the streak has been broken

Living in Korea all these years (I think next year will be my twentieth), one thing has remained reliably constant this entire time: the price of my contact lenses.

Until now.

Since 2005, I've been buying my contacts in Korea at a price of W70,000. I have no idea why inflation never hit the contact-lens market over the decades, but even though I've bought contacts in many different places in Korea, the price for a year-long set of lenses has always been W70,000.

Today, though, I went downstairs to the B1-level glasses/contacts seller in my building. I got a good enough deal for my glasses (even if they look more nerdy than hipsterish), and since the pair of contacts I'm wearing now should technically have been thrown out last month, I decided today would be the day to get new lenses.

The whole affair took not even ten minutes. I told the guy my prescription strength (which hasn't really changed over the past seven or eight years), and he gave a single pair of year-long lenses for the jarring price of... W80,000.

And that's how the streak was broken. I've never paid W80,000 for contacts before—not in Korea. I'm trying to comfort myself through rationalizing: when I've bought my lenses elsewhere, I've also had to pay round-trip cab and/or subway fare, so the extra W10,000 this time around is for the convenience of staying inside my building. Still, this feels like a blow. Then again, at today's exchange rate, W80,000 comes out to $61.36, so I may still be floating close to the $70 mark. And contacts in the States are ridiculously priced: you pay $100 for the eye exam, then another $150-$180 for the lenses, and the place makes you wait three days because your damn lenses have to be special-ordered. Ridiculous. In Korea, you're in and out. Fast. Easy. Even if you get an eye test, the cost is negligible. A test plus the lenses will still run you less than $100, US.

So that's how I comfort myself. Things would be worse in the States, and at the current exchange rate, W80,000 is a bit more than sixty bucks.

If you're reading the above and wondering about dates—about how I could have been in Korea for nearly twenty years, it's because I haven't been in Korea for a single block of time: I've gone back and forth between the States and Korea. The rough chronology looks like this:

1. 1994-96 (about 3 years)
2. 2002-2008 (about 7 years)
3. 2013-present (about 10 years)

If I calculate month-by-month, I think I've been in Korea for about nineteen years. Next year will mark my twenty-year anniversary.

Phase 1 of my time in Korea was the typical newbie story of the guy who knows little about the culture starting off in hagweons (cram schools—businesses first, not places of education) and teaching English conversation. In Phase 2, I worked my last hagweon and transferred to university teaching in 2005—conversation, literature, and other subjects. While that experience had some ups and downs, I proved to be a popular, highly rated teacher, and I finished on a high. In 2008, I had the idea of walking across America, which is why I quit Sookmyung Women's University—not because I hated the job. While in the States, I managed three months' walking, nearly 600 miles, after getting injured during the first month; I went back to my home state of Virginia to recuperate, and in early 2009, intending to go back on the trail, I learned my mom had brain cancer, and thus began another sort of journey that I documented on my first walk blog. Mom died in January of 2010; I moved out of the house and got a job working from home thanks to ETS (Educational Testing Service), the company that makes and rates tests like the SAT. I then switched over to working with C2 Education (I guess I can use the school's real name now; on the blog, I used to call C2 by the code name Yong Bulal, or "dragon testicles," abbreviated YB). That lasted until 2013, Phase 3, when I was in a better mental space, and I decided to resume university teaching in Korea. Came back to Korea in 2013 and taught at two more universities: Catholic University of Daegu, then Dongguk University in Seoul. Neither experience was nearly as good as my time at Sookmyung. I then switched to the company I've been at since 2015: the Golden Goose (my code name for it). Technically, this is a step backward into hagweon life again, but the difference is that I now work for R&D as a textbook creator, not a teacher. I'd never choose to teach little kids, which is what our school specializes in. That sort of teaching takes way too much energy. Luckily, I'm in the publications wing of the company, so I've never seen the inside of a classroom since coming here. The pay is great, the work is often very low-stress (except during crunch time), and I'm generally OK with my coworkers. I also have the dubious distinction of being the resident Grammar Guy, and I have literally written the book on grammar for our company (it's actually a 9-book series). My boss isn't a perfect fellow, but he's easily the best boss I've had in Korea, and while I don't feel any particular loyalty toward the company, I do feel loyalty toward him and my teammates. It was the Golden Goose that paid me well enough for me to finally get out of debt, and I've been blissfully debt-free for almost two years. To that extent, I'm thankful to the company. During my time at the Golden Goose, I discovered the joys of distance hiking across South Korea, and last year, I had a minor stroke that laid me out on my ass for a week but prompted me to reconsider my eating and exercise habits. While I still have plenty of weight to lose and books to write, life is looking good as I approach my mid-fifties. No family, no girlfriend (not for a long while), but I enjoy the tranquility and freedom that come with the life I lead. I make my own choices and follow my own schedule. So that's my chronology/bio in a single paragraph.

And W80,000 is too much for contact lenses.