Enjoyment and Employment. (And a touch of inspiration.)

Employment: Got a call from my mother, of all people, today, and couldn't place her voice. "Nina? Wendy? Who is this?" "What, you don't recognize my voice anymore?"

Well, considering you've never called me while I've been in Korea (she doesn't have an international calling plan, so sometimes I call her, but that's really slacked off in the past six months too... come to think of it, I don't think I've actually talked to my mother since I saw in San Francisco in September -- oops), I don't think I was unduly unfilial.

"Mom?" (Incredulous. And annoyed. Gut reaction. Sorry, mom.)

"Yes! Where are you?"

"Well, I'm in class."

"What?"

"IN CLASS."

"Oh. Can you talk now?"

"Yeah, in about 5 minutes I can."

"Well, I just called to tell you to call my friend because she might have a job for you."

Her friend from college is now the dean of human ecology at Yonsei, the number two school in Korea and also the alma mater of both my parents, as well as the site of their meeting. "I just got off the phone with her, and she might be able to get you a job teaching English at Yonsei. So call her, okay?"

That was about 9:45 am. At about 11 am, I checked my phone and saw that someone from the Foundation had called. Upon calling him back, he said the sweet words: "Okay. Three times a week. Same conditions as before. You'll start Monday?"

With this information, I started recalculating and rearranging. I had made an appointment to see the director of the English language institution in Shinchon, where my school is, on Monday. I called him back and made it for 3:30 pm this afternoon, after the Catholic service I had planned to see with my Chinese nun friend.

A bit of inspiration: Father Peter and Father Joseph both hail from Kenya. Father Peter was in the Congo for a couple years, but had to leave when the genocide there began to sweep through his area. Unlike the machete-wielding killers (forgive me, I don't remember if they are the Hutus or the Tutsis), who are shorter and more robust, Father Peter is tall and slender, a characteristic shared by most members of his tribe, the Masai. Unfortunately, it was also a characteristic of those being slaughtered. So he was evacuated with the other Kenyan priests.

Father Peter has been in three of my five classes at the Korean language school, and like everyone else, I adore him. If all priests were like him, I think I'd have to become Catholic. Gentle in speech and manner, slightly stoop-shouldered, owner of a charmingly gap-toothed smile, and as pure as they come, he and Father Joseph -- who has possibly the most blindingly wide and bright smile this side of the planet -- led mass in Korean. They were attended by three other priests from the language school, at least one of whom is Filipino. Where the other two are from, I don't know, but there was something really moving about these five Catholic priests from around the world, gathered in a chapel in a Jesuit college in Seoul, Korea, giving mass in the Korean they had so earnestly learned over the past year. In their white cassocks (surplices?) and emerald green drapery, they cut fine, solemn figures at the altar.

Most of the audience consisted of nuns and a couple teachers from the school, but me and two Japanese students in my class had come to see Fathers Peter and Joseph conduct mass, and we were unanimous in our opinion: they rocked.

After mass, we filtered out and headed to the refreshments provided by the language school (it was really a language school event, after all), and Father Peter grasped my forearm and said, with a wide smile, "I'm so happy that you came to this!"

More employment: I couldn't stay for the refreshments, though, because I had arranged to meet the guy at the language institute at 3:30. So I bid my farewells, and headed off to the easiest interviews of interviews, probably because I'd already been deemed suitable at the Gangnam office I went to last week. Basically, if I want to work a couple hours a day in March, I'm in like ... like Tin. Yeah.

After that, I walked over to Yonsei, and got picked up by my mother's friend, who drove me around the campus a bit and showed me the buildings. We then did a little chatting in her office, and she said she thought that teachers at the language school at Yonsei probably needed more qualifications than just being a native speaker, but that she'd ask. Then we talked about her son and her daughter and the job situation in Korea and being busy, and speaking of being busy, she usually ran about all day and, in fact, had another appointment in an hour. A little more chit-chat, and gosh, she'd normally take me to dinner, but she had that appointment at 6:30. I finally got the hint, and excused myself.

Enjoyment: By that time, it was 5:40, and I belatedly realized that I'd promised Maiko to pick up her homework assignment for today, since she's in Busan now, saying goodbye to a friend who's going to study abroad in Australia. I speed-walked back to my language school, picked up her stuff, and then paused. It was 6 pm, and I didn't feel like going home yet. I put my stuff down and took out my phone and thought, "Well, Etsuko probably has plans, but what the hell. I'll see if she wants to have dinner."

