Emoticons and a full rank matrix

When I got my first phone connection in Korea, my contact list was just limited to my labmates and the other GSP students. But after 7 months, that list has expanded significantly. And so has the number of Korean text messages that I recieve. Though my Korean has improved significantly over the past 3 months, I'm yet to be comfortable with the kind of Korean used in SMS .... and most importantly - the emoctions. Though I have been and am associated with some 'cutting edge' research and consider myself well versed with developments in technology, when it comes to SMS - I'm still a cave-man from the last ice-age. If there was an SMS and emoction awareness index, my score would be close to the 'retard' range! And every time I receive a message (most of which are loaded with emoctions) ... I have to call up that person in order to understand the message. Though these emoctions might be popular in global SMS culture, they were new to me. I can recall a few of them now:
V(-_-)V ... a face in the middle and V for victory on either side. The V sign is the most popular sign while taking photographs in Korea and it is virtually impossible to find the picture of Korean without a V sign. It might be noted that, we prefer using just one finger in our photographs (and that too a different one, instead of 2! )
-_-)=b ... thumbs up sign next to a face
@.@ ... surprised ... eyes wide open (try to understand in the Korean context!)
~~ ... stretched intonation ... as in oh~~ = ohhhhhooooooo
ㅠㅠ ... korean character (vowel pronounced as 'you') .... means tears or sad
^.* ... wink
There are many more but I can't recall them at this moment. Many of them use Korean character. Recently, I have developed a keen interest in understanding Korean culture - both ancient and contemporary ... and also the Korean psyche. This Saturday, Stepan, Ivan and I went to the sauna in the evening and then to drink at around 11pm. It had been a really long time since we had a nice drink and enjoyed the atmosphere and the conversation. But as it happens in long drinking sessions - the conversation becomes more colorful and interesting, as time progresses. It was around 1am and we began dissecting the Korean psyche. Already under the influence of 2 pints of beer and multiple whiskeys, the conversation combined widely different fields of study under one banner - from linguistics to history, from human migration to cinematography, from arts to linear algebra! Almost a year back, I discovered something called the 'Single Malt' effect but it seems that half-a-way across the world, whiskey continues to fire my imagination and that of those around me!
We were talking about the Korean alphabet system and its influence from the Chinese script. The modern Korean language is just about 500 years old. Korean language lacks in certain sounds or phones, that are present in other languages and has some that are not present in others. Since the other guys were Russian, they cited examples from their own script and Latin. Chinese is a character based language and hence there are a large number of characters, while Latin or modern Korean being alphabet based, has far less number of characters. Amidst the blue smoke and the golden brown, I commented, "Yeah, the ancient languages are like high-dimensional matrices with incomplete rank ... they have a lot of redundancies. Relatively modern languages are like low dimensional full rank or almost full rank ones ... lot less redundancies due to greater independence of components". In reply, Stepan added, "Yes, exactly, like orthogonal basis ... greater uncorrelatedness among the alphabets". And then there was silence ... we just stared at each other for some time and started laughing. We realised that we were beginning to drift off into another world and it was time to stop and go home to sleep!