19: Camping, Banking, and Aging

Have I mentioned before the similarities between my time in Korea and an extended camping trip? There are many.

I'm sure I've mentioned my exclusive cooking tool, the Sun Touch Portable Gas Range (aka camping stove). I get much use out of that. Plus everything I cook on it is done in my solitary pot. Very much like a camping trip with me where I forget to take something important like a frying pan.

But the similarities go beyond the camping stove. For one, there's the constant scent of mosquito coil smoke (aka camping incense). Without that blessed smoke, I'm sure we'd all be swollen, puffy masses of itch. I get pretty close regardless, and can only imagine how much worse it would be without those wonderful little coils.

But wait, there's more! Korean coffee is terrible. It's highly sweetened and milky instant junk (aka camping coffee). It's everywhere, too. Vending machines dispense it in little paper cups, or if you prefer, cold and in a can, and these machines can be found on practically every block. The vending machines are not all that camping like, but the coffee itself sure is.

As well, there are the cold showers I'm forced to take due to not wanting to spend the cash on heating oil right now. I'll take care of that come winter. Right now I'm willing to suffer, and really, on some days its pretty nice. Mostly, though, its not. It actually tends to make me shower less than my usual daily routine, which can make me on some days a bit smelly and greasy, and really, you don't get much more camping than that.

On top of these is the inconsistent weather which is stormy one day, hazy and humid another, or blazing hot on others. That is the epitome of any camping trip I've ever been on.

Add on to these the fact that I've been spending most of my spare time playing my guitar, and you've got a camping trip. Now, obviously not everything is like camping. I'm not sleeping in a tent (although, the roof leaks so I can't say as I'm truly out of the elements). I'm sitting at a computer, so that's not really camping-like, and I am in a city, thus have easy access to many things not available while camping. I also don't get to light bonfires and roast wieners in my living room. They frown on that here for some reason. And no one wants to be frowned upon.

In other observational news, I noticed that my bank also doubles as a small grocery store. In every respect except for that, it is an average looking bank. Then you look to the right and see a wall of shelving filled with huge bags of rice and beans, jars of jellies and pastes, and bottles of various juices. I'm told that my bank is the Korean Bank of Agriculture, so I guess it makes a little sense, but I still find it odd.

So, I had the age thing I was confused by before explained to me. I still have a hard time with it, but this is why I'm 31 here as opposed to 29 at home. First off, a persons age here is meant to include the time spent in the womb, but seeing as how it's extremely difficult, in most cases, to pinpoint the exact day of conception, they have decided that everybody will be considered a year older on January 1st. Now, what if you were born on that date, or on some other date early in the year? Well, that problem was solved by just adding a year. Thus, since I was born in 1974, my age is calculated as such: 2004-1974+1=31. Now, they certainly solved the problem of including the gestation time in age for people born early in the year, but this brings about an entirely different issue for people like me who were born late in the year. You see, by this method of age calculation, I was a year old months before even being conceived. As well, I turned two only thirteen days after being born. So, I just have to go with the fact that I'm a youthful 31 here and that I turn 32 thirteen days after I turn 30. In the past few years (I don't know how many, could be 20-30, could be 5) people here have been celebrating their "western birthdays" on the date of their birth. I think this is just to give them another reason to go out and party, but hey, that's fine by me. But there is one thing I do like about the January 1st thing. I makes for one hell of a birthday party on New Years Eve.

One more thing, I finally got around to looking into why using my real name wouldn't be appropriate here, and the results were not at all what I thought. I was expecting to find something terrible. Instead my name pronounced properly, you know the French Guy (기 in Korean) means 'flag.' The English pronunciation, guy (개), means 'dog,' so I can see the issue with that. The only other approximation of my name I could think of, gui (귀), means 'ear.' So, really, I'm not sure why I needed to change my name. I can deal with being Flag for a year. But it's too late now. I think I'm stuck with Steave.

And again, until next time,

Steave