"Oh Yes. This makes me very happy."

-- Said to my reflection in the blank monitor when the power went out, taking the whole system, and all the electric clocks with it. It came back on a couple of seconds later and the computer started rebooting on its own. I left to fill the humidifier tank while I waited for it. I have a 486, booting up takes time. I went out to check the laundry, which I had been so industrious about starting as soon as I got out of bed, and found that the power fart had disrupted it too. It sat, idle, with its digital display blank but the tub still full of water. Tehh! How do I re-set that thing? Digital, remember? I pushed some buttons and got it to empty its wad. When that’s done I’ll re-do the whole cycle. In the meantime, I’m having tea.

What a weekend.

I guess it was pretty much a rollercoaster. Tension had been building between Dave and me for quite awhile. Aggression, is more like it, I guess. Saturday morning we had to go visit the Korea National Tourism Organization (KNTO) to see if they could help us plan an overnight trip during Dave’s parents’ visit. The whole thing is stressful and a pisser. I’m mad at them for not really wanting to come so that when they planned it, they kept planning it shorter and shorter without even fucking realizing that a day is lost traveling to Korea and that traveling to and from the airport is such a strenuous journey that those two days are wasted. I had to inform Dave’s mom that she was only going to be here 4.5 days instead of the six she kept telling me - which even if it was six, it was still 4 days shorter than what they had originally said. Now we keep hearing about how having guests for so long would be a real pain and that even just a week will drive us nuts. That Dave’s mom keeps saying this suggests that she’s feeling a little guilty; she knows she’s doing this half-assed you know? I mean, they’ve already got a longer trip planned for the summer. One that, in the States, is going to cost them more than coming to Korea. So, you know, it’s pretty obvious where their preferences lie.

Knowing all this makes me really wish that they weren’t coming. I mean, it’s like, just don’t come if you’re heart totally isn’t in it.

So.

Saturday morning, Dave is saying he doesn’t want his parents to come. That’s cool, because maybe I don’t want them to either, even as I desperately want company. I can dig that. What I don’t dig is that Dave is only saying that because he doesn’t want to be hassled with making plans for their visit. He would rather not have any company than go out of his way to struggle with something annoying. That’s just so unacceptable to me.

And I was mad - so fucking mad - because for two years he has been Mr. Inflexible. The only flow he can go with is one he creates, and it just wears on me. Even if we’re on a new bus route, if I know the route, he doesn’t quite trust that I know. Stuff like that.

We get to the KNTO and the people there are totally unhelpful. I’m already mad, and their idiocy makes me furious. Korea is, like, impossible to get around. When I think about how easily I booked our stuff for Japan and then think about all the hoops I have to jump through to plan something minor in a country where I have lived for two years, it just proves to me how fucked up this place can be. So there’s this woman at the counter at the KNTO, whose English is OK but poor enough that I can’t understand what she means. She says shit like, "Later, call back for you." Does this mean that someone is calling us or we are calling them? I ask and she just says, "Later, call back for you." Thanks a fucking lot, lady. You’ve been a huge help.

At first she wasn’t going to help us plan a trip, which is like their whole raison d’être, you know? So we pushed and finally she made some calls and got us reserved on a tour down to Chinhae for the cherry blossom festival. BUT, we still don’t know where we are supposed to meet and we have not been given an itinerary. They wouldn’t give it to us then, but they made sure to tell us where and how much to pay. I’m just shaking my head at how stupid all this is. Makes Dave’s "ostrich" behavior seem reasonable. He’s going to try to get one of his staff to help us get an itinerary before we pay.

