Rain

It literally rained all day, from the time I woke up from when I went to bed. What a crock of shit.

Death Class 101

If you live in Korea, you probably know about Korea's high suicide rate. Almost 25 of every 100,000 Koreans kill themselves per year, and this is one of the highest rates in the world. Fortunately, this information is not lost on Korea's largest corporations. As of this year, Samsung and Hyundai are instituting "well-dying" courses to help their employees understand what happens when you commit suicide. They do everything from write wills, take funeral pictures and get "buried" in real coffins. What an excellent idea!

Update

The assistant to the supervisor did the "paper for paying before settlement" this morning, and said I should have my money by 3 PM. This means that the supervisor only had to fill out one paper before she went on vacation, and probably forgot on purpose. Bitch.

Vacation Prep

It's always something, isn't it? If you buy tickets to a movie, they give you shitty seats. If you want a decent burger for cheap, it's across town and takes an hour to get there. If you want to date a girl, she's a virgin. Well, today I had another one: if you want to get your money, they won't pay you until Friday.

I was originally supposed to get paid last Friday. It was money from the three-week summer camp that just finished. It totaled to about $1000. The lady in charge of the money promised us that we would have it before camp ended. The last day came, though, and the money wasn't there. I was a little worried. But, I thought, it's Friday--maybe the transaction won't go through until the end of the business day. Maybe it won't even be there until Saturday morning. So I waited. Then Saturday came and it still wasn't there. Now I started panicking. I'm leaving on Wednesday for the Philippines, and there are only two business days for them to transfer the funds. This is bad because in Korea, two days isn't enough.

I tried to take care of it today. That of course was hard. There are layers upon layers of people to talk to. First is the metropolitan school board. They said to talk to the district. I talked to the district, and they said talk to my school. I talked to my school, and they didn't speak English. Great. Finally, I found (meaning got the phone number of) the assistant to the lady with the money. She helped the lady with the money that ran the camp. But of course, she didn't have the answers. She said the lady with the money was out of the country and unable to be contacted.

Long story short, the assistant to the money lady said that the money lady just didn't do it. She left without doing the paperwork for our paychecks. The assistant told me that now the school has to do the paperwork, and we will get paid at the latest on Friday. That of course is too late, so I tomorrow I will get up bright and early to hound these people. I will first go to the military base to get some cheap American breakfast, and if I don't have my money by then, I will go and start some shit.

The bright side: my iPod is alive again. I went to the service shop, and it--although small, crowded and requiring an hour to find--fixed my problem. You know what it was? My plug was bad. It wasn't the heat, it was the goddamn plug.

Just think. In two days I will be here:

"Korea Live Fish Market"

There is nothing more sad than a child born into a mediocre existence and condemned to remain there forever. It is a child with no choice. He can do nothing but live his father's life. This is worst at the restaurant by my house. The children are there 24/7, because the parents have no sitters. They have nothing to do but follow Mom and Dad around. They are watching people drink, they are breathing in the smoke. They are watching people puke. No big deal. Normally I walk by and think, Whatever. To each his own. But yesterday I saw the family's new baby. It was probably 4 months old. It was so young, it couldn't even sit up. Yet there it was, lying on the plastic table next to Grandpa's soju bottle.

Is this what they do? Is this the best place for this child, this delicate human being with fragile skin and eyes and lungs? On a card table at a fish restaurant, breathing in exhaust and tobacco? I was so amazed (first, that the baby was actually cute), that I went home and got my camera and took a picture. Of course, I couldn't rightly ask to take a picture of the kids, so I told the Grandpa that I was taking pictures of the sign. In the closer shot, you can see the baby blanket on the table next to a tray of beer snacks and a sauce bottle. Such is his bed.

Truck: the Movie

I was in Hongdae the other weekend at 7 AM when I saw a poster for Truck: the Movie. Of course I had to have the poster for myself. I don't know who the truck is or what's his problem, but from the looks of the repetitive (and thereby awesome) slogan, I bet he's angry. Perhaps even vengeful.




If you were to give this movie a tagline based on movies done by Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Bronson, they would go something like this:

"A top secret nuclear satellite. A team of international terrorists. A government held hostage. An undetectable moving headquarters. Only one truck stands in the way."

"They killed his truck wife ten years ago. There's still time to save her. Truck murder is forever... until now."

"In Above the Truck Law, he got tough. In Hard to Kill Truck, he got even. Now the truck with the short fuse is... Marked For Truck Death."

"No judge. No jury. No cars. Only trucks."

Weekend at Bernie's

I went to see Bernie in the hospital last week, and boy, what a place. First of all, the entire place smelled of fish. I could smell it in the lobby a little, but in the elevator I really got it. Everyone obviously ate shitty Korean cafeteria food, and the collective smell was fucking awful. I was in the elevator with two oldies, a nurse and a guy on a gurney. The gurney guy had nothing to do but blow air.

Impression number two was the absolute chaos of Bernie’s ward. Kids running around, old men with the scrubs and the IV stands, nurses everywhere. From the elevator, you’re staring down a long hallway of about 12 rooms. To your immediate right is the nurse’s station. Maybe a dozen nurses scurrying all over the place. Moving fast but not going anywhere. Apparently not doing anything either, as Bernie says they haven't done shit for him. Won't even fucking come and take his dirty dishes.

I have a piece of paper in my hand with Bernie’s name written in Korean. It’s transliterated into phonetics: “BO-NEE BAEB-KEOK”. I walk up to the desk, and there are women in pink pant-suits all over the place. One is sitting down typing on the phone, one is putting files away, and others are just moving. This station isn’t very big either. Only 3 chairs, so it's a big pink mess.

I give my slip of paper to the woman at the phone, and she tells me the room number in Korean. I understand the first half, so I ask her to repeat it. She of course thinks I'm a retard, so she just stares at me. "Uhhhh." Thankfully then a woman standing behind her says in bad English, “Seven zero eight”. Alright, cool.

I walk down the hall, and it turns out 708 is way at the end. I get there and I see two Korean men watching TV. One sitting in a chair, one on the bed. There are three beds, and one of them is empty. I see a backpack with a Canadian flag tag on it, so I know it’s Bernie. I go back to the nurse’s station, and all the women are doing the exact same thing. It's like a goddamn ant farm. A pink ant farm with hair buns. I ask in Korean where Bernie is. It’s one of the few things I can actually say, where something is. Where’s the bathroom? Where’s this thing? Where’s the Han River? The woman tells me he’s upstairs on the 9^th floor. There’s a terrace up there.

So I finally get to Bernie, and what a fucking state. He looks good physically, but he has this giant thing on his leg. This contraption between his ankle and his knee, holding his shin together. Big as a trashcan. Like something from Wild Wild West, with the metal and the spider webs. It’s covered in this large bandage. It bulges under the cloth and looks like the frame of a parade float.

Apparently, this thing totally fucks Bernie's life up. He broke his tibia and fibia, and both breaks are different. One is vertical and jagged , and the other is horizontal and splintery. He’s in a wheelchair, and he's gonna be in it for a least a month. After that, he can use crutches, but he still has to have the spider web. He has something like a dozen pins in his bones, and the spider web holds everything together. And the worst part is that he's on crutches for a year. There are two pins that can’t come out till then. Poor guy.

Anyway, at least his spirits are good. His coworkers and bosses came to visit him, and they seem like they’ll stand by him. They won’t make him quit or anything. He might have to renegotiate his contract to reflect the new way he has to teach, but at least he won’t have to leave Korea. Plus, one of his student’s parents came to visit him, and she’s apparently influential with the other parents. She likes Bernie, so she’ll bat for him.

I guess all we can do is go to Bernie’s house and give him shots.

My Apartment

Just in case you think I forgot:






That shit is 5' x 8'.