It turned out that she was having chicken barbecue stirfry with Mayu, and they told me to come on over. Unfortunately, I didn't know where it was, so Mayu ran out of the restaurant and we spend several confused minutes trying to find each other. But ultimately we succeeded, and I went back to share their meal. Support the chicken farmers, I say! (Korea is all abuzz with the recent news that some chicken restaurant owner killed himself because business has fallen off so sharply due to the avian flu scare. They're saying that people are dying before the chickens are.)

We then went off to an ice cream parlor and talked for a while about people leaving, and how much that sucks. Etsuko's boyfriend is Mongolian, and will be heading back there in April. It's unlikely that they'll see each other again, though Etsuko might visit. That's the hard part about befriending other expats or foreign students: at some point, they leave. Though both Etsuko and Mayu say that they would consider living in Korea for several years, if not their lives, they're the exception. By the beginning of next term, most of the people I shared classes with for the past year and a half will disperse to their various homelands.

Etsuko was lucky (and talented) enough to snag a good position in a Seoul-based office of the Japanese company she used to work for in Osaka, so we talked also about work conditions, leading to my amazed discovery of the fact that in Japan, women are allowed one day a month for their menses. By law! Etsuko never took one, being both unplagued by PMS and embarrassed about her male colleagues possibly knowing when she was menstruating. But by law, women office workers are allowed one "seng-li hu-il" ("menstruation holiday") per month.

After the ice cream (a yummy concoction of low-fat frozen yogurt, Froot Loops, canned peaches and pineapple bits, fresh kiwi slices, Cocoa Puffs, and a couple tapioca balls, strangely enough), I was beat, and told them I was going home, but agreed that checking out an "o-rak shil" (game room) was worth doing, as I'd never been to one before. So we went to one that Mayu knew, and what came shimmering out of the cacophony and heat? Nothing less than House of the Dead. III.

Now, you may not know about my sordid affair with HotD (TM by Minnesota M's ex), which started in an arcade late one night in Chicago, where I was holed up for a couple of days in 1998 in preparation for a trial. The trial never went through (our man, Stan, pleaded guilty at the last minute), and to celebrate the settlement, we went out for steak and then to an awful, cheesy amusement park-like building that happened to have a pool table and video games. I noticed a little game called HotD and informed the rest of the DOJ team with amusement that the "agents" in the video used blue plastic handguns emblazoned with the slogan: "Gun of Justice". The DOJ team was of course immediately intrigued. Or at least, one of the junior attorneys was, and that was enough for me, he being my crush of the ye-- okay, of a couple years. We played, and I was hooked.

HotD is your basic shoot 'em up video game, taking place in various venues through the different versions. The original and my sentimental favorite is located in the haunted Curien mansion, and it was a lot harder to kill the undead that popped up everywhere. Tonight's foray back in the world of HotD showed that they've made the regular undead much easier to kill -- just a shower of bullets sufficed to kill the killer slugs, whereas in HotD I and II, you had to actually aim. In addition, in the first two versions, human hostages weren't ARMED, for CRYING OUT LOUD, and therefore could not, with your bullet barrage providing cover, GET UP and START SHOOTING AT THEIR UNDEAD ASSAILANTS FOR YOU. I mean, really. If they had freakin' guns in the first place, why didn't they freakin' use them to escape? Snort.

Okay. Calmer now.

The fact that you only kill the undead and other monsters was the appealing point of HotD, because around the same time I first became entranced by it, I decided that I'd only play video games that didn't involve shooting humans, because I found it objectionable to kill people, even in simulated format. (Oh, I know it doesn't make sense, but it kind of does, and it goes along with my desire, a couple years ago, to try shooting a handgun, but that's another story for another time.)

Anyway. I locked eyes with the box, told Etsuko and Mayu that I loved HotD I and II but had never seen HotD III, and just like that, we were shooting the familiar undead. With pump action shotguns. The original two HotDs feature the aforementioned light blue plastic guns. I dunno, but after the first exitement over the pump action reloading feature, I kinda wanted my old gun back.

We didn't win, but we did get pretty close to the end, and only used about $5. Next time, I'll take it to the finish.

After HotD, we went into one of the karaoke booths, and each sang a song for 40 cents. Mine was a request from Mayu: Glenn Medeiros - Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You.

You know it. You love it. Go on, sing it.