Things That Are Opseyo

Last night I rented Sahara, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. I'd never even heard of it before, and with good reason I guess. It was very "eh," and just never managed to grab my attention. I had to keep the remote control at hand, as the volume would rocket out of control during the action scenes, and calm to a whisper otherwise. The video tape ran out abruptly before the movie ended, so I suppose I'll never know if they all perished. When I took it back to the video store I borrowed a pen and paper and drew an illustration of the cassette's troubles.

The video store girl understood what I meant after I pointed to the tape, and then kind of hemmed and hawed about what to do to rectify this problem. Either that, or she was trying to sort out the English for "tough luck, SUCKER! Bwaaaaa ha ha ha!!" I smiled and waved it off, "kenchenayo!" (It's ok!)

When I was rooting around in my bag for the video to return, I came across my empty CD envelope for the Music Manager software for my MP3 player. Excellent. I left it at the PC Room last Saturday after successfully uploading nothing to my MP3 after 3 wasted hours. I ROCK!

So I gave up my weekly post-lesson dinner with the boss so I could go by the PC Room to retrieve my CD and try again to maybe upload a couple tunes. I walked in and went to the terminal where was a few days ago. Nothing. So I went to the lady and explained my problem. She shook her head. No. I said "really?"

Again, "no." And that was that.

It amazes me for easy it seems for people to just slam a door on something without putting any real effort at all into it. I'm not like that. I like to persevere.

A similar thing happened in Masan back in 2002 when I retardedly left MY UNIVERSITY DEGREE at a PC room after taking it there to be scanned. When I went back to the PC Room and explained, the guy replied by crossing his arms at me. So I called a friend on my cellphone and had them explain in Korean to the guy what I was looking for. Same thing, "Nope, it's not here." I spent a couple moments looking at the shelves behind the guy, and then pointed happily to it. "There it is! Issoyo!!"

So after being told my CD was gone, I wasted an hour trying to download the music manager online, but it looks like I need the serial number from my MP3 player, and I'll be damned if I can find it. It's not on the device or on any of the almost all-Korean paperwork it came with.

I finally went back and convinced the PC Room lady to quit multi-tasking (she was happily killing bad guys in a computer game at one terminal, while watching a Korean drama on the neighbouring monitor. Watching the back of her head looked like she was at a tennis match!) She went to the terminal I was at when I'd last seen her, the previous Tuesday. I explained I had been there on Saturday, at THIS OTHER computer, and the disc wasn't there either. She went back to the front desk and had a half hearted look around. She told me the guy who was in on Saturday was coming in at 12 (by pointing to her watch-less wrist and flashing me a one-two.)

When the guy finally came in, they talked a moment, and then she walked over to me with a large stack of CDs. Mine was on the top.

Just like the paper fasteners I need for the Halloween crafts, and the black furry material I'm needing to make some cat ears, I've been told I can't find them in Korea. Well, there's got to be something we can find somewhere to make do, surely? I mean, even if I have to buy a plush toy and borrow its ears!

I'll buy that line of thinking if we're talking about unicorns or the Easter Bunny, "I've never seen either, so they must not exist." But with things I can find in the first 10 different stores I can think of off the top of my head back home, I'm not willing to give in with a throwing up of my hands and a shrug of my shoulders just because I'm an idiot in a foreign land.

I'm a tired idiot, though.