OINK

Another week goes by. Nothing really noteworthy happened at work. Classes are going well. This week there was a lot of M.T. That's "membership training". It's just a Korean euphamism for drinking soju with the new classmates, overcoming crippling shyness by playing drinking games, getting fall-down-staggering-sloppy drunk then suffering the consequences the next day together. You know, bonding!

It's part of the Korean drinking culture I really like. When I think of some of the benders I've been on in my time, there really are few things that can bring you closer to someone than helping each other through a night of inebriation. I mean how much do you love a person in the morning when you hear they had to clean up your puke? THAT'S a true friend! You'd give them a big hug if you weren't so hung over. And what words could be used to accurately describe the appreciation felt for a bud who hears you say something like, "Was your other eye as beautiful as that one, Captain?" or "Your kids could use a positive role model like me." or "A week off heroine? We should celebrate!" and diverts your attention? And then there are the nights when YOU are the person helping a friend. Alcohol. Its wonders are endless. I'm enjoying a nice bottle of Chianti now.

But students here go with the 75 cent bottles of soju. Can't afford Chianti. I guess it could be considered the Silent Sam of Korea. Remember when you didn't have enough to get a six pack of beer but there was a sale on Silent Sam? Next to Mogen David, (which I had analyzed at the lab and found it to be rotten Welch's grape juice), and anything home-made, (particularly by friends of Portuguese heritage), probably the nastiest wine on the planet. But it does the trick. It was Silent Sam for me. But everyone has their "Silent Sam" when they're growing up and learning to drink. You take what you can get sometimes. And despite the fact that it was the cause of some cranium splitting headaches, a few moments of social awkwardness you were informed of the next day, and maybe even a few big problems, the memories associated with it are mostly good ones. I think soju is the same for these kids. The other day I took a walk between classes and I saw quite a few kids just throwing blankets on any grassy spots on campus and breaking out the drinking apparatus. It gave me a few misty memories of underage drinking. Not that these kids are underage. But I did most of my drinking on the cheap in my high school days when I wasn't actually supposed to be doing it. Maybe the possibility of getting caught added to the fun. THERE'S a visit to the psychiatrist that I will never make.

Anyway, because of M.T. classes are not full. So I've been doing fun exercises and falling behind in the textbooks. Not to worry, I planned for this. I knew all about M.T.

But it's the weekend! And I'm spending it at home in Mokpo this time. I had to get my cable fixed. I needed the cable TV cancelled and removed and I wanted a technician to come to my house and explain to me why Yahoo Messenger won't work with the new cable. I had KT Telecom cable in Yangju and Yahoomess. worked like a hotdamn! No problems at all. I have made no changes to my computer since then, yet with the new cable Yahoo messenger won't work. It just disappears after I enter my username and password. When the guy installed the internet I saw him raise my security from "low-medium" to "medium" setting. I tried to lower my security setting and wasn't allowed to. A warning came up saying programs would not work on this setting. So I figured I needed to customize the security setting somehow. But I don't have the confidence to monkey around with that kind of technical stuff yet. So I asked if I could get the technician who is removing my cable TV box to give it a whirl for me. Completely forgetting that I AM IN KOREA! I do that sometimes.

I went to Hanaro Cable and talked in person with Eun Ja, the local "English" service provider. She deals with the English speaking customers and, bless her heart, she's trying but I use quotes because it ain't English she's speaking. She's got her own special version of our language that is quite worthy of analysis, (by someone who cares about stuff like that), because it's uniquely non-mainstream Korean, yet not in a better way. I suspect she got an English speaking hagwon teacher to write her an English sample to present at an interview which got her the position of helping English speakers at Hanaro Cable. Happens all the time. She is just fractionally better than trying to communicate to someone who doesn't speak a lick of English. Which is why I had to go in person because trying to communicate with her on the phone is an exercise in futility. But I have to say I appreciate the effort.

Anyway, she explained to me that the reason I wasn't getting any new shows on the cable system I was paying 8000 won a month for was because there ARE no new shows till June. When the guy(s) installed it they plugged the bare cable into my TV and I saw about 100 channels. Lots of English and sports channels. The ones I'm interested in, of course. Then they rerouted the cable through this box that flashes a friendly "Hello! Welcome to Hana TV." when I turn it on. It looks to be something like what I understand Teevo to be. The box records stuff and if you happen to miss a show you can just ring it up and watch it commercial free with fast forward, pause, rewind etc. Sounds good right? Well recently there was a HUGE game in the Olympic qualifying baseball tournament between Korea and Canada and I know for a fact it was on KBS. I searched and searched. But couldn't find it. The Arnold Palmer Invitational was on TV but wasn't recorded. NOTHING new was recorded. I looked through the entire library of stuff on the box an nothing was more recent than October. So it was a box full of old shows. WOW! AWESOME! And with this box connected I got 15 channels instead of the 100 I KNOW my TV can get. So I'm paying 8000 won a month for WORSE TV! OINK! OINK! OINK!

