Wrapping Up The Blog

Now that I'm out of quarantine and have a regular life in Korea, I find myself without the time to update this blog. So it's time to wind it down. But before I do, I want to tell the story I skipped in the beginning: the story of fleeing India.

I got a contract consulting for one of JP Morgan's software development groups in India, helping them with scalability issues, and flew to Hyderabad on December 3, 2019. It was my second contract with this group, and in the beginning, things went pretty much as expected. But then in January, we started hearing more about a new virus dangerous enough that governments were starting to take notice.

At first, we didn't think much of it. We started elbow bumping at the office sometimes instead of shaking hands, but it didn't feel like a real threat to us. Nobody in India had gotten the disease, and India historically had managed to avoid all the other major pandemics in Asia, like H1N1 and SARS, perhaps due to the hot and humid climate.

I even flew back to the US for a week-long seminar on February 15th, transiting through the Dubai airport, and enjoyed the business lounge without it even occurring to me that I should buy a mask. The CDC was still saying you shouldn't wear them, and although I saw many people wearing them in the airport, I actually wondered if perhaps it was just always like that in the Dubai airport. 

At this point in February, Iran, perhaps the worst-hit country at the time, was still aggressively suppressing reports of their coronavirus cases. The Dubai airport was still running lots of flights to Iran, so not wearing a mask was really dangerous, but I wouldn't find that out until much later.

I flew back to Hyderabad through the Dubai airport again on February 22nd. At this point, there were only three confirmed cases in India, a country with a population of 1.4 billion, so it still didn't seem like a real and present danger. Those cases were a thousand miles away in the north. We continued elbow bumping and avoiding hugs, but when I came down with a runny nose, a sore throat, and a dry cough, I figured it was just jet lag and a run of the mill cold.

Then I started having trouble breathing.

It was like I had to breathe much deeper to get the same amount of oxygen. My girlfriend at the time she said she was having the same symptoms. There wasn't anything we could really do though, tests weren't widely available yet anyway. We figured if it got worse we'd go to the hospital, but in the meantime, we'd just try to get to sleep.

As we got better, everything else got worse. The buildings on either side of my office had a confirmed case and everyone was ordered to evacuate. JP Morgan ordered everyone to start working from home, or from your hotel room in the case of the American consultants in Hyderabad. The hotel started to feel more and more empty as new guests stopped checking in and old guests kept checking out. They started telling more and more staff not to come to work. The movie theater closed, then the gym, then the restaurants.

The company started pressuring me to fly home to the US, but by this point, in March, the US had become the new epicenter of the pandemic. India definitely seemed like a dangerous place to be, but the US seemed like it could be even worse. At least in India, there were relatively few cases, and the government was taking it seriously.

I started researching other countries to flee to. The countries that seemed to be handling it well were the four tigers: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. I decided Singapore was my best bet. They speak English, it's close to India, and I'd been there before so I knew I'd be able to get around okay.

But then Singapore closed its borders to all foreigners. Worse, they closed their airports to transit flights, which meant the largest hub in the region was no longer allowing layovers, effectively cutting off most of the flight routes to other safe havens. Then the Indian government canceled most international flights.

Trying to avoid layovers in Dubai, I booked a new flight on March 22, this time through Tokyo to Seoul. The flight was scheduled to depart two days later on March 24. That night, the Janta Curfew went into effect. No one was allowed out during the day and I worried about being stopped on the way to the airport. There were only a couple of guests left in the hotel and a skeleton crew of staff.

The next day, Prime Minister Nahendra Modi announced that all airports would be closed at midnight the next day, effectively canceling my flight. It was the middle of the night but I immediately packed my backpack, throwing out anything that wouldn't fit in my carry-on. There were no Ubers but the two remaining staff members at the hotel were able to find a taxi for me. I headed to the airport and got on the first flight I could to Delhi. 

When I got to Delhi, everything was empty. There were no taxis, no buses, no people, it was like a ghost town. I tried every airline ticket counter asking for a flight out, but to no avail, all their flights were canceled. I tried to get a taxi to a hotel, but there were no taxis. There were no buses either, or people for that matter.

I called the US embassy, and they said they told me there was nothing they could do to help. They said they'd add my name to the list of Americans stranded in India, but that at the moment the advice was to try to get out on commercial flights. They gave me the name of one of the few remaining hotels still accepting foreigners, and I made a reservation at the Marriott.

Thankfully, they were able to arrange a car to pick me up. Otherwise, I would've had to walk and risk getting stopped by the local police, or worse, the federal police that had been sent in to enforce the curfew. There were barricades everywhere, almost no cars on the road, and lots of police.

When I got to the hotel, they actually had extra masks, so for the first time since the pandemic started, I was able to actually wear one. The pharmacies in Hyderabad had all been sold out. The staff asked me if I was with the German embassy. I wasn't of course, but apparently, I'd happened upon the meeting point for an evacuation flight organized by the German government. Elated, I went about trying to get on the list.

They told me the flight was for Germans first, EU citizens second, UK citizens third, and everyone else whose embassies had arranged a deal with the German government. The first German official I spoke to was actively hostile and told me to talk to the American embassy. "I don't understand why your country can't get organized," she said, telling me if I wasn't happy, I should vote.

I told her I voted against the current administration in 2016 and would do so again in 2020 but would only be able to do so if I could get back to my country. She was having none of it.

I found another German official who was a little friendlier and told me I could plead my case if I showed up the next morning at 9am. I decided to try my luck and got on the bus the next morning headed to the German embassy, avoiding the angry German woman from before.

They checked our passports as we lined up to board the buses and I was almost turned away, but eventually, they let me on. We waited for hours on that bus, first waiting at various hotels to load up more German and EU tourists, then waiting at various checkpoints to show embassy credentials privileging us to travel during the Janta Curfew, then finally waiting outside the German Embassy as the buses ahead of us were unloaded.

Hundreds and hundreds of people got out. Businesspeople, hippies, backpackers, children, elderly, students, monks. They queued in front of the gates to have their documents checked, their temperatures taken, and their hands sanitized.

