Although Monday ended poorly.  An old fashioned ass-whupping in darts last night.  I followed up last week’s 12-0 performance by going 3-9.  My game was a tad off I suppose, but I kept drawing this hot shot Korean who is plainly a superior player.  I guess that was the yin for my yang.

Today, despite operating on 5 hours of sleep, I was actually pretty productive.  It feels nice to make a contribution that my boss seemed to appreciate.

At lunch I selected my hooptie.  It’s a 1999 Hyundai that except for the paint appears to be in pretty decent shape for a car of it’s vintage.  89,000 miles on the odometer so there ought to be some life in the old girl.  Yeah, I wanted the Volvo but whomever owns it couldn’t be fucked with returning my calls.  I’m guessing they had to PCS (permanent change of station) before it sold so they just abandoned it in the commissary parking lot.  Oh well.

I said “selected my hooptie” above because I haven’t actually purchased it yet.  It is currently owned by an embassy employee which adds a whole ‘nother level of bureaucracy to work through.  As I understand it, the car must be de-registered by the embassy (and those sweet diplomatic licence tags removed).  Then I’ll be given some paperwork that will allow me to register the car with USFK. I ‘m advised this may take a week or two.  At which point I’ll hand over $1200.00 of my hard earned money and then hope for the best.  Such is the way of the hooptie.

And now you are up to date on my so-called life.

Got one of these today…

…so I went shopping for one of these…

That would be a 2002 Volvo.  $1500.00 and 99,000 miles.  Tried to call the number listed but no answer.  Sent an email, but no response.  I’d like to own it.  I’ve heard Volvo’s are a lot of fun…

See what I mean?

Here’s a book I could have written:

Wasting time getting wasted. The story of my life…

Speaking of wasted time, I learned my friend Jeremy Frye has been sentenced to four years in prison.  I actually expected he’d get at least ten years, so I guess that’s a small blessing.  The consequences of this fucked up mess are a sad thing to behold.  One man is dead and the other is facing a bleak future.  Certainly Jeremy can expect to be deported when he completes his sentence and with a criminal record I doubt he’ll find work back home or anywhere else teaching. Jeremy is a smart man who is paying a terrible price for his ill-fated attempt to be chivalrous.  It’s all such a waste.

Thanks for the darts buddy. I guess those days are gone forever now.

Today I made it over the hump of week three of my life of re-employment.  I also gained access to the outlook email network which should facilitate my boss assigning me tasks more efficiently and effectively.

My self-assessment is that I need to buckle down and spend my time more productively. I’ve put “avoid procrastination” at the top of my to-do list.  I plan to start in on that tomorrow.

I’ve mentioned before about the interesting people I meet as I socialize in the bars of Itaewon.  In fact, I actually enjoy the company of almost everyone I meet.  But inevitably there’s always the exception to the rule.

Friday evening I was on the back deck of Shenanigans with a friend from work and these two 20-something guys came out and sat in our proximity.  It was early, maybe 5:30 or so and they were already in a highly intoxicated state.  One of them (his name is Mike as I recall) out of the blue asked me to tell a joke.  The request struck me as somewhat odd, but I have accumulated a rather large repertoire of humorous (admittedly, that’s a matter of opinion) anecdotes over the years, so I let one fly.  He laughed hardily, but then drunks are a pretty easy audience to please.  He reciprocated with a “joke” so horrible that I immediately erased it from my consciousness.  Suffice to say it was some sick and twisted thing involving infant pedophilia.  My friend had the same reaction.  We gave each a what the fuck look, and hustled back inside the bar wanting nothing more to do with our new found “friends”.

So Monday evening I’m sitting at the bar in Shenanigans and Mike comes into the bar.  He fiddled around with his phone for a bit, asked someone how to spell “psychiatrist” and then to my chagrin he plopped himself down on the bar stool next to mine.  He asked me if I remembered him and I reluctantly admitted that I did.  He then said “do you mind if I tell you something?”  I shrugged and said go ahead, thinking odds were high I’d regret it.  And then he laid it on me.

