It’s been a long time since I posted anything under the “University” category since I graduated over two years ago and whilst I may be a little older and wiser the learning never ends! Since visiting Korea twice this year I felt it was about time I learned a bit of the language so signed up for the Beginners Korean course at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Three lessons later and it’s not going to badly but I think I’m going to have to put a fair bit of effort in to be able to keep up with the work - somewhat reminiscent of when I studied Japanese!
Korean is significantly easier to learn than Chinese or Japanese as the alphabet (called Hangul) contains only 40 characters, compared with tens of thousands in the others! If it’s of any help to anyone I’ve put together a quick reference chart which contains the consonants (19) and vowels (21) along with English sounds to help with pronunciations.
You can download the chart in a variety of formats on Scribd. Please remember that I’m in no way a language expert so can’t guarantee the accuracy of the chart (although it’s been fairly thoroughly checked by native speakers)!
Update (29/12): I’ve also updated a Korean Numbers Chart (Pure Korean & Sino-Korean).
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During my last week in Durham I took a few walks around to take some snaps of the surrounding area which is particularly beautiful at this time of year. Late morning on a very hot day I visited the Botanic Garden which is situated up the hill next to Grey College and took a few snaps some of which I quite like…
Larger Version
Larger Version
It’s worth checking out the larger versions to see the details on the plants which show some nice patterns and textures up-close 
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Been a bit quiet on the posting front the last couple of days - this might have had something to do with dressing up in silly robes and being paraded about Durham Cathedral. Yesterday I finally graduated from Durham University so am officially no longer a student! The author Bill Bryson is the new Chancellor of the university so was in charge of the handshaking bit (poor guy!). He gave a pretty good speech which thankfully wasn’t to long. I’ve ended up with a BSc in Software Engineering which I’m pretty pleased with!
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Although I have never had hay-fever in the past my eyes have been itching and watering almost constantly the last few days. Apparently it’s something to do with the current high pollen levels for which I was prescribed sodium cromoglycate eye drops. Whilst this is all well and good £6.50 for a tiny 13.5ml bottle of something which is little more than water (2% active ingredient) is pushing it in my opinion. You can easily see that for people who have persistent medical problems the costs are soon going to add up. Luckily for for us in the UK we have the NHS (National Health Service) which will cover you if you can’t afford to pay so I guess it all evens out in the end but I’d still like to know where the almost 100% profit from my eye drops goes.
We’ve been having a bit of a heat wave here recently and last Wednesday we went rowing on the river which was very pleasant. Today things took a turn for the worse but it’s still very hot and humid making it pretty uncomfortable around here. For better or for worse, the end of an era is coming - today I sold my academic gown and tonight is my last meal ever in college (although I can’t say I’ll be missing the food!). I graduate next Wednesday which should be interesting, if no a bit tedious probably! After that it’ll be time to finally say goodbye to Durham and move on to pastures new…
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After a torturous journey up to Durham yesterday I received my exam results and was happy to achieve a 2:1 BSc degree in Software Engineering! No desmonds around here thank you! All I have left to now is to actually graduate on the 29th of this month then it’s all over. I’ll be sure to make good use of my student card in the next few weeks while it’s still valid (does this thing even have an expiry date…)! Now time to relax a bit for the next few months
Also… now avaliable in communist flavour!
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