Melatonin in South Korea

This may be old news for some, but since I couldn’t find much specific info online I thought I’d post here in case anyone else is looking for melatonin in Korea. It’s not available over the counter, and iHerb is prohibited from shipping it here. All that despite the fact you can buy it from Korean online vendors (such as 11st.co.kr or gmarket.co.kr) for approximately five times the price iHerb sells it for. I’ve sent an inquiry to customs, but don’t expect any sort of useful reply.

I get the impression that it used to be available (I’ve found references made to melatonin on Korean blogs where people are recommending iHerb as a source), but no longer. I’m not sure what’s prompted the change in policy by the Korean gov’t, and of course there is absolutely no info. on the customs site. A friend of mine told me he bought some at Dongdaemun a few years back. Anyone with info, feel free to post.

Veggies and Fats

The standard Korean diet includes a lot of vegetables, but if it’s not in season you may have trouble finding it. This puts more pressure on me to eat what’s in season, which is really what I should be eating anyways. It’s a bit of a pain when it comes to meal-planning, though, and you may need to educate yourself on what’s seasonal here (I’ll link to an online source if I can find one). A lot of Paleo recipes require dark greens like spinach and broccoli, which are available here off-season but the quality can be inconsistent and price high (occasionally they simply don’t have it). Avocado is also hit-and-miss. EMart has it, but it’ll be terribly underripe one order and close to rotten the next. It’s not a popular food here, so the farmers and distributors may just not know what they’re doing (according to the label, it is domestic).

For your carb-heavy veggies, you’ll have no problem finding sweet potatoes, but no yams and the squash variety is limited. There’s zucchini, 단호박 (sweet squash?) and one other kind that I haven’t tried yet. So you’re out of luck on trying any of the Paleo spaghetti squash recipes.

For fats, my wife and I consume the EMart avocado (Highstreet also sells pureed avocado), extra-virgin coconut oil for cooking (Nutiva from iHerb), coconut milk (Aroy-D from EMart), extra-virgin olive oil for salads (California Olive Ranch from iHerb) and occasionally macadamia nuts (available raw from EMart). Of course, we also get plenty of good fat from grassfed beef and freerange eggs.

If you’re eating dairy, I would highly recommend Sangha (상하) products. They are pasteurized (no raw here), but the whole milk is organic, tastes amazing, and the fat content is nice and high (14%). They also make a great yogurt. The Pasteur brand comes in a distant second (tastes good but only around 7% fat if memory serves). Amazingly, you can also get grass-fed butter here (not in Canada!). Highstreet Market sells Pure New Zealand Unsalted (Anchor). iHerb also carries ghee.

I may condense this information into a simple updatable chart rather than continuing these posts. Please comment if you’ve come across sources for these foods that I’ve overlooked. I tend to limit myself to online sources because I’ve grown tired at having to hit 4-5 stores every time I do groceries. Costco is probably a day in itself. EMart charges a really small fee for next-day delivery and iHerb’s shipping is free for orders over $60 (usually arrives 3-4 days after ordering). I doubt I’ll ever go back to spending an entire day shopping when I can purchase the same items online in a matter of minutes.

Paleo in Korea: Protein

Paleo

Based on a friend’s recommendation, I read Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution this summer and my wife and I have been eating a 100% Paleo diet since July 1st. Paleo is virtually unknown here, so I have had some challenges finding certain ingredients, Paleo-friendly restaurants, etc. I’ve found information online on eating Paleo specifically in Korea to be really sparse (just a few expats dabbling with it, really), so I’ve decided to write a few posts that will hopefully make life easier for anyone else beginning with Paleo here. If there are more of you out there, hopefully we can get some discussions going and help each other. I’m not a biochemist, dietitian, doctor, or trainer so I’m not really looking to debate the fine points of Paleo here. If anyone’s interested in learning more about Paleo (although I’m not sure how you would have ended up at this page first), I would recommend Robb Wolf’s introduction here.

Paleo in Korea — Protein (EMart + Highstreet + iHerb = just about everything)

For today, I’d just like to write about available proteins, their quality, and where to get them.

As you’d probably guess, finding standard meats in Korea is not a problem. Supermarkets and butcher shops are stocked with the same variety and cuts of meat that you’re likely accustomed to in your home country. Coming from Canada, I find poultry a bit cheaper here and beef pricier…but your experience may be different.

