The Cult of Inconvenience

 This was going to be my "first trip of the year" post but Fate and my habit of self-sabotage to create blog fodder dictated otherwise. 

There are a lot of prerequisites to the full understanding of this post. You have to know about my long history of being screwed by Korean (and for that matter ALL) telecommunications companies. Because of that and the inconvenience of living in Sokcho, I had a useless phone plan. You have to know about the insane problem we all have settling into Korea nowadays because banks have a rule that you need a cell phone to get an account and most cellphone companies have the rule that you need a bank account to get a cellphone plan. At least a decent one. I needed to get paid so that's WHY I settled for a useless cellphone plan. Yes, although Korea is advancing in banking and cellphone technology, it is regressing in banking and cellphone convenience, at least for foreigners. It's all part of what I am going to entitle this post, the cult of inconvenience and, like so many things, it's not like Korea is alone in this, they just do it more openly and to greater extremes than other places. And the cult of inconvenience, one of the Satanic butt-babies of capitalism run amok, is nowhere more evident than in the travel industry. 

My case against my former employer is still ongoing as far as I can tell. (actually I think it's done so that's why I'm posting this today). I have been awarded my dismissal notice allowance that they illegally withheld for over six weeks and I have been told that the matter of my improper dismissal with zero just cause on the shabby grounds of "this teacher refuses to break the laws we order him to break" has been referred to the appropriate agency, board, or commission. (But I think they lied when they told me that) I have no idea what that means in terms of punishment for the school or damages awarded to me but I guess I'll just wait and see. (It means no punishment for the school and no awards for the hardship this caused me. Basically the government forced the university to pay me what they legally owed me and nothing more after booting me out of my home and forcing me to live for weeks in hotels eating out every meal. I get the punishment, they get the convenience) I also have no idea what that is doing to my immigration status and THAT makes me really nervous. The problem is I have no way of getting ahold of the Sokcho Immigration Office except for waiting for Mr. An to call me. He's the guy who has been extending my stay while this battle has raged on. But since my phone plan includes about 5 minutes of outgoing calls per month, I can't call him. I also can't call the 1345 general immigration information hotline (which, in the spirit of this post, really ought to be toll-free if convenience were a thing anybody gave half a hunk of shit about any more), and, again because INconvenience is IN, the HiKorea webpage and other pages like it where we once had the ability (with difficulty and frustration) to check our immigration status has been purposely upgraded in its difficulty and frustration for the users. Every time I put my information into those websites I get a message back that says, "No information available." From past experience I think this has to do with the creative spellings that are sometimes used for VERY important governmental agency websites. I have sometimes played Boggle and shuffled the letters of my name around and come up with the spelling the agency used, but often it's too hard to do so I've given up. It really sucks when you don't even know if the spelling is the problem and you try and try and try and... the cult of inconvenience 101.

So what I had to do was try to locate some payphones. For a place so phone-obsessed, and where there used to be payphones on hiking trails, they have successfully rid this country of them in a short period of time. They are HARD to find now! But I managed to find a few and even then when I tried to call Sokcho Immigration or the 1345 COLDline I would wait while they played music or told me how important my call was but all agents are currently busy with other callers, and then suddenly, "All agents are still busy, please call back later." This was followed by either a dial tone or a busy signal. I had managed to reach someone using a friend's phone to call 1345 and the person told me I had one month after the date of dismissal to change my immigration status. Since that time Mr. An had been calling me and asking if I was going to get a D-10 looking for work visa or leave the country or what. All I could tell him was I was waiting for the work grievance to be settled so he kept extending. Well now that it was partially settled I wondered if I needed to do something about my status. Both Mr. An and the guy at 1345 had told me that the employer HAD cancelled my E-2 visa shortly after dismissing me. Again, this should not be allowed since this presupposes the university had legitimate reason for dismissal, which, AGAIN again, they didn't. Now that the visa's cancelled, if it is decided that they fired me for any bad reason, I can't go back to work. I don't want to and imagine nobody ever does, but this makes buying out the employee's contract the only solution. I believe the government organizations see this as an extremely extreme thing to do (especially for a foreigner) and since the foreigner probably won't be able to make his/her case in English while the employer will, it's a tall task to get an unfair dismissal ruling to say the least. Oh I could do it with a lawyer to argue my case in Korean. In fact I have had several tell me I have a slam-dunk, open and shut, can't lose case here and they guaran-damn teed that I could get my contract completely bought out by the employer. But two of them told me that amount of money wouldn't cover their fee, one offered me his services for 8 million and another gave me an offer of 3 million retainer, some out-of-town expenses, and one month's pay contingent upon a ruling in our favour. My contract buy-out would probably have been about 15 million. But there are no guaran-damn tees in life and if there are, you don't get them from lawyers especially if you are a foreigner making a case in one of the most foreigner-hostile countries on the planet. Believe me, this hostility, or if you want to be more euphemistically PC, this "xenophobia" has represented the largest inconvenience of all for me in Korea and if I just added up all the money it has cost me, I could retire comfortably. 

