16 THURSDAY
AUGUST 14, 2008
Expat living is a page dedicated
to the issues that affect expats'
daily lives. It is your page,
where you can share stories about
your life in Korea. Send story
ideas to Matthew Lamers
at mattlamers@heraldm.com
PHOTO CHALLENGE — The great outdoors — A Jeju grave site with a volcanic stone fence, from the top of Yongnuni Oreum. In the background the Sonji Oreum is visible, and further behind it is the Nopeun Oreum.
In focus —
prime lenses
By David Smeaton
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about
prime lenses, but I’m not really sure what
they are. Are prime lenses better than other
kinds of lenses — Mitch, Pusan.
There are two types of lens: prime and
zoom lenses. Zoom lenses have a minimum
and maximum focal distance and you can
zoom between those distances.
Zoom lenses cover various ranges. 12mm-
24mm would be considered a wide angle
zoom. 70mm-200mm would be considered a
telephoto zoom. So the type of zoom is de-
fined by its range.
Prime lenses are much simpler. They
have a fixed focal length. So there’s no zoom
in the lens. The only way to zoom is with
your feet! For example, a common focal
length is 50mm.
While it may seem that primes are far
less useful than zooms, both types of lens
have their advantages. Many photogra-
phers keep a combination of primes and
zooms in their camera bag.
Thanks to the laws of physics and the
wonders of engineering, primes have a few
benefits that make them worth using. The
first benefit is that prime lenses are often
lighter than zooms, because they require
less glass and mechanics inside. For the
same reason, primes are usually cheaper.
However there are two more important
reasons to consider using primes. The
biggest reason is that prime lenses have
wider apertures. Most zooms (the expensive
ones) have a maximum aperture of f2.8.
However, it’s easy to buy a prime lens with
f1.2, f1.4 or f1.8.
Actually, the 50mm f1.8 lens is one of the
most popular lenses that photographers
buy. This lens is very sharp and fast. It
works well in low light situations and cre-
ates wonderful “bokeh” by exploiting the
shallow depth of field that results from us-
ing wide apertures.
Prime lenses tend to take higher quality
photos than zooms. The trade off with zoom
lenses is the engineering compromises pic-
ture sharpness. Primes are much sharper.
Zooms tend to also be less good at bokeh
and blurring the out of focus areas. This is
also something primes do well.
However, these days zoom lenses are al-
most on par with primes in both bokeh and
sharpness.
It’s worth using both types of lenses, be-
cause they give different benefits. Most
photographers use a zoom as their base
lens (for walking around) and switch lens-
es for shooting different purposes. I have
one prime lens in my kit, a 50mm f1.8, but
I’ve chosen to use zooms because, as a trav-
eler, I need to get more range with fewer
lenses.
But every photographer should have one
fast sub-f2 prime lens in their kit. It’s a
great investment and it usually becomes
the photographer’s favorite lens.
Happy shooting!
If you want to be a part of the weekly Photo
Challenge, join the “Seoul Photo Club” group
at flickr (flickr.com/groups/seoulphotoclub).
Send David a message at davidsmeaton
@gmail.com or visit his website at
davidsmeaton.com. — Ed.
COMMUNITY
For expats, Olympics evoke patriotism
By Matthew Graveline
For Korea’s expats, the Olympics offer a
way to connect to their home countries. The
Games evoke national pride for Korea’s for-
eign population, even though most are thou-
sands of kilometers from their homelands.
Korea has become a country with a re-
spectable foreign population. Expats from
America, Canada, Ethiopia, South Africa and
Scotland took time to share with The Korea
Herald how they will experience the 29th
Summer Olympics.
Anthony O’Shea is an Irish-American who
came to South Korea from Santa Cruz,
California. Working as an English teacher at
a private academy, he regularly checks the
medal standings. O’Shea believes the
Olympics embody everything a good sporting
event should.
“It’s a couple of things: It mixes national
pride and sport together, and it only happens
every four years. As far as I am concerned,
that makes it pretty special,” he said.
Watching the Olympics on Korean net-
works has led O’Shea to search for other ways
to watch the American Olympians.
But being in Korea, watching the Korean
perspective of the Beijing Olympics has ex-
posed him to several sports he would never
have seen on American networks.
The most different being women’s handball,
which is a Korean favorite, as the South
Korean team is strong this year.
But as an American, O’Shea is looking for-
ward to watching several sports in which his
country is competing.
