I sure picked the wrong time to try and revamp my vlog. It seemed safe to expect things to calm down now that it's the end of the semester. They always do. Once the frenetic rush of grading and inputting is finished, events taper off. There's half a week where students are allowed to complain about their grades and plead on bended knee for clemency, and then the grades are finalized and printed and handed in. (I just did that today, as a matter of fact.) Then, after that...nothing. If you don't have summer classes, you're a free man for two whole months. From July 2 (the end of the finalization period) until the first Monday in September, it's vacation time. Customarily, things calm the heck down during that period. But not for us. Oh no. We lead a charmed life, Miss H and I. Just a scant two weeks before I leave for Vietnam, my fiancée's school decided to pull the rug out from under us. They asked us to move out of our apartment.
I know, right? We were shocked, of course. We've been here a scant four months. Moreover the whole reason Miss H signed a contract with this school is so we could have this huge apartment all to ourselves. That was the agreement. Now all of a sudden the school says "You have one month to move out"? Oh no they didn't! So we went in and talked to Miss H's immediate supervisors in person last week. They backpedaled and clarified, assuring us that they wouldn't revoke our housing completely; this was simply an expensive apartment, too expensive to have just one teacher and her pseudo-spouse living in it. They'd provide key money and rent for any other apartment, as long as said rent was ₩400,000 per month or less. According to the contract they'd signed with Miss H, they were legally obligated to do at least that much. There wasn't much more we could do but agree to that. I'm the moocher here. I don't work for Miss H's school, and was allowed to stay with her in this apartment for no extra money down. But it just wasn't fair of the school to kick our stilts out from under us out of the blue like this. Miss H and I quickly decided that there was no way we could find a new apartment, rent it, pack up this apartment, and move everything we owned in the scant ten days remaining before I departed for Vietnam. It just wasn't happening. So we went into meet her supervisors again just a couple of days later and asked them if we could stay in this apartment if I forked over my share of the rent. The supervisors told us that our place costs ₩800,000 per month for the school to rent, and I'd need to stump up half. After a little hemming and hawing and a halfhearted attempt at bargaining, I acquiesced. But now I'm rethinking even that. If I shell out ₩400,000 per month (roughly $400), that's almost three thousand dollars I'll lose by March 2015—for no reason at all. It's money which should be used to make a security deposit on a stateside apartment, buy a car, and acquire miscellaneous housewares. Miss H and I got it in writing that no one else would be billeted with us in this place, but unfortunately we never secured the school's assurance that we'd never be charged extra rent or made to move out. The school's got us over a barrel. I wasn't finished yet, though. On Thursday I marched to the Itaewon Global Village Center, which is on the same floor in the same building as the international clinic where I got my travel vaccinations two weeks ago. The Global Village Center, according to its own website, "offers a variety of services to support foreigners living in the area, and we have classes and programs that help to facilitate cultural exchange and understanding between foreigners and Koreans residents." Among those services is free legal consultation. I made an appointment at 10:00 AM on Tuesday the 8th to see a lawyer. Here's what he said: there's nothing in the contract to prevent the school from charging us extra for this apartment. They only agreed to let this apartment to the two of us exclusively. As the lawyer put it, "It was a favor, not a promise." However, there was one spot of hope: if we had a witness to corroborate the school's agreement to let us live here at no extra charge, then we'd have a case. He advised us to get in touch with Miss H's recruiter and obtain her testimony, which I thought was a good idea. I'll keep you posted on what comes next, but... All this would be hard enough to deal with if I wasn't leaving for Southeast Asia on July 12. That sure complicates things. It's really put the pressure on both of us. But Miss H and I really don't want to move. It's costly, it's a lot of effort, and frankly, we feel that we were promised this apartment and shouldn't have to abandon it because Miss H's school is worried about the bottom line. Moreover, after what we went through in Gwangnaru (living side-by-side in a studio apartment and sharing a twin bed and all that nonsense) we feel that we're owed a nice big apartment for our final year here in Korea. And now you've heard the whole story. The fight's not over yet. I'm not going to pay those crooks a single won if I can avoid it. Stay tuned.
