If I were to die tomorrow, ‘society’ would leave me with a remarkably depressing, unfulfilling and brutally boring obituary. According to the State of Indiana, at least, I’d just be a formally “medically frail” 39-year-old man, a never-married casualty who lived with his parents after 12 years unaccounted for. (He didn’t do too much before then, either. But he wasn’t in jail!)
My loving family could fill (some of) the blanks in my eulogy, but there’s little record of me in America. Returning – with brain damage – after twelve years overseas, I had zero social or professional contacts to lean on. Stateside four years now, I still don’t.
In 2019, year nine of my adventures in Asia, I survived being smashed by a car as a human-sized bug off its windshield. I’d rather this bug told the story rather than bystanders or the snooty whatever-vehicle that hit me. (I hope I left a dent in that smug-mobile.)
This particular creature got banged up and needed dire repairs: a coma, a craniectomy, brain surgery, concussions, seizures, a broken shoulder blade and an inner ear bone, cracked ribs, and a punctured lung. With all that reconstruction, my life can be snuffed with frightening ease. This Hoosier’s got more miles on his chassis than Indiana Jones. Any bump on my noggin will send me to the ER, if not worse. A minor car accident whips my head the wrong way, anything falls on me, or scariest, if I ever fall, from any height, The End. Or if epilepsy strikes at an inconvenient moment.
Credit to the surgeons’ previous work, neither of my replaced hips were damaged in The Incident, but I’m still walking on 12 and 14-year-old titanium legs. They’ve taken a bit of edge off my formerly spry step, and understanding my risk-adjacent self, I’ve tried to drape a heavy, stable blanket of caution over myself to find the best runway back in America.
After my failed attempt to return to teaching in Korea, I stayed in Indiana for the rest of 2020. Still, I knew I had to properly restart in Daejeon. Stateside, I felt like an addled astronaut, again lost in a society transformed by time and technology, but this time I felt – bizarrely yet truthfully – even more like an outsider than I ever did abroad. In this alien land, where I blend in and am expected to fit in, people speak English and tend to remember you. Dammit. Paranoid me, I felt like everyone around me was settled and had at least a vague idea about what they were doing. Even if I’d just been away for a decade, readjusting to life in America would’ve been a tremendous challenge. Add my brain’s ‘network connection’ difficulties? This Yankee was adrift in his own homeland, isolating me further inside my own bubble.
Trying to avoid wallowing in this, I instead schemed up ways to get back to where I belonged. I already knew Korea and understood the work, as opposed to where I was born, a land of native English speakers, where I felt like a sore, high school thumb sticking out in a world of pristine, adult fingers.
Still in touch with the expat community, a good friend told me he was going back home to England. We worked it out so I’d be his replacement, and I was back in Daejeon in March 2021 for a one-year contract, one I’d distinctly planned to be my final abroad. I was going to save as much as I could while I again acclimated myself to full-time work and life in my own place.
Tragically, my new, employer-provided apartment was by far the worst I’d been assigned over there. It was a dingy flat in a tiny building, completely different from the larger, nicer and newer buildings I’d always lived in. It was more tucked out of the way, no longer in walking distance of anything significant, let alone a main expat hotspot in town, like I used to be.
My kitchen was also pathetic, there wasn’t a TV, and my bed was a mattress on the floor. But it was mine! My local bodega was 100 feet from my door, and it was just as easy to slink back into work, the social scene and my independent life. This foreigner felt more comfortable in this dreary abode in Korea than I did back in America.
Taking a cab downtown, I walked into ‘Watering Ghost,’ a bar owned by an expat in the heart of the city’s nightlife. As a drummer, I’d performed there in several bands when I last lived in town, in 2017 and 2018. I was good friends with the owner, Jonathan, and had also jammed live there with him and many other musicians in town.
It was like I’d never left. There wasn’t a special celebration, but a large crowd came that night to see me. I was well known in the expat community and especially there, because Jonathan had set up a GoFundMe when I was still in the hospital in Thailand. At this point, I’d lived in Daejeon for five years over two stretches, and I’d gotten to know a lot of people and had a good reputation. Normally, I wouldn’t enjoy such attention, but it was relieving to be with the ever-changing crew again. Everyone had stories to tell and gossip to share, frequently about new people, bands, and where treasured comfort foods could now be found.
