And In Your Bank, I Deposit My Sanity

Sometimes I think about how much simpler life was when I was a kid. There were so many things back then that I didn’t have to worry about. Paying taxes, watching the height of my cholesterol rise, getting hair on my nipples, impotence, and, most importantly, having to remember a million passwords. When you’re a kid, a password is just some random noun that you have to mutter to get your friend to let you in his tree house.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Bagel sandwich.”

Bam. You’re in. That’s all it took. But then I got older, and passwords got increasingly more complicated. I started needing passwords for just about everything. My email, my WordPress account, online banking, my ATM card, the electronic lock on my door, stopping Gort from destroying the earth. Everything. And not only were passwords becoming more prevalent, they were getting more involved as well. A simple noun or a sequence numbers didn’t cut it anymore. Nope, for my own protection, passwords must include capital letters, numbers, and at least 8 characters, so that hacking into my Facebook page has become as difficult as cracking the Da Vinci Code or getting a girl’s phone number (for me anyways). In the future, one can only guess that passwords will get even more complex, requiring everything from punctuation to emoticons to strange symbols.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Oh. It’s Bill/198228/!?!/ ; ) /The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

All of this is to preface how I recently lost my mind in the bank, and all because I forgot a stupid password. I’d been living in Beijing for about a month when it happened. After getting my first paycheck from my new job, I ran off to the ATM to cash in, thrilled, ready to pull money out and do something awesome with it, like go to McDonald’s or buy a mop. I switched the ATM from Chinese to English and followed the instructions, not realizing that soon the horrors of modern security would entrap me, like a fat man who puts an alarm system on his jar of Slim Jims.

“Invalid Pin,” the machine said. I got two more chances, and then the machine cut me off.

“What? I only get three shots?” I said to myself. “I was just warming up.”

The next day, the same scene repeated. Thus, I found myself sitting in Bank of China, a paper slip in my hand with a number on it, waiting to see a bank teller who probably spoke no English. Three hours passed. Finally they called me up. “Hi,” the bank teller said, “Please show me your passport.”

“Oh,” I said, “I, um, don’t have it.”

And that was the end of that. Back on the bus, a total failure. But I returned to the bank the next day, this time equipped with my passport. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours once, shame on you. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours twice, then you have a lot in common with the last two Lord of the Rings movies. Anyways, I ended up waiting a mere hour and a half on the second trip, before finally being called up to the teller.

(Apparently banks in China have notoriously poor service, due to the fact that they’re all government run. This leads to them being seriously understaffed and not particularly motivated by the ‘customer is always right’ mantra.)

“Nee Hao!” I said, enthusiastically. Then I tried to explain what was going on.

The teller was baffled. She called over the manager, who could speak some English. “What is the problem?” she asked.

“Well, it’s my fault, really. I can’t seem to remember my pin number.”

“I see,” she said, motioning to a keypad on the counter in front of me. “We can help you change it. Just type your pin number on the keypad.”

“Um, but that’s the problem. I don’t know it.”

She looked confused. “You don’t know it? Try to guess.”

I typed in a few numbers, again failing miserably. “Can’t you look it up in the computer or something?”

The manager practically burst out laughing at this suggestion. “It is your secret number. How are we supposed to know what it is?”

I stared at her like she was crazy, and she stared at me like I was crazy. “Because you’re the bank. You’ve got to have the number on file someplace…”

The teller twisted the computer screen to show me. “See?” the manager said. “In our computer system, in the password spot, it just says xxxxxx.”

“So how do I change it?”

“You can only change your password by typing in the original password.”

“What? This can’t be happening. Don’t you have a procedure for what happens when someone forgets their password?”

“No.”

“But this has to have happened before? Are you telling me that nobody has ever forgotten their password before?”

“No,” she said. “You are the only one.”

She really said that, and she was serious. It was not a sarcastic statement. We decided, finally, that I would have to fill out a form declaring my card lost (or something to that effect), and in one week the bank would be able to wipe the pin number out of the system and replace it. “Fine,” I said. “While I’m here, though, I’ll need to withdraw some money.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Huh?” I was beginning to get upset. I told myself to keep cool. “I have no food. I need to eat. What do you mean it’s impossible?”

“It is impossible to withdraw money without putting your pin number in.”

“But I’m here,” I said, my voice wavering with desperation. “I have my ID. Here’s my passport. You know it’s me. Are you seriously saying I can’t have my own money because I forgot the pin number?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I cannot let you withdraw from your account unless you type in correct number. It is for security.”

The next twenty minutes were not the proudest moments of my life. I yelled. I demanded my money. I lectured the manager on the nature of passwords, how they’re supposed to stand in for identification when there’s just a machine there, nothing that can look at a person’s proper ID, and how this was insanity, the importance of the pin surpassing my being there, in physical form, me, my body and face, my real identity. Who was I? Had I become some number in a computer that nobody knew? I shouted until the security people came over. Five o’clock came and the bank closed. I refused to leave. I accused them of stealing my money. I had to eat and they were killing me. Again and again I waved my passport around and stated my name.

What did it matter? I’d lost the key, forgotten the combination to my locker, and I eventually left the bank with my head held low. Defeated. Rejected. Over a month would pass before the bank finally resolved the forgotten pin number problem. In that time I did what any person living in the modern world would do, and I put every last living expense I incurred on my credit card. See, MasterCard believes it’s really me…as long as someone keeps paying them every month.

