19.09.2007: Day One Syndrome ...

Okay ... time to bring Ranting Manor out of hiatus and let you know what I'm up to, which is basically this: I arrived last night in Seoul, and I've now been here for just over 24 hours. Day One (as you'll see) has been something of an epic, so let me give you the gist of it.

I've got a week in South Korea before flying on to Almaty, Kazakhstan, to start a new teaching job. While I'm here, the plan is to catch up with some former students, look around Seoul a little bit and head out of town to take in a bit of mountain scenery. At least, those are the fun parts. I also have one rather crucial thing to accomplish in Seoul. Kazakhstan has no embassy in Australia, so I had to choose a third country to travel to in order to pick up my business visa. I chose Seoul over a few other options, more or less on the rationale that I loved my Korean students in Aust and NZ and I wanted to get a glimpse of their homeland. So before I can continue my journey, I have to sort out visa issues here.

Before I'd even arrived in South Korea, my school in Almaty had organised to have a visa waiting for me at the embassy in Seoul. However, I still had to go through an application process before I could actually lay hands on it. And this, not surprisingly, is where my carefully-thought-out plan started to go fail-shaped.

When I turned up at the embassy today, the staff looked over my paperwork, cross-checked it with the paperwork my school had sent them, dragged me into an interview room full of enormous wooden furniture and serious-looking book cases, grilled me like a pork rib on a Korean B.B.Q., then told me I'm not eligible for the 12-month business visa I need because of [insert some immigrational technicality here]. The best they could offer me was three months, if I'd come back on Friday. And what could I do about this? Well, not a lot, really. When you're just a lone foreigner trying to navigate a bureacracy you don't really understand, The Word of The Embassy is law. So I left them with my passport and stepped out into the pouring rain, feeling less-than-fabulous (as one does).

That was my first disappointment.

With nothing else pressing to do with the remainder of my day, I wandered around bits of the city for a few hours - losing the way, finding the way, and just generally trying to absorb things. I then returned to my hostel and attempted to book a tour of the D.M.Z., the border zone between North and South Korea. This has been on my personal Things To Do Before You Die list for years, just under "See the Northern Lights" and "Have a cappuccino at the cafe in Iceland that reportedly sits on the spot where two of the Earth's tectonic plates intersect". So of course, when I decided to come to this country I knew I had to do the tour.

Having found the tour company's details, I rang to enquire about times, pick-ups etc., and all was going smoothly until I brought up the fact the Embassy of Kazakhstan had my passport and I only had a copy with me. At that point, the discussion effectively ended. Without a passport, it seems I'm as likely to tour the D.M.Z. as I was to see the Northern Lights during a four-day period of relentlessly overcast skies in northern Norway (and don't get me started on that story).

So then I thought "Alright, no D.M.Z., no 12-month visa. Let's just settle for dinner with a friend." I had the phone number of a former student named Hyeong Jung (a.k.a. "Jack") who lives here in Seoul, and I knew he was keen to meet up with me if possible. This seemed like a fairly achievable plan. Or at least it did up until the point when I called the number, and was answered by someone who definitely wasn't Jack (I could tell, 'cause she was female and didn't speak a word of English, whereas Jack is male and studied with me for three months). Try as I might, I couldn't get this non-Hyeong Jung type person to understand that I wanted Jack to come to the phone - not even by employing the time-honoured method of repeating the same phrase in the other person's language, only a little slower each time. So that was that.

Meanwhile, the skies above Seoul spent the entire day perfecting their impression of a South Korea-sized bucket being emptied on the city through a giant collander.

And that was my epic Day One - epic in terms of disappointment, more than anything else.

The thing that strikes me most, though, is that I'm feeling relatively okay. I mean, I'm definitely not thrilled, but it's struck me that a couple of years ago I would've been far more crushed about the embassy stuff than I am now. I guess this is where it helps to have a Big Scary Russian Adventure in one's past. For one thing, the Moscow Experience (along with my difficult start in Auckland) taught me that you can't just uproot your life and take it elsewhere, and expect that things will run as smoothly as Cityrail doesn't. There are going to be times when everything seems to be unravelling at a great rate ("like a tapestry and some tiny kittens", as Bill Bailey would say). The unravelling seems far less end-of-the-worldy now than it did the first time around.

So there you go. Day One was a bit of a disaster overall ... but hey, that's Day Ones for you.

On the upside, the other reason why I'm not overly panic-stricken is the calming influence of the extremely helpful and friendly Korean folk. From the taxi driver who spontaneously decided to share his breakfast of pung-oppang* with me to the various people who I've asked for directions, only to find myself being actually taken to the place I asked about, these people really seem keen to smooth the path of visitors to their country. It's very cheering in a (real or perceived) crisis.

One specific example I wanted to mention (fairly minor, but with added cute value): on the way back to town from the embassy, I managed to get quite lost, so when I passed a tiny English school in a suburban shopping street I decided to go in and ask for help. I walked in to the school - actually a single classroom / computer lab - to find a lesson in progress. The Korean English teacher stopped the lesson and offered to help me; all I had to do in return was say a few words to her class, which comprised about half a dozen ridiculously cute tiny people. I said "Hello, I'm Anthony, what's your name?" to one of them (who'd been asking the teacher questions to relay to me), and she responded by running behind her teacher and hiding. As she peeked out, grinning, from her hiding place, a couple of her classmates saw an opening and happily took up the conversation from there. The others just kind of stood around dumbfounded (probably not used to a 'native' accent, and thinking "What the Hell is this guy saying?"). It was a fun little reminder that I shouldn't be quite so nervous about the prospect of teaching the tiny people again, which I'll be doing in just over a week's time.

Anyway, I got all the help I needed and a bit extra from the teacher, which has been pretty standard here so far. Let's hope that continues - unlike the Day One Syndrome that followed me around on this wet and humid Wednesday in Seoul. Tomorrow, with a day to spare before my next trip to the embassy, I've decided to play tourist. I'll let you know if I see anything notable :-)

Until then ... live well!

Anthony.

* Pung-oppang: fish-shaped pastry with red bean filling. (Calorie-packed, but delicious!)