Korea is not a multicultural land. About 95% of Koreans are Koreans. So were their great grandparents and great great great grandparents. Just visually, all expats are easily seen. Everywhere you go, you may as well be in a police lineup designed by a kid who wants to frame you for eating that delicious cookie they stole from their sister.
If you happen to stick around, you have to quickly get used to sticking out. Understanding that is an important part of expat culture.
Simply by not being Korean, you were instantly, and officially on visas, part of the ‘waeguk-in’ community. It literally means ‘person from an outside country,’ and the 5% of us could instantly become best friends simply by sharing ‘outsider’ status. We all lived in the same constant confusion and shared the reality of being culturally, linguistically and bureaucratically adrift in our new homes.
It didn’t matter if we were American, Uzbek, Russian, South African, Irish, French, or whatever our native language was: We weren’t Korean – our faces were membership ID. This created a powerful camaraderie, and even if you didn’t know each other, there was an understanding that we were all in it together. Even if we’d never see each other again, stories, assistance, gossip and more flowed freely, like the bars we’d meet up in, or better yet, ubiquitous corner convenience stores. They had outdoor benches and plenty of beer and soju for sale inside. You could stop by past midnight, not know anyone, and still find waeguk-in to drink and chat with.
Recovering in America, everything felt like a test and all eyes were on me, judging and expecting me to know what I was doing. As a waeguk-in in Korea, however, I was expected to be bewildered, flummoxed and unsure. I fit right in! Often, just saying a few Korean words to a Korean could lead to wide-eyes, bright smiles and near-applause, like you just pulled Houdini out of a hat and cured him of cancer in front of an audience.
Navigating work was simple enough, aided by being back in my natural habitat as a professional adult. I could read Hangul (written Korean), and by knowing numbers, simple vocabulary, as well as understanding the Metro system, I was easily able to slide back into my old life. Days, weeks, without present or future concern.
Though not my favorite hagwon, or private academy, in my time in Daejeon, it was all right. While I had normal reading and speaking materials to work through with my grade school students, I also had conversation classes without any curriculum. A bit cumbersome, designing classes for kids far too afraid to actually speak, but a few smaller classes with more advanced kids eventually got to gamble while on the school’s clock.
I introduced these classes to poker, both draw and Texas hold ‘em, depending on age and ability. We played with candy as chips and the English Only rule was observed, or their stack would become lighter. Nearly unheard of for foreign teachers, we had actual, spontaneous conversations. They could also talk about K-Pop, baseball, movies or whatever was going on at school. As long as it was in English, I was doing my job.
Along with my easy 4-9 PM days at my school, I also taught a few morning classes at the YMCA for younger kids (except on Wednesdays). Once again, being a waeguk-in swimming in alien waters was strangely, predictably familiar, and the year was a welcome return to normalcy and employment. I swam alongside the rest of the foreign fish and was proud I’d accomplished what I set out to achieve, money saved and finishing one last, successful year in Daejeon.
Well, mostly successful. This job was sort of under the table and I hadn’t been paying into the national healthcare or pension system. Unlike normal arrangements, my boss also didn’t set me up with a return flight.
The first week of March 2022 was the last of my contract. My boss and school owner, “Wivina,” pulled me into her office, with her mother also in the room for some reason. Wivina handed me paperwork to sign showing the end of our work relationship. Essentially, the document would say I had quit the job, even though I completed our agreement. Ignorantly, I didn’t stop to think that this was only a ‘cover your ass’ legal document, allowing the school to continue getting official visas for teachers with their contract, despite it not revealing the real professional arrangement I had with Wivina.
I considered this an insult, and childishly, I made a bit of a display of it and tore the document in half. The short grandmother quickly stood up and began to angrily shuffle towards me.
Little did I know, police sirens were coming our way and I’d soon be interrogated inside an empty classroom. Wivina’s mom pulled a bold gambit to get the cops to show up so quickly. After I was questioned, I had a date to appear in the Korean legal system. I had an appointment with a detective, and I needed a lawyer.