I sat in my apartment after the bank incident and thought about things. I could lose my passport, have my face sawed off in a terrible carpentry accident, change my name to Cap’n Crunch, and none of that would make much of a difference, not as long as I kept track of all my usernames and passwords. A digital version of me had taken my place, like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as if I woke up one morning and I was gone, replaced, by some sort of computerized file.

What if the entire universe is based on code, and most of us just don’t know it? The cure for cancer, the key to finding love after forty, the secret to losing back fat – they probably all exist, somewhere, and are just very powerfully password protected.

*

The Strange Spot On This Planet That I Call Home

Back in November, I interviewed for a job in Beijing, China. Two weeks later, I’d signed a contract. A few months after that, I was on a plane to Beijing Capital International Airport. What greeted me – the place where I found myself – let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected. Yesterday was nice and sunny and so I went for a stroll and took some pictures. And thus I present to you my new home, for better or for worse. Cheers!

This is the outside of the campus where my apartment is. Right off the bat, I want to say that my school is quite awesome and that I really believe there’s some good stuff going on. It’s a school I’m proud to be teaching at. Yes.

What follows is my journey any time I wish to go off campus. Out in front of the school is a two lane highway. A public bus comes about once every ten minutes. Apart from the bus and some cars, the area is really empty.

Evidence of emptiness.

The bus takes about 15 minutes to get into town (not downtown Beijing, that takes 90 minutes) and stops running at 7:30 pm. Now, if I don’t feel like taking the bus into town, there is a village. It’s a short walk. Here are the stairs that mark the starting point.

Up the stairs, and down the winding path through the trees.

Four minutes through the trees brings us to an exit. The village is close.

Now it’s a walk down this stretch of road. Again, this isn’t the Beijing I had pictured. But, like anywhere, one gets used to the surroundings. Especially when there’s a random head by the side of the road.

We’ve finally reached the village. Hurray!

Here is the grocery store. There are always dogs outside…

…and exciting rides for kids.

In all seriousness, the village is pretty depressing. It’s an extremely poor area. Last semester, my school brought in children from the village’s elementary school, so that the wealthy kids attending my school could talk to the village kids and learn about their lives. My school planned to involve them more this semester, but we were told that the elementary school in the village was shut down. Closed. No one seems to know why, or what the village kids are doing now that they don’t have a school.

Village barber shop. Reminiscent of Super Cuts.

Probably it’s needless to say that I wasn’t too pleased to be living here at first. But I’m getting into it. It’s okay, nothing to complain about. Here’s Mickey Mouse. At Disney World, they say it’s a small world after all. That isn’t really true. The world isn’t small at all, but when you stay in one certain place long enough, I can see how it feels that way.

Tension and Fury with the Elderly on the Seoul Subway

Part One – In Which I Bash an Old Lady with a Suitcase

The Seoul subway is packed, just like always, and, also like always, I’m in a shitty mood. It’s mid-January and I’m headed to the airport, on my way to Hong Kong, a giant green suitcase containing half of my worldly possessions by my side, ready to make the trip with me. To get to the subway train, I must go down a staircase. I lift my suitcase, carrying it with both hands like a battering ram, and head down the stairs, taking the first step at the exact moment the train arrives. Approximately 8 million people get off the train and start walking up the staircase, flooding it, a tidal wave of Asians, coming right at me.

I sigh. I’m hugging the wall on the right hand side, as I feel I should be. One would think the people going up would do the same, two lanes, street traffic, headed in opposite directions, but they’re not. They’re spread out. This doesn’t deter me. I put my head down, the green suitcase held out before me, and walk with great speed, gaining inertia as I descend.

“Excuse me!” I yell. “Coming through!”

People duck out of the way, dodging me and muttering angry things in Korean. At least they’re moving, and I’m getting close to the bottom. But then I see an old woman, right in my path, walking up the stairs while texting. Why is an old woman texting? Why hasn’t technology passed her by, and who the hell is she talking too? Probably the retirement home, to tell them she’s escaped. She’s completely oblivious. It’s like a game a chicken and one person is asleep behind the wheel.

“Watch out!” I shout. That seems more pleasant than, “Move, bitch, get out the way!” The old woman continues towards me with her head down. I decide not to veer off, as I have heavy luggage and she should be the one that moves, and we collide. The suitcase wallops her good. She staggers to the side a bit and lets out a furious scream, shocked by what’s happened. I respond by saying “Pay attention!” and then make my way to the end of the staircase.

I don’t look back. It wasn’t my fault.

Maybe she’s learned a lesson about the dangers of texting. Or I’ve given Old Lady 21^st Century something to blog about. Because she probably has a blog, with an upcoming entry called, “The Damn White Bastard Motherfucker.”

Part Two – Things Get Tense with an Old Man

Mid February. Back in the subway station, a black suitcase this time, containing the second half of my worldly possessions. Another flight, the last leg of the move. I’m standing on the platform waiting for the train, my suitcase beside me like a son (in a bag, I dunno). There’s no one else in the general area and I’m poised to drag my luggage right onto the train when it comes. And then another person appears.