As far as I know, there are NO domestic sources of pastured/grassfed meat here. The pride beef of Korea, Hanwoo, is 100% grainfed. My wife and I order imported New Zealand grassfed beef and lamb from EMart (it’s only available online…never seen it in-store). You can also buy the same meat directly from EMart’s source, Wellborn Meats. There’s also this site, that provides a list of all the current New Zealand beef retailers in Korea.

Except for the odd cut of venison at Highstreet Market (they also sell grassfed beef and ground turkey), you won’t find wild meats in Korea, either (although I’d be very happy if you could prove me wrong). My wife’s parents live on an island in the country and every once in a while her dad will catch a wild pig…but it happens maybe once a year. So you’re out of luck on wild game of any sort.

Freerange anti-biotic-free eggs are here and are all the rage right now (look for 방사 유정란 or some combination thereof on the label). You can expect to pay around 5 or 6,000W for a dozen. I haven’t been able to find freerange poultry yet, but I’m still looking.

Fish and seafood is one area in which living in Korea puts you at an advantage. A lot of the fish sold here is still wild caught and not farmed. Unfortunately, most of the Paleo fish recipes out there are for fish you won’t really find here (e.g. halibut, tilapia, etc.), so you may need to come up with your own methods of cooking, etc. or ask a Korean friend for some tips. I still order in wild sockeye salmon about once a month. Tuna packed in water is available at most big supermarkets now, but if you want it wild and salt-free you’ll need to order it. If you don’t like the fishier-tasting Korean fish, you can also buy flatfish (광어) here. It has a very mild taste similar to halibut.

Still waiting for the perfect learning tool…

Long working hours, daily commutes, and a newborn son necessitated that I change back from SuperMemo to Anki a few months ago. It’s no longer possible for me to dedicate a daily block of time to sitting in front of the computer and working with SuperMemo.

I miss incremental reading with a passion. I wholeheartedly wish more people would discover it. Maybe then more learning tools incorporating SRS and incremental reading would come to market. I’m tired of having to choose between the mobility of Anki and the incremental reading feature of SuperMemo (I’ve probably made the switch 4-5 times in the past few years).

Every few weeks, I google “incremental reading,” hoping more people have gained interest, but to no avail. Most people who have discovered its power continue to use SuperMemo contentedly. Most people try SuperMemo for a short time, are frustrated by the interface, and proceed with vigorous online criticism. Somewhere in the mix, incremental reading has been labeled an overrated selling point for SuperMemo that has no real value. This is extremely unfortunate.

The truth is in all my years of study, reading (professional and recreational), and language study, I have never discovered a more powerful tool than the SRS / incremental reading combination.

Anki’s iPhone / iPad app is probably the biggest step SRS software has taken in the last ten years, but I don’t believe Anki will implement incremental reading anytime soon. A plugin was designed a couple of years ago that toyed with the idea, but it seems that’s been abandoned. Anki’s designer said specifically that he doesn’t believe incremental reading is a feature his users are interested in and he has no immediate plans for such a feature.

In order of importance, these are the features my ideal learning tool would include:

• an SRS engine;
• incremental reading (ALL text formats: PDF, html, etc.);
• complete mobility and synchronization between devices;
• plugins for third-party reading and browser applications (e.g. Firefox, Kindle, etc.) and would automatically import highlighted text back to the program, along with source information; and
• complete media capability (audio / video)

Such a tool would revolutionalize learning. For a motivated learner, it would blow away ALL currently available  and orthodox forms of education.

A functioning and mobile incremental reading plugin for Anki? A reader with an SRS engine? A real mobile version of SuperMemo? It would be a start. I’ve been waiting for these developments for years now, but they don’t come. Where is my perfect learning tool? Do I have to design it myself?

SuperMemo Wishlist

“Wouldn’t it be great if…?”

Use any program extensively enough, and you’ll have ideas for improvement. Here is my own wish list for the next version of SuperMemo. I would love to hear more ideas…Who knows? Maybe we’ll get the attention of the SuperMemo development team.

