A waste of bits and bandwidth

Well, I made to Seoul without too much difficulty. The flight was decent but the day was really long. Good to be back though; the place almost feels familiar now.

MiHwa’s net connection refused to work with my Mac and the only English on the error page was ActiveX. I had visions of a Windows only ISP but it turned out that she need to login. Oddly, I still can’t hit my site.

I had a good day while she was at work, heading back to COEX in search of the Apple store. I started out by not buying a enough of a train ticket meaning I had to jump the gate when I got to COEX. Nice; been in the country less than 24 hours and I’m already breaking laws.

Met a guy from Toronto who is here doing his army time, was interviewed again by what I thought were English students but they turned out to be religious. I left with a copy of the Watchtower for my trouble.

On the way home, I caused quite a stir among a group of school girls as you don’t get too many whiteys around this part of Seoul. I turned around and gave them a wave but in hindsight I should have taken a picture.

Once MiHwa got home we were on a bus to see friends for dinner. The bus is totally worth it; it’s like an amusement park ride. At one point we were three wide in two lanes with a taxi and another bus. Good times…

We’re off to meet the parents this afternoon. As soon as I learn to spell Gwang-Ju (not even close) I’ll be sure to tell you. Wish me luck. I hear they don’t take kindly to white devils…

So I’m sitting in the smoking lounge at YVR international departures, surfing YVR-PUB at 4MB/s! That’s faster than Shaw though I imagine someone is jacking all my pr0n. *firewall on*

I only got a few hours of sleep last night and it came in 15 minute blocks so I’m damn near dead on my feet. With a pinch of luck, I’ll sleep on the plane.

For those of you keeping score, I’ll arrive at Narita at 11PM, sit around until 2AM and then board my flight for Inchon. Should arrive there about 4:30AM and then maybe get to MiHwa’s around 6AM. Yeah, I really need to get some sleep on the plane.

Apparently, you aren’t allowed to to bring a lighter past security but about 50% of folks made it past. I put mine in my bag and got through but did need to unbuckle my belt . I suspect that was just for buddy’s giggles.

You know, it’s hard to type with a smoke in your mouth and one in each hand Next update from Narita I guess. *15 minutes until full*

I swear that my neighbours are the only reason this blog is still alive. Now I freely admit that I lie and make shit up all the time; it’s a side effect of writers block but you can’t make this stuff up.

I went to the office today and put in some time to tidy a few things up. I come home, press the button and wait for the elevator. It’s an old building and the elevator isn’t smart enough to deliver someone to the basement before coming back up for me. It just stops when the button is pushed and I’ve taken to getting on ’cause at least I’m on right?

Sure enough, there’s a woman/girl on her way to the basement. I say woman/girl because she was Asian, so maybe she was 16 or maybe she was 36 I really can’t tell. Now I like to put the other humans at ease so I look at her and say “Well, I guess I’m going for a ride…” She looks at me and smiles but doesn’t say anything. I sorta smile and look at the buttons to see if this elevator is going to move or not.

I sense that she is still looking at me. I look at her again and she is indeed, still looking at me but now very intently. I smile as the elevator leaves and look away. *Spidey senses start to tingle* “She’s not still looking at me is she?” I glance at her and she’s now staring, with a huge grin and nodding her head as if she’s sending me mental transmissions or agreeing with some conversation we’re having. Thing is, we’re not having a conversation or at least not one that I’m a part of. An awkward moment (for me anyway) ensued and then the door opened an she went to the laundry.

Keep in mind this all took place in the time it took to go from the lobby to the basement. I’d have a month of material if this had been a longer ride.

“Well that was weird…” I go up to my apartment and stumble over some boxes that are meant for storage. Cursing, I decide to take them down to my locker. Guess who greets me at the elevator when I get to the basement? Yeah, it was her.

