Hello TWCers and thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I am grateful that you found me either interesting or detestable enough to come read this page. An even bigger thanks if you take the time to comment or attempt to converse with me on this blog, I'll try to answer questions and comments in the following entries.

Short Biography:

For those curious about who I am, where I come from, and how my life turned out up until this point; read along. I was born in 1994 in a post-Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. I am ethnically a Korean. My parents, my grandparents, and generations of my ancestry are all Korean. I have uncles, aunts, and cousins, but I'm not particularly close to any of them really. Acquaintances and people to visit at most, though my family has an extensive network of friends all around the world. If you are interested in my particular Korean diaspora, here's an article that gives a basic gist of "my people." Culturally I am Russian. No, I don't like Vodka but I speak Russian, I read Russian news and media, I've visited Russia many times, and I watch the classical Soviet movie Irony of Fate every New Years'.

I move to United States when I was 9 years old in the Summer of 2003. My parents won the Diversity Lottery and moved to Washington State. We lived with some friends of friends for a while, before getting an apartment, and eventually a house. My childhood is quite typical of the "Communist Gamer Basement Dweller Social Justice Warrior" crowd. I was never quite good at school. Though I consider myself to be intellectually capable, school tended to bore me. I was the typical ace the exam, ignore the homework, type of student. I will admit I was very bad at Japanese though. Language learning requires effort and studiousness, something that's still not a strength of mine. I was quite the voracious gamer, something that originally brought me to the site. The mods, Fourth Age Total War and Rome Total Realism were the first mods that caught my attention. I tried many other different ones, the one that stands out the most is probably XGM or Extended Greek Mod. The one mod that I still play to this day and something I consider a permanent favorite of mine is Roma Surrectum and its successor, Roma Surrectum II. Total War is probably my favorite franchise overall, but not really the only game I play. I played Gunz The Duel, Day of Defeat Source, Starcraft, Counter Strike, and others. Gaming is still a passions of mine and likely will be a life-long addiction. What originally drove towards games was my love for history, and history of war especially. Rome Total War and Starcraft allowed me to live out my fantasies of being greater than Alexander, of expanding the British Empire, of defeating the Swedish as the Russians. Who doesn't love to role-play such scenarios in their head? This is what games allow us to do. They allow us to relive out fantasies in reality instead of just our imagination. History and politics were my strongest subjects intellectually and I consider them to be my strengths today. Less so perhaps in actual encyclopedic and academic knowledge, but definitely in understanding and explaining such information.

So I got through High School and College. There was plenty of drama, between my parents, school, and my girlfriend. I've been with her for many years now. School is difficult for me as I naturally question and abhor authority and structure. I consider such things constraining on my abilities. This has affected my life at work and I've worked many different jobs and continue to change jobs frequently. I do not enjoy being tied down and I find the idea that I have to slave at an organization for many years to be humiliating. I am definitely somebody who is arrogant. People who notice that tend to harbor a natural dislike towards me. On the other hand, I am naturally helpful, inquisitive, and hard-working. I enjoy solving problems, I enjoy learning, and I enjoy helping others. At the same time I am quite introverted, I never speak out, and I keep my emotions in check. Co-workers either like me quite a bit, or simply think I am a quiet and reserved individual. Many higher-ups tend to find me arrogant and difficult to work with. I am averse to failure, to laziness, and to negligence. I maintain a high level of quality to my work and I expect the same out of others. If I am under the impression that people are using me or trying to leech of my effort, I will lower my output to match theirs. I look for work frequently and I don't particularly have any issues finding it. Organizations I've worked with fall under two categories. They are either slow and inefficient, or they are too frantic and incompetent. Either way, I get tired of failure relatively quickly and tend to look for greener pastures. I mark my leave at project completion and I've genuinely enjoyed learning at all of the places I've worked at.

I've worked in sales for several years as I was studying. It was easy money, soul-draining, and ultimately not something I'd want to do. The corporations or businesses that primarily deal with such things are... dishonest in almost every aspect of humanity. They pretend they are hard-working when they are not. They watch far too much "Wolf of Wall Street" and are either not as effective as they think they are, or effective to a point where they have little to no morals. I've done several aspects of sales. Retail, B2B, inside sales, and account management. Same sleazeballs everywhere. If there is an ethical and high-energy organization, I'd love to work there, but I don't think it exists. I've also worked as an Analyst in telecommunications. That was an interesting job, lots of numbers, lots of work to do. Unfortunately, also a lot of down-time, a lot of lazy people, and a lot of stress when things get dumped on you at the last second. The pay varies, depending on what industry and how high up your position is. Definitely a job for someone who enjoys that kind of work, but not for me. I need daily problems and assignments that are high priority. Which leads me to my final and current forays, Government. Working in government is interesting to say the least, there are a lot of different jobs within the apparatus. Some are slow-paced and some are high-paced. I've worked as an analyst, as a clerk, as a manager, and as an observer. Some positions tend to burn people out. Police dispatchers for example, pretty stressful. Not something I'd want to do. Then there's a lot of office work, which tends to be slow, relatively mundane, and people who do not appreciate the gravity of their decisions. Currently, I work for a Court and help them process stacks upon stacks of information into something senior analysts can process verbally. What are things I enjoy? Well, I enjoyed learning the software and I enjoy explaining information to people seemingly incapable of doing so. However, the office has problems communicating. Nevermind the fact that people come in whenever they want to. 6 AM, 9 AM, sometimes Noon (really?), but it is legitimately hard to find a project to work on due to lack of communication and the slowness of responses. Then, when there is an inevitable deadline, we are in crisis mode desperately having people beg me to do something in a day or two. This of course results in rumors of laziness and questioning my competency. Sigh, office politics, probably the skill people work on the most, yet ultimately the least productive one.

Why "Steak"?

Because I love beef. I'm actually not a drinker, whatsoever. I used to be quite a heavy drinker when I was attempting to make up for my rather lame high-school years, but I generally don't even drink during holidays nowdays. I simply dislike alcohol. I do enjoy grilling. Burgers, steak, brats. If you pan-fry a steak, you're dead to me. Sorry, but stop ruining a precious commodity. I've recently discovered online butchers, which means I get to pay top dollar for the best cuts of meat. None of that lame ass "Prime Angus" crap at Safeway either. No more spending hours at a butcher looking for a cut with good marbling on it. I mean really, for a nation that loves meat and consumes the most meat on the planet, Americans are awful at producing it. On the other hand, just look at this delicious Angus-Wagyu crossbreed Ribeye. If I had to tell you why I love my country and globalization, it'd be the ability to order top shelf cuts to where I live.

Sadly I haven't had any real Japanese A5 yet. I am far too scared to spend hundreds of dollars just to end up ruining the damn thing on my grill. I think I'll hold off until I either, A) can't take it anymore, B) go to Japan to taste a professionally done A5 steak.

Politics

This'll take too long, but it's coming. I'll be outlining my political positions on various issues and my reasoning behind them.