• PDF conversion plugin. Reading incrementally is great–I’ll never go back to linear reading. Unfortunately, only plain text and html can be processed by current versions of SuperMemo. Most ebooks are in PDF-related formats. I probably spend as much time formatting poorly converted PDF text in SuperMemo as I do studying.
• Tab-separated value file (*.csv / *.tsv) import feature. SuperMemo allows Q&A format imports but that’s only good for text-only information. I (and I suspect many others) have moved beyond the text-only flash card format. Almost all of my elements contain some media, images at least and, in many cases, video or audio. I almost never import items into my collection (I much prefer to build knowledge from my own incremental reading and extractions), but a .tsv import feature would allow me to use output from SUBS2SRS, a program that creates video flashcards from movies (great for language acquisition).
• A reader. I read everything in SuperMemo: books, emails, news articles, etc. This post gave me an idea. Have you ever used Google Reader or subscribed to an RSS feed? Wouldn’t it be incredible if SuperMemo had this feature?
• My ULTIMATE wish: SuperMemo incorporates its own browser and/or email client. Think of the possibilities. Browse the internet in SuperMemo. Import a page or entire site to your collection to be read incrementally, or simply make extractions from web sites as you surf the web. All overhead of time and effort spent on importing eliminated. If you use an online email client (e.g. GMail), you could process your emails the same way (without having to use the Outlook workaround like in current SuperMemo versions). A browser that is your incremental reader and SRS software. Now that would be powerful. Combine this with a PDF-reading feature, and SuperMemo could literally revolutionize learning.
• Audio-to-text converter. This one is a little silly maybe (other programs already do this…Dragon Naturally Speaking, etc.), but it would a nice powerful feature for SuperMemo. There’s a LOT of great material out there that is ONLY available in audio, mostly lectures. I like learning from the audio format, but having a companion text in my SRS software would guarantee integration of knowledge. As it is now, I type notes as I listen, like I would if I was in a classroom.

Post your ideas!

SUBS2SRS and SuperMemo: Day 2

A new day, new challenges!

Audio flashcards from your favorite film? No problem!

It’s been easy enough to create text/audio-only flashcards in SuperMemo using SUBS2SRS’s output. Two text and an audio component, import the audio file…done. I saved my first card as a template with objects, and introduced the .tsv file into my learning process to be incrementally processed. I’ll extract one movie line at a time, and apply the original template to new extracts. It will take 10-15 seconds to convert each extract into a text-audio-text flashcard (importing the audio file, formatting and placing the text, etc.), and I’ll likely get faster over time. Still far from ideal–a .tsv import function would eliminate the need for this whole process…but I’m satisfied with this workaround.

Audio flashcard for SuperMemo using SUBS2SRS output.

Video flashcards–not there yet.

My next challenge is to create a video flashcard. Anki users  have been doing this for a few years now. Using SUBS2SRS, and with a little preparation in Anki, users can play bits of movies or dramas (with target language subtitles) and Anki will quiz their listening/reading comprehension, using source language subtitles in the answer field. The value of video flashcards is immeasurable. They allow you to study using your contextual (video of person speaking), listening (speaker’s voice), and reading (subtitle) comprehension simultaneously.  They make study much more entertaining. 

SuperMemo: The Challenges of Incrementally Reading PDFs

I recently contacted Piotr Wozniak, SuperMemo’s creator, about the
challenges of incrementally reading PDF files. I made an appeal that some sort
of solution be provided in the next version of the program. Here was his
response:

> I personally suffer due to the PDF pain as much as you, as I do need to
> read a lot of scientific papers that often come in PDF-only format. I
> adopted a number of strategies that depend on the type of article: from
> incremental copy&paste to visual learning (i.e. learning with picture copies
> of the text). The bad news is that the next version of SuperMemo does not
> make much progress in this area. However, I will yet once again forward your
> appeal to a colleague for a thorough technical re-evaluation.
>
> I have a sneaky suspicion that Adobe got a bit of vested interest in
> preventing an easy to-HTML conversion, or the problem is indeed technically
> insurmountable. However, a good plug-in editor from Adobe (like an IE’s
> TWebBrowser uses by SuperMemo) would provide a way around. Last time I
> looked into that issue, we did not have that option.
>
> Please rest assured that, as a user myself, I won’t give up on this
> subject, even though it has been dragging for a couple of years now.

Using SUBS2SRS for SuperMemo

This may be old news for the more experienced SuperMemo users among you (http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/supermemo/message/3825), but I just learned the hard way that Supermemo does NOT have an import function for .csv or .tsv files. This came as a blow, since I was really looking forward to using a program called “subs2srs.”

