Journal #5 – 4/2/2024
Wow, I wrote 4,000+ words for just a journal entry? I just gave it a quick read through and the memories are coming to life. I can’t believe these stories happened a month ago. Well, it’s pretty long so I just checked for the basic name revealing errors, only one found and that’s in Korean. The funny thing is that name is actually not her name (I am so bad with names lol). I will still edit that out in respect of her privacy.
6:00 now. I got back home from work at 5:23. Spent some time cleaning up today’s quota I set up for cleaning up the room. Man, past Jin was ambitious; he designated a lot of trash to clean. But guess what, I did them all, plus one more. It was so disgusting that I had to put on a mask half-way through (I thought if I didn’t I’ll end up getting some kind of fungi infection. I probably did when I unsealed the containers with rotten food, but what can I do now?)
Just for a future note, if I feel any weird unordinary symptom of any kind, go see a doctor.
Anyway, now those containers are cleaned and ready to be thrown out by the future Jin who wakes up. It’s all ready and prepared.
I have this thought in me about this whole cleaning room situation. I think this entire thing actually is a blessing that I have too much trash that the cleaning process cannot be complete in narrow slit of time. In order to achieve my goal, I really do need to form the habit of cleaning. And because I am now in the situation where I must take a multi-step approach, I have no choice but adopt the habit of cleaning.
Will that habit stick after the project clean up your room is done? I sure hope so. But even if it doesn’t, 1. I have a clean room 2. I learn the importance of building positive habits. Not learn as in knowledge wise, not feel the importance of habit, but actually live through the benefits of this habit.
It’s a win regardless; it’s just the matter of how much I can squeeze out of this opportunity.
I should really timestamp every line of entry for this journal. Maybe make a macro?
Anyway, what happened at work.
Well, nothing extraordinary happened until I got to work, I think? I mean, I was really feeling down when I woke up from the dream I had before work. The second dream I had from the sequential nap eased me a bit, but it was hard to shake off the doubt that maybe this “self” that’s done all the driving through to deliver the change I enjoy has died. Has been scared away by my subconsciousness back into hiding.
I, knowing that’s the child in me, I said out loud it’s okay. These guys are playing games with you because who knows maybe they are jealous, or maybe they are sincerely worried so wanted to give us warning.
Anyway, the fact that my emotion was not stable then is apparent, because I was mildly frustrated at this one woman who simply can’t stand still in a line and is always deviating out from the orderly line. The line, is the line that I had to stand while waiting for the shuttle bus to the work arrived.
I have, for the most part, have formed the habit of doing Yoga Nidra meditation while I am on the bus to work, listening to Ally Boothryod. I don’t think the meditation went that well either. I think I managed to squeeze out some sleep from it, but I know I wasn’t able to focus on the meditation that effectively. This one was also a body scan meditation so I didn’t get to recite out my Sankalpa. Hey, I just learned how to spell that. I always thought it was syncopa, lol.
Anyway, I got off from the bus, then on my walk to the building, I decided that I will finally talk to that girl who’s selling kimbop, or maki roll for you Japanese culture enthusiasts, in front of the gate. She kind of spawned out of nowhere in the past month or so. Maybe it’s been a little longer, but I don’t know. I was always hesitant because I don’t carry any cash these days, and I usually eat before I go to work anyway. But I always thought she’d get more business if she demonstrated that she has more payment processing options, such as credit cards or bank transfers, etc.
So I went up to her and asked her, Hi, I was wondering if this service is cash only, She said she also takes wire transfers and pointed to her bank account number that she printed and glued to the side of the container (ice box, it seems like?). I never even noticed that was there until she pointed out. I told her, I already ate today, but now that I know, I’ll get a kimbap from you. She said thank you and smiled, hey, she’s pretty cute btw.
I am really curious why and how she decided that she was going to operate the kimbap stand in front of a Coupang fulfillment center. I mean, she probably decided that operating the kimbap stand is more profitable than actually working at the center?
Hey, I just came up with an idea for her! Well, two ideas, but the second one is better. First idea is just help her set up a QR code payment processing system so people don’t have to type in the bank account number anytime she wants to acquire a new customer.
Second idea is the gem, though. She’s selling outside at the gate of the building. First of all, there’s two gates to the building, second, her potential customers have such a short time to make the decision whether to buy or not because they are in a hurry to get to work. If she sold at the locker room, where there’s a whole bunch of people just lounging away until work begins, wouldn’t that make it more feasible for her to acquire more customers?
Maybe she can just do it and see what happens, or maybe she can just ask coupang. I don’t know. There’s the risk, of course, that Coupang may find this idea daunting and may shut her down, but I don’t know, depending on her situation, maybe that’s a worthwhile effort to take?