When our bus was unloaded, I waited in line in the hot Indian sun with all my belongings strapped to my back, hoping to be allowed inside. Without an EU passport though, I was sent to wait in a makeshift camp outside the embassy walls, below the barbed wire. Indian federal police patrolled the street with their assault rifles, monitoring the growing crowd of foreigners which the local news was reporting on increasingly anxiously.

Those of us without papers traded rumors. Someone said some Germans would be denied exit visas on the grounds that they'd overstayed and not paid their fines, which might open up seats on the plane for refugees. Apparently, there were 800 seats and they were all expected to fill. Someone said another flight would leave the following day as well, depending on demand.

A Hare Krishna from Ukraine with an expired German residency card started a drum circle and we all came together to chant while embassy employees passed out water bottles. We shared food and WhatsApp numbers and hopes of a flight out. Periodically embassy employees would come by to read out names of people who had made the list. I stole away for conference calls, still working remotely and trying to avoid revealing that I was essentially in a makeshift refugee camp.

Night fell, and the embassy announced that the plane was full. The Marriot had apparently closed, and I was shuttled with the remaining refugees to a Westin nearby. We were told to try again in the morning as a second flight had been confirmed.

The hotel had a list of people from the German Embassy who were allowed to check in though, and many of us were not on it. Worse, the angry German woman who had yelled at me the day before was in charge of the list. The Ukrainian Hare Krishna who'd started the drum circle spoke German and also was not on the list, so he approached her on my behalf. She turned us both away, and I asked a group of Britishers from the drum circle who'd made the list if we could stay with them. They told us no, saying they didn't want to break the Germans' rules and jeopardize their chances at a flight out.

Eventually, I was able to convince the staff to rent me a room for double the price. The Hare Krishna couldn't afford it and resolved to camp outside the hotel. I told him he should stay in my room instead. We woke up early the next morning to wait in various lines, checking various papers against various lists.

When we got to the German Embassy, they'd set up some tents for those of us without the proper documents, so we at least had a little shade. The crowd was smaller this time, and the rumors more hopeful. Apparently, the flight was nowhere near full and the Germans were going to lose a lot of money on the flight without more passengers. The crowd dwindled as the bureaucrats rationalized more and more exceptions to the rules. I called friend and family members looking for any shred of evidence I could find that showed any kind of connection to Germany or the EU that could be used to support my case.

Finally, as the sun set, a French Embassy worker told me that their legal expert on EU evacuation decrees had determined that it would be illegal to let me on the plane. The angry German woman from before came out to shout at me again to leave. But there was nowhere for me to go. There was no transportation back to the hotel this time, and there were police patrols everywhere with assault rifles enforcing the Janta Curfew. I considered trying to walk to the US Embassy which I could've reached on foot in only ten or fifteen minutes, but whenever I stepped into the street the police shouted at me not to leave Embassy grounds.

The Germans were worried I'd try to stow away on one of the evacuation buses headed to the airport and sneak onto their flight and sent someone to monitor me from a distance while they loaded up. My laptop was dead and my cell phone was at 6% battery when finally I got through to someone at the US Embassy. They arranged for a car to take me back to the Westin.

Back at the hotel, I started chatting everyone up about evacuation flights. I asked every group of foreigners I saw if they had a way out. There weren't many foreigners but they were all talking about the same thing: how to get out. The Italians had a flight chartered to Rome, but the Italian outbreak was so bad that there were no flights out once you got there, and the flight was fully booked anyway.

Days went by and finally the US Embassy announced plans to charter flights out. It was extremely disorganized though, and better information was available on the Americans Stranded In India groups on Facebook and WhatsApp, where I became a regular.

One day, I came across a couple of Americans who had just moved to New Delhi and were staying in the hotel while their apartment was being renovated. They were talking about the crowd of migrant workers who could be seen walking on foot on the highway heading back hundreds of miles to the east as public transit had been closed and they had nowhere to stay.

We chatted briefly and they mentioned they worked in the US Embassy. From them, I learned that a flight had been chartered by a religious group in the US, and extra seats were being given to priority citizens like those who were immunocompromised or in other high risk groups. I shared the news on WhatsApp, and soon we heard of a couple people who'd been picked. Flights were four times the cost of those the Germans had organized though, and some people couldn't afford them. There'd been a lot of price gouging on flights and a lot of tourists in India were on a shoestring budget. The scary thing about the US flight was that they said it could cost more than $2,000 and you had to agree to pay it without knowing the final price, which had a lot of people angry.

Then one American girl started posting about a Japanese flight she claimed was still flying. Most people didn't take it seriously since there were lots of flights you could still buy tickets on. They would just get canceled though and then you'd be left to fight for a refund, and their customer support lines were always slammed. It was unclear whether this was intentional scamming or just incompetence on the part of the airlines, but many people had been burned.

Then she posted a photo from the airport, and then from the gate, and then from inside the airplane. The same airline was running that route one more time that week, on March 30th. Minutes later, the flight was sold out. I got a ticket just in time.

Next, I set about applying for a Janta Curfew travel pass to get to the airport. The state of New Delhi had started issuing them online. I submitted my application and waited. Apparently, they were backed up, and the website was unable to handle the load.

A Finnish woman in the hotel sent me a link to an evacuation flight to Helsinki that left two days after the flight to Tokyo which had just been opened to non-Fins. I bought a ticket for that flight too, just in case the Japanese flight was canceled or I was denied entry.

On March 30th, I packed up to head to the airport and discovered my travel pass application had been denied. I pulled together whatever documents I could muster to justify my travel, including a very flimsy claim that my work as a software developer was somehow "essential" to the fight against COVID-19. The hotel was able to arrange a car, and somehow we made it to the airport without getting stopped at a checkpoint. I headed to the check-in counter.

"Americans are no longer allowed visa-free travel into Japan due to the pandemic," the woman at the counter said, "and you don't have a visa."

"I'm not going to Japan," I countered, "it's just a layover, I've got onward passage to South Korea," showing her another ticket on my phone.