He’s old, probably in his sixties, with wrinkled skin and an Oakland A’s cap. Despite the fact that I’m obviously first in line, the old man doesn’t fall into place behind me, but instead stands directly next to me. I start to feel tense. There’s no reason for this – it isn’t crowded. Why can’t he just let me and my luggage get on the train first? I know that he’ll push his way by me. It’s happened a million times before with these old Asians. I grit my teeth. There’s no way I’m letting him ahead of me.

The train arrives, doors open. I pick up my suitcase and start heading on. The old man goes darts forward, and I feel his body press up against me, trying to push his way past. I guess I could simply let him go, but that’s ludicrous, and instead I position myself in front of him, cutting off his path. He doesn’t yield. Pushes harder.

That’s it. I’m pissed.

I turn and put my hand directly in the center of his chest and shove him back. “Stop it, God damn it!” Like the old woman I bashed with the suitcase, he’s shocked. I make my way onto the train and he steps on after me with hate in his eyes and his jaw agape. “Can’t you wait a second?” I say. I’m sure he doesn’t know a word of English but I don’t care. “I’m getting on the train. Don’t fucking push me.”

Riding the train, I start thinking. Really, if I’m honest with myself, standing on the platform before the train came, I was kind of hoping he would try to push past me. I wanted to do something, make a stand, just as I wanted that old lady to keep walking up the staircase so I could ram her with my suitcase. In truth, I was sick of Koreans being rude on the subway, and I was salivating at the opportunity to confront someone.

“My God,” I thought, “I’m like the George Zimmerman of the Seoul subway.”

Sometimes, standing up against something, be it thieves in the neighborhood or rude people on the subway, becomes a matter of personal need, an action waiting for a target. Maybe I shouldn’t have been such an asshole on the subway. I looked up at the monitor to see where I was.

Dorimcheon. I looked back at the old man and hung my head in shame.

I’d gotten on the wrong damn train.

*

I Don’t Want To Shower, I Don’t Want To Blog, And I Don’t Want To Eat Brain

I could feel the funk settling in. My floor was littered with unwashed clothes, and I hadn’t showered in two days. That’s the thing about depression – there are generally signs of it everywhere. See, depression doesn’t sneak up on you like Oscar Pistorious’ girlfriend on Valentine’s Day; it slowly makes itself at home. One day you sleep until noon but shrug it off. Then, before you know it, you haven’t shaved in two weeks and you’re suddenly listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell.

Well, at least that’s what happened to me. Relocating to China was beginning to wear me down, bum me out. Moving someplace new, really, is a lot like buying a porn magazine. Sure, the new issue of “Juggs” is thrilling for a day or two, but pretty quickly it gets boring, depressing to own, and you want it to go away. So was the case with China, at least in the early stages. The first few days were fun, but then I didn’t want to see its breasts any more, metaphorically speaking.

“Hey,” I said on the phone, calling one of the school coordinators, “I don’t mean to complain, but I can’t get any hot water in the shower.”

“Oh, you know it gets turned off, right?” she responded.

“No, I had no idea. What time does it get turned off?”

“7:30 AM.”

As soon as the number left her mouth, I knew I would not be showering again. Sure, getting up at that time would be fine when classes began. Until then, while the school was on vacation and I wasted the two weeks away memorizing the lyrics to “Blue” and attempting to feel better about myself by watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” there would be no way I’d be able to wake in time for the hot water. No, I would become dirty and disgusting, like a homeless person or someone vacationing with Carnival Cruise Lines. I considered my options – taking a cold shower or investing in a good bottle of cologne and bathing in the style of so many great Italians before me – and decided to just sleep more.

Writing this blog also seemed impossible. The Great Firewall of China was proving to be a greater foe than I had anticipated. Without exaggerating, I seriously spent about 10 hours trying to put a stupid Mitch Hedberg picture in my AIDS post, getting kicked offline by the proxy server over and over again. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “When I read there were Internet blocks in China, I didn’t expect that to apply to me!”

And then there was food. It took about a week to find a grocery store that stocked it. Finally I did, and I ran back home with delight, having purchased a whole chicken, cooked rotisserie style. I got home and cut it up with kitchen scissors. Starving, I devoured it. At one point, I was trying to gnaw the flesh off some part of the chicken – what appeared to be a wing – and was having trouble. I took the chicken from my lips and looked at it.

“What the hell is this?” I thought. Right after that I rotated it in my fingers, like it was back on the rotisserie, the image turning right side up, and that’s about the time my heart stopped. “Dear God…it’s the head!”

Yes, apparently the head of the chicken is not removed in the grocery store, and I had been nibbling on it. It was a horrifying sight to behold. Brown, soft and gelatinous, its empty eye socket stared up at me. “Fuckin’ shit!” I screamed, throwing its face back down onto my plate. It had to go, immediately. I grabbed a fork and thrust it down upon the chicken head, puncturing it through one of its eye sockets. Dinner had turned into a nightmare, and there was a gooey brown head on the end of my fork like a piece of fudge brownie from hell.

Afterwards, the chicken head flushed down the toilet, I sat on the bed and shook. I felt like a murderer. Terrible thoughts ran through my head. I pictured purchasing a bucket of KFC and opening it to find Colonel Sanders’ decapitated head inside.