It's the witching hour here in Seoul, and it's time for some updates. This blog's been clogged (see what I did there?) with my Japan junket and The Art of Manliness challenge I took in January. Time to give you the skinny on the others facets of my life. THE BIG MOVE TO GANGNAM Miss H and I started packing tonight. The bookshelf is completely empty, the dresser (which we use for miscellaneous storage, cramming all of our clothes into our wardrobes) is 80% done, and the games drawer has been packed up. The entirety of the kitchen, the wardrobes, the veranda and the bathroom remain, however. Both of us are remembering how much we hate packing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why are we moving to Gangnam? Well, Miss H was justifiably discontent with her job here in Gwangnaru, so she elected to switch jobs at the completion of her contract in late February. The new job she found was with Gangnam SLP, in Gangnam-gu. Gu, if you'll recall, is a word roughly analogous to "borough" or "district" or "ward" in English. Seoul has 25 of these gu. We live in Gwangnaru, which is located in Gwangjang-dong, a neighborhood of Gwangjin-gu, widely regarded to be the city's most multifarious ward. Now, however, we'll be moving to Gangnam-gu, which is noticeably larger and more oblong than Gwangjin-gu. As far as I can tell, Miss H's school and our apartment are located at the extreme southern edge, in the neighborhood of Irwon-dong near Daecheong Station on Seoul Metro Line 3. The boonies, as it were. Go any farther south and you're not in Seoul anymore, Toto. We will, however, be deliciously close to the glitzy Gangnam Boulevard, and the attractive neighborhood of Sinnonhyeon beyond—the same place I bought a copy of Kafka's Metamorphosis and read it in one go while sitting in a coffee shop in the Urban Hive, remember? There's also Yangjae Citizen's Forest, which I already know and love (and am planning some kick-ass summer barbecues around). We're right next door to Jamsil, with its humongous (albeit undergoing renovations) COEX Mall, and the Jamsil Sports Complex where all the best baseball games are played. It'll be a cinch to slide over to ritzy Apgujeong or across the river to Ttukseom Resort, too. Location, location, location. But first we gotta move there. So we're packing. We move in on the 1st of March. We're not using a moving service with a Kia Bongo like we did last time. He showed up at our old place in Bucheon at 8:00 at night and by the time we were all moved in to the new place in Gwangnaru it was midnight. We want to make it quick and easy this time. So I'll be obtaining a temporary international driver's license and renting a car. Preferably an SUV or at least a crossover—something with some cargo space. Then I'll drive our stuff to the new apartment in Irwon-dong myself. It'll be the first time I've ever driven Korea, or any foreign country for that matter. I'm heading to the DLA (Driver's License Authority) in Mapo-gu tomorrow to obtain a temporary license. I may have to take a test. Wish me luck. SPRING SEMESTER AT SEJONG UNIVERSITY The pre-semester staff meeting is February 24th. I like my new schedule: on Mondays and Fridays I start at 11 and have two classes, finishing up at one o'clock. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the heavy days: 9:00 a.m. - 5:20 p.m., with a few breaks here and there. On Wednesdays, like usual, I have no class at all. I have a new type of class this time around: a combined reading/listening class that affords me some degree of freedom with resources and materials. I'm very much looking forward to selecting the best passages and audio clips to give the students the most effective (and fun) time possible. My commute will be longer, of course, but finding out the quickest way from Irwon-dong to the university (which is in the Neung-dong neighborhood of Gwangjin-gu) is going to be an adventure. What I'm not looking forward to, though, is getting my visa extended. This is always a hassle. It requires an entire day, a ton of paperwork, and a great honking trip into Yangcheon-gu in West Seoul to the main immigration office—and that's if everything goes smoothly. If the immigration officer decides that he needs to see some extraneous document that wasn't included on the official list, he can do so—and send you away until you acquire it. Sometimes one must make two or three trips to immigration to get everything sorted. That's the other thing I'm doing tomorrow besides hitting the DLA: renewing my visa. I called immigration twice and asked them the same question: what documents do I need? The answers tally, and I think I've got everything prepared. Let's hope I only need to make one trip. FLYING Nothing doing. I'm in Korea, remember? Though I have figured out what I'll do about flight training when I return to the States. It looks like Miss H and I might wind up in Las Vegas, Nevada, when all is said and done. That's assuming we find jobs and cheap housing, but this locale is the most likely spot we've run across. Imagining that all goes as planned, we'll be living in Vegas, Miss H will be doing social work, and I'll be doing radio and bartending. On the side, I'll be working toward my commercial pilot's license. Once I get that (plus a few other ratings like high-performance and multi-engine and perhaps even instrument) I'll start applying to the companies that do flight-seeing tours over the Grand Canyon. I'd kill to fly a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter over that humongous scar in the earth. BOOZE When was the last cocktail review I did? Halloween, probably. Things went nuts toward the end of the fall semester last year, and then the holidays hit, and then January was taken up with that challenge, and early February was my trip to Hokkaido. So...yeah. No booze. I'll