"Americans aren't allowed into South Korea without a visa unless they can show onward passage," she replied.

"I have onward passage from South Korea as well," I said, "I have a flight back to Japan in June."

"But you're not allowed into Japan," she responded, skeptically.

"I will be by June," I stated with an entirely feigned sense of confidence.

"Okay, you can board, but we take no responsibility if you are denied entry when you arrive," she said.

And with that, I headed to the gate. Thank goodness I'd done so much visa research and bought those extra tickets. Perhaps I would be blocked at immigration in Japan, but as long as they didn't send me back to India I would at least have a shot at getting on a flight to a safe country from there.

It was a brutal redeye, and I was exhausted when we touched down in Tokyo. We deboarded the plane, and I went to find the gate for my connecting flight to Seoul. I had a 12-hour layover so there was plenty of time to nap, I thought. 

I couldn't find my flight on any of the departure boards though. It seemed that something like 9 out of 10 flights on the board were marked as canceled, but mine wasn't listed at all. Dismayed but hopeful, I sought out an airport employee who could help. They were running a skeleton crew, but eventually I found one who spoke English.

"This flight leaves from Haneda airport on the other side of Tokyo," he said, "this is Narita airport."

"Is there an airport shuttle?" I asked, a little panicky.

"Yes, but you'll need to leave the airport to get it," he replied.

This was not good. I did not have a visa for Japan. He pointed me to Immigration and I headed over, disheveled, sweaty, and tired.

"Are you American?", the immigration officer asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"You think coronavirus does not apply to you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

"I wear a mask all the time," I said, pointing to the surgical mask I'd been wearing since finding out about that first German evacuation flight. "I wash my hands frequently," I added, miming hand-washing, "and I stay 6 feet apart," taking another step back.

"Why do you come to Japan?" she probed.

"I don't come to Japan," I said, "I go to South Korea, this is just a layover." I held up my ticket to Seoul, and with that, she stamped my passport.

Exhausted and with so many hours left until my flight, I set out in search of a hotel. Much like in Delhi, there were no taxis. I headed on foot to the nearest hotel on the map. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I walked up to the check-in counter for a familiar experience.

"You can't stay here," the woman at the counter said matter-of-factly. "We're not taking new guests."

"Where can I get a room then?" I asked.

"You just landed?"

"Yes."

"I don't know."

And with that, I walked off to the next hotel, and the next, to be turned away again. Finally, I found one which promised me I could check in if I waited 4 hours. That would only afford me a 2-hour nap before I needed to head back to the airport, but I didn't have anywhere else to go. I paid and then curled up in a stairwell and tried to sleep with my backpack as a pillow until the room opened up. It was too cold in the hallway though, and eventually, I gave up.

I finally was allowed into a room and was able to shower and change before heading back to the airport. There were two other Americans on the flight, both there on visa runs. Apparently, you can stay in Korea for 90 days at a time as a tourist, and many people fly to Japan and back to reset their 90-day limit periodically.

According to one of them, a new rule was going into effect at midnight. Foreigners would have to pay $100 a day to stay in government-designated quarantine facilities instead of self-quarantining wherever you like. Our flight would be landing at 11:30pm.

Just then, I got a message from the Marriott where I'd booked a room. My reservation was being canceled because of the new rule. The hotel said there was no way I'd make it before the deadline.

If only I could get through immigration before midnight. Unfortunately, I was seated in the very back of the plane. Once we boarded and the flight took off, I got up and asked one of the stewardesses if I could change seats so that I could deboard sooner.

"This flight is entirely sold out, so there are no open seats for you to switch to, but we are ahead of schedule and may land at 11pm," she replied.

Hopeful, I returned to my seat and waited, backpack strapped on and ready to hustle as soon as we landed in Seoul. When I finally got off the plane, I sprinted the whole way across the airport to immigration and made it near the front of the line.

"Passport," the security officer said, and I reached into my pocket, only to feel it was empty.

Fuck, I thought, panicking. Where was my passport? They checked it when I boarded the flight in Tokyo so I had it when I got on the plane. Maybe I left it on the plane?

I sprinted the whole way back across the airport to the gate, frantic, only to be stopped by security.

"I left my passport on the plane!" I panted breathlessly.

Two stewardesses took pity on me and one agreed to go check. A painful five minutes later, she returned smiling and handed me my passport.

"Thank you so much!" I shouted, already sprinting back to security, it was 11:45pm now.

They checked my documents, had me download a government COVID-19 tracking app, and asked where I was staying. I gave them the address of my hotel.

"Do you have their phone number?" the quarantine officer asked.

"No," I said, worried the hotel would refuse to accept me.

The quarantine officer just searched for the hotel online and got their number. My hopes of self-quarantining in comfort were dashed. But then, to my surprise, the officer smiled and waved me on.

"Check in on this app every day," he said, and I agreed.

From there, I was just allowed to go. No special sanitized buses like I'd seen on the news, no transportation at all actually. I got to the exit and there was but a single taxi.

"I'm the only taxi driver here, and there are no buses," the man said.

I didn't have much of a choice, so I agreed to the $150 cab fare to my hotel.

When I arrived, I went to the front desk to check in.

"Are you William Jeffries?" the woman at the counter asked.

"Yes, here is my reservation," I replied.

"We tried to get in touch with you, you can't stay here. We've booked you at a government quarantine facility, here's a map for how to get there," she said.

I looked at the paper she gave me. It was a booking for another hotel with worse reviews.

"Are there any other hotels where I can stay?" I asked.

"The government office that assigns quarantine facilities is closed, and this is the only one they gave us," she answered.

Exhausted, I headed out again to the quarantine facility on the map. When I arrived, everything was covered in anti-viral tape. They checked my temperature and gave me a bag full of masks, disinfectant, a thermometer, and other quarantine goodies as I checked in for my 14-day quarantine.

"How long will you be staying with us?" the man at the counter asked.

