Nearing the 8 month mark

Ennui ennui ennui. Apologies for lack of updates. I'm simply a stress-face and not terribly witty at the moment. Also, I'm fairly sure that I've forgotten how to do much of anything clever in English.

Here is what I know how to say:

'Please put the pencil on the table.'
'If you do that again, I will be very angry.'
'Please don't make me want to cry.'
'Please don't fart on me.' (this happened yesterday. Goddamnit, Alex.)
'Let's write this together, okay?'

A very important thing, though! After 8 months of silence, I managed to accidentally set off an alarm at Starus Building! Sweet! When they installed the security doors on the 1st floor, there was a note indicating that apartment-dwellers would be able to buzz people in. I assumed this was perhaps done by hitting the big red flashing button on my weird-doorbell-video-wall apparatus. This was incorrect, and soon I had a random ajosshi and a security fella in my apartment, trying to explain how to re-install the battery pack for my door security keypad, and me trying to explain that I took it off on purpose because the metal is corroded and it makes weird noises like Aphex Twin barfing and I have a perfectly viable key, thank you.

Subway: The Blog

A lot of interesting or semi-interesting things go down on the Seoul Metro.

For instance, there are salespeople on trains. Usually ajumma or ajosshi and interestingly dressed, they wheel around a little cart full of 1,000 - 2,000 won items. These items tend to be: Xylitol gum, drain uncloggers, workout armband thingies, pens, scrubbers, and insoles.

There are some outliers, though. The most obnoxious salesperson (who happened to come around after my iPod battery died) was selling a Best of the '90s easy listening CD. The pitch? Wheel in a boom box and play 10 minutes of the CD, quite loud, for all to hear. I was surrounded by people equally unhappy as I, which softened the blow slightly.

However, last Sunday was apparently a popular day for sellin' stuff. It was 8:15 AM, dreary and sideways-raining, and the whole train smelled of wet commuter, sitting and trying to keep to his or her self. In walks a salesperson with their cart. They were selling a little knife sharpener stone. Keep your pointies fresh! and all that. I thought to myself, 'Alright, who in their right mind would be keen on buying a knife sharpener in the early morning on a day such as today?'. However, my finger is clearly not on the pulse of the average Seoul Metro rider. Five people paid up and bought the thing within a few minutes.

Next to me sat an ajosshi, listening to his headphones. He held out a 1,000 won bill and got his knife sharpener. He then proceeded to whip out a fairly large and menacing hunting knife, and sharpen in the entire way down the Bundang line for about 25 minutes. In New York, such a sight would send me fleeing to the opposite end of the train. But it's Korea, so I sat and listened to my Animal Collective and thumb-twiddled, quite unafraid.

One step forward, two steps back.

I had the good fortune the other day of stepping onto the Seoul Metro into a train that, quite literally, still had its new car smell. It was a little leathery and overwhelmingly clean. The seats were stained with absolutely nothing, a bit cushy, and had the classic color scheme of gray and yellow.

However, this was no ordinary new subway car. It was quite clearly a CAR OF THE FUTURE. Check out the picture above. This is the panel above one of the doors to the train, with a shiny new video screen in it. Now, I remember first being impressed by video screens on trains... 5 years ago, on the Yamanote Line in Tokyo. Here was a screen that let me know the weather, the entire route that the train was gonna take, any potential delays nearby, and length of time to the next station in both English and Japanese.

This video screen, though? What you see above is what you get. The station you're going to is displayed nice and big on the center of the screen, with your previous station on your left and the next-next station on the right. The name of the station you're hurtling toward fades between its name in Korean and English. That's it. No other pertinent information other than, oh hey, you're on a train, a-goin' this way.

So, I'm not entirely positive why the Seoul Metro found installing these screens to be a good idea. In fact, I find it a pretty poor idea. Where these screens now sit, there used to be maps of the entire subway system, and maps of the line you're currently on. If you're sitting on one of these new trains, wondering, 'Gee, I wonder how many stops until my destination?' or 'Crudmuffins, where do I transfer again?' or 'O GOD AM I ANYWHERE NEAR WHERE I MEAN TO BE?!', you're crap out of luck. Hopefully, you've got a copy of the map handy, and no need to second-guess yourself. All of the maps are gone out of the car entirely, to be replaced by the future of subways: even more confusion.

They went ahead and made my day accordingly

Lucy: Teacher, what is today?
Me: It's Friday.
Lucy: So tomorrow is... Saturday?
Me: Yes, Lucy, that's right. Aren't you excited?
Lucy: Awwww, no.
Me: What, why?
Lucy: On Saturday I don't come in the school and no English class. So, I sad.
Chloe: Me too!
Sally: Me too!
Dora: Me too!

It may have been a direct response to me being grumpy at their inability to eat lunch within a 45-minute span of time, but regardless, d'yawwwwwwwwwww.

