Some things from the US that bother me.

I wish my mom kept a blog, because so much of what goes on in her life would make for interesting reading. (I mean, just imagine if you could have followed the Deliverance Drama from the very beginning!) But, as my mother is not a blogger, I'll just have to share info on her behalf. I hope she doesn't mind.

My mother lives in the USA. She is a US citizen. The current year is 2011.

Four years ago, my mother brought eight acres of land in the country, just outside of the small town where she lives. Her plan was to put some of it into pasture, get some horses, and eventually move a house out there. She has certainly done all of this: horses? check! house? check! There's just one minor thing that hasn't yet been taken care of: There's no electricity out at her land.

Now, I've always known that people must pay their electric bills, or else their electricity would be turned off. What I didn't realize was how much money one would have to spend to obtain electricity if there wasn't already a power-line running past one's property. Perhaps I'm just foolish and naive, but I had honestly thought that in the USA in our modern era, everyone had the right to electricity, so long as they paid their monthly bills. Well, everyone does have the right... as long as one can personally shell out the funds to build the infrastructure.

My mom's land is located on an un-named private access road. (I use the term "road" loosely, as it's more of an un-maintained dirt track, part of which floods when it rains. I have literally taken a kayak down part of her "road" in the past.) The nearest electric powerline is located less than half a mile from her property. There are two power companies in her general part of the country, although only one operates in her specific location. Both companies told my mother that she would be responsible for all the costs of installing a powerline to her location.
The first company (which later turned out to not be the company she needed) estimated that it would cost $10,000. The other company, luckily, said they could do it for just over half that. Still, $5000 is a lot of cash. Both companies told my mother that the money had to be paid up front; she couldn't do it in monthly installments. Both companies also said that if someone decided to move in to any of the properties along the new powerline after my mother paid to have it installed, they (the new residents) could use the powerline at no cost (other than monthly utility payments). My mother was rather upset by the thought that she could shell out over $5000 for electrification, and that someone else could move in and use "her" powerline without having to share the cost.
As such, my mom decided to wait. Perhaps someone else would decide to move out there, and they could split the cost of electrification. So, the land sat with no electricity.


In order for the horses and cats to have drinking water,
my mother had a well drilled, and a hand-pump installed.
It's been four years. No one else has moved out there. Most of the neighboring property owners have been foreclosed upon. And my mother just had a house moved out there. Finally my mom decided that it was time to bite the bullet and get the place electrified.
Just fork over a little more than $5k to the electric company, and everything will be taken care of, right? Alas, no. Before she can even do that, her "road" needs a name. For a place to get electricity, it has to have a mailing address, not just a plat number. In order to get a mailing address, one must be located on a named road. And in order to officially name one's private access road, one must pay $200 to the county.
Sigh. End rant #1. Begin rant #2.
I take two different medications every day. They're kind of hard to come by here in South Korea, so I'd been having my mom send them to me from the US. (Well, I get the expensive one from Canada; the other's on the cheap meds list at Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, etc.) There haven't been any problems with getting the one drug from Canada. However, there have been some shortages of one I've been getting from pharmacies in the US. (And because it's on the cheap meds lists at US pharmacies, it's actually more expensive to get it from Canada.)
It took several weeks before my prescription medication was available. The thing is, this isn't some rare, hard-to-come-by drug. In fact, it's pretty commonly prescribed for a bunch of different things. And yet there are shortages. (As a result of all this, I'll be checking out the International Clinic in Itaewon to see if I can get my meds from there.)
Today I heard from my mother that there is a shortage of one of the medications that she takes on a daily basis. Again, this is a commonly prescribed drug. And it's not just my mother's pharmacy of choice in her small community that's having these problems. It's nationwide. Here are just a handful of the articles I found on this topic. Apparently a lot of the drugs that are in short supply are the ones that are cheaper. The ones that are sold on the 'cheap meds' lists at places like Wal-Mart. Yeah. Welcome to the USA in 2011.
Prescription Drug Shortages Threaten Patient CareGrowing Shortage of Some Rx DrugsWhat's behind prescription drug shortages?Hospital Drug Shortages Present Costly Crisis

Smartphone Camera Apps

I've been playing around a little with the camera apps on my new 'mobile device' - I certainly prefer to take photos with my DSLR, but it's nice to have a lightweight eight megapixel camera on me at all times. Since I bought an Android, not an iPhone, I'm missing out on the popular "hipstamatic" app - but I've found a couple Android-friendly apps that are fun to play with. Thus far, my favorites are retro camera and paper camera.

Taken with the retro camera app, pinhole camera setting.

Taken with the paper camera app, sketch up setting.
Anyone got any Android camera app recommendations?

dogs at the vet

This hasn't been an interesting or exciting weekend for me at all, as I've come down with a rather unpleasant head cold, and am incredibly headachy and mildly feverish. Yuck. But in the interest of posting something on the blog...

