I survived the first night in my new apartment. Every time I move, it takes a couple of days to get acclimatized to my new surroundings, new home, new building, new facilities, and new habits. Actually my new place is quite comfortable and spacious, approaching 80 pyeong (albeit from quite a distance). I think it's bigger than the old place. K's modesty had me believing it would be only slightly larger than a
go-she-wahn (a glorified walk-in closet).
The first night often reminds me of the classic Flintstones episode wherein Fred inherits a hill-top haunted mansion from a recently deceased kooky rich uncle. Fred must survive the night in order to seal the deal.
The first night was rather uneventful for me, except for the spectre in the mirror but that has been following me around for decades so I can't really blame my new apartment for that. I have noticed how incredibly quiet it is here at night. My last place had my large single-pained window facing a rather tumultuous street for regular animated exchanges with the passing motorcycles and yelling pedestrians. The silence here was quite deafening the first night, it actually hurt my hears as the void rushed into my eagerly awaiting ear canal.
The security guards explained the garbage/recycling situation to me, it was an unintentional tag team effort. Since there are 2 guards here (from what I've seen), some bits of information or advice tend to get repeated to me. But that's quite alright. I've noticed what one leaves out, the other fills in. Hmmmm, perhaps they have a psychic link; or perhaps they are in fact the same person cleverly disguised as 2 different people for my amusement.
I have just returned from starting my first laundry load. I expected the machines to be in the basement, so I sauntered downstairs with my big 'E-Mart' bag of laundry but decided to confirm the location with the #2 guard, let's call him Data. The #1 guard shall hence forth be called Riker. Data kindly informed me that the machines were on the 5th floor. After doing a quick look around for a non-existent elevator, I trudged back up, past my second floor pad, on to the 5th. A ironing room, nice. A laundry room, 2 large washing machines (with agitators, Allah be praised!) and 1 industrial dryer (you could dry a lot of lettuce in that giant crisper). To maximize my usage of the two washers, I put my load into the Korean machine and read the labels on the English machine for directions. As we speak, the Korean washer is frothing in a bilingual fury of cunning lingua. I suspect my clothes shall be limp, wet, and ready to rest on my rack in less than an hour, no timer so I will have to estimate.
After the laundry, I shall step out and explore the neighborhood and perhaps dazzle the peeps with my sparkling command of Korean. Then I plan to return home to rest and let my glowing red face recover from yet another embarrassing episode of "Let's Speak Korean".
Posted by Fred.
