I'm getting old. Dragging five boxes plus a heavy Costco bag full of textbooks from my apartment to my office Monday night was a pain in the ass. That's right: it's time for me to start moving back into my office since we now know we're not going anywhere. I thought moving those boxes and that bag wouldn't be much of a workout since I had a large, flat hand truck, but no: Mother Nature and physics had other plans. The sidewalks were bumpy, and because I was an idiot and didn't secure my Costco bag, it kept falling off, spilling paperback textbooks everywhere. A lot of these spills happened in front of silent witnesses, which was mortifying. But each time, I collected my books and my wits and the meager shreds of my dignity, and I trundled on.
You have to think through your route when you're lugging a bunch of boxes on a hand truck. I trucked my way to the apartment elevator, then got off at the first floor so I could cross the street and use the handicap elevator—something I'd normally be very embarrassed to do. Crossing the street was the first major hurdle: big wheelchair wheels might negotiate the stepping-off-the-sidewalk part fine (there's a ramp down to the street, but the end of the ramp is tiled with these obnoxious, bumpy "safety" tiles that I think are for the blind), but my cart's wheels got stuck as I tried to figure out whether I needed to be pushing or pulling the thing to launch onto the crosswalk. So right as I tried to cross, right as I was barely on the street, my Costco bag took its first tumble. It fell off the pile of boxes and spilled its guts like Judas Iscariot in the potter's field.* Paper was everywhere. I wasn't in the middle of the street, luckily, so I didn't have to worry about being smooshed by a car, but I scrambled to gather the fallen textbooks and get back on my way. I finally managed to cross the street, and I made it to the handicap elevator. These elevators are designed for the disabled, so they're super-slow and super-smooth in how they operate.
Next phase: take the elevator down to the B1 level. The subway tracks are on B2, one level down from B1, but B1 is where you touch your ticket to the turnstile sensor to officially enter the Exalted Realm of the Subway. In my case, once I hit B1, I used the handicap gate to let myself in. There was another elevator right there to take me from B1 to B2. And let me say that the subway's interior tiling made my heavy-laden cart produce this basso rattling noise that filled the entire station. All sorts of people looked my way to see what was producing all that racket. I got through the handicap gate, took the elevator down to B2, and was finally level with the subway tracks. Was my ordeal over? Hell, no.
The train arrived, and the ledge of the train's entrance proved to be a few inches higher than the level of the platform, so I had to stoop down and grab the leading edge of the hand truck to get the front wheels into the train. The computer voice was warning that the doors were closing, and at that moment, by Costco bag decided to take another spill. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The subway doors actually tried to close on me, then they opened up, and I somehow managed to scoop the spillage up and shove the hand truck the rest of the way into the subway in one smooth-but-still-awkward motion. The doors closed; I was in. It finally occured to me to take one of my smaller boxes, place it inside the capacious Costco bag, then tie the Costco bag's handles together to create a "seal" of sorts. With the handles now knotted, there was no longer any chance of spillage, but the bag could still theoretically topple off the top of the load.
The train started up... and my hand truck began to roll. I caught it before it moved a foot, but the rest of the subway ride (two stops) was a wrestling match to keep the thing from breaking away. Wrestling the hand truck out of the subway proved to be much easier than trying to get it in. I now had to trundle nearly 200 meters to Daechi Station's handicap elevator. I got there without any mishaps, used the elevator, buzzed myself out another handicap gate, took a second elevator to the street level, and found myself facing a nearly half-mile walk to my office (sorry to mix meters and miles).
The tiles inside the subway station had been horrific in terms of noise, but the bricked-over sidewalk was worse: the vibration as I traveled caused my unsecured bag and one box to tumble off. I did what I could to pile all the boxes in the least "vibratory" way I could and continued onward, mentally ticking down the meters and watching to make sure nothing fell off again. Nothing did. As I got close to the Mido building, I decided to take advantage of a smooth-looking ramp at the end of the sidewalk. This meant first swinging widely to the left and onto the street, then veering right into Mido's parking lot. Right as I made my leftward swing, a car came whooshing by, ensuring that I would have to pause. I often think God hates me at such moments: I want to do some simple thing like cross a seemingly empty street, and right as I cross, a car comes by or some idiot on a bicycle bumbles across my path or some walker blindsides me, forcing me once again to pause. I spend half my life in Seoul feeling thwarted by random circumstance—which never feels that random to me. It all feels quite intentional in a Let's see what we can do to fuck up Kevin's day! kind of way.
