| [ EnglishOnly ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): klimt (먼지가되어箔) 날 짜 (Date): 1994년07월01일(금) 10시36분47초 KDT 제 목(Title): to charie and swany from alpha primi tem this is a direct response to charie's posting. for those of who are new to this, the posting by charie was directly addressed to me, although she did not say so. i have no intention to start a flame war with a nineth grader (or somewhere around there) or with anyone else. i have my share of my flame wars and i have the faculty to prove my points when it is necessitated; however, i have been willing to acknowledge and aquiesce to other people's claims and opinions when they are valid. i will retaliate without mercy and swiftly if the other person refuses to understand or is insincere in his/her intentions in the disscussion. some of us have seen my postings in soc.culture.korean during north korea's refusal to the IAEA inspections (after all, i was the only korean posting from texas a&m). flame wars in general are pointless, and i do not find personal satisfaction in drumming this little girl on the net. obviously, charie has her place on the net, and i will not deny her that. i believe this venue of networking provides a unprecedented level of access of information and knowledge. it is my opinion that flame wars are only justifiable when people involved in the verbal jujitsu(ing?) realize the importance and significance of the net and respect the whole process (flame wars) as an intellectual discourse. with this in mind, let us tread back to the heart of dispute. i believe this dispute became a full scale, public one when i posted a vexatious posting about the sisters being the queens of the junk board at caltech bbs. frankly i did not mean to be malicious, it was just a little twist of poking fun at their expense. i did not realize that they were wounded by my satire. I APOLOGIZE TO BOTH CHARIE AND SWANY FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART. it was not the best of me to slander you in that fashion and you did not deserve that. i ask your forgiveness. i am saddened by my predicament of having to explain this and that to the people in a classless manner; i rather just go on and be an obscure denizen of the net. But the rest of the accusations and the allegations which i know they are directed to me is hard to swallow and i will take necessary steps to explain and erudite fellow denizens of my problems. people who know me will understand that i do not walk away from problems. i face problems head-on hoping that my best is good enough to solve the problems. if the problems are over my head, let them be, i will be appeased in the fact that i gave my best to correct the problems. i will go on, a little bit hurt, limping, but those hurt feelings and scars are the badges of courage to me. i will eternally revel in the fact that i have not given up on life and that i did not defeat myself. there are the problems which are out of the human realm. sometimes the interaction between two people can horribly go wrong without their own faults (in this case, i submitted that it is wholy my fault). it seems that networking(bbsing in this case) brings out the extreme in people; for example, people are extremely nice or extremely awful. this perhaps is because of the mode of communication is strictly written and we are so much accustomed to ascertaining information about the other people's points of view by watching their body languages during the conversation. absence of body language effectively abolish the shades of expressions we may use to facilitate our understanding. the absence is crippling for many of us and those many may have problems communicating well with others on the network. this handicap may even be a bigger one if one of the users uses a language others are not familar of. this is the point of charie. charie alleges that i use english exclusively when i can emulate korean. this is both very presumptous and untrue. first of all, it is very presumptuous of her to hypothesize that i am capable of inputting korean. i do a lot of bbsing at home. how does she know that? AND HOW DO 'WE' KNOW THAT? it is utterly sad to see others(in reference to her word in the previous posting) who are probably much older than charie and has enough sense to not care for this kind of claims hiding behind charie, and let her be the spokewoman for the peanut gallery. if you want to quibble with me do it like a man or SHUT UP. secondly, her allegation is untrue because it is not possible for me to do hangul emulation at home. i exactly know what the problem is and there is no work-around. i must have explain this to a number of people, virtually all of the people whom i met, and not many raised more questions above their curiosity. therefore charie's claim is foundationless and unwarranted. to the next allegation. she thinks i am showing off. hmm. i don't know what to say to that right away. i suppose that she thinks i am a show-office because of two reasons. the first one is my exclusive usage of english and the second is my vexatious posting on junk board at caltech bbs. since i explained about the first and apologized for the second reason earlier, i think this point of conflict has been resolved. as for your last item of your wish to not see me, unfortunately as i stated above, i do not walk away from problems, i am doing my best to deal with it and i apologized, so i hope you forgive me. i know that apologizing is just words, but right now i think it is the only thing i can do. certainly you do not want to see me at your door step begging for your forgiveness, do you? however, as tokens of my sincereness, i will send you sisters something that i like and that i hope you enjoy (how about my thesis titled 'collision- based stochastic interpretation of radionuclides migration in porous media'? ...ok...now i am showing off..:^) ) as i said, that in itself is not valuable, but the meaning it may contain will far exceed the conventional value of them. i can also understand why charie said that she does not want to see me, but if there are others who are just dying to kick me off this bbs, well, i will be in your face. your notion of seniority is absurd and irrational to me. i do not subscribe to it and you will have to fight me every step of the way. hu hu, bullies. you make me laugh. charie and swanny, i want you to know that while i do not know you, i care about your feelings. i do not wish to cause you any unpleasantness. so i hope you will understand what i said and believe me that i can not use hangul when i am home. overall, i believe this has been educational to me. while i write this letter, i realize that the way how people have been treating me is a shiny mirror of themsleves. there are several people, i feel close to. even though i have talked with them only a couple of times, i feel a close bond with them. the catharsis i found in them is the reflection of my pain and my joy. there are those who embraced me for who i am, without questions, without bytalks; then there are those who try to categorized me into their nifty and crude social classifications of school, of ethno-cultural origins, and of wealth. i do not fit into these categories at all. i have been to an obscure school and a reputable school in my field; i am both korean and amercian but preclusively korean-american, and i am both wealthy and poor(financially and in other ways, also). people who know me on the net know that i do not ask personal questions, i do not probe into their personal life uninvited, and i leave them where they are in the comfortable shade of obscurity with enough sunny rays of identity to dry the ground they lie down on. this is where i want to belong. and unfortunately, this is not possible. this notoriety will follow me and i will have to wear this as a badge of another decision. those of us who do not agree with me will not escape being 'unperson' as in the sense of george orwell and can only be treated as such nonexistence. it is not my job make everyone happy. i do not wish to make everyone like me. there would be something wrong with me if i can make everyone happy. at the same time, i do not wish to discount anyone, but those who discounts me will be discounted in the same manner and i can make people feel miserable in many ways. i am very sorry to both swany and especially to charie who endured and agonized enough to write me that posting. the irony of it all is that i like charie. the only quibble i had with her was that she was <ya ja> with everyone in the chatting room. but after i told her, she graciously changed her behavior. i must say that charie has more sincerety and courage to face her problems than the rest of peanut gallery -whoever they are. alpha primi tempi luke the 'yoo hooo~~~~ man' don't try to make anything more out of life than the winner of 93 mu contest what you expect of yourself. for supplemental dept. of nuke engineering reading ==> Jeremiah 9:23-25 and habakkuk 3:17-18 texas a&m university <<ab ovo usque ad mala, ad majorem Dei gloriam>> |