renovation

My building's first floor has been off limits for several weeks as little elves have been renovating our apartment's lobby. Some early signs plastered all over the building had said that we wouldn't have elevator access to the first floor until June 30th, but that date has been moved forward to June 21, with the lobby now mostly done and mostly reopened.

my building's new lobby + a friendly guard/concierge

our building's new front (looks like the old front except for the new, tall sculpture)

the new, bland, abstract sculpture

As I keep saying, Koreans love their abstract sculpture.

the shrubbery! (already looking kinda' rough)

new concierge desk, with no more "trap door" up front to allow concierges to move more freely

Artwork that had been taken down is now back up.

In eleven days, life will return more or less to normal. I've adapted to the current situation by getting off the elevator at the second floor and taking an escalator down to the first floor, where we're permitted to exit through the side of the building. I also adjusted my Coupang deliveries to mun-ap/문앞 as the delivery destination, i.e., to the front of my personal door. Before, I was having things dropped off at the lobby, where a guard would tell me I had a package (something I could also see on my phone because every delivered package would trigger an automatic notification—one of the perks of living in civilization). Come to think of it, I don't know why I didn't set my delivery destination to "front of my door" to begin with. Front-door delivery cuts out the middle man: no need for the concierge to tell you anything, a bonus for introverts. Sometimes, if an item is too bulky (like a mattress), the delivery people will lazily leave the delivery in the lobby and text me. I find this obnoxious, but it's a short elevator ride back up to the 14th floor, so I grumble only a little while I drag or heave my huge whatever-it-is. Some delivery guys have developed a habit of not coming all the way to one's door: instead, they drop their delivery packages at your floor in the area where the elevators are, making it the residents' responsibility to wander by the elevators to pick up their packages. This feels a bit like something a stereotypical French worker would do: minimize effort. (The French are known for enjoying life, not for doing backbreaking work, but in truth, there are exceptions, such as the men in my French family.)

The lobby is now open to the public again, but we still can't take the elevator to the first floor (every elevator's first-floor button has been taped over with a tiny warning saying the floor is unavailable). Not much longer until that situation changes.

Our building is old, though, and renovations like this are at best superficial. We have periodic planned power outages so crews can go in and rip out old wiring, then replace it with new wiring. The building is constantly being worked on. I probably can't live here forever. As someone noted: in Europe, you can have buildings that are sturdy, have survived for centuries, and are still in use. In Asia, you're never guaranteed to live more than twenty years in a single spot because everything eventually ends up getting knocked down and built up again for a different group of residents. It's a constant shuffle and a constant reminder of impermanence—a bit like the running joke about how Korean Buddhist temples, being made mostly of wood, are forever burning down and being rebuilt.