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The time has finally come where I feel like I have Owned Korea: I am totally pro and nowhere near a n00b anymore. Nevermind that my Korean lessons have degenerated into me asking for random phrases whenever the need pops into my mind - "Hey Cindy, how do I tell this guy he's a fucking dickhead without using any bad words that'll get me punched?" It's not quite immersion. It's more so that I feel somewhere close to home in this monolith of strange railwork, I understand the implications if not the words. It's week to week now, not day to day or hour to hour.

On the downswing of my contract, I have started considering my departure. My future, if any remains, rests squarely in the hands of one very special Board of Admissions. That's right: a single board. Not five or ten or desperation Anywhere Will Do. One application to become a Grand Master of higher education and if my application fails... well, I'm going to blockrockin' Europe. Or Cambodia. Or Hong Kong. I almost hope I get rejected, because I'm aching to throw away my savings, one more time, on something decidedly non-educational (in the conventional sense of the word).

The scales balance rather unevenly, depending on the minute. I want to go back to school to, you know, make something of my life. To fatten the rucksack of practical experience with another degree. To finally study something that actually interests me, and not just a vague sideways approximation of new media theory: a direct hit. It's juicy, as juicy as a classroom could possibly hope to be.

But it's two years, and if you learn anything in Korea (Jesus, how many times have I spouted that?) it's that these years in your twenties are a rock-solid-gold commodity. Halfway between youth and experience, you can't afford to waste any time. Better do some kickass stuff, or you'll be sorry. Is grad school kickass? As kickass as riding elephants in Thailand, perhaps, or chopping coke in a Malaysian warehouse? That's the kicker: you'll never know to find out. You have to choose - you can't shop and compare value because, if you could, you'd likely be a God or some kind of hardcore prophet. And then what fun would life be? Always getting renounced and killed with rocks for being a heretic.

Life is not an easy ride: visibility is severely limited, with possible rock slides up ahead. This is probably what every human since the 6 a.m. of humanity has understood and bemoaned, long before the car and most likely even before the wheel and the ride itself was invented. That probably doesn't make any sense but I like cavemen, and wondering what those crazy fuckers were up to back before the Internet.

I can force myself, without much duress, to picture a neanderthal all slung up in Stereotype Valley, standing at an important crossroads: "Uggg... should I hunt mammoth today or have a nice picnic lunch of clover and leftovers with the slavewife?" Of course, I have translated many Uggs and Ogggs into Sorta English for the sake of clarity. Anyway, our hide-wearing hero chooses hunting because week-old giant squirrel tastes gross and in the instant between being gored through the heart by an ivory tusk and death, he regrets his decision. In retrospect, clover is always better than getting nose-stabbed by a hairy elephant.

Now, it's my personal opinion that a life of backwards glances and What If's is scary, not only for a caveman but also for the modern human saucepot. And so I find it logical to hinge a decision on a very basic, binary opposition. Binary knows what's up. So here it is, on a raging grill of simplicity: If I get accepted, I'll go. If I don't, I won't.

Logical, maybe, but not really easy. The world is shrinking and if technology has taught us anything, it's that small things are cooler. Africa is just on the other side of that basketball.

Posted by Chris at 07:55 AM >> Commentations (4)