Thankfully, things started getting better. Just as depression is quite apparent at its onset, it’s easy to tell when it’s left too. Things began to make sense and a new routine started to form. Plus, I got my passport back, which meant a quick trip to Korea to see my wonderful girlfriend, and if anything can get a guy over the self-loathing that comes from having eaten something’s scalp, love can.

*

8 Cool Things I Will Miss About Korea

This coming Tuesday, I will get on a plane and leave South Korea, where I’ve spent the last 2 1/2 years. All in all, they’ve probably been the most important years of my life, as I’ve grown into a better, stranger person, and I’ve met all kinds of interesting and unique people. Looking back on my time here, I compiled a short list of 8 essential things that I will most certainly miss when I leave the land of Milkis and Kimchi.

1. Pomato – Pomato is like a little Korean fast food chain with restaurants all over Seoul. It’s awesome. For four bucks, I can get a wicked bowl of tofu soup. Pork cutlets, kimbap, pig intestines – you name it, Pomato got it. Plus the staff of unfriendly middle aged ladies gives it a good atmosphere.

2. Smoking – Despite violent anti-smoking protests like the one pictured to the left, there’s smoking all over the place in Korea. Everybody smokes and cigarettes are super cheap. In December, an anti-smoking ban was passed, outlawing smoking in certain places (like large establishments), but I was out last night, and as I chain smoked in the warmth and comfort of several bars, I saw no difference between now and the way things were pre-smoking ban. That’s good, because it’s really cold and I would not want to go outside and compromise my health.

3. Heated Toilet Seats – They might have these everywhere, but I never experienced one before moving to Korea. It really is like sitting on a thrown, and the feeling of having your badonkadonk warmed is vastly underrated. I hope everyone one day gets to use a heated toilet seat – as soon as I realized my school had one, I knew exactly what I was doing during break time.

4. Dong Dong Ju – This is a Korean liquor that is served in a big cauldron with a scoop.  It’s quite strong and tastes a bit like Milkis (carbonated milk drink). They make it from rice and a white person like me gets to feel hip and cultured drinking it while sitting on the floor in an Asian establishment.

5. Korean Animal Words – Knowing how to say the names of animals in another language is fun! “Go yang ee” means cat; “Kang a gee” is puppy. “Saja” is lion; “Nakta” means camel. My favorite is “Toki,” which means rabbit. Furthermore, cats go “yowng yowng” instead of meow, and dogs say “mung mung.” On another note, Jesus is not called Jesus, but “Yay Su.” That’s good to know, in case you’d like to use the Lord’s name in vain in multiple languages.

6. Korean Chinese Food – It’s delicious. Absolutely delicious. The typical Chinese dish consists of noodles in a black bean sauce served with sweet and sour pork. Odd sidebar: There’s “Black Day” in Korea, which is like Valentine’s Day for single people, and the tradition is that people eat Chinese black noodles to celebrate how miserable single life is.

7. Ridiculous Head Ware – Korean girls like to coordinate. Super short skirt? Check. High heels? Check. Bunny ears? Oh yeah. Check mate. Bows, ear hoodies, lamb hoodies – these are the tools Korean girls use to find a man and avoid having to eat the dreaded black noodles.

8. North Korea – Just because they’re funny.

That’s today’s list of awesome things that I will miss. Tune in next time, when I will present my grouchy list of things that I will be glad to escape!

*

Won Seok Wonka and the Krazee Kimchi Factory

I remember that time. It still exists in my head, kept well, the memory’s shelves dusted and lawn trimmed. Everything was bizarre. Fan death, the idea that an oscillating fan could steal your breath and kill you in your sleep. Double eyelid tape, butt pads, skin whitener. Ordering a live octopus and having it cut up with scissors, then chewing up the severed tentacles as they wiggled around like inchworms. Hooker karaoke, intestine soup, black goat tonic. Men who looked prettier than some of the girls I’ve dated, and women who wore super short miniskirts in snowstorms. Rice wine, soju, neon lights and vomit on the street. Electronic music – Fantastic Baby! – and schools that required students to bring their own toilet paper.

This was the Korea I stepped in to. One second I was on a plane, listening to Boston’s Greatest Hits (favorite track: Peace of Mind), the next minute I was in some anime dream sequence, like I’d pulled a golden ticket and was shipped off to Won Seok Wonka’s Krazee Kimchi Factory. If an orange-faced-green-haired midget approached me in a bar two weeks after I’d gotten to Korea, I don’t know that I would’ve batted an eye.

“Oompa Gangnam Style!” the Korean Oompa Loompa would have shouted, and I would’ve just nodded and gone with it. The place was fun and freaky. They buried live pigs and ate dogs, got surgical procedures to increase the slope of their forehead and committed copy-cat-suicide if a favorite celebrity took his or her own life.

But lately, shit just ain’t the same. I walk around a Korea that hasn’t changed one bit since I arrived here over two years ago. It’s drab, depressing. Things like rampant alcoholism, which seemed real rock ‘n’ roll when I got here, now seems sad. Like it’s not a good thing. Even all the beautiful girls bum me out. They’re doll-like, manufactured, assembly line. The neon lights don’t seem so bright anymore. It rains a lot and nobody looks at each other on the subway.

Two years might do that to a place. Korea, it seems, has lost its weird appeal. The place seems downright normal. We’ve spent lots of time together and I’ve seen it without its make-up.