Her jaw drops as the door opens, probably because all her unmentionables were on top of her basket of clothes. She didn’t seem like the type to have that many gstrings…

So I have decided to embrace the other humans in my building and engage them solely for the material. It’s a goldmine I tell ya’

Well, here we go… I actually feel like bogging. So, what’s new? Let’s see; first off, congrats to Karan and Claire as well as Fred and Krista who decided to have their respective babies this week. I didn’t realize that this was a race, though I’m all in favour of racing. One had a boy and one had a girl though I’m not going to tell who had what. See that? That’s the power of having a website of your own. It’s such an exclusive thing… Add Daymented’s baby to the mix and there are three new baby’s in my little circle of friends in the past few weeks. Well, good luck with that…

What else has been happening? Um, well I took a step towards becoming an adult which caused me to spend quite a lot of time under my bed in the fetal position. Some sobbing was detected though not reported.

Oh yeah, I bought my ticket for Korea and Japan again this year. I imagine that the humidity will kill me yet I’m still excited to be going. I love being there but getting there is kinda shitty. My agent has given me a seat on the upper deck of the plane; I don’t know what that means but here’s hoping that it’s not travel slang for a storage bin. I’m going despite Spanky threatening it trade me to Marketing in exchange for a whiteboard if I went during this release.

I’ve been fighting with my recently purchased shower massage. How nice that all the water restriction ‘features’ and the eighth inch hose reduces the water flow to a pathetic trickle. I’m all for saving water but if your shower takes twice as long, what’s the point? I feel like taking said shower massage back to whomever made it and smacking them right between the eyes with it.

Not easily thwarted, I disassembled it (repeatedly) to try and remove the flow restriction. I don’t mean taking the hose off and looking at, I mean taking it apart in a way that wasn’t intended and removing shit. This resulted in water simply leaking everywhere, eventually shooting all over the ceiling after my final attempt which involved quite a lot of electrical tape. All week I’ve been hacking this freakin’ thing, finally giving up and putting the original shower head back on and enjoying actual water pressure again.

Last night I was all about the home improvement. I hung two shelves in the bathroom as well as a new towel rack. Now I have place to put stuff besides the sink and toilet top. I really didn’t need the space but I know MiHwa will. In fact, I see hanging many more shelves in my future once she is here.

I’ve been in the new place for just about three weeks and all is well. It’s quiet, my wireless has only dropped once, I’m ten minutes from the office and I smiled quietly to myself as I wrote my rent cheque for this month. Even the fireworks crowd is basically muted by the time they have reached my building. I have a crazy middle eastern dude above me who likes to play odd music and stand at his open window while he screams into his phone. Thankfully, he seems to have enough restraint to only do this on weekends.

So yeah, no regrets.

So I was off on my daily Spanky break Monday in search of a barber. I’ve been going to this Korean salon near my old place and the last cut was brutal. Even for me… $20 includes the tip and I got what I paid for. I told MiHwa that whitey hair is different but did she listen? Maybe if they spoke English or I spoke Korean, things would be different. Anyway, I find this place near the office and buddy says to come back in 30 minutes. “Alrighty. I’ll be back.”

I decide to go back to work for a bit and then I’ll return to get me hair corrected. As I approach the doors to Pacific Center I hear this woman call my name. I look at her and realize that I know the voice and sorta recognize her. My mind draws a blank on the name for a second and then I realize that it’s Jenny, my neighbour from the condo.

“Holy! Jenny! Shouldn’t you be in Switzerland?” Turns out that she was here on vacation and doing some research for a wine show in Beijing she’s working on. It was great to see here again and I wish we had more time to fill in the past four years. I gave her my card and hopefully we’ll have time to get together before she goes home. How odd that we met by chance. I could have stopped for for a coke or hit a red light and missed her.

I say goodbye to Jenny and go to what turns out to be the craziest barber ever. He was like a short, Edward Scissorhands. Totally into what he was doing, hardly speaking and really passionate. The man loves cuttin hair. He was literally jumping around and really animated. Kinda pricey for a barber but almost worth it just to watch him work. Pretty good cut too, if I do say so myself. Spanky was quite taken…