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

This strange mixture of hospitality and strict bureaucratic procedure would characterize the rest of my stay at the quarantine facility. I can't complain though, they were very professional and their strict adherence to protocol I'm sure kept people safe. And if they hadn't taken me, I would've likely been shipped back to New York City, which was becoming the worst-hit city in the world.

So that's the story of my escape from India. It's about here where my blog picked up. If you'd like to keep reading, you can go back to my first blog entry, here:

https://myescapetoseoul.blogspot.com/2020/03/covid-refugee.html

That's about all I have to document for posterity. My life since then has become increasingly mundane and not worthy of the effort I put into blogging. I've just been slowly adjusting to the Korean version of this new world we live in. It still seems far preferable to the panic, disorder, and periodic lockdowns in the US.

Here the government has control over the pandemic, hospitals have lots of capacity, everyone listens to medical experts, there is no shortage of PPE, everyone can buy N95 masks, you can safely go to restaurants, and new cases are basically stable at well under 100 per day for a population of 50 million, making it one of the best countries in the world for COVID-19.

Much as I would like to see my family, flying internationally would needlessly put others at risk. It seems I should continue this responsible but boring wait-and-see approach. If things get interesting enough to warrant restarting this blog, I will, but for now, let's hope it doesn't.

Korean Quarantine Origins

I learned the origin story of Korea today. According to legend, there was a she-bear and a tigress living together in a cave. They both prayed to the divine king Hwanung to be made human. He told them to stay out of the sunlight for 100 days eating only 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort herbs.

The tigress got hungry and left the cave after only 20 days, but the she-bear stayed put. Deciding she was the more responsible one, Hwanung made the she-bear a human in the spring. They copulated and she gave birth to Dangun, the founder of the first Korean kingdom.

I thought it apropos that the country was founded because a she-bear followed social distancing guidelines. Apparently, I wasn't the only one to notice the parallel either. This story was actually referenced by the government when attempting to persuade people to follow the guidelines.

Nevertheless, I think crediting Confucianism or origin stories with the success of the Korean COVID-19 success is mistaken. Perhaps things were different when the outbreak started, but as long as I've been here, people don't seem to adhere to the social distancing guidelines much. I see a lot more tigresses than she-bears on the subway.

Instead I would credit effective government policy. Not only is testing free and widely available, but if you do need to self-isolate, the government will deliver food to you for free so you don't have to leave the house to eat. People who can't earn money because they're in isolation get a government subsidy to stay home. And all of this is relatively affordable to do because the policies were enacted swiftly before a large caseload built up.

Korea has a population of over 50 million, and yet there have only been around 11 thousand cases since the outbreak started. For comparison, last month New York had 11 thousand cases in a single day. It's a lot cheaper and easier to use these subsidies when the numbers are so small. Now that the number of cases in the US is in the millions, I don't know if it's even possible to emulate these policies.

Rare Pepe

You might know Pepe the Frog from racist alt-right memes on the internet. Memes of Pepe killing jews or dressed as a klan member ruined the memory of what was originally just a regular web-comic character and the anti-defamation league labeled it a hate symbol. So I was surprised to see this on the subway.

Was this Pepe-toting Korean woman somehow a white nationalist? It didn't make sense. At first I thought it was a fluke and then I stumbled upon another rare Pepe, this one singing Karaoke. Is 4chan taking over Seoul's karaoke bars?

Confused, I did some research and discovered that in Asia, most people don't know that Pepe is a hate symbol. Instead, he's associated with the Hong Kong protests against Chinese authoritarianism. Why? The best explanation I can find is that someone used Pepe in some protest memes not knowing it's considered a hate symbol, and it got some modest popularity. People in the west started reporting on the use of a hate symbol in Hong Kong and protesters saw the media attention as beneficial, so they doubled down.

So Pepe has gotten a kind of redemption. He gets to live on in the east as a symbol of freedom rather than hate. Although after talking to a few Koreans who didn't seem to know anything about Pepe as a symbol, either for nationalists or for protestors, I think the main reason he's popular here in Seoul is that he's a cute frog.

Thank You: A Phonological Breakdown

There's a word I say several times a day here which I've been working on pronouncing better. It's the Korean formal word for thank you, the IPA transcription for which is /ka̠msʰa̠ɦa̠mnida̠/. It's difficult because there are many phonemes in it which don't exist in English, but which sound similar to phonemes that do.

The first phoneme in the word, /k/, actually sounded to me like the American English /k/ as in 'kite': a voiceless velar plosive consonant. However, I was wrong.

Korean actually has 3 different pronunciations of /k/, each with a different degree of aspiration and force of closure: lax, tense, and aspirated. These are represented as /k/, /k͈/, and /kʰ/ in IPA or ㄱ, ㄲ, andㅋ in hangul.

Because English features a relatively high degree of aspiration, Americans sound like they're always using the most aspirated /kʰ/ no matter which one they're supposed to be using, and at first we actually can't tell the difference between the three at all. So I try to say the lax /k/ or ㄱ, which is a soft, voiceless stop followed by light aspiration. What comes out instead is much closer to the aspirated /kʰ/ or ㅋ.

I've been practicing and it's getting better, but I still can't do it consistently. Also, confusingly, voiced versions of these consonants seem to show up sometimes as allophones depending on placement, so /k/ can become /g/. Normally this only happens intervocalically, but I think sometimes it happens in initial position as well. The revised romanization even transliterates this word as beginning with 'g'. Perhaps it just seems this way because the voice onset time is much longer when the plosive is phrase-initial than when it is word-initial, making it easier to identify as voiceless when phrase-initial than when word-initial.

Next, the vowel /a̠/ which seems pretty close to an American English open back unrounded vowel /aː/ as in 'bra', but it's actually retracted. That was a pretty easy adjustment to make, perhaps because vowels are easy to adjust, or perhaps because the difference was too subtle for my speaking partners to bother correcting, especially given how poor my articulation was on the consonants.

Then comes /m/ which appears to be the first phoneme in the word that exists in English. It's a voiced bilabial nasal just like in the English word 'mom'.