How do Koreans react to Korean spoken with a heavy American accent?
Not entirely sure. With the exception of a few vowels, I can make all the sounds. I speak more like a slightly-literate kid than a foreigner, but again, foreigner talkin’, here. I know we all sound off and weiguk-in about it, but they think it’s cute.
Just being not-Korean will affect them greater than anything we say. They’re childishly impressed with my Korean, but for fluent foreigners? They are really, really, really surprised. Taken aback. Like, kinda suspicious, it seems. (Not in a bad way? Idk, hasn’t happened to me.)
My favorite was when I pinched in for a drummer in our friends’ band. Singer-guitarist is American and fluent in Korean, and the bassist, his wife is Korean and fluent in English. He’d talk to her in English during brand practice, etc, and she’d answer in Korean, and they were always on the same page. I’d sit there and… well. I got most of it! They do the same with their kid, whom I never met. (Wise, that.)
In continuation of my general theme, I had a great day at work today. Constantly busy, and decently complicated so far, but nothing a day or two more of exposure won’t break in. I got to be in The Vault today! (Only a tester of maybe ten files to find, but it was easy. Oddly, my time at Walmart and the newspaper somehow intersected as preparation. Quite queer, that, and I welcome how odd ‘skills’ and experience add up.
I hope this was a fun one. New readers need to know that something is amiss with me and get it out of the way, and I think it stays upbeat. Those few paragraphs did let me know, it’s the first time I’ve ever thought of ‘legacy’ in any real way, a term I pretty much loathe. However, it’s important in the biological ‘What am I?’ question. I really doubt I’ll have kids, I shouldn’t and don’t want to, but I’d like them (and others) to know there’s far more to my life than what they’ve seen.
Get ready for part two and my date with the Korean po-po! Yeeesh, my life is goofy, and I’ll say, in the bestest of ways. (Few exceptions, but that’s not important. Dammit, ev. WhyTF didn’t you answer the slaps on your face from Hannah fucking Lore. DAMMIT. *shrug*
“Wivina’s mom pulled a bold gambit to get the cops to show up so quickly. After I was questioned, I had a date to appear in the Korean legal system. I had an appointment with a detective, and I needed a lawyer.”
Perhaps it’s a cultural differences thing but that seems a little vindictive and an over-excessive response. Foreigner peevishly rips up a piece of paper=cops, lawyers, court date. Huh.
Nope. She pulled an actual gambit I didn’t reveal! (Continued in Pt 2) Tearing the paper was the start of the fuss, but not why they called the po-po. It was very silly of me, but so was their reaction.
What a bitch. The apartment was by far the worst I had over there. Can’t believe I brought a girl or two there. Yikes.
*incredibly embarrassed face*
She pulled an actual gambit I didn’t reveal! (Continued in Pt 2)
Foreshadowing.
I thought it was foreshadowed pretty damn hard! Not the specifics, but a purposeful cliffhanger! 🤔 Explaining it would take way too much time away from how Korea was so successful!
How it ends, may surprise you. Well, I was here the whole time. My favorite bit of the reality was I was right(!) about going back to Korea afterwards, I was just too aggressive with it. Bizarrely in my world, it was easier to restart my newly brain-damaged life by going back to a country I’m an alien in.
Yep, stoned author who had a really positive day at work is keen to talk. *blessed, adorable schnook’ums face*
She spoke with a terrible southern accent and threw a playing card at you?
I’m also not sure why she picked “Wivina” as her ‘English’ name. Best guess? Winona, and… uh? She fucked up? *hands up*
“And this is my Korean confidential secretary, Alotta Wivina.”
legit LOL — Here’s another thing, she was hot. Older but not really, like 55. (I was 35.) A large brassiere, she filled.
(No, I don’t have pics. Yes, it also upsets me.)
OT: Washington Post on the chances of party control of state governments changing
Most national attention in this year’s midterm elections is focused on congressional and governors’ races.
But Democrats are also making a strong push to win power in state legislatures across the country, forcing Republicans to play defense in a terrain they have dominated in recent years.
