dollop of solipsism

as a compendium to an earlier post titled ‘service, korean style‘ i shall share my customer service experiences in the US from the past couple of days to save myself from being seen as completely biased in my previous position on korean workers’ superior civility. we’ll go by incidences:

1) location: au bon pain in the dallas/fort-worth international airport. offense: a middle aged black counter clerk treats me as if i am interrupting her day for wanting to buy overpriced food and drink. catchphrase: the mayonnaise is in the back.

2) location: wal-mart in league city, texas. offense: a moronic middle aged white cashier waits 30 seconds for more money because she believes i’ve given her a $100 bill for a $120 purchase, when in fact, i’d just handed her 2 crisp $100 bills. after she realizes her mistake, she blames me for giving her money that ’stick together.’ catchphrase: you should crumple new bills because i thought you had given me only one bill (then she crumples the $100 bills to prove her point, or whatever).

3) location: league city post office. offense: an overweight white woman barks at my older sister that she has no packing tape to lend us. catchphrase: bark.

4) location: on the phone with texas department of public safety (texas city office). offense: a white sounding female voice blames me for not having received the drivers license i renewed (online) a year ago, even after i explained to her that i work abroad and therefore, was unable to follow up on the missing license. catchphrase: (after having been told to come into the office in person, and after asking the woman if i’d need to pay the renewal fee again (even though i had the receipt)) well, you waited a year, so yeah.

5) location: aldo shoes at baybrook mall in friendswood, texas. offense: a hispanic looking ‘manager’ snaps at me for asking for a discount on a pair of shoes that were on display (i bought my blue shoes from them last year at a discount price because it was a display). catchphrase: we never give discounts for displays.

6) location: 888 bistro on el camino blvd in houston. offense: an ‘english’-speaking vietnamese waiter informs me that they don’t have a lunch menu at 1:45pm. what kind of chinese restaurant doesn’t have a lunch menu and has a white manager? catchphrase: the deluxe menu in the back has dishes with rice and wonton soup. that can be like the lunch menu (yeah, in vietnam, maybe).

7) location: house of pies on kirby in houston. offense: a greater than thou fat gay waiter misinforms me that they do indeed have the bavarian chocolate and banana cream pie, forgets my ice cream for the a la mode, but still charges me for both. catchphrase: (when asked what he recommends, he retorts) all a matter of opinion.

8) location: on the phone with various idiotic companies. washington mutual will put you on hold for more than 5 minutes. donna at 1st financial bank won’t be able to hear you and will hang up after 2 seconds of you yelling into her deaf ears. the department of public safety office in austin has the screwiest maze of menus for you to go through before they redirect you back to the main menu again.

true, i’m being very very picky. and with 30 minutes of simmering after each incident, i was able to get on with my day. it’s not like activities were hindered due to an impoliteness here, a rude remark there. however, i simply don’t understand why on earth we deal with this type of service in america, the ‘greatest country on earth.’ i was accused of getting better service in korea than other foreigners because i can ‘pass off as korean,’ so what would i have to do in order to ‘pass off as american’ in america to get better service? bleach my skin?

i stand by my original opinion. customer service in america blows.

[this post does not apply to the incredibly welcoming and friendly black man checking tickets at the security checkpoint in the dallas/fort-worth international airport, the efficient black lady at the texas city dps office, and the helpful gay white man at express, all of whom are stars. stars i say.]

it’s been over a week since i’ve been home, and i’ve gotten the hang of the daily routine: wake up, complain about the heat, find something to do, clean a room, push rocky (my sister’s chocolate lab/pointer mix) off my legs, wait for my older sister to come home, play mahjongg, sleep.

a few days ago, the entire family (plus corey, my older sister’s boyfriend), had an early dinner at pappasito’s cantina. there, my sister ordered the ‘fiesta,’ which led me to scan the menu real quick to see what it was. before i could find it, waiter josh said, ‘great choice. has a lot of different types of meat for y’all to choose from.’ he retrieved all the menus, leaving me confused and expectant.