You see, I have this habit that when I am elated by my own brilliant idea, or when I am on the cusp of forming one, I have this tendency to smoke. I don’t know why, but maybe that’s the destructive side of me putting a check on me. But this trigger to the habit is worth an investigation. If I can substitute the cigarette to something else, imagine how much money and time (I get to live longer!) I can save for all the future Jins.
Anyway, I was out of cigarettes, so I decided to go out, throw out the cleaned trash, and buy a pack of cigs, along with energy drink and coffee that I will take to work tomorrow.
I’ve mentioned this in one of the previous journal entries, and I’ll recite it anew. There’s two convenience store near where I live. One is my favorite, and the other, I only go there when this one is closed. For one specific reason.
I don’t know if he’s the owner or just a nightshift employee, but there’s an old man at the counter. He always says Welcome when I enter, and is pretty decent throughout the checkout procedure. However, when I am done and I leave, I always say thank you. I say thank you everywhere. Most other places, the employee will say thank you come again, or something along that line. This old man, however, never says anything after the payment is done. He’s always dead silent, and unresponsive no matter how many times I’ve been there buying the same things over and over. His behavior thus made me feel like as if he is treating me like a walking wallet, and not a person.
My favorite convenient store; the boss is so friendly, and her employees, too (except for this one girl, but she’s rarely there), are so friendly and nice. One of the employee is currently serving the Korean military. I think it’s been about 2 months now. I hope he gets through it without getting hurt and I hope he learns a lot. The atmosphere there is just unlike any other convenience store. It’s a tiny store, at best. It doesn’t have a wide array of goods. Just the bare minimum at best. But The people who work there just transforms the entire shopping experience to another level. Not everytime, of course, but most of the times.
The sad thing is that store currently is closed for remodeling. I talked to the boss and she said the store will be open at around mid April. I am looking forward to it; not because of the new store, but I just want to tell her that her store is my favorite convenience store in the world.
Anyway, back to the story. Since my favorite store is closed, I had only one option left. I mean, I could walk a bit further to go to another store, but it’s not worth the walk. As I was entering the store, he was organizing the shelves and our eyes met. Welcome, he said. And I said Hello.
My hello, though, thanks to this surge of life in me, I think was a little over the top. Lol. Anyway, I proceeded to pick up my “usual” 3 cans of Hot Six (it’s buy 2 get 1 free), and 2 bottles of Acafela Specialty Coffee by Bingre (it’s buy 1 get one free). I went up to the counter and asked for the pack of Mevious, the cig I smoke.
I don’t know what came over me, but I said, “It’s always the same thing isn’t it?” with a smile.
He proceeded to register the items into the POS system; and then he said “oh wait, the coffee is actually buy 2 get one free.”
I’ve forgotten that this coffee brand switches its deals at the start of the month. So I said “Ah, you are right, it’s the start of the month, isn’t it? I always forget.” As I went to the shelf to pick up another one for it was part of the deal.
Then something I didn’t expect started to come out. He talked outside the process of transaction. He said “Yeah I am always scanning these items everyday and even I forgot!” We both shared a small laughter. Then I said, “hey, sir. Do you like coffee?” He tilted his head slightly and gave me that squinting look. So I handed over that extra coffee that we both forgot, and I told him, “drink it!”
And that’s the moment that I finally heard this old man say, with a smile, “thank you.”
I lived here for 3 years now. I made a small change that I never thought I would see.
I am just realizing how much time writing a journal actually takes. I am also just realizing how fun it is to write a journal. I am asking myself, what happened today? And the process of recalling is pretty fucking amazing bro. But damn, it’s already 7:53 am.
Time to go back to work story. What happened today, Jin?
Well, I guess nothing really worth mentioning except few banters I had with my coworkers. One different thing is that I said hell a lot of more hellos to other coworkers that I usually don’t say hello to.
There’s this one girl at work, who I do have occasional banter with. She once made fun of my hair ((the reason why I want to try a new haircut) and said I look like Nobita from the famous Japanese animation Doraemon. I told her about the story at the hairdresser and that I couldn’t get a new hairstyle and I had to wait 2 months. She joked, so does that mean that you need to spend another 2 month in that 삿갓 (tradition Korean hat/wearable umbrella) hair..
Later she came up to me and asked my name. She said “yeah, I don’t it’s very appropriate for me to call you umbrella hair for god knows how long, wouldn’t it be?” and I said, “yeah, probably. I mean, I can take being called Nobita, but umbrella hair is a bit too much.” So we exchanged our names after 5 months of me working with her (it’s especially hard to find out someone’s name when everyone is forced to refer each other in our id numbers instead). Her name was such a common name that on our PDA device, it showed up with an A attached. Like JohnA and JohnB or so.