“There’s something wrong with me.  I mean inside my head.” Mike told me solemnly.  “I need to see a psychiatrist and get on some meds or something.”  Despite our brief acquaintance I found myself nodding in agreement.  All those years of HR training kicked in I suppose because I felt an obligation to ask him if he was thinking of hurting himself. He told me yes, and said that he had beat himself up that morning.  And then he showed me his arms covered in fresh bruises.  So then I gave him the speech.  “How old are you? I asked and he responded “27”.  I said “Dude, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and whatever is going on with you right now, is going to pass.  It may not feel that way now, but if you get some help you will get through this”.  He told me he had quit his Hagwon job that morning (pretty scary to think of him around kids, right?) and that his parents would be so disappointed in him.  I told him that if he did something stupid and irrevocable like suicide they’d be a lot more than disappointed.  I asked him what his plans were, and he told me he was flying to Thailand on Wednesday.  I’m not sure how good that plan is, but he said he has a friend there, and now that he is jobless in Korea he doesn’t have many options I suppose.  So, I made him promise that he’d visit a shrink when he arrived and I advised him to stay away from ladyboys (I refrained from saying “and children” given the circumstances).

It was time for me to leave for darts and he thanked me for hearing him out.  I took a piss and came back and asked him what his money situation was.  “I’m dead broke” he told me.  I gave him a W50,000 note, wished him luck, and left.  And yeah, that was probably stupid on my part, but I felt better for having done it.  The rest is up to him.  I don’t expect or particularly want to ever see Mike again, but I also don’t want to read about another expat suicide.  I’ve been in those dark places myself so I hope he finds his way out.

And I’m ok with that.  When you get to be my age you realize that possibilities are no longer limitless.  And that is sometimes depressing. Which to me makes wanting to kill yourself at 27 insane. As we used to say back in the day “keep on truckin'”.

And I blame it on Monday.

But back to Monday.  As regular readers might recall I’ve been running the Dillinger’s dart tourney on Monday night.  Which is no big deal since I’d be playing in it regardless.  Last night we had a dart league meeting immediately preceding the tournament, and it ran over so we started about 45 minutes late.  And as sometimes happens the matches seemed to all run long.  So by the time the finals rolled around it was midnight.  That 0530 alarm was ringing in my head and I was in danger of missing the last bus home.  Having qualified for the finals, I suggested to the other team that we split the pot 50-50 and call it a night (the pot was W100,000; divided 60/40 for first and second place).  One of the guys said let’s play the first game anyway.  I responded that I didn’t care about the W10,000 so we’d just go ahead and give them the first place money outright.  I was explaining this to my partner and the other guy started screaming “It’s not my problem you have to get up at 5:30 so stop being an asshole by trying to make me out to be a dick!”.  Well, I figured he was doing a perfectly fine job of being a dick all on his own, so I just handed him his W60,000.  And he declined to accept more than W50,000.  So I still can’t figure out what his anger was all about, but it was a buzz killer.

I did in fact miss the last bus, and arrived home by cab shortly before 0100 in a foul mood. Was rude to the wife and went straight to bed.  I woke up tired when the alarm rang and was tired all day long.  Now I’ve apologized to the wife, had a nap, ate some baby back ribs along with corn-on-the-cob, and wrote this post.  Starting to feel like I’m getting back to normal.

Wednesday will be a much finer day, I’m sure of it.

Today Jee Yeun accompanied me to the commissary.  I spent $297 on groceries.  Not saying those two events are connected, but…

Well, we were ought of everything.  So I loaded up on steaks and ground beef.  And then Jee Yeun wanted a 25 pound sack of rice.  No way we were going to carry that home on the bus, so I knew we were in for a taxi ride.  At that point I just threw caution to the wind and purchased everything that caught my fancy.

I don’t think the on base taxi drivers like to haul people long distances, and I expect that Giruem-dong qualifies in that regard.  I told the driver we’d tip well for whatever inconvenience the trip might cause, but I couldn’t tell if that was to his satisfaction or not. Well, fuck it, it’s his job so I wasn’t going to fret about it overmuch.  The meter said W11,000 when we arrived and he did help us unload a trunk full of food.  I gave him W22,000 and he seemed happy with that.  As Jee Yeun noted, the savings on the rice alone more than paid for the cab.  So there’s that.

This past week I flowed into DEERS, got my CAC, registered in DBIDS and submitted my SAAR.  Now I have full access to all the amenities on the Army post, although I’m still awaiting approval to utilize the NIPRNet.  Perhaps tomorrow.

I was also successful in getting Jee Yeun base access.  The first thing she did when she got her ID card was to go to the PX. The second thing she did was ask for an increase in her allowance.  I told my boss I might not be able to afford working again.

It was a short week given that Friday was a holiday (my first paid holiday in over four years).  And without network access there was much “real” work I could accomplish.  I’ve gotten most of the in-processing stuff out of the way though.  Still need to attend a security briefing and register at the base hospital.

I was granted a rather spacious cubicle…

In other news, Dolce Vita has thrown in the towel on their long running Friday night dart tourneys.  Competition in other places pretty much did them in.  I remained loyal until the end with DV, but this week I found myself in the belly of the beast at Sin Bin Sports Pub. My partner and I made it to the finals undefeated but that took until after midnight.  We were both tired and ready to call it a night so we agreed to not play the finals and split the winnings for 1st and 2nd place 50-50.  Heh, a win-win if you will.

Last night found me out with some friends from the UK to celebrate a birthday.  Not America’s, a guy from Wales.  Still, I reminded him that he wasn’t the only one with a birthday!  Actually had a grand time.  Did some drinking at Shenanigans, then galbi at a place I had tried before (tasty enough, but the portions seemed small), and then we finished the festivities at Dolce Vita.  A nice night.

My Brit friends were very gracious in their Independence Day comments. Turns out, they even have a July 4 in the UK. Who knew?

Now I’m fixing to head out to the commissary to restock the cabinets and fridge which have been severely depleted during my working hiatus.   This time Jee Yeun will be able to accompany me which should reduce the pain-in-the-ass factor by half.

And that’s my story.

Oh boy.  Here’s how my week has gone so far.

I tried to go to bed early on Sunday night so I’d be bright tailed and bushy eyed for my first day at work.  Instead I was treated to the incessant rat-a-tat-tat of a jack hammer coming from the street construction nineteen floors beneath me.  The worked stopped (or I fell asleep) at around 2:00 a.m.

My otherwise worthless phone did manage to wake me at the appointed time.  The crappy phone is dumber than my old flip phone.  Wireless won’t open and the data network moves at such an excruciatingly slow pace as to render it unusable.  Second time I’ve had this problem.  Jee Yeun is down at the Samsung store as I write trying to get a replacement phone.  Failing that, I’ll have to buy a new one and eat the penalty on the contract we signed when I bought the Edsel of handphones. UPDATE: Jee Yeun came home with a new and nicer phone, and only paid a W50,000 penalty.  She’s quite the negotiator!

I still had a darts tournament to run in Itaewon.  I elected to take a cab into town because I had somehow managed to develop an embarrassing (and painful) diaper rash and the top of my thighs.  Ballsy of me, I know.  Heat and friction, a tortuous combination for sure.

Finished second in the tourney, hightailed it out of there and caught the 110B bus home, arriving a little after midnight.  Put on some diaper rash ointment and hit the sack.  Only to wake up tired four and a half hours later.

I’m still tired.  Too tired to write about day 2.  Suffice to say it involved a lot less walking.

Actually, I do.  Five of them in fact.

I love custom made shirts.  Store bought shirts just can’t accommodate my protruding belly.  I’ve had success with the Houston shirt shop in Itaewon, so that’s where I went to outfit myself with some new work attire.

All dressed up and come Monday I’ll have somewhere to go.

I’m also in the process of having two sport coats tailor-made.  Had the final fitting last night and I’ll pick them up tomorrow.

All I need now is a haircut and some soul stranglers (neckties).

Sent in the final documentation to the CPAC this morning and come Monday I’ll be reporting for orientation at 0830.  Bring it on!

Today I finally received the long awaited firm job offer.  Effective 28 June 2015 (may as well get used to using the Army way of writing dates again) I will once again be a Human Resources Specialist, GS-0201-13 with HHB, Eighth Army Directorate of Human Resources Management, duty location Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Some nice images in this piece from the New York Times.