The hardest phoneme in the word for me is the sibilant phoneme for the hangul character ㅅ. It's represented as /s/ but this is misleading because it is articulated very differently from the American English /s/ as in 'sea'. I produce this consonant as a voiceless alveolar fricative, which native speakers seem to identify as being closer to /s͈/, the tensed version written as ㅆ in Hangul.

To make matters worse, the IPA transcription I'm working with doesn't use either /s/ or /s͈/. Instead they're using /sʰ/, seemingly trying to shoehorn this sound into the same categorizations used for the Korean plosive triads by calling it aspirated.

Sibilants are fricatives, not plosives, and I'm not sure how it's possible to aspirate fricatives in the first place. But even if I knew how to do that, Korean speakers have been queuing me to aspirate less rather than more when pronouncing this phoneme.

From imitating them, it seems like it's supposed to be palatalized somehow. Perhaps normally the phoneme is the same but in this case it's substituted for an allophone of some kind, I'm not sure. Apparently, there's some controversy about this phoneme in the field, and I haven't been able to find an explanation.

So that's about as far as I've gotten. It's a little more than one syllable into a five-syllable word. I'm pretty stumped by this sibilant issue. My working theory right now is that because it's word-medial and occurs between two voiced phonemes, some Koreans are voicing it instead of aspirating, making /ka̠msʰa̠ɦa̠mnida̠/ into /ka̠mza̠ɦa̠mnida̠/. We have that same sonorization in English, pronouncing 'whimsical' with a /z/ instead of an /s/.

I wish I knew a Korean linguist.

Sauna Eggs

I accidentally bought sauna eggs instead of baked eggs at the convenience store again. The packaging is nearly identical so it's an easy mistake to make if you can't read Korean. Every time this happens I try to force myself to eat it, but I've always failed up until today.

Sauna eggs are eggs that are pressure-cooked for a long time until the whites turn brown and take on a nutty, roasted, vaguely medicinal taste. They apparently serve these in Korean saunas for some reason and sometimes are seen in k-dramas. The first time I tried them I had to spit it back out.

Today I finally crossed over into actually wanting to finish two. Strange how things taste better the more familiar they are.

Kim Jong-Un

People keep asking what people here in Seoul think about whether Kim Jong-Un is dead. The people I meet haven't really been talking about it. I brought it up yesterday, and a Korean friend said he's just desensitized to that kind of news story because Un's father, Kim Jung-Il, had so many health rumors for so long.

When Kim Jong-Il finely did die, nobody knew for more than two days, so it's not like the rumor mill eventually proved reliable either.

No one I've talked to here seems to think Kim Jong-Un's dead, although they said if he did die, that would be bad for South Korea. Apparently, he's seen as very peaceful, for a North Korean dictator at least, being young and having studied abroad in Switzerland. If he dies with no heir apparent, there will be a power struggle and one of the older generals might come to power. Those guys might be crazy enough to try to invade South Korea, so there is reason to worry. It just doesn't seem very likely at the moment.

Social distancing at the Gym

People seemed curious about what the gym is like in Korea so I thought I'd provide some insight. The first thing you do when you walk in is to get your temperature scanned. Then you write down your name, number, address, and temperature on the log.

If anyone who turns out to have COVID-19 went to the gym, contact tracers will use this information to notify everyone who's been to the gym since then that they need to self-isolate.

Once you're in, you need to stay 1.5 to 2 meters away from other guests, which this sign announces. You also need to wear a mask the whole time, and if you take it off someone will come and scold you. This feels a little like high altitude training because the mask makes it harder to breathe so you get less oxygen.

Every other treadmill has a sign on it saying it's been decommissioned to help maintain social distancing. This is true for all the cardio equipment in the gym. There are also bottles of hand sanitizer all over the gym.

I'd say overall the gym is doing a pretty great job. The one challenge is dealing with competition for equipment like the squat rack. It's harder to maintain distance, as you can see here, particularly at popular times like 7pm.

The gym does have limited hours, closing at 8pm on weekdays and not opening at all on weekends. I'll be curious to see what things look like in the US when gyms start to open back up.

Cat Cafe

Seoul is famous for its cat cafes, and I wanted to peek inside to see how they looked. I'm normally highly allergic to cats and as soon as I get a whiff of them my nasal passages close up like a clam, but the owner beckoned me inside and I thought I'd get a few photos. I sanitized my hands, slipped on the specially provided slippers, and sat down at a table, hoping that the cats would respect the 2 meter social distancing guidelines.

As soon as I was seated, a few cats sidled on up to me. Uh oh. I braced myself for the sinus attack as one of them proceeded to crawl up my chest towards my face.

But it didn't come.

At first I thought maybe it'd just take a minute to kick in, but then I remembered my face mask. It must be blocking the dander.

What a lucky break, I guess I can come to cat cafes now. If you've never been to one because you're allergic, once local ordinances permit it I definitely recommend taking advantage of the fact that it's now socially acceptable to rock an N95 in public and check out a cat cafe.

Good Enough Burger

I stumbled across this burger restaurant. They're tag-line is "Why pay more? It's good enough." At first, I thought this was a terrible marketing tactic. Why not settle for a barely passing burger? And then I discovered this appears to be a very successful chain with franchise locations all over Seoul.

So finally I bit. Is this burger really good enough? It's only $1.50.



Was it good enough? So this was a close call, but I'm gonna go with no. Not good enough. Not even for $1.50. So much mayo.

---

Update: I've eaten here several times now and it's definitely good enough. I was thinking about it all wrong. They're not trying to make a serious burger, they're trying to compete with McDonalds and Burger King on price. Their burgers are about as good as McDonalds or Burger King burgers, but cheaper. If you are in a hurry and want a trashy but delicious fast food chain burger, why pay more? It's good enough.

Hongdae Nightlife

In an attempt to make some friends here in Korea, I've been trying to establish myself as a regular at a language exchange bar called Playground. Every night, they host a language exchange meetup and provide stickers with flags from different countries so people can show which languages they speak. It's about half Koreans and half foreigners, mostly from Europe and the US.