*

Every now and then I go to the bank and wire money back to the USA. My girlfriend asks me why I do this. It’s actually not a bad question. “Well,” I’ll say, “that’s my main bank account. I’m sending money home.”

Home. The use of the phrase is a turn-off, like how most women react to the dreaded c-word. She makes a good argument. I haven’t been to the US in over two years, and I don’t plan to return any time soon. I don’t have anything there, no house or home or friend’s basement where my record collection and blow up doll have been keeping each other company for the past 800 days. Nothing’s waiting for me, with the exception of some bill collectors, and I’m in no hurry to finally meet them.

The thing is, I try to tell her, I have to have someplace to belong to. I don’t want to think of myself as transient, nomadic, a man with no home like Marco Polo or Woody Guthrie. And it feels funny to refer to the US as something other than “home.” It’s sort of similar to when I was 19 and living in an apartment with four of my friends. On Sunday mornings, I’d jump in my car and tell them I had to go “home,” and when I said that, I meant my parents’ house. The apartment was temporary. I still had a room dedicated to my existence at my parents’ house, and as long as that room was still there, not being used as a library or a shrine to the Buffalo Bills, then God damnit that was the place I’d call home. Sure felt more like it then the mattress on the floor I slept on in the apartment.

But the room in my parents’ house eventually let go of me – I was replaced by a new computer.  It seems like my American bank account is the new version of the room I grew up in. It’s what makes the US still my home. My parents kept my Elvis Costello poster and my suit, the only one I owned, a blue ensemble that I would call on once or twice a year, and the bank account keeps all my money for me.

It’s about the same, just slightly less sentimental.

*

I’ll never call Korea “home.” I could live here for the next 20 years (which is a ridiculous notion – I’ll never live that long) and I still wouldn’t feel like anything other than a tourist. Which, after some thinking, I’ve decided is mostly by my own choosing.

For all my plans to avoid the US, I still know what’s going on there. I read Huffington Post and other similarly slanted news sites daily and make too many political posts on Facebook. I watch the Oscar movies every year. I know what’s on the Billboard charts and get nervous when bad storms hit New York. In short, I still care about what’s happening in the USA. I’m interested.

And Korea? As groovy as the place is, I just don’t care that much about what happens here. The presidential election is this month, and I have no idea who’s running. I don’t even know what the issues might be. I don’t study the language and I avoid the entertainment like it’ll give me angina. I’m bored with hearing about the culture. I have no clue as to what’s happening in the news. Why? Because, bottom line, I don’t give a shit.

Home might be where the heart is, but it’s also where the head is. Wait, let’s change that – it sounds dirty. Home is also where one’s interest is. You would think, logically, that when the weirdness wears off a place, when things stop being polite and start getting real, that it would be a signal you’ve found a place to call home. But it doesn’t always work that way.

There’s a different feeling after the novelty is gone, I guess. I might not have a home, but I’m not really lost. This place, conversely, has lost me.

*

On Leaving Korea: Hands Off My Mayo, Punk

The broccoli in Korea has vanished. I’m not sure where the hell it went, but it’s gone. For the past two weeks, the area of my grocery store that used to be home to the broccoli has vacated, as though the broccoli packed its things and headed West, in search of a new place to live where it won’t always have to play second fiddle to kimchi. It didn’t go alone, either. The broccoli apparently convinced the salsa and green olives to go with it. Everything in the grocery store seems to have disappeared. There’s no chicken and I can’t even find the brand of tuna I like. Sometimes I walk into the grocery store, throw my arms up in despair, and leave with the hope that the loss of my business will encourage the little Asian lady that works there to hire some private detectives to go get my broccoli back.

In about one week, I’ll be gone too. I thought about that as I scanned the shelves for mayonnaise. “Get the smallest container you can find,” I said to myself. In a few days, I’ll be out of my apartment and some new guy will be taking my place. He’ll teach my students and sleep in my bed, which I guess were only ‘mine’ for a limited time to begin with. “Don’t buy a big thing of mayo,” I continued. “Get something you can finish in a week. I’m not stocking this next fucker. He can go buy his own damn mayonnaise.”

I don’t know why I’m so against leaving things for the new guy, but I am. The ironing board and toaster oven I bought will be going to my girlfriend as slightly used presents. I look at the new toilet seat I recently installed and shake my head, “That lucky guy doesn’t know how good he’s got it.” The new toilet seat is amazing. It’s like a throne. It’s so good, sometimes I pee sitting down just for the luxury. And now it will be his, whereas, when I arrived, I was handed over something vastly inferior. I inherited a pink bed and a half-eaten cake in the freezer.

If you’re curious, I replaced the bedding and no, I didn’t finish the cake.

Leaving a place where you’ve lived for any amount of time can be a lot like breaking up. When I got to this apartment, I found it ridiculously small and shabby. A couple months later, I didn’t even want to be in this country anymore and I certainly didn’t have much fondness for my job. But now that I’m leaving, I’m only able to see all the good qualities in everything. I’m filled with regret. “I love this place,” I find myself thinking. “I love this apartment and I love Korea and I love all my students. Oh my God, what have I done? I’m leaving the best thing I ever had!”

It’s exactly like how, after a breakup, the girl quickly goes from intolerable to amazing, and suddenly I don’t want to part with anything. Get rid of the pictures of us together? You’re crazy, man! It’s almost the same way I won’t let go of the toaster oven. That shit is mine, and it’s going to my girlfriend’s apartment, so I can come back in six weeks and, I don’t know, make toast I guess. Lots and lots of toast…unless the chicken and the broccoli are back by then.