For those of you unfamiliar with “subs2srs,” it’s an incredible program for language acquisition. Feed it a video file, along with subtitle files (target language and first language), and it will essentially output flashcards that either have a video or audio clip with screenshot (your choice) in the question portion, and the corresponding subtitle material in the answer.

Narrow Reading

Yesterday I read an article about the benefits of narrow reading on language acquisition. The article is written by Stephen Krashen, a linguistics professor known for his Comprehension Hypothesis (language is acquired, not learned). 

In this article, Krashen proposes that reading narrowly (i.e. books in one particular field, or by one particular author) is more beneficial to language acquisition than reading widely. By reading narrowly, we are repeatedly exposed to a certain vocabulary set and we gain a background knowledge for further reading in that field.

Most EFL readers follow the opposite principle. They feature articles on a variety of topics from as diverse a range of fields as possible. The idea is that this exposure to variety will endow students with a broader vocabulary set and a well-rounded grasp of the language. However, if students truly learn to read by reading, and reading should be pleasurable (Comprehension Hypothesis), then these textbooks are highly ineffective.

Every student has different interests. A textbook with ten articles on ten different subjects will likely contain 7-8 articles that a student has no interest in. This has certainly been the case for me. Those learning a language should select reading that interests them, with very little regard for level or variety.

2011 Summer Obsession: SuperMemo

For me, the beginning of every summer is marked by an obsession. The obsession is generally something I have a history with already, such as fitness, writing, etc. For an unknown reason, at this time of year in particular, a part of my brain randomly chooses one of these interests for rapid further development, to the exclusion of others.

This year, that obsession is SuperMemo–incremental reading, in particular.

I’ve been using SuperMemo for about five years now. For those of you unfamiliar with SuperMemo, it’s a Spaced Repetition System software…the origninal SRS software, in fact.

SuperMemo’s promise is that, if the software is used daily, the knowledge in your brain will reflect at least 95% of your SuperMemo knowledge collection. It fulfills this promise by forcing you to actively recall information just when that information would normally begin to “decay” in your brain (out of misuse). Luckily, the interval between the moment of “decay” becomes longer with each repetition. Knowledge becomes more firmly implanted in our brains with each “recall.” The challenge is recalling knowledge frequently enough to keep it there, but as infrequently as possible (more time to learn new stuff!). SuperMemo makes this calculation and gives you the nudges you need.

In addition to these standard SRS features (you can find several other, easier-to-use programs that work on this principle), SuperMemo has another component that is particularly addictive: incremental reading. With this feature, you may import any number of text or html files to SuperMemo, of any size, and read them incrementally and in parallel.

Knowledge evolves in SuperMemo. An imported book is broken up into important pages. Noteworthy paragraphs are highlighted and processed separately. Paragraphs become sentences, and sentences ultimately become actively-recalled items (question-answer pairs or cloze deletions). It all sounds like glorified memorization until you try it yourself.

I’m enamoured with SuperMemo’s incremental reading for several reasons.

• I’m endowed with confidence that my reading is purposeful. Not only does this confidence make reading more enjoyable, it also increases my sense of responsibility in choosing worthwhile material. I will never forget the important ideas contained in a book I’m reading. That feels good.
• Incremental reading allows me to read widely. One of the realizations you come to early in your experience with incremental reading is that linear reading, or reading one book at a time and working your way through a “reading list,” is vastly inferior to reading books and articles simultaneously, in parallel. It’s more efficient to read in parallel. It’s more entertaining to read in parallel. Most importantly, one’s power to associate seemingly disparate ideas is increased by reading in parallel. Worried about when you’ll get around to that book on your reading list? I don’t. I import it into my knowledge collection and read it in tandem with my other reading, as quickly or slowly as I like.
• Remembering the ideas and principles I encounter in reading allows those ideas to truly integrate with my own ideas and experiences. They become part of me, instead of “going through one ear and out the other.” I can weigh an idea I learned ten years ago against one I learned yesterday, despite elapsed time. Incidentally, this is also the best counter-argument against those who would question the value of memorization in an age when information is at our fingertips.

SuperMemo 2006 has become freeware. Try it, and revolutionize the way you look at reading and knowledge.