Locked out!

When I returned home after an excellent farewell Vietnamese dinner with Ryan and his wife in the south of Seoul, buzzing from all the delicious food and lugging a Korean tea set that I received as a lovely parting gift and will add wonderfully to my 20kg weight allowance, I realised I didn't have my keys. I'm reasonably impressed with myself that after nearly 18 months of living here, this was the first (and most definitely hopefully only) time I've misplaced my keys and forbidden myself entry to my apartment.

What is more, is that despite having lived here for nearly 18 months, and only ever nearly needing it, I've never been in the knowledge of the phone number of office tel guy - nor do I know where he lives. Luckily - not quite having the courage to knock on any of the doors of my adjacent strangers - my next door neighbour happened to be popping out. She called the guy for me, who was thoroughly irritated, and I spent the best part of forty-five minutes with her while the guy was - undoubtedly not without annoyance - having a new key cut for me.

Perhaps I could have been inside a lot more quickly if he knew I had a spare key inside, but it gave me an opportunity to get to know my next door neighbour. Just a year older than me (the hierachical nature of the language dictates you get this kind of information quickly in Korea; I still barely know the ages of many of my Western friends here) she was in the midst of a mammoth origami session as she was making individual wrappings for individual chocolates to go in an amazingly ornate box for her boyfriend for Valentine's day. She's been at it for the past month. Actually, it shows I've not been shopping lately as I haven't noticed any pro-Valentine's day merchandise around, but on reflection I'm sure it's out there in abundance.

So the best was made out of an inconvenient situation - we exchanged numbers and movie opinions; I am just pretty amazed I've lived here so long and practically not even seen another person go in or out of their rooms, let alone conversed with them. Lucky, eh.