how not to pack for a long weekend

Despite the fact that I have been in perpetual motion for the past couple years, I am still the worst packer ever.  I struggle to remember one trip in recent memory that didn't begin with a scramble to get everything packed at the last minute-- whether that be a weekend jaunt in nearby Philadelphia or a year-long move to the opposite side of the world.  Often this ends in gross over-packing, frequently in poor sartorial decisions, and time and again in random acts of packing stupidity, as I end up with several pairs of pants and only one shirt for the weekend or completely forget to toss in underwear (which can only somewhat work if you are headed to Mexico and plan on spending most of your time rotating through the bathing suits that you, thankfully, did not forget to pack).

This weekend was no exception, and Friday morning found me struggling to finish a final paper and throw together a weekend bag for New York with highs of 75 and best friends on the horizon.  75 is well and nice, but the excitement over basking in the glory of an early spring day can easily corrupt the reasonable part of the brain that tells you that highs of 50 the following two days really mean that it will get down close to freezing over the weekend-- don't hang up your winter jacket just yet.

Flash forward to Sunday night, as I'm waiting for the bus to take me home, away from the chaos of the city as well as far away from the people I love.  After a night of dancing in heels and retiring yet another sad pair of black opaque tights, I've been schlepping it around the city in a pair of yoga pants and gold Toms.  While I am vaguely embarrassed about my state of being, at least New Yorkers are wonderfully active, and traversing Central Park in workout attire (albeit of the perfectly matched Lululemon variety) is nothing out of the ordinary on a sunny Sunday.  Having just made it in time for my bus back down below the Maison-Dixon line, I'm high on the adrenaline of a close call and not really expecting a long wait out in the cold.  But the buses are backed up, and so nearly forty minutes later, I decide to pull a pair of jeans over top of my pants in hopes that I will stop shivering uncontrollably.  Never mind the awkwardness of shimmying into denim that was not meant to be layered and bending over to fish for the ends of my bunched up yoga pants while surrounded by hundreds of Megabus customers-- I'm certain I am borderline hypothermic at this point, and dammit, I am not going to go into shock just because I can't pack or predict the changing weather worth shit!

My bus ended up boarding a few minutes later, but the damage was done, and I shiver shiver shivered all the way home.  While this should be a lesson in how not to pack, experience tells me that I will continue to get this wrong time and again.  How does one pack for a short weekend with drastic temperature changes and drastically different social situations (a Saturday night out at a swanky lounge vs. lounging on a Sunday morning, for instance)?  Will I ever get it right?!

a self-portrait. the big apple is just sooo much better in the comfort of my yoga pants, yea?  I'm pretty jazzed about the situation, anyway, if you can't tell.

my refusal to fold becomes costly

This morning I cracked open a book to find a 10,000 won note.  A whole lot of good that does me in America.  That's a night of Korean BBQ!  Two bowls of dolsot bibimbap!  A tea set from E-Mart!  Thirty red bean filled fish cakes!  Twenty hot-tteoks!  (and then 1/10 of the gym membership required to work them off my hips!)

I really need to stop using cash money as a stand-in for a bookmark.  At the very least, couldn't I have done this with a 1,000 mark?  

mmm hot-tteok in Insadong- this stand would cost 900 won each (instead of 500 near my former abode), so I could only buy eleven with my bookmark won, cutting my theoretical gym time from four hours a day down to two.  oh, the sacrifices one makes for hot-tteok...  

*also, props to anyone who can polish off more than one or two of these and not want to die.  there is definitely a significant hot-tteok threshold- once you hit it you go from this is the most amazing paty in my mouth to send me to north korea to die an untimely death at the hands of dear leader for I cannot handle the copious amounts of oil and brown sugar coursing through my veins

Random acts of stupidity and kindness in the birthplace of Western civilization

A few years back, I spent a summer living out my Indiana Jones fantasies on an archaeological excavation in Arcadia, Greece.  Archaeology is actually nothing like Indiana Jones, but for the sake of appearing much cooler than I actually am, just imagine that I spent a couple months wearing a fedora and cracking a whip atop the alter of Zeus at Lykaion and be jealous.

in reality, I definitely spent more time befriending bugs and following them around than wielding a whip

Most of the team had a night to kill before flying home, and so we made plans to spend the evening in Athens before heading to the airport the following morning.  Using my internet skills, I found my clan a cheap place to stay for the night, and we boarded the train into the city.  Upon arriving at our hotel, I reached for my wallet to pay, only to find no. wallet. anywhere.  Navigating the metro during rush hour and being stupid with an awkward amount of luggage in a somewhat shady area of the city, it appeared, had led to my first-ever pickpocketing incident.  Sudden panic set in, but I quickly pulled myself together and set about assessing the damage and canceling my cards.  Survival money was lent, and I resolved to put it behind me and move on to having a wonderful night with a group that I would not see for awhile, or maybe ever, again.

