In Which I Tell of my Plans and then Show Myself to Be Elitist.
It seems facebook critical mass has hit. Although it has always been a hit with the kids, there was only one other person on the site from my high school when I joined. Here, of course, it is mandatory for keeping in touch with people as they move from country to country but it seems that in the last few months things have changed. My "friends" number has suddenly jumped as many of the people i went to high school with, long, long ago have joined up. Even my mother, her friends and an aunt are a part of it. (My brother, still AWOL.)
I bring this up because about a week ago an old friend that I spent a summer cycling around Montana with got in touch with me. It seems he is in Kuala Lumpur with the Red Cross and since I too was in Asia thought maybe we could get together. Though I had not seen him in at least 12 years, ㅈ and I have been wanting to go to Malaysia for awhile and had even talked about taking a trip South before we head to the Great White North. Turns out tickets are quite cheap, so it seems we will be spending the first week of March in KL! It will be nice to put some stamps in my new passport.
As for the "big move," it has gotten a little complicated. My Korean visa expires at the end of February and ㅈ cannot get her Canadian visa until the end of March. So the plan will be: I fly to Montana and see friends and family in Bozeman and buy a car, then I head north to see my brother, my though-now-pregnant-probably-won't-be-by-then sister-in-law and first niece. After about a week there (my brother is the person I miss the most) I will continue north to Calgary to get things set up for ㅈ's arrival. If we go to Singapore from KL, it will mean five countries and two continents in a month; not a record by any means but enough to be hectic. It will also mean I will have shit shattered over three countries.
I will have a handful of classes next week and then two weeks to prepare everything. 어머니 is allowing me to store some things at her place since we intend to come back to Korea after a year. However, since I was not able to kill the editing job I will have that to work on. I made it clear that I would not be working on it after the third week in Feb and that I would be getting more money (a "hassle fee," if you will. It is the money we will be paying for KL.) Things are busy right now but it is hard to be down about it.
Strange things that have happened
-ㅈ called to ask if I wanted to buy "couple's swimsuits."
-There was an English club on campus that invited the winter English camp kids I was teaching to watch their performance. The performed heavily edited and abridged English plays. The first was Our Town, then Getting Out (performed in blackface), and then lastly, Waiting for Godot. In uni I was a big Beckett fan and Godot, is without a doubt my favorite play (side note: when I was in Dublin I saw a production of Endgame that was incredible.) If you think this production was dreadful, you are right but the ways in which it was ruined left me in disbelief. First of all, they kept saying "GO-dot" instead of "go-DOT" throughout the play. Not ruinous but deeply annoying. The ruinous part came when the young girl playing Lucky started dancing to a Korean pop song. Then everyone started singing; it was Waiting for Godot: The Musical. Then the greatest travesty if all: Godot showed up. It called Waiting for Godot, Godot cannot show up. But it turns out, it was not REALLY Godot, it was Godo, ha ha, very funny, I was not laughing. Nothing destroys Absurdism like silliness. Put down the book and step slowly away from the Beckett.