probably restart my review schedule sometime in late March. Gotta wait for the dust to settle from the Big Move and the Spring Semester. On the home-brew front, the boys and I just bought a huge bulk order of malt extracts and yeasts and hops which we can play around with. But we'll get to that in a few weeks. For now we're just enjoying the amazing American pale ale we brewed up in December. We've discovered that adding an extra little bit of priming sugar to the brew just before bottling creates the perfect amount of carbonation. There's no fixing the sediment problem (not without secondary fermentation, which none of us have been brave/industrious enough to try yet), so all we have to fix now is the color and clarity. Oh, and the flavor. The last two batches have been spot-on, though, so I have high hopes for our next brew: a maple porter, my pick. I'm scanning the Interwebs for a suitable partial extract recipe. Let me know if you have any suggestions, dear readers. And speaking of reading... READING I hung up The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S. Thompson). I'll keep it and read it later and put it up on the shelf and it'll look all groovy and sophisticated to passersby. I have other fish to fry, though. During the long train journey down through Japan I finished reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Terror by Dan Simmons. Good reads both, though I found Simmons's work a bit more stimulating (probably for this reason). I'm almost to Part Four of Anna Karenina, and have finally begun to enjoy it. Tolstoy knows a lot about human beings and can describe what he knows simply and clearly. After I finish this weighty volume I reckon it's either Robinson Crusoe or The Catcher in the Rye next. I need to get back into fiction badly. And speaking of getting back into fiction... WRITING Still no word from Ace & Roc Science Fiction and Fantasy about my novel manuscript. I sent it to them, did I tell you? (I told Facebook, but I don't know if I've told you.) I sent them a query e-mail with the first ten pages of my manuscript copied-and-pasted into the body, as per their submission guidelines. Ace & Roc are imprints of Penguin Books, in case you were wondering. I chose them because I read somewhere that Cormac McCarthy sent his first novel (The Orchard Keeper) to Random House because it was the only publisher he had heard of. And they published it. Miracles do happen. I'm holding out for mine. I submitted the e-mail on January 29th, and Penguin's website warned me that manuscript queries can take up to five months to garner a response. So I'm waiting and praying and shopping for agents, just to be on the safe side. On the writing front, Novel #3 is a chapter and a half from being done. There's a lot of edits to do but I'll mow 'em down fast. Novel #4 is still where I left it when my computer died last November. I must revisit it soon. I'm also going to crank out some more short fiction just as soon as the heat from the Big Move and the Spring Semester blows over. I'm slogging through Mugunghwa (my old NaNoWriMo project from two years ago) and making adjustments, corrections and clarifications to that as well. It should be ready to go by spring. I'm not sure whether to e-publish it or send it to an agent, but I'm mulling the question over. I really need to get some more pipe tobacco. I should do the whole mulling thing properly. TRAVEL PLANS Well, I've done Japan, Korea and China. That's the extent of my Asian travels. Bit paltry for almost three years, right? So it's time to up the ante. Miss J, Miss H and I have been talking about Mongolia. Buddha's Birthday and Children's Day are right next to each other on the first weekend of May this year. That means there's a four-day weekend coming up in mid-spring. Flights are cheap. Perfect time to hit the steppes, we reckon. We're thinking a nice hotel in Ulaanbaatar, a ride on a Bactrian camel, a traditional meal with a Mongolian family in their private yurt, watching the Kazakh falconers do their thing, a pony roundup on the open steppes and a bite of the finest Mongolian cuisine. I'll let you know as events develop. I'm still planning on Alaska this summer, and would love to do a train trip through Argentina and Chile if finances allow. Stay tuned. LIFE IN GENERAL I haven't been to the gym in weeks. In fact, I'm about to head down there and cancel our membership, and see if there's any sort of refund possible. Miss H and I didn't realize when we signed up in October that we'd miss a full third of our six-month subscription to Art Gym when her contract expired. If they won't give us a refund, then we've forfeited ₩80,000 apiece. Darn. At least we know now how much of a time commitment we're making when we sign up with a gym. The winter weather in Seoul remains pleasantly mild, with temperatures hovering around the low 40s and nary a snowball or an icicle in sight. The yellow dust from China, however, is kicking into gear. I'd love to be walking around in the open air and taking in my last views of scenic Gwangjin-gu, but there's a jaundiced scum in the air and it irritates my lungs and throat something fierce. I can't be bothered to wear a mask, either. So screw it. I'll stay inside and play the Facebook version of Deer Hunter 2014. SCI-FI ART I haven't given you any of that in a while, either. And since every blog post (no matter how small) needs a picture, I give you this doozy. Make of it what you will:
Let us discuss certain first principles regarding car ownership in the sunny, smoggy, scummy state of California. I will introduce some terminology to start:
smog: a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog," referring to aerosol pollutants (industrial waste, car exhaust, and so on) mixing with airborne water droplets (like fog) to form a filmy, unhealthy haze.
