housing in hongdae...

Let's go over some words..
Junsae: the huge deposit you put down for your lease period.
Wuhlsae: the montly rent. One you get back, and the other you will never see again...
Junsae has some tradition in it, and both have evolved as apartment living as evolved in Korea.
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So the place that I wanted to move into is now gone because I didn't put down a 100,000 KW deposit (=111.11USD). It's absurd because they gave away the room JUST TODAY, the day that I happened to tell my aunt to come over and look at the place with me, after I looked at it a week before. It's fucking ridiculous because I told the realtor right before I left for Hong Kong that i for SURE wanted to live in the place but she went ahead and gave it to someone else, again, TODAY. Maybe it was never mine to begin with but the reservation just slipped through my fingers, much like most of my opportunities this year. I still can't believe it! I clearly told her that I wanted the place! It's symbolic of my life, yet again! Another loss for me. My year at Hongdae? Slept. Applying for some prestigious grant? Embarassing. Trying to write? Not working out. Trying to make friends? Not happening. My life is a trap and I feel so suffocated. I call out to people to save me from it, and that is, sadly, when I have anything 'correct' to say.

And that's another thing. Why should I be wrapped up in a certain image when I already built one in Michigan? And it was just fine albeit people did consider me as "the figure skater." I had a great rep, and sure i challenged it during my college years, but who wouldn't want to live on the edge even for just a bit after years of striving for perfection?

I digress.

It is all so symbolic of my place in society and my life, which futher tells me that I'm just an example for everyone else to learn from, and not someone to be friends with. What am I supposed to do? Pretend like I don't know how things work and try to buddy-buddy up with someone who I think might have more power? (It sounds like a very Hollywood thing to do - act nice, and fake, just in case the person you are talking to will give you that spot in his new blockbuster movie.) I didn't move out to Korea to see Koreans run around, knock down their old villa style buidlings that are cheap and replace them with officeteles that are more modern and allows them to neglect the older style buildings. It just feels as if improvement means going away from old styles, neglecting them, letting them run down until that can't stand up anymore, and then replacing them with a completely new facade of modernity and this expensive image. Some of these buildings would be JUST FINE if they had more care put into them. Fix a leak here, smooth over a fold there, and the old school junsae would probably work out and a WHOLE lot of students might appreciate it and live the life of a student with a taste of freedom. I'm sure a lot of art students would appreciate a nicer place, although considered a bit 'cheap' when compared to the apartments across the river. But they aren't across the river, and they aren't business districts, it's a fricking ART SCHOOL with a lot of art students, furniture makers, architects, designers, and etc in the area. You might not be able to tell with Hongdae's hot spot clubbing reputation....But reputations always give you a one dimensional look.