On Hold

I'm on my second credit card call to notify my card companies that I'll be traveling a helluva lot soon, and man, it's inconceivable. How many times do I have to repeat a 16-digit number? Slash, how long can Citi keep me on the phone, processing each trip notification separately? I've talked to three people on this call alone. The first call was better: one guy, under ten minutes, no holding. Poor call quality, though.

Here's my schedule:

July 29-August 4: the Philippines
August 4-August 25: South Korea (every time I call, they all act surprised that I'm here, yet every time I call, I say I'm living here and they say they'll make a note of it)
August 25-29: Taiwan
August 30-31: South Korea (for major packing and gear-getting-together)
August 31 (traveling back in time over time zones): Hawaii
September 1: Maine (well, and the rest of New England, too, but I didn't bother to mention it)
September 20 (for one year): England

Jezum.

On this last call, this guy kept telling me he could set up notifications for up to 60 days in the system, yet that the system wouldn't let him set up notifications into September, and he wouldn't acknowledge the fact that these two bits of info were incongruous, despite the two or three times I pointed that out (I didn't use "incongruous," though. Yeah, right.).

After finishing all my calls, I noted a change from previous notifications. Customer service agents used to be very ooh la la about international travel and make all sorts of conversation about all the places I've gone. Now they're all pretty blase about it. Maybe too many people complained about getting talked up in the name of customer relations. I'm cool with it.

My Mind is Like a Laser

Sorry, it's been a while, and it'll be a while more. Not tons of stuff has been going on here that's worth writing about. I've mostly been mired in visa and financial aid applications for school in England in September, as well as preparations for my upcoming trips and going home. I do have the Mud Festival and some beach stuff to blog about when I get some time and some pictures emailed to me. Also, I'm going to the Philippines on Thursday for five days, so that should be a lot of material.

I've been having stress dreams about not having time to get a haircut before I get some passport photos done, not having any money in my wallet, not being able to catch a train/bus/plane on time, losing packages in the mail, etc. What a nightmare--literally.

Where is the Pope?

This commercial came on a few weeks ago in Korea, and it's driving me insane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy0rCwJEH-Y&feature=PlayList&p=37DFADC300D24205&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=32

It's obviously supposed to be "Where is the pulp?" but because of the slight Korean accent, the inconveniently layered sound effect, and the fact that the "l" gets kind of lost against the "p" anyway, it sounds like "Where is the pope?" I want to kill.

"With pulpy" also sounds like an English-as-a-foreign-language naming mechanism, but maybe not. The humor factor takes away from the incorrect use of adjective, I guess.

FIFA World Cup USA vs. England

The game between the US and England was at 3:30am in Korea, so everyone had to do a lot of drinking and dart playing and such beforehand. The bar was as packed as I've seen it since then, there being so many Americans and Brits in Ulsan. The rivalry was strong, but there were no fights.








This is kind of a weird picture, but I took it to show how little space I had while watching the game. I was sitting on a windowsill with some other people, and the chairs in front of us kept getting inched closer and closer to let other drunken people stumble into the space and crouch down (or not, and get yelled at) to talk to the people in that area.


Here are a bunch of Americans. A couple of us found it amusing that the guy in red in the middle is holding crib notes for the USA chants they must have just made up for the game.




This guy on the left was hilarious. He's a friend of Emily's and came to meet Michael, on the right, but was so drunk, he held out his hand and fell flat forward into Michael, and almost flew out the window. Michael got kind of defensive and thought he was under unintentional attack, but then they worked it out and had a long inebriated conversation.



The game ended in a tie, which was disappointing to all. I think all the England supporters were surprised that we managed a point, but seemed to blame it on a moment of poor goalkeeping (considering the circumstance of our score) than on actual skill by the Americans. On the other hand, the Americans all seemed proud of keeping up and assumed all along we wouldn't lose outright, at the least.