After being mad at him and then after the KNTO, we went and ate lunch in near silence, pissed at each other, pissed at everything. Afterward, we had to go try and buy tickets for Titanic. OH, and that plot thickened too: Sometime last week, Dave told some guy he buys software from that we were going to see the movie this weekend. The guy, Mr. Kim, has a seriously warped history of asking us to do stuff with him and his family. He’s a lot older than us and we have absolutely nothing in common. When we spend time with them, we all sit in silence since he and his wife don’t speak a word of English, the kids who are learning it won’t speak it with us, and because we have nothing to talk about! Dave and I have been using evasive maneuvers with them for about 1.5 years now. Only on occasion do we get hooked into doing something. A couple of times, I have feigned illness and sent Dave off alone to fend for himself in their midst. The situation is tricky because Dave has a professional relationship with Mr. Kim that could be jeopardized if he is offended. So, when Mr. Kim invited himself and his entire family to see Titanic with us, we couldn’t really deny them. See, that’s what they do now: They invite themselves along. Can’t they take a hint? We think the family doesn’t like to hang with us, only Mr. Kim. The family has to do what he says because he’s the boss, so they go along. But, I mean, it’s pretty obvious we don’t want to do anything with them and it’s pretty obvious we all have nothing in common, so why? Why? Why? Why? Grrrr!

So we go to get the tickets. The theater is all sold out for Sunday and although we’re disappointed we’re already thinking, "Yeah! Now we don’t have to go with them!" But let me just talk for a moment about trying to get the tickets: We go up to the booth in front of the theater selling tickets for Titanic. Several of the times for Saturday were sold out, but it said nothing about Sunday. We approach the metal wall with the teeny hole. Dave bends down to peer into the hole but sees only darkness. Is someone there or not? Just then, a guy in front of the line for another booth selling tickets for another movie yells at us to get into that line. OK…. When our turn comes after waiting in that line, the guy at the front tells us that tickets for Titanic are being sold in the bowling alley, which is in the basement of the building with the movie theater. He points to a doorway. We go in, and walk down - no kidding - about two floors along a narrow stairwell with low ceilings. Dave scuffed his noggin at one point, protesting profanely. It was dimly lit and the stairwell turned round tightly. Makes me kind of dizzy thinking about it. Finally, it opened up into a long narrow hallway the length of the bowling alley. Pay lockers lined one side. There was a light at the end of the tunnel that turned out to be a small bowling oasis. There were only about six lanes and a small shoe rental booth. The Titanic table was all the way on the other side of the six lane room, by another wall of pay lockers. A woman sat there with seating charts for the various times for each day. Sunday, she said, was all sold out. So, with that bit of knowledge, we walked back across the width of the bowling alley, turned into the long narrow walkway leading to the stairs, and then wound our way up two narrow flights, being mindful of the low clearance. The whole time I kept thinking how it would’ve made a good hand-held scene in a movie, the kind where the camera is right behind the head of the actors.

Up on the street, I was already plotting what we could say to Mr. Kim so that he would leave us alone on Sunday. We knew that saying we couldn’t get tickets just wouldn’t be enough: he’d want to do something else. Dave called and Mr. Kim said he would find tickets for Titanic. And he did. Ugh.

Dave and I were still pissed at each other. We had planned to go to the Hard Rock Café for dinner and while I was getting ready to go, Dave broke the silence and brought up all the hostility between us. Later I thanked him for having the courage to address it. The air cleared a bit, but not until Sunday. That left Saturday at the Hard Rock feeling miserable. The food was good as usual, but that’s all.

Mr. Kim could only get tickets for the 10:20am showing at a theater in Shinchon, which is about an hour away from us. I don’t like going anywhere in the morning on Sunday.

