to read hangul because it's very easy to recognize the character, the hardest part is to know the meaning! By the way I found that Korean food (한식) is very nice. I have tasted some unique food and they all tasted good. Almost 5 days I have been here and these are the food that came to my tongue:
1. Sundae (순대)
Illustration:

Actually I tasted the soup version (Sundae gug) but I think the sausage is tasted the same. It made from pork's intestine which filled by mixed vegetable, pork blood, pork meat in the inside. It is called pork sausage. Tasted very good even for me who are not the kind of pork meat lover. It's a must try if you are coming to Korea. The price (soup) is about 6000 won with rice (bab).

2. Bibimbab (비빔밥)

This kind of food is the most common food everywhere, even in Indonesia I have tasted it before. I have no special thing about bibimbab but it's a good food to eat when you are hungry. Price : 5000 won (vary with restaurant).

3. Bulgogi

Korean's version of beef teriyaki with more tender beef. But the taste is not strong and I prefer beef teriyaki to bulgogi. But still, it's worth to try because bulgogi is very famous Korean food!

4. A lot of Korean food: fried mackerel fish, many kind of korean soup, a ton of kimchi (yeah, i like kimchi very much, its addicting!), pork cutlet, pork spicy soup (I forgot the name), Korean bread (no special taste), many kind of vegetables that I don't know the name, beef spicy soup. All food don't dissapoint me because they are very nice.

To be continued, more about the city, more about the people, more about the campus. Yeah, a lot of interesting things are here.