Similarly, just as the first person you date after a breakup doesn’t seem good enough, my next step – backpacking around Europe for a month and a half – seems tedious. I go through the Lonely Planet book, jotting things down, going, “Yeah, I guess I’ll go to Stonehenge…it’ll pass the time until I come back.” No one has ever been as melancholy about going to Europe as I have been. The Louvre? Oktoberfest? Nah, I just want to sit in my little apartment. On the toilet seat.

Maybe before I leave, I’ll write a short letter to my replacement. “You’re getting a tiny apartment,” it will say, “a job that will exhaust you, and a grocery store that doesn’t stock any food. Congratulations, you lucky son-of-a-bitch.”

*

In This Post, I Offend a Korean Girl on the Street and Wonder If It Has Greater Implications

In a historically significant moment for otters everywhere, the Seneca Park Zoo, located in Rochester, NY, decided to import one lone otter to inhabit the zoo’s meager confines sometime in the early 1990s. I was in high school then, and wasn’t particularly intrigued by the arrival of “Admiral,” who was flown in from Louisiana to break Rochester’s otter-barrier. Despite my initial lack of enthusiasm, I was in love the moment I visited the zoo and laid eyes on Admiral. He was an incredibly exciting creature, full of life and energy, swimming all over the place and drawing large flocks of people to him. Admiral was the Jackie Robinson of otters, and the entire city loved him. Last year he passed away, at age 21, and went to otter heaven which, I would guess, is a lot like a river.

The otter has been my favorite animal since then. I wonder, though, if things would be different if the Rochester zoo imported a different otter other than Admiral. What if the first otter they brought in was lethargic? What if they acquired a depressed otter who only wanted to sleep and bite itself all day? One could say that my love of otters is directly related to the positive experience I had with my first one. If Admiral had less personality, if he was more of an introverted, cerebral otter, perhaps today my favorite animal would be something different, like a cow.

Call this the “Otter Theory,” if you will. It states that a person’s perspective on something is largely relative to the first encounter they’ve had with that being. For example, what if an alien came down to earth? Well, let’s say the alien had a good sense of humor, was well mannered, and planned to vote Obama. Then everyone would not only love that alien, but possibly all aliens. On the other hand, if the alien didn’t support gay marriage, made offensive rape jokes, and slept around on Robert Pattinson, everyone would think aliens suck.

This past weekend, I had an experience that relates. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and I was walking down the street with my girlfriend. About ten paces in front of us was some Korean girl, probably around 20 years old, wearing a nice plum-colored purple dress.

“Ooh,” my girlfriend cooed. “What a nice dress she’s wearing.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I like it too. I should ask her where she got it.”

“Go ahead,” my girlfriend taunted me, knowing I would be too shy. “Go up to her and ask her.”

Neither of us took this idea seriously, and I playfully shouted out, “Hey, girl!” The chick in the purple dress kept walking. “Yo!” I quietly yelled, while my girlfriend laughed at me.

“Clearly she’s deaf,” I said. About a minute later the girl made a turn and, knowing she would soon disappear from our field of vision, I shouted out, “Hey girl in the purple dress!”

The girl turned around.

“Oh shit!” I said. “She heard me! She’s not deaf!”

The girl didn’t shout anything back. Her facial expression showed deep anger and she raised her hand and gave me the middle finger.

It was just like this, but real.

“She gave me the finger!” I said in shock. “Let’s get out of here!” And my girlfriend and I ran off like giggling little grade-schoolers.

Now, here’s the thing: What if, and this is conceivable, I was the first foreigner that girl had ever come across on the street? Sure, she’s likely had foreign teachers at her school, but I might have been the first real-life experience she had with a white dude. What kind of impression had I set? Maybe later on that night some poor lost foreigner would try to ask that same girl for directions. “Hey!” he’d shout desperately to her. And, thanks to me, what would happen? She would likely give him the finger and run away and hide in a jinibang.

“I was a terrible otter,” I said to myself later that night. When living in another country, your actions carry more weight than they do normally. But then another thought occurred to me. “Maybe I was the second guy, and she was overly angry because her first foreigner encounter was a nightmare. That must be why she was so quick to give me the finger!”

I liked that thought better. It’s so much more comforting to believe that you’re not the problem, and that everything is the fault of the stupid bastards that preceded you.

*

Snapshots of the Boryeong Mud Festival

It’s 8:45, Friday night, and I will be on a bus for the next three hours. The bus will carry me and a group of 50 other people down to Boryeong, where one of South Korea’s most popular festivals starts the next day. This is the “Boryeong Mud Festival,” a two week extravaganza based around the idea that it is fun to cover oneself in mud. That it’s fun to jump in mud, play in mud, and throw mud in your friends’ faces. Riding the bus, relaxing, I imagine what might happen over the course of the next two days. I’ve brought my camera with me. I’m, perhaps pathetically, thinking about the blog post I’ll write about it. It’ll have pictures and hilarious stories. Obviously. Granted, I don’t know what those hilarious stories will be, but I’m confident they will happen, organically, like how mud just sort of happens. One doesn’t have to force mud. Sand gets wet, and the magic happens. I’m positive my blog about the festival will be a real winner. What should I name it? I’m thinking perhaps “My Name is Mud,” after the Primus song. No, why would I do that? I don’t even like Primus. What about “Mud Gets in Your Eyes”? Sort of a play on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Again, I don’t like it. Coming up with the title is going to be difficult. I will wait for it, like a meal ordered at a restaurant, to come to me.