The movie was better than I expected. In fact, it’s still with me this morning and I spent much time yesterday thinking about the images I saw on the screen. It touched me in many ways like Schindler’s List, which was so painful to watch that I don’t want to see it again. I marveled at the special effects, keeping in mind all the secrets revealed the other day on Oprah. I was happy that Kate Winslet isn’t some skinny waifish person and is a better reflection of beauty than I’ve seen in a long time. Both actors acted very well. James Cameron wrote a good script. The love story unfolding against the backdrop of such a dramatic tragedy was incredible enough that it brought Dave to the verge of tears, which is, like, nearly impossible for him. At points I thought that some of the actors’ actions were far-fetched, but then so is the sinking. Knowing in this case that truth was more horrible than the fiction, it was easy to overlook any problems with the story. And I thought, when the ship was going down and for an hour I just sat feeling sickened and fearful thinking about all that death that really happened, "Should we do this?" Should we re-live for entertainment what was truly a tragic loss of life? I guess if it helps us remember history, it’s at least useful. Dave’s mom had made some criticism about how the movie lets you experience the tragedy of a long time ago, then lets you leave it unscathed even while tragedies of that magnitude exist in the world today and tomorrow. The movie somehow lets us ignore how horrible it is, romanticizing it, yet overpowering the real tragedies in the present that we should care more about. Something like that. I thought about that too, and I can see some of it, but I am a firm believer that we need to remember history lest we forget. We are forgetting and I worry that young people I meet who have little knowledge of things like WWII will really not be able to grasp the significance of this century into which they have been born. Or worse, that they, in their ignorance can be easily influenced by misinformation. (I guess a fictional love story against a dramatization of the real thing counts as misinfo too, but you get my drift.) The catastrophe of the Titanic is really a symbol of the time. The defeat of "man" and industrial might on the eve of the first World War, when the interaction of industry and warring tradition/ritual led to the most horrible loss of life the world had ever known, is indicative of humanity’s arrogance about our place in the universe. Even after that, we didn’t learn the lesson. I’ve also been thinking about the class issues at the forefront of the film. My friend Yvonne has an Anthropologist friend who believes that classism is the only -ism and that all other -isms, like racism and sexism are really only manifestations of class divisions. I don’t know about that, but I think about it, wondering if it were true how it would change theories of and policies toward populations. Besides all that, the special effects were so realistic that it just allows us to experience, in the closest way yet possible, what it was like for all those people on the ship. The length of the sinking in the movie was about half of the real-time sinking. Still, the hour seemed long and I can’t imagine the sustained terror people endured either knowing they were going to die, or struggling to live; and the many who thought they were going to live, but later froze to death. And just the thought of your love dying next to you and then having to let go, watching him sink away into the darkness…

All of it would’ve been better if a) we hadn’t been at a theater in Korea, where the screen is small and the slope of the room slight so that someone’s head is always in view - we’re both tall, so that problem isn’t so bad for us as it is for the people behind us; and b) if we hadn’t been with the Kims. Mr. Kim’s cell phone rang during the movie, and he conducted business while in his seat for a few minutes before finally leaving. Also, Dave and I were unable to really talk about the movie with each other; we had to suppress all that the movie made us feel because we had to remain composed for a near silent lunch with the Kims, who seemed unaffected by the film. We wondered later about all the factors that combined to make them immune: cultural, language (poor subtitling), lack of historical knowledge.

Mr. Kim's wife and sister remarked how I looked more beautiful than the last time they saw me and I felt offended because they said it was because I looked thinner. And I was like, This Sucks! because they're pulling this social pressure crap on me. Dave said he didn't think they meant it as anything but a compliment, but I told him that's how little girls are pressured into constant image awareness. Mr. Kim's wife must be at least 40 but she is always dressed in trendy, crispy, and nicely pressed clothes. She sits up straight as an arrow, hardly taking up any space and with a smile permanently etched into her maquillage. A life of serving gives her effort-free grace - the kind I'm trying to learn for tea - such that she has this way of making me feel like a bumbling klutz. I think I shouldn't let it bother me, but thinking is futile when the powers-that-be have done a damn good job of making me aware, throughout the course of my life, what is the most attractive behavior for a woman. Of course, I feel the competition despite knowing it is stupid and petty and ridiculous and unfounded and everything else. It just happens.

We said good riddance to them then boarded a bus for home, where we both sat in silence feeling and thinking. I didn’t even need to listen to music. I just watched Korea pass by the windows and wished I was not here.