By the way Canada beat Korea in that game. I still haven't seen it but looked it up on the internet. Now Canada, Korea and Taiwan get to play in the Olympic baseball tourney in Beijing. Anyhoo, of course I wanted the stupid box removed. Not only was it limiting my TV from 100 channels to 15, it made this camera flash noise every 10 seconds that was quite annoying. So I told Eun Ja. She pleaded that there would be new shows in June. Maybe. I just didn't really feel like keeping the service till then. Paying 8 grand for diminished service is something I can't imagine people doing elsewhere. So we agreed to disconnect that. Then I tried to explain to her the problem I was having with Yahoo Messenger. It was not going well. But I gave up and just told her to get the guy who removes the cable TV box to check my computer. She agreed. I thought my problems were over. But I forgot I AM IN KOREA.

Close to the Hanaro office there's a little temple and a bit of a hike up a hill to a nice view of the ocean and the city of Mokpo. So I decided to get some exercise. The temple, (forget the name Seuk Nam Sa or something like that), was cool. Some interesting pictures at the base of the roof. I've seen many temples in Korea and other places. They're all basically the same but at the base of the roof are some pictures depicting stories of Buddhas and they are always very cool. This one was, (As far as I could imagine), the story of a monk who followed some footprints to an ox and eventually tamed the ox. The ox turned from brown to white as it became more enlightened. Soon the monk could ride the ox and play his flute while on its back. But then the ox died and the monk missed it and told children of it. I couldn't figure out the rest of the story. I'm sure there's more to the story but I enjoy making up my own stories as I look at the pictures.

So I'm hiking up the hill and EXACTLY as I get to the summit, and am completely out of breath, the phone rings. It's a service guy from Hanaro. He speaks very good English. He asked me what I wanted to do. So I told him. He asked me all about my problems with the cable and... in ... very ... laboured ... sentences ... I ... told ... him exactly what I'd tried to tell Eun Ju. I need to do more hiking. I'm WAY out of shape. But eventually I caught my breath and told him what the problems were. I asked if I could get just the bare cable with 100 channels and he assured me that it was "impossible". Like I had been hallucinating. I know I saw the guy press the button on my TV remote. You know the button you press when the TV goes through all the channels and programs them into its memory. It went on for a long time. And I saw lots of good channels. But he assured me it was "impossible". So I said fine, just take the box out and cancel the cable TV. I was pretty sure that the cable I had was hooked up to some other service and that that was where the 100 channels came from. So I was hoping to save 8 grand a month and get GOOD cable TV.

Then he asked about the internet. I told him it was fine except that Yahoo Messenger wasn't working. Of course he asked the requisite questions you ask when you're dealing with an idiot. Did you use the correct password and username? Was your capslock button on? etc. After I patiently endured those questions, he went on to do the other standard move here. Get the customer to do your work for you. I swear the phrase should be "Pass the won" not "Pass the buck". Cuz even though they didn't invent it, Koreans are masters of it. He says to me, "Why don't you get another messenger program?" No I don't want to do that. "Well I'm sure lots of other programs like NATE or HANMAIL will work." Yeah, sure, get all my friends to download the same SHYTE Korean programs so they can chat with me. Also, the only way I'd be able to contact most of my friends and family is thru Yahoo Messenger and since it doesn't work I don't have their yahoomess. names and I can't for the life of me remember them off by heart. No let's just try to fix this problem. I told him to send someone who can fix it. He said it might happen next day at 2 or maybe in 2 or 3 days. I ask why the guy who removes the cable TV box can't be the same one to check my computer and he says it's "impossible". So I thank him and compliment him on his English service.

