Internet and food delivery

Not much happened to me today, so I will take this time to write about two things that I couldn't find a place for before:

Internet: I have a love/hate relationship with technology. When it works like I want, I love it. Every other time, it is the force that stands between happiness and me. Something that nobody told me about the internet is that it automatically matches with the geography. What I mean by this is that I cannot access American Youtube. My webpages are filled with Korean text. I thought origionally I would like this because it would help me learn to read -- that is not the case. I want to know what the hell the Korean says:



I don't want to click that until I know what it is...

Granted that it isn't Korean, but I can't remember a time back home when I went to youtube and had to translate nearly every video title (some come through in English, like Tom Cruise's Scientology video). I've been surviving...but nobody told me it would happen like this. I thought I would need to visit like youtube.kr.com or something.



Food delivery. Many Koreans order their food like Americans order pizza -- with a delivery. There are often mopeds that ride around the streets (see also, sidewalks, between cars, everywhere) with food in their rear basket. After the food has been consumed, the dishes are left on the curb to be picked up later by the restaurant. Let's say that I order Kim Bop from the local establishment and ask for delivery. A nice man (I've only seen one female delivering like this) will bring me my food in a giant metal lunchbox (only way I can think of describing it). The driver leaves -- I think usually without a tip because it is rare to give tips for service. When I finish eating, I take all the dishes and leave them on the curb. Maybe the next day, the next week or however the system works, someone comes and picks up the dishes. Ada told me it is the restaurant reclaiming their supplies. She told me this on the second day I was here because apparently the store forgot about her dishes so the rotting food sat on her curb for a solid week. It is gone now.

Garbage works the same way in Seoul. I rarely see trash cans and instead see bags of trash sitting on the curb. Ada told me that if someone wanted garbage service, that person would need to buy a special bag to alert the sanitation service for pickup. I can see how it would be inefficient to work where one paid a monthly charge to have their garbage picked up, but wow, sometimes it just smells awful to walk by these bags of trash.

Today I saw a street dog for the second time in a week. The first time I saw it was when it was knocking over one of those trash bags. Today, I saw it running happily on the street. I think I am going to name that dog Erik. For the record, Erik is cute but can beat up all the other street dogs.