But, as for my visa situation, I thought that maybe the best thing I could do was make a visa run to Japan. I'd leave the country, turn in my alien card, cancel my E-2 visa for sure, and return on a visitor visa. Sometimes you also need to have a plane ticket OUT of Korea when doing that but I planned on negotiating that once I got to Japan. At any rate, since I couldn't reach anyone I went to a travel agent I had used before named Khawaja at Nishaw Travel. This was Thursday and I wanted a ticket to Japan and back on Friday. He found me one for 7 AM to Osaka. Normally I am the guy who shows up WAAAAAY early for flights just to make sure I don't miss them. For this reason I hadn't even heard of a rule that check-in closes an hour before flight time. Well, that's the rule for Jeju Air, which was the airline for my flight. I guess this is something everybody knows so Khawaja just didn't tell me. Anyway, just to be sure I checked the good old internet. Google AI informed me that I definitely would be able to catch my 7 AM flight by taking the subway from Juan to Geomam then to the airport. Catch the subway at 5 and you'll get to the airport a little before 6 which will give you plenty of time to check in. 

Here's where my self-sabotage kicked in. Why did I trust the internet? Why did I trust Google? Why didn't I think of transfer time which is NOTORIOUSLY lengthy in Korea? Why didn't I ask the travel agent whose job it is to know these things? It all seems like no-brainer stuff NOW. I think I was just panicked about overstaying my visa and incurring a million-won fine. That's a thousand bucks. I didn't want to wait till I was able to get in touch with anyone, I just decided I had to go. But on Friday morning at 4 AM when I was getting ready I wasn't worried so much about my visa situation, I was worried about making my flight and thinking to myself every 30 seconds, "Why do I do these things to myself?" I got to Juan Station at 4:30 and already there were people waiting for the subway. This was encouraging. But we waited and waited while more and more people arrived. Finally at 5ish the train arrived. Well I had looked on the good old internet and discovered that from Juan to Geomam was 23 minutes and Geomam to Incheon Terminal 1 was 27 minutes. So if I spent ZERO minutes transferring between Juan and Geomam, and from Geomam to my flight's check-in counter, I could get there before 6 AM. 

I KNOW, EH? What a dope! Anyway, we got on the train at 5ish and it just sat there till 5:30. It went pretty much the way Google said. It WAS 23 minutes to Geomam then I literally RAN with all the other passengers through the LONG transfer and just barely made the train to the airport, which WAS 27 minutes. I guessed right at the 4-way intersection that I always guess wrong at and I made it to the check-in counter by 6:20. Not bad, not bad at all! The cute, young girl wearing the fake Jeju Air orangish uniform looked at my ticket and said, "Check-in for this flight is over." I said, "Yeah I thought it might be. Okay, what can we do?" She just looked blankly at me. Several other people asked for her help so it looked like she was just helping them before she answered my question, but she never answered my question. She had no idea what could be done. I gave her suggestions like, "Can I get a partial refund? Can I get on a later flight? Can I get my money back for the return ticket?" She just continued to look like she could help, but couldn't and didn't. The best she could do is look at my itinerary and tell me I have to contact the travel agent. Right. At 6:30 in the morning.

So I bypassed her and went directly to the Jeju Air ticketing window. There was a sign on it that said something like "We only take money, we don't give any," so I immediately figured there'd be no refund forthcoming. It turned out I was right. When I got to the window there were three young, pretty girls dressed in the flattering, form-fitting, orangy Jeju Air uniforms. Pretty but useless.

