the Great Epiphany

Winter is a great time for self-realization.

January has been miserable. We've had only a few sunny days which were of course bitterly cold. The rest of the time it's been cloudy, or raining, or both. Yes, raining. It hasn't been quite cold enough to snow. It's just been wet, cold, and cloudy, week in and week out. How cheerful. I'm ready for spring. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I'm ready for spring.

Being inside all the time has let me do a lot of thinking, though. And I've made a lot of discoveries about myself and my situation, revelations which are rocking my world.

The first one came early yesterday. It had been creeping up on me steadily for months, perhaps years. I had the sense that something was wrong with my world. There was a glitch in the Matrix, but I didn't know what. Then, yesterday, it hit me. I had spent the previous evening screwing around on the Web instead of doing anything constructive. And I'd spent hundreds, perhaps thousands of previous evenings doing the exact same thing. Since the day I'd gotten my first computer game, I'd spent a heck of a lot of time wasting time: playing Angry Birds, Halo, Dark Forces II and Serious Sam, or watching YouTube videos, anime, and movies I'd seen 30 times.

Yesterday I realized, at long last, that all that time could have been spent elsewhere. Furthering my writing career, for instance.

I was on the verge of remonstrating with myself about the weeks of wasted time in my ledger when another revelation popped into my head. This one was brought on by an excellent article I'd read on The Art of Manliness. The article stated that the secret to getting the most out of life was devoting all of your mind and body to the task at hand. If you regret the mistakes of your past or worry about the future, you're only devoting half of yourself to your work. Don't do that. Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Focus and you will be fulfilled.

That hit home. My shoulders relaxed. A grateful, relieved sigh escaped my bosom. And right then, the greatest epiphany of all sprang from nowhere and pounced upon my ready mind.

For many years, I have been a colossal worrywart. I've been hounding myself to do better, to pick up my life somehow, to get it all together. I thought I was lazy and shiftless. I thought my life was passing me by. I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what. If I could just get going with my life, everything would sort itself out. I thought I had to hurry up and do things to be successful and stop fretting.

But yesterday, I could finally see that I've placed a lot of undue pressure on myself. This is a big honkin' deal. The first step to fixing a problem is realizing you have one, or so they say. Up until now I didn't even realize any of this. Now I can see clearly. All this time I was stressing out about things which were beyond my control. Ever since I graduated college and got stuck in my parents' basement for six months, searching for a job that wasn't there, I've been living under a cloud of self-doubt, frustration, impatience, and despair. I felt ashamed that I couldn't find a job. I kicked myself for majoring in a competitive field like journalism instead of something like zoology, which could have netted me a job much sooner. A million times, I regretted returning from Korea and blowing all my money on a pilot's license and bartender's school. If I'd just held onto my savings, relocated to Alaska, and focused on starting a career, where might I be now?

I'd been extremely hard on myself. For no reason. What's worse, though, are the uncertainties and regrets which have tormented me all these years. The "what-ifs" wouldn't leave me alone. I felt like my life was passing me by. This feeling hit me the hardest this January: It's 2013. I'll be 27 in eight months. My career hasn't started. My résumé is pathetic. I haven't accomplished anything. My dreams are slipping farther and farther away. Do I still have time to live a full life? 

Yesterday, I scribbled something on Facebook about my self-discoveries. In response, a friend of mine (who used to work for a Korean newspaper) linked me to an Internet forum. In that forum, a young man asked the world: "I'm 27. Is it too late to have a full life?"

I was stunned. It was suddenly apparent that this was exactly the question I had been unable to articulate, yet was stressing about.

The answer to the young man's question was even more mind-blowing:

Too late for what?

If you slept through your 26th birthday, it's too late for you to experience it. It's too late for you to watch "LOST" in its premiere broadcast. (Though, honestly, you didn't miss much.) It's too late for you to fight in the Vietnam War. It's too late for you to go through puberty or attend nursery school. It's too late for you to learn a second language as proficiently as a native speaker. It's probably too late for you to be breastfed.

It's not too late for you to fall in love.

It's not too late for you to have kids.

It's not too late for you to embark on an exciting career or series of careers.

