Into each life...

...some rain must fall, so the song says. But lately, too much has fallen in mine. Which could be said of everyone in Korea, Japan, and most of the eastern Asian Pacific region. It's monsoon season, after all. It doesn't quite rain every day, but it's pretty close.

[On a completely random note, my coworker just told me she got her wisdom teeth out two days ago. But here they're called "first love teeth," because you get 'em just around the time you start noticing the other sex. I like that. I'm not sure where the wisdom thing comes from.]

So. Rain. It's lovely and healing and raging and destructive and it makes the mountains in the back of the office silvery gray with mist. It keeps the temperature down sometimes, and other times it makes for unbearably soggy heat.

It's depressing right now, is what it is.

It could just be me, though. Yesterday I felt all decisive and clear-headed, and it was raining, and today I feel wishy-washy and foggy and it's raining, so ... I guess it must be me.

Yesterday I went with my grandmother to exchange a brassiere she'd bought me (along with the 17 pairs of underwear) and was surprised to find that rare is the bra in Korea that goes above an A cup. [Sorry, fellas, this can't be of much interest to you. But ladies? Can you believe it?] The woman at the store showed me some B cups but they were definitely "old lady" style, so I rooted around and finally found an unoffensive pattern and color that came in B cup size.

Unfortunately, all the matching pants (British usage; better known in the U.S. as "panties," but for some reason "panties" sounds sort of ickly to my ear. I'm not sure why I think that, but I'm reminded of an old high school mate who could not stand that word. "The p-word," she whispered to me when she first explained her aversion. "You mean 'penis'?" I asked, confused. "No," a nearby friend said, amused, "she means 'panties'." Ah, Sonia D., where are you now?) were enormous XLs that my grandmother declared were a better fit for her than me. I suggested we buy the set and divide it between us, but she nixed the idea. So I settled on a pair of pants that were approximately the same color, but the woman wanted 5,000 won for it (roughly USD$4.33), so I decided I didn't really need another pair of pants (17 new ones are enough for, say, 5 years).

When I indicated that the bra was enough, my grandmother mentioned that I was just that way, that I always paid for my own things with my own money rather than accept hers. The woman at the store seemed impressed, and declared that I was a kind girl. I'm not sure what mixture of cultural factors led to this statement, but I think the following have something to do with it: 1. Older people always pay for younger people they have invited out. 2. Consumerism being as rampant as it is here, a young women who decides against buying something is something of an oddity. 3. Self-sufficiency for young women is not yet widespread.

After the B-cup bra-buying, I went to meet my KA friend Melissa at Lotte World (department store, amusement park, grocery store, movie theatre and ice-skating rink all in one). With about an hour to kill, I walked around the underground shopping mall and found these jeans that are 15,000 won (USD$13), skin-tight, and -- get this -- are the right length. Cheap, sexy, and the perfect fit -- what else could a girl want? But, thought I, I will not make an impulse purchase. I will wait. And also, I feel weird about wearing something that fits tighter than the casing on a tube of pig intestines (otherwise known as soondae, commonly sold at pojangmachas).

So I'm waiting for Melissa, not buying the jeans, skirt, or dress that I also suddenly discovered I like, rilly, rilly needed, and I aimlessly go through old messages on my cell phone. And come across a couple from KB, back when he was here in late February and early March. I read them over with a smile. And I suddenly thought, oh, fuck it. Just go. You wanna go, so just go. Life is short.

And I felt suddenly very happy.

I hung out with Melissa for a couple hours and then walked around Lotte World again, wandering and looking for a decent place to study. And consciously not buying the stuff I was lusting after. Ooh, but I want those jeans, I thought. Call it an experiment in style, but I need those jeans.

But I shouldn't spend money if I'm going to [ ]!

But I want those jeans. I want to spend freely. I don't want to be worried about 15,000 won for jeans, or 100,000 won for a weekend camp with the taekwondo studio, or 10,000 won for lunch for my grandmother and me.

Yeah, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. You go, your bank account flatlines. That's the price you pay.

Not just that. I also pay in time, opportunity cost, and let's not forget the inevitable emotional fallout. As RosaG so wisely pointed out to me earlier this week, anytime spent with a crush is later dwelled upon and obsessed over 5 to 10 times the length of time actually spent in presence of crush.

So don't go. Life is short and all that, but when the cons outweigh the pros, sometimes you gotta wise up and let things go.

Oh, all right. [Sulk.]

But you know, after I had that little exchange with myself, I felt ... not happy, but refreshed, sort of. Clarified.

Funny enough, I got an email from One-Armed Maggie last night that encouraged me to listen to my head/wallet. As for visiting, she wrote, "just say as long as he pays for the ticket you'd love to come!" Which is what Miss D said a month ago when I started thinking about this nonsense. You cold, girl!

Even I know, on some level, that it is nonsense. "You would spend X amount of dollars and fly X amount of miles to see someone who said he'd fallen for someone else? [And never told her, let's not forget that!] What are you crazy? You're either crazy or you're rich beyond belief, because girlfriend, no man is worth that! Where is your pride? You're worth more than that!"

But then again: "I know it sounds crazy and maybe it is, but life is crazy. And short. And you gotta grab these opportunities when they come, because --"

"What, opportunities to be a fool?"

"What's the joy in being sensible all your life? Look, I love traveling, I love seeing how people live, I may never have as good a chance as I do now to visit [ ], especially with a built-in tour guide and host, and let's face it, no matter how earnestly you say you'll do X and Y later on, life moves on and you're going to be going to law school and it's a whole different life starting this fall, get it? New opportunities'll open up, and going to [ ] will fade to the background. Besides, what if ... well, what if there's a chance?"

[Disbelieving silence.] "You really think KB's gonna fall in love with you in the four or five days you're gonna be there? You need to get a new dealer, 'cause the one you have now is giving you hallucinogenic shit."

"Yeah, I know it's not realistic. But still -- the thought of not going and wondering what would have happened... I don't want to have regrets like that."

"I'll tell you what would have happened. You would have had a great five-day booty call, gone home, been unable to not have expectations, been inevitably disappointed, and learned a lesson I thought you ALREADY learned in March, which is to expect more for yourself and not to fucking settle -- but not before spending three months, during which you should be focused on law school, brooding and being depressed about it. Repeat after me: Not. Worth. It."

"Still --"

"Shut it."