Start, Pause, Stop, Rewind

To paraphrase a conversation I had with KMart last week over drinks (some time before I started espousing the unheralded merits of mustard), I am Charlton Heston, Korea my cold, dead hands.

Reality, however, speaks differently; and sometime -- maybe soon, maybe in a year, maybe later -- I will leave this place. Not for good, but for good and long.

I once unfairly, stupidly called Korea a way station. It's not; for me or any of Psychedelic Kimchi's contributors. It is for some, but for us Korea is/was the most meaningful experience of our lives. I'm twenty-nine years old. I'll be thirty in May. I've lived here for nearly a third of my life.

During that period, I've felt the greatest exaltation and the greatest misery. And the good (however humble) has always outweighed the bad (however relentless). Korea is many things, but an environment of neutrality it is not. It is a manic-depressive place, where the highs are high and the lows are lower. Its undertow is as fearful as the symmetry of William Blake's Tyger, its exhilaration stronger than 300km/h wind gusts.

You learn to live with it. You learn to adapt. And in the process you learn about yourself, what kind of person you really are, what beliefs you're willing to hold onto, what morals you're willing to sacrifice.

Expatriates who stay in Korea for years are often labelled as masochists. I've been called such, and I've dubbed others likewise. But that's not it. It's an easy way to classify those whom we cannot understand. It's easier to believe that a person would choose to live in an environment which others deem unseemly because he has no other choice, rather than accept the fact that, ohnoitcantbetrue, he is actually happy there.

I came here in 2000. A lot -- and I mean a lot-- has changed since. Then again, shit's pretty much the same: the weather, the Dow Jones average, the decline of the New York Knicks and Nas's career...my youthful acne. I want for nothing save perhaps a Nintento Wii and, in a perfect world, donut milkshakes.

Will I ever be as happy when I leave Korea as I was when I lived here?

Magic 8-Ball says yes.

Probablyfuckingmaybe.