It's not too late for you to read the complete works of Shakespeare; learn how to program computers; learn to dance; travel around the world; go to therapy; become an accomplished cook; sky dive; develop an appreciation for jazz; write a novel; get an advanced degree; save for your old age; read "In Search of Lost Time"; become a Christian, then an atheist, then a Scientologist; break a few bones; learn how to fix a toilet; develop a six-pack ...

Honestly, I'm 47, and I'll say this to you, whippersnapper: you're a fucking kid, so get over yourself. I'm a fucking kid, too. I'm almost twice your age, and I'm just getting started! My dad is in his 80s, and he wrote two books last year.

You don't get to use age as an excuse. Get off your ass!

Also, learn about what economists call "sunk costs." If I give someone $100 on Monday, and he spends $50 on candy, he'll probably regret that purchase on Tuesday. In a way, he'll still think of himself as a guy with $100 -- half of which is wasted.

What he really is is a guy with $50, just as he would be if I'd handed him a fifty-dollar bill. A sunk cost from yesterday should not be part of today's equation. What he should be thinking is this: "What should I do with my $50?"

What you are isn't a person who has wasted 27 years. You are a person who has X number of years ahead of you. What are you going to do with them?

Zounds. I can't believe I didn't see this before. It's so simple. I haven't wasted 27 years. They just turned out differently than I thought they would. More importantly, I've got about 60 good years left.

I sat back in my chair after reading the older man's reply, utterly gobstoppered. I felt somewhat chagrined, too. This was precisely what my mother had tried to tell me. I had often confessed my worries, doubts, and insecurities to her. These always revolved around one thing: the irrational fear that I simply hadn't done enough in my first quarter-century of existence. And always, like the divine being she is, my mother would soothe my soul. She would tell me that I had plenty of time left, and that I hadn't wasted the time I had already spent. She told me not to worry so much. She told me to enjoy the journey. She told me to quit stressing and just see where the road took me. She knew, all along, that I would achieve my goals someday, and she told me as much.

I can't express to you what the older man's words—and their similarity to my mother's—did to me. They completely rearranged the furniture of my mind. They set out cool drinks and tasty snacks on all the tables. And they livened up the decor, too. Finally, they tore a huge hole in the roof and let the sun and stars shine in.

At a single stroke, I saw that my mother had been right all along. I saw that I had been fooling myself: I had always believed that I was a sanguine, easygoing guy. Now I saw myself for the insecure, self-obsessed, pettifogging worrywart that I was. And I saw how pointless it all had been. All those worries, all those regrets, all that stress about my life's direction past and present—it was all for naught. All the negativity I had unleashed upon my friends and family (and Miss H) was pointless. All this time I'd had nothing to prove, nothing to worry about, nothing to gain by burdening myself with that mental baggage.

Well, that's it. No more. Now I know better. It's time for a change around here, yes siree. I think I'll keep that hole in the roof. Then I'll never forget the sun and stars again. I'll let the warm, sunny breezes blow in and warm me; the winter winds will cool my fevered mind. From now on I'm going to actually do what I thought I was doing all along: work toward my goals with all my might, but not obsess over where I am, where I was, and where I could be. So what if I haven't achieved many of my goals yet? I'll get there eventually. From here on out, my main focus is enjoying the journey. Even if I have many years left, each moment is precious. I won't forsake the present for the promise of the future anymore. I'll take a slow boat to China instead of a rocket-ship.

So shall it be written, so shall it be done. Today heralds the triumphant return of the cheerful, stress-free Mr. Post, and the long-awaited rise of a hardworking, industrious, and dedicated man. I will neither regret my past, nor give myself cause to regret the future. No more dilettantism for me: I'm going to throw myself toward my goals, but remember to sniff the flowers on the way. I've chosen a road, and I'm going to saunter boldly along it, sinuous and misty though it may be. The sunny weather's on its way.