“We expect to win every Summer games in
basketball,” he said. “We have the biggest
Why the East and West don’t mix
“Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year
Struggle Between East and West”
By Anthony Pagden / 626 pages / Random House
By Rob York
Those in the West, meaning Europe and lat-
er the United States, have always disagreed
with those in the Middle East about how peo-
ple should be governed. Westerners have al-
ways been more partial to democratic govern-
ment and a politics independent of faith.
Even before Islam, however, Middle
Eastern countries have always supported to-
talitarian systems intertwined with religion,
as shown by UCLA professor Anthony Padgen
in his book, “Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year
Struggle Between East and West.”
It’s hard to imagine a time when the Middle
East’s conflicts with the West were not rooted
in disputes among Islam, Christianity and
Judaism. However, Pagden shows that the
conflict is older than these issues, and that
the core disagreements in governing style
show how efforts by one side to invade and
colonize the other have failed, not that this
has stopped either from trying.
Pagden traces the origins of today’s con-
flicts, including the Iraq War, back to the con-
flict between the ancient Greek city-states
names in the sport.”
He also wants to be able to see the Williams
sisters play in Olympic tennis and Michael
Phelps as he tries for the Olympic record for
most gold medals ever.
Andy MacDonald is not so lucky. As a
Canadian from Collingwood, Ontario who
works as an English teacher here, he has less
to cheer about.
Even as Uzbekistan, Togo and war-torn
Georgia have taken the podium, the Canadians
have yet to win a medal.
But it is the spirit of the Olympics that has
MacDonald excited.
“Its like Christmas season for sports fans,”
he said.
“The Summer Olympics aren’t really my
thing, but I’ll probably be watching the
games, no matter what the event. Take hand-
ball, for example. Do I understand it? No. Do
I care who wins? No; but I’ll still watch.”
All joking aside, MacDonald mentions a
couple of Canadian favorites who have a good
chance of winning medals.
Among them are Adam van Koeverden, the
Canadian flag-bearer and Olympic kayaker
who won several medals in Greece. Also, the
Canadian men’s-eight rowing crew, which has
not been defeated this year, is looking to make
good on its defeat in Athens, where it came in
fifth.
Either way, MacDonald said he sees the
Canadian team winning at least a couple of
medals, as they have one of the largest con-
tingents: 332 athletes.
But while Canada promises to bring home
some medals simply because of the sheer
number of athletes it has entered, the
Ethiopian team promised its nation that it
and the Persian Empire. The Greeks had
deities of their own, but valued their form of
democracy, as exclusive and elitist as it might
seem by today’s standards.
The Persians, however, had no use for rep-
resentative government. Greeks knew that
the Persians, deeply impressed by their
Zoroastrian beliefs, would never tell a lie, but
that their views led to fatalism. The historian
Herodotus once recorded a Persian general
say that he would carry out his duty of invad-
ing Greece, even though he knew that fierce
Greek resistance would lead to the death of
himself and most of his men.
“What God has ordained, no man can by
any means prevent,” this general is supposed
to have said.
Of course, the West would eventually adopt
Christianity, and the Middle East would follow
Islam, but their contrasting views regarding
the role of religion in the law never changed. In
the preface to “Worlds,” Pagden makes his dis-
taste for all religions clear (though he gives cre-
dence to the prophet Daniel’s visions regarding
the rise of Alexander the Great, oddly enough).
In the chapters dealing with the Crusades,
his critique of Christianity is more strident be-
cause Muslims were more tolerant of the faiths
they had conquered. As the book progresses,
however, the tide begins to turn in favor of the
Christians, almost entirely due to Christ’s com-
mand to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,
and unto God what is God’s” in Matthew 22. As
Pagden says, this is Christ’s only explicit refer-
will bring home medals because of its talent
in certain events.
As Ethiopian Fekadu Metekia explains, the
only events worth watching, for him, are the
running events.
As an expat living in Busan for several
years, Metekia said he enjoys the events
themselves, but it is the Olympics’ ability to
connect him to his compatriots that he enjoys
most of all.
“I guess it comes naturally. The Olympics con-
nects you with the people back home. They are
watching at the same time you are,” he said.
With no fellow Ethiopians nearby, Metekia
said he actually finds himself hoping his
country does better than before because he
has unbiased expectations.
While O’Shea and MacDonald still check
out their home media sources to see how their
nations are doing in Beijing, Metekia prefers
to check out global news sources to find how
Ethiopia is doing. Using Yahoo News, he is
able to check out the latest on the famed
Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie, the
world’s greatest distance runner.