I continued hiking. Seconds later another guy called. He had zero English. I didn't understand what he said but I assumed it was the guy who was gonna disconnect my TV box. So in Korean I asked him to come the next day at 2. I am sure he understood before he hung up. Seconds later a girl with extremely limited English called me. She asked me when I'd be available to have my TV box disconnected. I told her that I had just talked to the guy about that. She didn't understand. I told her in Korean. She didn't understand. I then said a time, (2 o'clock), in Korean. She understood. Seconds later I got a call from Eun Ja. She asked me if I wanted my TV and my internet cancelled. I tried to rehash what we'd laboured over in the office maybe 30 minutes before but talking to her on the phone is impossible. So in Korean I told her TV-no need, internet-need. Seconds later I got a call from a guy who spoke passable English. He was the technician who was gonna check my computer. He said he'd come by at 2 the next day. Seconds later... I'm not kidding... I got a call from a woman who spoke Korean at lightning speed. All I could understand was Hanaro Cable. Then I said, "Hangul mal mot hayo." That means I can't speak Korean. She unceremoniously hung up on my ass.

So the next day I'm at work at 12:30 and I get a call. It's the guy whose gonna disconnect my cable TV. He's at my house! Imagine a cable guy coming EARLY!!! I told him in Korean that I was at work and I'd be home at 2. The time we'd agreed upon? He said okay. Seconds later... again I'm not kidding... I got a call from the technician who was coming to fix my Yahoomess. He was at my house too! I should have bought a lottery ticket that day I swear to God. Two cable guys being early! Those are the longest odds I'm ever gonna beat in my life. Just my luck there was no way to place a bet on it. So I tell him to come at 2 too.

They both came around 2 o'clock. The TV guy disconnected the box and left me with a vastly inferior bare cable wire than I had before Hanaro reared its ugly head around these parts. Somehow the cable is now only the 15 crappy channels I had with the cable box installed. The hundred channels I had previously on the bare cable somehow magically disappeared! I asked him how to hook up my Xbox so I could use Xbox Live and play games with other people online but he had no idea. Then minutes later the computer guy came. I showed him very slowly what happens when I try to log onto Yahoomess. Then I showed him the security settings and told him I thought I needed to customize them. I'm pretty sure he understood but disagreed on the basis that I couldn't possibly know more about MY computer than him. He sat down at my computer and started typing and clicking and doing all kinds of stuff on my computer like he was playing Starcraft. I couldn't follow him at all. But the upshot of the whole deal was that he couldn't fix it. First he told me I had to reinstall Windows XP. This has happened to me before. It's what they say when they don't know what the problem is but want to save face. By this time the TV cable guy was with us. They both assured me I had to reinstall Window XP. I told them I didn't. Repeatedly. They got the picture. Then they told me I didn't have enough space on my harddrive for the Messenger program to work. Well it just so happens that I did regular maintainence a few days before. I cleaned both my disks and defragged them too. I have 17 gigs on one harddrive and 11 on the other. Plenty of room for Messenger. So they decided to play the trusty virus card. They both assured me that despite their misdiagnosed Windows and harddrive problems, they were very sure I had a virus. Dipshits. They offered to take my computer and, (in 3 or 4 days), fix the problem. I flatly refused. I let a guy do that once before and he replaced all my expensive, superior hardware with cheap inferior stuff that it was hard to tell from the other. Not gonna happen again. Besides there's March Madness happening all week. You can watch all the game live, or recorded on ncaa.com. This is the only basketball I ever watch except the live stuff. So I'm not gonna surrender my computer at this time.

Well they tried to get Eun Ja involved a few times. They called her and she tried to communicate to me what they were saying. I had no idea what she was saying so I thanked her and hung up. Then when they changed their story from replace Windows to not enough space on harddrive they called her again. AGAIN I couldn't understand her but I had understood the guys who speak less English. Anyway, I asked her not to try to help any more. lol We didn't call her when they tried the virus story.

So I basically told these guys to hit the road thanking them and being nice even though they had lied repeatedly to me, done nothing to help me and may have attempted to screw me big time and left me with about 85 fewer TV channels and, (I would find out later), a TON of adjustments made to my computer that I would have to UNdo. While he was at my computer the guy tried all kinds of things that changed the settings from what I'm comfortable with to what he thought, (and was wrong), would fix the problem. I am STILL finding things that I have to fix. Word to the wise: don't let a Korean on your computer for more than 2 minutes or it'll never be the same again. He changed fonts, favourites, settings, erased websites, names, passwords all kinds of stuff that I have been boggling my mind to retrieve all day long to fix what he fucked up.

HOWEVER, in the spirit of the new positivity I've found in Mokpo, I still have effective internet and I won't be charged for the cable TV I had, as far as I know. I can still use Yahoo beta. I just can't use webcam or send files or talk into a mike. AND internet is about half the price of what the GOOD internet was in Yangju. So it's a small price to pay I guess.

Oh, and by the way, OINK means Only IN Korea.