You can see students from the nearby university doing choreographed dances (perhaps k-pop trainees or students at one of the performing arts schools) in the park across the street from the bar. Here are a few in their tracksuits in the chilly spring weekday night performing for a very thin crowd.

On weekdays like this one, there are usually less than a dozen people who come through Playground throughout the night, but on Saturday the number shot up to 20+ people.

Playground Bar closed around 2am and people went bar-hopping afterward. Young people in Hongdae seem pretty nonchalant about the virus, here's a shot of the revelers spilling out onto the streets for cigarettes or a place to puke. Most of them are not wearing masks, and while there are many foreigners (who do seem to wear masks less in general), it's mostly Koreans.

Hanging out in Hongdae I get the sense that the threat has passed and people have already returned to normal, and yet many people elsewhere in the city who I talk to on HelloTalk (a popular local language exchange app) are still trying to avoid social contact altogether.

Today, the government officially began relaxing some of its more extreme measures. 

"Administrative orders on churches, bars, gyms and cram schools that strongly recommended their temporary closure will be lifted on the condition that they comply with strict quarantine rules."

If there's no second wave, on May 5th we'll downgrade to what's called "routine distancing". I'm sketchy on the details of what that looks like, but it sounds like continued temperature scans, hand sanitizer, and face masks but it'd be okay to go to work or school again. The requirements to get there are under 50 cases a day and at least 95% of them traceable.

Right now, we've been well within those guidelines, but the government wants to wait until after April 30 (Buddha's birthday and a long weekend in Korea) to do that. We just have to stay under 50 cases a day and over 95% traceability until then. If we fail though, it seems pretty plausible the cause could be Hongdae. An official from the Mapo-gu district where Hongdae is located told The New Yorker their biggest fear is a super-spreader, saying "The biggest problems are gaming cafés, churches, and Hongdae clubs".

My first day out of quarantine I was positive I didn't have it because I'd just been in isolation for 15 days, so I felt pretty comfortable going out of the house. You can't spread it until you've got it after all. Now that I've been free for a few days though, I'm getting more nervous.

Then I got this alert.

This one's in Mapo-gu, that's my district. A guy pretty close to my age. Came in through the same airport I did. He went to the Ministop convenience store? Is that my convenience store? I think mine is a Ministop. Is this the same address? Nope, 29 World Cupbuk-ro, this isn't my street, this one is closer to the subway stop.

Woah, this guy only went to one place in three days. Just the Ministop, other than that he self-isolated. Wow, I'm glad he didn't come to Playground Bar for the meetup. What if my location history ends up on an emergency alert? Will my gym have to close? Will the meetup shut down? What will people think of the fact that I went to three places today?

I get why they do this. People say the gender and age of the patient aren't relevant, and I suppose medically it's not, but it sure makes the alerts more visceral.

Should I stop going to the meetup? The government just eased the restriction, cases are at an all-time low, and the bartender told me to come in tomorrow to volunteer since they don't have anyone on Tuesdays who know the ropes. Man, I hope I'm not a super-spreader.

Freedom Hangover

I think I had a little too much freedom yesterday. There was no alcohol in quarantine, and I'm not a big drinker anyway, I'm really struggling with this hangover. Today I've been inside most of the day. The Airbnb has one of those cheap little projectors you can get for a few hundred bucks nowadays so I hooked it up and have just been watching Tiger King and rehydrating.

I wanted to get some protein so I went to the convenience store on the corner for snacks. There were a ton of seafood snacks that would definitely not sell in the US. I picked up these little crab pieces because they had some English on the label so I could figure out what it was. I couldn't hack it though, got two bites in and threw the rest away. Oh well, back to bed then.

First Day of Freedom

Apologies for the delay in posting, I got carried away enjoying my freedom. I checked out and walked outside and delighted in the ability to walk more than ten steps without having to turn around.

Shops are open, and some people have even taken their masks off. I was able to buy a more fashionable black mask at a convenience store on the corner, no lines, no rationing, I even had a choice between several brands.

I met up with James Chae for dinner, he took me out to a Korean barbecue joint where an old married couple was celebrating the national holiday by getting completely hammered. Afterwards, he brought me by the university where he teaches design, and then to a bar in the neighborhood.

Drinking in Korea is apparently always accompanied by snacks and today we had peanuts and anchovies. You tear the tiny little head off and then pop the rest of it. It's incredibly salty so it pairs naturally with beer.

Quarantine Day 15: The Last Day

Today is my last day in quarantine. Curious what the Korea I will meet tomorrow has been up to, I decided to translate one of my government alerts.

I haven't been bothering lately because it's a hassle to screenshot them, upload the image to my laptop, run it through OCR, and then paste it into a translator, which is the only way I can figure out what they say. I've tried retyping the hangul characters by hand, but Korean is agglutinative so you have to figure out which strokes to type in which order, and without any knowledge of the grammar you can get stuck on a single block for a while.

This one said:

"Central Election Management Committee 4.15. When you go to vote on the election day of the National Assembly, be sure to bring a mask and identification card and practice distance from other electors."

According to The Korea Herald, my first day of freedom is coincidentally also the day of the world's first pandemic election.

James mentioned he would be off work for a national holiday when we arranged to meet for dinner, but it hadn't occurred to me to ask why. I wonder if he's going to vote. I'll be staying far away from the polls, heading to Hongdae to check into my new Airbnb and finally getting to do some laundry.

Quarantine Day 14: Extra Day Penalty

I thought I'd be able to check out tomorrow but my first day in quarantine wasn't counted. Apparently the clock starts the day after you arrive. So Wednesday will be my first day back on the outside.

I'm planning to meet up with James in Hongdae, which is looking like the best neighborhood for me to settle down in. It's much easier to get around there with just English because of the universities nearby, it's relatively cheap, and there's a language exchange meetup that meets daily at a bar. If it's still happening of course, although it looks like it is.

I was a regular at a language exchange meetup in NYC and it was kind of a turnkey social circle. Perhaps it'll be the same here. As long as it doesn't turn into a cluster....apparently one popped up in Itaewon which is another reason why Hongdae is at the top of my list.