Democrats are on offense. They could break up full Republican control in as many as six states and win unified control in as many as seven of their own, a Washington Post analysis found.
Republicans are on their heels, with the chance to disrupt full Democratic control in only two states and pick up full control in as many as five states.
So a wash.
By the lefts best guess.
Favorite bits of slang at work — They call it “picking,” just like at Walmart, etc, and to get the wrong thing is a “miss-pull.” Which sounds like a failed pull-out maneuver, and I had to bite my tongue something fierce to not joke about it. I didn’t, despite another new hire and our trainer both being chill. (Good boy.) Dammit, there was another about when they return it. But miss-pull cracks me up.
The job is def in my alley. I said I need to talk to the HR person about med benefits, cuz a) I do and b) it’s gonna be complicated, cuz I can still stay on Medicaid cuz I’m “magically frail.” (Also, this is not a pouty-sad story and I’m not sad or pouty, neither.) So I’m gonna milk that as best I can, and I’m also gonna see how I can milk the disability + job coach thing so I can get extra help, just to make sure I get as much training before they think I perhaps maybe (doubtful) I don’t pick it up as quick as they’d like. (Why not? It’s a helpful Help Me Out Card to have in your pocket. Now’s kinda the time to use as much as I can. *shrug*)
Good 2nd day. I predict more of them! (I predict more ‘good days at work,’ UCS, not more second days, or even good second days. Go forth. I know there’s another ya can put together.)
Nice story Evan. I’ve only known one Korean woman, and she didn’t like white boys, which was too bad. She was attractive.
I forgot to use my pick up line on Winston’s Mom earlier. She’d like it, I think.
It goes like this: Hey, baby, are you a school? Because I’d like to shoot some kids in you.
Whoops. I did not sleep with too many Koreans, but I did. The only one close to a relationship was when I was studied in Germany in ’08. She insisted on only speaking in German, which I sucked at. She had post-its on EVERYTHING in her apartment with the translations.
I was very silly. Truthfully, I blame me+alcohol. I’m glad I’m a year sober. Hasn’t been too hard, and I really do thank weed, which again, I commit crime getting my supply in Michigan. Don’t add hurdles to new goals.
You’ve come a long way, Evan, from a kid in Indiana to being a world traveler and more. Luckily you ended up in the right Korea.
Hey everybody, Im alive and….alive. After issues with Toxteth, I made my own way, rejoined X and haha, what a cesspool. I got temp banned after a decade, and its so cool! I told someone they should delete themselves, oops, 12 hour ban.
I cant play disc anymore due to back injuries, but Im cruising along. I got my ssi going, thankfully I have other resources or I would be jacking it in San Diego, which by the way hasnt been nuked yet
12 hour TwiX ban?
Weak sauce.
I got permabanned with no reason.
Bluecheck
I even understand why they called me on it because I was like basically telling me someone to go kill themselves , which is not really a cool thing
Ah. I imagine that helps
Protect you.
It should be a thing.
Plenty of people are wastes of oxygen.
That in itself is a damn shame.
Oh, Phil, the front door guy — without knowing I’m a drummer — said I looked like Keith Moon in a fun moment. Not sure how to take that, really, but I happily accept! I think I mentioned being a drummer and he asked me about Neil Peart. I said I appreciated his drumming and said a few Rush songs were fun. He recommended one of Peart’s books, I don’t remember which. I was kinda shocked from the Moon discussion, and had no idea he’d written a few.
Huh. Oh! He’s older, white-bearded, and is chipper. He’s also a lefty, which I eagerly pointed out to him. (We respect our kind.)
Never underestimate white-bearded white guys who played left-handed bass.
I wonder what percentage of the Glibs are in their right mind?
I would say the majority now, the nuts all filtered out, except for me?
Compared to ‘normal’ people? We’re shockingly reasonable.
I think I’m remarkably sane. Most people also think their Congressperson is good.
@threedoor,
Yes sadly some humans are just useless and can bever be redeemed. I dont promote removing them but at a point in the future in may be our survival at stake
/ more guns better
I try to avoid them for the safety of my family.