As we feasted on tzatziki and saganaki, fresh salad and grilled octopus, spanakopita and souvlaki, washing it all down with Mythos beer, my problems were easily forgotten (and perhaps purposely avoided in conversation due to my embarrassment over being such an easy target).

Mythos, beer of the gods--pairs perfectly with ambrosia

In fact, after getting home and explaining the situation to my parents, reluctantly purchasing a replacement wallet, and writing a check to the friend who had so graciously lent me money, I absorbed myself fully in the ongoing Olympic Games, reconnected with the friends I had not seen for months, and nearly forgot about the situation altogether.

The following fall, my mom called me at school to ask if I was in trouble with the US Embassy, as a letter had arrived for me.  Being fairly certain that if the government had a bone to pick with me, I probably would not find out via snail mail, I asked her to open the letter and read me the contents.  Imagine my surprise to hear that the US Embassy in Athens had my wallet and would be shipping it shortly.  Not only would I have my wallet back, but I would receive the entire contents, including a check for nearly €100.

To this day, I sometimes wonder where my wallet was found and who the kind soul was that returned it.  Perhaps I left it on the counter when I purchased my train ticket, or if it fell underneath my seat as a I reached in my bag for a book on the suburban rail.  Perhaps it was airport security or another weary traveler.  Whatever the case may be, it certainly is one of those moments that has restored my faith in humanity.

The world is fundamentally a good place.

exposing myself to Korea

When I arrived in Korea on my one-year working visa, there were a few strings attached.  Aside from shipping away my diploma and a medley of notarized documents to Seoul prior to my arrival, there were a few things that needed to be taken care of upon touching down fourteen time zones into the future.

Lest they allow any impure mudblood foreigner taint their aseptic culture, immigration requires a thorough physical of all foreign visa holders (or "body check" in creepy Konglish).  Fail this, and they send you packing.  For visiting foreigners (who from most countries are granted a 90-day tourist visa), HIV disclosure is not mandatory.  If, however, positive HIV status is revealed, you'll be given the boot.  For all foreigners on working visas, blood work is done ASAP to confirm negative HIV status.  While this is a questionable human rights issue that makes me feel a bit uneasy, countries do have the right to make their own immigration laws, and S. Korea is not alone in requiring HIV testing for prolonged stays.  In fact, until 2010, positive HIV status could restrict entry to the United States (though immigration did not test for it, failing to disclose positive status could be considered "immigration fraud").  While it is still considered a "communicable disease of public health significance," HIV no longer bars individuals from entering and residing in the United States, which is a considerable step forward as we increase our understanding of the disease and aim to reduce the stigma surrounding it.

In addition to HIV tests, they require a few gallons of urine for, among other things, extensive drug testing.  In reality, it is more like a pint, but it sure feels like gallons when you are nervous, dehydrated, and trying to aim to fill a cup and several test tubes while straddling a squat toilet.  As I was particularly inept when it came to squat toilets (oh what a difference a year would make), this also required partial undressing as to avoid reeking of urine throughout the rest of the day with three hours of class left to teach.  My heart went out to the friend with the childhood fear of soiling his clothes that to this day requires him to completely undress to take a shit, a task made particularly difficult in business attire.  I would undress, squeeze out a few drops, get dressed, wash the cup of urine that I was about to stow in my pocket, and hit the vending machine for yet another cup of coffee.  The staff member that brought me to the hospital would call to wonder if I had left without her, and I would inform her that I regrettably had yet to produce an ample enough urine supply.  My so-called "diuretic" would fail me once more, and I'd be left to contemplate my performance anxiety and start the process all over again.

And I haven't even gotten to the good part.

Immigration also wants to make sure that you don't have TB.  Instead of doing a tuberculin test, they run a chest X-ray.  I was led down to radiology by an English speaking aspiring med student volunteer who instructed me to take off all my clothes, including underwear, and slip into hospital attire.  No problem... except that they only are providing shirts.  Now I know there are a lot of 4'10" adjummas running around, but this thing really seems to short to be intended for use as a gown.  So I asked for pants.  "No pants."  Wait, whattt?  This girl definitely understands English.  But I ask again.  "No pants."  I peek outside the curtain I am changing behind.  In addition to the technicians and my volunteer, there is a room full of old Korean male patients.  All wearing pants.  Now I've only been in this country for a week, and I am pretty sure that modesty, particularly between men and women, is a pretty big deal.  But maybe there is a different standard that applies in a medical setting, kind of like how people casually talk about having diarrhea as if it were a headache.  So I brace myself to bravely Pooh Bear a room full of strangers.  I'll never see them again, right?  For those of you who don't know what I mean when I use "Pooh Bear" as a verb, let me remind you of what Pooh Bear looks like.  More importantly, what he wears:

 

hello, world!  isn't life better without the constraint of pants?