Wish us luck...

rubbing elbows with the greats

I didn't mention this in my last post, but I should have. I already am rubbing elbows with great writers and luminaries. There's Luke Maguire Armstrong, for one. He's a poet, a travel writer, a songwriter, a musician, a globetrotter and a humanitarian all balled into one. We went to college together and bounced our intellects off each other in English class. After college he set out to hitchhike from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, but got waylaid in Guatemala, where he wound up running a children's hospital. In the meantime he penned several sweet songs on his acoustic guitar (available here; think Paul Simon meets Cat Stevens); published a book of poems or three; and wrote many edifying travel articles. He's a core member of The Expeditioner's team and has been a steadfast companion even across thousands of miles.

I also have the privilege to know Olivia J. Herrell, another burgeoning writer, she of the lyrical prose and boundless imagination. My friendship with her has been a professional one; both of us know the agonies and ecstasies of writing, the pains of childbirth and the joy of creating monsters with our fingertips. She's been a source of constant support, commiseration, and empathy. I can't wait to see what happens a few years down the line when we're both published and still corresponding. 

And then there's my own brother, who called me out of the blue a month or so ago and asked if I had some time to look at his WIP. Since then we've created a partnership the like of which has not been seen since J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis walked the earth. He is an actor by trade, living and working off Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and he has taken his lessons in drama and storytelling to heart. He's been a bottomless pit of advice, caution, directness, and refreshingly harsh literary criticism. Without him my pieces would still be heaps of puerile maundering. I would like to thank him here and now, publicly.

There. I said it. Happy writings, everyone.

your humble foreign correspondent?

Okay, here's the deal:

My contract with my current hagwon expires in mid-February. As a courtesy I've agreed to stay on until the end of that month and the conclusion of the current semester, just so I can finish up my classes and let my replacement start from a clean slate.

In the meantime, though, I need to find myself another job.

I figured I'd just get another teaching position down in Anyang where Miss H works. That plan went to crap a couple of weeks ago, when Miss H was informed that her school would be downsizing and (once again!) she'd have to be let go. This is the second time it's happened to the poor girl and she's rather downcast, but soldiering on courageously.

All the same, we didn't know what we would do. It was looking like we'd both be homeless and jobless at the end of February. But then one of my coworkers, a sweet young lady from Connecticut, drew my attention to something. It was a job posting on a popular ESL teacher's website and forum. The position was for a writer-editor with the NE Times and NE Times Kids, two periodicals edited by a single combined staff. I wasn't sure what kind of periodical it was (I later found out that it was a weekly kids' educational newspaper). But I applied regardless. Fifteen vacation days per year and a "competitive" salary—not to mention a chance at building my résumé—were too good to pass up.

The paper is based in the Mapo district of southwestern Seoul, just north of the Han River. This would be a heck of a commute from Anyang every morning, but I figured that was worth the price too.

Well, the Times called me back two weeks ago. They wanted me to come in and take their written test. I did it two Saturdays ago. Wish me luck, folks, I thought. This could be a whole new stage in Postie's life. I might soon be living like Hemingway, a print journalist in a foreign capital, rubbing elbows with great writers and luminaries.

The writing test went fine. I knocked it out of the park. The proctor (and my potential supervisor), a man I'll call J.S., told me that the test would probably take three hours. I did it in an hour and a half. I left the building feeling confident, shivered my way to the subway station and returned home.

A short while later, I was called in for an interview. My heart fairly quaked with excitement. I had passed the first round of the application process! I had gotten a callback! It was interview time! And for once, I felt that part went well, too. Normally I don't do very well in interviews. The close scrutiny of several high-ranking managers, asking me questions like Tell us about yourself and Why do you want to work here and What do you feel you could bring to the table and whatnot, turns me into a stammering mess. But this time (it happened this past Wednesday) everything went fine, I felt. I answered questions competently and without hesitation. J.S. and his two female co-interviewers looked quite impressed with my answers. The interview took precisely an hour. I had to wait 30 minutes for the big red intercity express bus, but it dropped me off on my doorstep in Bucheon, and I slept well that night.

Well, the roof fell in yesterday evening. I got an e-mail from J.S., explaining that it had been a heartbreaking decision and I had been second in line for consideration and I had all the talents they were looking for, but they couldn't offer me the position. In the end, they decided to go with someone who had more experience in English education.

