July 2009
1 post
Shameless Self Promotion...
If you found the Under Quarantine blog amusing, I’ll be occasionally posting to my new blog: Kimchi Cheeseburger at the following URL:
http://kimchicheeseburger.tumblr.com/
As the first article says, I probably won’t post anything of interest and most gossip will be unsubstantiated, unconfirmed, and probably made up on the spot in a soju stupor and regretted the next morning like a...
May 2009
76 posts
Day Eight: Coda & Credits
Thanks for reading this and thanks for all your support!
This is the part where I get all mushy about the whole mess.
I’d like to give our sincerest thanks to the medical staff, they really pulled through and turned a tough situation into a great experience. I think everyone learned a lot in those first few days and once things got settled everyone was on the same team. Dr. Lee and the...
Day Eight: Hasta La Vista!
After four days of Tamiflu and 8 days under quarantine, we’ve been released or unleashed, depending on who you ask. No one has shown any symptoms the last few days, and all of our temperatures check out. Last night was pretty quiet in anticipation of our departure; the proverbial calm before the storm, and when morning came, it was organized chaos! Vans, cabs, and shuttle buses, all...
Day Seven: More Good News!
We’re getting out sooner than expected! Spirits are high and there’s a lot of laughter in the halls. Fingers crossed no one comes down with full blown pork fever in the next few days.
Day Seven: The Five Stages of Grief & Lando...
I touched upon this in a forthcoming article, but it should be noted that being in Quarantine is a lot like going through the Five stages of Grief.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
I think we’re all pretty much at the acceptance stage by now, though Denial was probably the most upbeat time in hindsight.
In other news, I received a nice email from the owner of my school...
Night Six: Redacted!
So an announcement came over the P.A. saying what day we would get out of quarantine. Being bored and within a 500 meter distance of my computer, I quickly tossed it up on the blog. I mean, after a rough day of Rachel Ray, Project Runway, and writing articles for a few different travel mags (maybe one of the best things to have come out of this, besides so much curry tonkastu I now hate the...
Day Six: Q & A
So the emails are starting to taper off a little bit, but I’m still getting about 100+ a day, far too many to respond to individually, which I apologize for. I’m doing my best to send response quickly but they usually build up too quickly to answer back right away.
Q: Why doesn’t your blog have comments?
A: I’ve been asked this a lot. Part of it is because Tumblr is...
Day Six: Same S***, Different Day
The public address system has been quiet for the last 48 hours. I have a feeling most officials are off bowing and crying at Roh’s funeral. The halls here are quiet with most doors closed. Visions of infected zombie-swine flu mutations changing their hosts into snouted frothing filthy foreign english teachers behind the closed doors flicker through my head offering something amusing to...
Day Six: Good Afternoon!
I slept in until 10:55 this morning. So deep in fact I didn’t even get out of bed for the routine ‘let me rape your ear canal’ temperature reading. And it was some of the best sleep I’ve had at all while I’ve been here.
I won’t lie. I was a little hung over today. Last night seemed like an appropriate time for people to unwind peacefully and we spent hours...
Night Five: An American who needs help in Seoul
This is totally unrelated to our A/H1N1 quarantine, but since so many wonderful and kind people have been visiting this site recently, sending emails and asking how you could help, please do what you can to help someone who’s in a truly desperate situation far worse than ours.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/05/american-needs-help-in-seoul.html
An except:
You may have seen Matt...
Night Five: Two Good Articles on the Korean Herald
Two good articles on the Korean Herald. The first is by Paul Kerry, who we’ve spoken to a few times over the last few days. The KH is actually one of the only newspapers to show any real interest in this situation, or at least enough to call up and ask questions and double check facts.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/05/29/200905290007.asp
The second is an...
Night Five: Guest Blog!
The following article is posted by a fellow detainee here.
The Hole That M—- Built
So Soju is an incredible alcohol.
Those of you who haven’t had it just think of sake without the diarrhea taste. You can drink a shit load of it before you’re even starting to get drunk. Later on in the night is a different story however of mindless wandering bantering and singing on rooftops with short...
Day Five: Cereal for Breakfast!
Wake up, roll out of bed. Present my ear to the nurse like a trophy so she can take my temperature. 36.3’ (97.4f).
Felt pretty nauseous yesterday and a little out of it. That kind of crappy disconnected ‘watching yourself from the 3rd person perspective’ as if you’re head’s floating above you. I doubt it was the pig flu, but rather the Tamiflu. I remember...
Night Four: OMG VISITORS!!1
A huge, HUGE thanks to Roboseyo, Benjamin Wagner, and the others whose names I didn’t catch who came by tonight to talk to us from the balconies. That was a great boost to everyones spirits, and I do have to apologize if I rambled on incoherently like Tom Hanks in Castaway. As my girlfriend just said wistfully while staring off at the distant city: “It’s just sooooo nice to see...
