Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jeff in Korea at 10:37 am on Tuesday, February 15, 2005

The other day my brother and I went to pick up Warcraft III. This seemingly simple task required us to cross a street via an underground walkway.

To get to the stairs going down, we had to push our way through a group of three men standing at the top of the stairs for no readily apparent reason.

At the bottom of the stairs was a set of four doors. There were no signs indicating such, but three of the four doors were locked. We discovered the doors were locked after our first three attempts to pass through them failed. We were confronted with exactly the same situation at the stairs going up; three doors locked and no sign.

At the top of the stairs, there was a large delivery truck parked on the sidewalk between the stairs and the entrance of the computer store. To get into the computer store, we had to semi-circumnavigate the truck and wind our way through a few stacks of computer equipment on the sidewalk and stairs.

The experience was best summed up by my brother’s plaintive cry of, “[expletive]! Why must crossing the street be a stressful event??”

N.B. While writing this entry on my Palm Pilot on a train to Taegu for a meeting, l was in the first class car of the KTX. About 30 minutes into the 1-hour trip, the train waitress tapped me on the shoulder. She checked my ticket and informed me that I was sitting in seat 5A rather than seat 6A where I should have been. I was politely asked to move to the proper seat, so I collected my gear and moved one row back. I smiled and took my proper seat in the in the 36-passenger train car that was occupied by only myself and one other person.

3 Comments »

Comment by you

15 February 2005 @ 4:57 pm

I guess it’s the principle that matters (?)
Or she just wanted to talk to you.

Comment by Neil

16 February 2005 @ 9:14 am

Haha. If you want stressful try walking along the sidewalk parallel to Konkuk University in Seoul in the evening. People standing, stopping, walking 5 across, texting, turning, staring and running. Enough to drive you mad. And the odd 250cc motorcycle weaving his way through all of this with a load of propane gas tanks stacked on the back. And this is on a weeknight!

Comment by allan w horbach

16 February 2005 @ 8:04 pm

You know. When Koreans force these stupid, nazi rules. I think it might be a case of “hey, look at us. We can follow rules too.” Which might be a perversed way of them trying to do the western way. At least they’re not peeing in front of you like they did when I first came over here in the 70’s.

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