***Disclaimer*** Most of this was written while i was in Thailand last month
I go into the airport and get in line for my tickets when a couple of Korean women push past me in the line. I smile and resume my place in front of them because my Korean isn't good enough to call them motherless cunts. I get to the counter and the guy asked where I was going so I handed him the itinerary. Head scratch, conference in Korean, head scratch.
Ticket Guy: You go Beijing or Bangkok
Me: Bangkok via Beijing
Ticket Guy: O.K. here is a ticket to Beijing
Now I've got to change my won over to Thai baht so I look for the money exchange. I walk up to a building that was sealed tighter than a nun's vagina with a sign that read hours 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. It being 10:30 in the morning in Korea of course it wasn't open. So I head upstairs where I see the second branch of Daegu Exchange Bank. I head to the window and give her three wrapped stacks of 10,000 won notes and ask her for Thai Baht.
She then gives me a variation of this look( which I think they practice you see it frequently in advertisements)
I don't know if I am suppose to be so bowled over by her crunchy cuteness that I wouldn't dare embarrass her by forcing her to execute my transaction or what but I wanted my damn baht. So she says you must go to main branch downstairs. I let her know that it is closed. She pauses for about 10 seconds too long and decides to call down there to verify that they are indeed closed. She looks puzzled and decides to call someone else. Meanwhile, a gentle pressure is being applied to my back by the 4 Koreans behind. It is as if they are trying to phase through me so they can get to the counter a millisecond sooner than if I simply stepped aside. The manager comes up to the stand holding about 10,000 baht. I could eyeball it and tell that he didn't have nearly enough money in his hand. So she gives me another look while the manager scampers off.
While waiting for the money I see that the airport has courtesy computer terminals so I saunter on over. There I find a Korean woman and her 2 kids taking up all three terminals playing computer games. What the kimchi? I stand there for 3 or 4 minutes and the father showing remarkable good sense makes his wife get off the computer. I went back to the counter and picked up my baht after he made a second trip downstairs.
I fly China Air which is the shittiest airline in Christendom. They keep that airplane at a balmy 55 degrees and for the meal they served egg fried rice. I land at the airport and of course Korean bullshit has now followed me to China. The ticketing agent in Daegu didn't give me a second ticket to Bangkok. So I had to get out of line and go all the way over to the ticket desk and have Chinese women look at me like I'm an asshole. They wanted to charge me a fee to reprint the ticket. I laughed and refused and they relented.
I was having a good Korean bullshit free time when I decided to try to check my balance. Bad move apparently foreigner bank account information cannot be accessed from overseas. Now that I have invited KBS into my life continue on by calling the school to make sure my money was deposited. You see children the secretary has fucked up paying me on time 3 out of the 10 paychecks I have received and much like much of what goes on here it wasn't malice just good old fashioned incompetence . The funny part about the system is every other teacher, principal, lunch lady, secretary, and janitor gets paid on the 15th. So by the time my pay rolls around she has long since stopped thinking about payroll issues. I think they like having a chance to fuck something else up in the life of a foreigner.
I fly back to Daegu on Friday tired and a bit cranky after sitting at the gate in Beijing for 2 hours on a sunny day with no explanation. I get off the plane in Daegu pass through the thermal imager and that is when I see it children, another metal detector. This is the 6th most interesting city in the 4th (you don't think North Korea is more interesting, a communist dictatorship)most interesting country in East Asia and they think that foreigners are clamoring to smuggle shit in here . I take out my laptop the lady tells me to turn it on. I tell her i can't the battery is depleted and I left the charger in Thailand. She then picks it up and starts looking at it like one of those monkeys in 2010: A Space Odyssey . This bitch is picking it up , turning it sideways, sniffing it. Finally, I took it back from her and pressed the power button. I was hoping that the little light would blink just once so I could go about my day. It did and she let me put my clothes back on leave.
Dictated not Read
That look. Damn I have learned to hate it.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that were able to affect your vacation time.
When I worked at Ivy hell in Cheongju the director would find ways to fuck over our vacation. Whether it was waiting until it was too late to get a good ticket to tell us when, deciding to knock a day off, or actually fucking around with our tickets.
We used his travel agent because it was convenient. The guy actually got decent ticket prices even at the last minute. We would order the return date on the last day and the fucker (director) would change it and not tell us. He would have us come back a day early. His reason "So you aren't tired the 1st day back at work."
The first time he did it to me he sloughed it off as an accident, miscommunication. Eventually I realized miscommunication was code for "I lied and you caught me." The second time he did was the last. I never went through his travel agent again.
It's funny that you wrote that. I figured in my first two weeks that these people weren't to be trusted. My first job insisted that I get a bank account at her bank. Fuck that shit I went to Citibank because I wasn't 100% sure that she couldn't see remove money. The secretary here has someone way of seeing my money because she once made the remark Oh you have lots of money why you no spend? I propmtly sent all of my money to America after that
ReplyDeleteJeeze.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of confidentiality doesn't seem to be in the Korean lexicon.
A friend a couple of years ago went to the same doctor as me. She had some health issues she didn't want to talk about. So I didn't want to know.
One day I am at the doctors and he says "Oh tell Brandy she needs to come and see me. I have the tests back and need to talk about her menstruation problems with her." What the kimchi?
I said "Why did you just tell me what her problem is?" (He had good English.)
His only reply "But you are her friend."
He just couldn't understand that he should have told me anything other than have her come in to the office.
I have had friends who have had their doctors call their directors and tell them about their health.
No fucking discretion or confidentiality.
when I came to Hapcheon to work my boss took me for my AIDS test only they did a full medical with xrays and everything. Long story short my boss goes your AIDS test came up negative but you should watch your kimchi. I told myself I would never go to another doctor here again.
ReplyDeletecholesterol now I've got it on the brain
ReplyDelete"It is as if they are trying to phase through me so they can get to the counter a millisecond sooner than if I simply stepped aside. " Hi-fucking-larious!!! Great stuff bruh!
ReplyDeletehi praise coming from loco the best blog ever
ReplyDeleteso true. when they called my job for my enrollment into the national health care screening I was fucking livid. I had a show of temper so fierce, everyone asked what was wrong - then kept their distance. I asked for a supplemental test, they call the school tell the fat front desk teacher, who tells the Korean teacher that actually speaks English, who tells me - in front of students and parents in the lobby area - in of course that Korean whisper. Apparently I failed to pay for this test and they wanted to reconfirm my appointment - which if someone had told me I would have done in the office that morning. I went back to try to pay and they tried to make another appointment for me - that resulted in another phone call to the office. Finally after 4 or 5 more calls the lazy desk teacher cussed them out and told them to call my cellphone. They told her they didn't have my cell phone number - which of course is the ONLY number I put on the damn paperwork. After that fiasco I swore that all medical dealing would take place in Seoul - where they know how to treat a foreign population. Then of course, the other Korean past time of not minding your own damn business. It was just too much. HIPPPA needs to hit ROK in a big way.
ReplyDeletesiktir git
DeleteIl semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.
ReplyDelete- Daniel
zhduku
ReplyDelete