iRiver D100 and more...

First semester has ended and summer break has begun. Well, to put a conclusion on my first semester, I passed with flying colours in my exams and also traveled to many places. Seen snow, sakura, and met some great friends here. My research work could go better, but I also wrote my first paper and attended my first conference as a presenter. More on that to come, if I'm in the mood! :-)

Summer break has already begun and I'm taking extra Korean classes to learn the language! The Korean class is actually for undergraduate students only who want to take TOPIK Level 3 & 4 Exams. TOPIK is something like our MUET exam for the Korean language and Level 3 & 4 is really advanced. Most of the students in the class are from China and there is one girl from Japan. However, son saeng nim (teacher) has kindly let me, Janice, Pearly and Bryan attend the class for free. It's really difficult... vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, making sentences, listening... and to make it extra difficult, son saeng nim teaches wholly in Korean. I have to pick up... fast!

So, I bought myself a digital dictionary to make my learning easier. I'm gonna use it for two years here, so I'd might as well get a good one! Presenting the iRiver D100...

iRiver is a Korean brand that manufactures mp3 players, e-dictionaries, etc. Isn't it beautiful in baby pink? I bought it for around RM500. It comes with a carrying case and it's touch screen. Dictionary functions have English-Korean, Korean-English, Chinese-Korean, Korean-Chinese, Oxford English, thesaurus, Jap, French etc. Other than dictionary functions, I can use it to watch movies, play mp3s, play flash games, sound recording, and digital photo album!

When I got it via delivery yesterday, I couldn't wait to play with my baby iRiver! However I was sooooooo disappointed to find that I couldn't change the system language into English nor Chinese... so frustrating!!! Everything's in Korean, the menu, the push buttons, user manual... It was so frustrating for me because it's like, I spent RM500 and I can't even navigate it and it's something I bought for convenience's sake yet I have to spend time learning what all the menu buttons mean! So disappointed...

So I went to ask Pearly and it seems that her Intec brand e-dictionary is the same, all in Korean! Then Bryan told me if I wanna get a digital device that has English in it I'd have to buy Apple products... but the iPod Touch costs double the price of my iRiver! Arghhhh... so... what's been done been done, guess I'll just have to live with it and learn how to push the right buttons!

This is my Korean class material for summer. Learning to translate from Hanja (Chinese character) to Korean writing. Some Korean word pronunciation are similar to Chinese, but not all... nevertheless if you know a bit of Chinese it's easier to pick up Korean.

OK, moving on to other things...

This is what I had for tea break yesterday. Plain tasting wafer biscuits and plain tasting coffee. Everything is low calorie here is it!

And my latest summer spoils from Gmarket online... kekeke... can't wait to wear them out! Oh yeah, and my new hairstyle too... actually not much different from the previous one just the color... :">

Plain white angel wing one-piece dress

Must have piece for summer!

Flowery skirt

And another Bohemian style cotton lace blouse which makes me look like I'm pregnant here!