*

Last year, I remember talking to my friend Toronto. “You going to the Mud Festival?” I asked him. “No man,” Toronto said. “I’m 30. Why would I want to roll around in mud?” It was a damn good question. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not going either. We’ve gotten too old for this shit.” There’s nothing more embarrassing than middle-aged men rolling around in mud. I didn’t go, and spent the weekend at a Buddhist temple instead. I felt it was a mature decision. But this year my friend included me in on a modestly priced excursion down, so I figured what the hell, I would roll around in the mud. I’ve heard it’s good for the skin.

I wouldn’t be showing immaturity by going. I would simply be trying to get properly exfoliated.

*

7:30 AM Saturday morning, I’m sitting on a picnic table drinking beer and smoking skinny Korean cigarettes. I’ve been drinking and smoking all night long. The sun is up and I’ve purchased a small carton of milk to help settle my stomach. There are four other guys who have stayed up all night drinking as well. One of them is a US soldier. He spent some time in Afghanistan and now he’s here, stationed in South Korea. We talk about war and girls, and what he’ll do after his time in the service is over. Most of all, we talk about North Korea. He says they tried to launch a rocket at the USA, and that everyone in the military knows about it but the media was stopped from reporting it. I nod although I don’t believe him. He’s probably right and there are secret rockets being fired all the time. An hour later I’m too sleepy to talk about rockets and death, and I stagger up into the pension and fall asleep on the floor beneath the sink.

*

The Boryeong Mud Festival began back in 1998. The small city of Boryeong was using mud from its flats in cosmetic products and decided to throw a festival for promotional purposes. Mud from the flats was brought to the beach in trucks and used to create a giant mud pavilion. They set up a mud slide, a mud pit, mud wrestling, colored mud for body painting, and an entire mud obstacle course. I wake up on the floor under the sink around 11:00 on Saturday, someone brushing their teeth above me. My friend who I came down with is gone. I can’t find anyone I know and my phone is dead. I end up going to the beach with two South Africans girls I’ve never met before in my life. We wander over to the mud pavilion and use paint brushes to lather ourselves in mud. I think I’m still drunk. The mud is thin and watery and feels cool and nice. One of the girls pours mud over my head. Everyone is coated in mud and they look sort of grayish blue, kind of like aged smurfs. My stomach is turning and I lose the girls in favor of getting noodles at a corner store. I try to find them again, but can’t.

*

4:00 PM on Saturday. I start thinking about the upcoming blog. What is there to write about? For the duration of the actual festival, I’ve either been searching the beach for my missing friends or trying to sleep off my hangover. I still can’t think of a title. I’m sitting on a staircase at the base of the beach, and two Koreans approach me. They’re from an organization called “The World Peace Initiative.” They hand me a dry erase board. I look at it. It says, “Peace Is” and then is blank. They ask me to write my definition of the word ‘peace.’ They will then photograph me holding the board and put the photo on the Internet. I stare at it blankly. I can’t think of anything to write. What is peace? Does peace involve secret missiles? I eventually jot down a quick definition and they snap my photo. I feel like a fool. Soon I will be on the Internet, covered from head to toe in grey mud, holding a board that says, “Peace is people living in harmony and not killing each other.” It’s not a dictionary definition, but I feel it summarizes ‘peace’ adequately enough.

*

I’m back with the two South African girls. 4:30 AM Sunday morning and we’ve been in a bar all night long. I’m happy that I’ve only had a few drinks, as my body still hurts. My blog has gone to hell, I think. I didn’t take a single photograph the entire time, and nothing very interesting has happened. The only evidence I was even here in Boryeong is the picture The World Peace Initiative took. I feel happy though, because I’m drinking with the two girls and a really funny American guy and at least I’m not alone anymore. I’m beyond exhausted and still don’t know what happened to my friends, but it doesn’t matter. One of the girls is speaking without direction, sort of stream-of-consciousness style, and she mumbles the phrase, “Mud, sweat and tears.”

“That’s it!” I declare in my head. The name of my blog will be “Mud, Sweat and Tears”! But really, there are no tears and there isn’t any sweat, either. Only mud. Lots and lots of mud.

*

One week later I search the Internet for my “Peace Is” photo. I find a gigantic gallery on The World Peace Initiative website, but I am glaringly absent. So there you have it. There are no snapshots of the Boryeong Mud Festival, not a single one. I have nothing to show anyone, and no hilarious stories to relate. I don’t even feel up to lifting the clever title from the South African girl. All in all, it was nothing more than 3 simple days spent by an American living in South Korea, hoping something interesting would happen.

I wonder if mud ages. The Earth is always getting older, and that must mean mud gets older too. Really, if you think about it, the Earth looks pretty damn good for its age.

