Failure
06-20-2002, 05:45 AM
Hey everybody,
Just stopped by to drop by and say hello.
Though I'm no Maxie, here's a quick fill-in for I've been up to lately.
The Flight:
God, the flight. *shakes head* The flight from NY to Seoul, takes about 5 hours. That's non-stop. 15 hours in the big scheme of things isn't bad. However, I've decided that 15 hours in a economy seat in a plane, is probably like a couple days in jail. Only in jail you get more room. First came the 2 hour shuttle bus ride to NY. Not too bad. When I got to the airport, I met with a girl who's in the same program with me that I'd been emailing with. During check-in, when I asked for the emergency exit row seats, she gave me a weird look, I was like trust me, it's worth it. And yeah, I guess it was worth it. You get all the leg room you want, and there wasn't anyone sitting behind me, so I didn't hesitate to cock my seat back all the way. Still, that's only making an insuffereable flight slightly more suffereable. I've come to the conclusion that they make the economy seats as uncomfy as possible. How else do you explain those monstrously unnatural headrests? Jesus, you'd think our heads were angled a foot away from the rest of our body. The inflight movies were A Beautiful Mind and The Majestic (no Snow Dogs, yes! :bosko: ). I didn't watch ABM, cuz I'd seen it, but watched the Majestic. Good flick, I liked it. I had a little difficulty seeing Jim Carrey as a purely dramatic actor, especially in the early on, where I imagined every one of his facial expressions in a comedic sort of way, he won me over by the end. Especially during his speech. Although, I think the ending shouldn't have ended on the happy note in the way it did, I was still content. I figured I didn't need to feel sad on an already crappy flight. Anyway once I got there, I met with my uncle and drove to his apartment. Another 2 hour drive. Which means I spent about 19 hours of my last 21 hours couped up in some sort of transportation. Joy.
My uncle lives in a city called Ilsan. It's a newly developed city. Going there is like walking into a live-action magazine. Stores everywhere, big signs all over the place. It's like I fell into an advertiser's dream. Plus, there's construction all over the place. This is pretty much the case in cities all over Korea, but apartments are being built non-stop, you can't turn around without seeing one of those huge cranes on top of a budding apt. It's only 10th in size in Korea, but it's congestion is probably comparable to downtown New York. Cars, people all over the place with only the narrowest of roads. Korea needs better roads, or at least more of them.
Anyway, the night I got there was the night Korea was playing Italy in the World Cup. I'm not a soccer fan in the least bit, but I watched the first half with the rest of my family (my aunt's had shown up to greet me, my little cousin, and my grandma). Then I fell in and out of sleep during the 2nd half, waking only when I fell off the bed, and during the cheering when Korea scored their 2 goals. When Korea scored the gamewinning 2nd goal, you should've seen the place! Jeez, it was frigging pandemonium. I only remember a little bit, because I was sleeping for most of it, but everybody in the apt. complexes, everybody in the streets, they were going nuts! Firecrackers, people screaming, people chanting, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was a nationwide orgasm of just flat-out craziness, and that's probably an understatement. It was an unbelievable sight.
And then yesterday was just a big shopping day. I had to buy a couple of suits, dress shirts, etc for my upcoming internship. Oh yeah, and I bought a guitar, that was the cool part of the day. Heh heh. My sole purpose of flying 11,000 miles from home is to buy guitars. ;)
Tomorrow morning I'll be heading to Seoul University to meet with everyone else in the program. It'll be the first day of our program. Not sure about my computer access yet, but I'll try to keep y'all up to date whenever I can. (To digress for a second, typing on a foreign keyboard is weird. I dont know why. It's not that different, but it just feels weird. I think it's slowed my typing speed in half.)
Hope you all found this all interesting, cuz it took me forever to type it! (Though it's great to use some English. These last couple days I've been trying to get by solely with my limited Korean. Has me doing mental pushups for the simplest of sentences.) See you all later. :)
Just stopped by to drop by and say hello.
