Body Profile

So, I’ve been keeping the blog contents for the Korean and English versions of my page different, just because sometimes I want to write in Korean, and other times in English. I think this one, however, deserves to be in both languages, since it was quite a milestone for me. 

Body profile photoshoots have been a thing in Korea for a couple years now, where people that are not professional body builders spend a few months ‘building their bodies’ and do a photoshoot. There are a ton of information and blog posts on this now, and a lot of studios that do body profile shots. 

How I got into this

When I first heard about the hype with body profile shoots, I wasn’t interested at all. I didn’t want to have to stick to a strict diet plan and watch what I eat. 

Then COVID-19 happened, and we were under a shelter-in-place (SIP) order. I’m one of the few people that actually lost weight during the SIP. This is mainly because for me, the joy of eating comes from eating good food with good people. When I’m by myself, I don’t really care what I eat.

So, eating less, combined with daily light workouts I started doing eventually led to noticeable changes in about two months. Now that I could actually visually see the changes, I wanted to do more. I started watching YouTube videos and eating some of the traditional ‘diet’ food. 

In September, I finally started working again, and since we were all working from home anyway, I planned a trip to Korea to see my parents. As soon as I booked my plane tickets, I looked for body profile studios and hair & make up studios, and booked them a couple days after my quarantine would be over on. 

The 2 Weeks Before the Photoshoot

Since I had to be quarantined for 2 weeks after arriving in Korea, I thought that would make it easier for me to keep controlling what I eat and to work out. It didn’t quite work out the way I expected, because my parents felt bad that I was eating so little, so they would still cook me amazing home-cooked food. I felt bad saying no to that, so I ended up eating regular meal every other day. 

I also got pretty lazy with working out the last few days. But I could see some abs visible now, so I just wanted this to be over quickly. 

The day before the photoshoot, I went to get a spray tan, to hopefully make my muscles more visible. 

The Photoshoot

…and the day finally came! I planned it so that it fell on a US holiday so I could get some rest the night before. I got my hair & make up done at a nearby salon in the morning, and walked over to the studio for the photoshoot. I picked 3 different concepts, and after about 2 hours, I was done. 

The Result

The Uncertainties of Life

It could just be me, but I just love the uncertainties in life. I like it when my future is hazy, and when unexpected things happen in my life, both positive and negative (as long as it doesn’t have to do with the well being of those around me). 

I think these uncertainties are what really makes my life interesting. Not having a clear picture of where I’d be and what I’d be doing in a few months gives me a thrill. 

Planning

I actually love planning, whether it be for trips or for events. For me, planning is a big part of the fun in travelling and attending events. However, as much as I like planning ahead of time, I also love it when things don’t go as planned. Looking back, the trips that didn’t go exactly as planned were more memorable than those that went as planned. 

Ones that comes to my mind right away are the Havasupai trips. On my first trip to Havasupai in 2018, we were planning on driving to the trailhead at night and starting the hike right before sunrise to avoid the sun when hiking down and to have some time to relax at the campgrounds. However, when we were less than an hour away from the trailhead, we got a flat tire on our rental car. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere with scarce phone reception, but we finally managed to 1) find the spare tire, 2) figure out how to remove the spare tire from the car (it was placed underneath the car below the front compartment), 3) drive back 1~2 hours to get the tire patched for free. When we finally got to the trailhead after all that, it was already past 1pm. By the time we got down to the campgrounds after checking in, it was starting to get dark. So, nothing really went as we originally planned, but this whole experience was so much fun and so memorable. 

My second trip to Havasupai also had something happen that I was not anticipating. During our day hike on day 2, I sprained my ankle. It was the first time I ever experienced something like this, and it was very painful at first, but the pain eventually died down and I still did the day hike and the hike back to the trailhead on day 4. After I came back home, I was on crutches for a couple weeks. I even went to Salt Lake City with my friends on my crutches. I couldn’t go snowboarding as originally planned, but I took off on my own to explore the city. I even got to use the wheelchair assistance service at the airports. After I came back, the ankle pain actually went on for quite a while. I couldn’t go climbing or play soccer. Although, less than a month after I sprained my ankle, the pandemic kicked in and shelter-in-place order was put in place, so I didn’t feel as bad about not being able to do sports. This whole experience was definitely something, though. 

2019 – 2020 – Full of Uncertainties

I guess the year 2019 was full of uncertainties for me. I got laid off from work in March, which actually wasn’t all that surprising as our team was expecting it to happen in a year or two. A week before I got laid off, I got into my first car accident. This could be seen as bad things happening all at once, but I found this period to be really interesting. With all these happening, I felt like I was ready for anything else that gets thrown at me. 

The fact that I had to say goodbye to my old car was the saddest and the worst part of all this, but other than that, I found this experience quite amusing. No one got hurt, it was the other party’s fault 100% and my insurance pretty much took care of everything. I got to experience the process of taking care of accidents. 

