Testy

I don't know why, but I've been feeling vexed a lot lately. I wake up annoyed that my grandmother or great-aunt is up at 6 am and rattling dishes around. I stick my earplugs in, irritated at the way they don't completely block out sound. I wake up an hour or two later and don't want to leave my room because I don't want to hear high-decibel commentary from the grannies ("So! You're up!" "Are you going out today?" "What are you going to eat now?" "Where'd she go? Back to sleep?" "No, she's in the bathroom."), so I lie there, aggravated.

I'm bitter about having to leave the house an hour and ten minutes before I start work in order to get there on time. I'm cross because there are no empty seats on the train, and the car is immoderately cold or hot. I'm galled (and appalled) that KB hasn't written in almost two months. I am malcontent with the state of my family affairs.

I suppose what I'm really dissatisfied with is myself. I feel like I'm wasting time here, I miss school and the sense of purpose I had when I was attending, I don't like the fact that I'm going to law school in the fall, I'm disappointed for having had expectations of other people and then feeling down when they don't deliver. You gotta stop getting your happiness from other people, I tell myself, and you gotta start manufacturing your own. The hk factory of happy.

I did try this weekend to do some happy-making: finally finally FINALLY got my hair cut and re-permed straight (regret getting bangs, but happy with the sleek stick straightness), worked on my translation project, met friends for meals and chats.

I had an especially nice time lying around in the sun on Youido Island yesterday with Etsuko, snacking and talking about nothing. We ended up having dinner in Shinchon and, as she is wont to do, Etsuko on a whim called up an old classmate in Ulaan Batoor. Bayra left Seoul a year ago, and while Etsuko calls her from time to time, I haven't been in touch with her at all, so it was a pleasant surprise to chat with her briefly. She demanded to know when I was coming to Mongolia. I'd sort of put that idea in the Later-In-Life basket, but talking with Bayra last night, I pulled it out again and stuck it into the Farfetched-But-Hey-Who-Knows drawer.

On Friday night (sorry, not going chronologically here), I was feeling particularly cranky, mixed liberally with a great big tank of tired and depressed, and I found myself reluctantly going to a coworker's housewarming party in Insadong in part because the subway was so crowded that it was easier to stay inside than fight my way out at my stop.

I was awfully glad in the end, though, because this coworker has the most beautiful, charming house I've ever seen in Korea. It's a real house, not an apartment, and furthermore, it's a traditional, tiled-roof house of the variety you see in guidebooks and no longer in real life, except in government-designated heritage areas like Insadong. Upon entering the wooden gate, you step into a small courtyard, where my coworker had placed seven round stepping stones in the gravel, as a counterpart to the Big Dipper, which on a clear night you might be able to see in the patch of sky above. A spacious kitchen is the first room you see, directly across from the entrance. Clockwise around the courtyard, it connected by a sliding door covered in traditional paper to the bedroom, off which a tiny bathroom and storage room was positioned. The bedroom connected to the living room, which connected to a study. To the left of the entrance, there was a separate guest room, and on the left wall of the courtyard, the Chinese symbol for "double happiness" was inscribed. Benches around the courtyard offered the perfect places to sit and look up at the stars. There was even a tiny, tiny cellar and access to the roof as well.

This coworker bought the house and oversaw all the details herself, hunting for the perfect doorknobs, etc. She's a tall, always impeccably dressed woman in her mid-thirties, very good at what she does (managing art exchange and grant programs with foreign museums) and has perfect taste. Perfect, I tell ya! Look her up in the dictionary -- she's under "elegant." Or maybe "glamorous." She's one of those Beautiful People with Beautiful Lives. And now she has a Beautiful House. But she's also a really hard worker and doesn't have a touch of snobbery about her.

And I'm not sure why I spent a couple hundred words describing her and her house, but there you have it.

Love,
hk, vexed