Though I'm no Maxie, here's a quick fill-in for I've been up to lately.
The Flight:
God, the flight. *shakes head* The flight from NY to Seoul, takes about 5 hours. That's non-stop. 15 hours in the big scheme of things isn't bad. However, I've decided that 15 hours in a economy seat in a plane, is probably like a couple days in jail. Only in jail you get more room. First came the 2 hour shuttle bus ride to NY. Not too bad. When I got to the airport, I met with a girl who's in the same program with me that I'd been emailing with. During check-in, when I asked for the emergency exit row seats, she gave me a weird look, I was like trust me, it's worth it. And yeah, I guess it was worth it. You get all the leg room you want, and there wasn't anyone sitting behind me, so I didn't hesitate to cock my seat back all the way. Still, that's only making an insuffereable flight slightly more suffereable. I've come to the conclusion that they make the economy seats as uncomfy as possible. How else do you explain those monstrously unnatural headrests? Jesus, you'd think our heads were angled a foot away from the rest of our body. The inflight movies were A Beautiful Mind and The Majestic (no Snow Dogs, yes! :bosko: ). I didn't watch ABM, cuz I'd seen it, but watched the Majestic. Good flick, I liked it. I had a little difficulty seeing Jim Carrey as a purely dramatic actor, especially in the early on, where I imagined every one of his facial expressions in a comedic sort of way, he won me over by the end. Especially during his speech. Although, I think the ending shouldn't have ended on the happy note in the way it did, I was still content. I figured I didn't need to feel sad on an already crappy flight. Anyway once I got there, I met with my uncle and drove to his apartment. Another 2 hour drive. Which means I spent about 19 hours of my last 21 hours couped up in some sort of transportation. Joy.
My uncle lives in a city called Ilsan. It's a newly developed city. Going there is like walking into a live-action magazine. Stores everywhere, big signs all over the place. It's like I fell into an advertiser's dream. Plus, there's construction all over the place. This is pretty much the case in cities all over Korea, but apartments are being built non-stop, you can't turn around without seeing one of those huge cranes on top of a budding apt. It's only 10th in size in Korea, but it's congestion is probably comparable to downtown New York. Cars, people all over the place with only the narrowest of roads. Korea needs better roads, or at least more of them.
Anyway, the night I got there was the night Korea was playing Italy in the World Cup. I'm not a soccer fan in the least bit, but I watched the first half with the rest of my family (my aunt's had shown up to greet me, my little cousin, and my grandma). Then I fell in and out of sleep during the 2nd half, waking only when I fell off the bed, and during the cheering when Korea scored their 2 goals. When Korea scored the gamewinning 2nd goal, you should've seen the place! Jeez, it was frigging pandemonium. I only remember a little bit, because I was sleeping for most of it, but everybody in the apt. complexes, everybody in the streets, they were going nuts! Firecrackers, people screaming, people chanting, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was a nationwide orgasm of just flat-out craziness, and that's probably an understatement. It was an unbelievable sight.
And then yesterday was just a big shopping day. I had to buy a couple of suits, dress shirts, etc for my upcoming internship. Oh yeah, and I bought a guitar, that was the cool part of the day. Heh heh. My sole purpose of flying 11,000 miles from home is to buy guitars. ;)
Tomorrow morning I'll be heading to Seoul University to meet with everyone else in the program. It'll be the first day of our program. Not sure about my computer access yet, but I'll try to keep y'all up to date whenever I can. (To digress for a second, typing on a foreign keyboard is weird. I dont know why. It's not that different, but it just feels weird. I think it's slowed my typing speed in half.)
Hope you all found this all interesting, cuz it took me forever to type it! (Though it's great to use some English. These last couple days I've been trying to get by solely with my limited Korean. Has me doing mental pushups for the simplest of sentences.) See you all later. :)