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Wednesday, July 02, 2008

다시 어려지는 것

I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with THE CHAIRMAN last night at the gym after a disappointing squash performance. We decided that going to bed at 4AM and waking up at 12:30 was no good, and that 남자들이 규칙적으로 살아야 해! (Men need to live by rules/in an orderly fashion). I won't bother you with the details, but you should know that I woke up at the entirely reasonable hour of 10:30 and have been incredibly productive since then. Hurrah. I'll have to buy him an ice cream tonight. Soy milk for me, though.

Rescindment

No, I'm not going back on my threat about the toe. Rather, I went to the post office to cash in my rebate, and I was turned away because the ID number on the check didn't match the ID number on my card. We called my boss and he promised to take care of it, assuming he had just put the wrong number on. On the unfortunately, the number was right. The mistake was my name. The rebate was actually intended for some guy who worked for us about a year ago. So, no dough for me. Good thing I didn't go on a shopping spree.

Brace for the toe picture.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Sweet day!

A while ago my boss told me her accountant had said I might be getting a tax refund of about 5 or 10 bucks. I told my boss that my taxes were already really low (3.3%) and that I would be surprised to get anything back, especially since (assuming Korean taxes are at all similar to American ones) I don't have any dependents and didn't really want to bother trying for any exemptions or anything. I also told her she could keep the cash as a birthday present, or even just forget about filing if that was an option. Then, today, I got a government money order for $103.80. Sweet action! That's like a month and a half's worth of taxes! I immediately canceled my offer to let my boss have some, though the other boss started begging me to pay for the next company dinner.

In other news, Donny and Dylan, two of my friends just graduated college and are going to be moving to different cities - one to Seoul (score!), one to Ulsan (lame!). So, I'll either be taking some weekend trips in the future, or I'll be finding some new friends.

Also, I think I'm getting an ingrown toenail. If I don't get comments from at least 5 different people, I'm going to post a picture. Take that!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

I should know better

Despite a year of actually starting to do interesting stuff (my first 6 months here were a little more on the reclusive side), I have still apparently not learned that if I don't write about stuff immediately, I won't do it at all. Argh. Sorry about not writing about my sweet hiking trip. I actuallythought of lots of sweet stuff and genius insights, but never jotted them down. In the future I will either:

a) blog promptly
or
b) not make silly promises

Sorry for the absence lately. I haven't really done anything too interesting, though I did put up another album on the photo site. Had a girlfriend for a while, spent a lot of time hanging out downtown, broke up, spend a lot of time hanging around my friend's college area, and that brings you up to speed about the past month and a half.

Mom's in Korea now, with a friend, and they've been having a good time. I've been informed that they did lots and lots of stuff in Seoul (I was still here in Daegu working), and they'll be spending the next week touring around a little sub-tropical Island in the south, then working their way up the east coast, then they'll come to Daegu next week. I'm sure next weekend I'll post some nice pictures.

Also, in less than 1 month, just after Mom heads back to the USA, summer vacation will roll around. From Tuesday, July 29th until Sunday, August 3rd, George and I will go scope out Tokyo. We've got our plane tickets and hostel reservations, though we don't know exactly what we're going to do. We're staying in Shinjuku, which is supposed to be a pretty happening place, and I'm really hoping to spend a day climbing Mt. Fuji. I know I said I wouldn't make any more pointless promises, but...I swear I'll put up some pictures!

Also, I'm thinking that in December, I'm going to do a sweet little tour of Southeastern Asia. I'll fly into Singapore, work my way up through Malaysia, and then hit up Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. I think I'm going to spend a month grabbing a CELTA certification while I'm there, though I don't know whether I'll do it in Chiang Mai or Ho Chi Minh City. Either way, I'll travel from December until early January, then take the course until early February, then head back to the US for a while. If any of you want to join me for some of this stuff...that'd be cool.