There's a vet clinic around the corner from my house that I walk past every day. They often have dogs tied up out front. I think (although I'm not sure) these are dogs that are being boarded at the clinic, but that are too big and/or full of energy to be kept cooped up in a tiny crate all day. I'm not sure how much better off they are tied up on a super-short leash (any longer and they'd be able to run into the busy street), but they don't seem particularly unhappy.

A couple of weeks ago, a large Siberian Husky type was tied up out front. And when I say "large" I mean really freaking huge. This boy's back came up to the bottom of my ribcage. I'm pretty short, but even so, dogs that aren't Great Danes don't generally come close to that height.

It's unfortunate that you can't tell from this shot how absurdly huge he is.

He was absolutely beautiful. And he didn't like me. Now, if you know me in real life, or if you've been reading this blog for a while, you should know that whenever I see a dog or cat, the very first thing I want to do is pet it. While this fellow didn't seem at all opposed to me squatting down and taking his photo, whenever I held out my hand to him, he would sniff it, and then emit a subtle yet forceful growl. "I don't mind you being here, but don't think about touching me." For several days, whenever I walked past I would stop and talk to him, in an effort to get him accustomed to me. Then this sign appeared on the tree to which he was tied:

Apparently it says something to the effect of "Be careful. This dog does not like women or children." On one hand, this made me wonder why the hell they would tie him up on a busy sidewalk. On the other, it made me want to redouble my efforts to win him over. He's not going to start liking women if he doesn't meet any who are kind to him.
But, alas, he seems to no longer be at the vet clinic.
The newest dog to be tied up out front is a three month old, female, black lab (or lab mix) puppy, who is super sweet and playful. Had I not felt so miserable, I might've even worked up the nerve to ask them if I could take her for a walk. She has so much energy, and her leash is so short...

The Raccoon Dog of Changdeokgung

Monday was one of the very few days off that I have (my last time off until Lunar New Year in late January, in fact). It's a little unfortunate that both the extended Chuseok weekend and this three day weekend occurred before my first paycheck! :-( Ahh well. I decided to spend Monday continuing my tour of historical palaces in Seoul. This time I decided to go to Changdeok Palace (Changdeokgung, 창덕궁), which apparently means Palace of Prospering Virtue. (BTW, Changdeok Palace is normally closed on Mondays; it was open yesterday because of the holiday. Also, a good half of the palace complex is part of the "secret garden." You can only go into the secret garden as part of a group tour; I figured I'd put off the garden tour until the spring, when I suspect it would be much more worthwhile.)

I have to say that while beautiful, historic Korean palaces are all starting to look rather the same to me. The challenge now is taking photographs that are somehow different from the photographs I've taken at other Seoul palaces. It's getting pretty difficult. I'm not sure that I actually succeeded, but here are my favorite palace photos of the day:

I was nearly done exploring the temple buildings - in fact, I'd just turned the corner around the building to the very last building - when I saw something that made me grin ear to ear. There was what looked like a raccoon, sticking its head out from under the building. It turned out to be a 너구리, or a Raccoon Dog [wikipedia]. Despite its name, it's apparently a much closer relative of the fox than the raccoon. Anyway, South Korea is *not* a good place for wildlife watching. In all my trips here over the past decade I've seen a handful of chipmunks, one squirrel, and a bunch of pigeons and magpies. And that's it. Seeing a Raccoon Dog in the middle of Changdeok Palace in central Seoul was really amazing.

(Under the bench is a drain going under the building; he vanished into it.)

Picnicking along the Han River

My boss decided that he wanted to have a barbecue party down by the Han River this weekend. He offered to pick me up near my house, but after Thursday's mobile mishaps I didn't want to be anywhere near the inside of a car. Instead, I agreed to meet my coworker HM at the Seoul World Cup Stadium, which was supposedly a short walk from our destination. I say "supposedly" as HM didn't exactly know where we were going, and we may have walked up and down the Han River for a good bit before arriving at our destination.

Walking along the Han River: "Maybe it's this way?"

Overcrowded sailboat on the Han River

Our destination was the Nanji Camping Park, which offers camping and picnicking along the Han River. (If you picnic there, you can rent pretty much everything you need - an awning to keep off the sun, tables, chairs, a grill, etc.) It was a gorgeous day and great to be outside, and the company was very laid back: my boss, his wife, and their son, as well as WG and HM. An excellent and relaxing day, delicious food, and good company.

WG and HM, grilling

SB, the boss's son

SB, the boss's son

Hwaeshik FAIL

In Korean business culture, socializing with one's coworkers after the workday has finished is very important. The term for this is hwaeshik (회식), a term which essentially encompasses going out to dinner and drinking copious amounts of alcohol with one's colleagues. It's easy to see how many a 회식 could easily end badly. Sadly, my first 회식 with my new company crashed and burned before it even got started.