I said to her, “okay, I’ll call you A from now on.”
사원님, 이름 뒤에 A 붙었으니 이제부터 xx아라 부를께요. 왜요, B가 아닌게 다행이지, xx브 될뻔했는데.
That’s a little banter line I’ll throw at her next time I see her.
That, and “maybe you should actually call me umbrella hair so henceforth when you see any Korean historical dramas, all you can think of is me.”
That banter aside, I guess the rest of the 5 hours of work until “lunch time” (11pm) was pretty uneventful. Oh, except the fact that I saw that girl I liked and still couldn’t go up to her and ask for 30 seconds of her time.
Anyway, the PA system announced it’s lunch time, so I went to the rail to drop off the totes (baskets where you collect iitems that will be shipped out), only to find it stuck and not moving. So dropped off the totes next to the rail, and went downstairs to check out from work to go eat (we check out by scanning our id barcode at the floor center. I was the last one to check out; and I asked the manager, hey, is there a reason why the rail is stopped? I had to drop my totes next to the rail because the rail was full and I couldn’t leave it on the rail. The manager looked at the screen and said, oh shit, you are right. It is stopped. No worries, I’ll just resume it from here. Go eat, I’ll take care of those totes upstairs.
I was pleasantly surprised that not a single person mentioned that to him. Imagine if he was unaware and went to lunch without resuming the rail flow. I think I get a tiny “helped someone” pointer for that?
Anyway, work resumed at 12:00 am. I took a nap for 30 minutes. It was a sweet, sweet nap. When the work resumed, this time I was placed on the first floor. A lot people don’t like the first floor because that’s where most of the heavy lifting is done. I used to hate it too, but now I just think of it as a muscle workout time.
When the work resumed I realized that the girl that I like was positioned on another floor this session. It kind of gave me a relief of some sorts. Not that I liked it that much though. As I worked I felt I was getting tired and sleepy.
Then came the break time. We get 20 minutes of break from 1:40 am to 2:00 am. In that narrow window, smokers go outside of the building to smoke. It’s actually a long walk. We need to go downstairs in the basement to our lockers, and have to climb up 60 steps of stairs (equivalent to 3 stories tall building) to go outside.
There’s a cat outside sometimes, and I have the inkling to buy some catfood to feed it one day, but that hasn’t happened yet. The cat wasn’t around today, however. I hope he/she is okay. The Cat lounges around the smoking area because there’s one lady who’s already feeding her, sometimes.
Anyway, I was outside smoking, and there was a gentleman next to me who was watching news on his phone. Somewhere in the middle he yelped out “oh wow” so I leaned over and I asked him “did something happen?”
Besides the point that I talked to a stranger, he was very receptive and he recited me the news. Apparently there was this person on an internet community who reported that he/she has reported 2800 cases of illegal parking, and thus was claiming himself as a patriot who has earned the government over $100,000 in fines collected from his reporting.
The gentlemen had a very negative view towards this person, saying things like: why must this person go around disrupting his community like that? Our country has way too many cars, and there literally is no parking spot for anyone these days. This person obviously doesn’t have a car, must be young, and damn he must be unemployed for him to go around spending time doing such petty, annoying things.
I shared my opinion that I agreed with him, but then I introduced him to see it in another perspective. In which it goes: Shouldn’t we be glad though, that this person is at least doing something? There are so many people who don’t even do anything. At least this person is doing something in alignment with the law.”
Some meanings are lost in translation, but I think that’s kind of the jest of what I said. And he laughed and said, “yeah, that’s probably right too.’
Anyway, on my walk back to the building, I saw her outside smoking with a friend. They were talking to each other, and I passed by. Once again, I couldn’t say anything, and I walked past them towards the building entrance. It almost became one of those nights.
At the entrance of the building, I said fuck it. And I turned around.
I went straight up to her; and said those lines rehearsed in my head over and over again. The simple acknowledgement of her good work, a simple compliment, and a show of gratitude for the energy she provided. Yeah, of course, it didn’t all come out like I rehearsed it in my head. I probably stuttered here and there; but I said it anyway. At the beginning, her faced showed signs of confusion, then a bit of tension. Then there was a relief when I said that I like seeing her working hard. Then she was laughing, I didn’t know why then, but later she told me (I talked to her again after work) it was because, according to her, I said something that was totally opposite from what she thought I’d say.