smogging: in certain states like California, drivers are required by law to have their car "smogged"; that is, tested to ensure that they are keeping noxious exhaust emissions low, which in turn ensures that smog levels are minimized. Before a car can be registered, it must be smogged.
title: in reference to automobiles, this is a legal certificate of ownership issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Also known as a "pink slip."
license: everybody knows what this is, but I thought I'd mention it here just to make this list longer. This is the little piece of plastic, obtained after you complete your driver's test, that says you're allowed to drive a certain class of vehicle. It has your picture, your birthday, and some other miscellaneous crap on it.
registration: bureaucracy these days being what it is, it's no longer enough to simply own a vehicle. You now must register it with your state of residence. You tell them you have a car and they issue you with license plates that you bolt onto said car. Makes it easier for the cops to identify you, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
registration stickers: as if registering a vehicle wasn't enough, the registration expires after a few years. So you have to occasionally renew your registration. These stickers, applied directly to your license plates, keep track of your registration currency.
Are we clear? To own and operate a car in this state, you need four, count 'em, four things: title, registration, license, and a smog check.
I'm writing this because I went in to get a smog check today, in preparation for obtaining registration for my 1995 Jeep Cherokee, and thereby being able to drive my car in California legally.
I just got back. It took almost seven hours.
That's Southern California for you.
First, I got up at 7:00 a.m. to get to A-Action Automotive (the ones who did the checkup on the Jeep right before I purchased it) by eight. I did, and got it inspected. At nine, owner Steve Coultas came out to give me the verdict. The Jeep barely passed the smog check, but it failed on the fuel system evaluation. There was a leak in the fuel system somewhere. The smog check had already cost me $60, but I went ahead and approved the $80 fuel system inspection.
That took a further hour or two. I went down to Starbucks on the corner of Hesperia Road and Bear Valley and had some passion fruit lemonade tea (for $2.80), then went across the street to Walgreen's and read some magazines: guns, video games, even the latest issue of Time. It was the "brain" issue, all about the human brain and its vagaries.
Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 I returned to the shop and heard the new verdict: both the filler hose and the vent hose, connected to the fuel tank, were leaking. To repair it, the custom bumper on the Jeep and the fuel tank would both have to be "dropped" (unscrewed, lowered and removed). Total repairs, including parts and labor, came to just over $450.
The day had already been going badly before I heard this. I'd ripped my pants on the rabbit-wire on my way out of the backyard gate, and I'd had to get up early. Now I was going to spend two weeks' pay on these repairs. Not that I would've cared, mind you. But compounded with the rest of what happened today...well, read on.
So I went ahead and approved this latest round of repairs, too. Steve checked and told me that his shop had the hoses in stock, so they wouldn't need to be ordered. Good, because it meant the Jeep could be repaired that same day. And I needed to have it repaired as soon as possible. On Monday I'd be getting up early again to head up to Barstow and the office of the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the Jeep registered. Steve printed me out an cost estimate and told me the Jeep should be finished by this afternoon.
(I'd just like to point out here that, despite how it sounds, I'm not blaming A-Action Automotive or any of its employees for this. I understand that parts and labor cost a lot. I'm just deploring the fact that I have to spend that much money on repairs. I'm not complaining that A-Action is charging me that much for them. They run a splendid repair shop and I'd recommend them to anybody. This was just some bad news on top of a soon-to-be stinky day...but read on.)