The girl who "helped" me was absolutely gorgeous! I wonder if people are less likely to lose their shit with pretty young girls. I had seen her before. Not HER specifically and not SEEN specifically, but I knew this girl. Oh yeah.... back to my struggles with telecommunications! "Hello I would like to cancel my Telus cable please?" "I am sorry, you can't do that here. Is there something else I could do?" "What else can you do?" "Anything but cancel." "Well how can I cancel? I've tried the place where I signed up and I've tried the website, they both referred me to you." "I understand your confusion and frustration sir, but I regret to tell you that there is nothing I can do to help." IT WAS HER!!! Only she wasn't Filipino this time, she was Korean and she wasn't on the phone, she was in person. But essentially the same person. These are what I've labeled the "buffers." They are middlemen, or usually middlewomen, put between customers and people who have the abilities to HELP customers. They are not actually employees of the actual company, nor do they know any actual facts or have any actual information about the company. They are there to tell you how sorry they are for the inconvenience it is their livelihoods to create. The cult of inconvenience lesson 2: the buffers.

As you might expect, the gorgeous buffers were highly empathetic but just as highly unhelpful. So I got back on the train to go back to the travel agent's office in Itaewon. I got to Itaewon and had Mcdonald's breakfast for lunch. It was about 8:30 but remember I was up at 4 and had breakfast then. Now comes one of my sidetracks. Not quite as aside as my usual sidetracks, but still an aside. Take a guess how many Americans enjoy coffee every day. According to the good old interweb up to 73% of Americans drink coffee every day. The average person has 3 cups a day. Do you know how many drink WATER every day? About 75%. Yeah. Coffee is like water to the American. Now, how many of those Americans drink their coffee black? 20%. The vast majority of Americans "color" their coffee with cream, creamer, milk, or some dairy substitute. And I am one billion percent positive I have had Mcdonald's coffee in Korea with one of these:

But there is a fad that might be more popular than the cult of inconvenience here in Korea and that's coffee. Not REAL coffee but the trendy, expensive, maybe Italian-inspired, environmentally horrible bean juice that comes in the cups that people "on-the-go" think make them look busy and professional so much they sometimes carry empty ones around and pretend to caffeinate like little kids having a coffee party. You can tell what I think of those. I prefer Dunkin Donuts, Tim Horton, drip coffee. That's what it's called now. My music is called classic and my coffee is called drip. But that won't change me. I'm a classic drip. And although Mcdonald's HAS the uppety high-maintenance Americano coffee now with all it's additives, they still offer the drip coffee that's made in a pot with no "tamping" or "frothing" or fluffing or buffing. And they have actual milk that they put in the "lattes." Go figure since latte literally means milk. But I double dog dare you to try to get milk or cream or any kind of whitener or lightener in your coffee at Mcdonald's any more. It's just not done! It's really hard to get it anywhere actually! It just seems wrong to call it "Americano" and not offer milk which 80% of Americans put in it, especially at the most American restaurant in the world. I asked politely and in Korean if I could get milk in my coffee and got lied to. The Mcwench actually told me they don't have milk there. That's all I'm saying about that.

Except that it gave me another thing to be pissed off about on this day. So I made my way up the hill to my travel agent's office for the first time that morning. I had already reached my goal of 6000 steps. My phone doesn't record if they are uphill steps like in Itaewon or running steps like in the airport train transfer so I had more than my fair share of exercise for the day. One positive. Gotta cling to the positives sometimes. Ac centuate the positive e liminate the negative... If only life were a song!

As I am getting to the top of the hill where my travel agent (and damn near EVERYTHING in Seoul) is, I realized something: it was Friday. Being unemployed I lose track of the days of the week. Had I thought yesterday while buying my ticket that the next day was Friday it might have been enough to make me think twice about getting it. It seems like I always have this inconvenience when buying my air tickets. You see Friday is the Muslim holy day and my travel agent is a Muslim. It is not my purpose to start slagging all religion here but religion DOES seem to participate in the cult of inconvenience, does it not? How many Christians would rather be watching football on Sunday than sitting in church? I remember thinking of the absolute rip-off it was being all dressed up and in church during a large portion of my two days off of school per week every time I was forced to go to church. I daydreamed all through Sunday School about tobogganing and street hockey and bike riding and football and hockey card trading and mountain climbing and who would win a fight between Spiderman and Batman... I tell ya I've been inconvenienced enough by religion in my lifetime! But on this day it wasn't even MY religion that inconvenienced me. I got to the shop that Khawaja works out of and the door was locked and nobody was there. It was a cold day but there's a couch outside the shop so I took by backpack off and sat on the couch.

