My Superbowl and phone adventure

Brian asked me last night if I wanted to wake up at 7AM to go to an Irish pub in the foreigner part of Seoul to watch the Superbowl. Who could resist? In the bar, I saw more Westerners than the last two days combined (once I landed in Narita, that is). I cheered for the Patriots because I think the mascot is better -- when was the last time you saw a giant on currency? Exactly.

Brian was sick all day, so we got back to Ada's place around 2PM or so. I found this really nice phone on Seoul's craiglist on Sunday and I emailed the seller to try to meet with her. I wasn't really comfortable going on my own to the station she suggested (Hoegi) which was about an hour and a half away from me. My discomfort stayed with me, but I really wanted to get this phone, which meant that I had to go by myself to get the phone.

Since I hadn't met her, I gave her a description of how to find me: "tall white guy with a blue sweatshirt and a black coat." Her description was just a tiny bit vague: "I am a short Asian woman in a white coat." Number of short Asian women I saw while I waited: 10,000. Number of short Asian women in white coats: 500. I mean, come on, give me a little more direction on what to look for. Wear a scarf too (short Asian women wearing a scarf and white coat: 40), or a hat (short Asian women wearing a hat and white coat: 70), or a surgical mask (short Asian women wearing a surgical mask and white coat: 25) or combine them all (short Asian women wearing a scarf, white coat, hat and surgical mask: 3). She also didn't capitalize Asian, but I went crazy typing this up and leaving that as it is. So I bought the phone when she found me, costing about $60.

Well, the phone works fine, but it needs registration. I haven't quite fully figured out what that means, but my best guess is that it needs something like a SIM card. The woman told me how to activate the phone by going to SK telecom and asking for help. I left the subway station expecting to see SK telecom like right in front of me (she told me it would be). Nah, it is better to make me look for it. I got to practice my Korean by walking into every store nearby that had the letters "S" and "K" somewhere in their sign. Mostly consisted of me asking in Korean "do you understand English?" The first person did and helped me out by telling me to go next door -- where nobody spoke English. I showed the logo on my phone and gave a confused look, so the guy in the store gave me directions in complicated Korean, but I think I understood his hand signals: "go outside, walk left and give a big smile."

I walked around a little more to see this HUGE 30 story building with SK on the doors. I thought I might be in luck. The inside of the building reminded me of that tower in Die Hard -- there were two receptionists at the desk watching videos around the hotel. I asked if they understand English and luckily one did. She gave me a little map and pointed out the SK Telecom building (I don't really know what was inside the other SK building) which reminded me of the MAC store. The person at the front of the SK Telecom building spoke a little English, but had to call someone to help tell me that I can't use the phone on a prepaid system. How sad...

I got back to Ada's place successfully and with no trouble. The first thing I wanted to do was to play with this cool Korean phone. Let me tell you, this is so amazing! It has the ability to play downloaded videos, has like 10 games, has the entire Seoul subway system, an English-Korean dictionary, a virtual pet (I named mine Erik), internet (I think, there is a picture of the Internet Explorer but I can't click it until I register), email and some other features that made me point them out to Brian (he was far less impressed than I expected). That virtual pet feature is maybe the coolest thing: Erik and I played each other in a pong-like game, we chased butterflies by the garden, we looked at pictures together...yeah, it is pretty amazing. Oh, the backgrounds are animated too! I've never tried to build a facade that it is hard to impress me, but wow, this phone is awesome.

My perspicacity for Korean has improved as well! On my second day it came quicker that I need to say "Shilehamnida" (spelled phonetically) instead of "excuse me." When people wave at me, I still instinctively say "hello."