a few minutes later, someone from the kitchen approached our table with a giant platter of smoking meat. blinded by the insane amount of food sitting before me at the time, i shall now refer to the restaurant’s online menu to describe the ‘plato fiesta.’ the plato fiesta (fiesta is spanish for ‘feast’) serves a family of five to six, and contains a full rack of ribs, six brochette-style shrimp, two mesquite-grilled quail, jalapeño sausage, beef & chicken fajitas, all for the price of $99.95 (≈₩104,250). soon, waiter josh followed up the insane platter of carcass with individual servings of rice, frijoles a la charra, guacamole, pico de gallo, and fresh flour tortillas.

if ever there is a question of where to go when one is craving some good tex-mex, pappasito’s is your answer. the windows are lined with ostentatious christmas lights, the tortilla chips and salsa are top notch, and a mariachi band used to perform during the dinner rush. pure mexican food it is not, but pappasito’s serves the best in (insanely) extravagant tex-mex cuisine.

there’s nothing in the world that compares to being home. it’s the place where you feel most comfortable. you can sit on the toilet for an hour, wear t-shirts with holes in them, sleep until one in the afternoon, watch tv all day, read a book in bed, scream at other family members, etc.

my family lives in a middle-class surburban neighborhood in league city, texas, forty minutes from downtown houston by car. it is sunny, hot, and tropical. people can be seen driving golf carts, walking their dogs, or taking a dip in the community swimming pool. the grass is almost always green and the sky is cloudlessly blue (especially during the summer).

our two-story house has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. we’ve lived here since i’ve been in the third grade. this house has seen 3 turtles, 2 rabbits, 3 dogs, and 5 cars. it is what my friend gina refers to as ‘lived-in.’ the carpet has stains, the ceiling has leaks, and holes exist in walls. in the seventeen years we’ve resided here, there have been several tropical storms, occasional hurricane threats, some almost tornadoes, a few droughts, and close to no snow. we’ve been lucky (cross my fingers) on the weather front.

currently, my parents are semi-retired, my older sister is a police officer for the deer park police department, and my little sister is an eighth grader at league city intermediate school. i’m the only sibling (so far) who has left home for school and the only one who doesn’t live in the house. consider me the black sheep.

my little sister kathy and our dog rocky

i was cleaning my room today in light of my friend elaine’s two day visit (she arrives tomorrow), and came across my diaries (i have like, eight). i reread some entries and realized that my childhood wasn’t all lollipops and gummi bears. i saw a fair share of arguments, fights, dysfunction, financial instability, sadness, sickness, etc. and am quite content with how my life turned out inspite of those setbacks. consider me lucky. but with the bad, there was the good. here, we practiced musical instruments, raised animals, brought home a younger sibling, and baked goods. they say some houses aren’t homes, but this house is definitely my home, and i’m glad that i can come back to it whenever i want to.

after a 5 hour bus ride to incheon international airport, i checked in about 3 hours early, exchanged wons to dollars, and did some duty free shopping. burberry, chanel, hermes, were just some of the fashion brands present in the terminal. seriously, though, who’s going to shell out $1000 for a purse at louis vuitton just before their flight? do these people really exist? i want names.

i got some cheap korean cigarettes for my mother and some pumpkin yeot for my aunt. i had a carry-on item (my computer), and the duty free stuff. i sat at my gate for a good 2 hours waiting to board. luckily, what started out as a still view became more interesting as groups of korean air flight attendants gathered before me. it was like watching gazelles herding at a luscious oasis. what makes the korean air flight attendants so attractive are their high stature, the slight variations on the same elegant uniform, and carefully coiffed hairstyles. no doubt korean air has strict rules concerning appearance and behavior; why else would all these young women look and act exactly the same?