See the sign? And you can see the couch too... directly below the sign. What you CAN'T see are the pigeons that live in the neighbourhood. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. 

I sat on the couch unable to dial anybody with my crap phone plan and unsure if Khawaja had received the text messages I had been sending him since early in the morning from the airport.

Then my first bit of good luck for the day.

They say being shat on by a bird is good luck don't they? Well one of those pigeons landed on that sign, hung its arse over the edge and bombed me. 

I guess I was lucky. Here's how I have to reckon good luck in my life: You can see that the shit hit the steel railing and the corner of the couch. I just got the splatterings on my sock and pant leg, not the main load of the shit so yay, good luck for me! 

I shit you not, this really happened! 

Let me back up. I typed that I was unable to call Khawaja but that's not true. I had changed my phone the day before while waiting to get my ticket to Osaka. Just a couple doors down (or more accurately, UP) from the travel agency is a phone shop. It's run by another Muslim. I don't know where these guys are from but they speak several languages. Korean, Hindi, English, and some others. Probably Russian in there too. I asked the phone guy about it and he says you have to live and deal with folks all day long who speak Korean. That's how he learned. I have never done that or, frankly, wanted to do that. Anyway, he gave me a cheaper phone plan with unlimited calling and data. Friggin' Sokcho crappy phone plan DONE! So in reality THIS was the one positive to come from the whole story.

But it's not over yet. While waiting for Khawaja to get outta church I called the airline to see if I could get a refund for my ticket. I got the erstwhile "Our operators value your call but they value doing nothing just a little bit more..." Then suddenly somebody answered! It was a girl who couldn't speak English. This is Korea. All the English helpline workers can't speak English. I can tell you that in the time I've been here this has gotten worse, not better. They used to at least make an effort. But Korea is becoming MORE protectionist and less global in their own country and they expect people to use their language when they are here. Even if you don't particularly love being here.

The girl told me she'd get an English speaker to call me back. I said, "Sure you will," and hung up. To my surprise - convenience! An English speaking lady called me back! So I explained my situation and actually we had a good laugh together about my shitty day and I DID include the birdshit story you better believe it! She was nice, but not nice enough to give me good news. She said I probably wouldn't get much back, but she wasn't sure because... you guessed it, I would have to talk to the ticket issuer. Is this the way airlines do business now? They relinquish all responsibility for their tickets to the people who sell them? And the people who sell them? Do they get the airlines' refunds if someone misses a flight? And they have a choice of whether to share it with the ticket purchaser or not? Is this how it works? It was getting close to 1 PM. That's when my return flight from Osaka to Seoul was due to take off. Would I forfeit the refund if I didn't locate Khawaja by then? Is THIS why he wasn't answering my calls?

I wandered around Itaewon. To tell the truth I was looking for a beer but nothing is open in the morning in Itaewon. Nothing with beer anyway. I had a coffee at Paris Baguette. I asked politely in Korean if they could put a little milk in it. THEY DID!

The day was looking up. I would have rather had a beer. I would rather have had cream too, but it was a good cup of coffee. I wasn't even halfway through when I got a text from Khawaja that said he was at the shop and I should go back again. But I finished that coffee before doing so. 

It was my 4th trip up the hill to the travel agency but I finally got the deal settled. I only got the taxes back. I don't know if this is Jeju Air's rule or Khawaja's rule. He said the two parts of the trip are considered one ticket so I couldn't get a refund for the return ticket. Again, his rule or Jeju's? I think maybe he pocketed some money for the refund even though I worked just as hard as he did, maybe harder. But, travel agents are not looking out for our convenience either. What could I do? 300 bucks down the shitter! 

By the time I had received my refund - my paltry, insignificant refund - it was past noon. It was too early for supper and STILL none of the pubs were open. It would have been DAMNED convenient to have a place to grab a beer at noon on THAT day let me tell you! But it was probably better that there wasn't, so with my tail between my legs, pissed off, shat on, and fully shitkicked by the world and the cult of inconvenience, I slouched home to Incheon. 

Stay tuned for part two.

