Spells E-Z Ham

As I noted in an earlier post, Korea has no lack of ugly signage, adding to the urban cacophony. This one I found hilarious. It’s a sign for a cosmetics company: “LJH Cosmetics”. They were wise to go with the acronym: I assume that the company was set up by 3 partners, whose last names are: Lee, Jee and Hamm, which are common Korean last names. But when you phonetically read the Korea name for the company it sounds like: ee-zee-ham Cosmetics :-)

The virus protection software on my new laptop wasn’t working so I called tech support. A man with an accent I assumed to be from the south of Korea took my call and instructed me to remove then reinstall the software.

Even in the States, I’ve been in the habit of asking phone support staff where they are  physically located, and what the weather is like there, rather than wait in silence as the computer does what it needs to do. I’ve found out that the GEICO call center is located in Virginia Beach and Amex often answers calls from India.

I didn’t even question the fact that my man was in Korea, but I asked anyway. He told me he’s in Shanghai! I asked him if he’s Chinese, and he told be he was! He told me he provided tech support for China, Japan and Korea.

Korean is a pretty obscure language, and very few foreigners picking it up. I am guessing my man was from the handful of ethic Korean who live to the north of North Korea. It’s not uncommon to talk to an Indian customer support representative in the US, but I was pretty shocked to find outsourced phone support even in Korea.

Seoul’s eclectic architecture

Now that I have fully embraced my role as the tourist, I intend to have fun.

Let’s start with today. Since everything is new to me (the tourist) and in part because of my architectural education, I actually look at buildings. I read them, measure them and place them in a style. Most building in Seoul doesn’t have much of a vernacular to follow, so on top of the corbusian domino system of columns and slabs, people slap on the style (or more correctly ornamentation) that makes most sense with the image they are trying to project, especially if you are retail store. Over the course of time the ownership retail space change hands and whomever comes in afterwards is forced to deal with the what was there before.

This is the case for this store that sells Simmons beds and furniture. My guess is that the store was originally built to house a store that catered to the wedding business (how else would you explain this architectural style?).

This makes for a strange clash of ornamentation. Now it has a modern floating, translucent glass box growing like an alien entity which is obsessed with battling the baroque armed with simplicity and order.

I’ve been here in Seoul for about a month now. I have an apartment and a job, and my family is here also. I know the language, and speak Korean like a local. I know my way around, can take the subway without referring to a map, and transition seamlessly from one transportation infrastructure to another. It’s my home.

My wife put into words a nagging sensation that I’ve had in the back of my mind. We are tourists. Everyone has that feeling when they move to a new place for work or some other reason. It takes you a while to know where the grocery store is, where to rent a video, how to get to work. It takes you a while to call it home. In my case, this used to be my home. I used to work in this exact neighborhood before I left for the States, 13 years ago. However, it has changed so much that it’s really disorienting. It’s like returning to your childhood home and the new owners have painted the whole house another color and added a 2 port garage and built a whole new floor.

All the landmarks are gone. Well, not quite. They are now dwarfed and shadowed by bigger, shinier ones. As an information architect I know that people navigate using landmarks – that’s why you don’t change navigation buttons, or prominent layout element on a page, since that what people remember and related to during their wayfinding. Just the other day, I came out a subway station to a place I visited countless times, the same exitI used to take, and I couldn’t tell which way was North, let alone get to where I was going. The mind goes crazy trying to reconcile the old map of places to the new. There are little remnants of the past I recognize scattered here and there, but they have been disembodied, now floating without context, no longer in a relationship to a whole that used to exist in my mind.

What makes it worse is, I walk around with my iPod listening to NPR’s Marketplace or This American Life, which I used to do in the States. It’s like walking around in a bubble.

I always say, when you can’t fight it, embrace it: I am a tourist.

Now that I have signed my rights away and accepted my status, the next question is, what kind of touristy things can I do? I can stop in the middle of the road and take photos and not feel embarrassed. I can ask stupid questions. I can marvel at the progress this country has made since the last time I was here. I can get lost and feel ok about it. I can poke fun at the local culture.

This last point, I intend to do a lot of :-)