Last night, I was half-lying on my bed, staring at the Baduk board on the wall. Yes, I have a lecturer’s magnetic board in my room. Though I bought it to practice lecturing in either English or Korean, I hardly use it for that. Instead, I present a few life and death problems on the board, to expose myself to some difficult problems any time. And when I solve all of those, I transform them to new problems. Anyway, mom saw me by chance and asked me what I was doing in that strange posture. So I told her I was solving life and death problems. Then all of a sudden, it reminded me of a weird moment in Kent School.

I was having dinner with a few teachers of Kent School, and we all were talking about the game of Go. They had taken some lectures about it from Kwon 7P and me prior to the dinner, and were curious to know how and what they were supposed to ‘think’ in order to find ‘better moves’. The point was that the board was too wide to decide where to play.

So I said, “You should think it’s similar to Math. You just learned how to solve 1+1, and you shouldn’t expect to solve some equations right after that. Just like Math, Go has many steps to follow. And, in order to improve, you need to solve lots of exercise problems. We call that Life and Death problems.”

I thought I made my point clearly, but they all looked puzzled after hearing me. Then I realized that they were sort of frightened by the name of problems.

Life and Death problems!!

How come haven’t I ever thought it may sound so scary and serious?! Haha.

Yea, I’ve used the word since I was 6, and probably I was too familiar with the term when I grew up enough to notice that it sounds strange.

Don’t you have any similar experience to this?

Oh, and I got 100 on TOEFL, which outweighs the university’s requirement. J
So, the next step is to write an essay and prepare for an interview in English.

We ordered three more boards because there are many students in the GO Society club presently. They meet every Tuesday evening. I also see some students playing Baduk in the Dining Hall!

Above is a part of email I got from Kent School.
Isn't it exciting??