Sleeping with the fan on

Yun Jung and I had our green card interview yesterday in Garden City, NY. I'm going to write about it in case anyone else out there is going to go through the same thing.

We showed up way too early. If your paper says that your appointment is at 10am, then 10am is as early as it's going to be. An hour early is more then enough time. You check in and hand them your appointment paper and then you wait for them to call your name. When they do, they take you to another room (upstairs in this case) and you wait some more. This time, the actual interviewer came out and called Yun Jung's name (she was the one applying, I was just there as an aside, although my presence was required).

We went back to her office. She asked us some questions about each other's backgrounds. She asked if we had met each other's parents and that sort of thing. She asked me about her family, asked Yun Jung about some of the people in our wedding photos, asked about the wedding reception. Then we handed her a bunch of paperwork that proves that we live together (lease with both of our signatures on it, bank letters, I need an employment letter from my job, bills with both of our names on them) and then she asked a battery of questions to which the correct answer was always "no" ... thing like "are you a terrorist," "have you ever been arrested." That sort of thing. Then she took Yun Jung's passport and we went back downstairs and waited to get it back. That was it and we were out of there.

I get a lot of calls from technical recruiters, and in fact I just accepted some high-level part-time consulting work in addition to being the Director of Technology of a downtown Manhattan web development company. I started to wonder how these people were finding me, as I just got off the phone with a very aggressive recruiter from Bloomberg, and about two months ago Microsoft was pressing me pretty hard to come on board with them. So I did a search on my name in Google and was suprised to see my resume in the top spot. I was only slightly more suprised to see this blog right beneath it.

I started to read through my blog expecting to get a blast of nostalgia about my times in Korea, especially since I'm planning to head back later this year. What I got, however, was the sense that I was reading someone else's blog. I could kind of remember my times there, but it read more like something someone else had written.

My first thought is just about how firmly entrenched in New York I've become. Before, I had programming jobs that I could (and did) leave on a moment's notice. Now I'm 30 and I spend most of my day making decisions about other people's jobs. If I make a mistake, I could cost someone else their job. Falf of the people I work with have kids, so I could be affecting someone's family.

Why am I bringing this up here? Because I guess this is growing up. I don't know if I'm ever going to have the chance again to just say "f**k it" and move off to another continent for a couple of months. I want to, but there's a lot more depending on me these days than there ever was before. Jeez, I'm going to be MARRIED in a few more weeks.

And you know what? I'm cool with it all. My adventures aren't over just because I'm 30.

The toughest person I know is definitely the old Chinese lady who works at the drop-off laundromat. I stopped by today, figuring that there was basically no chance that she'd make it from wherever she lives to Chinatown (I know that she usually takes the subway to work) with the transit strike. She was there right at 9am, all bundled up with gloves and a scarf on. I helped her open the gate, like I usually do when I get there at the same time that she does (she's not tall enough to get the gate above the entrance to the door) and we both went inside. The first thing she says is "very cold!"

I just stopped and said "how in the world did you get here?"

"Many people ... walk over bridge ... walk into here"

Her next statement was one that will go down in the annals of my personal history as a classic:

"today, subway ... no good!"

In all seriousness, I walk by the laundromat at 9pm and this lady is in there folding clothes. She's almost always the person who opens the store at 9am. She's there on weekends. The store is open from 9am-5pm on Christmas. For whatever reason, she's closed on Wednesdays, but everyone needs a day off so why the hell NOT Wednesday?

I like to think of myself as a tough person who can deal with a lot, but I'm not anywhere near what this lady is. She lives in a country where she has only a basic grasp of the language, and I know how tough that is. She works a ton of hours per week, unlike me. I'm writing this at work when I should be getting stuff done. And she does the same thing, all-day, every-day. Even when it's 21 degrees outside (that was the temperature in Chinatown at 9am this morning), she's still there ... even if subway no good.

So we're at the 60th Korean Independence Day festival. It was actually quieting down when I was there and the big parades happened earlier in the day. It was also pretty damn hot out.

Here's some old dude hanging out by himself. I followed him around a little bit and I was never really sure what his story was:



Just in case anyone ever got the idea that Korea was all fun and games, these guys are a reminder that shit is not taken in these parts:



A short stroll, maybe a block away from the main street, and you get to this sight from a nearby alleyway:



Turning 180 degrees, and this is where we are:



Keep in mind that we are literally 1 block ... 2 at the most ... from the festival. Changes in Korea are even more abrupt than changes in New York. Here's an intersecting alleyway (if you can read Korean, one of the restaurants has a dish called "Pu-dae chi-gae", which means "army stew". It's basically just pork, ham, some hot dogs, ramen, kimchi, and some other stuff thrown into a pot with some water and heated up, and it's possibly my favorite Korean dish. I didn't notice the sign until I was back in New York and going over the pictures, otherwise I would have had to stop and get some):



I went back to the subway through a different entrance, and this is what greeted me:



So, that was the Korean Independence day in Seoul. A followup post will have Yun Jung's pictures from the countryside.

