Adium is Me | Korea

Bastard fuse is giving me a headache

– August 14, 2010Posted in: Korea

Shortly after my in-laws coming to the U.S. the first thing they bought was a rice cooker. Not your average $10 crappy wal-mart rice cooker… but a $200 imported from Korean with 400 buttons (all in Korean) and a million bells and whistles. No really! It whistles when the rice is done.

Like every bad joke you’ve ever heard about Asians and their rice, my wife’s family can’t live without their rice! And this week a blown fuse in this overpriced crock pot has hampered their ability to cook rice. At least conveniently anyway. They can cook rice on the stove, but then no way to keep the extra rice warm. It’s also a bad superstition to throw away rice. Rice fried into these hard cookie shaped things have to be the worse thing I have seen them make with rice. Its like eating one large chuck of uncooked rice. The rice cooker is a Woonjin WPX-0702BC by Cucken.

I opened up the rice cooker, found the fuse and put a meter on it and sure enough its blown. That was the easy part. A trip to Radio Shack, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and even Fry’s and this 3/4″ long tube fuse is nowhere to be found. The main problem, its 12.5 AMPS!!!

The best I found was a 10amp fuse at Fry’s, which was enough to get the LED and LCD’s to light up, but starting to cook and this fuse is toast as well. The home depot guy insisted that the fuse might be good and that we had to test it with a voltage meter, even after I insisted that I had. After he replaced a perfectly good battery, I then had to show him how to use the voltage meter. I thought it was common sense, but I guess if you’re 40 and making minimum wage at Home Depot you’re not the sharpest tack in the bunch.

Tip for those that don’t know how to meter a fuse,

Turn meter on to any setting. Personally I like the setting that beeps, but any setting will do!

Take the two wires that are plugged into the meter, there should be metal on the ends these are called leads.

Touch the leads together…. note how the meter reacts. Does it beep or does the display change?

Separate the leads… the meter should be quiet and display shouldn’t change (don’t touch the leads with your hands your body conducts electricity)

Now take one lead touch one end of the fuse, then take the other lead and touch the other end of the fuse

Note what the meter is doing (if this is too difficult for you, seriously re-think why you aren’t using the setting that beeps)

If the meter reacts like step 3, fuse is good…. if meter reacts like step 4, fuse is bad!

After I made a poor attempt of insulting the guy with my sinister dry humor that no one understands but me, he opened a package of 6 amp fuses (the largest they had) and gave me one. Surprised that he was allowed to do such a thing I changed my attitude a little and graciously took it, even though I threw it away once I got home.

The fuse reads “T12.5AL 250V.” I am not 100% what the L or T mean but the A and V are Amps and Volts, which with my knowledge it should be the only thing that matters. Slow burn or fast acting is something I am learning about this week but still don’t know which this fuse is. Honestly if it says 12.5 amps, I’m buying it!

I have a couple other places here in Sacramento and Roseville I want to check out on Monday, but for the most part I am looking at a new fuse holder, some wire, and any fuse that is 12 amps and re-wiring the rice cooker to make it take the new fuse. If that doesn’t work then maybe we’ll just settle for some wire and review the fire insurance coverage on the house.

If anyone know of a place to buy these things online please point me in the right direction! I’m also willing to drive anywhere from San Jose to Sacramento if I have too. Sacramento or the Northern part of the San Francisco East bay is preferred (since I commute back and forth between the two a couple times a week), but as long as I can get this thing working and don’t have to spend another $200 is worth the trip.

Won goes up, then goes down

– October 16, 2008Posted in: Korea

South Korean Wons to 1 USD



120 days	latest (Oct 16) 1369.5	lowest (Jul 10) 998.2	highest (Oct 8 ) 1415.25

The above is only a graph for the past 4 months. Korean Won has ranged about 400 won per one US dollar. On or around its lowest point 1,000,000 won was roughly worth about $1,000. With 1$ worth about 1,400 won that makes that same $1,000 worth about $700. If you are exchanging enough money to buy a business, buy a home, or even buy a car, that is still a fairly heavy chunk of change that would be lost in the exchange.

For once I would like to see the US economy weaken.

South Korean won slumps to lowest level in decade

– October 8, 2008Posted in: Korea

South Korean won slumps to lowest level in decade – International Herald Tribune.

Not my normal focus of discussion, however in this case it does hold some significance for me. Presently an American dollar is worth about 1,395 Korean won. Which if I was back in Korean being paid in US dollars like I was before I would be loving it. However that is not the case. A couple years ago when I left Korea a dollar and 1,000 won were worth about the same.

My mother-in-law is looking into leaving Korea and coming to the U.S. She has two bakeries and a home she will sell then bring that money to the U.S. to establish her home base here. I don’t know how much money she has, nor do I really want to know, but for the sake of easy math lets say she has a million dollars, or better 1 billion won.

That 1,000,000,000 won would easily be worth $1,000,000 two years ago. Now the same amount is worth $717,000. Nearly $300,000 would be lost if that were the amount she would be bringing here. Even if it was only 1/10 of that, which would be a the cost of a low priced home, she would still be out $30,000. Still a big chunk of change. A single percent (1%) of that first figure is $3,000, which is more money than I have at the moment.

This is making it harder and harder for the Mother-in-law to make the move here. If she decides to give up she packs everything up and moves back to Korea. Including my wife and daughter…, which is where I start to feel uneasy.

I earn enough money at the moment where I can provide the smallest of apartments for my wife and me, still go to school, and keep the creditors off our back. But there will be no extra for toys, clothes, or any luxuries. Possibly the same reason I haven’t gotten an apartment yet, I like my toys.

If we moved back to New York I could do this a lot easier. Possibly even live with my Father for a while, until the price of the won comes back down or until I finish school and can get a better job. Regardless of where I live I will earn the same, but if I move to a place with cheaper real estate then it would be a much more pleasant life. My wife won’t leave this area though. She has had it programmed into her head since she was a baby that people live in cities, and only the extremely poor live in the country. The fact that this is not Korea isn’t something that she has grasped yet, and one of our many problems.

So if Mom takes the plunge and sucks up such a great loss in money, or is able to wait it out long enough and setup shop here in California then I have nothing to worry about. Except its such a great loss, and I know that this is all because of me as well. I need to hurry up and finish my two year degree so I can get a job somewhere, then maybe finish my B.S. in night school.

DVC being my 5th college, and having about 25 credits so far, hopefully there are enough so with one more semester and maybe some summer classes I can have my two year degree.

My Sassy Girl

– March 28, 2008Posted in: Korea

This is one of the better Korean movies that I have seen that they have now turned into an American movie. I still hear about the movie “The Lake House” from my wife, I wonder what she is going to say about this one?

Bangawoyo?

– November 27, 2007Posted in: Korea

Logged into Flickr for the first time in a while, and was greeted in Korean. Or at least that is what they tell me. They have a script installed that will randomly great you in a different language every time you visit their site. It just so happens that I caught the Korean greeting they have as soon as I signed in.