Night Four: Q & A
Q: Have you seen anything in the American press about your situation? I’ve been checking the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post for the past three days and still nothing. Has anyone even contacted you?
A: Several people here have contacted the U.S. press directly, via web, phone, or email, including myself personally. I’ve also received quite a few emails from friends and...
Night Four: Temperature Check
36.2’ (96.2f)
Glad I’m at normal range because I’ve had a headache for almost two weeks now and the hypochondriac in me is always paranoid I have some wacky new strain of A/H1N1.
In other news, there’s got to be a circle of Hell solely for hardcore gamers where you watch your girlfriend play Xbox shooters but miss the enemies all the time.
Me: “Dude, you missed...
Day Four: Blargh...
Tamiflu + Black Bean Noodles = Not a good feeling.
In other news, it’s been quiet all day. People shuffling about in slippers like at a mental institute, to and fro, mainly keeping to their rooms. The sounds of TV permeated the halls earlier. Now it’s like a ghost town…
Took a nap while my girlfriend played BioShock on the Xbox and had the most bizarre dreams. I actually...
Day Four: The Voice of God Speaks Again
Jenny, who has the terrible job of delivering more or less only bad news passed down by the Ministry of Health over the P.A. system just came on to announce the following:
The Ministry of Health has said it is very disappointed with our attitude about the quarantine.
We should stay to our rooms 24/7 and always wear our masks in our rooms as well.
We should minimize contact to no less than 2...
Day Four: Good Morning!
8am wake up. Roll out of bed, have my temperature taken by two nice polite Korean nurses (it’s normal, 36.4’). I think they’re still freaked out to see two foreigners sleeping in a bed together. I’ve thought it would be funny to hop up, drop pants, and spread cheeks, as if expecting a rectal temperature reading.
Also, we made a little more news. The New Tang Dynasty...
I just got, pretty much, the most amazing swine...
Night Three: All Quiet on the Waegook Front
What a wild 24 hours it’s been. I think the range of emotions, frustrations, and over all miscommunications in the last day has been enough to fill a Brett Easton Ellis novel with enough fluff to pad 600 pages. Spirits seem a lot higher tonight at almost midnight now that most people are getting a clear line of communication between ourselves and the representatives at the MInistry of...
Night Three: Irony
In other news, Outbreak is on XTM TV now and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate movie unless it’s followed up by Quarantine.
Night Three: Announcement
Our defacto voice of God, a real sweet teacher who had the rough job of middle-woman between the teachers and the Ministry of Health thrust upon her, just came over the P.A. system to announce the following:
We are going to be quarantined and released in 7 days.
They are looking into whether teachers will be paid for this time.
They are attempting to get us books and teaching materials. ...
Day Three: A Funny
Big thanks to Adam Beer for the following funny tip. Took me a minute to get it (I’m slow) but then I couldn’t stop chuckling.
“If you get an email from the Department of Health advising you not to eat any tinned Pork as a result of Swine Flu - just ignore it……………It’s Spam.”
Day Three: Q & A
Another round of questions and answers. Why? Because it sure beats watching bees mate, the paint peel, and fantasizing about running downstairs ripping masks off the CDC workers and oinking in their faces.
Q: Could you let me know your location?
A: Sure can! We’re at the Human Resource Development Center, a government run facility outside Seoul just a bit in Seocho-dong, close to Nambu...
Day Three: Entertainment
You know you’re bored when you actually justify why you’re watching The Devil Wears Prada by saying “it has a great twist at the end!”
Also, when four of you watch a bee flopping around on the rooftop and try to psychoanalyze why it’s flopping around.
Day Three: Contact!
A big update from here in the Hot Zone.
Spoke to two people today in the world outside these infected walls. I had a long conversation with a Jeff, a reporter at The Korean Herald. He asked great questions about what life was like inside. It sounds like the piece they’re running is going to be an ‘experience piece’, i.e.: what it’s like being in quarantine rather than...
Day Three: Korean Herald news
The Korean Herald ran this story.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/05/26/200905260048.asp
I find two things worrisome. First, there’s STILL no mention of the 51 of us being quarantined. Second:
“As they (the teachers) were found to have continued daily activities without recognizing their infection, epidemiologists are investigating further infection among...
Day Three: Good morning!
Woke up, got my temperature taken. A little low, 36.0 (98f) degrees, but at least it’s not high! Breakfast was a sandwich and some Dole OJ.
Many people have been emailing, asking how they can help (smuggling beer in, smuggling us out), so I got an email this morning from the US Embassy suggesting that we ask friends and family to contact the South Korean Embassy in Washington DC with...
Night Two: A quick thanks...and off to bed!
A quick thanks to all the people who’ve emailed us with well wishes, humor, funny anecdotes, cross blogs, blog-backs, blow backs and whatnot. And even a big ‘thank-you-veddy-kamsa’ to that prat that said we should be deported. I may need to get a bigger gmail account for all the love we’ve been getting here over the last 24 hours. It really does mean the world to us here...