*

White Guys: I Hate Them

Any time a person intellectually analyzes his or her viewpoint on something, it’s important to consider how that opinion would change if he or she was on the other side of the fence. For instance, I support taxing the hell out of the rich (in fact, I support basically just taking all of their money). What if I was rich? Wouldn’t that change my stance? Maybe then I would support tax cuts for the wealthy and making up the difference by crushing the middle class, or, as it’s sometimes called, “the way things are.” Likewise, I personally don’t support The Patriot Act. But what if I was on the other side of the fence, and I was a federal agent with lots of time on my hands and I had a genuine interest in good, juicy gossip? Then I would probably love The Patriot Act. It would be like having an endless supply of melodrama right at your fingertips. Who needs VH1 reality TV shows when you can listen in on real conversations people are having? Now that’s entertainment! Oh, and it helps fight terrorism too.

Lately, I’ve been trying to decide how exactly I feel about white guys. Do I like them or not? What’s my stance? In large part, this has been brought on by the negative attention white guys have been getting in the Korean media. Last month, MBC ran a story about interracial dating in which white guys were portrayed as being sex crazed, AIDS ridden, selfish children out to sap Korean women out of their money and their dignity. More recently, a Korean newspaper called ‘Nocut News’ ran two stories about white guys and their continued efforts to bed helpless Asian women. One story uses the phrase ‘white hunters’ to describe foreign men who try to pick up Korean women at clubs. The other story is about websites white guys have made that offer tips on picking up K girls, who are obviously the victims here and not at all capable choosing on their own volition to go out with a white guy/con artist (note: this sentence contained sarcasm). It is clear the Korean media hates white guys, and for good reason. How, though, do I feel about them?

Of course, this is a difficult question for me, as I am a white guy myself. It would be easy for me to stand firmly with my brethren and deride the media attacks as xenophobic, offensive, and ignorant. That would likely have been my stance several months ago. However, things are a lot different now. Despite what my skin pigmentation urges me to believe, I find my viewpoint shifting to the other side of the fence, and it’s all because I have a Korean girlfriend.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I should be more offended by the news reports, as I am clearly a sensitive soul looking for love and not by any means a ‘white hunter.’ (On a side note, I would urge Nocut News to create a better phrase, as ‘white hunter’ sounds like somebody running around killing white people {which I support}). Yes, I guess I should feel angry at being lumped in with the stereotype. There’s a bigger problem, though, and it dwarves these media stories in the same way current Kirstie Alley dwarves Cheers Kirstie Alley. And the problem is that white guys keep hittin’ on my girlfriend, man, and it’s not cool!

I wish there was some sort of white guy repellent, some version of “OFF” that I can spray on my girlfriend to keep the white guys away from her. Unfortunately, the fact is that nothing can stop a white man. Sure, she’ll tell them that she has a boyfriend, but that phrase doesn’t seem to register. Put a ring on her? It won’t matter – white guys see that as a challenge. Impregnate her? It’ll bring out their kinky side. The white man takes what he wants. Look at how he did the Native Americans. He stole their land and then humiliated them with a bunch of ridiculous sports mascots.

I can see the white man doing the same thing to me. In a few years, there could be a new baseball team called the Cleveland Pregnant Korean Girlfriends.

Those bastards.

Seriously, though, it does make me angry. This past weekend, a white guy approached my girlfriend at the bus station and told her that if she helped him find his hotel, he’d buy her a drink. What a deal. Who could say no? On my birthday, we got in a bit of a fight because some white guy kept sending my girlfriend text messages after midnight wanting her to meet up with him.

“He’s a friend,” she said.

“No,” I responded. “He’s a white guy. He does not understand friendly intentions.”

And that’s the thing: although they’re hyperbolic, to some degree, the Korean news reports are, well, kind of true. We are on the hunt for Korean girls. I’m settled now, but at one time, I suppose I was a ‘white hunter’ too…just an incompetent one. I remember talking to a girl in a bar. To try and create conversation, I asked her to teach me a curse word in Korean. She taught me some phrase and I repeated it.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It means, ‘I will cut your penis,” she said. I wondered if it was supposed to be a warning.

“I will cut your penis? I’m going to forget this phrase as quickly as possible.”

At the time, the phrase seemed nutso. I’ve changed my mind, though. Maybe I should make things come full circle by using that phrase on the white guys who hit on my girlfriend. If that phrase doesn’t scare them away, nothing will. I can picture myself shouting it at some white guy in the bar.

“What’s up, bro? You talkin’ to my woman? Say that shit now. I’m standing right here, what the fuck you sayin? Yeah, bitch, I’m talking to you!”

“You got a fuckin’ problem?” white guy says.

“Yeah I got a fuckin’ problem! Step up, motherfucker, and I will fuck you up! I will work you dog! I WILL CUT YOUR PENIS, WHITE MAN!”

“What?”

“Did I st-st-stutter, motherfucker!?! You heard me! I will cut your penis! I will wait for you to use the washroom, and then I will run up in that motherfucker with a piece of loose leaf motherfuckin’ paper and cut your penis! Don’t fuck with me! I got time, you gotta piss at some point, and I got a whole pack of motherfuckin’ paper, white boy! No high five for you!”

Life is hard. I guess the most important thing is that I trust my girlfriend and I know she’d never do anything. That’s part of what makes our relationship so strong. I trust her to fend off the white hunters. It’s vital. Without trust, I would be a nervous wreck all the time. Not just from white guys, either. From what I’m told, horny men come in a whole variety of other races, too.

*