i was hoping for a flight with some top-notch inflight service. when i flew san francisco to seoul two years ago, i didn’t get much in terms of entertainment. when i boarded this plane, though, i saw the purple blankets and yellow pillows neatly laid out on the seats, in addition to each passenger’s personal touch screen and remote/game controller. i should fly seoul –> dallas more often. before departure, i scanned through the goodies stored in the personal entertainent system. games for single- and multi-players (you can even play against a specific passenger) such as tetris, golf, and solitaire. movies categorized by language (korean, english, chinese) and genre (comedy, drama, classics), in addition to a wealth of short features (documentaries, tv episodes, music concerts), not to mention live bbc and cnn broadcasts. as for music, you can listen to a specific music channel (like k-pop, korean traditional, classical, oldies, US chart toppers) or create your own playlist from currently released albums. for a 13-hour flight, this wealth of media would surely be enough.

in the second hour food came. options: beef or korean rice. one thing i am sure of is that korean air has better food than most US airlines. the ‘korean rice’ came with white rice, a bowl of seaweed soup, some bulgogi, spinach, and marinated anchovies, a package of roasted seaweed, some veggies, and two dollops of ddeok. i ate everything because everything was delicious. across the aisle, i could smell the western beef other passengers were eating. it smelled gross…it had that airplane food smell i can’t describe well—it’s like they’ve cooked the food with fabric softener, which gives off a creamy, milky odor. in between the main meals was a serving of pizza (also delicious), and the final meal was bibimbap (but i wasn’t awake to taste it).

you would think the entertainment system would suffice as a means to get through a 13-hour flight. it ain’t. by the sixth hour, my eyes were screaming for something other than the touch screen a foot away from my head. it didn’t help that the man in front of me had his chair reclined the entire flight, and the man behind me resented my every move. i should’ve brought a book. on flights, i’m not a good sleeper (i don’t even consider myself a good flier), so i just wait until sleep overtakes me. i slept maybe 4 hours total on that flight (i did see the movie smart people—it’s shit).

we landed in the dallas-fort worth international airport. i grabbed my one check-in bag and breezed through customs. a bit english-sensitive, i kept ingesting snippets of others’ conversations because hey, i could understand them! i was also color-sensitive, which caused me to stare at all the mexicans and blacks and whites and others. eventually though, i felt close to normal. i did find myself judging americans’ daily flip flop, jeans, and t-shirt ware, as well as their general largeness. and really, girls dress so skanky in this country. no wonder koreans think all foreign women are whores. it’s because they dress like whores.

after i checked in at american airlines and got past security, my stomach was aching for some food. i browsed through some fast food places but settled on au bon pain, a fancy schmancy bakery/deli. there, i got a gigantic turkey and swiss sandwich with a gigantic bottle of water. starved for human interaction, i was friendlier than usual to the gigantic (black) clerk but was, of course, met with bullshit american, unmotivated, aloofness. i suspected this would happen. as much as people tell me that service in korea (compared to the US) stinks, i, a fairly open-minded person, whole-heartedly disagree. but perhaps it’s because i’m not american enough.

after a 2 hour wait, i boarded the tiniest plane i’ve ever seen in my life. i could literally lay on the floor and have my toes and head touch the two walls of the plane. it was that tiny. you’d think for a tiny jet as that, they’d find a small flight attendant. try again, american airlines. for the love of god, please.

surprisingly, i landed 20 minutes early and was met by my little sister, mother, and father. i suppose they make the 25-hour trip worthwhile.

[while i was waiting at incheon international airport, i took my laptop out of my carry-on to pass the time. when i flipped opened the notebook computer, i found a note waiting for me in the middle of the keyboard. it was addressed 'to my love.' the significant other, who, the night prior, installed a program on my laptop, had surreptitiously slipped the letter into my notebook. it was a sweet, handwritten love letter to me. awwwww. with a better half like that, who needs affairs?]