I was rather crushed. I felt grateful for J.S.'s honesty and the courtesy with which I'd been treated, though. I understood their decision. But I couldn't help wonder what might have been: me working as a writer and editor in Seoul, Korea. That would have looked pretty good on a résumé. The loss was compounded by the salary I soon learned that I'd missed out on: 3.5 million Korean won per month. That's roughly $1500US more than I was making as an English teacher. Great googly-moogly. That would have made my future a whole lot rosier. Debts paid off, a nest egg accrued, money for traveling...

Ah well, it doesn't do to dwell on the past. I've moved on. Miss H has secured jobs for us at a kindergarten in south Incheon, so we're going in today (Saturday) at 10:50 a.m. for training and contract-signing. We still have to move at the end of February, but at least now we've go somewhere to go. I'm looking forward to taking on a new challenge (teaching at a kindy), exploring a new bailiwick, living closer to the ocean, scooting farther away from Seoul, and being on the same daily schedule as my girlfriend.

I am not, however, looking forward to moving. I'm looking around my apartment here in Bucheon and it seems we've a lot more stuff to shift than I originally thought. I've never moved from one apartment to another in Korea before. It promises to be an...interesting experience. Don't worry, I'll keep you informed.

Wish us luck, and stay tuned.

This will be our new subway stop. I'm looking forward to exploring it, hee hee.

some words about the bailiwick

In line with my New Year's resolution to tell you more about Korea and the things that happen to me here, I've got some news for you.

I might as well start with the building I'm living in. You caught a brief glimpse of it a year ago when I arrived here, in this post (the tall one on the left).

But the surface of a building, as with most other objects, only tells part of the story. In the year that's passed since I first came to this city and started living in this Estima Officetel, I've gotten to know it rather well, and I'd like to describe it here.

First of all, I should explain what an officetel is. Like the Wikipedia article sez, it's a multi-purpose building. It has both commercial and residential space available for rent. People like to have business in officetels because they're cheaper to rent out (I think) than a spot in a purely commercial building. The tradeoff is that their business is not very visible.

Up until a few months ago, the utility bills in officetels were calculated using a system of averages. Instead of each apartment paying for what it used in heating and electricity, the utility use for every apartment on a particular floor was averaged out, and each person on that floor paid the average. This wasn't exactly fair, as you've probably already realized. I hardly use any heat in winter, though other people run it 'round the clock. Conversely, I run my A/C all the time in summer, where other folks hardly use it at all. Fortunately that law was recently changed, and now people who live (or work) in officetels pay their for their own.

Okay, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about the building. Then I'll talk about the people in it, which is where it gets really interesting.

Estima has 15 floors above ground, four parking floors below, and an open rooftop common area. The view's pretty good all around. Something like this:

My apartment was meant for a couple to inhabit, and is palatially spacious compared to the tiny studio apartment I was living in down on the islands in 2008:

Now, I mentioned that this is an officetel, which means that commercial space rubs elbows with private residences. On the second floor there's a brand-new home furnishings store, mostly sofas and coffee tables and stuff. It's pretty sparkly and tastefully appointed, but otherwise nondescript. Putting a shiny store like that in a beat-up old building like this is like hanging a pearl earring from a swine's ear, anyway.

There's some more scattered businesses on the other floors. I think there's a music instructor over on the north side of the ninth floor (mine). And just down the hall from me is something called "Georgia Immigration Services." It's run by a young woman and I never see anyone going in or out. There's a few other business on the third floor (which is where Avalon's lunchroom is, also) but I don't know what they do, since the signs are all in Korean.

On the first floor are the usual corridors, lobby, mailboxes, and elevators (three of them). The hallways are frigid. For some reason the Koreans decided it was a good idea not to heat the lobbies or entry spaces of their buildings (at least not the cheap-ass officetels, anyway). There are three entrances on the north, south, and west sides of the building, each defended by a double pair of slender glass doors. Those are the interior's sole protection against the elements. The tile floors are perfectly flush and become treacherously slick when wet—which, in wintertime, they always are. Mats are sometimes laid down, but sometimes not. Your only chance of warming up is when you finally walk over your own threshold and into your warm apartment.

