Token White Man's Self Intro - John Milburn

With the current spate of self introductions, I decided that it is about time that I do one. I don't expect (or want) to be graded on the Lim scale. Many of the folks here know me to some degree. The following is a 'stream of consciousness' core dump of some of my thoughts about me.

I've been an [Mil|ARPA|Inter|USE]net junkie for about 14 years, starting as a student at Berkeley. I have been hanging around on SCK on and off for about 5 years, since the first time I visited Korea on a consulting trip (March, 1989).

I was an 'Animal House' type fraternity member who inflicted cruel punishments on lower classmen to teach them respect, never bothered to register for the draft, a politically right leaning democrat, and all-in-all a rather poor student.

By training, I'm a Nuclear Engineer, but have worked all of my professional life as an accelerator engineer on various experimental physics projects. I'm considered something of an expert on magnetics theory and applications, and dabble in vacuum, pulsed power devices, accelerator physics and computers.

I was at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory for a long time, before I was recruited to Pohang in 1991 to help in the construction of the Pohang Light Source. My current contract runs until mid-1996, and I don't know how long I will end up staying.

I'm the only foreigner (i.e. non-Korean) on the staff of the construction project. Also, there are not many foreigners in Pohang. The result is that I know only two non-Koreans in my everyday life. They are my next door neighbors, a Yugoslavian soccer player and his wife.

In many ways, I am glad that I am not in a large city with a significant expatriate community. I've on occasion met foreigners in Seoul who spend all of their time in and around Itaewon, and who associate only with other expats and the various sycophants that gather about them. I've met many who have been in Korea for a long time, and yet (to me) seem to understand nothing about the people or culture.

One big drawback of being an American who posts news messages from Korea is the large number of unsolicited e-mail requests I receive from people who want some kind of help. Questions from non-Koreans have ranged from "can you send me your recipe for kimchee?" to "My girlfriend/wife is having visa troubles, can you do anything to help?" There are also many messages from Koreans, some polite, some very rude, who want to know who I am and what I am doing here.

I've finally decided that I am under no obligation to help, or even respond, to such messages. If the request is simple, or in some way connected to my work or to POSTECH, then I usually answer. Most things I drop into the bit bucket.

I have been active on ARM for about a year. It was not available on any of the Korean news servers for a long time, so my only access was via an old account in the states. Since then, I've recitfied the situation.

USENET news has become someting of a hobby. The whole news system in Korea was unreliable and chaotically organized. I ended up first creating a news server on my workstation, which now serves all of POSTECH, and later taking over most of the news systems in Korea. I'm now managing, or assisting to manage, about 10 news severs, including all of the foreign links.

As many of you know, I am married to a Korean national, and we have a darling, beautiful daughter (Ashley Sunyoung) who is a month or so older than Deanna. Planning and practice continue for the second...

If we end up staying here for a long time, I worry about my daughter. Being of mixed blood, I'm concerned about how she will be treated by other children. Also, since we are no where near Seoul, sending her to one of the foreign schools would be difficult and unpleasant (seperation).

I dabble around a bit in various languages, speaking (almost perfect) English (of course!), passable German, a smattering of Japanese, and a wee bit of Korean. My wife speaks English, Korean and Japanese. So, we have decided to teach the baby Korean and English, and reserve Japanese for conversations that we don't want her to understand. :)

Since being in Pohang, I've learned scuba diving. I took a course from a local shop. The instructor spoke no English at all. It really adds to the thrill, learing a potentially life threatining sport in a language that you only marginally understand.

I'm not skiing as much as I used (and prefer) to. There are a couple of causes. One is that the ski areas are a bit far away, and not very good. I haven't found a proper partner yet, one who is willing and able to ski anything, and ready to blow off a day of work to go when there are no crowds. But, primarily, the demands of the child have put a serious cramp into all recreational activities.

I've never posted enough to SCK to receive 'net.god' or any sort of semi-deity status. I was involved as a minor player in the whole ruckus that ended up with the ARM split. Since arriving in Korea, I've been somewhat cautious about what I post on SCK, as it is widely read here, and I don't want to say or do anything which will cause trouble at the school. Such is the difference in culture, as that is not something I would have worried about much in the states.

I've been to two SCK/ARM live meetings, both in Seoul. My report on the second was re-posted a couple of weeks ago. I've also met Hyunsuk and other members of the Seung clan a number of times, the first being the infamous SCK:Wangshimni last year. Joohee Nam splits her time between Salons in Seoul and being a part time student and seductress at Postech, so I run into her quite a lot.

One of my great joys is driving in Korea. It is like a large 3D video game, where there are almost no rules and you must constantly be alert for unexpected dangers.

I've decided that for the time being, I will be the dirty old man of ARM, making lecherous, lewd, rude and lacivious comments about everyone. Gwan does this to some degree, by generally with an air of nastiness and rather irregularly. My birthday is in January, should any of you care to get your butt over to Pohang and give me some lovin'.