Monday, November 30, 2015

Literally, Sleepless in Seattle

After over a year of being in Asia, I was finally able to visit my family and friends back in New York City. I spent 2 weeks in the states with a jam packed schedule of coffee, lunches and dinners follow by a 4 day vacation in San Diego and Las Vegas. It was fun but also tiring!

Needless to say, there wasn’t much sleep involved in my 4 days in SD and Vegas. My flight was also Monday morning 630AM back to NYC so I pretty much stayed up all night. I arrived for a final family dinner before my early 7AM flight from JFK to Seoul the next morning. I had a layover in Seattle and when I got on the Delta flight from Seattle to Seoul, something unexpected happened. I’ve had about 25+ flights in the past 3 years and this has never happened to me before.

About 4 hours into my 12 hour flight back to Seoul, the pilot said there were some sort of malfunction technical difficulty and we had to return back to Seattle. Everyone was shocked and freaking out a little bit on the plane, myself included. This 8 hour flight to nowhere was definitely not a fun experience when you’re traveling alone. To top it off, the 2nd backup plane that was supposed to arrive at 10PM to pick us up also had a malfunction which didn't help with the paranoia. Eventually, it was decided that we had to wait till 10AM the next morning for the next flight out to Seoul. They put me at a nearby airport hotel for the night and I managed to sneak in a tiny bit of rest before another early morning flight. 12 hours later, we finally landed safely in Seoul.

This pretty much summed up my sleepless week. I shall now sleep like a bear- zzz

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Go Green Korea!

People often say they want to be eco-friendly but saying is one thing, doing is another. Korea, however, is pretty damn serious about recycling and sorting their trash. This definitely took me by surprise.

How did I learn? Not from a friend's advice, but through personal experience.
I stayed at hotels my first two months in Seoul so the simple task of taking out the trash never occurred to me. Now that I am living in an actual apartment building, one where the lobby guy does not speak English and refuses to try to understand me, this has now become a painful and daunting task.

A week of furniture shopping and unpacking left me with A LOT of trash and cardboard boxes. We usually leave these in the little side rooms of the floor where people generally take the trash down. Or so I thought. I did this twice in a week until one day, these signs magically appeared around the walls of the little side room next to my apartment door. I suspect that they didn't know where I'm truly from, but to ensure I get the message, the signs were in Korean, Chinese and English.



I now clearly know I've been illegally taking out the trash. They now have CCTV recording me so I should take it to the basement B2 to avoid fines. B2 has a huge garbage room where it is sorted by pure food waste, general waste, paper, plastic and cardboards. I've been told you need a special waste bag for food only, nothing waste. I have failed to secure this "bag" after a few attempts to purchase it at the local convenient stores near me. I did successfully order a food waste bin online, so I will eventually get on buying that bag.

I'm impressed Korea, go green!