There are seven businesses on the first floor of Estima. On the south side (the main entrance, off Gilju Street) there's BHC Chicken and some fancy-pants bike shop that sells ridiculously overpriced mountain bikes to windburned fitness freaks in skintight polyester. (Seriously, they're like $5,000 apiece.)

BHC Chicken is just one of a dozen national fried chicken franchises. Koreans are nuts for fried chicken. You can find a chicken joint on every corner. They usually deliver, too. You'll see the suicidal delivery boys (usually young guys working their way through college) swooping through traffic on their scooters, blowing red lights and mounting sidewalks, the little red cargo box riding high on the seat behind them.

Over on the north side of the building, at the back entrance to the building (across from the police station, on a quiet little side-street) are some more businesses. Embedded within the northern exit corridor, right across from each other, are a convenience store and a Chinese apothecary. The convenience store is called Good Mart, and it's open 24/7, which is handy for us apartment-dwellers if we get the midnight munchies. Though small, it's got everything: six-packs, Q-tips, lighter fluid, ice cream, chewing gum, canned tuna, and a bazillion different kinds of ramen...not to mention a few small bottles of blended Scotch.

The Chinese apothecary really defines the first floor, though. That's not because it has an imposing façade, though. It's mostly just because it smells funny. The thirtysomething woman who owns it is always brewing up some foul-smelling medicine in there, often inundating the entire ground floor with noxious odors. Sometimes I'll see the proprietress sitting in the waiting room with her friends, space heaters cranked up and glowing red, chatting and drinking tea as something that looks eerily like witch's brew simmers away in a stainless steel pot over a blue flame. Behind the counter are dozens of wooden drawers excitingly labeled with mysterious Chinese characters. It doesn't matter to me what they mean. They could read "gout" and "pox" and "boils" and "chlamydia" for all I care. They still look cool.

Down at the end of the northern corridor lie an octopus restaurant, a twigim shop, and a gimbap joint. I've never been to this particular octopus restaurant, though I probably should. I love molluscs and I love the way Koreans prepare 'em even better. Twigim is sort of like Korean fast food: various bits and bobs deep-fried in oil and covered in a delicious greasy crust. I've only eaten at this shop once, and that was with my predecessor, whom I loathed so much that I swore off everything that she professed to like.

The gimbap joint is called Sumirak, and it makes the best stuff in town, in my opinion. Gimbap is sort of like Korean sushi, but you won't find a hint of raw fish in it. Mostly it's got ham (more like Spam), imitation crab, pickled radish, and slivers of cucumber and carrot, all wrapped up in rice with a seaweed wrapper. This is formed into a roll and then cut into slices, just like roll sushi. Sumirak is owned by a middle-aged woman who has aged as gracefully as Helen Mirren or Julie Andrews. Her face is lined, but in that endearing careworn way we all imagine when we think of our beloved grandmothers or great-aunts. She does not stoop or hobble, but stands tall and proud (at sixty-five inches). She rolls gimbap at lightning speed, sets it down in front of you with a smile, and says 맛있게 드세요 (masissge deuseyo—"enjoy your meal").

Maybe I'll put up pictures, and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just do like Hemingway would have and let you imagine all this stuff for yourselves.

Now you know a little bit more about my bailiwick. Next up: some of the people who inhabit this place. And maybe a bit more about Jung-dong in general.

an immoveable feast

Goodness, ten days into 2013 and I haven't posted yet? Let's rectify this, shall we?

I'd like to say a few more words about my last post before we begin. I declared my intention to eschew any further references to airplanes, booze or literature in my blog and focus solely on travel, but due to popular outcry I am hereby rescinding that declaration. Thanks to you and your wonderful comments, I've decided to keep on writing about the things that interest me (alcohol, flying, good books and travel being the most prominent). If people would like to get more specialized information, they can click on the lower right of this main page, among the swarm of yellow keywords with which I've seeded my posts, and narrow the topics down that way. So there. The Vaunter abides. Thank you for your support, y'all.