My dad had called me earlier and told me he and Mom were coming into town to go shopping. Once he heard that the Jeep was going in for new repairs, Dad said he'd pick me up and we'd all go together while the repairs were going on. I plunked myself down on the sidewalk outside the repair shop and awaited their coming, shaded from the blasphemous sun by the A-Action sign out front. Mom and Dad came shortly before noon, and we headed off: first to try to find a mattress store in Oak Hills (which we didn't; it wasn't even there) and then to Tom's Burgers to get lunch (yum!).
Then (this was about 1:00) we went back to A-Action. The Jeep was sitting outside in the parking lot...a good sign? Perhaps it was finished already. I went into the small front office. Steve said that the parts that they'd thought they had weren't correct; the hoses were intended for a Jeep Wrangler, not a Jeep Cherokee. He'd order up the parts and I could bring the Jeep back in on Monday to have it repaired.
Awesome.
Fortunately I didn't have to pay anything right then and there. Steve nicely said, "We'll square up when you come in on Monday." I walked out of the office feeling slightly let down. Five hours and nothing had been fixed, only diagnosed. The Jeep hadn't even passed its smog check thanks to those blasted leaks in the fuel system (which the DMV would never let pass). I'd have to get it re-checked on Monday after repairs were concluded. Damn it and blast it.
Thereafter, Mom, Dad, and I stopped by Harbor Freight (a hardware store) to get some more stuff for my emergency automotive kit: a hydraulic jack and a towing cable, replete with large steel hooks (cool!).
Then we split up. Mom and Dad went home, and I went to Eagle Motors, the car dealership where I'd originally bought the Jeep (I should just think up a name for the Jeep so I wouldn't have to keep blandly referring to it as "the Jeep," shouldn't I?).
I had an errand in mind. I didn't have a title for the Jeep. I had a lot of other paperwork that had been given to me when I'd bought the car, but no title. I didn't know why. Normally they give you the title when you buy the car. But I didn't have it. So I went in to get it.
Carl was still there, his wrinkled, spotty, sandal-clad foot resting on the desktop. I told him, politely, that I hadn't received a title. After leafing slowly through the paperwork I set before him and clicking around on the computer for a couple minutes (whistling tunelessly over the blaring television), he pronounced that, as far as he knew, my title was still being processed by the DMV. They'd mail it to me when they were finished. I asked how long he thought it'd be. He said he didn't know. He told me to give him a call about 2:30 (it was about 1:45 right then), when Sal, the owner, would come back and dig up the paperwork.
I sighed, thanked him, and left.
I got some gas. I drove almost all the way home, then pulled over and called Eagle Motors precisely at 2:30. Carl said that he'd confirmed with Sal that Eagle Motors didn't have the Jeep's title. The DMV was working on it, and would mail it to me. However, the reason I hadn't received my registration paperwork is that Eagle Motors had mailed it to me, but it had returned undeliverable.
I almost banged my head against my steering wheel when I heard this. I'd given them my street address instead of my mailing address. We don't receive mail at our street address. I quoted him the mailing address and requested (biting back my self-disgust) that he send my registration paperwork to me again.
I should explain here, now, that the reason I haven't received my title is because I haven't registered my vehicle with the state, and the reason that I haven't registered my vehicle with the state is because I don't have any registration paperwork, and the reason I don't have any registration paperwork is because I gave Eagle Motors my physical address instead of my mailing address that day long ago when I bought the car. So in the meantime, my parents and I have been wondering and worrying and wailing about how my registration paperwork hasn't shown up yet and how I don't yet have my car registered with the state and in the meantime the fuzz could pull me over and ticket me for driving around without registration. Sheesh.
After getting home at a quarter to three, having left the house precisely seven hours earlier, I collapsed onto my bed and considered going into hibernation ahead of schedule.
An entire day shot. Blown. Down the drain. As if being informed that I'd be shelling out $450 on car repairs wasn't enough, I had then been notified that I'd made a stupid mistake, and had been wondering and wailing and waiting for absolutely nothing this entire time. And it took seven hours and an unholy amount of driving around in triple-digit heat to figure it all out.
This is how you register a car in Southern California.
Phase One, anyway.