I am highly susceptible to motion sickness. Cars and buses are the worst offenders, although I've been motion sick on trains, planes, and boats as well. Cars are generally okay as long as we're moving rapidly and smoothly, and as long as I've got plenty of ventilation. Sitting in the front seat generally helps, too. Sitting in the backseat of a hot car with no ventilation during Seoul rush hour, driving from Yeouido to Gangnam did me in. I wasn't physically sick at that point, although I was rather surprised that I wasn't. Our first destination was a really fantastic seafood buffet in Gangnam, and the food looked absolutely delicious. Unfortunately, for me at least, one of the worst things to be exposed to when I'm feeling nauseous is the smell of food. I wasn't able to eat anything, even though most of the food looked really, really delicious. (In particular, there was a huge and beautiful selection of sushi rolls that I'm incredibly disappointed I couldn't sample.)

(Taken with my smartphone. It might have an 8 megapixel camera, but it's no match for my DSLR)

Luckily my coworkers were very understanding and concerned about my well-being, and it would've been a pleasant dinner, if only I could've eaten.

Well, one of the dishes I probably wouldn't have sampled, even had I been up to snuff: not so much live octopus, as freshly killed and still reflexively wriggling octopus:

At 8pm, just as I was thinking that soon I'd be able to go home and collapse... I learned that our boss had booked a "round two" for us. Round two was at a noraebang (노래방, Korean karaoke). Unlike karaoke bars in the US, where one goes and makes an ass of one's self in public, in Korea, you rent a private room with your friends (or coworkers) in order to limit the number of people who get to see you making an ass of yourself. I really didn't want to go on to round two, but as this was my first 회식 with these folks, I figured I should. (I had also thought that our department head - my boss - was going to go on to round two as well. Had I known that he wasn't going, I definitely would've skipped it... but I found that out a tad too late.)

The 노래방 that our department head had booked for us was super-swank, at the top of a building with a kickass view of Seoul from our room, which was well-stocked with tons of snacks and booze. (Have I mentioned that this was a Thursday? Apparently hwaeshiking on Thursday nights is pretty common... although getting one's workforce shitfaced on a Thursday night seems a little counter-intuitive in terms of productivity.) Unfortunately, our 노래방 was a 15 minute drive from the restaurant. I had sat in the front of a taxi with two of my coworkers (WG and SM) in the back, thinking that I felt substantially better and could surely make it as long as I was in the front... I made it about halfway there before being violently ill. Luckily we were at a stoplight and I was able to open the door, so at least I wasn't sick inside the taxi. Also, the taxi driver was very kind and understanding (as opposed to many who probably would have yelled and kicked me out right there). Amazingly, I felt a lot better after that.

We arrived outside our destination, and WG and SM convinced me to go inside with them. Again, I still thought our boss would be there, and knowing that socializing with your coworkers is so important, I gamely went along. This wasn't my first time inside a 노래방 by any means, although it was my first *sober* time inside of one. Everyone else was getting pleasantly sloppy and singing their hearts out. Meanwhile, I washed the vomit out of my hair in the 노래방's bathroom sink, then sat in our room feeling a little awkward. Even though I felt substantially better, I knew that there was no way I was going to drink any alcohol, considering the state of my stomach.

After about an hour and a half I decided to leave. There are only two women in our department - and the other one - SM - is 11 years younger than me (she's an intern; still a university student). Even though the men in our group all seem like really nice, reliable, trustworthy guys, I really didn't like the idea of leaving her alone in an enclosed room with them, as they were all drunk. (Okay, so I went out drinking with two of them for my birthday, but I'm older, wiser, bigger (!), and much more likely to punch a fucker in the face than SM.) Luckily, she wanted to leave at the same time I did. We took a taxi to the nearest subway (it would've been a really long walk otherwise), and I seriously barely made it there without puking. Sheesh. And then I had to face an hour or so long subway ride. Sigh. At least the subway didn't set me off, and I made it home okay.

Can we *not* call it a phone?

I don't like phones. I hate calling people. I hate answering the phone. I try my best to avoid using them at all costs. Computers, now... I love computers. I love tech gadgets. And I totally love my new hand-held miniature computer. Okay, so perhaps in the parlance of our times these wonderful things are called "smartphones" but I'd rather call it a miniature hand-held computer. Or a tricorder. Or anything other than a phone.

The school where I worked when I lived in Daegu supplied me with a phone. (It was a regular cell phone, not a smartphone.) I had to pay the monthly payments on it, but I wasn't responsible for getting it or anything. The fellow who took my place when I left Daegu also inherited "my" phone. Now that I'm up here in Seoul, I have to be responsible for everyday mundane shit like cell phones and rent and whatnot. Unfortunately, so many things here in Korea - including getting a phone and opening a bank account - require one to have one's Alien Registration Card. Mine took three and a half weeks to arrive. The next day, one of my coworkers took me to a nearby phone shop and hooked me up.

Anyway, I got an Android - a Samsung Galaxy SII in a glittery lime green case - and it's really quite amazing. I'm already wondering how I existed without one. I was able to choose my own last four digits - so I chose my two "lucky" two digit numbers. And wouldn't you know my "unlucky" number is part of the first part of the number. Ahh well. Yin and yang or something. So, without further ado: