A wedding and a birthday

On Saturday, one of my coworkers got married. I don't really have to much to say about this event as I've been to Korean weddings before, and after a while they really start to seem much the same. At least this time I actually knew one of the people getting married, and they won't be wondering who the hell that waygook chick in their photos is.

As today (Sunday) was my birthday, a couple of my coworkers decided that I needed to be in a restaurant drinking wine at midnight in order to celebrate my birthday right when it began. Let's just say that the evening was a bit silly.

Officially older!

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I took a short walk and discovered an interesting wall. Then I went home and took a nap. Like I said, lazy. That's what birthdays are about.

For dinner, my friend S came up from Pyeongtaek, and we went out for sushi. Somehow I neglected to take any pictures of our dinner. It was a bit absurd. We somehow ordered what ended up being a never-ending supply of sushi, and we ate and ate and ate until we were about to burst. Then we had coffee at a Charlie Chaplin themed coffee shop. I wonder if I'd get free coffee if I brought my cat with me? :-)

No, really. I'm just small.

I'm a pretty small person. The last time I weighed myself (last month when I was in the US visiting my mom; I don't own a scale) I weighed 102lbs (46kg). I don't eat much; my stomach's pretty small.

At work, we pretty much eat together as a department every day. Mostly we eat Korean food, although we've also had Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese. (In the three weeks I've been at this job we've yet to eat anywhere more than once!) I normally eat about 2/3 of whatever food I've ordered. This is - as I've told my coworkers repeatedly - because I don't eat much. I stop eating when I'm full.

Apparently they didn't believe me.

Today we went to an Italian restaurant. It turned out to have been a test to see whether or not I would eat my entire portion when eating food that I'm more accustomed to. Or something. (Seriously: It's trip #5. I'm pretty damn accustomed to Korean food!) Anyhow, at about the 2/3 mark, when I pushed away my plate, there was an immediate response of "Wow!" and "You didn't finish your meal here either!" and "You really *don't* eat a lot!" Apparently they were all really worried that I was just being polite and suffering through meals I didn't like, despite my assurances that the various Korean/Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese dishes were quite tasty and I was merely full. They'd wanted to take me somewhere where I'd be comfortable eating.

My coworkers are awesome.

My Commute

My commute to work takes between 25 and 40 minutes, depending on how soon after a subway train has left the station when I arrive, and depending on whether I can catch the express train between Dangsan and Yeouido, or if I have to take the regular train. A subway commute isn't exactly enthralling, although at least mine has one above ground segment that provides me something to take some snapshots of. I don't lug my DSLR to work, so these were all taken with my pocket Nikon. They were shot on the bridge over the Han River between the Hapjeong and Dangsan stations.

8:30am

8:30am

6:00pm

6:00pm

On the walk home between Hongik University Station and my apartment, I pass a clothing store in which this ridiculous looking dog lives. (It's there at all hours of the day, even when the store is closed, so I'd say it lives there.)

Every now and then, the absurd pink eared dog has a friend or two in the store with her. Tonight she had an elderly chihuahua companion.

American Interlude Part 4: House Moving Madness Part D

The below tale of absurd redneck drama might not all be in the correct sequential order, as it's been several weeks and a couple continents since this all happened, but you'll get the general idea.

The drama had to do with the Deliverance Crew, as I'd taken to referring to them. These folks. (I wrote about them here.) My mother had hired the two Deliverance men, R and J, to take the roof down three feet, remove the chimneys, haul the wood from the roof and the bricks from the chimneys out to the land, and put the roof back together once the house was reassembled. They said they'd do all that for $1200. She advanced them most of it up front.

Early on in the process, R cut his foot with a chain saw. Following this, he simply didn't wear a shoe on that foot (although he did, at least, wear a sock) as "it done swolled up" and wouldn't fit in his shoe. And possibly because he had chopped his shoe open with the chainsaw. But, chainsaw accidents notwithstanding, the roof got taken down three feet, and the chimneys got dismantled. (We'll get to the specifics on how that actually happened in a bit.) A couple loads of wood and bricks even got carted out to the land.

At one point, I was at my mom's house alone while she was at work. I got a call from the woman of the Deliverance Crew. She asked me to have my mother call her or stop by the house as soon as possible. They needed to talk to her. (I should add that with their unbelievably thick southern redneck accents, understanding them in person is tough. Understanding them over the telephone was nearly impossible.) I immediately let my mom know, and she popped over to the house. Of course, she'd been planning on going over there on her break, it wasn't like she was jumping at their beck and call. They talked to her while she was there, but just about generalities; they didn't seem to have any specific reason for talking to her. A couple hours later, the woman called again. Yet again, she needed to talk to my mom ASAP. This time - after she got off work and stopped by the house - they (J and the woman) told my mom they needed gas money in order to haul the rest of the wood and bricks out to the land. (At this point, J and the woman were the only people at the house site; for some reason they hadn't wanted to ask in earshot of R, the house's owner, or the house moving crew.) They claimed their truck "really drinks gas" and that they wouldn't be able to get all of the wood and bricks out there without some more cash. Mom gave them $40. Only one load of bricks made it out to the land.

Two days later, they needed more gas money. Likely story. My mom has a 1984 Chevy van that drinks gas like a mofo, and I can make it from town to her land and back quite a few times on $40 worth of gasoline. I think my mom did give them more gas money, but about half what they were asking.

Around 9:30 at night at one point in the middle of the process (I think one half of the house had been maneuvered out to the land by this point), we received a phone call from the woman. (My mom usually goes to bed around 9 or 10.) She claimed she was in the hospital, suffering from heat exhaustion from working on the house all day. (Keep in mind that A: mom had hired R and J, not the woman and B: the woman never did any work; she literally just sat around all day.) The woman told my mom she needed (!) to go over to the house site, because J wanted to talk to her. My mom told her she was in bed already and would see them the next day.

The next day, mom promptly told the house owner and the house moving crew of the bizarre phone call that she had received, and told them that she did not want the woman on either the house site or the land. The next time I showed up at the house site, the rumor among the house movers was, "Did that big woman say she was gonna sue y'all?"

At some point my mom finally ran into J, who was once again asking for money. When asked what he'd done with the money she had advanced them... well, she'd given the money to R, who had apparently given J 1/4 of the money, not the 1/2 he was promised. Or so he said. Mom told J he would have to take this up with R; she wasn't going to pay J money that R owned him.

After all of this, mom was still planning on having R and J reattach the roof once the two halves of the house were reunited, although I had no doubt that they were completely incapable of such a feat, and my mom was beginning to share my belief.

After the second half of the house was brought out to the land, the house moving crew still had a couple of days worth of 'tying the house back together' (as they put it). While talking to the head of the house moving crew, he mentioned that the cost was going to come to $8000, not the $6000 upon which they had originally agreed. Obviously my mom was pretty upset about this 1/3 increase in price. The house mover kind of hemmed and hawed a bit... but finally he came out with it: his crew had had to do a lot of extra work, including taking down most of the roof and chimneys, as the Deliverance Crew hadn't had any clue as to what to do or how to do it.

Let's just say that my mom ended up hiring a roofer to reattach the roof and re-shingle the top three feet.

And that's all for my house moving madness... I returned to Korea before the roof was re-attached. The following photos were taken by my mother:

Deoksu Palace and the Seoul Drum Festival

Today was probably the last day of summer weather here in Seoul. The morning was gorgeous: sunny with blue skies, although unseasonably hot and humid. The weather had been predicted to change this afternoon (it did; it grew all cloudy), and rain is predicted for tomorrow. Starting Monday, it should be a good 15 degrees cooler (Fahrenheit of course) here.