True to form, a car whooshed by as I was swinging left and out into the main street. Pause. Then, as I made it onto the street and swung right, a cyclist came by. Pause again. Of course. And right as I pushed forward after the cyclist, a fucking walker came by, her nose buried in her smartphone, and swung into my path. Bitch. Pause a third goddamn time. So I got the trifecta. With all that behind me, I swung into Mido's parking lot, did what I could to avoid cracks in the asphalt, and pushed my load close to the building's back entrance, which is the only entrance open after 9 p.m. There was a steep little concrete ramp up to the sidewalk in front of the building. I took my Costco bag off the cart, took off one of the boxes, then popped the now-lighter hand truck up the ramp. I parked the hand truck by Mido's back entrance and began the final, arduous process of hand-ferrying all my cargo, box by box, up to the second floor. Mido's an old building, so it has no elevator. Taking up the lighter boxes wasn't too hard despite my fatigue, but when I tried lifting the heavier boxes, I encountered the same balance problems I'd had in Jeju: my stroke really has left me an uncoordinated mess when I'm straining while fighting my way upward. So when I had to carry the heavy boxes, I took it slow and wasn't too proud to set the boxes down when I was just shy of the top of the stairs. I needed the breather, and I had to clear my head of any vertigo. Late-night students and gym members passed by me as I ferried my load bit by bit up to the second floor. I piled everything back onto my cart, pushed the thing tiredly down the hall, keyed the code for my office's door, let myself in, trundled the hand truck to our R&D office, pushed everything into a convenient corner, then just sat glassy-eyed at my work station, sweaty and completely beaten.
That's when I reached into my breast pocket to get my phone, and it wasn't there.
Shit.
A thousand thoughts flooded into my head. Among them: the phone fell out while I was stooping over multiple times to collect my fallen books. It left my pocket, then glided out of my winter coat while I, being flustered, completely missed that fact. And now, my phone was lost, claimed by the gods, yet another digital sacrifice.
Then it hit me: people can track their phones nowadays, right?
Google might be irredeemably woke, but it's still good for some sorts of information retrieval. I fired up my work station's computer, got on Google, and searched for something like "how to track lost samsung." This took me to Samsung's phone-finder service, and it was just a matter of typing in some login info to get on the site. I gave the site the requisite information, hit "track my phone," and boom—my fears were for nothing. The phone was in my apartment building, and now, I felt like a senile bastard. The phone had never dropped out of my pocket: I'd simply forgotten to take it with me, which was, frankly, the outcome I'd been fervently hoping for. All's well that ends well, even if I end up looking stupid.
Relieved, and now partially rested, I gathered up my winter hat and scarf, put on my coat, turned off the R&D office's lights, left my company's premises, and caught one of the last subway trains back to my place. Jesus fucking Christ. Suck-ass way to end a Monday.
Don't try moving lots of boxes when you're old and out of shape. Either get in shape, or figure out some clever mechanical way to do your moving. For me, the moral of the story is that I should have lashed my load down to prevent it from moving at all. Korean movers often have these long, tough strips of rubber that they use to lash their cargo down; I need to buy a few yards of that stuff; it's better than bungee cords. (Here's a pic of some sort of strapping going on—not the straps I'm talking about, but close.) When I move my bookshelves back to the office, I'll use what resources I have to tie them down to the hand truck. Stability!
__________
*I assume you're aware the Bible has two different accounts of how Judas dies. The gospel account has him hanging himself out of guilt after he receives his thirty pieces of silver; perhaps lesser known is the account in Acts, in which Judas finds himself at the potter's field he purchased; he somehow contrives to "fall headlong"; his abdomen opens, and his guts come spilling violently out. Some theologians have, amusingly, tried stitching these accounts together for consistency's sake: Judas hangs himself high above the potter's field; the branch of his chosen tree breaks, and Judas tumbles into the potter's field, hitting something that opens up his guts. I don't think either story mentions broken tree branches (see for yourself—here and here). Another contradiction is that, in the gospel account, Judas tries to give back all of his thirty pieces of silver, and the priests and elders reject him, but in Acts, he uses some of his money to purchase the potter's field where he dies.
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