I went downtown on 8/15 to check out the Korean Independence celebration (Yun Jung went to her grandmother's old house in the countryside). I've already posted the shots of the City Hall (which is across the street from where Katrina lived last year when she was in Seoul). It's about a 20-30 minute subway ride from Sang-il Dong. Sang-il Dong is in the far eastern outskirts of Seoul and it's the neighborhood in which Yun Jung pretty much grew up. It's certainly a lot more interesting than the suburban whitebread where I grew up. The name, if you can read Chinese, translates literally to "above one neighborhood". I am the only foreigner I've ever seen there, and I spent a week there last year and a week there this year. In fact, one little girl said "Mom! Look, there's the guy that can speak English" (in Korean) when she saw me. I only caught part of it, but Yun Jung heard her say it.

Kids are cute everywhere, but Korean kids are f**king adorable.

Anyway, so I took off for the subway and on the way took a short, 1-block detour to take this picture:


That is the edge of Seoul. On the left side of the picture, the one where we are, is Seoul. The other side is ... well, it's not Seoul. This is weird for me to think of since the sum total of my time in Korea was pretty much spent in Seoul and I was a few feet from leaving the only place I knew in the country.

Anyway, so I went downtown to the GwangHwaMoon station. I knew where it was because it is where Kyobo Bookstore is, and Kyobo has a big section of books in a foreign language. Namely, English with some books in Japanese, Chinese, and French.

This is the Kyobo building:



The neighborhood is very modern and has a somewhat "Times Square" feel to it, except less crowded and not as tacky. There are several "downtown" neighborhoods in Seoul, and this is one of them.



here's a closer look at that middle building, which actually says "GwangHwaMoon Post Office" on it.



The skyline in one direction (it's not as easy to get your north/south bearings in Seoul as it is in New York) was dominated by two Korean flags tied to balloons.







In the other direction, the festival was capped by a statue of the Korean hero Yi Sun Shin, who repelled a couple of Japanese invasions a few hundred years ago. The last form that you have to learn in TaeKwonDo (the martial art, not the sport) before you get your black belt is named after this guy.



Right near the statue is this little thing tucked away in the crowd of buildings:



The festival itself had music, both Korean and American, games, and traditional Korean drummers.





Also nearby was this big rock with Chinese letters carved into it:



and this bus stop with a Bat Boy advertisement that I couldn't resist taking a picture of:



Part 2 of this post is coming soon

I'll post the rest of the pictures from the festival later, but here are some shots of the City Hall. One thing to keep in mind is that there are these fountains in front of the building that shoot water up into the air on occasion, and there are always little kids playing in the water.

City Hall from across the street:


From in front of the building:



The kids playing in the fountain:



This last shot is a picture of the buildings that are nearby. In case you didn't notice from the rest of this blog and all the pictures I've taken of New York over the years, I really like interesting building architecture.

The flight was, with the layover, 20 hours. On the long leg (Atlanta -> Seoul), I sat with a bunch of US National Guardsmen, so I spoke English most of the time except when the stewardesses came around and I translated between for the military guys when they tried to flirt with them. I got to Seoul and Yun Jung and her mom were there, but by then I was so beat (I tend to not sleep on planes and I had to get up at 4:15 am to get to JFK to catch my flight) I couldn't speak Korean any more. Oh well.

On Sunday, Yun Jung and I went to go meet some of her friends at the Hyundai building. There's a place called the "Ruby Garden" that kicked some major ass. It's the 13th and highest floor of the building and it's a rooftop garden. Yun Jung got a bunch of pictures, and as soon as I get them from her I'll post them. Her friends are all our age and, therefore, have been married for about 600 years. One of her friends could drink, but the other one was nearly on the floor after the first bottle of San Sa Chu.

Yesterday, I went down to Myeongdong to see the Korean Independence Festival. It's a big deal, as it's the 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan. They decorated the City Hall by plastering it with Korean flags. It looked pretty cool, actually. I topped off the evening by going to dinner with Yun Jung's younger brother. It was way cool, and definitely the hardest test of my Korean, since he doesn't have much English to fall back on. A lot of the things he said went over my head, but I got a good portion of what he was talking about.

Today is just going to be a quiet lunch and then head back towards CheongHo (near the Hyundai building) to catch a movie. Maybe "Fantastic Four," as I missed that when it puttered through the theaters in New York.

Two days from now, I will be returning to Korea. There are two reasons for this:

1) Yun Jung went back to Korea to visit some doctors
2) Madden 2006 kinda sucks

I'll be staying in Sangil-dong again with Yun Jung, her mom, and her youngest brother. I have a feeling that I'm going to be pretty much left to my own devices during the days, so I'm planning on going downtown and hanging out and seeing what I can see.