Magical powers

If Korea has taught me anything, it is to appreciate food. Like, I had apple pie the other day, and it was the first pie I'd had since arriving in the country. Normally, I would've scoffed at such a treat, store-bought and nowhere near crisp (my preferred mode of pie, naturally). However, the sugar-coated dough melted with the gooey appley stuff in such a way that I thought, 'My GOD, this is how one oughta spend a July 4th'.

Sources indicate that the moment I eat a really delicious pie, my heart will explode with excitement and I will keel over then and there.

Amongst the kids in a whole new setting

Before Phil departed Korea for 'merica-land, we had the opportunity to visit Everland Resort, Korea's biggest (and pretty much only) major amusement park. There are other smaller parks in the country, to be sure, but this is the only one complete with themed areas, a water park, a big old hotel, and all the trappings of a comparable park elsewhere in the world. Some observations:

Not for thrill-seekers - The park had a whopping one roller coaster running when we visited out of a possible three. The roller coaster I had been most excited about, a suspended terrain coaster called Eagle Fortress, was closed for "refurbishment" according to signs on the loading station, but it had been suspiciously taken off the map. The second closed roller coaster, Rolling X-Train, was a kind of take-it-or-leave it ride, but it was being inspected. For months. Yeah, it takes awhile, I guess? Anyway, that left T-Express, which is a very solid wooden roller coaster, and the steepest coaster in the world. It is apparently also the tallest roller coaster in Korea, which at 170-ish feet kinda makes one pause. It's a hoot and a half, though. Very smooth and enjoyable, even though I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses. If you've got to name your roller coaster after an evil monolith of a company, might as well make it good, right?

Repetitive Stress Injuries - Bafflingly, all employees at Everland have to wave their hands at you at all times. If you know what deaf people clapping looks like, it is pretty much the same thing. Always. At varying degrees of enthusiasm and effectiveness. I really don't get it at all. It's not a wave, they're not beckoning to you to try Dippin Dots for freaking $1.50 (~~~~), they're just doing it. Like a tic or something. Maybe it's a cultural difference.

It's a Small World, After All - so, I ran into one of my students at the park. I was with Phil, and we were sweating buckets and I'm sure I looked kind of like crap, but the kid hasn't quit yet, so I guess I didn't spook her too badly. Still, how do the fates align that myself and young Sally happen to be at Everland, in Holland Village, at the same exact time? Probably because it is the only amusement park in Korea. Right.

Did I mention they have Dippin Dots for $1.50 - because it is kind of awesome.

The Zoo - They have at Everland the world's "only mixed zoo", as in they toss lions and bears and fennec foxes and tigers into the same overly-small habitat. Is it depressing? Yes, yes it is. Are the animals cute? Yes, yes they are. They had several tiny cages of cockatiels and I wanted to be their friends pretty badly. I benefitted from this lack of animal care, however, because I got to pet a lion cub. He was fuzzy.

Also, rafting - Nobody prolly cares, but I was fascinated by the vehicles on their river rafting ride. You got a giant plastic cover that renders your body pretty much un-soakable, and also, the raft has joints in it. No, not that kinda joints, alas. It's hard to explain, but each seat is on its own slice of the round pizza, and the pizza can flex when it goes over the rapids so it's not so rough and... anyway, this analogy is flawed, but it was cool, okay?

Good movie, bad movie, worse movie

I have seen three bits of cinema recently, and have had mixed results in attempts to enjoy said cinema. The results of my extensive trials:
Good Movie - "Mother": Though I've complained about my inability to see "Bakjui", the Seoul Metropolitan Government's subtitle program allowed me to see the latest movie from the dude who made "The Host". The trailer for it is utter dreck, and kind of put me off from seeing it, plus the fact that this film was a chart-topper, usually entailing that is just as dreck-y as the trailer; but no! it was actually pretty good. It's about an attractive but mentally handicapped young man who is framed for murder, and the quest of his crazed ajumma mom to get him out of jail. Seriously, this lady is nuts. I was a little scared of all the middle-aged women I saw on the street for a few days after seeing this. The film itself is a bit long, but it's a pretty good thriller, and has a nice number of twists n' turns to keep a viewer guessing. Of course, I spent a great time wondering what exactly was wrong with the son, mentally, but he fell under the Korean cultural umbrella of "the boy ain't right".

Bad Movie - "Transformers: Revenge of Whatever The Hell the Plot Is": Seriously, what. I don't... understand what happened. Why did the mom wig out after eating a pot brownie? Why did the little robot hump the hot chick's leg? Why is there a giant field behind the Air and Space Museum? Is it okay if I blow up the pyramids, too? The effects were pretty grand, but that is about all this film had going for it. Also: LINKIN PARK NOOOOOOOO.

Worse Movie - "Night at the Museum 2": I pretty much ask all the same questions of this film that I did of "Transformers", and plus the effects aren't even all that good in this one. Plus, did you know it's possible to fly an antique airplane from NYC to Washington, DC and back again within an hour, and it's cool to land it in the street, because nobody is awake in those cities at night? The mind boggles.