Saturday 22 December 2012

(Day 154) Seoul Nambu Correctional Facility-day 59 D-97

sit-upschair-lifts
1000
Breakfast, lunch & dinner = December 7


It may seem like a small and petty thing to be upset about item delivery but when you can only order in receive certain things on certain days of the week it makes all the difference in the world.
For example, the fallout from Wednesday means I couldn't order coffee. Now, you're saying “so, what's the big deal?”

This means I have to wait until today to order more, which means I won't actually get it until next Tuesday, 4 days from now, plus the two days that just passed. That's six days, in case you happened to have failed grade 1 math. 6 days without coffee produces the headaches I have suffered from since yesterday and also means no breakfast since that's all I have other than rice, kimchi and soup.

In addition, last Monday, 5 days ago, I ordered a bar of laundry soup. This should have been delivered Wednesday. It wasn't delivered yesterday either. So that means I don’t have any soup to wash my socks, underwear or undershirt. Arguably the stinkiest of all laundry.

On Tuesday, I ordered snacks that should have been delivered yesterday along with my soap that should have been delivered the day before if it wasn't a holiday...

I was told it would be delivered today-- Friday. Now you're all saying “so, what's the big deal? You’ll get everything today... “ But, it wasn't delivered.

The bigger deal is I ordered snacks on Tuesday specifically to receive the snacks delivered on Thursdays because the snacks available on each day are different. I don't want Korean shrimp-flavoured chips. I hate shrimp-flavoured chips or octopus or squid or any chips that taste vaguely like fish. Chips are made with potatoes, but not in this fucking country! And especially not in this damned jail full of Koreans. If I get all of my items I ordered on Monday and Tuesday, which is only soap, notebooks and snacks, the kind of soap and notebooks are unimportant, but I'll be forced to buy snacks I wouldn't eat if you gave them to me let alone pay for them out of my own very limited funds.

 It may seem small and petty to be upset, but at this point, getting the items I ordered is the most important, exciting part of my day. I have nothing else to look forward to. I'm in a small room with nothing to do but sleep and if I try to do that, the guard comes and bangs on my door to wake me up because I'm not allowed to sleep during the day.

All the other inmates can read or watch TV, but I can't because all the books and TV are in Korean, so what am I supposed to do? Not liking Korean dramas or rice or fish flavored chips always produces the same reaction—“Are you crazy? Everybody likes rice, kimchi and soup for breakfast... Or rice at every single meal...”
 If by ‘everybody’ you mean every Korean in Korea or everybody in this prison, I'd like to point out one very important critical fact that’s been overlooked-- I'm not a goddamned fucking Korean!
And they're pretty fond of pointing that out when I try to adapt and understand—“Oh, you're not Korean. You wouldn't understand what ‘Han’ means,” but real quick to forget when I refuse to do things their way-- “you're in Korea! You do things Korea way!”

I've met some really nice cool individuals, but as a group (and this is actually true with most groups) this country homogeneous people leave a lot to be desired. And before the argument starts I've lived, worked and made a lot of money off of this country, I came here and started that way, but I haven't made any money off of Koreans in almost 3 years. 90% of my clients are foreigners and 90% of the 10% left over are Korean-Americans. The only thing Korea has done for me lately is take my money-- not provide it.

Forcing the taxpayers to pay for my fines, feed and house me, is my way of sticking it to the Man. But if I have to follow their rules, shouldn't they have to follow their own rules too? If no one follows the rules, we have corruption and anarchy-- and corruption is one of the biggest problems with this country-- along with motorcycles driving on the sidewalk, a high vehicle fatality rate and the second highest rate (after Japan) of suicide in the OECD

There's a downside to Korean media touting is horn every time Korea is mentioned in the Western media. I learn all the bad things as well as all the Hallyu.

I can't wait to get out of here just so I can find something else to write about other than Koreans. Sometimes, I actually quite like the people and things here, but you could never have guessed that from these rants...

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