Speaking of support, I have only 80 official followers but my page views are skyrocketing. I cracked 100,000 in late 2012 and am already well on my way to 150,000. I've noticed, thanks to the crisp and clear statistical analysis which Blogger provides, that some of my posts appear to have been backlinked. I'm writing like I have a clue what "backlinked" means, but in reality I don't. I think it means that somebody posted links to my blog in high-traffic areas of the web, and they're getting clicked on a lot, thus driving up my page view count. Also, I have taken advantage of the "post-tagging" function that Blogger offers, and have made my posts highly searchable. (I believe the cyber-gods call this SEO, or "search engine optimization.") So there ya go. Hopefully someone in power will notice me and start paying me to write this blithe and mellifluous blog.

Anyway, on to the heart of the matter: Ernest Hemingway.

I don't think I ever truly realized in high school exactly what Hemingway's books were about. The Old Man and the Sea was thankfully self-explanatory, but For Whom the Bell Tolls sounded like it was about somebody's funeral and A Farewell to Arms made me think of a wood-chipper. A Moveable Feast was no different. I thought it was a buffet on wheels.

Then, on a whim, I looked the book up. To my surprise, it was a kind of memoir, posthumously compiled from Hemingway's notes and manuscripts, recording his time as a young writer in Paris in the 1920s, and his encounters with other famous expatriates. The story behind it was quite charming, really: during his time in the French capital (working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star), and beginning to spread his novelist wings, Hemingway bumped into a lot of luminaries: Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, among others. He took copious notes about his time in Paris, the things he saw and did, and the places where he and the other expats habitually hung out: restaurants, bars, seedy cafés and whatnot. In 1928 he stashed these notes in two small trunks in the basement of the Ritz Hotel. He retrieved them again in 1956, had them transcribed and was in the process of collating them into a memoir when, well...

Yeah. You know what happened. The dude offed himself. The editing process was finished by his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, and published by Scribner's.

This information has seized my imagination with incandescent fingers. I now have yet another book I need to read, another chance to expand my Hemingway collection. It also made me see that I have something in common with Ernest, as well as Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Crane and Willa Cather: I worked as a journalist before becoming a writer.

(Okay, I didn't work as a journalist very long, and I'm not a published writer yet; but I will be, dang it. I have some exciting news to tell you on the journalism front, so hang tight for that this weekend.)

But apart from the superficial facts, there's another thing that I realized. All the notes I've made about Korea—all my thoughts on this nation's complexities, dualities, dichotomies and idiosyncrasies—are digital. They're floating around in cyberspace, either on this blog or in various e-zines. I've got a few tiny Mead composition books filled with bus fares, random scribblings in Hangeul, the translated names of exotic dishes, half-finished itineraries and disjointed snatches of poetic prose, but that's it. It's hardly enough to fill a pair of steamer trunks.

This saddens me somewhat.

Part of me feels like walking down to Homeplus (similar to Tesco, and owned by them) and buying up every spiral notebook and composition pad in sight. I'll spend the rest of this year (and the next, if I choose to stay in Korea longer) filling them with every conceivable thought that comes into my head. The loud drone of cicadas in summer. The autumn trees' fireworks display. The children squealing as they escape their last hagwon of the day and sprint for the buses, or the old housewives chattering as they maneuver through the aisles of the supermarket. That annoying little whine that only young Korean women are capable of infusing into the final syllable of their sentences. The Koreans' dislike of China and absolute hatred of Japan. The wailing invasion sirens, tested every six months. Typhoons, cloudbursts and fog-banks. The Han River, lazy and green in summer and frozen solid in winter. The sandy beaches of Busan, the humid heat of the midlands, the fading grandeur at Gyeongju, the tropical paradise of Jeju Island. Kimchi, squid-rice, bulgogi soup and fried sweet potatoes. The cloud factory behind my apartment.

Yeah. That sounds like a plan. Something for future generations to mull over. In print. This URL might not last forever, you know. But maybe a manuscript hidden in a chest in the attic for 200 years will.

Even if I don't go through with it, and those notebooks are never bought and filled with exciting scribbles, I am going to make a determined effort to write more on this blog about Korea. In addition to my travel writing (which I need to do some more of), and in addition to being more assiduous in my reporting (bus fares, travel times, ports of call), I shall simply give you more info about my bailiwick, and paint a more vivid picture of my life in East Asia.

Sound like a deal?