Hoggin!

Snapped awake to a foreign alarm clock.  A hellish wind up device that rang with the urgency of an air raid siren.  Found the pants I'd been wearing all weekend, crumbled on the floor with the belt still in the loops and slipped them on in a hurry.  Shirts, hoodie, jacket, hat then the essentials: cell phone, wallet, and keys.  Ran out into the cold , shoulders hunched, collar up.  It occurred to me that I hadn't shaven in three days but I wasn't too concerned with appearances.  No students at work today so no real need to perpetuate the illusion of being a "role model". 

I ducked into a GS25 on the way to the bus stop exchanging an "Anyongaseyo" with the clerk.  Grabbed a sandwich and a can of coffee.  Paid for it with a handful of uncounted change before chasing the #9 bus down the slush covered street.  Orange backhoes swung snow filled buckets out over traffic and into the backs of idling dump trucks.  Civilian cars were driving dangerously close to this unchecked operation and the part of me fascinated with carnage hoped to see the hydraulic arm shear the roof off of a passing minivan.

The fog was dangerously thick when I got off the #9 and after the giant green mammoth labored away the street was left in an eerie silence.  Behind me the cabs and booms of yellow cranes hovered magically in the sky, their triangular towers lost somewhere in the mist.  As I approached the school from the deserted country boulevard the silence was cut with a slamming repetition like that of a .50 caliber machine gun.  I made my way to the third floor of the unheated building unalarmed, knowing that portions of the complex were scheduled for cosmetic makeovers yet completely unaware as to the extent.  I stood slackjawed upon reaching the level where my classroom should have been.  What had been explained to me as minor construction resembled damage consistent with that of a Tomahawk cruise missile.  Crumbled brick, plumbing, and load bearing columns haphazardly exposed.  Entire walls obliterated, cement floors disintigrated down to their rebar skeletons, stripped black wires hanging from busted conduits and ravaged ceiling panels.

Hurriedly I made my way past degenerate, jack-hammer wielding laborers to get to the teachers lounge where the few remaining faculty huddled in the only space warmer than the rest of the defunct building.   I wondered what transgressions had kept them in the confines of the school while the majority of the employees were on holiday.  I gave a respectful nod to the vice-principle who, despite the day's events was looking sharp in a three piece suit.  Then, as best I could manage in my ragged state, a seductive wink to an attractive co-worker I knew to be married before gracelessly dropping into a generic, five-wheeled office chair.  I gave a cheerful spin in the plastic seat, saluting the rest of my compatriots before firing up my ever praiseworthy Samsung notebook.  As the computer lazily loaded it's grocery-list of pre-installed Korean software (the function of which I can not yet fathom) I took the assembly-line sandwich out of my pocket and pulled back it's date-stamped plastic sheath.  Biting into the soft white bread, soggy lettuce, pressed ham, and imitation crab meat I imagined that somewhere a world away, someone was enjoying a fresh, made to order mixed-meat turkey club with thick bacon, real cheese, juicy tomato, and creamy mayonaise on three crisp pieces of golden-brown rye toast.  Then I cracked open a sweet can of T.O.P. brand espresso.  Now with more polyphenol than the leading competitor!  When I was in college I had quite a regular coffee habit.  Now, a world away from a decent cup of high-test organic I barely touch the stuff.  Still, on the rare occassion that I do decide to dabble with a can of trimethylxanthine it's got to be name brand.  None of that no-name grocery store junk.

Lunchtime, day one of winter break and there is absolutely nothing that I am expected to accomplish.  I have exactly 72 working hours of time left to kill before I leave for Thailand.  So far today I've read half of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, watched about 25 Youtube videos involving professional replicas of K.I.T.T. from the show Knightrider, began writing a draft of, "The Korean Dream: Observing Modern Korea Through the Lens of 1950's America," ran five laps around the school, sent prank job applications to American defense contractors, facebook chatted with my brother, and wrote this blog post.  It's an endurance marathon against boredom and bordom is winning.  If anyone needs a research paper written, life problem solved, or even an anonymous accopmlice in a decent prank please cut me in.  I'm dyin here.

Cool Thing About Korea #43: The Korean hunts the tiger six months in the year and the tiger hunts the Korean the other six months.