I took advantage of this morning's good lighting, and headed for Deoksugung (Deoksu Palace, 덕수궁), one of the five Joseon Dynasty palaces in Seoul. (Gyeongbuk Palace, which I visited on Sunday, is another of the five - I figured I'd start my Seoul photography by hitting up all five.) Deoksu is a lot smaller than Gyeongbuk. While I wandered around Gyeongbuk for hours without seeing everything there was to see, I was able to explore the entire Deoksu complex (well, I didn't go to the art museum) in about 45 minutes. It is, however, a nice park, and it's conveniently located right next to City Hall. Entrance costs roughly $1.

I left the palace complex around noon... just as some rather loud and interesting sounding drumming started up across the plaza from the entrance. I went over to investigate, and discovered that the 2011 Seoul Drum Festival had just started. I really found myself wishing I'd shelled out the extra couple hundred dollars for a DSLR that also took video, as the photos I took don't really do it justice without the accompanying sounds. Ahh well.

American Interlude Part 4: House Moving Madness Part C

This post is going to be pretty much photos-only, as they tell the story far better than words ever could. Enjoy!



My mom, in front of half of her house.

The house, causing a bit of a traffic jam.

They had to take down someone's fence in order to turn the corner.

"Oh, btw, we just took down your fence. Hope that's OK."



Yep, that's the house at the very end of the "road"



Half a house, out at the land.

A few days later, they brought out the second half.





Two halves of a house, however, do not necessarily make a whole!

American Interlude Part 4: House Moving Madness Part B

The first thing my mom did was to contact a house moving company. As in house moving, not mobile home moving. There aren't many of them out there, but they do exist. She was quoted $6000 as the rough cost of moving the house out to her land.

Of course the house couldn't just be picked up and moved. Nah, that would've been too simple. For starters, in order to fit down the narrow roads and narrow, tree-lined, road-like tracks leading to my mom's land (it's *really* out in the country) it needed to be sawed in half. That wasn't really a big deal; the house movers do that sort of thing all the time. The main obstacle was the roof. In order for the house to fit under all the power lines between its original location and its new home, the roof needed to be lowered by three feet. As in the top three feet had to be removed. As the rafters that form the top three feet (among many others) are key to structural support, I gather this is rather tricky. The other option is to have the local power company take down every single power line along the way. While structurally simpler, the local power company charges a couple thousand dollars a day for this service, and my mom was trying to keep costs to a minimum. So. Cutting off the roof then.

Unfortunately, the house movers said that while they do sometimes do the roof-removal themselves, as they were so busy at the moment (apparently there are people moving houses all over the place; who knew) my mom would need to hire someone else to take the roof down three feet. They didn't have any suggestions as to who she should hire, however. This was when the owner of the house stepped in and said he knew some people who could do the work, and who would do it fairly cheaply. These people:

Tune your banjos, people.

You would have had to pay me to get me to hire these folks. My mother, meanwhile, is cheaper than I am - and is apparently more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt or is less judgmental than I am. She hired them. Well, she hired the dudes. The woman just came along for color or something. Half the time she brought her son, until my mom pointedly asked him why he wasn't in school. He never reappeared after that. (Also, he might not have been her son. Family relations were a bit convoluted among that crew.) Anyway, she agreed that for $1200, they would take down the roof, demolish the chimneys, cart the bricks out to her land, and reattach the roof once the house was moved. Too good to be true. She advanced them way too much of it.

[Upon musing on these folks, I can only think of one possible explanation for the house's owner to have recommended them. See, he's a local landlord. He might have been an old country boy, but he's certainly a class or three above dueling banjos. My guess is these folks were some of his tenants, and he was in need of some rent money. Just a supposition, but probably pretty close to the truth. These cats wouldn't have been crossing paths otherwise.]

After the roof was taken down three feet (and we'll get to *who* did the taking down and whatnot in a later post), the next task at hand was chainsawing the beast in half and winching the halves apart. That was accomplished with great efficiency by the house moving company:

You can see the split that's been cut down the center.

Winching the pieces of the house apart.

A little further...

Front - winched apart!

Winching the back half apart.

Two halves of a house do not make a whole!

Just about ready to roll!
(They really just put wheels on those beams and bingo, it was mobile.)