"Cabs are here! Cabs are here! Cabs are here bro!"
-DJ Pauly D
The summer before my senior year of
college I interned in Hong Kong. This is
a different country (or “Special Administrative Region,” at the least) from
Korea, but not as far as my grandmother and her friends were concerned:
“Will
you be able to speak Korean with the people in Hong Kong?”
“You mean with the Koreans who live
in Hong Kong?”
“Well, whoever lives there.”
“You mean the Chinese people?”
“All I know is you had better steer
clear of that North Korea”
But while I spent the vast majority of my time in HK, I did
manage to make it to Korea twice that summer, once as part of the internship
and once on vacation.
The first
trip began inauspiciously enough, but quickly took a turn for the worse. I had been coughing frequently and generally
feeling sick in the weeks leading up to my arrival in Seoul, but I just assumed
that eventually this would pass. About
four days into the trip though I had a peculiar dream, in which I dreamt that I needed to solve an integral
using differentiation by parts. For
those of you who need a calculus refresher:
The reason I so desperately needed to solve this integral
was that the problem’s completion, I logically reasoned, would lead to the
cessation of pain in the lower part of my chest cavity. Still in my dream state, I plunged forward
with the math.
As I began
to regain consciousness, I realized that solving this problem was hardly
“integral” to the sensation of being stabbed repeatedly in my right lung. Taking a piss didn’t seem to help much
either, so after a few minutes of wavering I called the front desk to ask for a
doctor. They didn’t have one, but sent
up a bellman to help take me to the hospital.
I thought this a bit much but by the time he arrived I was having
trouble standing up, and by the time I reached the hospital I was getting to be
delirious.
As it turns
out my problem was not mathematic incompetence, but pneumonia. While that sounds like a complication eradicated
in the 19th Century, it can be quite serious if left untreated and
so I stayed in the hospital for the next few days until my flight back to HK
(though the doctor had suggested I stay longer, and in retrospect, that might
have been a good idea). My stay was
comfortable enough. A few friends came
to visit, and the elderly cohabitants (oscillating between three and five in
number) were interested to hear why a caucasian twenty-two year old a) was interning
in Hong Kong, b) spoke Korean, and c) ended up in Korea just long enough to
become hospitalized. The nurse was a
binary “one,” which further assisted in rendering my stay bearable.
My second
trip to Korea was, with the exception of one event, markedly more
enjoyable. I spent most of my time
traveling around the countryside with a college “hubae (후배),” or younger classmate, and
the remainder catching up with friends in and around Seoul. This hubae,
however, does not live in Seoul, but rather the city of Incheon (where the
egomaniac MacArthur famously succeeded with what was by all accounts a
boneheaded decision). Incheon is
sufficiently close to Seoul, however, to warrant its incorporation in Seoul
public transportation. One day, deciding
that I was short on time for an appointment in Seoul, I hailed a cab instead of taking a bus. When I told the cab driver to take me to “New
World Department Store, at Express Terminal (신세계백화점, 고속토미날),” he told me that I would make better time taking the
subway. When I got down to the station
and looked at the map I realized that he must have made a mistake. The train would take nearly an hour, while I
had done the cab ride before in less than thirty minutes. Going back up to the street, I hailed another
cab.
I had been certain that I
was on the right side of the street, but the second taxi driver told me that he
would have to turn around. I was
confused, but assumed that he must know where to go. Despite feeling somewhat compassless I had a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with the cab
driver. We talked about life in Incheon
compared to Seoul, about the “trot” music on the radio, and, per usual, why in
the hell I had ended up in Korea. After
thirty minutes or so, the cabbie announced, “Here
we are! New World Department Store,
Express Terminal!”
I
looked outside.
“Where?”
“Right over there!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep, this is Incheon’s
Express Terminal!”
Fuck. Me.
Apparently
both Seoul and Incheon had “Express Terminals” with a “New World Department
Store.” Realizing that I was at least an
hour away from where I needed to be, I exited the car, took my copy of The Economist and hurled it against the
sidewalk with enough force to draw the attention of passing shoppers. The cabbie blamed it on me, I blamed it on
him, but at the end of the day it was essentially a misunderstanding to the
tune of two hours and seventy dollars.
I’ve
had other memorable experiences as a passenger, from the cabbie showing me a
picture of his daughter and soliciting my views on her attractiveness, to the
bus driver gyrating oddly while shouting “Fuck! I’m always tired! Always! (“시발! 항상 졸려! 항상!”).” The oddest ride, however,
occurred during my first year in the country.
The cabbie, having ascertained that I was an American, excitedly began
to tell me a story, which at the time sounded to me like “Soldier…fish…wedding….death.” A
normal story in my native American South, perhaps, but not in Seoul!
A
high school hubae, who I had been
riding with, translated.
“He says that there was an American soldier who witnessed a wedding between
two Koreans. The groom took a fish to
hit the bride’s feet, symbolizing that she is ready for marriage [re: sex], and the soldier, perceiving this as domestic abuse, killed the
groom.”
“Ah,” I
replied. “I don’t think most American soldiers are like that.”
