Third Strike

1. I live right up the hill from Sinpyeong subway station which is pretty convenient if I need to tell a cab driver how to find my apartment. Trouble is I suck with Korean and I had the Korean word for subway station confused. The word is jiachol but I had it confused with jigalchi which is actually the name of another subway stop. So I'd get into a cab and tell the driver sinpyeong jigalchi which is like getting into a cab in New York and saying Brooklyn Manhattan. Every driver I said it to would give me this really confused look as if to say "Well, which one?" and I would get really mad that no one understood me. It was 6 weeks before someone corrected me. I felt like an ass.

2. I got a coffee maker for Valentines day and was really excited to try it out. I went down to the supermarket but had some trouble finding ground coffee. With all the labels in Korean I had to squeeze every bag to see if it felt right. I found one and brought it home to brew a pot. It was good too, much better than the shitty instant coffee that I had been drinking for months. I went to empty the used coffee grounds from the machine and was surprised to find no grounds at all. After discounting the possiblity of having a magic coffee maker I realized that I had just brewed a pot of instant coffee. I felt like a moron.

3. After coming back from the mud fest Sarah and I both had bags full of damp clothes to wash. Sarah started a load of laundry and called to me inside.

"Where's your detergent?" she asked.

Exasperated, I replied "Right next to the machine, dear."

"You mean this?" she asked, showing me a container of liquid soap.

"Yeah," I said.

"This is fabric softener."

Turns out I had been washing my clothes for 6 months using fabric softener instead of soap. It explains why my clothes have been so soft but stains have been a real bitch to get out. I felt like and idiot.