First Hike of the Year

 Since early December the majority of my thoughts, efforts, writing, talking, texting, chatting, and stress have been about the whole work situation. Because it is not, as yet, resolved I STILL can't get into it in any detail here. 

Instead, I'll tell you about something I did today that was good. A few things. We'll start this year off on a bright note. I'll do what everybody says I should do: I'll say "Yay," though I walk through the valley of death. But I will fear no evil though I have no rod, staff, or shillelagh to comfort me. I shall hike and it may restoreth my soul. And lo (and high) I didst hike and it was good.  

I have been getting my steps every day since moving into my capsule abode, not just because I need to go out for food, but to keep my sugar down and my spirits up. I haven't hiked anywhere that would get me fresh air or allow me to commune with nature though. And, to be honest, no stairs, no grade, 6000 steps is a cinch. It hasn't really been challenging. Aside from getting me out of the hotel and giving me seen time instead of screen time, the walking has not done a world of good. I have seen a little bit of Incheon but a lot less than I'd like to because I've been so caught up in research, rules, and legalities. During one or two of my outings I noticed a little green on the GPS not far from where I am staying. Today after watching the US get knocked out of the World Jr. Hockey Tournament and watching the Canadian boys dispatch the Slovaks with aplomb, I decided to take a shower and then go for a better walk than usual. 

I almost walked right past it but found what was called Moonlight Park on Naver Maps. I know it 

doesn't look like much but that's what I wanted. I haven't hiked for a long time and it wasn't long before my body was screaming that at me. 

It was just a puny hill with some exercise equipment and I saw a few adults and a few kids playing on swings and exercising on equipment. It was pretty easy to tell that there was a path up one side of the hill that looped over to the other side and came back down again. The side I was on had stairs and as I am always saying, I said today with the whiniest tone I could get away with in public, "Stairs..." But luck was mine and there was a path right beside the stairs. I took that right up to the top. 

At the top I was confronted with my first choice of the day. If you had heard how I was wheezing, coughing, spitting, and sputtering all the way up the puny, little hill you might have suggested I turn around and go back down to the road where there is a hospital. St. Mary's Hospital I think it is. 

Truth be told I had expected to make it a lot farther before hitting the wall than a hill that had about 50 stairs. So although everything in my pudgy, soft, sedentary body was telling me to just pack it in before I cough up a lung or stroke out and die on a hill in Korea like so many of our fallen comrades, I pressed on. But this was no Heartbreak Ridge, this was no Pork Chop Hill, this was no Khe Sanh, Langdok, or Hill 364 where so many of Walter Sobchak's generation gave their lives to die face down in the muck, if this was skiing this wasn't even the bunny hill! I pressed on out of embarrassment not heroism. I chose not to loop back down and be done with it. I saw an opening in the fence and I went through it.

This was what awaited me. "Awwww stairs.... ;-(" I had to get to the top of these stairs without stopping because there was another hiker coming down and I didn't want his to see me stopping like a girl's blouse. I even held my breathing as much as I could as I passed acting like the hike wasn't destroying me like Anthony Joshua did to Jake Paul. My whole body was feeling like Jake Paul's jaw looked the next day. 

I almost felt like I was in prison or the military and I HAD to keep going or get KP or a longer sentence. Maybe it was the cheery barbed wire narrow enclosure. I dunno...

But eventually it DID open up and it started to look more like a hiking trail and less like a tour of Vietnam. 

Although Vietnam never gets this cold. Or has this type of foliage. Or Korean signage. Yeah, bad analogy. 

At any rate, if you notice, the hike leveled out too and I was able to catch my breath for the first time. This invigorated my aerobic ambitions and renewed my resolve. I kept plugging on.

It may sound like I'm well into this hike but I'm sure this was at like the thousand step point. I had a second decision to make. 

Although it has been a while I am an experienced hiker of the Korean hills and I pride myself on being able to follow the trail maps even if they don't have English and my Google Translate camera is not working.

Well, this map had no English and my Google Translate was not working. A lesser man might have turned around at this point being so close to where the hike had begun and almost (but not 100%) sure to find my way back the way I had come. 

But I read the word Byeongweon. That means hospital. It looked very much like I could keep going, get off the green where I was and onto the brown trail, go by the gazebo, then back onto the green trail and down to the hospital. That's pretty much where I started.