Other interesting things have been happening in my life as well. Why just the other day I was getting off the elevator at my apartment tower in lovely Gireum-dong.  A little girl of maybe three years was waiting with her mother for the ride up. The girl stared at me wide-eyed for a few moments, probably not used to seeing a foreigner so up close and personal.  And then she said matter-of-factly “hal-abeoji” (which means grandfather).  The mother nodded and said, “ne, hal-abeoji.”  Which made me feel older than I am.  Or at least older than I like to pretend I am.  Although, it is true that I am in fact a grandfather.

Meanwhile, my buddy Kevin Kim popped up on YouTube. Granted, it was annoyingly funny but he describes himself as “another frumpy American walrus in a long line of frumpy walruses.”  Although I’ll cop to being a grandpa I don’t think this American walrus is frumpy.  I was recently tagged in this picture on Facebook:

Frumpy? I think not.

Switching gears, they say life is for learning.  And today I learned the origins of Canadians.

Just as I always suspected.

Now, I tend to be respectful of all religious beliefs that don’t involve beheading, stoning, or throwing homosexuals from tall buildings.  Still, when I saw this I couldn’t help but laugh.

No offense intended.

What else have I got for you?  Well, on the MERS front the World Health Organization (WHO) offers this helpful advice: “don’t drink potentially fatal camel urine”.  I shit you not. I think I’m pretty safe in that regard, although I have never actually checked the ingredients of OB beer.  I’d rather not know.

I’ll tell you something more deadly than MERS–an angry Korean woman with a gun. Which I guess is why South Korea has such strict gun laws.

I have seen that look on a woman’s face more than once.

Now, I’m not a big fan of soju, but this ad made me want to go out a buy a couple of bottles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laRZ1JjVX7U

Alrighty then, don’t you just hate bloggers who go days without posting and then do a Friday afternoon dump of everything they thought about posting during the week but didn’t?  Yeah, I hate them too.  Even if I are one.

Every Korean apartment I’ve lived in has this “squawk box” type thing on the wall where messages are periodically conveyed from the building management.  I’ve always found it pretty annoying, especially since I can never understand what they are saying.

So this morning I’m sitting at the kitchen table and the box emits a series of several loud beeps.  Simultaneously, my phone chimes that I’ve received a message.  That message is captioned “Emergency Alert” and is followed by three bullet points in Korean (which I also can’t read).  Of course, the first thought that comes to my mind is that the NORKs are invading.  But no, it turns out that the message says: 1. Wash your hands. 2. Cover your mouth when you cough. 3. If someone has a fever, don’t touch them.

And in the few minutes I’ve been writing this post the squawk box/phone message has been repeated twice more.  So I guess they really, really, really mean it.

I probably could stand to wash my hands more often, but doing so is situational for me.  If I’m in a public lavatory and they have a bar of soap on a stick, I’m like “no thanks, I’ll take my chances”.  After all, all I’ve really touched is my own junk and I don’t even want to think about where those hands that touch the nasty soap bar have been.  I do cover up when I cough, but use my arm, not my hand, to cover my mouth.  I don’t want my unwashed hand anywhere near my mouth, right?  The last point about not touching anyone with a fever is a bit disconcerting.  I mean, what’s the first thing you do when someone says they are not feeling well–you touch them to see if they are hot.  Apparently, if they do have a fever you are both screwed.

My first instinct that war had broken out has proven correct, Korean government officials have declared war on the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).  I guess there is a fair amount of panic taking place among the populace.  Schools are closing, rumors are running rampant, and oh yeah, people are dying.  Four as of this morning.

I noticed on the subway yesterday that nearly half of the riders were wearing masks as opposed to the normal handful.  I came up with the bright idea for insuring I’ll always have a seat on the train.  I’ll just stand in front of the seat I want and start coughing uncontrollably.  I reckon that might score me the whole row!

Anyway, I don’t mean to make light of this potentially catastrophic health emergency.  But other than taking normal precautions like practicing good hygiene there’s nothing to be done but live your life and hope for the best.  At least that’s what I plan to do.

What, me worry?

More famous last words?

UPDATE: Here’s what all the cool kids riding the subway wear.