As of yesterday, I’ve been living and working in Korea for six months. The wife and I arrived on a cold January night, given the keys to our little apartment, and started teaching the next day. Since then we’ve developed a tenuous grip on life here, crazy as it is. I’ve become more adept with chopsticks and less disdainful of karaoke. Seriously, though, here are five useful things I’ve learned since I left my hometown and moved to the other side of the world.
1. If You Don’t Know What You’re …

I just finished watching Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the full video here.
For a synopsis, I’m going to be lazy and quote from Wikipedia:
“Pausch delivered his “Last Lecture,” titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. This talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk”, i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world …

Are you living or traveling abroad for a long time? Need a way for (not-so-tech-savvy) people at home to reach you without breaking your budget? For the past six months I’ve been using a cheap and dirty prepaid cell + Skype setup to allow people in the states to call me for the cost of a mere local phone call.
Here’s what you need:
1) A pre-paid cell phone. In Korea, you can get one from some LG stores for under 30,000 won ($23 USD) plus 30,000 for activation. We found one …

Cut the Crap!
Today, for the first time in five months, I ate a fat, decked-out, All-American hamburger: a 1600 calorie behemoth dripping with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and a side of fries. I won’t name the restaurant, just know they have franchises in Korea and there’s a day of the week in their name. After chomping down about ¾ of the burger, I started to feel weird. Now, seven hours later, my insides are still twisted, and I’m keeping a trash can beside my desk just in case I can’t …

How to Sleep Less
If you’re sleeping more than 7-8 hours a night and you’re not an infant, you’re probably sleeping too much (my army of out-of-work attorneys just told me to tell you I’m not a doctor, just so you know). The following article will share some background and tips on how to sleep less.

Background
I know, I know, most people say they need more sleep. Every day, millions of people grumble, wishing they could nuzzle their pillow a bit longer. Thousands of news stories and …