I soldiered on. The decision was not made lightly for you see there has seldom been a hiking trail, road, highway, track, subway tunnel, path, or any form of thoroughfare in Korea (in all of my experience) that ends up or comes out where you might expect it to. This could have meant for all the world that I was just making the half-way point farther away since I might have to just turn round and retrace my steps all the way back. Was I ready for that? Well, I actually felt like the worst was behind me. I had hit the wall, scaled it, and Humpty Dumptied down the other side without needing any of the King's men or horses to put me back together again. Nobody? Ever wonder what help the horses could have been putting a big egg back together? Just me? 

If you blow this pic WAAAY up you'll see a lady in full Korean hiking regalia like I described in a previous post. Even the guy in front of me had his fancy boots, pack, and titanium hiking stick. 

Another decision. Should I walk all the way up that graveyard hill or should I turn right where I think the hospital path is? Do I satisfy my curiosity or keep it simple? I bet I know what you think I did. But I was feeling the burn now. The rush of exercise that I hadn't felt since working out at the gym at the university I no longer work at. I also thought it might be a good view.

This was about half way up. It WAS, as it turned out, a good view. I can't tell you what those buildings are. I think the circular one is a coliseum where they take all the foreign workers who have disobeyed the Korean employers who ordered them to break Korean laws and make them fight lions, tigers, and ligers for the amusement of the ruling class. 

But I could be mistaken.

It was a 20% grade and I did it without stopping. Well except to take that picture above. But I wasn't breathing as hard as when I summited the bunny hill. So I was feeling proud. 

When I got to the top, this is what I saw. More graves. I don't know what I was expecting. 

Beyond the path continued and there were even more graves, but I looked back down the hill and saw something that made me turn around and go back down.

By golly it was the Gazebo!

20% downhill? It's a lot easier than 20% uphill.

So in no time I had reached the gazebo. 

Here's where I had to make another choice. Should I use some of the exercise equipment here and make this a full body workout?

There was bench press, curls, twists, sit-ups, pull-ups, flies, and of all things...

Yeah! This machine gives you all the exercise of hiking up a mountain without actually hiking up a mountain although you need to hike up an actual mountain to get that even better than the real thing feeling of the machine that makes you feel just like you are hiking up a mountain. 

It reminded me of those people who go to concerts and film the whole things on their phones looking at the phone screen version of the real thing they are capturing electronically. 

Maybe I should have just watched a few episodes of Hiking With Kevin Nealon. 

I left the gazebo area and immediately found another decision pole with three arrows on it, one of which had the word byengweon on it. I followed that trail.

It got thin and woody. Nobody else was on this trail. I started thinking that maybe this was a different hospital. Maybe it wasn't St. Mary's just down the road from my capsule hotel. Maybe I'd have to just turn around and go back.

Oh well, at least I was going downhill. 

This empty lot is where the trail came out. It was completely surrounded with fence. There were some signs in red that I couldn't understand and STILL Google Translate camera refused to translate for me. 

Luckily I found a hole in the fence and went out to the street.

This was the street. I just walked a little bit along this street and suddenly I saw the byeongweon. It was an angle I hadn't seen St. Mary from before but I was pretty sure it was her.

Before long I got to the main crossroad and saw an E-mart 24. It was the E-mart 24 at the end of my road! The one that's not open 24 hours but never mind. I had come off the mountain ON MY ROAD!

This NEVER happens! And I looked at my step count. Just below 7000. Pefectamundo!

So you can bet I'll be doing that hike again! 

The cherry on top was that I realized I had skipped lunch and I had been craving a sub with some soup for a while. There was a Subway right on the corner. I'd never noticed it before. 

But before I get too excited I noticed while buying my Italian cold cut combo that my alien card was missing from my wallet. I didn't panic because all my cards were there and so was the cash. Nobody would steal a person's alien card. I mean, unless they're lucky enough to look exactly like me.

I then remembered I had been to the pension office in Incheon the day before and the guy had kept my passport, bank book, and alien card. I had to ask him for them back just before leaving. I must have only got my passport and bank book back. So now I have to go back to that office on Monday. That's the kind of hiking I've been doing lately. It's not as healthy.

Hopefully they still have my card there. If not I could be in trouble. 

Tuesday I have a meeting in Gangneung during which I just might need that card. I have no doubt it will lead to some really great content for this blog too. 

Whether or not I'll be able to publish it remains to be seen...

As always, wish me luck.