As for the job, I wanted to take at least a few months of break so I just spent the next few months travelling and chilling at home. I started doing some Leetcode problems to get ready for interviews around winter time, and was doing some interviews when the pandemic hit and a couple companies I was talking to put a hiring freeze due to the pandemic. The pandemic actually changed so much for all of us, creating even more uncertainties. I used this time to take some online courses, but became more unsure of which direction I wanted to go with my career. But I really just love this feeling of not knowing what lies ahead for me. Looking back, I would never have guessed in my freshman year of college that I would be working and living in the states. 

Mystery Boxes

It feels like I am revealing some sort of mystery box each step in my path. Some boxes may be better than others, but they are all interesting in their own ways. These boxes then spice up my life. I see many different paths that lie in front of me each with its own mystery boxes. I don’t know which path I will take and I don’t know what lies inside these boxes, but that’s exactly what makes my life so much fun. 

My Phone Dies

My phone suddenly stopped working.

I must admit, I have been abusing my phone a lot lately, playing games nonstop and overheating the phone. 

I was on my laptop when I looked at my phone and realized that it was frozen. I took out the battery and tried turning it on but nothing happened. I changed the battery, but still no luck. I tried plugging the phone into the charger but nothing came up. 

I tried Googling, and it did seem like this has happened to some others on the same phone. It sounded like some hardware got fried due to overheating. 

I took it to uBreakiFix near me without much hope, and was told that the motherboard probably needs to be replaced, which probably isn’t worth it. 

Smartphoneless Life Begins

There are two things that I really want in my phone – Android, and removable battery. The latter is really hard to come by these days as all of the major smarphones have moved away from removable batteries. I just personally find it much easier to have extra batteries on hand when I travel, rather than having to keep charging my phone. So I started looking into what’s available out there. 

I wasn’t in any hurry to get a new phone right away, though. Since I was home most of the time anyway with the Shelter-in-place order in effect, there really wasn’t any immediate need for a phone. But I did need that calling functionality of a phone, for emergencies, on Thursdays when I deliver meals to seniors, and in case a recruiter wanted to talk to me. That’s when I remembered the flip phone I bought in Korea. 

I took out the SIM card adapter I bought a long time ago, and put in my SIM in the flip phone. And voila! Calling and texting worked fine. 

Some Minor Inconveniences

It’s been about three weeks since my phone stopped working, and other than some minor inconveniences, I’m doing perfectly well without a Smartphone.

Some minor inconveniences include:

• Google Map – I don’t have built in navigation in my car, so I’ve just been using the Google map on my phone. But even when I had my phone, I didn’t really use navigation; I preferred to look at the map and study it before I started driving. I didn’t want to be too dependent on the navigation. As a result, I know this area pretty well, and I can get by without Google Map. I ask for any changes to senior meal delivery locations beforehand so I can memorize the route before I head out. I even went to the bookstore and grabbed a Norcal map to leave in my car just in case. 
• Camera – The flip phone does have a camera, but it’s really bad quality. I started getting into a habit of carrying my camera with me when I go out, in case something (i.e. an accident) happens and I need to take pictures. 
• Video chat – So when I do video chat with others, I normally used my phone to show my video and used my laptop to share screen and take notes. This was because I had my laptop connected to the monitor which didn’t have a webcam. Now, without a smartphone, I need to use the built-in webcam on my laptop, forcing me to use the small laptop screen instead of the monitor. 

Other Workarounds

• Kakaotalk – Thankfully there is a desktop version of Kakaotalk, so I use that to communicate with others. I am home most of the time anyway, so this is not a problem.
• Spoon Radio App – I have been using this app to listen to my friends’ live broadcasts, and although I can still listen using the web browser, I can’t do a broadcast myself, upload a recorded cast, or participate in a live call using web browser. These can only be done on the app. I have a Chromebook that I got to bring with me for writing diaries when I went to Africa. I tried going to the Play Store on my Chromebook and downloaded the app, and I tried doing a test broadcast and it worked! 
• Philz Coffee – So it seems like I can only order ahead using the app, so I tried installing it on my Chromebook and there it was, I was able to order using the app. 
• Fit On – My friend recommended this app to me for working out at home, and I had a couple exercises still to go for a challenge I signed up for. So I tried to see if they had a web browser version, and they did! There are some things you can’t see on the web version, but I can still watch the videos.
• Duolingo – I was trying to break my previous streak record, but I missed a couple days after my phone stopped working and my streak broke, sadly. But I can still do the exercises on web browser, and it seems like there is a timed practice on web browser that I didn’t see on the app. 
• Music in my car – I took out my 3rd gen iPod nano that I used to play music in my old Civic. I need to restart it once in a while, but it still works! 🙂 I love singing along to my playlist while I drive, so this was very important. 

The Good

So I was able to find a workaround for most of the apps, and now that I’m forced to not play mobile games and to not be looking at my phone the whole day, it feels like the quality of my life has just gotten better. Ironic in a sense, since smartphones were meant to improve our lives. But I can definitely take this as an opportunity to stay away from smartphones for the time being and spend that extra time on some other things. It’s always sad to see something break, but I feel like more good has come from it. I will eventually need to get a new smartphone, but I’ll hold it off until I really need one. 

A heart-shaped cloud