I mumbled a lot of incoherent words about seeing a lot of my ass and nervously penguin waddled out from behind the curtain.  Volunteer stares at me awkwardly and tells me I can keep my pants on.  But you just told me several times not to wear pants, you sadistic fuck.  Oh, I technically was never wearing "pants" because I was wearing a skirt.  Kill me now, I just Pooh Beared a room full of strangers.

I'm a whore for science

That's right.  I said it.  When I said you'd never have to sell your eggs to afford to travel, I wasn't telling the whole truth.  You want to know a great way to make some easy cold hard cash?  Give your body to science.  Science.  Now, I know that science has that in-tell-ec-tu-al ring to it, and we, as Americans, fear the intellectual, but hear me out.  You will be free to indulge in all the non-intellectual pursuits you've ever dreamed of when you are basking under the sun on a beach in Thailand, paid for (in-full) by science.  Ah, the life of a professional guinea pig.  Does it get any sweeter than that?

 

When I was a student at University, I became a regular in neuroscience research studies.  Most of these involved sitting through after-hours MRI sessions that paid a whopping tax-free $20/hr.  Every now and then someone would get curious and ask me for the hook-up.  Kind of like having the coolest drugs, except I had nothing to gain by recruiting new research subjects.  Just more people in the pool to take away from my income!  How dare they ask to get into this exclusive club!  And if they couldn't perform a simple Google search to find it for themselves, would science even want their inferior brains?!  I became a pro at showing up in my zipper-less pants, no underwire bra, keeping still in that tiny tube as I drifted off the the knock-knock-knocking of magnetic resonance.  What a life.

Flash forward to 2010.  I have just returned from my escapades on the other side of the world and am slowly realizing that I am no longer earning a comfortable income, nor living in a country where I can survive on $20 a week.  Who can I turn to in these dire economic times?  You guessed it: SCIENCE.

I've been enrolled for awhile now in a study that is paying some decent bones.  I joke that I have a tiny crush on the research assistant handling my guinea pig body (oh, how I wish he was literally handling my not-literally guinea pig body).  He used to call to schedule things early enough in the morning that my guinea pig ass was still in bed.  I'd answer in my half-awake raspy sex voice and try not to sound like too much of an asshole for still being in bed while decent people were off working.  By the voice on the other end, I decided that I wanted him to be an attractive person, and so when the day finally came to get drunk in front of him (for science, of course), I was delighted to see that he wasn't someone unfortunately mismatched in terms of voice/appearance attractiveness.  Let's just say that when you are hooked up to machines measuring your heart rate and blood pressure, you aren't really in the best position to make small talk with your one-sided love (yes, that is Konglish for "crush").  Throw in the fact that you are drinking cup after cup of worse-than-frat-house jungle juice (only the best for the guinea pigs!) by yourself (for science)... and well, you are now self-conscious of the fact that you are tipsy before noon on a Monday and you just want to hold your shit together the best way you know how and not be an obnoxious drunk Chatty Cathy in front of some stranger that you find vaguely attractive. 

I have a few rules for being a research subject.  Unfortunately, this ends up ruling out all the high-paying studies, but I usually value my health over some quick money, and isn't it nice to know I have boundaries?  Put simply:

-no experimental drugs

-no exposure to diseases or drugs that simulate diseases

-no long-term consequences

-nothing risky (clearly open for interpretation)

I am now faced with the dilemma of continuing with my current study and exposing myself to unnecessary levels of radioactive materials and earning myself an extra $200, or calling it quits.  

The obvious benefits here are:

-monies.  200 of thems.

the maybe benefits are:

-see pseudo crush object (though I'd probably make it awkward- if there is a way to be awkward, I will inadvertently succeed in finding it)

-have colorful photos of my brain to display in my future new home.  said photos will certainly bring all the boys to the yard.  (but if I wanted my brain in day glo, I could have just signed up for the shrooms & meditation study- yes, this is a real thing.  Science!)

the definitely not benefits are:

-unnecessary radioactive isotopes cruisin' through my body

What's a girl to do?

this is my brain.  it is for thinking.

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