This Orderly Conduct

• F&*king hell. What a flustercuck of a morning. Arriving aliens need to visit the Seoul Office of Immigration within a month of landing, and my number was up today. I just knew something was amiss, though. No state-run activity in a foreign language is ever going to go off without a hitch, and this morning had more hitches than a low-income neighbourhood in Tennessee.
  
  
• You'd figure that a process involving largely foreign applicants, most of whom speak English, would be run by English-speaking personnel. Let's throw a wrench in there and just skip that irrelevant step, shall we, Seoul?
  
  
• Took a number, waited my 15mins. Approach the desk. After much Webster page-flipping and the most Random House conversation with the desk clerk, it becomes clear-ish that I need to visit floors 2 and 3 before I can come back downstairs. To take another goddamn number.
  
  
• Turns out I need original documents to apply for this form. Originals of my criminal check, originals of my passport, and my original degree. They'd keep them for a week. I wish I knew more Korean, because this was a glowing opportunity to use it. Roughly translated, I believe I said "Walk towards hell."
  
  
• So now I'm outside the main building in search of a satellite immigration office. It's pouring. I'm delivering some Korean paperwork that has my signature but which I have no idea of its meaning. I could be enlisting in the national reserves for all I know.
  
  
• After two more visits to the desk clerk (and just as many take-a-number waits) his broken English apologizes for making me run around unnecessarily when he should have seen the filled-out form at the bottom of the pile I handed him. Which is apparently what I've just spent my morning preparing for him. He laughs it off in typical Korean fashion and we both have a delightful afternoon. [This post edited for profanity.]
  
  
• Korean ATMs. Here's an adventure in international business. See, just as we've all become accustomed to seeing the Chinese characters top-right of our own Toronto ATMs for the purpose of changing the language, these ATMs have a glowing red "English" button. Upon pressing said button, three options are presented; foreign chequing, foreign savings, and foreign credit advance. Reasonable. What's not reasonable is how there is no longer ANY ENGLISH after this step. It's like the programmer just forgot. I have navigated four ATMs out of button-position alone, hoping that "Enter" and "Cancel" are in their proper positions, and that I didn't hit the "Donate" or "Empty it All" buttons by mistake. Scorched-Earth banking.
  
  
• Went for Japanese-American sushi for dinner. Food was good, reasonably priced, but the servings came in 8 small-sized rolls, one plate apiece. For anyone living in the tri-cities area, you'll understand when I say this is no Ye's. And I miss Ye's.