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 pass the time. Reality is rather boring under quarantine.
We spent a few hours laying out in the sun, passing around magazines, laughing at picture perfect Christopher Walken impressions and cursing the construction workers jack hammering away not a hundred meters up from us. That’s one thing that always amused and irritated me about Korea. There’s no such thing as noise pollution laws, or if there are they’re enforced about as well as red lights and monogamy around here, which is to say not at all. Last year we lived next to a construction site that operated seven days a week from 6am to 8pm with the sole intention of seeing how many people it could wake up. I still wake up early half the time, conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs after a year of hearing excited construction workers chanting their morning pep rally at dawn and doing calisthenics for the days labors.
Swine flu may not have yet claimed my girlfriend or me, but boredom certainly has. I watched her stare at Rachel Ray on TV this morning, fascinated as that cute spunky cooking host demonstrated how to make meals that kids would like. Here’s a girl who’s idea of a good time involves horror movies (the grosser the better), World of Warcraft, backpacking around dirt poor countries, and Bret Easton Ellis books and she’s actually fascinated with Rachel Ray.
Maybe the zombie infection has already started to take hold.