Now I just need to book an Airbnb. There are not a lot of good options, everything is tailored to students bunking in groups. I think I found a decent option but it seems a little sketchy, might be false advertising.

No matter where I end up, I'm sure it'll be better than this quarantine hotel room. There's on thing I'll miss though: the electric toilet seat warmer. I dunno why we don't have these in America.

Quarantine Day 13: Improvised Exercises

In order to stay in shape while trapped in a tiny hotel room, I've been improvising some exercises. Bodyweight exercises only go so far because I don't weigh that much, so in search of more resistance I've been exploring household objects.

The bed makes a decent leg press, although it weighs much less at the top of the range of motion than it does at the bottom. The greater the angle between the bed and the floor, the more weight is on the headboard and the less is on my legs. I tried putting stuff on the bed to make it heavier but they just slide off.

It works better for chest press because the range of motion is shorter (arms being shorter than legs) so the angle between the bed and the floor stays small, increasing average resistance throughout the motion. It's still easier at the top than the bottom though.

I'm okay doing bodyweight only for shoulders. I still can't do a handstand push-up with full range of motion so I can keep working on that. I needed something for my back though and none of the door jambs are deep enough for pull-ups, even if I had the finger strength to maintain a crimp grip for that long (which I don't).

The best I've come up with so far is single arm rows with my simplicity descending life line. It's not very heavy but if I do a lot of reps with it I eventually feel a burn.

The hotel initially provided a plastic wrapped package of water bottles with a handle that would've worked better since it was heavier. Unfortunately I drank most of the water bottles in it and the hotel refused to give me another. They don't want to give me more than 5 or 6 water bottles a day so I've been calling at different times of day hoping to get a different staff member that doesn't know I've hit the quota.

Between that and drinking less water, I've gotten pretty close, and the plastic wrapped package has some structural integrity again. By tomorrow it'll be fully restocked. I think it'll be about twice as heavy as the simplicity descending life line. Too bad I'll only have a couple more days to use it.

Quarantine Day 12: Neighborhoods

I'm beginning to look into places to stay for once I'm out of quarantine. It seems like there are plenty of options on Airbnb but it's difficult to know what to look for. The standard recommendations most travel sites make are the following, in order from cheapest to most expensive:

• Hongdae: cheap, young, university-dominated area where English is widely spoken
• Myeongdong: easy access to markets and transportation with a more local vibe
• Itaewon: the international scene with lots of foreigners and casual nightlife
• Gangnam: big corporate offices alongside the most lavish shopping and nightclubs

Normally, I choose where to stay based on commute time and nearby things to do, but given that I won't be going into an office and am supposed to be avoiding lots of outings, it seems like perhaps I need new criteria. But what should they be?

Quarantine Day 11: Vlogger Insights

I'm nearing the end of my quarantine and am starting to think about what life will be like on the outside. Thankfully, there are lots of vloggers in Seoul, and from their videos you can get a decent idea of what people are doing. Some vloggers are really excited to go out again, and other vloggers are mad at them for going out too much. This vlogger is less opinionated about it and is just filming to show people what it's like.

 

So based on that, it seems like while there are definitely way fewer people than normal, shops, malls, and even an indoor theme park are open. According to this data set I found from Johns Hopkins, there were only 27 new diagnoses and 132 recoveries yesterday, continuing a weeks long trend of decreasing numbers of active cases. Korea never had to lock down the way NYC is doing, and people have been starting to relax for a while now, so it seems possible things could be returning to normal without a second wave, although of course the threat is still real.

Based on this, how much should I indulge in this lack of lockdown luxury? Can I start going to the gym again? What about using the subway every day? It's hard to know where to draw the line. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, it'll be four more days of quarantine before I get to have these problems.

Quarantine Day 10: G-Dragon

Continuing my Korean cultural education, I've been listening to some K-Pop. G-Dragon is arguably the most popular Korean pop star at the moment. While not a household name in the US, G-Dragon has done collaborations with Missy Elliot and some other mainstream American rappers. This photo I think effectively conveys this artist's androgynous fashion style. Do you think G-Dragon is a guy or a girl?

This propensity for gender blurring is not uncommon in K-Pop, but it is rather confusing to me given how conservative the country that produced it is. Gay marriage is still not legal, porn sites are blocked by the government, and tattoos get blurred out on TV. And yet, trans rights are kind of ahead of the curve. Trans people still face prejudice of course, but unlike in the US, housing and employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity is illegal in Korea. Is this because of K-Pop? Is there some deeper cultural root? 

Quarantine Day 9: Korea Cares!

I forgot to check in on my self-diagnosis app to report no symptoms and got a call from a friendly Korean woman with the government who seemed genuinely concerned about my health. I told her everything was fine and I'd actually remembered to check in this morning even though I forgot yesterday. She offered to call me every day, but I told her I'd set a reminder alarm on my phone instead.

The staff noticed I stopped ordering food and sent a hotel manager to come check on me. They said they'd allow me to throw my garbage out again, and gave me a bag of supplies, including some proper disinfectant (not that scented stuff), four N95 masks, and a digital thermometer with an adorable blue penguin on it. Wow Korea, my favorite color and my favorite animal, how did you know? Temperature is a healthy 36.8ºC. Can't wait to try out these N95s when I'm finally free again in 6 more days. I've been stuck using an old disposable surgical mask since the outbreak started because the pharmacies in India were all sold out.

Quarantine Day 8: K-Drama

As part of my Korean culture education, I've started watching a Korean drama. Korean culture in general is experiencing a renaissance period, partly because the digital era has made it easier to export culture profitably, and partly because the government began subsidizing it once they realized the power that soft influence brings. It's even considered a weapon against the North.

That's part of why I picked this particular Korean drama, Crash Landing on You. It's about a South Korean woman from a powerful elite business family who goes to test her business's new activewear line by going paragliding, but gets caught up in a tornado and flung across the border where she crash lands and is rescued by a handsome North Korean army captain.

