New Apartment

Number 3/5: Getting my apartment.

On Monday afternoon (that is, Monday 15th) I moved into my new apartment. Jason drove me to it where we were met by my director, a woman with big teeth. The apartment was the same as I'd remembered it, thankfully (I'd worried that it might have been a lot worse than my first impression) and so I got settled in.

All I really did on Monday was lie on floor, knackered from my Seoul weekend. I dozed quite a lot. My director returned with some food for me, and later one of my fellow teachers-to-be called by just to answer any questions I might have.

This guy is an American called David. I don't really want to be cruel about him, but just to describe him honestly is bein cruel, I feel.

He looks like a paedo. I would not trust this man with my children, or the children of others. He is between 40 nd 50 and is an ugly, ugly man. He's bald and has giant paedophile glasses and has taught for 20 years, ten in Japan. He's not much imbued in the way of sparkling personailty either. He's a step above Mr Whiney, but when asked about if he had a phone in his apartment he replied in his nasal US accent "No. Nobody wants to phone me, and I don't want to phone anyone either." Ok.

But in fairness, he probably isn't a child molester, and is probably just a quiet and slightly lifeless middle-aged man who isn't unfriendly, but just isn't naturally friendly either. He's not offensive. Well, except to look at a little.

So, my apartment is ok. It's just one room, like a bedsit, with bed, washing-machine, fridge-freezer, TV, video, stove-top, desk and chairs. And a separate bathroom. The heating is centrally controlled by the block manager, but it's always been warm so far, and I have hot water and a good shower. It's spacious enough and in a good location. Because while being next to a main road and therefore a little noisy, it's also a couple of minutes from a subway station, which is extremely convenient..

Daegu is a big city, 2.5 million people and quite spread out and so certainly not walkable. And so I count myself extremely lucky I live so close to a subway because otherwise it's a confusing a slow series of buses to link me to the city. Especially as of the two subways of the city, only one is functional, due to some madman last year who set fire to a subway train last year (might have been a bomb, the story is a bit confused) and killed about 30 people, and disabled an entire line.

So I'm linked to the city and have plenty of useful shops nearby, especially a Carrefour, which is a French version of Wal-Mart and sells rare products such as coffee, butter and cheese.

So, yeah, I'm happy with my apartment. But I barely got time to break it in, because the following morning I had to leave the city, and later the countr, to go to Japan on my visa run. On an overnight ferry crammed full of Koreans with big boxes of cheap exports...

The mansion.