Waiting for the wash now. I never quite know just how rushed the laundry facilities would be at 12:17 during the heat of day. Don't people have better stuff to do? Like go outside? Be social? Explore the city? God. I'm supposed to be doing things at odd times, thus to avoid the rush. Didn't they get the memo?
And I'm the only one who looks the part of antisocial derilict - the other three people surrounding me are two quite tall, built, and attractive men (aren't they supposed to be out schmoozing or playing hockey or something?) and one extremely tall and thin blond woman (who should definitely be outside schmoozing or playing hockey). One of the blokes is even ironing. Ironing! Damnit, last night I was able to successfully sew a latch onto the back of my bag to avoid having the flap go crazy in the wind; now my quest for guy-with-household-skills position is being challenged. There can be only one.
Something else: I love accents. Not only foreign-language accents (for example, one of the cleaning ladies named Rita is from Portugal and speaks Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and English. I asked if she was learning French, living in Toronto and all, and she scoffed and made a funny face. So she was fun. And her accent engaging), but also the regional accents of English. Turns out I'm rooming with two other Californians, so I don't hear it while upstairs, but down here in the basement awaiting my turn at (now) the dryer, accents are popping up from all over. I'm hearing some Australian, some English, some awesome cockney-isms. I just got a "Cheers, mate" for letting the guy after me know my wash was done. I love that. While doing an Adventure Korea trip, Jessie and I heard "The coach is a bit hot, isn't it" referring to the tour bus. Lino used to dole out all sorts of goodies (which would often lead us to discuss the peculiarities of differences regarding pronunciation and the lack of phoneticism [heh] that abounds in English), and Ron from Harry Potter says "Wicked". How awesome is that? The only thing I can bring to the table is Californian surf-speak, which I refuse to do. Likewise, I don't think Jessie is willing to sell her soul and commence with Valley Girl lingo. So we're just accent-less, and thus cool-less. Bugger.
So the best I can do is adopt a few I like, and chock it up to adaptation. Hey, Jessie does it with Spanish.
Funny thing. Turns out the reason there was a big cram right around noon, is because starting around 1, going till about 5, it's time for all the cleaning ladies to come down and wash the linens, sheets, and pillow cases. Oops. So now I have this clump of wet clothes that need drying, and the dryers are currently bogged down with "official" laundry in 45-minute increments.
Update: Just spoke with Rita, who let me scamper in for a little bit. Bless her. After 5, I'll come down and do my second load (consisting of the stuff I'm currently wearing, cuz it's rank), and then I'll be all set.
To pass the time of waiting, I’ve been consistently getting fresh material for my dilapidated iPod. This mostly involves films or other such visual fun such as comedy stand-ups and random youtube happinesses. Happinesses. I love new words.
My current list consists of Louis CK, Marcus Brigstocke, Jeff Dunham, Eddie Izzard, Mitch Hedburg, Demetri Martin, Rob Paravonian, BJ Novak, Janeane Garofalo, Robin Williams, and a few others. It involves lots of patient downloading, renaming, transferring, and converting, but goddamnit, I'm expecting to be thoroughly mesmerized by the joyous results of modern technology, completely and without remorse on this train ride back down. Or else.
I've also managed to acquire a sandwich. So I feel proud. Not so proud, however, about the time I got it in. Since the laundry has completed itself, I decided I should perhaps go and attempt to complete some other things that needed doing. Namely, finding a US Consulate and getting more pages for my poor, poor passport. Turns out, there's one not 10 minutes from where I'm currently staying. So go there, and comes to be thatthe only time American Citizen Services (ACS, for short they say) applicants will be taken is 8:30 - 12:00. It's nearly 14:00. Bugger. So, failure number 2 of the day (1st being the laundry fiasco), and off to get some lunch.
Oh, and in-between my time-management failure and my lunch, I saw this little treasure, complete with the CN Tower in back:
(If any of my South Korean hagwon students are reading this, look away now, please.)
So yeah. Day 2, check. I plan on finishing my current book (J. Maarten Troost, who I love enough to have bought his second book already), finding dinner (maybe go back to the Sushi place, they were nice), and then early to bed, as I must rise and be official on the morn.
-Jay
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