What makes the series interesting to me is that the actress who plays the leading role is actually a North Korean defector. While the premise itself is pretty far-fetched, all the depictions of life in North Korea are pretty accurate because they consulted her on everything. And the role of South Korean cultural influence on life in North Korea is a recurring theme.

I imagine the producers thought a lot about the impact the show will have when it makes its way across the border. What will they think seeing a fellow North Korean who escaped to star in a South Korean TV series? The North Koreans in the show (all played by South Koreans) accuse her of spreading propaganda when she accurately describes life in Seoul, much like many of her former countrymen are sure to accuse the actress of doing. In a way they're both right; she does tell the truth about the world below the 38th parallel, and that's what makes it such potent propaganda.

Quarantine Day 7: Garbage

The hotel will no longer take my garbage out. They're saying by government policy, it has to stay in my room until I'm released from quarantine (9 more days). They gave me some biohazard bags and some disinfectant along with a very complicated 2 page manual written entirely in Korean on how to properly pack my garbage. I've tried translating it but to no avail. Google's image translation breaks down on passages this long.

Upon closer inspection, the "disinfectant" appears to actually just be an odor eliminating scented spray. I can see why this would be necessary because after only one day my garbage smelled terrible. The meals they provide are largely seafood based, which makes it worse. Here's a picture of some kind of tentacle I've been eating. The scented spray is nice but it really just doesn't cut the mustard here.




The staff kept calling about it and saying it's a government policy and I can't keep leaving garbage out for pickup. I really don't want the garbage in the room and have been protesting. They typed up a rough, abbreviated translation of the manual and left it on my tarp. I was able to get them to take one last bag of garbage out but I think that's about all I'm gonna get.

Quarantine Day 6: Semifood Restaurant

I ordered takeout on a little app called Shuttle, and the hotel staff brought it to my tarp! I don't know if it was just miscommunication when they told me I could only eat the quarantine food or what, but I'm happy to have a little more control over my diet again. Here's something I got from Semifood Restaurant.



It's about 3x more expensive than quarantine food but it tastes a lot better. I think this is a vastly superior introduction to what Korean food really tastes like. Here's some beef kimbap. It's like sushi but with beef.

Quarantine Day 5: Climate Control

Climate control has proven to be a challenge. There's a very modern, powerful AC / heater in the room but the controller is entirely in Korean.

You can kind of guess from context clues how it's supposed to work but I'm always left wondering if it's in heating mode or cooling mode. 

I tried using Google Translate's handy camera feature to automatically translate the buttons. The results were pretty interesting. I'm very curious to know what the Barab Century button does.

Quarantine Day 4: Simplicity Descending Life Line

I found the simplicity descending life line beneath my desk. It was next to a hook bolted to the floor. The instructions are simple.

1. Hang the hook to the supporter ring.

2. Fasten the belt around your chest.

3. Throw the rope-rill out of the window.

4. Descending safely with facing to the wall.

The rest of it is written in Korean. From this much, I gather it's a sort of fire escape. Unfortunately, neither I nor my simplicity descending life line will fit through this tiny hotel window.

The window has a much larger upper panel that doesn't open. The glass is pretty thick but I think I might be able to smash through it with the chair if I got a running start. I could throw a few towels over the glass shards so they don't cut my simplicity descending life line.

I quietly pray for a fire.

Quarantine Day 3: Kimchi for Breakfast

The hotel provides all my meals in these little bento boxes. I don't have any control over what goes in them, so I pretty much always get kimchi.

Breakfast this morning was unusual in that I could name almost everything: kimchi, eggs, sushi, fruit, bacon, compressed protein nugget.

The only thing that stumped me was this wet yellow lump next to the kimchi. I make an effort to eat the local food but I wonder if quarantine food is really the best introduction to Korean cuisine.

I stare longingly out the window at the barbecue joint across the street as I gnaw on my wet yellow lump and try not to smell.

Quarantine Day 2: The Benefits of Big Brother

It's time for my daily self-check. This app, "Self Diagnosis", was released by the Korean government. Once a day, I have to self-report any symptoms I might be experiencing. If I have symptoms, they'll send someone to come test me, which is nice. The part that's creepy is that it checks my location in the background and reports it back to the government. That way they can tell whether I am still in my quarantine room. Also, if needed, they can use it for COVID Alerts.

I didn't know what a COVID Alert was when I first got one. It showed up on my phone like an Amber Alert or a Flood Watch alert does in the US. They happen often, and they're written entirely in Korean. Sometimes they're just updates on the situation in general, but sometimes they're reports about a specific new individual diagnosed. They list basic information about the person and every location they've been to since contracting the disease. Even love hotels.

They know when the person contracted the disease because, with everyone's location history and diagnostic status, they can tell exactly who the person contracted it from and where. Creepy, but effective.

I wonder if one day I too will become a COVID alert. Based on my daily self-check results, at least I won't be today.

Quarantine Day 1: COVID Refugee

The pandemic struck while I was on contract working in India. As borders all over the world began to close, I had to decide whether to return home to NYC---which was rapidly becoming the epicenter for the western hemisphere---or to seek safe harbor somewhere else. Watching the infection rate curves, there was only one country still accepting Americans which seemed to be over the hump. South Korea.

I didn't know anyone in Korea, save for a former co-worker of my sister's who I doubted would remember me, and I didn't speak a word of the language. But in Korea I could go to a restaurant and not worry about being responsible for human death. That is, if I make it through quarantine.

So that's how I found myself in this tiny room in a quarantine hotel. It's like jail if all the guards were extremely service-oriented. You are imprisoned ever so politely. “Is it okay if I order a pizza?” I ask the receptionist. “No, sir. We humbly allow you only eat the meal we provide sir, and only at the meal time. I am so sorry to you sir, my deep apologize.”

There’s a plastic tarp in front of the door to my room; that’s where they leave food for me and where I leave garbage for them. They replace the tarp four times a day. I watch them from the peephole in the door.

If you lean in close to peer through that little circle, you can see what my neck feels like.