She told me she thought I was there to scold her for slacking at work. And that’s probably because I am apparently known as the guy who works the hardest at work. So apparently everything I said to her was opposite reality of her reality. She said, she didn’t once think of her as a hard worker. She said those times she seemed to show hard work was because she felt that she was slow at work. The entire contrast of reality was what she found funny. I guess I stilled another perspective in someone, once again.
Lesson learned? Contrasting reality is funny when you seed it in as a new perspective?
She thanked me for the compliment, and I told her it’d be nice if we can say hello when we pass by each other. She said “yeah, let’s do that.”
20 minutes of breaktime goes pretty fast, usually. But today that 20 minutes felt so worthwhile.
It’s 0930 am right now and I am rehearsing world building exercises that I can do with her. If she happens to ask for my name; I will give her my ID number. Then I will use the prison routine. If I find her slacking and chatting in middle of work, I’ll use the 이대감 routine.
Anyway, the rest of the work for two hours went by like a blast. I felt energized, happy, funny. I think I talked to so many new people today, and I think I carried a good vibe.
After work, on my way to the shuttle bus, I saw her and her friend smoking at the same spot. So I approached them again. When I called her, and when she acknowledged my presence, immediately broke into laughter. Perhaps she didn’t think she’ll have a version 2.0 of me that night. Anyway, I said “I was just curious, were you scared of me?”
I told her that I meant to say what I wanted to say earlier, but so many times we’d pass each other by and she had the serious face so many times that I thought that she was afraid of me or something. She said that’s not true and that she was afraid that I was going to scold her for either blocking hallway to talk to her friend or for throwing a box (I, even now, don’t understand what she means, lol). I said, who am I to scold you and I said I don’t think there’s anyone who’d actually go about scolding people. She suddenly showed the face of uhmmmm… so I said “… was there someone like that?” and apparently there has been a lady, who apparently likes to dress in red, who scolded them for blocking the hallway..
I said I am sorry I made something so simple so awkward. She said it’s all fine, and that she’ll say hello when we pass by next time. We said our byes and we went our separate way home. I wonder what she thinks about this strange encounter right now.
On the way back I watched a video by Tim Ferriss interviewing someone on the topic of stoicism. I am going to replay it on my laptop as I fall asleep today.
Oh, and once the shuttle bus arrived at our destination, I also said hi to this guy who got off with me. He works on the same floor as I do, and we’ve not spoken or said much other than some thank yous out of courtesy if our works happen to overlap. I said it’s weird that we work on the same floor yet we don’t even say hi. He genuinely is a nice guy, it turns out. He works on Group G shift, which is the same group as the coworker friend I have who started the job at the same time with.
I don’t know what today holds for me, but I am excited, and thus I feel like I will have a hard time falling asleep. This journal has been longer than I ever expected it to be. A thought in my head right now is that maybe I could make a newsletter sharing specifically my journal. Of course than means I need to edit out my friend’s names; and henceforth not spell out their names in my future journals. Well, other than mentioning two people, I think I am doing a good job at that.
Let me see what I can do for video forms. I need to improve my writing skill, video creating skill and on top of that, I must develop and harness superior focus.
I woke up at exactly 2pm. I don’t even know how long I slept, but I feel like the sleep was good. I didn’t have any nightmares.
I woke up and discovered that my best friend cancelled the purchase I made for his product. I wonder why he did that. The message on naver (the sales platform) is that they are out of stock. But we all know that’s not true.
I was in the shower just now and a question came up. What do I want to be? The answer that came to my mind was little peculiar this time around though. It wasn’t to become an entrepreneur, not an author, not a philanthropist, but a simple answer; a happy old man. A happy, sincere, independent, charming old man.
I’m watching Why Is Love So Hard To Find In The Modern World? – Matthew Hussey, a podcast by Chris Williamson. Here, Matthew is talking about how he needed therapy to even understand what he was truly feeling. He said that he felt guilt in relationships where he hurt others. The therapist then told him, perhaps the way you feel guilt is not because it’s just guilt, but guilt is easier emotion to accept than the emotion that’s underlying him. He asked the therapist, then what is the real emotion underneath? And the therapist said it’s disappointment.
I wonder if this new feeling of happiness, confidence, or everything under this spectrum is also because this is an easier set of emotions to deal with than something else that’s deep inside of me. I thought to myself, maybe it’s the fear of unknown, fear of the inevitable death. Those are real feelings that I can feel if I reach for it. So it must be, at the very least parts of it.
Then I thought to myself; then it’s okay. It’s a good way and a good mode to accept what is to come. I am glad these are my substitute emotions and not something destructive.
I sent my best friend a message asking why he cancelled my order. I feel like there is a more delicate way of addressing it, but what’s done is done.
I wish could allocate more time building this (content, I guess) in a day than now. I want to get to that level up.