But, while Gebrselassie gets a lot of media
attention for his decision not to run in the
streets of Beijing because of the air pollution,
South African fencer Sello Maduna gets only
brief mentions.
But, as South African expat Cindy
Sigamoney explains, the first black South
African fencer to ever make it to the Olympics
is a big reason why she is watching the
Beijing Olympics.
“To be truthful, I didn’t really follow the
Olympics, but because of this one guy, I am
this time,” she said.
Another reason she’s interested in the results
ence to politics in the Gospels, and, over time,
it has lead to greater separation between the
Church and the law.
Conservative Muslims, however, follow
Shari’a law, which makes any separation of
mosque and state unlikely.
“The society of Islam is ultimately based not
upon human volition or upon contract but upon
divine decree,” he writes. “In the societies of the
West, by contrast, every aspect of life has been
conceived as a question of human choice.”
This difference has inevitably resulted in
disharmony when one side has stepped into
the other’s territory. Among the examples
Pagden cites is Napoleon Bonaparte’s ill-fated
attempt to colonize Egypt starting in 1798.
Napoleon, a self-professed “Orientalist,” un-
derstood that defeating the Egyptians mili-
tarily was only the first step, so he attempted
to win them over by practicing religious toler-
ance and telling them of his defeat of their old
enemy, the Vatican in Rome.
However, Napoleon’s words only convinced
the Muslims that the French were indifferent
to faith and had overthrown the Pope to in-
stall godlessness.
“Just as most Muslims today have failed to be
persuaded that Western social values can be
made compatible with the Shari’a, so, too, were
the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon,”
Pagden writes.
Historians* reading his book will see many
examples of how the tragedies of today are the
result of Western interference in Middle
Mario Taradan (flickr.com/photos/helje)
of Beijing 2008 more than previous Olympics is
that this is the largest South African team com-
peting since Apartheid ended.
Just like O’Shea and Metekia, Sigamoney
was moved as her nation’s athletes made
their way into the stadium during the open-
ing ceremonies.
“I definitely miss home more,” she said.
But for Scottish expat Barbara Cadwallader,
the Beijing Olympics do not really inspire the
same homesickness. Having just arrived in
Changwon with her husband, who is an engi-
neer, Cadwallader had a different reaction to
the beginning of the Beijing Games.
When asked about Beijing, she said she felt
it was being overshadowed by the controversy
with Tibet.
She has yet to get her cable set up, so she
hasn’t had a chance to watch any of the
Games, but once she does, she will be watch-
ing the Opening Ceremonies, at least the re-
runs.
“I heard the ceremonies were spectacular,”
she said. “I hear China pulled out all the
stops.”
The other expats also said they were more
interested in these Games because of where
they live now.
Sigamoney admitted that she first became
interested in the Beijing Olympics because of
China’s controversial position in the world
and other political issues which surround
these games.
“Part of it is the sport, but part of it is
China’s coming-out party,” said O’Shea. “I am
interested to see how they present the Games.
We are so close to them; there is definitely
also a big buzz about Beijing here in Korea.”
(graveline.matthew@gmail.com)
Eastern affairs. This includes well-inten-
tioned interference, like the creation of the
state of Israel, which Muslims saw as little
more than the West’s latest crusade.
“Jews and the Christian Crusaders, whom
Muslims had for centuries treated as two quite
distinct enemies, now became merged as one,”
Padgen writes. Decisions such as these, coupled
with Western support for decadent, secular au-
tocracies like the Shah of Iran stirred new ha-
tred in the Muslim world — an enmity that
would one day reach American shores.
This book is, as its subtitle suggests, a con-
densation of 2,500 years of events, and more
thorough analysis of each era can be found in
other books. There are times when his econo-
my-sized history lessons fall short. His telling of
the marathon-inspiring journey of Pheidippides
contains decidedly incomplete information, and
he states that Mark Antony “fell in love” with
Cleopatra, apparently unaware that, etymolog-
ically speaking, the concept of “falling in love”
did not exist at the time. We ought to assume
that Antony’s motives for allying with the
Egyptian queen were less romantic.
These are forgivable oversights, however,
given that Pagden clearly expresses why
Western and Middle Eastern powers are bet-
ter off not trying to force their wills upon one
another. It does not appear that our govern-
ments are any closer to learning the lesson,
but it has been articulated.
(rjamesyork@heraldm.com)
*A group to which U.S. President George W.
Bush should belong; after all, his bachelor’s
degree at Yale University was in history. That
makes the past five years even sadder, does it
not?