I am the proud possessor of a Magic oven. Literally, as that is the brand name. The story of my Magic Oven is much like any fairy tale in which our intrepid hero seeks an arcane object and is thwarted at every turn.
Once I decided to buy an oven, I pulled painful amounts of money from the ATM and walked down to Home Plus. I approached the oven aisle, but was oven-blocked by a woman and her approximately 12-year-old daughter, who were intently discussing the merits of a specific model of oven with a saleslady. They were taking up all the space in front of the display of ovens, so I went over to another part of the store, browsed for about fifteen minutes, and came back. Still at it. Okay, maybe I'd only arrived scant seconds into their conversation, and they'd need a little more convincing. I continued to Lewis-and-Clark it across the store to unknown shores of comforters and self-assembly furniture. A further 15 minutes, and I slogged back, sure that now I would be able to point at my oven of choice, use two of my five reliable Korean words, and labor out under the considerable weight of its mass and price. Nope, still at it. It was at this point that an English speaker in close proximity might have heard me make disparaging comments about the oven's dissimilarity from a human child, and the buying process unfavorably compared with international adoption. We may never know.
Finally, after exhaustively comparison shopping among the adhesive hook collection, I returned to a blessedly empty aisle of ovenry. I found a model I could afford (I had budgeted about four hundred excruciating dollars for this) and a saleslady nearby. I pointed at the one I wanted and used my two Korean words. She looked worried, and directed a stream of concerned Korean at me, which I deflected with my +4 shrug-and-idiot-smile shield. The word I caught was "oven," which I repeated and nodded while saying. This led her to feel that communication norms had been established enough to point me in the direction of a considerably cheaper model, that would apparently do everything except tap dance. There were many hand gestures (some very creative, now I think of it) and a litany of virtues of this particular device, one of which was "convection," or so I discerned. She even got out the manual and presented each page to me, Vanna White-style. In response, I moved on to a perfectly translatable nodding with enthusiasm, possibly accompanied by smiling and a thumbs up. It was at this point, dear readers, that I became aware of just how insufficient my Korean was to the occasion, for what was earlier a stream became a torrent, a cascade, a Niagara Falls of Korean, none of which did I understand.
Eager not to let the situation get away from me, I used the universal "one moment" gesture so I could call the BBB, a service for foreigners living in Daejeon that connects you, ostensibly, to a volunteer translator. Indeed, it connected me to a dude who spoke some English, and I tried to explain my situation to him. I then handed the phone to the nice lady, who diverted the Amazon of Korean to flow over his receptive little ear, and after about five minutes of sustained chatter, during which she seemed to forget she was attached to my phone and wandered up and down a couple of aisles, she frowned in a confused way and handed the phone back to me. I picked it up only to have the guy say that he already had an oven, and didn't need one. Gee, thanks, dude.
Next I tried J, the foreign teacher with the best Korean (being Korean American himself), the same one who rescued me from my directional inability in the cab. He was unfortunately unavailable due to a pressing basketball engagement. I was on my own and becoming progressively more anxious about the woman sighing with exasperation and just giving up on my functional Korean retardation.
Having figured out the BBB draws on a series of volunteers at any one time, I gambled on getting a more useful person on a second go-round. This time I got a guy who understood my situation somewhat better, and after a protracted conversation, he told me that she was saying they didn't have the model in the store, and she wanted my address so they could deliver it tomorrow. I thanked him - probably unnecessarily profusely - and gave the woman my information. After great pantomiming of abstract concepts like "before noon," it seemed we had reached an understanding. She escorted me over to a till with a form full of my information and that of the model in question, and I payed in an ostentatious cash wad. Huzzah! With the money I'd saved, I went and got a kitchen cart, so I had a place to put my new piece of fancy science.
I went home, built my cart with all its Korean instructions, and greatly anticipated my oven's arrival the next day.
Well, the next day came, and at obscene-o'clock in the morning (like 9 a.m.) I got a call. Five minutes of very intense Korean later, we had managed to piece together one point of commonality. Home Plus. Well, good. At 9 o'clock, I knew Home Plus was trying to get in touch with me. No idea what about, though. So I apologized, got hung up on, and went about my way, waiting for noon and my oven. I really couldn't stay longer, because it's intensive period, and we have to be into work at 1.
Aaaaaand 12 came and went, and no oven.
At work, I threw myself on M's mercy, who works in my office, is Korean and kindly agreed to come with me to Home Plus and figure out what had happened. She determined that the driver had called me to say he was running late, and I now had the option of trying delivery again, or trying to grab a taxi home with my Magic oven. Terrified of having another incomprehensible phone call wake me up and announce that another day of ovenless desolation was about to descend upon me, I arranged (through M) to pick it up after work.
And glory, glory, hallelujah, dear readers, the promised device is now at home, installed upon its noble caster-borne chariot, waiting for me to decipher its arcane manual and unlock its mystical powers. Triumph!
No comments:
Post a Comment